At the center of The Elissas: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia, Bustle editor Samantha Leach’s gripping work of memoir and reportage, sits an indelible image and a grim coincidence. Three girls with nearly identical names, Elissa, Alissa, and Alyssa, met at a so-called “therapeutic” boarding school for teenagers and bonded over cheeky resilience in the face of what Leach describes as the school’s harsh tactics. To cement their friendship, all three got cryptic matching tattoos reading “Save Our Souls.” A decade later, all three women would die in tragic circumstances before the age of 27.
When Leach first saw the tattoos, she looked at them with a bit of jealousy and disdain. Elissa was Leach’s childhood best friend, but they had begun to drift in their teen years. An early brush with rebellion put Leach back on the straight and narrow, but Elissa was sent to a series of boarding schools that were a part of what we would now call the troubled-teen industry. As Leach writes, at age 18, still dealing with the trauma she incurred at the schools, Elissa died after a bout of severe encephalitis.
By 2019, Leach was living in New York City with the type of journalism job she had been dreaming about since she and Elissa were children flipping through magazines. But her friend’s tragic loss left a mark, and she started researching Elissa’s final years out of a desire to understand why their paths had diverged so profoundly.
“It really started from a place of grief and a place of deep curiosity and not wanting to let go. It’s a very strange thing to lose years with somebody and then immediately lose them altogether,” Leach explained over a lemonade at a café near her apartment this summer. When Elissa was away, occasionally calling in moments of boredom or crisis, Leach would try to imagine what her friend was going through. “I had all these memories—not true memories, but my thoughts of what was going on with her. I’d hear little things, like they take your shoes sometimes or that there’s a lot of wearing white. I had these over-the-top images that burnished my desire to know what had happened.”
As Leach worked on the book, the troubled-teen industry became a renewed topic of public discourse after Paris Hiltoncame forward with her experiences of abuse at a therapeutic boarding school. In her 2020 documentary, This Is Paris, the reality star talks about the lingering effects of her teenage experiences of isolation and abuse.
Leach said she saw a reflection of Hilton’s experiences of the things she learned during her research for The Elissas, and the way programs in the troubled-teen industry teaches teenagers to mask their emotions. “These are institutions that teach you masks are the best thing, so of course she put a face on,” Leach said. “They run on operant conditioning—get your points, comply. Of course that leads you to create a persona for yourself when you’re deprived and lose any sense of personhood.”
Eventually, three years of reporting and researching led Leach to realize that the story of the Elissas dovetailed with some of the thorniest social issues of our times, from increasing fears over girls’ mental health to the opioid crisis.The book that resulted is an indictment of modern girlhood and our culture’s obsession with quick-fix psychological pseudoscience.
Leach sat down with Vanity Fair to discuss writing through grief, the contours of the troubled-teen industry, and the lessons her friend’s story has for understanding teenagers today.
Vanity Fair:One thing that comes through in the book, especially in the beginning, is how much you adored Elissa. She comes off as a bit of a spitfire, that sparkly, outgoing friend who everyone wants to be around. You portray yourself as her sidekick in the beginning, but you also complicate that story, and are pretty honest about the ways that you misbehaved or acted out as a teenager. Why did you decide to complicate that trope?
Samantha Leach: I’ve loved so many stories about the sparkly friend and the less sparkly friend, or the friend with blond hair and the friend with brown hair, the student and the nonstudent. But I really didn’t want it to feel that flat, not that all those stories are flat. I just felt like we’ve seen that before and it can feel like that there’s no escaping that binary. But I was like, nah, I’m not that, I’ve done my own fair share of shit and I needed to be honest. Besides, I was going to tell everybody else’s secrets. So I thought, let me spill some of my own.
The book reminded me of the recent statistics about how teenage girls are facing amental health crisis. But you’re talking about the early 2000s, and you really focus on the contours of what it was like to be a teen then—the fashion, the ways of communicating with each other. In a way, the experiences of the Elissas feels a bit like the prehistory of whatever is going on right now.
James Frankie Thomas isn’t stuck in high school. He can, however, recall with crystal clarity every role he played onstage from the ages of 14 to 18. “I wish I could pretend that I don’t remember, but I think about it every single day of my life,” he says, joking but not joking as he picks at a piece of pecan pie. To be fair, you’d feel that way too if you’d played Puck, the titular role in Kiss Me, Kate,and Little Red in Into the Woods.
Anyone who’s impressed by that list will be even more bowled over by Idlewild, Thomas’s debut novel, which hit shelves this week. Set at the turn of the 21st century, the book follows Nell and Fay, teenage best friends so inseparable that a third of the book is narrated by a collective consciousness called the “F&N unit.” Fay and Nell are unabashed theater kids, and they’re also both slightly tortured: Nell is a lesbian who once harbored a hopeless crush on Fay, but Fay only has eyes for beautiful boys like Theo, a mysterious new sophomore. Not because Fay wants to sleep with Theo—or at least, not only for that reason—but because Fay wants to be Theo.
Thomas, who graduated from high school in 2005 and from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2019, understands melodramatic elder millennials as well as Curtis Sittenfeld understands old money prep school kids. Fay and Nell are always slurping elaborate Frappuccinos and writing covert fan fiction over AOL Instant Messenger. Their very first conversation hinges on those quarters that had different designs for all 50 states—remember them?
“I think I am capable of writing characters who are nothing like me, but I was not interested in doing that for this book,” Thomas says over coffee in August. (Like Fay and Nell, he also did On the Town in high school, though he’s got a connection to the show that they don’t share: Thomas’s grandfather is Leonard Bernstein.) “I was interested in writing about being on the outside of what is considered a normal high school experience—specifically, being queer and not having a dating life, not having the sort of YA novel experience of coming out and blossoming in high school.”
Courtesy of Penguine Random House.
The result is a book that’s almost painfully relatable for somebody who’s in the same microgeneration as Thomas, whose research involved rereading both his old diary and the “incredibly detailed blog” he kept his junior and senior years. Unlike Nell’s LiveJournal, Thomas’s Blogspot was not protected by reader permissions. “A lot of drama ensued from the fact that it was public.”
But Idlewild’s pleasures aren’t accessible only to the relatively small group of people who appreciate the nuances between a Blogspot and a LiveJournal. There’s something universal in the book’s careful excavation of complicated relationships, its compassionate understanding of how friends at that age can love and resent and envy and condescend to each other all at once.
“My first kiss was not the most exciting moment of my teen years,” says Thomas. “My sexual exploration was not the most interesting thing about my senior year. What I remember instead is the yearning and the friendships that I had, and wondering what people thought of me.” The ties between Fay and Nell and the boys they get entangled with—possibly sociopathic Theo and gentle, passive Christopher—“don’t have an easy label and don’t fit into familiar categories. And that was the thing I really, really wanted to explore in fiction, because I so rarely see it explored.”
In our post–Gone Girl world, it’s also rare to find a page-turner that doesn’t have a gimmick—competing timelines; narrative bait-and-switches; crucial information that, while known by the characters, is withheld from the reader until the very last minute.
Thomas can understand why authors are so tempted to pull that last trick: “It’s because it’s fun. It’s like edging.” An early draft of Idlewild even employed it. Originally, the book was framed by Fay and Nell preparing to reconnect at their 15-year high school reunion. “I think I didn’t trust that the story of their time in high school was enough for a novel for adults,” he says, “and so I kept trying to bring in present-day storylines and themes”—as well as a very contemporary, literary-thriller-esque twist.
“Theo was always a major character, but I kept trying to imply that he’d done something really bad as an adult, and the whole novel was working toward the revelation of what he’d done. And I wasn’t even a hundred percent on what that thing was.” Thomas’s Iowa classmates had a running joke that Theo must have been involved in getting DonaldTrump elected.
LONDON — Back in the spring, Britain was sounding pretty relaxed about the rise of AI. Then something changed.
The country’s artificial intelligence white paper — unveiled in March — dealt with the “existential risks” of the fledgling tech in just four words: high impact, low probability.
Less than six months later, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems newly troubled by runaway AI. He has announced an international AI Safety Summit, referred to “existential risk” in speeches, and set up an AI safety taskforce with big global aspirations.
Helping to drive this shift in focus is a chorus of AI Cassandras associated with a controversial ideology popular in Silicon Valley.
Known as “Effective Altruism,” the movement was conceived in the ancient colleges of Oxford University, bankrolled by the Silicon Valley elite, and is increasingly influential on the U.K.’s positioning on AI.
Not everyone’s convinced it’s the right approach, however, and there’s mounting concern Britain runs the risk of regulatory capture.
The race to ‘God-like AI’
Effective altruists claim that super-intelligent AI could one day destroy humanity, and advocate policy that’s focused on the distant future rather than the here-and-now. Despite the potential risks, EAs broadly believe super-intelligent AI should be pursued at all costs.
“The view is that the outcome of artificial super-intelligence will be binary,” says Émile P. Torres, philosopher and former EA, turned critic of the movement. “That if it’s not utopia, it’s annihilation.”
In the U.K., key government advisers sympathetic to the movement’s concerns, combined with Sunak’s close contact with leaders of the AI labs – which have longstanding ties to the movement – have helped push “existential risk” right up the U.K.’s policy agenda.
When ChatGPT-mania reached its zenith in April, tech investor Ian Hogarth penned a viral Financial Times article warning that the race to “God-like AI” “could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race” – urging policymakers and AI developers to pump the brakes.
It echoed the influential “AI pause” letter calling for a moratorium on “giant AI experiments,” and, in combination with a later letter saying AI posed an extinction risk, helped fuel a frenzied media cycle that prompted Sunak to issue a statement claiming he was “looking very carefully” at this class of risks.
Known as “Effective Altruism,” the movement was conceived in the ancient colleges of Oxford University, bankrolled by the Silicon Valley elite, and is increasingly influential on the U.K.’s positioning on AI | Carl Court/Getty Images
“These kinds of arguments around existential risk or the idea that AI would develop super-intelligence, that was very much on the fringes of credible discussion,” says Mhairi Aitken, an AI ethics researcher at the Alan Turing Institute. “That’s really dramatically shifted in the last six months.”
The EA community credited Hogarth’s FT article with telegraphing these ideas to a mainstream audience, and hailed his appointment as chair of the U.K.’s Foundation Model Taskforce as a significant moment.
Under Hogarth, who has previously invested in AI labs Anthropic, Faculty, Helsing, and AI safety firm Conjecture, the taskforce announced a new set of partners last week – a number of whom have ties to EA.
Three of the four partner organizations on the lineup are bankrolled by EA donors. The Centre for AI Safety is the organization behind the “AI extinction risk” letter (the “AI pause” letter was penned by another EA-linked organization, the Future of Life Institute). Its primary funding – to the tune of $5.2 million – comes from major EA donor organization, Open Philanthropy.
Another partner is Arc Evals, which “works on assessing whether cutting-edge AI systems could pose catastrophic risks to civilization.”
It’s a project of the Alignment Research Centre, an organization that has received $1.5 million from Open Philanthropy, $1.25 million from high-profile EA Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Foundation (which it promised to return after the implosion of his crypto empire), and $3.25 million from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, set up by Skype founder and prominent EA, Jaan Tallinn. Arc Evals is advised by Open Philanthropy CEO, Harold Karnofsky.
Finally, the Community Intelligence Project, a body working on new governance models for transformative technology, began life with an FTX regrant, and a co-founder appealed to the EA community for funding and expertise this year.
Joining the taskforce as one of two researchers is Cambridge professor David Krueger, who has received a $1 million grant from Open Philanthropy to further his work to “reduce the risk of human extinction resulting from out-of-control AI systems”. He describes himself as “EA-adjacent.” One of the PhD students Kruger advises, Nitarshan Rajkumar, has been working with the British government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) as an AI policy adviser since April.
A range of national security figures and renowned computer scientist, Yoshua Bengio, are also joining the taskforce as advisers.
Combined with its rebranding as a “Frontier AI Taskforce” which projects its gaze into the future of AI development, the announcements confirmed the ascendancy of existential risk on the U.K.’s AI agenda.
‘X-risk’
Hogarth told the FT that biosecurity risks – like AI systems designing novel viruses – and AI-powered cyber-attacks weigh heavily on his mind.The taskforce is intended to address these threats, and to help build safe and reliable “frontier” AI models.
When ChatGPT-mania reached its zenith in April, tech investor Ian Hogarth penned a viral Financial Times article warning that the race to “God-like AI” “could usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race” | John Phillips/Getty Images
“The focus of the Frontier AI Taskforce and the U.K.’s broader AI strategy extends to not only managing risk, but ensuring the technology’s benefits can be harnessed and its opportunities realized across society,” said a government spokesperson, who disputed the influence of EA on its AI policy.
But some researchers worry that the more prosaic threats posed by today’s AI models, like bias, data privacy, and copyright issues, have been downgraded. It’s “a really dangerous distraction from the discussions we need to be having around regulation of AI,” says Aitken. “It takes a lot of the focus away from the very real and ethical risks and harms that AI presents today.”
The EA movement’s links to Silicon Valley also prompt some to question its objectivity. The three most prominent AI labs, OpenAI, DeepMind and Anthropic, all boast EA connections – with traces of the movement variously imprinted on their ethos, ideology and wallets.
Tech mogul Elon Musk claims to be a fan of the closely related “longtermist” ideology, calling it a “close match” to his own. Musk recently hired Dan Hendrycks, director of Center for AI Safety, as an adviser to his new start-up, xAI, which is also doing its part to prevent the AI apocalypse.
To counter the threat, the EA movement is throwing its financial heft behind the field of AI safety. Head of Open Philanthropy, Harold Karnofsky,wrote a February blog post announcing a leave of absence to devote himself to the field, while an EA career advice center, 80,000 hours, recommends “AI safety technical research” and “shaping future governance of AI” as the two top careers for EAs.
Tech mogul Elon Musk claims to be a fan of the closely related “longtermist” ideology, calling it a “close match” to his own | Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue
Trading in an insular jargon of “X-risk” (existential risks) and “p(doom)” (the probability of our impending annihilation), the AI-focused branch of effective altruism is fixated on issues like “alignment” – how closely AI models are attuned to humanity’s value systems – amid doom-laden warnings about “proliferation” – the unchecked propagation of dangerous AI.
Despite its popularity among a cohort of technologists,critics say the movement’s thinking lacks evidence and is alarmist. A vocal critic, former Googler Timnit Gebru, has denounced this “dangerous brand of AI safety,” noting that she’d seen the movement gain “alarming levels of influence” in Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, the “strong intermingling” of EAs and companies building AI “has led…this branch of the community to be very subservient to the AI companies,” says Andrea Miotti, head of strategy and governance at AI safety firm Conjecture. He calls this a “real regulatory capture story.”
The pitch to industry
Citing the Center for AI Safety’s extinction risk letter, Hogarth called on AI specialists and safety researchers to join the taskforce’s efforts in June, noting that at “a pivotal moment, Rishi Sunak has stepped up and is playing a global leadership role.”
On stage at the Tony Blair Institute conference in July, Hogarth – perspiring in the midsummer heat but speaking with composed conviction – struck an optimistic note. “We want to build stuff that allows for the U.K. to really have the state capacity to, like, engineer the future here,” he said.
Although the taskforce was initially intended to build up sovereign AI capability, Hogarth’s arrival saw a new emphasis on AI safety. The U.K. government’s £100 million commitment is “the largest amount ever committed to this field by a nation state,” he tweeted.
Despite its popularity among a cohort of technologists,critics say the movement’s thinking lacks evidence and is alarmist | Hollie Adams/Getty Images
The taskforce recruitment ad was shared on the Effective Altruism forum, and Hogarth’s appointment was announced in Effective Altruism UK’s July newsletter.
Hogarth is not the only one in government who appears to be sympathetic to the EA movement’s arguments. Matt Clifford, chair of government R&D body, ARIA, and adviser to the AI taskforce as well as AI sherpa for the safety summit, has urged EAs to jump aboard the government’s latest AI safety push.
“I would encourage any of you who care about AI safety to explore opportunities to join or be seconded into government, because there is just a huge gap of knowledge and context on both sides,” he said at the Effective Altruism Global conference in London in June.
“Most people engaged in policy are not familiar … with arguments that would be familiar to most people in this room about risk and safety,” he added, but cautioned that hyping apocalyptic risks was not typically an effective strategy when it came to dealing with policymakers.
Clifford said that ARIA would soon announce directors who will be in charge of grant-giving across different areas. “When you see them, you will see there is actually a pretty good overlap with some prominent EA cause areas,” he told the crowd.
A British government spokesperson said Clifford is “not part of the core Effective Altruism movement.”
Civil service ties
Influential civil servants also have EA ties. Supporting the work of the AI taskforce is Chiara Gerosa, who in addition to her government work is facilitating an introductory AI safety course “for a cohort of policy professionals” for BlueDot Impact, an organization funded by Effective Ventures, a philanthropic fund that supports EA causes.
The course “will get you up to speed on extreme risks from AI and governance approaches to mitigating these risks,” according to the website, which states alumni have gone on to work for the likes of OpenAI, GovAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.
People close to the EA movement say that its disciples see the U.K.’s AI safety push as encouragement to get involved and help nudge policy along an EA trajectory.
EAs are “scrambling to be part of Rishi Sunak’s announced Foundation Model Taskforce and safety conference,” according to an AI safety researcher who asked not to be named as they didn’t want to risk jeopardizing EA connections.
EAs are “scrambling to be part of Rishi Sunak’s announced Foundation Model Taskforce and safety conference,” according to an AI safety researcher | Pool photo by Justin Tallis via AFP/Getty Images
“One said that while Rishi is not the ‘optimal’ candidate, at least he knows X-risk,” they said. “And that ‘we’ need political buy-in and policy.”
“The foundation model taskforce is really centring the voices of the private sector, of industry … and that in many cases overlaps with membership of the Effective Altruism movement,” says Aitken. “That to me, is very worrying … it should really be centring the voices of impacted communities, it should be centring the voices of civil society.”
Jack Stilgoe, policy co-lead of Responsible AI, a body funded by the U.K.’s R&D funding agency, is concerned about “the diversity of the taskforce.” “If the agenda of the taskforce somehow gets captured by a narrow range of interests, then that would be really, really bad,” he says, adding that the concept of alignment “offers a false solution to an imaginary problem.”
A spokesperson for Open Philanthropy, Michael Levine, disputed that the EA movement carried any water for AI firms. “Since before the current crop of AI labs existed, people inspired by effective altruism were calling out the threats of AI and the need for research and policies to reduce these risks; many of our grantees are now supporting strong regulation of AI over objections from industry players.”
From Oxford to Whitehall, via Silicon Valley
Birthed at Oxford University by rationalist utilitarian philosopher William MacAskill, EA began life as a technocratic preoccupation with how charitable donations could be optimized to wring out maximal benefit for causes like global poverty and animal welfare.
Over time, it fused with transhumanist and techno-utopian ideals popular in Silicon Valley, and a mutated version called “long-termism” that is fixated on ultra-long-term timeframes now dominates. MacAskill’s most recent book What We Owe the Future conceptualizes a million-year timeframe for humanity and advocates the colonization of space.
EA began life as a technocratic preoccupation with how charitable donations could be optimized to wring out maximal benefit for causes like global poverty and animal welfare. Over time, it fused with transhumanist and techno-utopian ideals popular in Silicon Valley | Mason Trinca/Getty Images
Oxford University remains an ideological hub for the movement, and has spawned a thriving network of think tanks and research institutes that lobby the government on long-term or existential risks, including the Centre for the Governance of AI (GovAI) and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.
Other EA-linked organizations include Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which was co-founded by Tallinn and receives funding from his Survival and Flourishing Fund – which is also the primary funder of the Centre for Long Term Resilience, set up by former civil servants in 2020.
The think tanks tend to overlap with leading AI labs, both in terms of membership and policy positions. For example, the founder and former director of GovAI, Allan Dafoe, who remains chair of the advisory board, is also head of long-term AI strategy and governance at DeepMind.
“We are conscious that dual roles of this form warrant careful attention to conflicts of interest,” reads the GovAI website.
GovAI, OpenAI and Anthropic declined to offer comment for this piece. A Google DeepMind spokesperson said: “We are focused on advancing safe and responsible AI.”
The movement has been accruing political capital in the U.K. for some time, says Luke Kemp, a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk who doesn’t identify as EA. “There’s definitely been a push to place people directly out of existential risk bodies into policymaking positions,” he says.
The movement has been accruing political capital in the U.K. for some time, says Luke Kemp, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk who doesn’t identify as EA | Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau via AFP/Getty Images
CLTR’s head of AI policy, Jess Whittlestone, is in the process of being seconded to DSIT on a one day a week basis to assist on AI policy leading up to the AI Safety Summit, according to a CLTR August update seen by POLITICO. In the interim, she is informally advising several policy teams across DSIT.
A former specialist adviser to the Cabinet Office meanwhile, Markus Anderljung, is now head of policy at GovAI.
Kemp says he has expressed reservations about existential risk organizations attempting to get staff members seconded to government. “We can’t be trusted as objective and fair regulators or scholars, if we have such deep connections to the bodies we’re trying to regulate,” he says.
“I share the concern about AI companies dominating regulatory discussions, and have been advocating for greater independent expert involvement in the summit to reduce risks of regulatory capture,” said CLTR’s Head of AI Policy, Dr Jess Whittlestone. “It is crucial for U.K. AI policy to be informed by diverse perspectives.”
Instead of the risks of existing foundation models like GPT-4, EA-linked groups and AI companies tend to talk up the “emergent” risks of frontier models — a forward-looking stance that nudges the regulatory horizon into the future.
This framing “is a way of suggesting that that’s why you need to have Big Tech in the room – because they are the ones developing these frontier models,” suggests Aitken.
At the frontier
Earlier in July, CLTR and GovAI collaborated on a paper about how to regulate so-called frontier models, alongside members of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft and academics. The paper explored the controversial idea of licensing the most powerful AI models, a proposal that’s been criticized for its potential to cement the dominance of leading AI firms.
Earlier in July, CLTR and GovAI collaborated on a paper about how to regulate so-called frontier models, alongside members of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Microsoft and academics | Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images
CLTR presented the paper to No. 10 with the prime minister’s special advisers on AI and the director and deputy director of DSIT in attendance, according to the CLTR memo.
Such ideas appear to be resonating. In addition to announcing the “Frontier AI Taskforce”, the government said in September that the AI Summit would focus entirely on the regulation of “frontier AI.”
The British government disputes the idea that its AI policy is narrowly focused. “We have engaged extensively with stakeholders in creating our AI regulation white paper, and have received a broad and diverse range of views as part of the recently closed consultation process which we will respond to in due course,” said a spokesperson.
Spokespeople for CLTR and CSER said that both groups focus on risks across the spectrum, from near-term to long-term, while a CLTR spokesperson stressed that it’s an independent and non-partisan think tank.
Some say that it’s the external circumstances that have changed, rather than the effectiveness of the EA lobby. CSER professor Haydn Belfield, who identifies as an EA, says that existential risk think tanks have been petitioning the government for years – on issues like pandemic preparedness and nuclear risk in addition to AI.
Although the government appears more receptive to their overtures now, “I’m not sure we’ve gotten any better at it,” he says. “I just think the world’s gotten worse.”
Update: This story has been updated to clarify Luke Kemp’s job title.
Oprah Winfrey and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, famed for his lessons on happiness, have collaborated on a book about finding enjoyment and meaning in your life: “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier.” Watch this preview of their interview with Norah O’Donnell, to be broadcast on “CBS News Sunday Morning” September 10.
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In our digital age driven by content consumption, entrepreneurs and business executives are constantly seeking ways to elevate their brands and establish themselves as industry influencers. When you’re recognized as an influencer, your opinions, insights and recommendations carry more weight, positioning you as a trusted source of valuable information in your field. It also increases your brand’s visibility and recognition. As your insights reach a wider audience, you and your brand gain exposure, attracting potential customers, partners and collaborators.
One important way to broaden your reach as an influencer is to write and publish a book. As a seasoned C-suite executive and entrepreneur in the publishing industry, I’ve personally experienced and observed the powerful impact of becoming an author. There’s probably no better way to boost your and your brand’s credibility and authority. In this article, we’ll explore why writing a book trumps all other means when it comes to brand elevation.
When it comes to brand elevation, there are a variety of different ways to achieve success. As a lifelong book publisher, I’ve observed five ways becoming an author will increase your reach.
First, authoring a book requires in-depth research, analysis and a thorough exploration of your subject matter. The process compels you to dive deep into your field, fostering a comprehensive understanding that goes well beyond surface-level knowledge. This depth of expertise is evident in your writing, positioning you as an authoritative figure in your industry. It gives evidence that you indeed are a subject matter authority. You’ll also appear on bookselling websites, including Amazon, helping to expand your reach.
Second, publishing a book inherently carries a sense of authority and credibility. A book is a representation of your knowledge and insights, establishing you as a thought leader. Your position as an author commands respect, and readers are more likely to view you as an expert in your field compared to a podcast host, a blogger or social media influencer. A published book is a tangible asset that you can hold in your hands and showcase on your shelves. This physical representation of your expertise serves as a lasting reminder of your accomplishments and a powerful conversation starter in professional settings.
Third, books are perceived as valuable resources that people pay money for. Readers often associate authors with wisdom, experience and the ability to offer solutions to their challenges. This perception of value can lead to increased interest in your brand and a higher willingness to engage with your products or services. Books are also less fleeting in nature compared to other digital content because they have a timeless quality. Once published, your book remains available to readers indefinitely, allowing you to consistently reach new audiences over the years.
Fourth, the media often seeks out authors for interviews, expert opinions and feature stories. Being an author can open doors to media exposure that podcasts might not offer to the same extent. Media coverage can significantly expand your brand’s reach and visibility. I’ve worked with hundreds of authors who landed appearances on regional and even national TV and radio, not to mention on podcasts and in print. Program producers are regularly looking for authors to book as guests on their shows, sometimes helping you find new customers and generating more income.
Finally, the process of writing a book encourages thoughtful reflection and refinement of your ideas. This careful consideration translates into content that is well-structured, coherent and impactful — qualities that resonate with readers seeking valuable information. Authors often become synonymous with their ideas, creating a strong connection between their personal brand and their work. This connection can enhance your brand identity, making it more memorable and recognizable in your industry.
Think of the books you’ve read that have influenced your life. You can probably point to at least a few that made a significant impact in your personal life and at work. Their words have shaped your perspectives, inspired new ideas and guided you through challenges. Becoming an author yourself offers the opportunity to join their ranks — to create a lasting legacy that resonates with readers. Just as you’ve been impacted by the wisdom and insights shared in the books you read, imagine the potential to leave a profound imprint on others.
The depth of expertise, authority and perceived value associated with authorship, coupled with the timelessness and media opportunities it offers, make writing a book a superior choice for entrepreneurs and business executives aiming to enhance their brand’s reputation and reach. So, if you’re looking to solidify your position as an industry leader, consider picking up the pen and writing a book that will stand as a testament to your expertise for years to come. Today’s technologies also make it a fast, easy and affordable way to elevate your brand. And once you’re an author, you’ll always be an author.
As POPSUGAR editors, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you’ll like too. If you buy a product we have recommended, we may receive affiliate commission, which in turn supports our work.
We love an addictive page-turner. A book you simply can’t put down that ends up stained with coffee and torn up from the beach wind. Sexy romance novels are a great option for any season, not just because of their inherent steaminess but also because they’re fun — and who doesn’t want a bit more fun in their life? The right spicy books can inspire you to fantasize about far-off time periods or give you a few ideas for how to spice things up in your own life (or both), but one thing’s for sure: they’ll definitely hold your attention.
The following list has options for everyone: the “Fifty Shades of Grey” fanatics, the traditional-romance-novel fans, those of us who enjoy a good enemies-to-lovers twist, and readers who spend their days stalking BookTok for their next read. Whether you’re partial to tear-jerking and heart-wrenching star-crossed-love stories or interested in a compelling, super-sexy read but would prefer to start off with something, ahem, closer to the lighthearted and sweet end of the spectrum, there’s something here for you. One thing all these books have in common, though, is they all feature truly great writing, examine sensuality in innovative ways, and will make you want to buy all the books in the series ASAP.
— Additional reporting by Alexis Stackhouse and Sabienna Bowman
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
From memoirs like Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog to leadership guides like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, books have long been a powerful medium for executives to share their stories and wisdom. But in today’s noisy digital age, does authorship still matter for modern business leaders?
The answer is a resounding yes. Here’s why every leader should make writing and publishing a book a priority.
Publishing a business book has become a rite of passage for today’s foremost executives across every industry. It’s one of the most effective ways to demonstrate intellectual authority and cement your status as a thought leader.
Writing a book lets you articulate your unique perspectives, business philosophies and life lessons. A book is a tangible artifact of your ideas that delivers lasting value to readers long after publication. Whether it’s leading a startup or a Fortune 500 firm, authoring a book provides an unparalleled way to define your leadership brand.
Share your story
Books allow leaders to share their origin stories and behind-the-scenes glimpses into pivotal moments. Vulnerable and personal stories connect with readers on a human level. Mixing anecdotes with practical lessons also makes teaching moments more resonant. A book provides the space to tell your journey – from early career struggles to the risks that fueled your success. Every leader has impactful life experiences worth capturing in print, which a book makes possible.
Business books give leaders a unique format to cast a vision and rally people behind it. Certain ideas require more nuance than a tweet, blog post or speech can provide. A book allows you to comprehensively articulate your philosophy and prescriptions around leadership, culture, innovation or any topic. Whether predicting future trends or detailing growth strategies, a book gives leaders the bandwidth to inspire action around their ideas. Put simply, books make messages stick.
Attract top talent
Your book can be a powerful recruitment tool to engage and hire world-class talent. It provides insight into your leadership style and company values. For candidates considering roles at your firm, reading your book is like getting a crash course straight from the CEO.
They can discern whether your culture and philosophy resonate before stepping into the office. A book signals that you are invested in developing people. Top performers will find the care and forethought behind your book attractive.
Authoring a book is a brand-building exercise that boosts your professional visibility and name recognition. A book gives you a product to promote across all your marketing channels. The content also fuels speaking engagements, podcast interviews and social media. Every touchpoint where someone engages your book spreads brand awareness. Over time, your book can make you synonymous with key ideas. Whether trying to attract investors, partners or media, a book strengthens your brand considerably.
Leave a legacy
Once a business leader departs, their tangible impact can fade quickly. A book, however, creates a lasting legacy that continues influencing people for generations. It serves as a formal record of your fundamental principles and achievements.
Whether instructing others or reminiscing, your book remains a reference. Great entrepreneurs like Rockefeller and Disney still impact people through their biographies today. A book provides future leaders with enduring life lessons.
Beyond individual gains, a book also directly benefits your business in several ways:
Credibility and PR. A book is a powerful credibility booster that generates buzz and media coverage for your company. Journalists rely on readers to inform their reporting. A book gives you a pre-researched resource to share with reporters. It’s also great fodder for landing speaking gigs and PR opportunities. Any publicity the book drives ultimately shines a positive light on your business.
Lead generation. Your book can fuel a robust lead generation strategy. Using sections of the book or lessons within it as gated content offers in exchange for contact info is proven to attract qualified prospects. Books make ideal gifts to existing clients and high-value targets. They establish you as an authority worth paying attention to. Promoting your book is also a pillar for capturing speaking leads or advisory roles.
Recruiting perk. A book can be a nice added perk to entice candidates during recruiting. Providing copies to finalists or new hires is a meaningful gesture. Your book enables them to hit the ground running by quickly getting up to speed on your leadership style and business principles. C-suite candidates, particularly, see your book as a strong indicator of your dedication to mentorship and developing future leaders.
Culture ambassador. For organizations with thousands of employees across disparate locations, a book allows you to reinforce vision and values consistently. Your book encapsulates the culture you want to be embodied at scale. When distributed widely internally, it is an invaluable reference that keeps everyone rowing in one direction. New hires receive a clear artifact of the company’s ideals and history from day one.
The book process
Writing a book may seem daunting, but modern publishing options have made the process more accessible than ever:
Work with an experienced ghostwriter – They handle the writing based on your vision and interviews.
Use pre-orders to fund production – Cover upfront costs by pre-selling copies.
Start with a goal of 250 pages
Schedule 4 months to complete the manuscript
Hire a professional designer – Have a budget of around $1,000 for an eye-catching cover.
Self-publish and retain rights – Platforms like Amazon make this simple.
Launch with PR and events – Land media hits and plan release parties.
The benefits demonstrate why authorship should be on every leader’s radar. But ultimately, a book allows you to impact people seeking wisdom on thriving in business and life. And there is no greater legacy.
Could Gavin Bond take these same photographs today? His answer, without hesitation, is no. The photographer—English by birth, a New Yorker by choice—knows that the era he captured in his book Being There is gone forever. Stella Tennant has died, as have Karl Lagerfeld and Vivienne Westwood. His photographic playground, the backstage of the catwalks of fashion shows, is no longer the place it was in 1993. Bond describes it as once having been an intimate and private zone, much like the “backstage of a theater,” reserved for models and the teams of assistants preparing them to walk the runway. It was a closed and secret space. Today, the 53-year-old photographer explains, “there are a lot of cameras with access to the dressing rooms and the models themselves are on their cell phones. Everything is on display, but there is less spontaneity.”
In 1993, however, Bond was the one of the few to take his camera into this intriguing world. As a young student at London’s prestigious Saint Martin’s School of Art, he started shooting the fashion shows of his fellow students, including John Galliano. He eventually got to know a producer, John Wolford, who acted as a liaison between the students and fashion professionals. Bond learned that Wolford was close to Vivienne Westwood and the photographer took a chance and sent the designer some photos he’d taken of dancers in the dressing rooms at the Lido de Paris. Westwood was impressed and offered Bond access to her Anglomania show in Paris in March 1993, a chance to be up close and personal with her team and the models. Christy Turlington remembers: “Gavin appeared one day and it was as if he’d always been there.”
Bond used a compact film camera on his backstage outings, a Bronica ETR-Si, small and discreet enough not to disturb his subjects. His photos from this period came to define his style: in place of staged fashion shots, he produced photo-reportage, bringing a journalistic approach that was reminiscent of the work of Frank Horvat. “The great photographers of the time were invited to fashion shows by the brands,” Bond recalls. “They only had access to the top models within a very defined framework and they had to produce something beautiful. I was free of all those constraints.” The photographs in Being There shine a light on the world of fashion at work: the subjects are vulnerable—some concentrating intensely and others joyfully euphoric. They often appear unaware that they are being watched by Bond’s lens. “There’s nothing worse than having a camera pointed at you to destroy a mood while you’re chatting or smoking between costume changes and alterations,” says Turlington. “In those days, before backstage was open to cameras, few observers were welcome.”
The photos of the Vivienne Westwood fashion show attracted the interest of all the leading couturiers of the day. Bond would infiltrate the fashion houses of his friend John Galliano, then the head of Dior, as well as Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent, and Jean-Paul Gaultier. His shots, first in black-and-white and later in color, captured the golden age of supermodels from a unique angle. This period, now practically wrapped in legend, when Naomi Campbell, Tennant, Claudia Schiffer, and Christy Turlington were emerging, seems wonderfully intimate and familiar in Bond’s photos. “You had to be there,” as the photographer says.
Being There, by Gavin Bond, is published by IDEA. Many of the photos in Being There were originally exhibited at Hamiltons Gallery in London, which continues to represent Gavin Bond. This gallery originally appeared inVanity Fair France. It was translated by John Newton.
The daylight’s waning, morning brings with it a crisp chill. In recent weeks I’ve gravitated toward suitably late-summer books—moody depictions of an upper crust filled with cracks that play out post Dog Days—as though clinging onto summer even as fall beats at the door. But despite Memorial Day and Labor Day serving as the season’s accepted bookends, astronomical markers say we’ve still got three weeks left. Summer reading forever.
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There are many ways to generate passive income and change your financial future. Whether you want to earn just an extra $1000 per month on the side or go into something full-time and replace your current salary, different passive income ideas require different work and time.
Upfront work is required, so don’t expect to get rich overnight, but with a plan in place and the right kind of motivation, you can see success much sooner than you think.
1. Start an Online Business
Starting an online business is the best way to generate revenue on autopilot.
Why?
You don’t need a ton of cash upfront.
You have a lot of room to make mistakes, and
It’s one of the most fulfilling life adventures you could ever be on.
I started my first online business in 2008 after being laid off from an architecture job I loved. My website helped architects pass a difficult exam, and people paid me for study material I created to help them prepare.
How much money did this business make?
In one year, I generated over $200,000, more than double what I earned as an architect.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing allows you to generate passive income simply by recommending existing products to other people. If you’ve ever recommended something to a friend, you know how to do affiliate marketing already.
Affiliate marketing has been my most significant single source of revenue, bringing in over $4 million since 2009.
So, how does affiliate marketing work, exactly?
With affiliate marketing, you recommend other people or company’s products and services to your following. You can talk about it on YouTube, a website, in an email, or even just with your social following. And, when someone purchases from your recommendation, you’ll receive a commission from the sale.
One of the most popular and accessible ways to get started is through the Amazon Affiliate Program. People already know and trust shopping from Amazon, and you’ll have a massive range of products to select from.
Just be sure only to choose products that you can stand behind, and that will serve your audience well, and be sure to always be upfront that a link you promote is an affiliate link.
To be successful with this, you’ll need to put time into building an audience who trusts that you’ll always steer them in the right direction and then follow through on that.
Starting a YouTube channel is an excellent option for making passive income online; it’s free to get started, and if you create videos that people want to watch, you can generate revenue from ads, sponsorships, and even promoting your products.
Recently, I started a new YouTube channel all about Pokemon cards called Deep Pocket Monster. In two years, this new channel has grown to over 500,000 subscribers, and it generates revenue from ads, sponsorships, and even affiliate marketing by promoting card shops and binders on my videos.
4. Open a Paid Membership Business
Like signing up for a gym membership, people join online memberships and pay recurring fees for the sense of community and value it brings them. In fact, we have a couple ourselves:
Our SPI All-Access Pass is a community of up-and-coming entrepreneurs who get access to all of our courses, workshops, community events, and even guides to help them through the material.
SPI PRO is our higher-level community of established business owners who want to network, connect, and share ideas with growth in mind. We require an application to get into this paid community.
Both of our communities require a recurring payment (quarterly or annual), but people are happy to continue to pay that because they’re getting more value in return.
With a membership business, you may need a platform to host your community. Circle is our top choice because it’s easy to use and familiar to users who join. This is our affiliate link for Circle in case you’d like to check it out and give it a run!
5. Make Print-on-Demand Designs
If you have a keen eye for design and current trends and know how to use design software, selling print-on-demand designs could be a great option to create passive income.
With print-on-demand, you don’t have to buy any inventory ahead of time, so it’s a low-risk business model.
You’ll work with a print provider, like Printful or Teespring, to sell merch (t-shirts, mugs, bags, etc.) customized with your designs and sold per order.
When someone buys one of your designs, the print provider fulfills, prints, and ships the order on your behalf.
The trickiest part is making unique, high-quality designs that inspire your people to purchase them.
6. Offer Software as a Service (SaaS) Business
Another potentially lucrative option for passive income is to create an app or software that you can offer as a subscription service—also called software as a service (SaaS).
To do something like this requires coding knowledge or the funds to hire someone who knows how to code, but there are many resources available to find people who can do that kind of work for you, like Upwork.
Remember that this is one of the more time-consuming options; it will take a good chunk of time to plan and get things up and running.
Also, you will have to create and offer a truly valuable solution—and market your solution effectively—to make passive income with this, which isn’t exactly easy.
This is a challenging route., but it can be rewarding.
Everyone has a skill they can teach, so why not monetize yours AND help others by creating an online course?
Making an online course isn’t too difficult either, but it will take a lot of time and effort to ensure it’s useful. We host our online courses on both Teachable and Circle, and it’s an amazing way to package information into a place where people can experience a transformation or solve a problem.
Once you’ve created the content and have everything set up, it can be an incredibly profitable source of passive income.
There are several platforms, like Udemy or Skillshare, that you can choose from to host your course and facilitate getting your course paid viewers.
However, I always recommend using your website to give you greater control and true ownership.
8. Create No-Code Apps
Did you know you can reap the benefits of creating an app without knowing how to code? Apart from hiring an expensive developer, that is.
Yep, you can control the process and create an app through development platforms like Zapier, Appy Pie, or Bubble.
There are a lot of apps out there, so to be successful with this, you’ll need to search and identify a need and fill that need with your app.
If you set your objectives ahead of time and know exactly which problem you’re trying to solve—and who you’re solving it for—you’ll already be a step ahead of the competition.
With this, you can earn high passive income through downloads, subscriptions, ads, etc.—depending on how you model it.
9. Publish an eBook
Selling eBooks online is a very accessible method of making passive income.
The idea of creating a whole digital “book” might still sound intimidating to you, but I promise it’s actually simple to do.
Your book’s content can be informative or entertaining, and it can be as short and simple as a 5-page PDF.
You don’t have to be a pro writer or even an expert on your eBook’s topic. Just be sure to provide high-quality, well-designed content that resonates with your audience.
You can even hire a freelance ghostwriter and graphic designer to help you out.
All you have to do is self-publish it to Amazon or Apple Books and promote it to your audience.
Writing an eBook gives you a vehicle to benefit your existing audience with helpful information, further strengthening your relationship with them.
It’s also a great tool to augment your audience to new levels and boost traffic to your website, podcast, and other channels—growing your brand.
10. Write a Book
Writing a physical book is a great way to generate passive income, not just from the book’s potential sales, but how it may promote other services and products you have to offer.
I’ve written and published three books myself, and although it’s a tough route, it’s super rewarding, and the residual income, if you continue to market the book (or it takes off on its own)can be plentiful.
My self-published book, Will It Fly, has generated a total of $459,341.00 (between 2016 and 2019)
If you’d like to join a community of people just like you who are building their businesses right now, please check out our All-Access Pass. We’ll guide you across our entire course library to ensure you give yourself the best chance to earn an additional income.
As POPSUGAR editors, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you’ll like too. If you buy a product we have recommended, we may receive affiliate commission, which in turn supports our work.
Sometimes, it can feel like the real world is too much to handle. Fortunately, there are plenty of choices for escapism in 2023, with a slew of phenomenal new fantasy books to transport you to worlds of myth and magic.
This year’s fantasy books offer plenty to choose from. Long-running stories are finally coming to epic conclusions, with authors like Cassandra Clare wrapping up series this year. There are also new stories from beloved authors like Rebecca Yarros, Claire Legrand, Andrea Stewart, Alexandra Bracken, Tahereh Mafi, Shannon Chakraborty, Caroline Peckham, and Susanne Valenti, plus fresh voices introducing us to their creative, fantastical new worlds full of mystery and romance.
No matter what fantasy style you enjoy most, there’s sure to be something you’ll love among this year’s best new fantasy reads. Some releases take inspiration from folklore worldwide, with exciting and creative twists on all the creatures, stories, and tropes you love in your favorite fantasy fiction. There’s never been a better time to get swept away in the magic and adventure of a really great fantasy book. As a bonus, many of these books are perfect for filling several of the prompts from the 2023 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge! Check out what’s coming out when, and happy reading!
As POPSUGAR editors, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you’ll like too. If you buy a product we have recommended, we may receive affiliate commission, which in turn supports our work.
Show of hands: how many of us have learned something new about history because we read about it in a book?
Whether you’re a major history nerd curious to learn more or just looking for an enthralling story set in the past, there are plenty of great new historical fiction books coming out in 2023 that are perfect for you. Travel from the ancient world to the 1800s, from the world wars up through the mid-20th century and beyond, all while getting lost in the stories of some unforgettable characters, sweeping love stories, and tense battles — both literal and metaphorical. Some of the genre’s best new releases this year are inspired by true stories and real people, while others tell original stories to uncover the corners of history that might be forgotten.
Authors like Chanel Cleeton, Sophfronia Scott, Sadeqa Johnson, and Vanessa Riley paint vivid pictures of eras gone by and characters struggling with what’s expected of them. You can read about real figures from history in new titles from Renée Rosen, Heather Webb, Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray, Stephanie Marie Thornton, and more, putting a more personal spin on the stories from your history books. So as you make your reading plans for the year, get ready to go back in time — and maybe learn something about the present, too — with 2023’s best historical fiction books.
With thousands of hilarious and thought-provoking comic strips, Watterson’s adventures with Calvin and his stuffed tiger remain forever lodged in the hearts of millions.
As we bid farewell to what has been one of the most tumultuous years in some of our lifetimes, Calvin and Hobbes’s philosophies on life and relationships hit home on the last day of 2020 and still make for compelling reading. To take us on a path down memory lane, here are some of the best Calvin and Hobbes strips created.
“He is one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice!”
Calvin and Hobbes
Bill Watterson’s use of lively and grotesque animation to convey Calvin’s deepest daydreams and playtime antics remain some of the series most entertaining moments. One of the best strips is when Calvin pillages his tinker toys, positioning himself as an old and unforgiving god of the universe. As destructive and narcissistic as his actions may be, his aloof parents find it all so compelling. “I bet he grows up to be an architect,” his mom says.
“It’s psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I’ll get a saw.”
Calvin and Hobbes
Another amazing bout of unique animation, A very seriously drawn doctor with a chiseled jawline enters the room with an equally as beautiful patient. He then gives some of the worst medical advice known to man, saying she needs a lobotomy because her foot hurts. Sadly for him, this patient is unlike any other patient he’s had before.
“I know more about medicine than you! I’ll be the doctor now,” she says as she starts to kick the doctor in the shins. “Say it! Say I’m the doctor!” It is then revealed that Calvin and Susie are playing pretend and that Calvin was just being a pain for no reason.
“I notice your oeuvre is monochromatic”
Calvin and Hobbes
What set Calvin and Hobbes apart from other comic strips was its ability to be incredibly metaphorical and smart in its writing. Watterson admitted in the Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Collection that he was always interested in art and the frivolous culture built around it. Calvin embodies that bullsh*t in the hilarious snow art sketch above, offering Hobbes asinine explanations on the deeper meaning behind his poorly constructed snowmen.
Spaceman Spiff
Calvin and Hobbes
One of Calvin’s recurring daydreams and playtime sagas, the Spaceman Spiff saga was always presented as their own, recurring comic strips. In this particular adventure, Spiff crash lands on a mysterious planet and is soon captured by weird alien worms that strongly desire to…wash his hair? The comic then pans out, and the alien warlords are revealed to be none other than Calvin’s mom trying to get him into the bath.
“Do you LIKE her??”
Calvin and Hobbes
In the first comic strip that technically introduced Suzie, Calvin casually brings up that there is a new girl in his class, and totally normal questions from Hobbes quickly cause him to lose it. “Do you LIKE her??” Hobbes teases before Calvin screams at him. It’s a simple and hilarious strip that showed Watterson never needed much to make us laugh.
“We’re here to devour each other alive.”
Calvin and Hobbes
In one of Hobbes’s shining moments, the duo are taking a casual stroll in the snow-laden woods, with Calvin ruminating on humanity’s disconnect from the natural world. When he asks Hobbes the meaning of existence, the tiger replies: “We’re here to devour each other alive.”
The sentiment of every panel in this strip hits deeply in 2020, as it calls into question humanity’s place in the universe. Are we here merely to eat each other and kill each other? Haven’t we technically been doing that for centuries?
The Raccoon Story
Calvin and Hobbes
n the most moving Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin tries to rescue a dying raccoon but is forced to grapple with his own mortality as the creature slowly withers and dies. Over the course of many weeks, Watterson takes us through his thoughts on death and the trauma that comes when kids have to realize that there will always be things we won’t understand and that it is okay if that makes you sad.
“I didn’t even know he existed until a few days ago and now he’s gone forever. It’s like I found him for no reason. I had to say good-bye as soon as I said hello,” Calvin ruminates. “Still, in a sad, awful, terrible way. I’m happy I met him. What a stupid world.”
Pondering the relationship between the News Channel 4 team and their rivals in the early drafts of their script, McKay and Ferrell imagined them to be like the juvenile delinquents of classic movies like Blackboard Jungle and The Warriors, squabbling over turf. They pictured a violent showdown between Ron’s team and a rival news team that would feel like the Jets and Sharks facing off in West Side Story.
According to a couple of sources, DreamWorks was insistent that this scene—unwieldy as it was—be cut from the script. Meanwhile, producer and all‑around scriptwriting adviser Judd Apatow had prodded the writers in another direction. “Guys,” he told Ferrell and McKay, per a 2013 interview with Vulture, “you should just try taking a pass where you go further.” He suggested they think about what might happen if the news teams really did get into a fight, and the plan for a no‑holds‑barred throwdown began to cohere, with one day designated for the shoot.
The anchor showdown sequence was to be shot on location in a downtown Los Angeles parking lot on a scorching day, in a mostly abandoned district of warehouses near the Sixth Street Bridge. It was so hot that costume designer Debra McGuire brought multiple shirts for each actor, to give them a chance to change out of their sweat‑encrusted clothes over the course of the day. Not only did the setup involve dozens of shots, many of them with significant technical challenges, but the entire shoot had to be completed with one day of first‑unit work and one day of supplemental shooting by a second unit. Next to the video monitor where McKay, Apatow, and cinematographer Tom Ackerman would gather, there was an oversized paper tablet on a tripod with a list of the seventy or eighty shots they needed to capture that day.
Prop master Scott Maginnis laid out a tarp on the ground the morning of the shoot. Maginnis had assembled ordnance, fake weapons ranging from the threatening to the ludicrous, including a board with a circular saw and a nail‑studded baseball bat, and the performers were requested to select their weapons of choice. “The actors came, and they said, ‘I’ll take that one,’ like they were really going to go into battle,” first assistant director Matt Rebenkoff told Vulture.
David Koechner selected the brass knuckles, figuring it was an understated choice that emphasized Champ’s toughness. Paul Rudd chose a crowbar, for simplicity’s sake, and then went back and took a gun. Brian Fantana had already been seen wielding a gun in the film’s party scene and might as well have one with him that day. In contrast with his costars, Steve Carell was assigned the trident, which Maginnis had hand‑tooled in two different variants: one made from metal and one rubber version for throwing. Carell also picked out a grenade, to the chagrin of his costars: “Everyone was jealous of the hand grenade,” he later told a journalist. “I mean, you have a switchblade? I can blow you up!”
The cast was joined by Vince Vaughn as Ron Burgundy’s foil Wes Mantooth, and by three stars making cameos for the day, each in a role as a rival newscaster: Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Tim Robbins. Stiller and Wilson, who were friends of Ferrell’s and Apatow’s, had been asked to appear as a favor. Meanwhile, Robbins had been cold‑called through his agent to appear as a public television newscaster. The Bob Roberts star responded with two questions: Could he wear a turtleneck? And could he have a pipe?
The entire scene was only possible because of the intense preparation and rehearsal that led up to the shoot day. McKay, Ackerman, and the camera crew rehearsed extensively with the actors, concerned about the pressure that the ambitious schedule would put on the cast and crew. If any actor missed their mark, not only would they spoil the take, they would endanger themselves and their fellow performers.
Key grip Lloyd Moriarity, responsible for overseeing the equipment on set, was afraid of the crew’s relaxing too soon, not remaining adequately wary of the nearly infinite number of ways in which the shoot could go disastrously wrong. The weapons being used in the scene were primarily made of plastic or fiberglass, but it was still possible for a performer to be badly injured by mishandling one of them.
So, yes. Many people felt that a catastrophe was brewing with the Titan, but at the same time everybody’s hands were tied.
On theTitan’s second deep test dive in April 2019—an attempt to reach 4,000 meters in the Bahamas—the sub protested with such bloodcurdling cracking and gunshot noises that its descent was halted at 3,760 meters. Rush was the pilot, and he had taken three passengers on this highly risky plunge. One of them was Karl Stanley, a seasoned submersible pilot who would later describe the noises as “the hull yelling at you.” Stanley was no stranger to risk: He’d built his own experimental unclassed sub and operated it in Honduras. But even he was so rattled by the dive that he wrote several emails to Rush urging him to postpone the Titan’s commercial debut, less than two months away.
The carbon fiber was breaking down, Stanley believed: “I think that hull has a defect near that flange that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.” He advised Rush to step back and conduct 50 unmanned test dives before any other humans got into the sub. True to form, Rush dismissed the advice—“One experiential data point is not sufficient to determine the integrity of the hull”—telling Stanley to “keep your opinions to yourself.”
“I remember him saying at one point to me that one of the reasons why he had me on that dive was he expected that I would be able to keep my mouth shut about anything that was of a sensitive nature,” Stanley told me in a phone interview.
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t think he wanted everybody knowing about the cracking sounds.”
Shortly after that, Rush did make an accommodation to reality. He sent out a press release heralding the Titan’s “History Making Deep-Sea Dive to 3,760 Meters with Four Crew Members,” and then a month later canceled the 2019 Titanic expedition. (He had previously scrubbed the 2018 expedition, claiming that the Titan had been hit by lightning.) Now, Rush was off to build a new hull.
Surely, people in the submersible world thought, Rush would come to his senses. Surely he wouldn’t actually go through with this?
But he did. 2020 was a write-off because of COVID. In 2021, Rush took his first group of “mission specialists” to the Titanic—and with him now, as part of his team, was Nargeolet.
It’s not that Nargeolet’s friends didn’t try to stop him. “Oh, we…we all tried,” Lahey said. “I tried so hard to tell him not to go out there. I fucking begged him, ‘Don’t go out there, man.’ ”
It’s that Nargeolet knew everything they were saying was true and wanted to go anyway. “Maybe it’s better if I’m out there,” Lahey recalls Nargeolet saying. “I can help them from doing something stupid or people getting hurt.” In the implosion’s aftermath, the French newspaper Le Figaro would report that Nargeolet had told his family that he was wary of the Titan’s carbon fiber hull and its oversized viewport, assessing them as potential weak spots. “He was a little skeptical about this new technology, but also intrigued by the idea of piloting something new,” a colleague of Nargeolet’s, marine archaeologist Michel L’Hour, explained to the paper. “It was difficult for him to consider a mission on the Titanic without participating in it himself.”
Now the reports are emerging about the plague of problems on OceanGate’s 2021 and 2022 Titanic expeditions; more dives scrubbed or aborted than completed—for an assortment of reasons from major to minor. A communications system that never much worked. Battery problems, electrical problems, sonar problems, navigation problems. A thruster installed backward. Ballast weights that wouldn’t release. (On one dive, Rush instructed the Titan’s occupants to rock the sub back and forth at abyssal depths in an attempt to dislodge the sewer pipes he used to achieve negative buoyancy.) Getting all the way down to the seafloor and then fumbling around for hours trying to find the wreck. (“I mean, how do you not find a 50,000 ton ship?” Lahey asked me, incredulous, in July 2022.)
One group had been trapped inside the sub for 27 hours, stuck on the balky launch and recovery platform. Other “mission specialists” were sealed inside the sub for up to five hours before it launched, sweltering in sauna-like conditions. Arthur Loibl, a German businessman who dove in 2021, told the Associated Press it was a “kamikaze operation.”
Fair is fair: Some people did get to see the Titanic and live to tell about it. Plenty more left disappointed, having spent an extremely expensive week in their branded OceanGate clothing doing chores on an industrial ship. (OceanGate’s Titanic expedition 2023 promotional video, now removed from the internet, showed “mission specialists” wiping down ballast pipes and cleaning the sub.) And even when Rush offered them 300-foot consolation dives in the harbor, on a number of occasions those were also canceled or aborted.
Sadly, those problems now seem quaint.
When the world learned of the Titan’s disappearance on June 18, no one I know in deep-sea circles believed that it was simply lost, floating somewhere, unseen because—the mind reels—it didn’t have an emergency beacon. No one believed that its passengers were slowly running out of oxygen. If the sub were entangled amid the Titanic wreck, that wouldn’t explain why its tracking and communications signals had vanished simultaneously at 3,347 meters. “The fear was collapse,” Lahey said bluntly. “The fear was always pressure hull failure with that craft.”
But the families didn’t know, and the public didn’t know, and it would be ghastly not to hope for some slim chance of survival, some possible miracle. But which was better to hope for? That they perished in an implosion at supersonic speed—or that they were alive with hardly a chance of being found, left to suffocate for four days in a sub that had all the comforts of an MRI machine?
“When I found out that they were bolted in…” Kerby told me, his voice anguished. “They couldn’t even evacuate and fire a flare. You know, there’s a really good reason for those [hatch] towers. It gives everyone a chance to make it out.”
“The lack of the hatch in the OceanGate design was a serious deviation from any and all submersible design safety guidelines that exist today,” Kohnen wrote in an email, seconding Kerby. “All subs need to have hatches.”
No knowledge of the tragedy was preparation enough for watching television coverage of the Titan’s entrails being craned off the recovery ship HorizonArctic. Eight-inch-thick titanium bonding rings, bent. Snarls of cables, mangled debris, sheared metal, torn exterior panels: They seemed to have been wrenched from Grendel’s claws in some mythical undersea battle. But no, it was simply math. A cold equation showing what the pressure of 6,000 psi does to an object unprepared to meet it.
One person involved in the recovery effort who wishes to remain anonymous told me that the wreckage itself was proof that no one aboard the sub had suffered: “From what I saw of all the remaining bits and pieces, it was so violent and so fast.”
“What did the carbon fiber look like?” I asked.
“There was no piece I saw anywhere that had its original five-inch thickness,” he said. “Just shards and bits…. It was truly catastrophic. It was shredded.”
Now, back on land, he was still processing what he’d seen. “I think people don’t actually understand just how forceful the ocean is. They think of the ocean as going to the beach and sticking their toes in the sand and watching waves come in and stuff like that,” he reflected. “They haven’t a clue.”
“Is there any possible reason the Titan could have imploded other than its design and construction were unsuitable for diving to 4,000 meters?” I asked Jarl Stromer, the manager of class and regulatory compliance for Triton Submarines. Stromer, who has worked in the industry since 1987, began his career as a senior engineer at the American Bureau of Shipping. He’s an expert on the rules, codes, and standards for every type of manned sub—the nuts and bolts of undersea safety.
“No,” he replied flatly. “OceanGate bears full responsibility for the design, fabrication, testing, inspection, operation, maintenance, catastrophic failure of the Titan submersible and the deaths of all five people on board.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the beginning, OceanGate’s mission had seemed so promising: “Founded in Everett, Washington in 2009, the company provides manned submersible services to reach ocean depths previously unavailable to most individuals and organizations.” But there’s a vast chasm between intention and execution—and pieces of the Titan now lie at the bottom of it.
After the tragedy OceanGate went dark, suspending its operations. Its website and social media channels were suddenly gone, its promotional videos deleted. Emails sent to the company received this reply: “Thank you for reaching out. OceanGate is unable to provide any additional information at this time.” Phone calls were greeted with a disconnection notice.
Only one person familiar with OceanGate’s thinking would speak to me on the record: Guillermo Söhnlein, who cofounded the company with Rush. And Söhnlein left that post in 2013. “So I don’t have any direct knowledge or experience with the development of the Titan. I’ve never dived in Titan. I’ve never been on the Titanic expedition,” he told me. “All I know is, I know Stockton, and I know the founding of OceanGate, and I know how we operated for the first few years.”
“That’s you,” I tell Smoke in my most reassuring voice, but she always forgets. And this is the catch-22 of confronting your doppelganger: Bark all you want, but you inevitably end up confronting yourself.
My commitment to non-involvement began to weaken during COVID, when the stakes of getting confused with Other Naomi rose markedly. Several months into the pandemic, Wolf emerged not as a scattershot peddler of conspiratorial speculation but as one of the most outspoken opponents of almost every anti-COVID public health measure, from masks to vaccines to vaccine-verification apps, which she equated with fascism while wantonly drawing comparisons with Nazi Germany. An NPR investigation found that Wolf was a primary spreader of the theory that vaccinated people shed dangerous particles onto unvaccinated people, possibly compromising their fertility, a theory that led a Florida private school to ban vaccinated teachers from the classroom.
Mocked and deplatformed in liberal circles, she quickly became a full-fledged crossover star on the MAGA right, appearing regularly (sometimes daily) on Stephen Bannon’s podcast War Room, as well as on Tucker Carlson’s now canceled show on Fox News—that is, when she wasn’t testifying for Republicans (or attempting to) in statehouses or posting photos of her new firearm. A “biofascist” coup d’état was taking place under cover of mask mandates and vaccine-verification apps, she warned, and her new fans ate it up.
Meanwhile, my doppelganger troubles escalated. No longer was it a periodic annoyance every few months. When I went online to try to find some simulation of the friendships and communities I missed during those achingly isolated months, I would invariably find, instead, The Confusion: a torrent of people discussing me and what I’d said and what I’d done—only it wasn’t me. It was her.
And look, it was confusing, and also, in a gallows way, funny, even to me. We are both Naomis with a skepticism of elite power. We even had some of the same targets. I, for instance, was furious when Bill Gates sided with the drug companies as they defended their patents on lifesaving COVID vaccines, using the World Trade Organization’s insidious intellectual property agreement as a weapon, despite the fact that vaccine development was lavishly subsidized with public money, and that this lobbying helped keep the shots out of the arms of millions of the poorest people on the planet. Wolf was furious that people were being pushed to get vaccinated at all and boosted conspiracies about Gates using vaccine apps to track people and to usher in a sinister world order. To stressed-out, busy people inundated with thumbnail-size names and avatars, we’re just a blur of Naomis with highlights going on about Bill Gates.
Again and again, she was saying things that sounded a little like the argument I made in The Shock Doctrine but refracted through a funhouse mirror of plots and conspiracies based almost exclusively on a series of hunches. I felt like she had taken my ideas, fed them into a bonkers blender, and then shared the thought purée with Carlson, who nodded vehemently. All the while, Wolf’s followers hounded me about why I had sold out to the “globalists” and was duping the public into believing that masks, vaccines, and restrictions on indoor gatherings were legitimate public health measures amid mass death. “I think she’s been got at!” @RickyBaby321 said of me, telling Wolf, “I have relegated Naomi Klein to the position of being: ‘The Other Naomi’!” It’s a vertiginous thing to be harangued on social media about your alleged misunderstanding of your own ideas—while being told that another Naomi is a better version of you than you are.
Doppelganger comes from German, combining doppel (double) with gänger (goer). Sometimes it’s translated as “double-walker,” and I can tell you that having a double walking around is profoundly uncanny, the feeling Sigmund Freud described as “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar”—but is suddenly alien. The uncanniness provoked by doppelgangers is particularly acute because the thing that becomes unfamiliar is you. A person who has a doppelganger, Freud wrote, “may identify himself with another and so become unsure of his true self.” He wasn’t right about everything, but he was right about that.
My first response to Other Naomi’s COVID antics was horror and a little rage: Surely now I needed to fight back in earnest, scream from my screen that she is not me. After all, lives were being lost to the kind of industrial-scale medical misinformation she was doing so much to help spread. Surely it was time to get serious about defending the boundaries of my identity.
But then something happened that I didn’t expect. I stopped being so horrified and got interested. Interested in what it means to have a doppelganger. Interested in the conspiratorial world in which Other Naomi was now so prominent, a place that often felt like a doppelganger of the world where I live. Why were so many people drawn to fantastical theories? What needs were they fulfilling? And what would their proponents do next?
In the hopes of picking up a few pointers on how others had handled their double trouble, I began reading and watching everything I could find about doppelgangers, from Carl Jung to Ursula K. Le Guin; Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Jordan Peele. The figure of the double began to fascinate me—its meaning in ancient mythology and in the birth of psychoanalysis. The way the twinned self stands in for our highest aspiration—the eternal soul, that ephemeral being that supposedly outlives the body. And the way the double also represents the most repressed, depraved, and rejected parts of ourselves that we cannot bear to see—the evil twin, the shadow self, the anti-self, the Hyde to our Jekyll. The doppelganger as warning or harbinger: Pay attention, they tell us.
From these stories, I quickly learned that my identity crisis was likely unavoidable: The appearance of one’s doppelganger is almost always chaotic, stressful, and paranoia-inducing, and the person encountering their double is invariably pushed to their limits by the frustration and uncanniness of it all.
Confrontations with our doppelgangers raise existentially destabilizing questions. Am I who I think I am, or am I who others perceive me to be? And if enough others start seeing someone else as me, who am I, then? Actual doppelgangers are not the only way we can lose control over ourselves, of course. The carefully constructed self can be undone in any number of ways and in an instant—by a disabling accident, by a psychotic break, or, these days, by a hacked account or deepfake. This is the perennial appeal of doppelgangers in novels and films: The idea that two strangers can be indistinguishable from each other taps into the precariousness at the core of identity—the painful truth that, no matter how deliberately we tend to our personal lives and public personas, the person we think we are is fundamentally vulnerable to forces outside of our control.
In the age of artificial intelligence, many of us are feeling this particularly acutely now, which may be why twins and doppelgangers and multiverses seem suddenly ubiquitous in the culture, from Everything Everywhere All at Once to the remake of Dead Ringers. When machines can generate the voice and the style of any person, living or dead, do any of us control ourselves?
“How many of everybody is there going to be?” asks a character in Jordan Peele’s 2019 doppelganger movie, Us.
Answer: a lot.
If doppelganger literature and mythology is any guide, when confronted with the appearance of one’s double, a person is duty bound to go on a journey—a quest to understand what messages, secrets, and forebodings are being offered. So that is what I have done. Rather than push my doppelganger away, I have attempted to learn everything I can about her and the movements of which she is a part. I burrowed deeper and deeper into a warren of conspiracy rabbit holes, places where it often seems that my own research has gone through the looking glass and is now gazing back at me as a network of fantastical plots that cast the very real crises we face—from COVID to climate change to Russian military aggression—as false flag attacks, planted by the Chinese Communists/corporate globalists/Jews.
As I went, I found myself confronting yet more forms of doubling and doppelganging, these ones distinctly more consequential. Like the way that all of politics increasingly feels like a mirror world, with society split in two and each side defining itself against the other—whatever one says and believes, the other seems obliged to say and believe the exact opposite. The deeper I went, the more I noticed this phenomenon all around me: individuals not guided by legible principles or beliefs, but acting as members of groups playing yin to the other’s yang—well versus weak; awake versus sheep; righteous versus depraved. Binaries where thinking once lived.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
There are many different ways that leaders learn, and reading books is one of my favorite ways to open my mind to new thinking and expand my perspective. Personally, I like to always have at least a couple of books I’m reading; and even when I don’t entirely agree with all of the concepts in a book, I always gain some insight that sticks with me.
The following seven books are ones that I have returned to throughout my 35-year-career and that I often recommend to CEOs seeking new ideas and inspiration:
1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team outlines obstacles that lead to underperforming teams and recommends steps to overcome them.
One major obstacle Lencioni discusses is a lack of trust. Lencioni notes that when there is inattention to results, status and ego can take over and lead to finger-pointing that fractures teams. Trust is the foundation for creating cohesive teams, encouraging innovation and ultimately achieving organizational goals. In thriving organizations, trust is largely built on integrity, transparency and the belief that everyone has a voice and ideas to help the company succeed.
2. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements offers a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform the workplace. The agreements are:
Be impeccable with your word: When leaders say they’re going to do something, it’s non-negotiable that they deliver on their promise.
Don’t take anything personally: When leaders are constantly trying to preserve their ego, the team is unable to move forward and progress toward its goals.
Don’t make assumptions: Great leaders are intentional with their communication. They ask questions instead of jumping to conclusions.
Always do your best: There are no shortcuts on the path to success.
While these principles extend beyond business, they truly are the fundamentals of great leadership.
3. Lincoln on Leadership by Donald T. Phillips
Lincoln on Leadership examines President Lincoln‘s leadership abilities and details how they can be applied to today’s complex world.
President Lincoln exemplified the importance of humility in his effort to abandon command and control leadership. Even amid intense pressure, he showed discernment, taking the time to pause instead of reacting too quickly. It is amazing how perspectives change when leaders give themselves the time and space to really think through decisions.
4. Strategic Selling by Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman, with Tad Tuleja
Strategic Selling emphasizes the importance of being able to speak your customers’ language. Great leaders understand what their customers are trying to fix, accomplish or avoid and how their product or service will help their customers achieve their goals. When leaders stay close to their customers’ evolving needs, they’re able to build lasting relationships, ensuring long-term success in the ever-changing business world.
5. Good to Great by Jim Collins
Good to Great is another must-read as it helps CEOs better understand where their company provides value. According to Collins, Level Five leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. Many of us know Collins’ famous line about having the “right people in the right seats on the bus.” I’ve seen firsthand how a coworker taking on a new and different role in the organization can lead to incredible success for both the individual and the business.
6. The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale
For those just starting out on their CEO journey, The Strangest Secret provides a helpful reminder of the importance of mindset to leadership success.
Nightingale was ahead of his time in the now well-established concept that people’s thoughts shape their reality and can determine their success. This is why great leaders focus on articulating the company mission, vision and purpose to their teams. When everyone knows what success looks like, everyone works together toward the goals. While it sounds straightforward, it is certainly not easy. This powerful concept has stayed with me throughout my career.
7. From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks
Finally, it can feel lonely at the top, but it doesn’t have to be. The role of the CEO is challenging, and From Strength to Strength offers a roadmap for finding purpose and meaning as leaders reach the end of a successful career and decide on the next chapter. Brooks shares how intentional focus on priorities and habits can pave the way for fulfillment.
“‘I never bet on the Ryder Cup. While it is well known that I always enjoy a friendly wager on the course, I would never undermine the integrity of the game.’”
That was golf star Phil Mickelson responding to allegations he wagered more than $1 billion on football, basketball and baseball over the past three decades, and attempted to bet on the Ryder Cup, too.
The claims were made by professional gambler and Las Vegas businessman Billy Walters in a book due out on Aug. 22, “Gambler: Secrets from a Life of Risk.” Walters said Mickelson placed hundreds of bets with him for exactly $220,000 and 1,115 bets for precisely $110,000 over the span of three decades. Walters claims that Mickelson also asked him to place a $400,000 bet on the U.S. team to win the 2012 Ryder Cup, a request that Walters said he declined, according to excerpts of the book reported by The FirePit Collective.
PGA Tour players are prohibited from wagering on events under the organization’s Integrity Program.
“I have also been very open about my gambling addiction,” Mickelson continued in his statement shared on social media. “I have previously conveyed my remorse, took responsibility, have gotten help, have been fully committed to therapy that has positively impacted me and I feel good about where I am now.”
Mickelson did not specifically address Walters’s claims that he wagered over $1 billion on sports, or that he lost more than $100 million on his bets during the multi-decade span.
Walters is viewed as one of the more successful professional gamblers in recent memory, with sportsbooks limiting the amount he could wager at their establishments. He was convicted of insider trading in 2017 and served five years in federal prison. Mickelson was named in that insider-trading case; he was not accused of wrongdoing but agreed to pay back close to $1 million earned on a stock tip he received from Walters.
Representatives for Mickelson did not respond to MarketWatch’s request for comment for this story.
Mickelson was one of the first professional golfers to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf last year. He was offered roughly $200 million to join the Saudi-backed league, according to the Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine. The PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit reached a landmark merger agreement in June that aims to create a single operation that would “unify” golf.
Some fellow professional golfers reacted to the alleged gambling issues by taking a few swings at Mickelson.
“At least he can bet on the Ryder Cup this year because he won’t be a part of it,” golfer Rory McIlroy said on Thursday. McIlroy, one of the PGA Tour’s staunchest defenders in its battle against LIV Golf, has been critical of Mickelson and LIV on multiple occasions.
Golfers including Mickelson and Dustin Johnson have been criticized for joining LIV Golf and turning a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record. According to the U.S. State Department, Saudi Arabia has in recent years been linked to multiple human-rights violations, including unlawful killings; executions for nonviolent offenses; forced disappearances; torture and cases of cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees by government agents, among other offenses.
Golfer Jordan Speith, a three-time major championship winner, said people in the golf world were “surprised” by the recent headlines about Mickelson.
Mickelson’s alleged gambling predates the summer of 2018, when the Supreme Court lifted a U.S. ban on sports betting, allowing states to create legislation to legalize gambling. Since then, 34 states allow some form of legal sports betting, according to the latest tally by the American Gaming Association.
“We didn’t have a good problem-gambling infrastructure in place prior to the expansion of sports betting, and we still don’t,” Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, was quoted as having told the Charlotte Observer in February.
U.S. sportsbooks accepted $93 billion in sports bets in 2022, according to the American Gaming Association’s Tracker, a massive jump from the $57.22 billion wagered in 2021.
“We smile while our faces burn, we love it so. Because we know magic is happening, just like in a fairy tale.” By the time Mirabelle Nour—the narrator of Mona Awad’s latest novel, Rouge (Marysue Rucci Books)—speaks this gauzy ode to exfoliation into the mirror, she is already in too deep. With acid-based toners, yes, but more troublingly with a rogue spa, the same one that wooed her late mother before a sudden tumble off a California cliff. Set in a modern world of skin care tutorials and microcurrent devices, the book trades in age-old symbols: poison roses, an imagined prince in the guise of Top Gun–era Tom Cruise, “fairest” defined by racialized norms. This quest for eerily preserved beauty unravels Belle’s memory and language (she swaps insanity for vanity, ridicule for ritual) before the book reaches a vivid body-horror climax. Rouge has already been optioned for film, proof that beauty extremes have a certain subset gripped. “After all,” says the spa’s Woman in Red, “self-care is really our only escape from the Abyss, is it not?”
Anyone who has a passing familiarity with the phrase hyaluronic acid has heard some version of that message—the siren call of an oceanic beauty and wellness industry. A stack of recent fiction digs into this anxiety, though whether such novels qualify as an escape depends on how entwined a reader feels with this complicated slice of culture.
Allie Rowbottom’s Aesthetica (Soho Press) was a perceptive entry last fall, prefiguring a wave of influencer remorse. In it, Anna Wrey, at 19, disses her mother’s outdated feminism in favor of “my body, my content” digital empowerment. Now 35 (“I don’t bother using face recognition, it never works for me”), she has booked one final surgery: a high-risk procedure that is like a factory reset, undoing every last modification. The Glow (Random House), Jessie Gaynor’s debut novel, centers on a conspiring PR woman who transforms a small-scale healer into a wellness machine, with the sour taste of monetized authenticity.
The promise of self-improvement is darkly seductive. In Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty (Dutton)—released this spring and in development for a television adaptation with Constance Wu coproducing—a former pianist working at a biotech-funded wellness store initially thrills at her regimen’s effects (defined eyelids, opalescent skin). By the end, her dismissal of rigid aesthetics is what lingers: “That fine line between beauty and ugliness, ripeness and rot, is what keeps an audience listening with held breath.”
This post contains spoilers forRed, White & Royal Blue.
“It’s absolutely undeniable that the fans love the book for the same reasons that I do, so I think of myself as one of them,” Red, White & Royal Blue director and co-writer Matthew Lópeztold Vanity Fair of how he approached Casey McQuiston’s New York Times best-selling novel. His adaptation of the book is now streaming on Prime Video. “You could argue that I’m such a rabid, passionate fan that I made the most expensive bit of fan fiction ever. I hope the fans take solace from the fact that one of them has made this movie.”
Given López’s reverence for the source material, much of the original enemies-to-lovers story between British prince Henry (Cinderella’s Nicholas Galitzine) and American first son Alex Claremont-Diaz (The Kissing Booth’s Taylor Zakhar Perez) remains the same. They still connect over a royal wedding gone wrong, quote Sense & Sensibility via text, and consider a polo match as foreplay. But the film isn’t completely beholden to the book on which it’s based. Ahead, a look at the biggest differences between RW&RB book and movie, from missing characters to a completely changed coming-out scene.
Alex and Henry’s Siblings
With any adaptation, inevitably a few characters’ arcs will be scaled back or downright stripped from the narrative. The victim in this book-to-film transfer is June Claremont-Diaz, Alex’s unfiltered but supportive sister, who pretends to date Henry when rumors about her brother’s relationship start to circulate. In the novel, she’s Alex’s closest confidant, along with his friend Nora (played by Rachel Hilson), granddaughter of the Vice President. And it’s in the pages of her teen magazine that a 12-year-old Alex first spots a photo of Henry. In the film, she’s completely absent.
While both of Henry’s siblings—Prince Philip (Thomas Flynn) and Princess Bea (Ellie Bamber)—remain in the film, their roles have been largely reduced. Gone is Bea’s cocaine addiction—in the book, tabloids call her “Powder Princess”—and most scenes involving Prince Philip, who publicly shames Henry for not finding a proper wife while he and Alex attend Wimbledon.
The Political Intrigue Ratio
The political machinations surrounding both men, but particularly Alex, go far deeper in the book than the film. Many of them surround the character of Raphael Luna, a gay US senator and family friend of the Claremont-Diaz clan who shocks everyone when he joins the campaign for Republican presidential candidate Jeffrey Richards—the opponent of Alex’s mother, Ellen (played by Uma Thurman). We eventually learn that Rafael only jumped ship to expose Richards’ sexual misconduct—but more on that below. Rafael is missing from the movie, seemingly replaced by Miguel Ramos (Juan Castano). Miguel is a Politico journalist and Alex’s former lover who pulls a similar betrayal later in the film.
Alex’s Romantic History
Alex’s journey to acknowledging his bisexual identity is truncated to fit within the span of a two-hour film. In the film, he’s had some more experience and is less rattled by the fact that he kissed a man than by the fact that said man was his sworn enemy.:“I can wrap my head around being low-level into guys, but what I’m really confused about is being into Henry,” Alex says. In the novel, his kiss with Henry catapults Alex into a more in-depth internal struggle over his sexuality, and even a Google search on the presidential views of bisexuality.
The Details of Alex’s Coming Out
There’s cheeky acknowledgment of one book-to-movie difference in the film. After Alex comes out to his mother Ellen, she quips, “I mean, if I’d had more warning, I could’ve made you a Powerpoint presentation.” That is, in fact, exactly what happens in the book. The president creates a PowerPoint and schedules an official debriefing to cover the threats Alex’s romance with Henry could pose to her re-election. She also yanks her son from the campaign trail. In the movie, Ellen’s reaction to Alex’s reveal is far more positive. She urges him to use protection both actual— anyone who’s been yearning to hear Uma Thurman say “Truvada,” you’re welcome—and metaphorical. “You need to figure out if you feel forever about him if you take this any further,” Thurman warns in a Southern drawl. “A relationship like this will define your life.”
How Alex and Henry’s Relationship Is Leaked
With the character of Rafael Luna axed, there’s no subplot involving him exposing Ellen’s opponent as a sexual predator or evidence that the Richards campaign leaked our couple’s private correspondence. Instead, it’s that pesky Politico journalist who catches on to Alex and Henry and breaks the story of their relationship.
The Ending (Sort Of)
The final moments from the book, where the couple returns to Alex’s childhood home in Austin with the key he gifted Henry, remain intact. But a few tweaks have been made in setting up their fairytale ending. First off, Henry’s grandfather King James III (played by Stephen Fry) is his grandmother, Queen Catherine, in the book. Alex and Henry’s connection over Star Wars has been nixed from the film, meaning the mural painted of them as Han and Leia by the public is also gone. And it appears Anderson Cooper wasn’t available—so instead, it’s Rachel Maddow who declares Ellen’s presidential victory.
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