It was the beginning of 2001. I’d been working at MTV News for nearly three years, and I was convinced I had the best job in the world. I had no idea that a 19-year-old Beyoncé was about to teach me something I would remember for the next 25 years.

(If you know what MTV News is, skip this part. For those who were not even born then, MTV News was the place in the 90s and 2000s, where young people got their daily pop culture fix. If you wanted to know who was the new cool artist, the dreamiest teen star or what was going on in the culture, you would tune in to a cable channel called MTV, watch music videos and wait every hour, 10 minutes before the hour, to get your news. Imagine Tik Tok or IG without scrolling)

Every year, MTV News produced the pre-shows for the Movie Awards and the VMAs. In 2001, in an effort to elevate our Hollywood coverage, the decision was made to produce a quick-turnaround, live-to-tape show covering the Golden Globes red-carpet arrivals. It was called Buckwild at the Golden Globes (a name I cannot defend, but which perfectly captures the early-2000s belief that putting the word buckwild in a television title automatically made it cool. Cringe)

So I flew to L.A. a couple of days beforehand. I had no idea how I had ended up being selected as one of the show’s floor producers. It might have helped that I had a great relationship with both Heather Parry, the West Coast Bureau Chief, and Chris Connelly, the main correspondent for everything Hollywood-related.

Then came the production meeting. And that’s when I discovered who we were actually putting on the carpet. Two of the biggest rap acts of the era, Outkast and Xzibit, would be doing live hits from a hotel-suite balcony overlooking the carpet. Fine. Very MTV. And on the carpet itself, interviewing Hollywood’s arriving celebrities, would be Chris Connelly and… Beyoncé. I nearly fell out of my chair.

We had just spent the last year reporting on Destiny’s Child members being kicked out and replaced as if it were the Super Bowl of pop culture. Throughout it all, Beyoncé kept deepening her acting chops, including filming what would be her first acting role in the MTV film Carmen: A Hip Hopera, which premiered later that year. So this gig as an MTV News correspondent, mingling with Hollywood celebrities, was a smart strategic move on her team’s part.

But what were 19-year-old Beyoncé’s thoughts about it? Well, she was the consummate professional, and I never imagined I would know or dare to ask.

The day of the show arrived, and as she walked onto the carpet, she looked…well, stunning, in an orange strapless gown that exposed her skinny arms.

In order for her to conduct interviews with the celebrities in attendance, we had to squeeze behind a rope, surrounded by correspondents from every other TV outlet on the planet.

If you’ve never been there, it can be daunting and stressful: you have to get celebrities to stop and talk to your talent, make sure the MTV News mic is in the shot, and, ideally, secure something exclusive from them. But as celebrities get bombarded with questions coming at them every few feet, it can start to feel like no one is going to stop for you.

That might have dawned on Beyoncé as she stood there witnessing the madness. She whispered in my ear, “I’m nervous.”

This was Beyoncé. Beyoncé was nervous?

I calmed her down and told her not to worry. We would “wrangle talent” for her, which meant my kick-ass colleague Heather threatening anyone and everyone to talk to MTV News talent. She was the pro. I would not have wanted to be the celebrity who told her no.

Luckily, we got off to a good start. Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, were just passing our position when Rita stopped and did a double take. She approached Beyoncé and said, “We love your music.”

I watched Beyoncé light up.

Beyoncé was surprised and delighted to be recognized and welcomed. She was already a huge music star, but still young enough to feel that there were new rooms for her to enter.

Once we interviewed Tom and Rita, Beyoncé got more excited, and more celebrities followed, including a 21-year-old Kate Hudson, who went on to win Best Supporting Actress for Almost Famous that night and more.

An hour or so passed. Everything moved incredibly fast, and I walked Beyoncé to her next position on the red carpet, so she could do some stand-ups with Chris Connelly, like the one teasing a 2000s version of GRWM with J.Lo.

As the carpet was winding down, I found myself alone with Beyoncé.

I don’t remember how, but somehow we started talking about her 14-year-old sister, Solange. She told me she was trying to discourage her sister from getting into show business, even though Solange was desperately trying to follow in her big sister’s footsteps.

“Why?” I asked, surprised.

In my eyes, Beyoncé was someone who seemed so well-adjusted to the limelight. She had a supportive family who managed her career and had guided her since she was a child. Her dad had famously even built a deck on top of their back patio so Beyoncé, Kelly, and their friends could rehearse their dance routines in heels.

But how would I know what was really going on behind closed doors?

Her next statement changed me forever.

“You have a little girl, correct?” she asked. We had chatted about my daughter earlier; she was six years old at the time and at home with her dad.

“Yes,” I answered, baffled.

“Never let her go into show business as a child,” she admonished me, very seriously.

I was stunned.

Here was this 19-year-old woman, someone I had just met, giving me parenting advice. And yet somehow, it didn’t feel presumptuous. It felt like wisdom.

I had met Beyoncé, the future superstar that day. But in that moment, I met something else: a young woman who seemed to understand the price of growing up in public.

She was wise beyond her years, remarkably poised, and confident enough to tell a mother she had just met something she genuinely believed she needed to hear.

I never forgot it.

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A few months later, I had a chance to work with Beyoncé again when she hosted another stupidly named show I had developed at MTV News: The Fake ID Club, a magazine-style show featuring celebrities under 21, including Britney Spears, the Olsen twins, and many others.

We filmed her host wraps in a design and furniture store in SoHo because, for reasons I can no longer remember, we thought it would look cool.

As always, Beyoncé came prepared. She breezed through the script in less than an hour.

Before she left, she gave me a huge hug and a smile.

She was still only 19.

The rest of the world would soon catch up with her.

But I had already seen something in Beyoncé that had nothing to do with fame.

Her warmth stayed with me for the next 25 years.

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Watch: Furious. I have to confess that Hulu has become one of my favorite streaming services. Of course, I still love HBO series, but there seem to be fewer and fewer of them—especially now that the company is going through what can only be described as the “merger from hell.” But I digress. Between the FX shows and its own originals, Hulu has somehow become the new HBO, just with fewer marketing dollars.

So when I vaguely read that there was a new series created by the talented Elizabeth Meriwether, I was immediately in. I did not, however, expect to be in for such a treat.

Police procedurals are so ubiquitous that it’s hard to surprise an audience anymore. Yet Furious is full of original ideas and terrific performances. And for a good cat-and-mouse thriller, you need a very convincing mouse when Emmy Rossum is playing the cat.

It took me a minute (and, okay, a Google search) to identify the mouse. Then it clicked why I was so completely hooked: Lola Petticrew, whom I discovered in another spectacular Hulu series, Say Anything, is the aforementioned mouse, playing a serial killer. Enough said. Go turn on your TV. And cancel whatever you were planning to watch on HBO.

Visit: Noguchi Museum. Being a typical Manhattanite, I rarely travel to other boroughs. Call me snob or call me lazy, at least I’m being honest. So when I made plans with a friend to go to Astoria in Queens, I felt like Dora The Explorer. The truth is I’ve been meaning to learn more about Isamu Noguchi, a fellow immigrant who adopted New York as his new home. The current exhibit shows the sculptures currently in the city as well as his designs for work that was never built, including several cool children’s playgrounds.

The museum itself is a japanese inspired paradise, with a lovely garden where you can sit and meditate and a museum shop where you can admire and/or buy Noguchi’s iconic lamps. Unfortunately there is no coffee shop inside, so we walked across the street to admire the Socrates Sculpture Park which is worth visiting and found a coffee shop nearby where we refuel before the “exhausting” subway ride back to the city.

Read: Euphoria. My writing teacher once taught me that one of the hardest things to do when writing a short story or a novel is to portray the bond between two or more people in a way that feels completely authentic. Once you accomplish that, everything else, the plot, the twists, the drama becomes secondary. If you can make us care about the people, you’ve already done most of the work.

I encountered the author Lily King for the first time when someone gifted me her latest book, Heart the Lover. I was so moved by its love story that it brought me to tears, which is saying something, because I’m not exactly a crier when I read. So I did what I always do when I discover an author who enchants me: I immediately read another one of their books. That’s how I found Euphoria, which, on the surface, is a fictionalized account of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s adventures in New Guinea, but is really a story about the complicated bond between her and her two lovers. The way King writes about desire and longing makes you want to fall in love all over again (or at least makes you briefly consider texting someone you absolutely should not text–you know who you are)

Listen to: Love Trapped podcast. Wanna hear a bonkers story about a The Bachelor contestant? On its own, that probably wouldn’t have been enough to make me download a 10-part serialized podcast. But when I learned it was produced by Nancy Glass, I knew I was in for something far more substantial than reality-TV gossip.I had the pleasure of working with Nancy on several unscripted TV projects, and she is not only incredibly smart but also deeply serious about investigative journalism. She knows how to take a story that sounds almost too crazy to be true and dig until she gets to what’s really underneath it.

And that’s exactly what happens here. The Bachelor contestant at the center of the story is merely the doorway into a much darker and more astonishing tale involving deception, fraud, and mental illness. What begins as a juicy reality-TV story slowly turns into something far more unsettling and, at times, downright shocking.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, because the best way to experience this one is to start listening and let the multi-year ordeal unfold episode by episode. Forget the fantasy suite. This story goes somewhere considerably creepier.

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During my many years in corporate America, I encountered my fair share of sexist comments. Unfortunately, I didn’t always recognize them for what they were. In the 1990s and early 2000s, conversations about feminism often focused on the feminist movements of the past. I would read books and watch documentaries on the subject, but without the internet, I didn’t have the information at my fingertips to help me recognize how deeply the patriarchy was embedded in the workplace.

It is only in retrospect that I realize that things said to me as if they were perfectly normal were, in fact, insulting and demeaning, not just to me, but to women in general.

Here are 5 examples and how I fought back:

1-Don’t speak: Early in my career, a male boss asked me to accompany him to a meeting with a senior executive who had just been assigned to oversee our department. As we were about to enter the executive’s office, my boss looked me in the eye and said, “Do not speak. Let me do the talking.”

I was taken by surprise. Why was I in the meeting if I wasn’t going to participate? Startled and confused, I sat there like a statue for the entire hour, unable to understand what was happening. When the meeting was over, as we were walking out, the male senior executive looked at me for the first time and asked, “Are you mute?”

They both laughed in unison at my expense. Was it a setup? What was the point? I was terribly humiliated, but I had to think fast. “I’m not a mute,” I said. “I’m just not competing for airtime.” And then I walked away and cried in the bathroom.

It took me a while to understand what had just happened. The only reason my boss had invited me to the meeting was to demonstrate that he had minions, a little display of power as he introduced himself to his new boss. But he couldn’t risk having me speak, appear smart, or, worse, acknowledge that there were things in our department that could be improved. I wasn’t a person in that room. I was a symbol. And once the two men had bonded over their shared masculinity and declared me unworthy, they mocked me together to reinforce their sense of superiority.

I lost all respect for my boss that day. Soon after, I quit and found another job, one where people thought I might actually have something worth saying.

2- When I hired you, you didn’t even know how to turn on a TV: yep, that’s a real comment from my first TV boss. You must be wondering: who would say that? And why? Well, I was hired as a production assistant and was given menial tasks for months. The first one was alphabetizing a video library (meaning, ordering the music videos in alphabetical order) That’s how low I started, something that only requires one hand and elementary school education. But I was green, an immigrant, and oh so happy to have a paying job, I was willing to do anything I was asked. Time passed, and I really started to work on producing segments for a Spanish music show MTV was making for Telemundo. I compiled the music videos, made sure the talent was ready, pitched ideas and even started writing scripts. I was promoted to Segment Producer. I was incredibly ambitious and so elated to have such a cool job, that I would stay late and arrive early no matter what. One day, an opportunity came up to produce a new show for channel 11 in NYC. They wanted Latino content in English and asked MTV to produce it. It was called Second Generation. I volunteered to be in charge, and shockingly I was assigned to produce it. It was my first credit as a full blown Producer.

But my male boss, the one who originally hired me, was not going to take it sitting down. It’s not that he wanted the position for himself, he was busy working on big music shows like a series called Unplugged. But he couldn’t tolerate how fast I was growing my career, so he made sure I hit the brakes. He came to my cubicle one day, and making sure other people around us could hear him, sarcastically said: “Look at you. When I hired you, you didn’t even know how to turn on a TV” I heard muffled laughter as he returned to his office.

So I did something that I would never do again: I ran to the Human Resources office and ratted him out. (Here I have to make an aside: HR people work for the company, not for you. Unless there is a real threat to your well being, try to avoid them)

I was lucky that the HR person who I met was older and way wiser than me. She smiled after I mentioned his comment and said: “Next time a man makes a comment like that, you respond, YOU ARE RIGHT, BUT DID YOU SEE HOW FAST I LEARNED? That will shut him up”.

The way the patriarchy diminishes women’s worth can be subtle and insidious. In this case, he was not only taking responsibility for my success - it was his, not mine- but was also saying: aren’t you lucky? If it wasn’t for me, you would be nothing.

I never got a chance to retort, but I’m giving you permission to always push back.

3-There is a perception you are not putting enough hours: I was the first one in my department to have a child. I was very aware I was not like everyone else. I wasn’t going to happy hours with my colleagues anymore nor I could attend free concerts, which was one of the perks that came with the job. Moreover, working at a News division, even if it was MTV News, meant long hours, quick turnarounds and “always on call”.

I was surprised when my boss asked me to her office. She sat me down and said: “There is a perception you are not putting in as many hours as everyone else. That can jeopardize your job” I was livid. I knew that having a baby at home meant changing my habits to prioritize both my child and my work. I dropped my daughter off at nursery school at 8 a.m., which meant I could arrive at the office in Times Square by 9. While everyone else rolled into the place slowly, often carrying a hangover, sometime after 10 a.m., I was already at my desk. I barely got up from my seat, not even for lunch, so I could make the 6 p.m. pickup. All my work was delivered promptly, and I hadn’t missed a beat. I was now in my 30s, and I was fully aware of how women with children were discussed in a male-dominated society. And although MTV, as a company, was remarkably progressive, misogyny was still ingrained in the system. I didn’t let my anger show. Instead, I told my boss, “It’s not a perception. I do leave the office before everyone else. But I also come in earlier than the rest, including you, and I don’t spend hours gossiping and chatting with the team because I HAVE A BABY.” I let that sink in before adding, “And to whoever perceives me as a faulty piece of this organization because I’m a mother, have them come and tell me to my face.” No one ever did. The subject was dropped.

4-You are too ambitious for a woman: I was working at A&E, where I developed Duck Dynasty, the biggest show in the history of the channel up to that point. It was the #1 unscripted cable show in the country and was making the company millions of dollars. I had worked incredibly hard, and I was very proud of this accomplishment. So it didn’t seem unreasonable to expect a raise or a promotion. That’s how important the show was to the overall health of the company. But I was wrong. The then-CEO wouldn’t even say hello if we happened to run into each other in the elevator. When I mentioned it to my bosses, who were very supportive of me, they said, “Don’t take it personally. That’s just the way she is.” I knew that ignoring one of her most successful employees was not a good omen for the promotion I was hoping to get. One day, a consultant who helped with personnel dynamics invited me to lunch. She asked me about my hopes within the organization, and I naively told her the truth: I was passionate and driven about my work, and I thought I deserved a promotion. Because she was a woman, I felt I could confide in her. She took a sip of her wine and, without the slightest hint of irony, said, “You’re too ambitious for a woman. It’s not a good look.” I almost vomited my meal.

The promotion went to a man, and shortly afterward, I told them I wouldn’t be renewing my contract. Because I had a one-year non-compete clause in my contract, the company paid me my full salary, with benefits, for the next twelve months. It wasn’t enough money to make me forget what had happened, that’s why I’m sharing it here, but it did allow me to travel the world at their expense.

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5-This table is not for you: By the early 2000s, I had risen to Senior Director, carrying tremendous responsibility and developing hit shows, yet I still didn’t feel seen as a senior employee. Every week, 50 to 70 people gathered to discuss the channel’s upcoming programming. All the senior members of each team attended, but the table could seat only about 20, so the rest of us sat in chairs at the back. Apparently, there was a hierarchy, and the furniture knew it.

I never thought much about where I sat. I was fascinated by the discussion: strategies, ratings, what worked and what didn’t on air. It was a master class in TV 101, and I looked forward to Thursdays.One day, one of my closest colleagues, who would become a dear friend, told me she was reading Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman by Gail Evans. I had never heard of it but was intrigued by the title. She shared some of its lessons: corporate business was a game designed and ruled by men, and if women wanted to claim a “seat at the table,” we needed to understand its unwritten rules and confidently insert ourselves into the game. The following Thursday, instead of retreating to the back row, we both sat at the table. No security guard came to escort us back to our chairs. So we did it again the following week, and then again. Before long, our presence at the table seemed almost expected. Questions started coming our way, and we were even asked to present at one of the meetings.

We knew it wasn’t the physical change that brought us to others’ attention. It was the confidence it gave us to assert ourselves. We were important to the organization, but instead of waiting for others to recognize it, we started telling ourselves.

In the book, Evans argues that women often wait to be noticed, assuming their hard work will speak for itself. She emphasizes that self-promotion is a requirement, not a luxury. Men are often comfortable taking credit and selling themselves; women must learn to do the same to remain visible. In other words, sometimes getting a seat at the table starts with the radical act of... simply sitting down.

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Visit: Keith Haring exhibit in Tribeca. Last May, Louis Vuitton unveiled its Cruise 2027 collection, A Tale of Two Cities, at The Frick Collection. Nicolas Ghesquière filled the runway with Keith Haring’s unmistakable graphic lines, and I remember thinking: Really? Haring? For New York? How subtle.

That’s the problem with living here for decades, you stop noticing that your everyday landscape is everyone else’s fantasy. New York still inspires artists from Tokyo to Paris; I’m just the idiot who occasionally forgets.

So don’t make my mistake. This free gallery is worth the trip for Haring’s paintings and sculptures alone, but the real surprise is the full-scale recreation of San Francisco’s legendary DV8 club, complete with his original 1980s murals, black-light rooms, and a soundtrack. Go before the New York cynic in you kicks in.

Visit: Frida and Diego: The Last Dream. After spending much of her life in the shadow of her painter husband, Diego Rivera, Mexican icon Frida Kahlo eventually became one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. So it feels only right that, for once, Frida’s name comes first—at least on the sign at MoMA. Diego, don’t take it personally.

I was still living in Buenos Aires when I discovered Frida’s biography. I devoured it and then couldn’t seem to get Frida out of my head. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to see many of her paintings in person, and every time, I’m struck by how much story each one contains. Frida had the extraordinary ability to turn pain, heartbreak, illness, and pretty much everything life threw at her into astonishing art.

The MoMA exhibit is small, but if you’re not familiar with her work, it packs a punch. And there are some beautiful pieces by Diego, too—which I’m sure Frida would graciously allow us to admire. 😂

Read: Tangerinn. I’m always drawn to debut novels by female authors, partly because I’m hoping that some of their magic will rub off on me and, one day, I’ll officially join the club.

This debut, by Italian-Moroccan author Emanuela Anechoum, follows Mina, a 30-year-old woman living in London who returns to her hometown in Italy after the sudden death of her Moroccan-born father. What begins as a story about returning home becomes something much more complicated: a meditation on belonging, identity, family, and the strange feeling of being both from somewhere and not entirely from there.

Anechoum’s portrayal of immigrant life resonated with me deeply. Mina’s sense of displacement, her complicated relationship with her Italian and Moroccan identities, and her struggle to understand where she belongs reminded me of my own journey from Argentina to New York as the daughter of Eastern European parents. Different countries, different generations, different circumstances and yet, that familiar question: Where exactly is home when your identity was shaped by more than one place?

What stayed with me most is the book’s exploration of the invisible weight we inherit from our families. The expectations, the stories, the things our parents left behind, and sometimes the things they never talked about. We carry all of it, whether we want to or not. Ultimately, It’s a book about the universal struggle to figure out who we are once we realize we can’t simply inherit an identity from the people who came before us.

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Watch: Blue Heron. My NYU film school teacher would have loved me if I had written a film like this. Instead, when I handed in a short script inspired by the magical realism of the books I read as a teenager, he handed it back to me and, almost shouting, said: “Have you heard of Shakespeare? Please read him if you ever want to write anything good.” Apparently, I had been writing all wrong and, more importantly, had somehow missed Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, this gem of a film is no longer in theaters, but you can rent it digitally. If, like me, you need a steady dose of indie and experimental films in your movie diet, this semi-autobiographical drama, written and directed by Sophy Romvari, will satisfy the craving. Set in the 1990s, it follows eight-year-old Sasha and her Hungarian-Canadian family as they relocate to Vancouver Island, where their fresh start is disrupted by her eldest brother Jeremy’s increasingly dangerous and unpredictable behavior. What makes the film especially fascinating is the unexpected shift from past to present, and the way the director blends fact and fiction to show how our adult selves can return to childhood memories and see them—and the trauma buried inside them—in an entirely different light.

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I became a full-time employee at MTV in 1990. Although MTV didn’t exist in my own country yet, everyone in America was raving about it. It was like TikTok, a podcast, and a live Twitch stream all at once.

Every artist needed MTV to succeed. The algorithms were the executives at the channel who decided which videos, and which artists, they were going to air. They had so much power that their floor was practically a parade of assistants delivering flowers, platters of food, and plenty of booze from record companies, all desperate to make sure their artists weren’t forgotten.

As a production assistant, I obviously had no power whatsoever. But after hours, the assistants in that department (it was called Talent and Artist Relations) would let us grab all the remaining food, which, for broke PAs like me, meant free dinner for the night. I thought it was the biggest perk anyone could get.

Oh, was I wrong.

While I was a young immigrant employee being impressed by free food, the bosses were enjoying the increasingly humongous profits a content company like ours was starting to make in the era of cable. MTV and its parent company, Viacom, were being paid by cable operators—the people who ran the cable lines into every home—to allow them to carry MTV on their services.

MTV launched a very clever and now-legendary campaign in which the biggest artists on the planet looked into the camera and declared, “I want my MTV!” I’m talking about David Bowie, Sting, Mick Jagger, Madonna—all of them making free advertisements for the channel. So not only was MTV cashing in on these “carriage fees,” but it was also selling tons of advertising to companies desperate to reach young consumers for the first time.

Imagine if all the money from advertising on Instagram, TikTok, and podcasts were funneled into one company. That’s how rich this company was at the time.

And I was about to find out.

The holidays were approaching, and we were told we were all invited to a company party. It was my first time working for an American corporation, and I was excited to be invited—me, one of the last people on the totem pole. Another dinner I wouldn’t have to pay for, I thought. I was still operating at the “free food equals success” level of ambition.

We walked into a small venue in Midtown, near the office, where the party was being held. I didn’t know what to expect. I had never seen an open bar in my life, let alone trays piled high with every kind of food imaginable, all there for the taking.

Cocaine and weed were circulating, although they certainly weren’t being offered by the company. People brought their own. No one seemed to care. It was bizarre for me to watch some of the big bosses letting themselves go on the dance floor, high AF. But it was hardly surprising. MTV was the epitome of cool, the place where every young person wanted to work, especially creative people who loved music and pop culture.

Suddenly, the lights dimmed, and I gathered that someone was going to play music that night. I thought it would be a good time to make a run for the bathroom as people moved closer to the stage.

But then someone walked onstage, and I froze.

There, in front of us, was none other than Prince, performing at MY company’s holiday party!

My friends in Argentina were never going to believe this. Hell, I could hardly believe it myself. I had gone from stealing a Snickers bar from a film set to watching Prince perform at my office Christmas party. This was not a career path I could have predicted.

I remember looking around to see how everyone else was reacting to this turn of events. But no one else seemed remotely as stunned as I was. They just knew their job was cool, and apparently, this kind of thing was expected. I was waiting for someone to explain what was happening. Nobody did. They were too busy singing along with Prince: “You don’t have to be rich to be my girl, you don’t have to be cool to rule my world. Ain’t no particular sign I’m compatible with. I just want your extra time and your kiss”

As the years went by, I would share private rooms with many more celebrities, but the sense of awe never got old.

Although some of them really pissed me off. (To be continued…)

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Watch: The Invite directed by Olivia Wilde. Not only should we support female directors because it’s still harder for women to access funding to direct feature films, but also because of the choices Olivia makes in this film, which are genuinely revelatory. Based on a Spanish play and the Spanish film that followed it, the movie looks behind the closed doors of a relationship (in this case, actually two marriages). Whenever a couple breaks up, we wonder why. But they seemed so in love, we say. But what does it really mean to be “in love” within a relationship? This film dares to ask that question, and sometimes, the answers sting.

Visit: Schiaparelli: Fashion becomes Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. First, let me let you in on a secret: if you’re a pop-culture addict like me, this is the best museum in London. Its sold-out exhibitions on musicians, actors, and fashion designers are so brilliantly curated that you walk out feeling as if you’ve earned a new degree in a subject you didn’t even know you’d enrolled in. This current exhibition runs through November 8, so if you’re planning a trip to London, book your tickets now, they sell out fast.I knew only a little about Elsa beyond her role as the founder of the House of Schiaparelli. I had no idea how deeply she influenced the artists around her, including Dalí, Picasso, and André Breton. Learning about those connections cemented her place in cultural history for me. Her creations are sublime, and the house’s current designer, Daniel Roseberry is the most perfect successor to her genius.

Listen to: Generation Women at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan. This is a monthly event where six women, each from a different generation (from their early 20s to their 80s) read personal stories aloud, all connected by a theme that changes every month.It’s a great choice for a girls’ night out, or for taking your mother, aunt, or daughter. There are drinks and food available (with a minimum charge), and you’ll laugh and cry as you listen to these outrageous, heartbreaking, and deeply relatable stories. Because no matter your age, there’s something comforting about hearing another woman tell a story and realizing: I’m not the only fucked up person in the world. Pro tip: if you go as a group, arrive early so you can drink, eat and chat before the show begins.

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It was the end of the ’80s. I had recently arrived in NYC, and after two years pursuing a graduate degree in film and television at NYU, I had run out of money. It was imperative that I find a job, and fast. But with no connections and no internet job boards, the task was daunting.

Someone tipped me off that there was a paid job doing craft services for a short film shooting downtown. The line producer looked at me suspiciously and asked what my qualifications were. I didn’t think I needed a degree to lay out Snickers bars and muffins on a table or add milk or half-and-half to a coffee, but I told him I was an M.D. in Argentina and had moved to America to pursue a master’s in film. I thought this information would be enough for him to appreciate my intellect and drive, but it wasn’t. He declared that I was not capable of doing the job.

I fell a deep sense of humiliation. I had left behind a career in medicine in Argentina to start over. And although this encounter didn’t made me rethink my choice, being told I was stupid, left me with a profound sense of shame.

I stole a Snickers bar on my way out. If I wasn’t qualified to work there, I figured I was at least qualified to take the severance package.

By chance, the next day, someone told me they had met a fellow Argentinian who worked at MTV and gave me his name. I didn’t want to shatter this naive American’s belief that everyone in the country knows everyone else, especially since he was only trying to be kind. I did know what MTV was: Music Television, the TV channel every young person in the U.S. wanted to watch.

So I grabbed the Yellow Pages (yes, before the internet, we had to look up phone numbers in a book), found the main number for MTV, and asked to speak to him. They transferred me right away, so I was completely unprepared when he answered.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Hi, my name is Lily. I’m a friend of [name of a music producer I didn’t know personally but who was very well known in Argentina]. I’m looking for a job and was wondering if we could meet?”

That white lie brought me to his office in Midtown. He was incredibly nice and a good listener. We shared stories about growing up in Buenos Aires, going to university, and landing in NYC. He brought up the name of the music producer I had mentioned, and I was able to steer the conversation to another topic.

After half an hour, he confessed that he couldn’t offer me a job because there were no jobs available.

“But you can intern here?” he added.

I had never heard the word intern before. I had to ask him to clarify.

“An intern works for free, just for the experience and the learning,” he explained. (This was before it became mandatory for corporations to offer pay or college credit to all interns.)

I was flabbergasted.

“If I wanted to work and not make any money, I would have stayed in Argentina,” was my answer as I stood up to leave.

He stopped me.

“Why don’t you come once or twice a week to work here while you look for another job? It’s a fun place, and you’ll learn a lot.”

I looked at him in silence. I didn’t understand then that he was just trying to figure out who I was. I had walked straight in from the street with a shady reference that didn’t pass muster. I could have been a con artist, for all he knew.

But in the weeks that followed, I agreed to spend time in that building. And as I showed him how hard I worked, how smart I was, and how much I knew about music and pop culture, I gained his respect and was eventually offered a job as a production assistant.

I lied to get my foot in the door. But now that I was inside, I had no intention of leaving.

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Women complain about aging: the neck, the wrinkles, the widening waist, the insomnia. All true. All unavoidable. But here’s the upside: the older we get, the wiser we become. And wisdom, if we’re lucky, comes with something even better: serenity.

Fretting over a man who isn’t available? There will be others. Stressing over a boss who doesn’t give you enough praise? Get another job—or, even better, stop expecting validation from work. We become less interested in winning every argument, pleasing everyone, or fitting into someone else’s idea of who we should be. The sharp edges get smoothed out as we grow older, and suddenly, almost without noticing, a portal opens to something wonderful: more joy.

And that is where we meet today.

You are there, reading this, and I’m here, at home, free for the first time after a long career: first as a doctor, then as a television producer and executive, and as a working mother. Don’t get me wrong: those were some of the best years of my life. I loved my work. I loved the madness. I loved the people. But there is something surprisingly empowering about finally sitting still and looking back at everything I’ve accomplished.

And now I feel that maybe it’s time to share some of what I’ve learned, especially with younger women. How to navigate a career. How to raise a daughter while being divorced. How to build a life as an immigrant when your family is far away. How to reinvent yourself when the plan you had for your life no longer makes sense. How to battle the patriarchy at home and in the work place.

And then there is the really fun part.

For the first time, I get to tell some of the stories I’ve been sitting on for decades.

Working in television at MTV, HBO, A&E, and Paramount gave me a front-row seat to some of the biggest stars, events, and cultural moments of the ’90s and 2000s. I also had a peek behind the scenes of some of the craziest reality shows of that era, back when reality television was still the Wild West, and nobody quite knew what we were creating.

I’ve been telling these stories to my family and friends for years. But professional discretion and the very real possibility of never working again, kept me from sharing them more widely.

Not anymore.

Now I’m retired from corporate life, so I can finally tell you what I saw.

Someone once told me that immigrants become experts at decoding culture as a survival mechanism: the more you understand the culture around you, the better you can navigate it. I think there is a lot of truth to that. I’ve always been fascinated by American culture, perhaps partly because I arrived here as an outsider. I watched, listened, observed, and tried to figure out how everything worked.

I still do.

So I’ll also be sharing my take on what’s happening in pop culture today, through the eyes of someone who has spent decades watching it from very close range.

And, selfishly, I’m hoping this Substack will teach me something, too. So give me feedback. Push back. Tell me when you disagree. And, most importantly, tell me what you want to hear more about.

This is a conversation, after all.

Cheers to us and here’s hoping this turns into a long, entertaining, occasionally outrageous, and very prosperous relationship.

PS: the newsletter is free for now as I build my community. I would aim to write twice a week (except when I’m traveling around the world.)

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