"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Tim Cook’s Oscar Moment Didn’t Come Cheap.md\"> Tim Cook’s Oscar Moment Didn’t Come Cheap </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder.md\"> He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle.md\"> Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The death spiral of an American family.md\"> The death spiral of an American family </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That..md\"> You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Hollywood Reporter.md\"> The Hollywood Reporter </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Shaming-Industrial Complex.md\"> The Shaming-Industrial Complex </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The dark side of Discord for teens.md\"> The dark side of Discord for teens </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Bullet and the Ballplayer.md\"> The Bullet and the Ballplayer </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Oxford American Louisiana Girls.md\"> Oxford American Louisiana Girls </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/This Italian artist became the first female superstar of the Renaissance.md\"> This Italian artist became the first female superstar of the Renaissance </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/My guiding principles after 20 years of programming.md\"> My guiding principles after 20 years of programming </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future.md\"> The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London.md\"> How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way.md\"> What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way </a>",
@ -3465,27 +3568,22 @@
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Ukrainian military long on morale but short on weaponry.md\"> Ukrainian military long on morale but short on weaponry </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/As the West takes aim with Russian sanctions, here’s what we know about oligarchs’ secret finances - ICIJ.md\"> As the West takes aim with Russian sanctions, here’s what we know about oligarchs’ secret finances - ICIJ </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-03-24 Départ de Meggi-mo.md\"> 2022-03-24 Départ de Meggi-mo </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Tim Cook’s Oscar Moment Didn’t Come Cheap.md\"> Tim Cook’s Oscar Moment Didn’t Come Cheap </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder.md\"> He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle.md\"> Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The death spiral of an American family.md\"> The death spiral of an American family </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That..md\"> You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The real Mission Impossible.md\"> The real Mission Impossible </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The real Mission Impossible.md\"> The real Mission Impossible </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Shaming-Industrial Complex.md\"> The Shaming-Industrial Complex </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The dark side of Discord for teens.md\"> The dark side of Discord for teens </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Bullet and the Ballplayer.md\"> The Bullet and the Ballplayer </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/My guiding principles after 20 years of programming.md\"> My guiding principles after 20 years of programming </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future 1.md\"> The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future 1 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London.md\"> How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way.md\"> What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way </a>",
@ -3523,22 +3621,22 @@
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Jeff Zucker Scandal Inside the CNN President's Downfall.md\"> Jeff Zucker Scandal Inside the CNN President's Downfall </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/For the West, the Worst Is Yet to Come.md\"> For the West, the Worst Is Yet to Come </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Three Bodies in Texas.md\"> Three Bodies in Texas </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Three Bodies in Texas.md\"> Three Bodies in Texas </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/GitHub - deividgdtfail2ban_telegram_notifications Sending fail2ban notifications using a Telegram bot.md\"> GitHub - deividgdtfail2ban_telegram_notifications Sending fail2ban notifications using a Telegram bot </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.05 Media/2022-03-15 Kids for Cash.md\"> 2022-03-15 Kids for Cash </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-03-15 Kids for Cash.md\"> 2022-03-15 Kids for Cash </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Amateur open-source researchers went viral unpacking the war in Ukraine.md\"> Amateur open-source researchers went viral unpacking the war in Ukraine </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.04 IT/40+ of the best open-source tools to build your startup, from project management to infrastructure.md\"> 40+ of the best open-source tools to build your startup, from project management to infrastructure </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Seneca On Coping with the Shortness of Life.md\"> Seneca On Coping with the Shortness of Life </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Simone de Beauvoir recommends we fight for ourselves as we age Psyche Ideas.md\"> Simone de Beauvoir recommends we fight for ourselves as we age Psyche Ideas </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/We Need to Retire the Term “Microaggressions”.md\"> We Need to Retire the Term “Microaggressions” </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The cells that can give you super-immunity.md\"> The cells that can give you super-immunity </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/GitHub - matriphemonit2telegram A simple script to send Monit alerts using Telegram bot..md\"> GitHub - matriphemonit2telegram A simple script to send Monit alerts using Telegram bot. </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Three Bodies in Texas.md\"> Three Bodies in Texas </a>"
],
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That..md\"> You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The death spiral of an American family.md\"> The death spiral of an American family </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle.md\"> Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder.md\"> He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That..md\"> You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Shaming-Industrial Complex.md\"> The Shaming-Industrial Complex </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The real Mission Impossible.md\"> The real Mission Impossible </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Shaming-Industrial Complex.md\"> The Shaming-Industrial Complex </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Bullet and the Ballplayer.md\"> The Bullet and the Ballplayer </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The dark side of Discord for teens.md\"> The dark side of Discord for teens </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Welcome To The Vice Age How Sex, Drugs And Gambling Help Americans Cope With Covid.md\"> Welcome To The Vice Age How Sex, Drugs And Gambling Help Americans Cope With Covid </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way.md\"> What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London.md\"> How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Airbus.md\"> Airbus </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"01.01 Life Orga/@Life Admin.md\"> @Life Admin </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Fresh Tomato Eggs in Purgatory with Chickpeas.md\"> Fresh Tomato Eggs in Purgatory with Chickpeas </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Jeff Zucker Scandal Inside the CNN President's Downfall.md\"> Jeff Zucker Scandal Inside the CNN President's Downfall </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/For the West, the Worst Is Yet to Come.md\"> For the West, the Worst Is Yet to Come </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Three Bodies in Texas.md\"> Three Bodies in Texas </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Amateur open-source researchers went viral unpacking the war in Ukraine.md\"> Amateur open-source researchers went viral unpacking the war in Ukraine </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/This Italian artist became the first female superstar of the Renaissance.md\"> This Italian artist became the first female superstar of the Renaissance </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/GitHub - inCallerprometheus_bot Telegram bot for prometheus alerting.md\"> GitHub - inCallerprometheus_bot Telegram bot for prometheus alerting </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Prometheus Alertmanager send alerts via Telegram - DPBD90 - Medium.md\"> Prometheus Alertmanager send alerts via Telegram - DPBD90 - Medium </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/How to Install and Configure Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.md\"> How to Install and Configure Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS </a>",
@ -3673,61 +3759,60 @@
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Chinese Philosophy Inhabiting the Ineffable Dao Medium.md\"> Chinese Philosophy Inhabiting the Ineffable Dao Medium </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Seneca On Coping with the Shortness of Life.md\"> Seneca On Coping with the Shortness of Life </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Understanding Argument Styles Is The Secret To A Happy Relationship.md\"> Understanding Argument Styles Is The Secret To A Happy Relationship </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/On the pleasures of hand-writing letters you’ll never send.md\"> On the pleasures of hand-writing letters you’ll never send </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Ukrainian military long on morale but short on weaponry.md\"> Ukrainian military long on morale but short on weaponry </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Could COVID-19 And Alzheimer's Overlaps Point Towards A Solution For Both Diseases.md\"> Could COVID-19 And Alzheimer's Overlaps Point Towards A Solution For Both Diseases </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Are Greeting Card Messages Getting Longer A Very Serious Investigation.md\"> Are Greeting Card Messages Getting Longer A Very Serious Investigation </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The twitching generation.md\"> The twitching generation </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle.md\"> Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Tim Cook’s Oscar Moment Didn’t Come Cheap.md\"> Tim Cook’s Oscar Moment Didn’t Come Cheap </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The death spiral of an American family.md\"> The death spiral of an American family </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle.md\"> Saint Peter’s Is a Miracle </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder.md\"> He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That..md\"> You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The real Mission Impossible.md\"> The real Mission Impossible </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/The Shaming-Industrial Complex.md\"> The Shaming-Industrial Complex </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/A Vibe Shift Is Coming.md\"> A Vibe Shift Is Coming </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/As the West takes aim with Russian sanctions, here’s what we know about oligarchs’ secret finances - ICIJ.md\"> As the West takes aim with Russian sanctions, here’s what we know about oligarchs’ secret finances - ICIJ </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Migrants faced the worst of the gig economy, so they made their own delivery app.md\"> Migrants faced the worst of the gig economy, so they made their own delivery app </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Welcome To The Vice Age How Sex, Drugs And Gambling Help Americans Cope With Covid.md\"> Welcome To The Vice Age How Sex, Drugs And Gambling Help Americans Cope With Covid </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Taliban Confront the Realities of Power.md\"> The Taliban Confront the Realities of Power </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Three Bodies in Texas.md\"> Three Bodies in Texas </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Ancient Indian texts reveal the liberating power of metaphysics.md\"> Ancient Indian texts reveal the liberating power of metaphysics </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Terrible Truth So Many Experts Missed About Russia.md\"> The Terrible Truth So Many Experts Missed About Russia </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Sex Pistols Rolling Stone Cover Story on Notorious Punk Band.md\"> Sex Pistols Rolling Stone Cover Story on Notorious Punk Band </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Is tech gentrifying Latin America’s cities.md\"> Is tech gentrifying Latin America’s cities </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Slow sex, long life.md\"> Slow sex, long life </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London.md\"> How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Jeff Zucker Scandal Inside the CNN President's Downfall.md\"> Jeff Zucker Scandal Inside the CNN President's Downfall </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/What’s in a Black name 400 years of context..md\"> What’s in a Black name 400 years of context. </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/We Need to Retire the Term “Microaggressions”.md\"> We Need to Retire the Term “Microaggressions” </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How The Inca Used Knots To Tell Stories.md\"> How The Inca Used Knots To Tell Stories </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side.md\"> France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/My guiding principles after 20 years of programming.md\"> My guiding principles after 20 years of programming </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.01 Admin/Calendars/2022-04-04 Départ Papa.md\"> 2022-04-04 Départ Papa </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way.md\"> What happened to Starbucks How a progressive company lost its way </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London.md\"> How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future 1.md\"> The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future 1 </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Welcome To The Vice Age How Sex, Drugs And Gambling Help Americans Cope With Covid.md\"> Welcome To The Vice Age How Sex, Drugs And Gambling Help Americans Cope With Covid </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Sex Pistols Rolling Stone Cover Story on Notorious Punk Band.md\"> Sex Pistols Rolling Stone Cover Story on Notorious Punk Band </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side.md\"> France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/How to Install and Configure Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.md\"> How to Install and Configure Prometheus Alert Manager on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Nurses Have Finally Learned What They’re Worth.md\"> Nurses Have Finally Learned What They’re Worth </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Midlife isn't a crisis, but sleep, stress and happiness feel a little different after 35 – or whenever middle age actually begins.md\"> Midlife isn't a crisis, but sleep, stress and happiness feel a little different after 35 – or whenever middle age actually begins </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Inside a $4-billion family feud.md\"> Inside a $4-billion family feud </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Science of How Alive You Really Are Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life.md\"> The Science of How Alive You Really Are Alan Turing, Trees, and the Wonder of Life </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Why it can be sublime to love someone who doesn’t love you back.md\"> Why it can be sublime to love someone who doesn’t love you back </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/For the West, the Worst Is Yet to Come.md\"> For the West, the Worst Is Yet to Come </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/Why We Listen to Music With Lyrics We Don’t Understand.md\"> Why We Listen to Music With Lyrics We Don’t Understand </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server VPN.md\"> Server VPN </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server Alias.md\"> Server Alias </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server Tools.md\"> Server Tools </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/How The Inca Used Knots To Tell Stories.md\"> How The Inca Used Knots To Tell Stories </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future.md\"> The Man Behind Ethereum Is Worried About Crypto's Future </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Why We Listen to Music With Lyrics We Don’t Understand.md\"> Why We Listen to Music With Lyrics We Don’t Understand </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.02 Inbox/Ego is the Enemy The Legend of Genghis Khan - Farnam Street.md\"> Ego is the Enemy The Legend of Genghis Khan - Farnam Street </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server Alias.md\"> Server Alias </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server Cloud.md\"> Server Cloud </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server Tools.md\"> Server Tools </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"05.02 Networks/Server VPN.md\"> Server VPN </a>",
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"Test task.md\"> Test task </a>"
"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"00.03 News/France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side.md\"> France and PSG star Jean-Pierre Adams was in a coma for 39 years. His wife never left his side </a>"
],
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"<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"06.02 Investments/Le Miel de Paris.md\"> Le Miel de Paris </a>",
this.container.style.minHeight = "500px"; const { renderCalendar } = app.plugins.plugins["obsidian-full-calendar"]; let calendar = renderCalendar(this.container, [[{start: new Date(), id: "id", title: "Now and for an hour"}]]); calendar.render()
```
=== start-multi-column: Testlist
```column-settings
number of columns: 2
@ -33,6 +86,8 @@ My Meggi-mo is never going to give up on me
[Forum](https://forum.obsidian.md)
- [b] bookmark checklist item
=== end-column ===
> citation example
@ -43,6 +98,8 @@ My Meggi-mo is never going to give up on me
# As the West takes aim with Russian sanctions, here’s what we know about oligarchs’ secret finances - ICIJ
****Update, Feb. 22, 2022:** Russian oligarchs Boris Rotenberg, Igor Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko have been sanctioned by the U.K., along with five Russian banks, hours after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two separatist regions in Ukraine after recognizing their independence. [Read our full story here](https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/uk-targets-three-oligarchs-and-five-russian-banks-in-first-tranche-of-new-sanctions/).**
**Update, Feb. 22, 2022:** Russian oligarchs Boris Rotenberg, Igor Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko have been sanctioned by the U.K., along with five Russian banks, hours after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into two separatist regions in Ukraine after recognizing their independence. [Read our full story here](https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/uk-targets-three-oligarchs-and-five-russian-banks-in-first-tranche-of-new-sanctions/).**
As tensions continue to rise around the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, authorities in the U.S. and the U.K. are looking to hit figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin where it might hurt: in Western safe havens where they keep and spend their money.
# He Chased Silicon Valley Dreams Amid the Cannabis Boom. But Did His Ambition Lead to His Murder?
**THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF** Pleasure Point stands on cliffs overlooking one of the more famous surf breaks in California, a menacing swell that locals call Sewers. Some four miles from the Santa Cruz boardwalk, the break takes its name from an old underwater pipe that once disgorged the town's sewage into Monterey Bay. Today, the Sewers can draw a rugged crowd, and woe betide the newcomer who does not pay the proper deference to those locals, for the surfers of Santa Cruz have earned a reputation for being as hostile as they are skilled.
A stretch of opulent oceanfront villas also looks out over the surf at Pleasure Point. Ever since San Francisco first got rich--more than 170 years ago, from the California gold rush--the city's elite has treated Santa Cruz as its favored beach resort. But in the past two decades, there has been a wealth invasion unlike any before. Just on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, an easy commuter's drive away, sprawls Silicon Valley. From there, the tech titans have come. When [Reed Hastings](https://www.inc.com/carmine-gallo/why-netflixs-reed-hastings-encourages-candid-feedback-and-gets-it.html) and (rumor has it) [Mark Zuckerburg](https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-just-had-its-most-disappointing-quarter-ever-mark-zuckerbergs-response-is-1-thing-no-leader-should-ever-do.html) bought glamorous pads in the Santa Cruz area, their hirelings at Netflix and Facebook began snapping up nearby properties in aspirational emulation. The pattern repeated with other tech barons, and other hirelings, until today the median price for a single-family home in Santa Cruz is $1.3 million.
The villa at 3034 Pleasure Point Drive has a multilevel deck that's built out over the cliffs. The view from there is a panorama of changeable seas and histrionic sunsets, with the Monterey Peninsula hovering on the horizon like a blue-green mystery. On the night of September 30, 2019, the owner of the home slept alone in his master suite. There and throughout the house, the ocean's waves were soporifically audible, rumbling against the rocks and sliding back again in their lunar rhythms.
Two months earlier, the villa's owner, Tushar Atre, had turned 50, though he looked decades younger. He had a beaming, youthful smile and an infectious vitality that charmed almost everyone he met. A keen surfer, mountain biker, and wild-edibles forager, he was in top physical condition. He was also rich. He'd grown up in affluent Westchester County, New York, the son of Indian immigrants, had studied at NYU, and had come west in 1996 in pursuit of the dot-com dream.
This, by all appearances, he had unconditionally achieved. The founder of AtreNet, an early corporate web-design firm, Atre, who had never married or had children, was now at the charismatic center of a circle of prosperous friends, many of them Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and executives. The group had become practitioners of a kind of heady lifestyle discipline, a philosophy of hyperfocus, first popularized by the late Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, called "the flow." For Atre and his circle, this often meant intense sessions of early-morning surfing, when they would strive to work their minds and bodies into a kind of adrenal rapture. "There was this voracious appetite for work and danger," says a family friend. After surfing, perhaps after meditation, the flow state would be achieved. Then they would retire to their desks and go to work, focused, relentless--hour after hour, without pause--applying their energies to their various business ideas.
For his part, Atre had recently shifted his primary focus from [AtreNet](https://www.atre.net/) and turned his ambition toward a fresh field, one he believed held immense potential. One he felt was ripe for disruption. One whose growth opportunities in recent years had lured myriad entrepreneurs to stake their claim--with more than 38,000 U.S. licenses issued, per cannabis data firm Whitney Economics. By the fall of 2019, he'd spent more than a million of his own dollars on the new business and had raised millions more from investors. Atre was building a cannabis startup.
At 2:48 on the morning of October 1, 2019, according to the time stamp on surveillance footage captured by a camera on a neighboring home, three men entered the house at Pleasure Point Drive. They appeared to be wearing gloves, baseball caps, and N95-style facemasks. One carried an assault rifle. There were no signs of forced entry; Atre had either let them inside or they knew the passcode. But there was a struggle. At one point, the entrepreneur escaped. The same footage shows a figure running down Pleasure Point Drive, a normally quiet lane ensconced in the force field of its own affluence, his wrists apparently cuffed behind his back. In the video, a man gives chase and brings the figure violently to the ground. An SUV then pulls up beside them, and two men quickly bundle their victim into the passenger seat. Then the vehicle speeds off, disappearing into the night.
**THE CITY OF SANTA CRUZ**lies not just on the Pacific, but also in the shadow of the Santa Cruz Mountains, a secluded hinterland of redwood forest and fern canyons, unpaved switchbacks, and remote homesteads. The mountains harbor a swath of rural isolation right at the edge of the Bay Area megalopolis, and it was here that California's counterculture found one of its first bucolic, dharma-bum milieus. Ken Kesey kept a writing cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the '60s, where he threw his wild hallucinogenic parties and incubated the Merry Pranksters. With Kesey's crowd providing the initial demand, some of the earliest commercial (and, at the time, illegal) cannabis crops in the U.S. were planted nearby. Major, now globally famous strains of marijuana--Haze, Blue Dream--were, at least according to legend, first bred by experimental growers on the south-facing slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains above 800 feet, where the marine-layer fogs halt their ascent and ideal growing conditions exist. An outlaw pot-ag culture took hold, hillbilly hippies with dreadlock beards burying safes in the woods containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. It was here too, in the 1980s, that the cannabis legalization movement began. Some of the earliest efforts in the nation to create an exemption for the use of marijuana to ease the pain of the chronically and terminally ill were spearheaded by Santa Cruz grower Valerie Leveroni Corral. Her work helped lead to the 1996 passage of Proposition 215, which made California the first state in the country to legalize medical marijuana. This, in turn, led to Proposition 64 and the legalization of recreational cannabis in California, which went into effect on January 1, 2018, and seemed to mark the beginning of a new cannabis boom.
For Tushar Atre, Santa Cruz and its environs represented the ideal base from which to make a play for that coming boom. But the boom was not without complication--or danger. In this way, the story of Atre is the story of the vexed conclusion of perhaps the most destructive prohibition in U.S. history. It is a story about the clash of cultures between Silicon Valley and the pre-legalization "traditional" cannabis economy. It is the story of a battle being waged not just between the legal industry and an incumbent black market, but also between the coming corporate behemoths and the independent underground business people who have defined the industry since the beginning.
Most of all, it is the story of an entrepreneur--and the ambitions that led him into the hills from which he would never return.
**FOUR OTHER PEOPLE** were inside the house at Pleasure Point Drive in the early morning of October 1. Each was Atre's houseguest as well as in his employ. They were engineers and technicians from out of town, contractors Atre had hired to help him build his state-of-the-art cannabis-oil-extraction facility--the gem at the center of Atre's plan to disrupt the cannabis industry. Housed in a refurbished warehouse at 211 Fern Street, on the north side of Santa Cruz, the lab was crammed with expensive equipment, the purpose of which was to transform raw cannabis biomass--harvested marijuana flowers and leaves--into the THC-laden oils, resins, waxes, and cakes that are the main ingredients in today's innumerable marijuana products, including vapes and edibles and beverages and even skin creams. The four contractors were staying in guest suites, semi-separate from the main home, that Atre had built out on the 3034 property. Neil and Diana Ide, a husband-and-wife team of engineers, occupied one of the suites. At the lab, the Ides were in the final stages of assembling a massive, custom-designed machine that would use ethanol to extract oil from cannabis plants. With its stainless steel valves and piping and chimneys, it was like something out of a factory owned by Willie Wonka. Other equipment used hydrocarbons--highly volatile butane, for example--to produce a purer, more potent substance. That equipment was handled by Atre's other two houseguests on the night of his abduction: a woman named Murphy Murri and her assistant, Christopher Berry.
Legalization of recreational cannabis in California seemed to mark the dawn of a new cannabis boom.
In the official paperwork, Atre's startup was called Interstitial Systems. But the d.b.a. was Cruz Science, and Atre seems to have had visions of creating at 211 Fern Street a kind of R&D unit, a pot skunk works. One of the things that had attracted him to the marijuana business in the first place, he told friends, was the science of cannabis manufacturing. It appealed to his Silicon Valley mind. The extraction and distillation processes, borrowed from the food sciences, had in recent years been advanced by a cadre of THC boffins interested in exploring the unique and seemingly depthless nuances of the cannabis plant. Atre had assembled a team of such experts--including a PhD in organic chemistry--who he hoped would spur groundbreaking cannabis innovations.
Some of Atre's team had an air of the mad scientist about them. Neil Ide, for example, had acquired his engineering know-how as a seaman in the U.S. Navy, working in reactor rooms aboard submarines and studying at the prestigious Naval Nuclear Power School. He had dreams of launching a startup of his own, based on a design he'd developed for a new kind of miniature, subsea nuclear reactor.
Murphy Murri, meanwhile, had platinum-blond hair and a nose ring and sometimes liked to wear white lab coats at work, rolling up the sleeves to reveal a network of arm tattoos. She was a marijuana chemist who'd made herself into a leading innovator in the preparation of high-quality cannabis concentrates. At about 1:30 a.m. on October 1, she and Berry had returned to 3034 Pleasure Point in a state of exhaustion. They had spent the previous 18 hours at Fern Street, extracting a batch of wax and scrubbing down the lab to a spotless gleam in preparation for a visit from a prospective customer, scheduled for the next day. They crashed in their separate bedrooms. The Ides had returned from the lab a bit earlier and were already asleep. Berry, closer to the main house than the others, had showered and then lain down. Moments later, according to police, he became aware of voices, raised and angry voices. He sat up. He heard someone shout, "Open the safe!" He heard someone shout, "Get on your stomach!" and "Where is it?" and "Where are they?" He heard a male voice like Atre's say, "How can we make things right?" He heard the same voice shrieking in terror or pain or both. Then the voices seemed to move out of the main house and into the street. Too frightened to move, Berry waited until there were no more voices to hear. Then he ran to Murri's room and woke her. She'd been fast asleep the whole time; the Pacific's white noise had soundproofed her bedroom. The Ides, however, had been awakened. A few minutes later, Berry and Murri were at the Ides' door saying that Atre had been abducted. They used one of their cellphones to dial 9-1-1.
When deputies from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office arrived 10 minutes later, one of the things they noticed was a pool of what looked to be blood in the middle of Pleasure Point Drive. They also noticed, lying incongruously on the home's driveway, a digital scale. Later that morning, as cops milled up and down the street, a crowd of worried neighbors came and went from the Point Market, a small food store and café across the road from Atre's house, speculating about what had happened to him.
At some point after interviewing the houseguests, sheriff's deputies had made their way to 211 Fern Street, searched the lab, and failed to find Atre or anyone else. Meanwhile, word was trickling out among Atre's other employees: Their boss had been kidnapped. They traded theories, they wondered: Who would want to harm him? Did he owe anyone money? Did he have beefs with anyone? "Shit, man," someone said, "that's like a line around the block."
Everyone in California in cannabis knew that a flourishing marijuana black market still existed despite legalization. Everyone knew that taxes and other costs were so high for legal operators in California that they often felt forced to dip into the black market to make ends meet. Had Atre done business with anyone dangerous? Years before, he had told more than one of his employees, he'd worked in what he called a "trap lab," an illegal extraction facility, which, he claimed, occupied a shipping container in some remote California place. Off-the-grid cannabis extraction rooms are known to be more prone to explosions even than meth labs, and the idea of a tech millionaire claiming to have toiled in one, like a character from *Breaking Bad*, had struck his employees as absurd.
Several Fern Street staffers had recently visited a piece of property that Atre owned high up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in an area called the Summit. It was a beautiful parcel, with views stretching in every direction across alpine valleys dense with conifers. At the Summit, Atre and a group of laborers had planted a crop of cannabis. But Atre had not sought a cultivation license from the state's regulatory bodies. Was this black-market weed? And, if so, why? Why would he put his legit startup at risk by growing illegally? As the day wore on, the houseguests became increasingly agitated, their fears maturing as the hours passed into something closer to panic.
Then came the terrible news. It was now midafternoon, 12 hours after the abduction. Sheriff's deputies had found a body in the mountains, at the Summit. There was no official word of the identity of the deceased or how the person had perished. But the houseguests knew. The men who had invaded his posh home in the middle of the night had taken Atre to his secret spot in the forest and murdered him amid his marijuana.
**THE HISTORY OF CANNABIS** legalization in California has always been characterized by a tension between two strains of American entrepreneur: the idealistic heirs to the 1960s and the bald profiteers. Sometimes those strains exist within the very same person. In November 1996, when the state's residents passed Prop 215, making medical marijuana legal, they had ushered in what came to be known as the 215 era in California cannabis, organized around the concept of the medical collective. To purchase marijuana legally under 215, people with qualifying disorders had to receive a prescription from a doctor and then join one of the proliferating marijuana collectives. Each collective was either a retail outlet--known as a dispensary or a club--or a farm. According to the spirit of the law, the collectives were to be small and not-for-profit.
But, soon enough, this lightly regulated market grew and mutated and metastasized. Dispensaries and cultivators came to have hundreds and then thousands of members. Receiving a scrip became pro forma. Collectives morphed into quasi-legal cannabis enterprises. Drug dealers used 215 to go (sort of) legit.
"I woke up every morning staring at a 10-year mandatory minimum," says Johnny Wilson (not his real name), who, before 215, was an Oakland street dealer and high school dropout with tattoos up to the base of his skull. After 215, he saw an opportunity. He moved to Humboldt County, purchased tracts of land with his drug-dealer cash, and oversaw a set of clandestine but industrial-size growhouses, camouflaged by redwoods as well as Prop 215. Selling his product directly to a battery of Bay Area medicinal retail clubs, he was 23 years old and clearing $20,000 a week. "It was grossly, grossly profitable," he says. "It was a two-decade gray area when people made tons of money. No one was paying fucking taxes! We were just making money." Men from Brooklyn would fly in on private jets, do deals in motel rooms, and fly out the next morning with hundreds or even thousands of pounds of bags in the hold, worth $1 million, $2 million, $4 million on the streets of New York City. The Emerald Triangle--Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties--and the Santa Cruz Mountains, Big Sur, and Calaveras County were together producing a superabundance of pot. All told, California's farms were yielding far more flower than the state's medicinal users could ever hope to consume. And so California became, according to some estimates, the largest exporter of cannabis on earth.
This was the situation when, in 2016, California voted yes to Proposition 64, making the state the fifth in the union to legalize recreational marijuana. Sacramento lawmakers and civil servants then set about formulating the regulatory regime that would oversee California's new cannabis industry. They fixed January 1, 2018, as the date for the ribbon-cutting, the first day of legal recreational pot sales in the state.
This intermediary period sparked what some have called a green rush. In 2017, many 215-era growers, deciphering the writing on the wall, decided to get out. Sowing their last massive crops, they'd determined that this was their ultimate chance to produce a nest egg. Those harvests would be their retirement plan. The result was an oversupply of such magnitude that by 2018 it had crashed cannabis prices not just in California but throughout the U.S. Other 215-era growers and manufacturers decided to apply for licenses and go legit, joining the new aboveboard cannabis economy. Then there were the newcomers, wealthy entrepreneurs like Atre who'd come from other industries but sensed great opportunity. (Prop 64 itself was, in some ways, a child of Silicon Valley--its language written with funding from entrepreneur Sean Parker, he of Napster and Facebook fame.) The legacy operators even coined a term for these intruders. Because quite a few came from privileged backgrounds and seemed to be named Chad, they were called Chads.
And finally, some of the old underground growers and drug dealers decided just to remain drug dealers. No need to go through the costly rigmarole of obtaining licenses and paying taxes. Having been at it for decades, they understood that they possessed a first-mover advantage.
**SAM LOFORTI IS** the cannabis licensing manager for the county of Santa Cruz. He's also a surfer and longtime pot user who, before taking a job in government, worked as a consultant for cannabis entrepreneurs seeking to obtain local permits, including Atre. LoForti has a science background. He'd come to Santa Cruz to study geology at the university and started his career in the mining industry, eventually consulting for a copper extractor in Arizona, but the lure of the ocean and the opportunities presented by the coming legal herb industry were impossible to resist.
LoForti has thick, dark hair, the build of a long-distance bicyclist, which he is, and an intense, frenetic manner. He immersed himself in the legal and regulatory nuts and bolts of cannabis in California and elsewhere. Appointed licensing manager in December 2018, his education deepened. California's cannabis regulations "are a total calamity," he said recently in his office in Santa Cruz. With disgust in his voice, he explained that the state's policymakers had set taxes too high, and had allowed local jurisdictions total freedom to set their own tax levels. This had given rise, he said, to an absurd, almost satirical state of affairs in which cannabis businesses were taxed on their taxes, and forced to pay fees levied on the very act of paying still other fees.
"The way regulations are now, the legal market will never be able to compete with the black market," he said. "The dude on the corner is still on the corner." Unlicensed growers and dealers, easily able to underprice their legal rivals, now dominate the state's business. LoForti noted that illegal weed costs half as much as the branded buds in a licensed dispensary, on average. A recent study reported that the state's black market sold an estimated $8.7 billion in weed in 2019, likely a gross underestimate but still triple the sales of the legal industry. According to one cannabis entrepreneur from Northern California, the black market was more likely twice that size, with most illegal sales going out of state. A kilogram of cannabis oil on the white market in California goes today for about $2,000, he said. On the black market, "I can sell that same kilo in Massachusetts for $30,000," he added. "That's a pretty good delta."
"California is the biggest cannabis economy in the world, and the legal market needs to win," LoForti said. "If we do it right, it's going to take a decade to win. If we do it the way we're doing it now, it will take 20 years or longer. We have to lower the regulatory burden."
The problems, however, go beyond Sacramento. Since cannabis remains federally illegal, a Schedule I narcotic along with heroin and Ecstasy, national banking institutions largely won't do business with cannabis companies. The cannabis industry, therefore, lacks a coherent way to obtain bank loans or credit lines or even do business using credit cards. Despite a few clever workarounds and a handful of community banks that have stepped into the void, the cannabis business, just like in the old days, is largely conducted in cash--stacks of bills stashed in safes, armored trucks ferrying funds. This carries its own risk and costs, especially in the realms of security and compliance. In sum, it's hard to make money in cannabis--in legal cannabis, that is. Yet optimistic investors and entrepreneurs continue to flood the industry, especially in Northern California, which also happens to be home to the world's largest pool of venture capital. As one Santa Cruz attorney who specializes in cannabis said, "I've seen a lot of people throw a lot of money away trying to make a fortune in this industry."
"The way regulations are now, the legal market will never be able to compete with the black market."
In his office, LoForti described an increasingly common chain of events. A cannabis startup will take VC funding. The founders soon realize that, with all the taxes, fees, hidden costs, and other frictions, the business is more challenging than they'd realized. The startup finds itself in danger of missing financial targets put in place by its new VC investors. Faced with this undesirable outcome or worse--insolvency--the new cannabis entrepreneur realizes there is a way to remain solvent. They can dip into the black market. A cultivator can grow a little off-the-books poundage and sell it into the black market for instant untaxed profit. A manufacturer of oils can buy cheap off-the-books biomass, widening their profit margins. "I can tell you all the loopholes and weaknesses in the regulations," LoForti said.
The situation has given rise to brutal ironies. "I don't even use my license," one longtime California cultivator and activist said, explaining that he now sells every ounce he grows into the black market. "Even though I fought for legalization, I'm forced to be illegal." According to the founder of a cannabis manufacturing startup very similar to Cruz Science, who got into the business partly because he believed strongly in ending the war on drugs, "almost every single legal operator has to have some sort of illicit demand network for their product, or there's simply no way to make a living." He laughed bitterly, then stopped. "It's a fundamentally failed market."
Still, though the black-market money might come easy, it also presents dangers. It means dealing with perhaps unsavory elements, including, possibly, organized crime. "Everyone thinks, hey, man, it's the cannabis industry, so it's all rainbows and hippies and hugs," former street dealer Johnny Wilson says. "It's like: No. There's a shady side, too. There are bad people--bad people--because there's lots of money in this." There are stories of Mexican cartels running farms in the Emerald Triangle. There are stories about the Russian mob, the Armenian mob, Hells Angels, the Japanese yakuza. "I know people in cannabis who've had run-ins with criminal gangs," LoForti said. In Los Angeles, for example, the state's largest retail market for cannabis, more illegal weed is sold than legal. According to an analysis by the *Los Angeles Times*, an estimated 220 unlicensed dispensaries--outlets that, to the casual eye, were indistinguishable from their legal counterparts--did business in the county in 2019. Law enforcement agents allege that many such fraudulent dispensaries have ties to organized crime. Legalization, it turns out, has not resulted in legality. It has given rise, instead, to twin sectors, underground and aboveground, in conflict but also in symbiosis.
**ONE GRAY MORNING** in November 2019, a soft rain falling, more than 60 surfers paddled out to a tranquil spot off Capitola Beach, not far from Pleasure Point. The party included many of Atre's Silicon Valley and surfer friends. Forming a large circle that rose and fell with the incoming swells, they recited poems and told stories "in fond memory of Tushar, businessman, surfer, and outdoorsman," as his obituary later reported. Earlier that same day, a much smaller group had made its way to a spot in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains called the Land of Medicine Buddha, a peaceful place with a golden statue of the sage sitting inside a varicolored shrine. At the center of this group of mourners were Atre's family.
Also in the group at the Medicine Buddha that morning, standing apart and silently observing the ceremony, was a striking young woman. She was known to most of the others, but among Atre's closest friends and relations, she would come to be distrusted, even despised. If Tushar had never met her, some wondered, would he still be alive today?
Her name was Rachael Emerlye. And when contacted for this article, this is the story she told: By the time she met Atre, in early 2017, she had been living in California for about five years. She'd gone to college in her home state, at the University of Vermont, where she'd found her place in the local cannabis scene, volunteering as a legalization activist. After college, she'd set out in 2012 for the hippie weed plantations of the Emerald Triangle as a trimmigrant, one of the seasonal migrant workers who harvest the cannabis crop and prepare it for sale, trimming the flowers from the plants. She decided to stay. In the quasi-outlaw era of 215, she wound up leasing several small plots deep in the woods of Trinity County, running her own weed farms and nurturing her entrepreneurial dreams.
"Everyone thinks it's all rainbows and hippies and hugs. No. There's a shady side, too. There are bad people."
In January 2017, Emerlye, on an extended vacation, rented an Airbnb near the beach in Santa Cruz, one of the many investment properties the Atre family owned. That's where she met Atre; he proposed they go surfing together. Soon enough, at his urging, she was confessing to him her cannabis aspirations. Prop 64 had just passed; true legalization was coming to California. "Nerd boy meets cannabis girl," as one friend described it. They fell in love and together began searching for property to purchase in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Among their ideas, Emerlye said, was to create a small marijuana garden for experimental cannabis genetics and, eventually, a kind of clinic for the administration of a future proprietary marijuana therapy. According to Emerlye, they also thought they might one day build a magical home on this land, where they would live in forever-after bliss. Finally, they found what appeared to be the perfect parcel, 60 undeveloped acres at the Summit. Eventually, Emerlye moved in with Atre at Pleasure Point Drive. As the startup took shape, she contributed "funding, contacts, intellectual property, and cannabis business experience" to the startup, "including investment of over $300,000," according to a lawsuit she filed against the Atre estate after the murder. (The Atre estate, in court filings, has denied her contentions.) But she signed no documents; her name was on nothing. According to Emerlye, she complained repeatedly to Atre about this, and he would promise to follow through, to make her a partner on paper, to include her name on the cap table. But he never did.
As time went on, Emerlye's frustration expanded. There were arguments. Then, in early 2019, she went back east, to Massachusetts, which had just legalized recreational cannabis. She wanted some distance but also to pursue the founding of a cannabis startup on her own. According to Emerlye, this was part of her and Atre's grand plan--to prepare for federal legalization by creating a bicoastal cannabis operation. All through that summer and early fall, she said, Atre came to visit her and she went to visit him. But on the night of September 30, Atre slept alone.
**THE SANTA CRUZ COUNTY** Sheriff's Office occupies a four-story building right off the Pacific Coast Highway, down the street from the Ding Pro surfboard repair shop, and around the corner from a supplier of equipment for the cultivation of hydroponic marijuana. With its beach enclaves and blissed-out natural settings, the county of Santa Cruz might seem to present to its police a somewhat undemanding constabulary experience. But onto the desks of the detectives posted to the SCSO come case after case of violent incident and mysterious death--and now, despite legalization, a stream of black-market cannabis cases. Like the clandestine extraction lab near Felton that blew up and nearly set off a forest fire. Or the clandestine extraction lab in Loma Prieta that blew up and did. Or the clandestine extraction lab brazenly operating out of an industrial park just outside Santa Cruz city limits. Or the armed home invasion in June 2019 in the Santa Cruz Mountains hamlet of Ben Lomond--where deputies arrived to find two victims bound with zip ties lying on the floor. One was bleeding from the head; he'd been pistol-whipped. It was a black-market weed deal gone wrong. The assailants were drug dealers from Texas who'd come to California to acquire supply.
On October 1, 2019, the SCSO caught the Tushar Atre homicide case. Eventually, it would evolve into the most comprehensive murder investigation, as measured by manhours, in Santa Cruz County in 20 years. Dozens of officers would put in time on the case. Almost 200 people would be interviewed, and more than 60 search warrants served. The case was a massive whodunit.
Atre had left behind not just a cluster of passionately loyal friends, but also a community of the disgruntled. Again and again, according to later court testimony, detectives heard the same thing. Atre "went out of his way to start fights with people." He was a "hot head" who "left a trail of people who are pissed off with him." Atre, in other words, had made enemies. Not only that, but the nature of the California cannabis market, with its flourishing illicit side, along with Atre's own stories about running a trap lab, had given rise to speculation. If Atre had been engaging in black-market deals, could he have angered some person in the cannabis underworld enough for that person to have him killed? Investigators, in short, had a lot to investigate. As one former Fern Street employee said, "If you're doing ... illegal weed shit in California, there's a whole host of people it probably would not be a good idea to treat the way Tushar was prone to treating people."
**OVER TIME, INVESTIGATORS** began to put together a clearer picture of how Atre had built his cannabis startup, how he'd applied the ways of Silicon Valley to an industry emerging from a shadowy past. In late 2016 or early 2017, Atre met a young cannabis extractor. The two hit it off and began working toward the creation of a legal cannabis startup that would take advantage of the end of prohibition. To the extractor, Atre seemed the perfect guy to team up with: a seasoned entrepreneur with decades of experience in Silicon Valley, the major leagues. According to multiple people familiar with the business at the time, Atre and his partner eventually constructed and operated a lab inside a shipping container inside a warehouse Atre had bought near the town of Castroville, in Monterey County. The idea, said a former employee, was to use this lab as R&D, to experiment with new techniques and hone their skills in preparation for the build-out of a fully licensed facility.
But this was a risky business. At the time, law enforcement viewed cannabis extraction setups as the equivalent of meth labs. If found guilty of this, the charge, a felony, could have carried up to a seven-year prison sentence. In this, Atre and his partner were far from alone. All over California, others were doing the exact same thing. And so here was another surreal byproduct of the transition from prohibition to legalization: entrepreneurs feeling forced to skirt the law in preparation for operating in accordance with the law.
Meanwhile, Atre bought the structure at 211 Fern Street, which he and his partner planned to turn into the company's flagship licensed lab. They began the long process of applying for and obtaining the licenses and permits required for going legit in the new California weed economy, while Atre and Emerlye searched for a secluded property in the mountains where she could cultivate.
By all accounts, Atre was a hard-driving boss. In the seemingly laid-back culture of cannabis, his managerial style jarred. It was, everyone realized, classic Silicon Valley, a place where the entrepreneur, the job-creating maverick, is held in exaltation, and where Atre's behavior was standard operating procedure. From his workers, Atre insisted on total commitment, total excellence--feel the passion for our world-changing venture, and do as I say, or get lost. Many did get lost; the startup suffered from constant turnover.
By January 2018, Atre had what amounted to an employee revolt on his hands. A kind of intervention was staged. The whole staff sat in chairs in a circle with their boss, airing grievances. In the end, Atre and his partner, the young extractor, agreed to part ways. All of the workers chose to go with the young extractor, not Atre. "We hope you don't make these same mistakes with the next people you work with," someone said, according to a person who was there.
Atre, of course, didn't give up. He was able to quickly tap into his network and assemble a second team. He was, after all, lauded in entrepreneurial circles--a "bright operator," a "borderline savant," a "genius," according to other business people who knew him. By early 2019, Atre, a master pitchman, had persuaded an Ohio VC fund called OWC Ventures to invest a sum eventually amounting to $4.25 million in Interstitial Systems, valuing the startup at $10 million. Founded by Jack Heekin and Jeff Walker, both graduates of Miami University in Ohio, OWC stood for OpenRoads Wealth Capital and was focused on cannabis investments.
At the same time, Atre appeared to be up to something at the Summit property. Ever since sheriff's deputies' earliest interviews in the homicide investigation, they had known Atre was growing some form of cannabis at his mountain retreat. But there was confusion about this garden. Atre didn't have a cultivation license from the state. Nor was the property eligible for a local cultivation business permit from Santa Cruz County. Instead, Atre told people, he had obtained a hemp "research permit" to run an experimental hemp "breeding program." On August 16, 2019, in fact, he registered the Summit property as an agricultural research center with the agricultural commissioner of Santa Cruz County. Simply by submitting this form, anyone in the county could grow as much hemp as they wanted "for purposes for research," in the words of the registration form. But there was no real application process or oversight of the program by authorities. The term *hemp* refers to a cannabis cultivar so low in THC that its psychoactive impact is imperceptible. By contrast, according to several business associates who saw the plants and spoke to Atre about them, high-THC marijuana had been growing at the Summit. "It was all kush up there. It was all weed," said one person familiar with the purchase of more than 900 seedlings in August 2019, most of which came from a nursery in Humboldt County. In a lawsuit filed by OWC after the murder--the fund is seeking control of the startup and its assets--OWC alleges that Atre engaged in "black-market activities" when he "grew and cultivated marijuana and cannabis, under the guise of a research license, that he and others attempted to sell on the open market." (The defendants in the lawsuit, which include Atre's estate, have denied OWC's allegations.) Whatever the case, Atre expressed to multiple people in the weeks leading up to his murder that he'd undertaken to plant and harvest a cannabis crop at the Summit as a way to win back Emerlye's heart.
**ONE MONTH, TWO MONTHS,** four months, eight. In early 2020, as the coronavirus spread and the world shut down, the investigation ground on. In increasing desperation, Atre's friends staked larger and larger sums in reward money for information leading to a conviction--$25,000, $150,000, and then $200,000. Then, at last, the revelation came.
On the morning of May 20, 2020, the SCSO announced that detectives had arrested four suspects in connection with Atre's murder. One had been found in Burbank, another in a town just outside Detroit, and the third and fourth in Lancaster, California. They were all young: 19, 22, 22, and 23 years old. Two were brothers: Kaleb and Kurtis Charters. A third was their brother-in-law: Stephen Nicolas Lindsay. The fourth man was a friend of the others: Joshua Camps. All of the accused shared a part of their upbringing in Lancaster, a dusty working-class exurb of Los Angeles about an hour's drive northeast of downtown, basically in the Mojave.
To many in the Santa Cruz community, the news was baffling. Who even were these guys? Most of Atre's colleagues and acquaintances did not recognize the names, had never seen their faces. Many people suspected Atre had gotten himself ensnared with dark enemies inside the cannabis black market. Instead, according to the sheriff's office, it had been some kind of inside job: Two of the accused had worked for Atre at the cannabis startup: Kaleb Charters, the 19-year-old, and Lindsay, 22, the brother-in-law. In total, they'd worked for Atre for all of a few weeks. Their last day was near the end of August, about a month before the murder.
"Hard-working," "respectful," "well-mannered" is how their co-workers described them. In Santa Cruz, they seemed out of place. They kept to themselves. They didn't go out with others. They didn't even appear to use the product they were in the business of helping produce, according to other Cruz Science employees. They reminded one co-worker of Mormons, which, it turns out, wasn't too far off the mark. Kaleb Charters and his siblings had grown up in a village in Russia and then in a village in El Salvador with their parents, who were fundamentalist evangelical Christian missionaries.
At Atre's Summit property, Charters and Lindsay had put in long hours. According to another of Atre's underlings, who got to know them both, they would arrive before dawn and not stop working until the sun had set. They helped put more than 900 seedlings into the ground. Then one day, in a seemingly insignificant moment that would reverberate catastrophically, Charters and Lindsay misplaced a key to one of Atre's trucks, enraging their boss, who refused to pay them their salary.
After the lost-key incident, Charters and Lindsay disappeared for a few days, according to co-workers, and then returned to Fern Street to confront Atre. They wanted the wages they were owed. The two had just completed boot camp; they'd joined up as Army Reservists. And so, according to several eyewitnesses, Atre ordered them to demonstrate their penitence by performing hundreds of pushups. They did them, and Atre did in fact pay up. And then Charters and Lindsay left. Almost no one gave them another thought until May 20, 2020, when their mug shots were broadcast across the internet.
**THE TAKE FROM** the crime was somewhere around $30,000 in cash, a camera, and Atre's acoustic guitar, according to evidence later presented in a preliminary hearing in the case. Because none of the four defendants have spoken publicly, it's impossible to know if that haul matched their expectations. But the prosecution has alleged, on the basis of the series of events presented in its case, that the plot was likely hatched in North Las Vegas--a place almost identical to Lancaster in its beige stucco sprawl of subdivisions and strip malls laid out like circuitry on the flat desert plain. They had all just moved there, in September 2019, and were living together in the same apartment: Kaleb Charters, his brother Kurtis, their sister Kelsey, and her new husband, Nick Lindsay.
In one way or another, they'd all been adrift. By 2018, Kaleb Charters and Lindsay--at one time a star high school football player--had joined the Army Reserve together, gone through boot camp together, and gotten jobs together as telemarketers at a firm in Pasadena. It was also Charters and Lindsay who had gone to work in Santa Cruz the next year for the rich entrepreneur at his new weed business. As part of his telemarketing gig, Charters had called the main Cruz Science number one day and gotten to talking with the intern who'd answered. The intern had said: My boss is building a cannabis company. He needs all the help he can get. You should come up here for an interview. One could imagine Charters and Lindsay thinking that here finally was a great opportunity--a way, on the ground level, into an exciting and explosively growing new industry in which, just maybe, they could rise and thrive.
They drove to Santa Cruz and met their funny, cool new boss, Tushar, inside his amazing oceanfront house. He agreed to let them live rent free at a small apartment building he owned in Felton, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But, according to the case being presented by the Santa Cruz County District Attorney's Office, the adventure quickly spoiled. Atre changed. Charming and generous at first, he became increasingly tyrannical, bringing to bear his Silicon Valley style. And yet they seemed to want to impress him. At first, Atre put them to work in the lab at Fern Street. They did custodial jobs, but they also were learning, helping the extractors, receiving an entry-level education in this wild new marijuana chemistry. For a short time, they were what's known as "sock monkeys," helping technicians feed biomass into the nylon sleeves, or socks, that went into the extraction machines. But then Atre sent them to the place he owned up in the woods to plant cannabis seedlings. First, though, they needed to get them. Three times they drove the more than 300 miles back and forth to Humboldt County in a box truck, ferrying almost 900 seedlings from the Emerald Triangle to the Summit property. For two and a half weeks, 12 hours a day, they planted. But when told by Atre to do the pushups for their paycheck, this was the final straw. After working for Atre for less than a month, they decided to quit. Now they were adrift again.
They moved to Las Vegas. Nevada had recently legalized recreational marijuana. As Charters and Lindsay had asked one former co-worker, why not maybe start a legal weed delivery business in Sin City? But things apparently did not go as planned. At one point, they lived in a cut-rate motel. They were living off their Army Reserve pay.
One day, according to the prosecution's case, the idea sprang into one of their minds: Go back to Santa Cruz. Go to the rich man's house late at night--they knew the simple four-digit passcode, had overheard Atre saying it one time to another employee--and take some of the wads of cash he seemed to have always around, had to have always around. And maybe also, one of the men thought, they should go to the Summit and take some of those 900 plants they'd plugged into the earth. For their posse, they felt they needed a fourth man, so Kurtis Charters roped in an old friend, Josh Camps, who was living in his mother's house back in Lancaster. A big, strong guy, 210 pounds, he would be the muscle. Even better, he owned guns.
**THE SEARCH TO** find meaning in terrible events is a natural impulse, and today in Santa Cruz many of the people who knew Atre refuse to believe that Lindsay, Camps, and the Charters brothers could have acted alone. Some suspect it was a hate crime--White boys who came to resent the ultra-successful Brown man to the point of bloodlust. Others believe the mystery hasn't fully been solved. How could anyone grow angry enough at a boss--no matter how allegedly tyrannical--in the space of just a few weeks to carry out such a sinister act? It is as though something more profound is required to explain the violent extinguishing of such an extraordinary life.
As the case has ground through California state court, the district attorney's office has contended that the crime was a planned execution, a premeditated revenge slaying. The defense, meanwhile, has argued that this was a botched robbery--the four defendants intending only to steal from Atre, but then things going madly, murderously sideways. What doesn't appear at issue is whether the SCSO arrested the wrong people. None of their attorneys have brought this forth as a defense. During initial interrogations by detectives after their arrests on May 19, 2020, the Charters brothers and Camps made admissions of guilt. Lindsay said nothing and immediately invoked his right to an attorney. There will possibly come a time when one or more of the four pleads guilty and testifies against the others, but as of presstime, all four have pleaded not guilty. If the case does go to trial, these two competing versions of the story--the planned execution versus the botched robbery--will do battle for the jury's favor.
Meanwhile, Atre's family has declined to comment for this story. Even beyond their tremendous grief, one can see why. Atre's complex business affairs at the time of his death have drawn them into a morass of legal actions. Creditors and others have come out of the woodwork to make claims on the estate. Rachael Emerlye is suing the estate for what she claims is her fair share of the business. (The estate denies that she was a partner and "denies that she is entitled to any recovery under the complaint.") The VC fund OWC sued for control of Interstitial Systems; earlier this year, the parties reached a settlement. If there's one thing connecting all the main characters in this drama, it's that each of them--founder, partner, investor, worker, lover--was chasing, in their own way, the same dream.
The birth of a legal industry; a thrilling product of historic import, now at last a commodity to be bought and sold on the lighted marketplace--these are the conditions that foment ambition. The legacy players hungry for their chance. The mega-corporations plotting and waiting to pounce. The state and local governments, greedy for their cut, which had engineered a racket of a regulatory regime. The Silicon Valley disrupters, dropping in without deference, with little sense of the dangers that might lie in wait.
**THEY GATHERED** in Lancaster on September 30, a Sunday, according to evidence presented at the preliminary hearing, and drove together in Camps's blue Toyota Camry all the way to Santa Cruz. The four men brought with them one of Camps's weapons, a long, black, AR-15 assault rifle. Kaleb Charters, at the wheel of the Camry, dropped the other three off at one end of Pleasure Point Drive at about 2:45 a.m., and then headed to the Summit property, a 20-minute drive away, where he would await his partners. According to a police summary of Kaleb Charters's later statement to detectives, the plan was for the others to find keys to one of Atre's several vehicles and drive that vehicle to the Summit for the rendezvous. Then they would all escape into the night in Camps's Camry with their haul, no one else the wiser.
It was a mad scheme, infantile, full of holes. But their brains were likely on fire with the plot they'd concocted. It would be, they believed, according to the defense, an almost victimless heist; they did not believe, for whatever reason, that Atre would be at home. But then they found that the house was not empty, that he was in fact at home, asleep in his bed in the master suite. And so they turned to Plan B.
Many who knew him seek something more profound to explain the extinguishing of such an extraordinary life.
This was, after all, why they'd brought the rifle. Just in case. This was why they'd brought the zip ties. If he was home, the plan had been to tie him up, as Kaleb Charters later said in his statement. They would give him, perhaps, the fright of his life. Now they zip-tied his wrists behind his back. They yelled at him to tell them where the cash was, where the safe was. One of them shoved a sock in his mouth. But Atre practiced mixed martial arts. Normally strong, he was now likely even stronger, engorged with rage. Somehow he was able to spit out the sock and get out of the house and onto the street, sprinting now, in all likelihood screaming, a banshee, to wake up neighbors, but apparently no one in the other houses could hear him above the surf's roar, and one of the men--according to the police and prosecutors, Lindsay the football star--blazed down the street and tackled Atre headlong and allegedly stabbed him in the side--repeatedly. Fast jabbing motions like punches. There was another scuffle, and perhaps more stabbing, this time allegedly by Camps. And then Atre's white BMW SUV was beside them and they were shoving Atre into the passenger seat, Lindsay now at the wheel, Camps and Kurtis Charters scrambling into the rear. And then they were driving, blood soaking and running out of Atre's shirt as they climbed slowly up the winding road through the dark forest along the route that Lindsay knew to the Summit. No one spoke as Charters tried to stanch the blood.
By the time they arrived, Atre was barely conscious. The night was pitch, the dark total. According to evidence presented at court, Camps walked the wounded man down an incline and into a grove of towering cathedral pine. Then there was the crack of gunfire, and Tushar Atre, his mountaintop garden just on the other side of these mighty evergreens that groan and sigh with the wind from the sea, fell to the ground of his final ambition.
From the March/April 2022 issue of *Inc.* Magazine
She is eighteen years old and lives with her family at 14550 Greenlaw Church Road, her childhood home in Kentwood, Louisiana, a town of two thousand in the rand of the boot of the state. It sits but a stone’s throw from Camp Moore, a Confederate military base used during the Civil War. She has not yet abandoned the twang from which her vocal fry will eventually depart.
It is difficult to overstate her celebrity at this point in history: it is the advent of the digital age, and she is the most photographed woman in the world. The proliferation of new forms of mass media reduce her likeness to ubiquity on AOL, Napster, iPods, blogs, billboards, and nascent forms of social media. Her image plasters the covers of most magazines and tabloids people read. I danced along to her songs when I was in kindergarten on my HitClip and boombox radio—*hit me, baby, one more time*, that sugar candy bubblegum beat.
Britney Spears is the millennium’s first major pop superstar, a comet phenomenon whose influence no talent since has been able to fully replicate, though not for lack of trying (consider the other famous blondes who followed in her footsteps, e.g., Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus). She pioneered her own career as a young girl; over its span, she has won 377 awards. *Rolling Stone* called her breakout single the greatest debut of all time. Her peers are Michael Jackson and Madonna; she is referred to affectionately as the “Princess of Pop.” Sitting opposite Conan, Spears is only a teenager, but she manages herself like a woman in perfect control. Her body glitters, is dusted in gold.
Little girls script their lives according to fairytales, the first stories we are ever told. The peasant leaves her slipper on the stairs of the castle. A mermaid gets legs in exchange for her voice. A woman loves a beast who is eventually revealed to be a prince. Millennial women watched our fairytales on reality television and music videos on VH1 and MTV.
*This is a story about a girl named Lucky*: America’s Cinderella, a beautiful blond girl from the South who sheds her rags for riches and loves to sing and dance.
\*\*\*
**G**irls raised in the South perform gender according to Christian roles and stereotypes: *first we are virgins, then we are ladies, then we are brides*. These scripts dictate our temperament, decorum, and what labor we are allowed to pursue with our lives. In Louisiana, there are bonne belles (good beauties) who acquiesce to social norms and cultural values; mauvaise belles (bad beauties) do not. Certain terms imply our social rank and economic positioning: *Southern belle* first referred to women in the planter class in antebellum society (underwritten by the enslaved); *country girl* is a euphemism for the type that city people like to call *white trash*. Southern women have reclaimed these terms to signify what we want them to, transforming them into markers of a common identity, shared experience, and geographic pride—like in that Gretchen Wilson song: *I’m a redneck woman, I ain’t no high-class broad. I’m just a product of my raising; I say, “hey y’all” and “yeehaw.”*
The fairytales of Southern white women seldom turn out well: Scarlett is rejected by Rhett and abandoned to Tara, Blanche is committed to an institution, and Edna drowns herself at the beach. These stories exist not to entertain but to teach us necessary lessons we also learned from second-wave feminism: how to be strong and independent, that we must protect our fragile dreams, and it is important to craft lives of our own ambition. They show us that the world will reject us for our conviviality and that we may spurn the world in turn. We make mistakes along the way, eventually bloom into women. Summer moves into autumn, freeze into spring.
\*\*\*
**A**t the turn of the twenty-first century, Britney Spears was Louisiana’s Princess Diana: crowned the 2000 Grand Marshal of Endymion in New Orleans, she returned for Mardi Gras 2003 with MTV. The success of her first three records did not corrupt her—even while juggling each album’s production and world tours, she maintained relationships with her childhood best friends, Cortney Jansen, and Laura Lynne. In an interview with British talk show host Jonathan Ross, she says that she likes to cook rice and jambalaya, classic staples of Louisiana cuisine. In 2002, in a cameo on the *Oprah Winfrey Show*, her ten-year-old sister Jamie Lynn guarantees “she is the nicest country girl you’ll ever meet.”
After Hurricane Katrina, she took some young girls shopping who were affected in New Orleans; after Hurricane Laura, she sent a truck of supplies to help out in Lake Charles. In 2016, she auctioned the clothes off her back to support victims of catastrophic floods; at another point, she held a raffle for a meet-and-greet during her Las Vegas residency to support the Louisiana school board. She has posted pictures of herself on boats, happy in summer, hugging on suntanned boys.
After a while, America started to wonder—*is she a debutante or is she a hick*? In a particularly challenging interview four years into her career, Diane Sawyer asks if her worst nightmare is going back to Kentwood to sell crawfish at her grandmother’s store. In a later taping, Matt Lauer implies she is a redneck. She begins to assert she is *proud*—weary, instead she gives up.
\*\*\*
**I**n the early aughts, mainstream American feminism had yet to extract itself from our culture’s obsession with white women’s perceived innocence and virginity, a fantasy with which Britney Spears refused to comply. She kissed Madonna at the VMAs, dressed in crop tops and denim cut offs, choreographed risqué dance routines, and spoke frankly when questioned about losing her virginity when she was only twenty-something years old. The media ridiculed her empowered sexuality and shamed her for not *setting a strong example for young girls*. They implied she was a harlot, told her in so many words she should behave. Paparazzi trailed her in the double digits. In interviews, she was expected to address whatever speculative narratives the tabloids described.
Her personal life became public spectacle; she dragged as a phantasm of who young girls long to grow up to be. She revealed what men think young girls are: fantasy, prey they project illusions of girlhood onto. At times she was performing and at times she was living her truth. She antagonized public opinion, costumed herself in hypersexualized corruptions of archetypal roles: a Lolita school girl, the slut in the garden of Eden, a lesbian virgin bride. The lyrics to her catalog read like country music ballads or her teenage diary: she is a marooned Hollywood starlet, a girl coming into her own. From child to icon to mother, we watched her grow before our eyes. She matured, continued to sing, invited the world to mature along with her, implored that we all get a life.
We know the next part of the story: the princess bites from a poison apple; the mermaid disintegrates into foam. She married a man, got pregnant quickly, and then filed for a divorce. She then lost custody of her two young sons. What followed were a series of behavioral anomalies that the media exploited, refusing to acknowledge them as cries for help. She experienced a mental health crisis like most twenty-five-year-old women in the same position would. The paparazzi ignored her when she asked them to leave her alone. They did not stop when she told them no.
\*\*\*
**W**e are now twenty-three years out from the *Rolling Stone* cover story in which we first visited the seventeen-year-old in that ranch-style home. Her parents have since separated and divorced, the house was sold last year to new owners, and Britney celebrated her fortieth birthday in late 2021. Many writers have traveled to visit the Kentwood Historical Museum (composed of half Britney Spears and half World War II memorabilia acquired from local veterans) and drive themselves back home. Her parents never moved away, and Britney visits often, most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I arrive a few months after a *New York Post* reporter has torn through town. She stalked and harassed Britney’s father, Jamie, texted his personal phone number, drove up unannounced to the RV he lives in, and demanded to be seen. She reports that he drove around in his golf cart and warned her that he’d contacted the police. The attendant at the museum answers the phone guarded when I call. I do not sense that I am wanted here at any point: I do not ever pass a welcome sign; it is clear I am a stranger as I navigate this town of two thousand, that I have found myself somewhere foreign, that I do not belong.
It is Monday midday, and the Kentwood Historical Museum is closed. I drive down the main road and another that intersects it like a cross, passing worn out buildings and single-story homes. Some still look damaged from the last hurricane; most are painted a variant shade of dirt brown. I pass daiquiri shops on both sides of the street, and then the Dub, a bar. I piss in the bathroom of the Sonic Britney likes to take her boyfriends to, which smells musty, like a cigarette.
I visit Connie’s, a gift shop on the edge of town. It is silent when I walk inside until a shopgirl tells me hello. I glance around at their merchandise, full of the same kind of stuff that populates every other Southern gift store, including the one my mother works in: monogrammed throw pillows, silver jewelry, crosses to hang up on the wall. I buy an ornament of the three wise men I find marked half-off on the Christmas table in the front; I admire a variety of birthstone rings featured behind glass in the jewelry counter. They are sold out of mine in topaz. Though we are both Sagittarius women, Britney and I do not share the same stone—her birthday is December second, two days after mine.
I drive thirty seconds downtown to stop for coffee and a plate lunch at The Cafe. When I enter and sit down, the woman at the next table over promptly compliments my coat. I order the daily special: fried chicken with a side of red beans and rice. It is served with cornbread just like my grandmother’s: thick and homemade, obviously baked with love. Paintings of cows decorate the walls. My waitress compliments my purse and tells me she just got her first designer bag for Christmas, though she is quick to add she likes the ones they sell at Target for fifty bucks, too. I decline dessert: a small slice of chocolate cake with a layer of chocolate icing on top like they used to serve for school lunch. I pay the bill and notice the row of monogrammed mugs held for regulars along the bar, including one for Jamie. When neighbors finish their meals and leave their tables, they tell one another goodbye before they go.
At 14550 Greenlaw Church Road, an inflatable Santa Claus, Grinch, and snowman decorate the front lawn. When I drive to Serenity, the multi-million-dollar French country–style estate Britney built for her mother Lynne on the outskirts of town, I see a heron fly up against the marsh, lit up in sun.
The folks I encounter in Kentwood are polite and keep to themselves, so I do too. Because I am a Southern girl, I uphold the social code: I do not broach the subject, I do not ask rude questions, I do not mean anybody no harm. I am followed out of town by a state trooper waiting for me on the side of the highway. He pulls out from behind me to cut off onto a dirt road and turn back the other way.
I stop a couple of towns over, in Ponchatoula, to leave Peruvian lilies on my grandfather’s grave. It is just another ordinary Louisiana day.
\*\*\*
**W**ho she is is something I refuse to fetishize. To me, it has always been quite clear: Britney Spears is just another Louisiana girl like I am. She acts like country girls from the South: posts the same inspirational quotes on her Instagram, references the same stories and music, wears the same kind of clothes we all buy, upholds the same values that we were taught, talks back with the same attitude. She is refreshingly candid in her interviews, nothing short of the woman she is—she grew up far away from the posturing and pretension that most of the country is accustomed to.
Her public breakdown was a common rite of passage many of us experience in the privacy of our own homes: we sneak out, break rules, get drunk, take drugs, do rehab, come back, become moms, and continue to be young women figuring it all out. I am sure she started partying young like we all did; in the country, there is nothing else to do. I have passed out in my fair share of ditches, and I have a pretty good idea of which bars in New Orleans let her in early because they accepted my fake ID too.
She just so happens to be a world-famous celebrity expected to behave like other celebrities do. But celebrity is never actually what those people are—it is just their day job, another performance, another ridiculous standard of conduct we hold beautiful women to.
##
When I drive to Serenity, the multi-million-dollar French country-style estate Britney built for her mother Lynne on the outskirts of town, I see a heron fly up against the marsh, lit up in the sun.
Idon’t presume to understand the details of the conservatorship she lived under. I don’t know a damn thing about her relationship to her family, her personal life, or her mental health. I think my colleagues in media who have never met the Spears family yet purport to be able to write about this subject in any terms of authority are off their fucking rockers. These stories we tell are only ever speculative—exercises in fantasy and collective imagination, in public scrutiny, often invasions of privacy that exploit her joy and tears.
There have been so many moments throughout her career that she’s told us we’ve got it all wrong, that we fundamentally misunderstand her. What makes the immediate end of this arrangement any different? Britney Spears has been obscured from the public eye over the past thirteen years in a rigorously litigated conservatorship, in which she was stripped of her personal, financial, and professional autonomy and forced to defer to the wishes of her father, her manager, and their legal teams. Her personal contacts were limited and heavily monitored; her social media was censored; she was deprived of her civil liberties.
The conservatorship was established when she was 5150ed at Cedars-Sinai after a volatile custody dispute. Britney has been medicated for years to regulate her mental health. Parties implicated have expressed ambivalence about the legal arrangement; her father’s lawyer claims Jamie only ever acted in Britney’s best interest, that his only motivation was to protect his elder daughter from harm. Her own counsel has been accused of misrepresenting her, and the court system for the State of California has always been ultimately responsible for overseeing the terms of her conservatorship. As signing culpability for what went wrong here is an open-ended question; its answer is ambiguous, unclear, and complex.
On social media, fans launched the #FreeBritney movement to draw public attention to the conditions of the conservatorship, a vital part of the reason it was eventually overturned. Some have since pivoted to #CancelJamieLynn. While I believe in fans’ attempts to support Britney, I recognize this vitriol as a toxic byproduct of the same predatory mass media ecosystem that first tore her life apart and now feels emboldened to tear her family apart too. It is something I fundamentally disagree with, misconduct in which I adamantly refuse to take part.
Her June 2021 petition for the conservatorship’s end detailed being coerced into a 2018 tour under threat of suit by her management and having been forced to abruptly switch psychiatric medications despite her reservations about lithium’s long-term side effects. She claims she was forced to stay at a mental health facility and endure treatment she likened to sex trafficking, in which she was forced to participate in therapy for ten hours a day and change clothes in front of staff and medical personnel without the privacy of a door. In spite of her desire to get married and have another child, she was forced to retain an IUD. Her compliance with these terms determined her rights to visitation with her boyfriend and her sons. I appreciate her rage.
The conservatorship was legally dissolved this past winter, and Britney is now free. But I do not yet believe we have arrived at a happy ending. I regret to admit my distrust in any tightly wound narrative, my disbelief that closure ever comes. Stories don’t actually *resolve*; it is not how real life works. We never recover the past we’ve lost, and I am skeptical of any salvation in which the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles, corporate media conglomerates, and social media hashtags are handsome princes who come to save the day.
Southern stories are not fairytales:*Gone with the Wind*is a tragedy about slavery and the Civil War; *A**Streetcar Named Desire*implies that fantasy has no bearing on real life;*The Awakening*insinuates that freedom is ultimately a destructive force.
\*\*\*
**I** recognize that most families are complicated: relationships break, grow back together, and evolve. So much goes on behind closed doors, irrevocable history we are not privy to. I choose to believe in a version of this story where the Spears family experiences forgiveness, healing, privacy, and peace. The court records are sealed. Her private life is not something she ever meant for the public to fully understand.
I know that her community back home continues to treat her ties to them with the utmost tenderness and care. It is the reason they have stayed silent for so long despite every opportunity not to. I know that Kentwood is among the few places on earth where her celebrity does not matter, where she is granted the freedom to be her full self. I know that this acceptance is irrevocable, unconditional, true.
Home is where we learn our values and to whom we belong. It is the setting against which we live the rest of our lives, what we carry along with us no matter how far away we go.
What is a happy ending for Louisiana girls? Sometimes it’s death, sometimes it’s motherhood, sometimes it’s love, sometimes transcendence. Sometimes it’s a Kate Spade bag; sometimes a heron springing up in the marsh. Sometimes it’s the freedom to be honest with ourselves and one another. Sometimes we just want to be left alone.
Saint Peter’s may turn out to be the greatest Cinderella story in men’s NCAA tournament history—but according to Hassan Drame, it’s not the most meaningful tournament run he’s ever gone on. Hassan and his identical twin, Fousseyni, are a pair of 6-foot-7 forwards from Mali who help anchor the Peacocks’ surprisingly stout defense. Mali’s senior-level national basketball team has never qualified for a FIBA World Cup or the Olympics and rarely performs well in African competition. But when Hassan and Fousseyni suited up at the U-19 World Cup, Mali made a surprise run to the championship game. They took down Latvia, Canada, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, and France before falling to a United States team filled with future NBA stars. While Saint Peter’s is not the first 15-seed to go on a tourney run, Mali was the first African team ever to medal at any major international basketball event—men’s or women’s, senior or youth level.
“The no. 1 reason for our success in the World Cup was our mindset. That’s the same mindset we tried to bring here,” said Hassan, standing next to his less talkative brother. “Their school might give them a million dollars, or a billion dollars. But when we step on the court, it’s five vs. five. They don’t have two heads. They don’t have four legs.”
Saint Peter’s is the ultimate underdog story—one of the smallest schools in Division I, with one of the smallest athletic budgets, with a basketball program that has historically been an also-ran in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, whose champions hadn’t won an NCAA tournament game in over a decade.
Even compared to other March Madness Cinderella stories, Saint Peter’s is a true miracle. Take UMBC, which in 2018 became the first 16-seed to beat a 1-seed: That school opened an $85 million basketball arena in 2018. Saint Peter’s plays in a 47-year-old rec center where [games have been postponed due to ceiling leakage](https://saintpeterspeacocks.com/news/2016/1/25/1_25_2016_779.aspx). I went there on Tuesday as part of a quickly organized interview session for the dozens of media members who suddenly need to know everything about Saint Peter’s basketball. The first thing you notice when you enter the building is the smell of chlorine from the school pool. UMBC has five times as many students as Saint Peter’s, an endowment three times as large, and double the athletics budget. Former Saint Peter’s hoops staffer Ryan Woerner wrote a thorough Twitter thread explaining what it was like to run a Division I basketball team on a shoestring budget that didn’t always include money for things like “hot water.”
> From [@CooperCalz](https://twitter.com/CooperCalz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) - former Iona Assistant - “My 2nd year at Iona. During warmups at St. Peter’s - someone took a jumper, hit the rim, and the rim just fell off the basket. 40 min delay. Had to go get a new basket installed.”
>
> — Ryan Patrick Woerner, Esq. (@CoachRPDubs) [March 21, 2022](https://twitter.com/CoachRPDubs/status/1505983861439844356?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> Our offices routinely flooded because we were at the top of the Yanitelli. Here's a photo of a regular workday with an inch of water on the floor. Note: the carpets/sheetrock/rotted ceiling tiles were never rehabbed after the flooding events. [pic.twitter.com/DMMum49mAi](https://t.co/DMMum49mAi)
>
> — Ryan Patrick Woerner, Esq. (@CoachRPDubs) [March 21, 2022](https://twitter.com/CoachRPDubs/status/1505928388216766478?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
The “arena” did receive a $5 million renovation last year, and [is now known as “Run Baby Run Arena,”](https://www.nj.com/sports/2022/03/why-is-saint-peters-arena-called-run-baby-run-arena.html) although almost all the outward signage still says “Yanitelli Recreational Life Center.” While the renovations were happening, the team played its home games at Division III New Jersey City University’s home court and [practiced in an unheated high school gym](https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/03/24/saint-peters-sweet-16-ncaa-basketball-tournament/). “It was humbling,” says head coach Shaheen Holloway.
UMBC was an example of a David slaying a Goliath—but David would go on to be a king. Did David have any smaller, poorer friends we can compare Saint Peter’s to?
And the Peacocks beat *Kentucky*. Everybody in the basketball world knows Kentucky. Doug Edert, the Peacocks’ sixth man who scored 20 points against the Wildcats, told *The Ringer* he’d never even heard of Saint Peter’s before they recruited him—and he grew up a half-hour away in Nutley, New Jersey.
Kentucky pays head coach John Calipari more than $8 million per year. [His top assistant makes $850,000](https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/college/kentucky/2021/05/13/kentucky-basketball-salaries-for-orlando-antigua-chin-coleman/5071813001/). Holloway [reportedly makes $260,000](https://twitter.com/ByBerkowitz/status/1504647038163726362). The school’s last coach, John Dunne, was hired away by [conference opponent Marist for “a substantial raise in salary”](https://www.app.com/story/sports/college/2018/04/03/saint-peters-basketball-john-dunne-shaheen-holloway/483871002/)—even other schools you’ve never heard of significantly outspend Saint Peter’s.
In 2021, Kentucky [received more than $45.5 million from the SEC](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2021/02/04/southeastern-conference-revenue-2020-fiscal-year/4395659001/) as part of its annual payout from the conference—that’s money split among the SEC’s schools for the league’s media rights and other shared revenues, not counting additional money that Kentucky makes on its own, through ticket sales and licensing agreements. It’s indicative of a massive financial gap in college sports between the biggest schools and the smallest ones—a gap that is only growing larger. This year’s SEC payout [will be $54.6 million](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/sec-generates-777-8-million-in-revenue-in-2020-21-distributes-an-average-of-54-6-million-per-school/). That year-over-year increase of $9 million is more than Saint Peter’s entire athletic budget, [which came out to $7.2 million in 2020](https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2022/saint-peters-kentucky-win-financial-upset-1234669077/). Meanwhile, the SEC keeps making itself richer, through larger TV deals and adding powerhouses like Texas and Oklahoma.
And yet, in March Madness, it doesn’t seem to matter. We are in the most upset-heavy period in college hoops history. A 15-seed has beaten a 2-seed in five of the last 10 NCAA tournaments; that had happened only four times previously in the 33 years since seeding was introduced. Only three 15-seeds have ever reached the Sweet 16, all of them in the last 10 years, and now two in back-to-back years. And of course, UMBC’s historic upset was in 2018. How is it possible that an era of heightened inequality in college sports is coinciding with the Upset Era?
---
It’s hard to come up with a good explanation for how Saint Peter’s made the Sweet 16 while facing so many disadvantages. I [literally made a video picking Saint Peter’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqIaOYTwHfQ), and even I cannot believe they won. There is no good answer here. These things shouldn’t keep happening under this type of structure. There are no analytics that explain how Cinderella’s Value Over Replacement Stepsister got her noticed by Prince Charming. There is a somewhat legitimate part of me that thinks a unique, one-of-a-kind mascot is the necessary ingredient to pull off a big upset. You’ve gotta be a peacock—bold, beautiful, and built to survive despite carrying a massive tail around everywhere you go.
But I also have a more legitimate guess. College basketball players aren’t as committed to the top few schools as they used to be, and now spread their talent beyond the blue bloods of the sport. Take a look at [the ESPN recruiting rankings from 2010](http://www.espn.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/playerrankings/_/class/2010/order/true), the first year the company released star ratings for recruits. There were 11 five-star recruits. Ten of the 11 went to Power Five schools; the 11th went to Memphis, which has targeted top talent for a long time. Four of the top five went to Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, or North Carolina—four blue bloods in blue uniforms.
Saint Peter’s gathers for a press conference Tuesday, attended by our own Rodger Sherman (far right).
AP Images
Now let’s look at [the recruiting rankings from this past summer](http://www.espn.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/playerrankings/_/class/2021/order/true). ESPN named 24 five-star prospects. Only 16 of them picked Power Five schools. Duke’s Paolo Banchero was the only top-five player to pick a power conference school. Three five-stars chose Gonzaga, a school that [hadn’t landed a five-star recruit until Jalen Suggs signed in 2020](https://www.theringer.com/2021/3/18/22336679/gonzaga-bulldogs-march-madness-program-transformation). Two of the top 10 went to play for the G League Ignite, the NBA’s developmental squad that caters to elite prospects, founded in 2020. Fifth-ranked Patrick Baldwin Jr. chose to play for his dad at Milwaukee. ([That choice didn’t work out so well.](https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/33406511/milwaukee-panthers-fire-head-basketball-coach-pat-baldwin-sr-5-losing-seasons)) Just five of the 24 picked schools you’d historically consider blue bloods: Two went to Duke, two to Kentucky, and one to UCLA. [It was a similar story in 2020](http://www.espn.com/college-sports/basketball/recruiting/playerrankings/_/class/2020/order/true), when there were 25 five-star recruits, 18 of whom picked Power Five schools. Four picked the G League and none of the top five went to traditional blue bloods. Even the Power Five prospects spread themselves out a bit, picking some schools that aren’t typical elite destinations, such as Oklahoma State, Arizona State, and Texas Tech.
There are more avenues than ever for prospects to develop their games and become pros. They’re less likely to play for blue bloods that have historically hoarded talent, and less likely to pick a power conference school—they’re even less likely to play in college at all. The talent is diluted.
That dilution at the top doesn’t really affect schools like Saint Peter’s, which exist in an entirely different ecosystem. It’s like how if we had a drought up here on the surface and struggled to grow crops, the weird animals that exist on the ocean floor feeding off geothermal vents would be just fine. Saint Peter’s was always going to recruit players who were either under-recruited or totally overlooked. It needs a coach who can find the right players everybody else has passed on—and the school found one of those coaches in Holloway.
Saint Peter’s hired Holloway in 2018 after he served as an assistant on Seton Hall teams that had gone to back-to-back-to-back NCAA tournaments. He had to recruit kids to a school with no history of basketball success, no name recognition, and some of the worst facilities in Division I. “I had to sell myself,” he says. “You’ve just got to sell what you know, and that’s me.” A Queens native who led Seton Hall to the 2000 Sweet 16 as a point guard, Holloway has great basketball smarts—but that alone wouldn’t make a great Cinderella. The key is that he also has those undefinable traits that turn guys who know basketball into great coaches—the ability to talk to someone and make them feel important, the ability to say cool stuff on demand. This quote became an instant icon:
> "I've got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we're scared of anything?"
>
> Saint Peter’s head coach Shaheen Holloway’s confidence is unmatched
But perhaps most importantly, Holloway can look at a bunch of talented basketball players and identify the special ones. The Peacocks coach goes out and gets the guys he wants—guys who have only a couple of scholarship offers, but remind him a bit of himself. “You’ve gotta get guys that fit your personality,” Holloway said on Tuesday. “It’s not always the best guys, it’s the right guy.”
In 2019-20, Holloway’s second year on the job, Saint Peter’s landed a recruiting class of six players whom he credits with turning the program around. Five are now juniors on this team: the Drames; Edert; Daryl Banks III, who scored 27 points against Kentucky; and Matthew Lee, the team’s starting point guard. (The sixth, Aaron Estrada, transferred to Oregon.) They joined KC Ndefo, a defensive dynamo who managed to lead college basketball in blocks per game last season despite standing just 6-foot-7. Ndefo could have transferred to major schools after his spectacular year, [but stayed](https://nypost.com/2022/03/22/saint-peters-kc-ndefos-decision-to-return-sparks-march-madness-run/). Between Ndefo, the five juniors, and Jersey City native Isiah Dasher, the top seven players in their rotation are all upperclassmen.
You’re probably not pulling off an upset with a hastily assembled bunch. This Saint Peter’s team is built on a group of players who have spent years playing and growing alongside one another, becoming a cohesive unit that understands what they’re trying to do and what they’re capable of. That’s how you have a defense that can get the same results against Kentucky as it does Quinnipiac. Nothing on the court is new to them, so they seem only a little bit surprised by the history they’re making.
Great mid-majors are being built the same way they always have been. When you combine that with the trend of slightly weaker top-level teams, you can understand how upsets become a theme. The elite teams of college basketball are concerned with a million constantly changing aspects in the college sports universe; at Saint Peter’s the only thing that matters is Shaheen Holloway.
---
Obviously, this new reality isn’t a situation that major conference teams enjoy. They have relatively little to gain from beating 15- and 16-seeds, but can go down in history for losing these games. (I suspect that the average sports fan remembers famous March Madness upsets, like Florida Gulf Coast and Lehigh, more than who actually won those tournaments.) So they’ve done what they can to try to get smaller schools out of the tournament. This starts with the NCAA’s selection committee, [which by rule features one member from each of the Power Five conferences](https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2021-04-15/five-new-members-appointed-ncaa-di-mens-basketball-committee) and just four from the 20 least successful conferences in college basketball. Over the years, the committee has selected fewer and fewer teams from smaller leagues, [a trend I wrote about in 2018](https://www.theringer.com/march-madness/2018/3/30/17177416/loyola-chicago-march-madness-selection-committee-mid-majors). It used to be common for the committee to give at-large bids to teams like George Mason or VCU, which made the Final Four in 2006 and 2011, respectively. In 2012, the Power Five leagues and the Big East got 32 of 68 bids, leaving 25 slots for champions of other leagues and 11 for teams from those leagues that simply had good seasons. Among those 11? Iona, from the MAAC, the league that Saint Peter’s plays in, who got a spot in addition to the league’s champion, Loyola-Maryland. This year, the Power Five and the Big East leagues got 35 of 68 bids, leaving 26 slots for the other champions and just seven for any other deserving teams. When regular-season champion Iona (which went 25-8 overall) lost in the MAAC tournament, the committee probably never thought about them again.
But the presence of smaller schools in the NCAA tournament brings big league schools more than just the potential for embarrassment: It represents an ongoing hindrance to their ability to run college sports the way they want. In addition to participating in the same postseason events, the haves and have-nots of college sports are governed by the same bureaucracy and rules, even though they have very different interests and needs—[as demonstrated during COVID](https://www.theringer.com/2020/8/3/21349611/season-schedule-power-five-conferences-college-football-playoff). When potential new NCAA rules are voted on, both Kentucky and Saint Peter’s get exactly one vote apiece. And the power conference schools are outnumbered by the smaller schools, both in the NCAA at large and in Division I.
So the largest schools have slowly attempted to insulate themselves from the riffraff. Division I split into Division I-A and I-AA in 1978, separating schools like Kentucky from schools like Eastern Kentucky, allowing the big boys to make some of their own rules with regard to football. But that eventually wasn’t enough for the bigger schools. So in 2014, the Power Five conferences were classified as “autonomy” leagues and given power to make certain rules. They’ve also created the College Football Playoff, which generates hundreds of millions that they don’t have to share with the majority of Division I. But they still feel hindered by the smaller schools, over a variety of issues—as Ross Dellenger explained [in a thorough article about the contentious 2022 NCAA convention](https://www.si.com/college/2022/01/20/ncaa-future-power-5-football-basketball-money).
If they wanted to, they could destroy everything. For some time, it has seemed like the most likely scenario is that the biggest schools in college sports [will break away from the NCAA](https://www.theringer.com/2021/10/8/22714846/texas-oklahoma-red-river-rivalry-ncaa-future). It would benefit them in almost every way: They could make their own rules in their own leagues and stop having to split revenue with the minnows. The small schools provide relatively little to the big ones, especially from a financial perspective—and that seems to be the only perspective that matters.
There is exactly one thing that is keeping this from happening: March Madness. There is a financial incentive—the NCAA [makes $770 million per year from the TV contract for the men’s NCAA tournament](https://www.businessinsider.com/ncaa-tournament-makes-a-lot-of-money-2017-3), most of which is distributed back to the conferences that perform well. In 2021, the Power Five leagues [each made at least $20 million from the NCAA tournament](https://sports.betmgm.com/en/blog/2021-ncaa-tournament-basketball-fund-units-money/#:~:text=With%20each%20game%20played%2C%20a,for%20a%20total%20of%20%242%2C022%2C846).).
But more importantly, there is an emotional perspective. The NCAA tournament is America’s most romanticized sporting event. Lots of postseasons have upsets; only this one has “Cinderellas,” stories that we literally compare to fairy tales. We talk about the tournament like we used to talk about baseball, or apple pie. It’s strange and beautiful that both Saint Peter’s and Kentucky get to compete for the same title. It’s like how the United States and the tiny island nations in the Pacific both send sprinters to the Olympics—but we don’t often see the representative from Nauru outracing America’s best.
It often feels like the NCAA’s largest schools can do essentially whatever they want in their quest to maximize profit—but if they axed the NCAA tournament out of greed? They’d be the ultimate villains. It’s the one money grab in sports that would be considered a step too far.
If teams like Saint Peter’s never won NCAA tournament games, perhaps the greed of the power leagues would seem justified. If the early rounds were simply an opportunity for the biggest schools to romp against overmatched 16-seeds, we would start to wonder what the hell these schools were doing in the tournament anyway.
But luckily, they keep happening. It’s what makes the NCAA tournament America’s most beloved sporting event, holding together the unusual and unhappy marriage between world-famous brands and unknown teams practicing in unheated school gyms. It feels inexplicable, and yet Hassan Drame has no problem explaining it. In the NCAA tournament, it doesn’t matter if the other team has a million dollars or a billion dollars. It’s just five against five.
In 2019, a gunman wounded beloved Red Sox hero David Ortiz at a bar in the Dominican Republic, upsetting the delicate balance between the superstar’s life in Boston and in his native land. The story of love, tragedy, and the shooting of Big Papi.
**On a steamy spring night** in 2019, the Dial Bar and Lounge was the place to be in Santo Domingo. Thumping reggaeton filled the air, spilling onto the palm tree–lined street where valets in tight black polo shirts hustled between sports cars and luxury SUVs. It was Sunday, June 9, and like on any other weekend night, the Dial’s patio—which extends right to the edge of the sidewalk—was filled with powerful politicians, prominent businesspeople, and entertainment industry celebrities. Still, a wave of excitement swept through the place when, at around 7:30 p.m., the VIP of all Santo Domingo VIPs showed up: David Ortiz, the most famous and beloved man in the Dominican Republic.
Wearing crisp white pants, a gold-and-midnight-hued printed shirt, and a thick gold chain, Ortiz strode into the bar and took a seat at a table at the edge of the patio where it gives way to the sidewalk, alongside his friend Jhoel López, a TV host, and the hip-hop artist Secreto El Famoso Biberón. Fans whirred overhead, keeping the humid air moving, as speakers thumped with a pulsing bass line. Waitresses in skintight black jumpsuits ferried buckets of ice and bottles of liquor around the club, while others pushed carts of cigars to beckoning patrons. Once Ortiz sat down, though, all activity in the bar seemed to revolve around the Red Sox champion. And he welcomed it: As friends and fans stopped by his table, he rose, unfolding his massive frame, and flashed his iconic electric smile for photos.
At 9:20 p.m., the party was still going strong when a man wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap made his way down the sidewalk toward Ortiz, who had his back to the street. When the man was just a few feet away, he stopped, lifted a pistol, and fired. As soon as the bullet ripped into Ortiz’s back, the gunman squeezed the trigger again and…click. The gun seemed to jam. The shooter, appearing to panic, took off running as Ortiz slumped over and dropped to the floor.
News of the shooting spread quickly, from Ortiz’s hometown to his adopted city of Boston. In both places, it was met with grief and shock. Why would anyone want to hurt Ortiz? In Boston, he was seen as a teddy bear—joyful, self-deprecating, guileless—and also one of the city’s greatest heroes. He was the man who had helped break the Red Sox curse by vanquishing the New York Yankees in the miracle playoff comeback of 2004. He was also the only Sox player on all three championship teams in 2004, 2007, and 2013, not to mention the face of the Red Sox throughout. He was already a Boston superstar when, less than a week after the marathon bombings, he held a mike on the Fenway field and said, with pain and rage in his voice, “This is our fucking city!”
Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
In the Dominican Republic, Ortiz was arguably even more revered. There is a sense, among many Dominicans, that he represents the “best of us.” Dominicans I’ve spoken to have described Ortiz as a “national glory,” “a model to follow,” and “like a god.” He is a man who grew up in poverty and achieved staggering success on an international stage without ever forgetting where he came from. His philanthropic largesse is widely known and deeply appreciated in the DR. The idea that someone, anyone, would want to harm Ortiz was practically incomprehensible.
The search for an explanation for the shooting began before Ortiz’s wounds had even closed. Social media in the Dominican Republic lit up with rumors, half-truths, and wild speculation. News outlets published a flood of articles, many of them contradicting one another. The Dominican government wasn’t much help, either, as law enforcement officials changed their story about what they believed had happened, destroying their credibility in the process. The result was a tangled mess of information and a tantalizing array of half-baked theories: The shooting had been motivated by jealousy over a woman; the shooting had occurred because Ortiz had crossed the wrong man; or the shooting was an accident, a case of mistaken identity, and Ortiz had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Dominican Republic’s national police director, Ney Aldrin Bautista, discusses the crime during a press conference. Photo by Erika Santelices/AFP via Getty Images
That frenzied quest for answers has yet to bear fruit, but it nevertheless opened a window into Ortiz’s personal life, offering a glimpse of him that had not always been visible to his legions of fans in Boston. Although Ortiz has always been unusually open and accessible to the public, and those traits are part of why Bostonians have grown to love him, there were some parts of his life—especially in the Dominican Republic—that he had long kept out of the spotlight. Consequently, the shooting didn’t merely reveal the two worlds Ortiz inhabited. It prompted the unraveling of his burgeoning attempts to finally bring them together for good.
**Santo Domingo** sits on the Dominican Republic’s southern coast bordering the Caribbean Sea. Rising from the shore is a nucleus of gleaming office towers, hulking government buildings, and massive villas tucked behind high perimeter walls. A couple of miles inland are the *barrios populares*, the slums, where rickety houses and roadside markets crowd winding, narrow, traffic-clogged streets. These are the neighborhoods in which Ortiz grew up.
Most residents of the capital city spend the entirety of their lives on one side of the divide or the other. The sons and daughters of government officials, business executives, and the independently wealthy are born in the city’s affluent center, go to school there, and then raise their own families in the same neighborhoods. In the *barrios populares*, the children of taxi drivers and maids tend to enter similar, poorly paid professions. There is little interchange from one side to the other. There are, however, two well-known paths from the outskirts to the center: amass wealth through the drug trade, or make it as a professional baseball player.
When Ortiz was a boy, his parents sat him and his sister down in their small house in Haina, a poor and polluted city on the outskirts of Santo Domingo where they had recently moved. Ortiz’s father, Leo, pulled out a plastic baggie of white powder. “Someone might ask you to take this,” he told his children. “Don’t do it.”
It was a simple directive that was heavy with significance. Ortiz’s father and his mother, Angela, were in the midst of a two-decade journey to deliver their children from poverty. Ortiz had spent his early years playing ball on the dirt roads of Gualey, an especially poor *barrio* popular perched on a hill above the Ozama River. To this day, a neighbor recalls seeing a young Ortiz ferrying buckets of water from a nearby spigot to his home, which had no running water, so that he could help his mother by cleaning the house. When Ortiz’s family moved to Haina, it was a step up in some ways—paved roads and plumbing—but the place was rife with drug-dealing and violence. Once, as a child, during a grocery run to the corner bodega, Ortiz saw a man stabbed in the street. His parents’ message was clear: The powder in the little baggie could lead to the same fate.
Leo had other plans for his son: baseball. “He was happy that I was interested in sports,” Ortiz wrote in his 2017 memoir, “since that made it less likely I’d be drawn into the chaotic environment of our neighborhood—people caught up in gangs, shootings and murders, people lost to drugs, in a big way.” When Ortiz became enamored of basketball as a teenager, Leo, a former baseball player himself, tried to spark a love of America’s national pastime in his son. He “talked to me about the beauty of baseball,” Ortiz wrote. “He insisted that I was going to be in the big leagues.”
Leo was right. After several years in the minor leagues, followed by a handful of seasons with the Minnesota Twins, Ortiz in 2003 came to Boston, where he was not just a big leaguer—as his father had predicted—but also a superstar. He became known as one of the best clutch hitters of all time as well as one of the greatest postseason sluggers. He was also beloved by fans and teammates. One of the reasons was that he appeared to love everyone else. At Fenway, he called most people “Papi,” his backslapping term of endearment. He said it so often that his teammates turned it around on him. Ortiz himself became Papi: Big Papi.
Ortiz after throwing out a ceremonial first pitch at Fenway several months after the shooting. Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
Ortiz not only fulfilled the Dominican dream of making it to the major leagues, he clinched the American dream, as well: wealth, a family, and a mansion in the suburbs. He met his wife, Tiffany Ortiz (née Brick), in 1996 when he was playing minor league baseball for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers and earning a pittance. He spotted her in a club and asked her to dance. She teased him about his outfit—she said he looked like a construction worker in his long shorts and an orange vest with no shirt underneath—but said yes.
They started dating and she soon took him home to meet her parents, who also lived in Wisconsin. Ortiz and Tiffany’s mother hit it off right away. The couple’s friends sometimes asked if the cultural divide was difficult to bridge, but to David and Tiffany, it never seemed that way, Tiffany said during a podcast interview about Ortiz’s life. They weren’t as different as it might have seemed: They were both jocks—Tiffany played softball and had been voted “most athletic girl” in high school—and she also came from a relatively modest background. When she and Ortiz met, Tiffany had never been on a plane. Their relationship got serious fast. “I think we even mentioned the word ‘marriage’ within the first two weeks of meeting each other,” Ortiz wrote.
The couple’s daughter, Alexandra, was born in 2001. Their son, D’Angelo, followed in 2004. Along the way, they moved from the Midwest to a house in Newton, and then to a larger home in Weston, as Ortiz’s salary and endorsement deals ballooned. Ortiz rose to the highest levels of Boston society, rubbing elbows with Robert Kraft and Tom Brady. He grew close to John Henry and Tom Menino. During the golden age of Boston sports, Ortiz was the city’s greatest—or, at the very least, its most beloved—star. Leo’s dream for Ortiz—to use baseball as a way to ensure that his son steered clear of the more dangerous elements in his home country—had been realized.
**On the evening** of June 9, 2019, Eddy Féliz, a young man from the poor Herrera district, sat idling on a moped just down the street from the Dial. He was waiting to spirit away Ortiz’s shooter, another young man named Rolfi Ferreira Cruz.
After the gunshot rang into the night, Féliz saw Ferreira Cruz sprinting toward him, with a pack of enraged men following close behind. Panicking, Féliz tried to push off as Ferreira Cruz scrambled to board, but they tipped over and stalled. With the mob bearing down, Ferreira Cruz jumped up and fled into the neighborhood’s dark streets. Féliz was not so lucky—the pack pounced on him and started beating him in the street. A man intervened, shouting, “Don’t kill him” and yanking people off the bloodied getaway driver. Investigators would need the driver alive.
Meanwhile, Ortiz lay bleeding on the floor of the Dial. His acquaintance, businessman Eliezer Salvador, who had also been at the Dial, rushed over to Ortiz and pulled him to his feet, supporting the slugger’s weight as they shuffled toward Salvador’s SUV parked on the street. Once he had helped Ortiz into the backseat, he jammed the gears into reverse and hit the car behind him before slamming his vehicle into drive and gunning it up the street.
When they arrived at a high-end hospital in Santo Domingo’s wealthy center, doctors rushed Ortiz into surgery. In the operating room, they discovered that the bullet had torn through his liver and damaged his intestines before exiting his abdomen. The internal damage was massive. Ortiz’s life was in their hands.
News of the shooting had already begun circulating throughout Santo Domingo. A woman named Fary Almánzar was at a restaurant in central Santo Domingo when she got a call. A friend of her mother’s had been out at the Dial and had seen something terrible: Ortiz had been shot. Rushing to the hospital, Almánzar prayed that Ortiz would survive. While few in Boston may have known of her existence, many in the DR did: She was the mother of Ortiz’s second-born son.
Almánzar and Ortiz were, in some ways, an odd couple. He was a boy from the *barrios*. She was a member of the Dominican elite, the daughter of a successful international businessman who had amassed a substantial fortune. She lived in posh central Santo Domingo, and worked out at a high-end gym called the Body Shop, which is where she says she first met Ortiz nearly 26 years ago.
They worked out with the same trainer, a man named Nelson, Almánzar recalls. While Almánzar lifted tiny dumbbells, Ortiz was toting massive weights. Almánzar was short, cute, and had a big personality. Her voice was commanding and could seem out of place emanating from her tiny frame. The two became friendly and eventually Ortiz, 23 at the time, asked her to travel with him to Puerto Rico, where he was playing in the 1999 Caribbean Series. She told him she couldn’t because she didn’t have a visa. Instead, she went as his date to the victory parties after Ortiz and his team returned from Puerto Rico as champions.
Over time, Ortiz’s life developed an annual rhythm. During the MLB season, he was in Boston and on the road for away games. During the American off-season, he played winter league baseball in the Dominican Republic. When he was in Santo Domingo, Almánzar says, they stayed together in a condo he owned in the city center. Their relationship wasn’t exactly a secret in the Dominican Republic, where a famous man’s infidelity was less of a scandal than in America.
During Ortiz’s Red Sox years, Almánzar says, she traveled to meet him in the States during road trips. Going with Ortiz to away games was great, she says, but she avoided seeing him when he was playing at home. She knew her place in his life—she was the second woman—and she regarded Boston as Tiffany’s turf.
In 2007, Almánzar and Ortiz had a child together, a son named David Andrés. When in the United States, Ortiz only rarely spoke of David Andrés’s existence (Ortiz’s 2017 memoir makes no mention of him), but in the Dominican Republic, Ortiz was every bit the boy’s father. He took him to a Dominican baseball stadium where he had played professional ball in the early part of his career, was present for birthday celebrations, and brought him to neighborhood events with Ortiz’s friends. (Ortiz also has an elder daughter, Jessica, from an earlier relationship.)
Ortiz’s spokesman, Joe Baerlein, acknowledged that Ortiz and Almánzar had a child together and said that Ortiz has always provided child support. He also claimed that “there has been and there is no relationship with the mother of this child,” adding, “\[Ortiz\] has been married to someone else for years.” Yet Baerlein’s claim seems at odds with a government lawyer’s account of her interview with Ortiz. In 2020—in the midst of a bitter dispute that would erupt between Ortiz and Almánzar in the wake of the shooting—Ortiz had told her they had been a couple.
There are also two decades’ worth of what can only be described as family photos that Almánzar shared, including shots of them—father, mother, and son—dressed in matching white outfits while posing for a portrait at church, and cuddling in bed together as a family. There is a snapshot of Ortiz and Almánzar in front of the Eiffel Tower replica in Las Vegas; a photo of them ringing in the New Year together in 2019; and pictures printed on fading photo paper of Ortiz and Almánzar, both of them skinnier and younger, dancing, embracing with their arms around each other, and smiling on a sofa.
The photos show a happy man who loves his son. Still, Ortiz was a celebrity in a historically puritanical city in a historically puritanical country, and the idea that he was carrying on a parallel relationship would not have been a boon to his (or Tiffany’s) public image in Boston. That may explain why he kept Almánzar and David Andres in the shadows—at least until the shooting cast a bright light on every closely held detail of his life.
**As word of the shooting spread** over social media and WhatsApp messages, a crowd descended on the hospital where doctors were trying to save Ortiz’s life. Well-wishers gathered in the parking lot and crowded the hallways, while journalists harried security guards who were desperately trying to maintain order. Because this was a crowd that had come to support Ortiz—a man famous in his home country for discriminating against no one and befriending everyone—it contained people from both sides of the two divides that organized Santo Domingo society: rich and poor, law-abiding and not.
It is not at all uncommon for lawful Dominicans to have connections, through marriage, friendship, or happenstance, to figures in the criminal underworld. The boundaries between business and government, on one hand, and the drug trade, on the other, can be porous. So it was not exactly a shock when one of the men who showed up on the hospital grounds that night happened to be the country’s most notorious drug trafficker: César Peralta.
Widely known as “César the Abuser,” Peralta was, in many ways, the kind of man Ortiz’s father had warned him not to become. He grew up poor, worked for a time as a fare collector on buses, and eventually made his riches in the illegal narcotics trade. But after taking different paths to the top of Dominican society, Peralta and Ortiz had become neighbors. For a time, Peralta lived in the penthouse of the luxury tower where Ortiz shared a condo with Almánzar and David Andrés, which the ballplayer visited regularly. The two men moved in overlapping social circles (Ortiz once said in an interview that it was impossible not to cross paths with Peralta because he owned so many of Santo Domingo’s nightclubs), and had some acquaintances in common. Ortiz was photographed hanging out—at a club, backstage at a concert, lounging on a restaurant banquette—with Peralta’s bodyguard, an army sergeant named Natanael Castro Cordero. Peralta, in a video posted to social media after the shooting, described Ortiz as a close friend—a “brother”—adding that when Ortiz traveled to Santo Domingo from the United States, Ortiz brought him gifts, such as cologne and sneakers. A photograph published in Dominican media outlets shows Ortiz standing and smiling for the camera in a luxury condo alongside Peralta and a group of men, two of whom were later accused by Dominican law enforcement of being participants in Peralta’s criminal organization. (A judge closed the case against one of them, saying the prosecution had provided insufficient evidence.)
In a television interview after the shooting, Ortiz described his relationship with Peralta as cordial, but as being at arm’s length. “We were not close friends,” he said. “César idolized me.” Ortiz’s spokesman, Baerlein, says Ortiz was neighborly and nothing more, adding, “He is polite to everyone.”
Ortiz has never particularly shied away from men who flout the law or have connections to the criminal underworld. For instance, in the early 2000s, he employed a man known as Edwin “Monga” Cotto-Garcia as a kind of aide-de-camp who helped handle his business affairs. According to a 2018 book written by Eddie Dominguez, a Boston police detective who also worked as a security agent at Fenway, his informants told him that Monga was placing bets on Red Sox games at an illegal gambling ring run from a Boston barber shop. He eventually turned over Monga’s name to federal authorities and, in 2007, Monga was arrested on charges unrelated to gambling. (Ortiz was not alleged to have been involved in the gambling ring.) According to court records, federal prosecutors charged Monga with making false claims of U.S. citizenship and identity fraud. His real name, they learned, was not Edwin Cotto-Garcia (an identity he had allegedly assumed from a convicted drug dealer), but Felix Leopoldo Márquez Galice. According to a *Boston Globe* report, he was convicted in federal court on nine counts related to making false claims of U.S. citizenship and sentenced to six months in prison.
Márquez Galice had once claimed to a reporter for MLB.com that Ortiz was his “best friend” and that they’d met in the Dominican Republic when they were teenagers. Reynaldo Brito, a Dominican photographer, told me Ortiz tends to hire personal assistants who come from Santo Domingo’s *barrios populares*—that is, men with backgrounds like Ortiz’s. Some of them are honest, workaday folks (such as one recent assistant from the Herrera neighborhood known as El Liro). But even if an assistant, such as Monga, seems to play around the edges, Ortiz treats him just the same.
In fact, Ortiz had endeared himself to Dominicans by never forgetting Santo Domingo’s poor *barrios populares*. He was the rare superstar athlete—the rare Dominican, actually—who felt comfortable hanging out in any part of Santo Domingo and with any social set. To blow off steam during the off-season, some days he partied at expensive nightclubs with the country’s elite, while other days he’d hang out at seedy holes in the wall that many wealthy Dominicans avoided and feared.
One joint Ortiz frequented was El Punto del Mameluco, a nightspot in another working-class Santo Domingo *barrio* called Villa Juana. It was owned by Roberto Cáceres, whom Ortiz is said to be friends with, and who Dominican law enforcement authorities have alleged was the liquor distributor for Peralta’s nightclubs and helped manage Peralta’s money. (In 2019, Dominican police arrested Cáceres on suspicion of laundering money for Peralta’s criminal organization. The case was closed in 2021 and Cáceres was neither charged nor tried. Cáceres denied any wrongdoing, telling the Dominican press, “I don’t even sell a Coca-Cola without a receipt.”)
El Punto del Mameluco was essentially a liquor store, but Cáceres allowed customers to open drinks on the premises. On most weekend nights, the revelry spilled onto the street, where car stereos blared and partiers clogged up traffic. A local blog described the regular clientele as including “mechanics, electricians, barbers, warehouse workers.” In other words, it was a party for folks who couldn’t afford nightclub drinks that cost as much as a day’s wage. But it could also attract a rough crowd. In 2009, two men were shot dead there.
This was the kind of scene that other Dominican baseball stars took pains to avoid. “Vladimir \[Guerrero\] doesn’t like to leave his area, his circles,” says Ortiz’s friend Aquiles Correa, a well-known standup comedian and actor. “Sammy \[Sosa\] travels a lot. Pedro \[Martínez\] likes to stay at his estate.” David Ortiz, however, “is a kid from the *barrio*—and he likes that.”
A kid from the *barrio* who made good, and wasn’t afraid to flaunt it. One weekend during the 2014 off-season, he rolled into Villa Juana in a white Lamborghini convertible and stepped out wearing camo pants, a black sleeveless shirt, and what looked to be a couple of pounds of gold chains. A crowd formed around him and fans approached. Ortiz, friend to all, put a massive arm around one man’s shoulders and smiled for the camera.
In a way, Ortiz’s greatest strengths, the traits that had endeared him to so many—his openness, his ingenuousness, his authentic joie de vivre—may also have gotten him into trouble. “You’ll never see Pedro Martínez in a photo with a drug trafficker,” says Jessica Hasbun, a Dominican journalist. In many ways, Ortiz seemed oblivious to the fact that he might have to make some tradeoffs to protect himself. It’s not just a matter of maintaining appearances, Hasbun says. It’s about safety, self-protection, and risk. She recalls a night she saw Ortiz out at a high-end restaurant with men she described as *tigres*, Dominican slang for hustlers or toughs. “When you’re hanging out with these people, you’re going to be caught somewhere, somehow in the middle of this shit.”
**The bullet** from the hitman’s gun did far more than tear through Ortiz’s body. It also disrupted Ortiz’s efforts—over the days that preceded the shooting—to fuse his two worlds together.
On Friday, June 7, Ortiz had introduced his two sons, D’Angelo, then 14, and 11-year-old David Andrés, for the very first time. Over the 48 hours before Ortiz headed to the Dial, the father and sons spent a “magical” weekend, Tiffany has said, at each other’s sides. They started, on Friday night, by going to the movies in Santo Domingo. The next day, Ortiz and his boys headed to the ballplayer’s country home outside the city. Grandpa Leo joined them on the trip—three generations of Ortiz men spending a Saturday in the country together. On Sunday, Ortiz and his sons ate lunch at a Santo Domingo mall, followed by a raucous round of go-karting. The boys bonded. Ortiz beamed.
It was a glimpse at what could have been. But shortly after parting ways with his boys, Ortiz was on an operating table fighting for his life, while just down the hall even more trouble was brewing.
It was a chaotic scene at the hospital as grief-stricken friends and loved ones, some of whom had come straight from the Dial after a few drinks, anxiously awaited updates. His Dominican spokesman; his friend Jhoel López’s wife; Leo; and Almánzar were all there—as was María Yeribell Martínez, a Dominican model and social media personality whose alleged appearances with Ortiz would later start to fuel online rumors of romance. As the night grew late, and nerves frayed, Almánzar and Martínez exchanged words. Then, before anyone realized what was happening, they began fighting. They grabbed at each other and fell to the ground. It took several men to pull them apart.
What took place at the hospital that night set in motion a series of events that have shaped Ortiz’s life ever since. After years of managing what information was shared with whom—and how—details of the baseball star’s personal life were now spilling into public view. Tabloids published a video of the fight.
Photos of Ortiz with members of Peralta’s circle also began circulating, prompting some observers to wonder whether proximity to these men might have had something to do with the shooting. (There is no evidence suggesting any association between Ortiz and Peralta or Peralta’s circle, besides social ties.)
Ortiz, of course, was in no position to control the flood of information, true or false. The day after the shooting, hospital orderlies wheeled him outside and loaded him into an ambulance that sped eastward across Santo Domingo to Las Américas International Airport, where a private plane, chartered by the Boston Red Sox and staffed with medical personnel, was waiting on the tarmac. By day’s end, Ortiz was in the hands of doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, with Tiffany waiting to be by his side.
Almánzar, meanwhile, hunkered down in her condo, worrying about Ortiz and wondering what to do next. She remained in touch with Ortiz, and they agreed that she and David Andrés should leave the country for their safety. On Saturday, June 15, Almánzar, her mother, and David Andrés landed at Miami International Airport, then drove to a luxury downtown condo bequeathed to Almánzar by her father, who had died the year before.
It was still unclear to Almánzar, and to much of the world, whether Ortiz would survive. He underwent an additional surgery at MGH and then another. Fearing the worst, Almánzar wanted to send David Andrés north to be by his father’s side. Not long ago, the idea of David Andrés traveling to Boston would have been impossible. But after the “magical” weekend in the DR, perhaps things had changed, she reasoned. From her home in Miami, Almánzar tried to arrange a visit to Boston for David Andrés (she did not plan to go herself). She says she contacted Tiffany. She spoke with a lawyer representing the family. Eventually, Ortiz—who was suffering through seemingly endless medical interventions—called David Andrés directly. According to Almánzar, who listened as they talked on speaker phone, Ortiz told his son not to worry and that he was doing much better than everyone was saying. But he also said that it would not be a good idea for David Andrés to travel to Boston. There was “too much media” around, Almánzar recalls Ortiz saying before assuring his son that they would see each other as soon as he was out of the hospital.
Almánzar interpreted Ortiz’s response as a rejection. That was when she began worrying that David Andrés’s status as Ortiz’s legal son might be less than ironclad. She went to Miami family court and asked how to have Ortiz’s paternity of David Andrés officially recognized in the United States. Dominican documents alone were not enough, she says the court told her, so the effort failed.
Seven weeks after the shooting, on July 26, Ortiz was discharged from Mass General and returned to Weston. Once home, he asked David Andrés to visit, but Almánzar says the conditions she insisted on for the meeting were unworkable to Ortiz. She demanded, for instance, that David Andrés have no interaction whatsoever with Tiffany. David Andrés didn’t make the trip.
Meanwhile, Almánzar took their dispute to the courts. On July 29, she petitioned the Miami family court seeking to have Ortiz’s paternity of David Andrés officially recognized in the United States. Baerlein says it was inappropriate for Almánzar to sue Ortiz in American—rather than Dominican—court and that she was only trying to embarrass him. In any event, Ortiz’s response was not what Almánzar had expected. On August 30, according to Miami court filings and Dominican government records, his lawyers mistakenly filed documents with the Dominican government denying that David Andrés was his son.
**Several days** after Ortiz contested paternity of David Andrés, he withdrew his denial and instead sued for joint custody. A succession of legal actions between Ortiz and Almánzar followed. In Dominican court, they litigated the terms of Ortiz’s child support. They took out restraining orders against each other. Ortiz ordered Almánzar to vacate the Dominican condo he owns where Almánzar and David Andrés live. (Almánzar has not moved out.) And in May 2020, Almánzar formally accused Ortiz of psychological abuse and threats. (In 2020, a Dominican government prosecutor decided that the facts Almánzar alleged did not amount to crimes and closed the case of her complaint. In January, a judge ordered the government to reopen the matter, but a top prosecutor said she would not bring charges, citing insufficient evidence.) Baerlein did not respond substantively to my detailed written questions about Ortiz’s court filings—nor, for that matter, to many of my other questions. Instead, a lawyer representing Ortiz sent several letters raising the specter of suing me and the magazine. But in an earlier phone interview, Baerlein said he believes that Almánzar “feels, honestly, aggrieved that…David is not with her.” He added, “I’ve got a lot of friends who have gone through really shitty divorces that truthfully have worse facts than this.”
The legal dispute did indeed resemble a messy, public divorce. Ortiz’s lawyer told the Dominican press that “Mrs. Almánzar and her lawyers have been filing lawsuits and complaints without legal basis or evidence with the sole objective of damaging David Ortiz’s image as a mechanism to obtain an economic benefit from him.” Almánzar’s attorney responded that she had made “substantial investments” in multiple properties owned by Ortiz, including a beach house and a Santo Domingo condo, and that she is seeking protection from the courts so that her investments are not absorbed into Ortiz’s assets.
As the turmoil in Ortiz’s personal life escalated, the Dominican police and government mounted a shambolic response to the shooting. On June 12, police arrested Ferreira Cruz, the shooter. Through the bars of his jail cell, Ferreira Cruz later told reporters that Ortiz had not been the intended target. At first, the spokesman for the prosecutor’s office derided the claim—it seemed like an obvious attempt to save his own skin. But about a week later, in a chaotic press conference, the attorney general of the Dominican Republic, Jean Alain Rodríguez, said that, in fact, Ferreira Cruz was right. Ortiz, one of the most famous men in the country, had been mistaken for a friend of his, Sixto David Fernández, who was smaller and had lighter skin than Ortiz. Fernández had been targeted, the head of the national police said, because an alleged drug trafficker believed Fernández had informed on him to the police eight years earlier.
Many Dominican journalists and law enforcement experts considered the explanation preposterous. Daniel Pou, a crime specialist and security expert who advises the Dominican government but was not involved in this case, says he believes that the authorities “revealed themselves to be in a rush to shift the public’s attention away from the idea that David Ortiz was the target of the attack” and engaged in “a media campaign to distance Ortiz from…any possible link to organized crime figures.” In the weeks that followed, the Dominican police rounded up more than a dozen suspects whom they accused of involvement in the hit.
As the official government story came under withering scrutiny, other theories of the case emerged. One was the so-called love-triangle explanation. According to this version of events, María Yeribell Martínez had been the girlfriend of Peralta, who had taken out a hit on Ortiz out of jealousy. This theory has never been proven, yet also has refused to die. Proponents point to the cost of the attack—a promised $30,000, according to the Dominican police—and its brazenness. Who would dare to pull off such a thing but the country’s most notorious capo?
As I, too, tried to get to the bottom of what caused the shooting, I found that the closer I got to people with genuine knowledge of the Santo Domingo underworld, the more skepticism I heard about the love-triangle theory and any possibility of Peralta’s involvement. One man I spoke with who knows many of the men in Peralta’s circle, as well as some of the men accused of involvement in the shooting, said that the theory was bunk. No part of it added up, he said, and hardly anyone in his neighborhood—Herrera, a hot bed of Dominican drug trafficking—believed it. (The man insisted on anonymity to talk about underworld figures.) Among other issues, he said that Ortiz and Martínez had been seen out together for years before the shooting. Why would someone try to kill Ortiz over her all this time later? (Almánzar says that by the time of the shooting, her relationship with Ortiz was strained, in part, because “the thing with María Yeribell had become very obvious. She was the number three.” Baerlein, Ortiz’s spokesman, says the two were family friends and nothing more.)
Even if it was off the mark, the theorizing may have been enough to set some larger forces in motion. According to U.S. news outlets, American authorities participated in the investigation of Ortiz’s shooting and had also looked into Peralta. The Americans had long been interested in the capo. In 2018, Puerto Rico’s federal grand jury had indicted him for drug trafficking and sought his extradition, to no avail. Now, with Peralta in the news, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control submitted a new request and, in August 2019, just more than two months after the shooting, Dominican authorities raided Peralta’s properties and arrested many of his alleged associates, including Cáceres and later Castro. (Peralta himself escaped to Colombia, but he was later captured and is now awaiting trial in an American prison.) Did the shooting somehow revive the Americans’ interest in Peralta? Many people I asked think so. “The David Ortiz case accelerated the dismantling of Peralta’s organization,” says Fabian Melo, the former lead narcotics prosecutor in Santo Domingo. Or, as my source in Herrera put it: “David’s shooting opened Pandora’s box.”
**In one** of his first broadcasts as a pundit on Fox Sports after the shooting, Ortiz appeared as if nothing had changed. His hair—high and tight—looked freshly cut. His beard was perfectly trimmed. Wearing a medium blue suit, a pink paisley tie, and a gold watch, Ortiz was back in business. He was also, as always, palling around and pulling pranks. At one point, when fellow baseball great and pundit Frank Thomas stepped away from the set for a moment, Ortiz grabbed Thomas’s water bottle and filled it with vodka. After the production crew played a slow-mo video of Thomas taking a sip and grimacing, Ortiz chuckled and beamed. “Get the party started early!” he said, as Thomas playfully poked him in the arm.
This was the retirement Ortiz was meant to have: basking in the goodwill he’d accrued during his career and yukking it up with other stars (retired Yankee All-Star Alex Rodriguez sat to his right while he teased Thomas on his left). It just wasn’t quite the one he was getting.
In the Dominican Republic, Ortiz’s conflict with Almánzar had dragged into the summer of 2020 and had driven a wedge between Ortiz and David Andrés. They still had not been able to reconcile. The low point came in June 2020, when Almánzar’s mother confronted Ortiz at his beach house while David Andrés recorded video on his phone. The circumstances of the encounter are disputed. Almánzar, who says she has a claim to the house as a part owner due to significant investments she’s made, asserts that Ortiz had come to evict David Andrés and his grandmother, who were both staying there. Ortiz told a Dominican journalist he had gone to oversee renovations and to visit his son without Almánzar or her mother being present.
The next day, Ortiz appeared on Dominican TV to give an interview about the encounter. The interviewer brought up Ortiz’s denial of paternity of David Andrés (and the withdrawal of the denial a short time later) and asked, “Do you have a good relationship with the boy?”
“I’m going to explain something,” Ortiz said. Then he paused and started breaking down. “I have four children ,” he said, as his voice cracked. “And if there is one of my children who looks like me, like a photocopy of me, it’s David. That boy is a lovely boy, he’s a sweet boy, he’s an extremely intelligent boy.… It pains me—” He stopped. And when he started speaking again, his words were drowned out by his sobs.
In the days that followed, Tiffany took to social media to defend her husband. “There is NOTHING this man wouldn’t do for his children,” she wrote on an Instagram post, and added a hashtag that read “#iwouldnevertrytodividesuchabond.” She also took a direct shot at Almánzar. In a comment on Instagram, she seemed to raise the possibility that Almánzar was somehow involved in the shooting. “David decided to go against the demands of the one known as the gold digger to introduce \[D’Angelo and David Andrés\],” Tiffany wrote, referring to the weekend the boys had spent together. “They were inseparable from that Friday to Sunday afternoon,” she went on, “and the younger ones mother was on fire about it. On Sunday night my husband was shot.” At the end of the comment, she added an emoji curiously stroking its chin. (Almánzar says she had nothing to do with the shooting and denies opposing the boys’ get-together. Tiffany did not respond to requests for comment.)
Tiffany had stood by Ortiz throughout the aftermath of the shooting, helping to nurse him back to health, issuing statements to the public on his behalf, and cheering him on through her active social media accounts. By the end of 2020, though, the marriage reached a breaking point. On December 4, Tiffany filed for divorce. The couple had started down that road before, separating in 2012, but had managed to reconcile roughly a year later. But this time, it seems, the split may be permanent. For more than a year now, their lawyers have exchanged documents as Tiffany tries to assemble a full accounting of Ortiz’s assets, according to court filings. Last October, Tiffany’s lawyers filed a motion asking a judge to grant Tiffany “exclusive occupancy of the former marital home.” According to the filing, she wanted Ortiz to stay away.
**On January 25, 2022,** Ortiz sat at a polished wood table in a high-ceilinged room surrounded by family members and friends in Santo Domingo. He wore white pants and a colorful, crisply pressed button-down shirt. Pedro Martínez stood behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. His father, Leo, stood by his right side. Ortiz placed his cell phone on the table in front of him and watched it intently. When it rang, he answered it on speakerphone. “I’m trying to reach David Ortiz,” a man said.
“This is David Ortiz,” Ortiz replied. “I’m calling you from Cooperstown, New York,” the caller said. “The Baseball Writers of America have elected you to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.”
Ortiz shot out of his chair, punched the air, and looked near tears. “Yes!” he shouted. He wrapped his arms around Martínez and Leo for a hug. Then he turned and hugged his agent, Fernando Cuza. His friends clapped and hooted and waited as Ortiz made the rounds, embracing practically everyone. As the news traveled, people celebrated outside Fenway Park, where fans had gathered in anticipation, and in bars and bodegas across Santo Domingo. Ortiz, though, had planned a more intimate affair. He had told the *Globe* the day before that he planned to gather at home with a select group of family and friends.
It was not, perhaps, the way one might have expected Big Papi to celebrate the news. He would not be making the rounds to the nightclubs and *barrios* to see old friends and make new ones. Instead, he wanted to stay home, to close the doors around himself and be surrounded only by loved ones. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. A bullet can change you.
In the wake of Ortiz’s acceptance into the Hall of Fame, there were some indications that at least one of the wounds Ortiz had suffered in his personal life had begun to heal. In March, he traveled to the Dominican Republic, bearing gifts for his son, Almánzar said. He brought David Andrés shoes, a baseball bat, a glove, and an Apple Watch, among other things. Ortiz also watched his son play baseball in the junior league that David Andrés participates in, she said. It was a sign, perhaps, that the pulling together of Ortiz’s two worlds might have been interrupted by the shooting, but not halted forever.
In his first interview after the shooting, Ortiz sat down with a friend, the television presenter Tony Dandrades. Without wishing to impart any blame, Dandrades asked gently why such a famous and successful man would allow himself to be so available, so exposed. “You walked around without bodyguards,” he said. “How do you explain that?”
Ortiz responded right away. “Many reasons,” he said, “and number one…I don’t have enemies.”
But then he conceded that the shooting had also forced him to reconsider some things. “I had a flaw,” he said. “I was very accessible. I’ve always been a very humble person. Now I understand that there are people who will take advantage of that. I’ve often asked people, people of a certain status, why they’re so”—he made a gesture as if pushing people away. “They keep people at a distance. Now I understand why.”
In 2013, when people still nursed high hopes for the salvific effects of the Internet and cancellation was a fate reserved for poorly rated TV shows, a private citizen with a hundred and seventy Twitter followers was loitering in Heathrow Airport, waiting for a flight to CapeTown, South Africa. “Going to Africa,” she dashed off before boarding. “Hope I don’t get *AIDS*. Just kidding. I’m white!” By the time she landed, eleven hours later, her ill-advised missive had gone disastrously viral. She stumbled off the plane to discover that a multitude of online detractors had weighed in on her character. Now she was a globally known racist.
The woman, Justine Sacco, was one of the first high-profile casualties of public shaming in the digital era, and she suffered all the consequences that have since become routine: job loss, wide-scale condemnation, and a public identity subsumed by a very public sin. Still, in the wake of subsequent disasters, her story is almost quaint. How pleasant it is to recall a simpler, kinder time when an online mobbing was an occurrence so unusual that it merited two articles in the *Times.*
Our social fabric has since frayed considerably. What’s curious about the brutality that fuels Internet shaming frenzies is that in real life—that is, IRL, in the usual online parlance—most of us would hesitate to consign a normal nobody to nationwide notoriety and several years of unemployment. We might even have mustered the charity to read Sacco’s quip as a satirical, if clumsy, sendup of the white privilege and parochialism that give rise to public-health inequalities. (Sacco, as people in her inner circle would have known, was no stranger to either Africa or progressive causes.) Yet the nasty comments went on accumulating, as if of their own accord. “We are about to watch this @JustineSacco bitch get fired. In *REAL* time. Before she even *KNOWS* she’s getting fired.” “All I want for Christmas is to see @JustineSacco’s face when her plane lands and she checks her inbox/voicemail.” “Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #*AIDS* can affect anyone!”
It’s an open question whether there is anything redeeming about our transformation into bloodhounds as soon as we log on, and two new investigations into the nature of shame offer contrasting answers. In “[How to Do Things with Emotions: The Morality of Anger and Shame Across Cultures](https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Things-Emotions-Morality-ebook/dp/B093B5W89R)” (Princeton), Owen Flanagan, a professor of philosophy and neurobiology at Duke University, suggests that our tense political climate is the product of poor emotional regulation. In “[The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation](https://www.amazon.com/Shame-Machine-Who-Profits-Humiliation-ebook/dp/B097QRHT4N)” (Crown), the data-scientist-cum-journalist Cathy O’Neil suggests that shaming is structural: its ubiquity is the fault not of individual vigilantes but, rather, of the many industries that manufacture and exploit mortification for profit.
At the heart of these diverging perspectives is an ambiguity built into the very concept at issue. Shame is an emotion—a person can suffer from its bilious bite, as Sacco did—but it is also a state of affairs. No matter how Sacco felt, her ostracism was an established fact, a thing that happened to her. Is shame fundamentally a feeling or fundamentally a social phenomenon? Should we treat it as a matter of psychology or of politics?
In “[How to Do Things with Emotions](https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Things-Emotions-Morality-ebook/dp/B093B5W89R),” a scholarly plea for a renovated emotional landscape, Flanagan casts his vote for psychology. Troubled by the churlishness of contemporary American politics, he sets out to isolate “emotional habits that are mixed up in our troubles,” by which he means our descent into polarity, chaos, and mutual mistrust. He’s against the more vituperative forms of anger, which he believes are too prevalent, and is in favor of shame, which he regards as all but absent from our ethical repertoire. Shame, in his view, is an unjustly maligned emotion that we might rehabilitate in order to discipline racists and misogynists.
Shame, canonically, is the sinking sentiment that attends deviation from widely endorsed mores, whatever they happen to be. You can be sad or elated for any reason or for no reason, but shame requires a shared social context. The emotion in question arises not because you violated a standard that you set for yourself but because you violated a standard that your milieu (perhaps policed by Twitter) imposes on you. Because shame is a means of enforcing whatever values are operative in a given society, whether it proves salutary hinges on the merits of the moral system in which it is deployed, at least according to Flanagan. He admits that shame has too often been conscripted as a weapon against the oppressed—as when women and queer people have been encouraged to suppress their sexual impulses. Nonetheless, he calls for shame to be enlisted in the service of social justice, as it was when a concerted social-media campaign ejected the Hollywood producer and serial rapist Harvey Weinstein from power.
This proposal is undergirded by an ornate apparatus, the product of a lifetime of meticulous inquiry into the workings of the human heart. In Flanagan’s view, shame is not so very anomalous among the emotions in being constitutively social. “The idea is to get away from thinking that emotions are only or primarily ‘inner things,’ ” he writes. “Instead, it would be better to think of an emotion as an event” or, better yet, as “a sequence of events,” with characteristic causes and consequences. In particular, emotions follow “scripts.” To be angry, according to this model, is not merely to feel a crimson flicker: it is to feel the flicker in response to a culturally specified trigger (an insult, for example) and to respond in a culturally sanctioned fashion (by screaming, for example, or by demanding a duel). In this sense, Flanagan says, emotions are cultural artifacts, and, consulting a body of anthropological research, he makes a valiant effort to demonstrate that other societies “do” emotions differently—and that we might follow suit if we only took the trouble. Perhaps we could become more like the Nepalese Tamang, who “value harmony and self-effacement and strongly discourage anger,” or the Tibetan Buddhists, who “believe that anger, resentment, and their suite are categorically bad.”
“[How to Do Things with Emotions](https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Things-Emotions-Morality-ebook/dp/B093B5W89R)” is a welcome corrective to Anglophone philosophy’s tendency to frame Western presumptions as universal. And it presents an appealingly sensible moral program. Flanagan instructs us to begin by acknowledging the cultural contingency of our emotional outlook and to proceed by modifying our unruly inner lives, eliminating vengeful impulses and instilling a propensity for shame in the face of moral transgression. Yet we may wonder how many people are capable of exercising so much control over their feelings. It is usually rash to conflate our espoused ideals with our actual practice; Seneca’s vaunted Stoicism didn’t prevent him from bellyaching when he was exiled. Few will defend vindictiveness for its own sake—but many of us fall prey to it, out of spite.
And what if we *could* learn to forfeit the pleasures of pettiness and perversity? Political life might plod on unchanged. Private fractiousness, unseemly as it is, may have less to do with Donald Trump’s rise to power, say, than with any number of structural factors, among them the arrangement of the Electoral College and the dissemination of misinformation by right-wing news outlets. Even if emotions involve external actions, not simply interior states, the behavior of scattered individuals may have only a minor effect on the institutions that shape our lives and constrain our conduct.
Besides, if the scripts that define our emotions are social, then personal reform cannot be expected to kick off an about-face. We can adjust our behavior, but we cannot change the nature of emotions until we overhaul the rituals bound up with them. Because, by Flanagan’s own account, shame is parasitic on the norms it polices, “How to Do Things with Emotions” gets the proper order of operations backward: to reinvent shame, we must first reimagine those norms.
Shame, as Flanagan sometimes appears to forget, is an effective weapon only when it is brandished against those who already inhabit a shared ethical universe. If politicians on the other side of the aisle strike Flanagan as shameless, that’s not because of any shame shortage but because they are not bound by the norms he favors. When Representative Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, remarked that “anyone who denies the truth of what happened on January 6th ought to be ashamed of themselves,” the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson countered that she was the one who “should be ashamed.” A mere increase in the total volume of shame in circulation would not result in the social betterment that “How to Do Things with Emotions” envisions; big feelings do not guarantee big changes.
In “[The Shame Machine](https://www.amazon.com/Shame-Machine-Who-Profits-Humiliation-ebook/dp/B097QRHT4N),” O’Neil takes a more promising tack, proposing that shame is inextricable from its institutional buttresses. Her previous books, notably the award-winning “[Weapons of Math Destruction](https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-Inequality/dp/0553418815),” have focussed on unmasking the data science so often abused by companies like Facebook. “The Shame Machine” moves her into uncharted territory: although it contains its fair share of pseudoscience-debunking, including an admirably lucid explanation of how diet programs massage statistics to artificially bolster their success rates, it is largely a work of social criticism. It presents a tripartite investigation into what O’Neil terms the “shame industrial complex.” This comprises a weight-loss industry that capitalizes on eating disorders, a pharmaceutical industry that capitalizes on widespread addiction, and a cosmetics industry that capitalizes on women’s discomfort with their sexual selves.
Perhaps the most powerful shame machines of all are social-media companies, to which O’Neil devotes the middle (and best) section of the book. If the quintessentially shameful scenario is one in which we are “seen, inappropriately, by the wrong people in the wrong condition,” as the philosopher Bernard Williams argues, then the Internet is the perfect theatre: online, almost everyone has an audience almost all the time, and social-media companies have every incentive to push Sacco and other bunglers into the spotlight. Stale debates about the interpersonal ethics of “cancel culture,” O’Neil notes, have long overlooked the extent to which “digital titans, led by Facebook and Google, not only profit from shame events but are engineered to exploit and diffuse them.”
Since Sacco’s highly publicized wipeout, many have suffered a similar fate, in large part because of social-media fracases. In 2014, a British astrophysicist named Matt Taylor delivered a press briefing about the Rosetta mission while clad in a shirt depicting cartoon women in suggestive attire, a garment that turned out to be a birthday present from a female friend who had designed it. While Taylor was discussing his hand in devising the first spacecraft to land on a comet, many viewers fixated not on his accomplishment but on the sexism that his shirt supposedly evinced. Soon, #shirtgate and #shirtstorm were trending on Twitter. More recently, aggrieved TikTok users heaped abuse on a man dubbed West Elm Caleb, a furniture designer in the unfortunate habit of wooing and then ignoring women on dating apps. Commenters began by chastising him for his disrespectful behavior, but before long they were calling on his employer to fire him. Though very few people, if you buttonholed them, would advocate the sort of trial by TikTok that West Elm Caleb endured, social-media companies work to push paroxysms to the top of our feeds in defiance of our feeble scruples.
(CNN Business)When a mother in Washington state learned her teenage daughter was on Discord, a popular social media platform, she felt reasonably comfortable with the idea of her using it to communicate with members of her high school marching band.
But in September, the mother discovered the 16-year-old was also using the audio and chat service to message with someone who appeared from his profile picture to be an older man. The stranger, who said he lived in England, entered a group chat that included her daughter and members of the band, according to the mother. They struck up a friendship in a private thread. He asked for nude pictures; her daughter obliged.
"I went through every chat they ever had but the most disturbing thing, beyond the nudes, was that he asked her to send a picture of our house," said the mother, who, like other parents of young Discord users, asked to remain anonymous, citing concerns about their family's privacy. "My daughter went on Zillow, found our home and sent it, so he knew where she lives. He then asked what American school buses looked like, so she took a photo of her bus and sent it." He then requested pictures of her friends, and she sent those, too.
The mother worried the Discord user was manipulating, tracking and planning to exploit her daughter. After shutting down her daughter's Discord account, an effort she said took six weeks for the company to complete, she installed outdoor security cameras around the home. The mother never reported the incident to Discord, and the conversations are no longer available to flag because the account was deleted. "There's lots of things we should have done in hindsight," she said.
In recent months, large social media companies have faced renewed scrutiny from lawmakers over the negative impacts their platforms can have on teens. Executives from Facebook ([FB](https://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=FB&source=story_quote_link)), Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat's parent company were called to testify before the Senate after leaks from a Facebook whistleblower pointed to Instagram's potential to harm one's mental health and body image, especially among teenage girls.
Lawmakers are now weighing legislation to protect kids online -- a bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate last month which proposes new and explicit responsibilities for tech platforms to protect children from digital harms. President Joe Biden also used part of his State of the Union address to [urge lawmakers](https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1498856342358003716) to "hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they're conducting on our children for profit."
Discord, however, has not been part of that conversation. Launched in 2015, Discord is less well-known among parents than big names like Instagram, even as it surged to 150 million monthly active users globally during the pandemic. The service, which is known for its video game communities, is also less intuitive for some parents, blending the feel of early AOL chat rooms or work chat app Slack with the chaotic, personalized world of MySpace. While much of the focus from lawmakers with other platforms has been on scrutinizing more sophisticated technologies like algorithms, which can surface potentially harmful content to younger users, parents' concerns about Discord recall an earlier era of the internet: anonymous chat rooms.
Discord's users, about 79% of which are located outside of North America, engage in public and private chats or channels, called servers, on varying topics, including music interests, Harry Potter and Minecraft, and homework help. Some, like a room for memes, can have hundreds of thousands of members. But the vast majority are private, invite-only spaces with fewer than 10 people, according to Discord. All servers are private by default, and only channels with more than 200 members are discoverable in its search tool if the administrator wants it to be public, the company added.
Still, it's possible for minors to connect with people they don't know on public servers or in private chats if the stranger was invited by someone else in the room or if the channel link is dropped into a public group that the user accessed. By default, all users -- including users ages 13 to 17 -- can receive friend invitations from anyone in the same server, which then opens up the ability for them to send private messages.
CNN Business spoke to nearly a dozen parents who shared stories about their teenagers being exposed to self-harm chats, sexually explicit content and sexual predators on the platform, including users they believed were older men seeking inappropriate pictures and videos.
One mother from Charlotte, North Carolina said her 13-year-old daughter's mental health was impacted after a Discord chat room involving her interests took a turn. "The group eventually started talking about cutting themselves, shared tips on how to hide it from parents, and suggested advice on how to run away from home," the mother told CNN. "I later found out she was actively engaging in self-harm and had planned to run away to Alabama to visit a friend she made on Discord."
A father outside Boston, who initially didn't think much of his 13-year-old daughter downloading Discord last summer "because she's a gamer," later discovered she had been talking with a man in his 30s who was looking for photos of her and wanted to engage in "naughty cam" activities, in messages reviewed by CNN Business.
The father said he also later learned some of his daughter's classmates actively use Discord throughout the day unbeknownst to the school.
"The school actively blocks apps such as Snapchat and Instagram when they log onto the school network on school devices, but teens are using other platforms like Discord that aren't on their radar," the father said. "It is the wild west of social media."
CNN Business reported several of these cases to Discord -- with the parents' permission -- ahead of this article's publication. After launching a series of investigations, the company said it took action against some accounts but said it does not publicly comment on specific cases or user accounts.
Many of the parents CNN Business spoke with said they did not enable any of the offered parental controls at the time, mostly because they were in the dark about how the platform works. If enabled, those parental control tools, including one that prohibits a minor from receiving a friend request or a direct message from someone they don't know, likely could have prevented many of these incidents. Some parents also expressed frustration with how Discord responded to their incidents once they were reported and struggled with the fact that audio chats on Discord don't leave a written record and can prove to be more difficult to moderate.
Data on the frequency of such incidents is hard to come by. One recent report from Bark, a paid monitoring service that screens more than 30 apps and platforms, including emails and personal messages, for terms and phrases that could indicate concerns for the nearly 6 million children it protects, said Discord ranked among the top five apps or platforms for content flagged by its algorithms for severe violence, bullying, sexual content and suicidal ideation.
In its most recent [transparency report](https://discord.com/blog/discord-transparency-report-h1-2021), Discord said it removed more than 470,000 non-spam accounts between January and June 2021, a significant rise from 266,075 account deletions during the second half of 2020. "Exploitative content made a particularly large contribution to this overall rise," said the report, which [describes it as an umbrella category](https://discord.com/blog/discord-transparency-report-h1-2021) which encompasses sexually explicit material. The category went from around 130,000 removals in the second half of 2020 to 238,000 in the first half of 2021, and the removal of exploitative content servers -- which Discord defines as non-consensual pornography and sexual content related to minors -- nearly doubled to more than 11,000.
However, Discord told CNN Business that child sexual abuse material and grooming — a term that refers to an adult forging an emotional connection with a minor so they can manipulate, abuse or exploit them — makes up a small percentage of activity on the service.
In response to questions about the incidents parents shared with CNN Business, John Redgrave, the company's VP of trust and safety, said "this behavior is appalling, unacceptable, and has no place on Discord."
"It's our highest priority for our communities to have a safe experience on the service, which is why we continuously invest in new tools to protect teens and remove harmful content from the service, and have built a team dedicated to this work," Redgrave said in a statement. "We also invest in education, so that parents know how our service works and understand the account controls that can contribute to a positive, safe experience for their teens."
Redgrave added: "We built Discord to foster a sense of belonging and community, and it's deeply concerning to our whole company when it is misused. We must and will do better."
But some experts argue the concerns that parents raised with Discord are innate to its design model.
"With Discord, you subscribe to channels and engage in private chat, which is a veil of privacy and secrecy in the way it is constructed," said Danielle Citron, a law professor at University of Virginia who focuses on digital privacy issues. While some larger social networks have faced scrutiny around harassment and other issues, much of that activity is "public facing," she said. "Discord is newer to the party and so much of it is happening behind closed doors."
### A gaming tool goes mainstream
Discord started with [aspirations](https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/22/discord-exploring-sale-that-could-be-worth-more-than-10-billion/#:~:text=Eros%20Resmini%2C%20Stanislav%20Vishnevskiy%2C%20and,out%2C%20the%20communications%20service%20did.) to become a game developer studio called Hammer & Chisel but shifted to focus on its communication tool after a multiplayer game it created never caught on. Its use of voice-over-video and screen sharing was a draw for gamers, allowing them to interact with friends or others while playing video games. In June 2020, the company announced a rebranding effort to grow beyond gaming; now about 80% of active Discord users report they either use the service mainly for non-gaming purposes, or use it equally for gaming and other purposes, according to the company.
The company, which employs 600 people globally, said it makes its money through a subscription service called [Nitro](https://discord.com/nitro), which provides an enhanced Discord experience, such as customizing profiles with unique tags, accessing animated emojis, uploading large files and "boosting" users' favorite servers. In September 2021, Discord announced it [raised $500 million in a funding round](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/22/discord-doubles-valuation-to-15-billion-in-new-funding-round.html), placing its valuation at around $15 billion. Earlier in the year, the Wall Street Journal [reported](https://www.wsj.com/articles/discord-ends-deal-talks-with-microsoft-11618938806) it walked away from a deal to be acquired by Microsoft for at least $10 billion. The company is widely expected to be moving toward a potential initial public offering.
Like other social platforms, Discord said it saw a jump in usage as people were stuck at home during the pandemic, going from 56 million monthly active users in 2019 to 150 million in September 2021. Like other platforms, it has also had to confront extreme content, including from [far right and conspiracy groups](https://blog.discord.com/discord-transparency-report-july-dec-2020-34087f9f45fb?gi=fe93553061d). And while users must be 13 years of age or older to join, problems exist with age verification, just as on other platforms.
Similar to Reddit, there are [moderators for channels](https://discord.com/safety/360044103531-Role-of-administrators-and-moderators-on-Discord) who are responsible for enforcing the company's community guidelines and their own chat room rules. They are directly able to investigate a situation and then warn, quarantine, or ban users from channels. Discord also has an in-house Trust & Safety team of full-time employees who investigate and respond to user reports. According to Discord, they can rely on a mix of proactive and reactive ways to keep the platform safe, including automated search tools that scan photos and videos for exploitative content.
The company said it's made an increased effort around boosting its safety protocols across its platform in the last year, working to scale reactive operations and improve methods to proactively detect and remove abuse. It continues to roll out more account controls through its Safety Center, which includes the ability to block offensive users, restrict explicit content, control who messages you and set up server rules and permissions within communities. It has also partnered with ConnectSafely, a nonprofit dedicated to internet safety, to create [a parent's guide to Discord](https://www.connectsafely.org/discord/) of recommended safety settings for teens, and is hosting "listening sessions" with National Parent Teacher Association chapters to increase awareness and usage of Discord's safety features and practices.
Discord said parents can request that their child's account be deleted by sending an email associated with the account to confirm they are the child's guardian. This process may require some back and forth with the Trust & Safety team to help the parent through the process, according to the company.
Discord also said it plans to turn off the default option for minors to receive friend invitations or private messages from anyone in the same server as part of a future safety update.
The company recently [updated](https://discord.com/blog/important-policy-updates) its terms of service and privacy policy to take into account the off-platform behaviors committed by its users to assess violations of its community guidelines, including for sexualizing children. (Other large platforms, including Twitter and Twitch, began taking into account a user's activity [off their platforms](https://mashable.com/article/twitter-purge-neo-nazi-reckoning-new-rules-hate-speech) several years ago, such as being affiliated with a violent organization, as part of their efforts to crack down on abusive behavior.)
But problems persist. Many of the parents CNN spoke with said they believe Discord is not doing enough to protect its young users.
### 'There was no help at all'
One mother from Los Angeles who submitted a report to Discord said the company was unable to help her after a man struck up a conversation with her 10-year-old daughter who started sending her links to BDSM pornography. (Discord requires users to be at least 13 years old to create accounts, but as with other social platforms, some kids younger than that still sign up.) The mother received an automated email from its Trust and Security team.
"We're sorry to hear that you came across this type of content, and we understand that this can be extremely concerning," said the Discord response, reviewed by CNN Business. "Unfortunately, we're unable to locate the content with the information you've provided. We understand this may be uncomfortable but, if possible, please send us the message links to the reported content for the team to review and take appropriate action."
After the mother sent Discord the requested links more than a year ago, the company never responded. Although the company told CNN Business it does not comment on specific reported cases, it said it reviews all reports of inappropriate content with a minor, investigates the behavior and takes appropriate action.
Amanda Schneider, who lives outside Phoenix, said she was also disappointed with how the platform handled her concerns when she said a man in his late 20s pursued an inappropriate relationship with her 13-year-old son, asking the teenager to masturbate and tell him about it afterward.
"Discord told me I couldn't do anything unless I had specific links to the text thread that showed my son verifying his age — such as typing 'I am 13,' which was shared through a voice \[chat\] — and the other person verifying his age before an incident happened," said Schneider.
"It was just awful; there was no help at all," she said. After she reported the incident to law enforcement, she learned he was a registered sex offender and had been arrested, according to Schneider.
The company told CNN Business the reason it requires links to the chat and cannot use screenshots or attachments to verify content is to prevent users from potentially falsifying information to get others in trouble. It added that parents have the ability to use its report form to flag specific users to the Trust & Safety team.
According to Citron, the law professor at the University of Virginia, voice-to-voice chats on Discord make reporting even harder for parents. "Unlike text conversations, predators thrive in the voice space because there isn't a record," she said. "When a parent goes to report that a kid has been engaging with someone \[inappropriately\] or that they're being groomed by a sexual predator, there's often no proof \[because audio isn't saved\]."
Discord said its rules and standards around audio are the same as its text and image policies. But it told CNN Business that like other platforms, audio presents a different set of challenges for moderation than text-based communication. Discord said it does not store or record voice chats, but its team investigates reports of misuse and looks at information from text-based channels as part of that process.
### What parents can do
Some parents like Stephane Cotichini, a professional video game developer, believe Discord can be a positive platform for young users if the right parental controls are in place. His teenage sons who use the site for gaming have a handful of Discord's features enabled, such as restricting direct messages to only friends.
"I know Discord can be problematic, but it's important for me as a parent to not simply prohibit these things because of the dangers but teach my kids about how to navigate them and balance limiting it," he said. "To my knowledge, I've never had an issue with any of my boys."
Cotichini, who uses Discord to chat with his own team at work, said the platform is a valuable place for other gamers to drop into his servers and weigh in on what they're developing in real time. He also attributes the platform to encouraging his sons' love of gaming; two have already made their own programs, including one who won an award at the XPrize Connect Code Games Challenge in 2021.
"If at a young age I can get them to spend a percentage of their time creating content as opposed to consuming, I feel like I'm somehow succeeding," he said.
As with other social platforms, parents with kids on Discord should abide by age restrictions and enable parental controls, said Rich Wistocki, a former detective in Illinois who now runs [Be Sure Cyber](https://www.besureconsulting.com/) training to help parents, school administrators and law enforcement learn more about the dangers of social media. In the event of an incident, he said parents should take screenshots of the chat, pictures, video, user ID and save links to the text in the channel when reporting it.
"Parents often don't think these things will happen to their kids," he said. "More can be done to prevent these incidents from continuing."
“It was just a basic cremation, right?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “The cheapest one.”
“And did you order any kind of urn, or a memory book, or —?”
“No. Sorry,” he said. “I know he deserved a lot better.”
It had been almost a month since Dave, 39, found his father lying unresponsive in bed next to his cellphone and a bill from a collections agency, having died of a heart attack at age 70, and ever since then Dave had been trying to make sense of what his father had left behind. He’d read through his father’s credit card statements and then talked to a banker, who concluded that the final estate of David Ramsey Sr. was of “inconsequential value.” Like a record 23 percent of Americans who’ve died in the past five years, the ultimate financial worth of his father’s life was nothing — a number somewhere below zero.
That meant that what Dave Jr. and his two daughters were inheriting during a time of accelerating inequality in the United States was the exact opposite of intergenerational wealth: his father’s end-of-life expenses, thousands of dollars in debts, a leftover bottle of anti-depressants, and the Ramsey family’s continued regression from the middle class into the expanding bottom of the American economy.
“Here’s Dad,” the funeral employee said, as she walked back into the room holding a small cloth bag.
“This is it?’” Dave asked.
“Our process is very efficient,” she said.
Dave picked up the bag and felt its weight. “He did a lot in his life. For it to end like this … it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“You can still have a service,” she told him. “You can still find a way to honor him.”
Now Dave looked up at the laminated menu of funeral home prices posted on the wall. “One-day visitation: $5300.” “Funeral service director: $1800.” “Limousine: $450.” His family couldn’t afford any of it, so Dave Sr.’s body had remained in a freezer at the funeral home for three weeks while Dave Jr. scrapped metal and raised money from friends. His 17-year-old daughter had worked extra shifts at A&W and his girlfriend had sold some of her electronics, until finally they’d come up with $1,400 for basic cremation.
“I’m sorry. It’s embarrassing,” Dave said, as he got ready to leave. “This is the bare minimum.”
“Believe me, the bare minimum is normal,” the employee said.
“Yeah, but he was doing really good there for a while,” Dave Jr. said, and when she didn’t respond, he grabbed the small bag, labeled: “Remains No. 28,666.”
“You’re sure this is it?” he asked again. “I don’t understand how this can be it.”
\* \* \*
His father had been a police officer, a restaurant manager, a real estate agent, a private investigator, a Mason and a Little League umpire. He had wanted a large funeral where his friends could share stories about him, a full viewing, a three-volley military salute. It had been a life modeled on middle-class aspirations, and now what was left of it was sitting in the back bedroom of a small rental house across from a sewage refinery on the outskirts of Detroit, where Dave Jr. had spent the past week trying to summon the courage to go through three boxes of artifacts.
Maybe, Dave thought, these boxes offered some clue as to how a life that began with so much promise and momentum became a case study in what economists called “backwards mobility” into the bottom 50 percent of Americans who now collectively have a negative net worth. Or maybe, Dave Jr. thought, the boxes contained one more of his father’s schemes — some kind of a solution, or even a suggestion, for how to help their family recover a semblance of stability.
“Kristal?” he called out to his girlfriend one afternoon. It was their rental home: Dave Jr. and Kristal on a living room couch, one bedroom for their daughters, and one for Dave Sr. when he had nowhere else to go. “Kristal? Can I get some help?”
“You know I don’t like it in there,” she said, standing at the doorway, looking at the empty oxygen tanks and the blackout curtains. “It’s not like you’re going to find anything that’ll help.”
“Got a better idea?” he asked. So far that morning, he’d gotten nine messages from companies trying to collect on his father’s debts. They were 12 days late paying rent and a week behind on their electric bill, and Dave Jr. had no scheduled jobs for his landscaping business and no car to help him find other work.
Kristal sat on the bed and started sifting through the first box. There was Dave Sr.'s Army enlistment form, where he’d lied about his birth date to make himself a year older, so he could serve in Vietnam. There was his associate’s degree in criminology, his police badge and a picture of him posing with his wife in front of a little red Mustang at their three-bedroom house, just before things began to unravel. That marriage had ended in divorce. Dave Sr. sank his half of their money into Detroit-area real estate, only to see values drop 82 percent from 2006 to 2008 in the Great Recession. He lost his house to foreclosure. His next wife became addicted to opioids and stole what little money he had left. He had his first heart surgery in 2010 and went thousands of dollars into medical debt. He moved in with his son and tried to redeem himself by opening a string of businesses, each more desperate and more leveraged than the last, until they seemed to Dave Jr. more like delusions. He was starting a photography business in the backyard. He was buying and reselling Tasers on the Internet. He was trying to make TikTok videos for a profit. He was hoarding the family’s household items and hiding them in his room — cellphone chargers, magnets, pencils and razors that Dave Jr. found now at the bottom of the cardboard boxes.
“How do you go from being a police officer to basically stealing people’s trash?” he said, lifting out one of his daughter’s old toothbrushes. “It makes no sense, but I know I shouldn’t be mad at him. He was suffering. He kept trying.”
Dave Jr. knew what that was like. He’d modeled himself after his father, umpiring alongside him in high school and riding with him on private investigations to train as his apprentice. But if his father’s middle class ambitions had fallen apart after 50 years, Dave Jr.’s collapsed by the time he turned 20. He dropped out of school against his father’s advice so he could make some quick money laying cable, got injured at work and then got addicted to the prescription fentanyl patches. He’d gotten clean and stayed that way for the past nine years while taking care of his father and his daughters. He’d even gone back to school at night to earn his diploma, but the life available to him didn’t include the Masons, or a union job, or a thriving American middle class. Instead he’d hustled his way through a series of contracting jobs that paid a living wage one week and nothing the next, until the family’s monthly bills were so far beyond its means that Dave Sr. started burying them in the bottom of a box.
They owed $681 to Verizon, $11,760 to Honda, $522 to Downriver Pain Management and $12,479 to the cardiologist who’d signed Dave Sr.’s death certificate.
“It would take a hundred years to dig out,” Dave Jr. said. “We’ll never get back to where he was.”
“Told you there’d be nothing,” Kristal said, tossing each bill aside, until she stopped at a fluorescent green envelope with cheerful typography. “Leave a lasting legacy for those you love,” the envelope read, and she handed it to Dave Jr. Inside he found a handwritten note addressed to his father. “Hi Dave, here’s the policy paperwork you requested,” it read. “You’re making a great decision for your loved ones. Looking forward to moving this ahead.”
“Is there more?” Dave Jr. asked, turning the pages over from front to back. “Did he follow through?” He looked through the rest of the paperwork, but it was only more bills until he’d emptied the box.
\* \* \*
At night Dave Jr. went to bed worried about the life he was inheriting, and in the morning he awoke to the realities of the life he was passing on. Moriah, 7, was asleep again on the couch with TikTok videos playing on the TV, late for school again because there was no bus. Brionna, 17, was on her way to bag groceries at Kroger and then on from there to A&W, where after 11 hours of low-wage work she realized that it would be another day when the math didn’t work out. She’d spent $17 on a ride to Kroger and $14 to get from there to A&W. That left $7 in her ride-share account, and it usually cost at least $10 to get home.
“Dad, I need money to get home,” she texted to Dave Jr., late in her shift at A&W. “I’m scared I’m gonna be stuck at work.”
She’d joined the workforce full-time in September, after she dropped out of high school four days into the school year. Her plan was to focus on work until she had enough money to buy her own car, re-enroll in school, graduate and then drive that car as far away from Michigan as she could until she made it to the other America, the place where the rich always seemed to be getting richer. She wanted to settle on the coast of California and open a tea shop, so she’d started bagging groceries at Kroger early in the morning for $10 an hour and then frying chicken in the afternoon for $9 an hour. She’d worked double shifts six days each week, and yet the most she’d ever managed to save was a few hundred dollars. A third of her paycheck went to rides to and from work. The rest went to taxes, lunches, and household expenses. Six months after dropping out, she was no closer to a car and still 2,500 miles from California, and some days she couldn’t afford the four-mile trip home.
“Dad,” she texted again, and when he didn’t respond, she sent another message. “Yo.”
“Sorry,” he wrote, a few moments later. “What’s up?”
“Do you have $5? Jeff can’t give me my paycheck early, and I don’t have enough money to get home.”
“I have nothing, hun.”
“Dad what should I do?”
The first few times she’d been stuck at work, her co-workers had offered to loan her money or even drive her home. It was an awful place to be stranded, tucked between a freeway and a trailer park. The A&W was just a tiny stand with no indoor seating, where five employees competed for space around the fryer, so she was inevitably in someone’s way. As she kept having to stay late, she thought her co-workers had moved from sympathy to pity and then finally to something like disdain. “We’d really love for you to have more reliable transportation,” a manager had told her once, so she’d started to dread the end of her shifts.
“Hello?” she texted again. “Tell me something. I got 20 minutes left.”
She leaned out the drive-through window to take another order. She fried up a few pieces of chicken and checked her phone. Nothing. Fifteen minutes left. Ten. “Dad?” she wrote. He was the one person she counted on and trusted completely, because he always did whatever he could to make her life easier. Neither of them could afford cellphone service, so they relied exclusively on WiFi, and there was no WiFi network at A&W. He let her take the family’s state-issued WiFi hotspot with her to work, which meant sometimes he had spotty service at home. Maybe his phone wasn’t working. Maybe he was outside in the garage. Or maybe he was avoiding her, because she sometimes suspected that he’d spent some of her ride-share money to get her 7-year-old sister to and from elementary school.
“This is ridiculous,” she wrote, as her shift wound down. “Next time I give you money for ME that I work for, it better go toward me. Now I got to sit here and look dumb again.
“I didn’t use your money,” he replied. “I am $1.35 short.”
“So then tell me how am I going to get home, because I’m not waiting and looking dumb again.”
She waited, and waited, and then the shift was over and the other employees were heading out. She stood against the wall. She moved toward the doorway. It was 8 degrees outside and snowing, and she checked the Lyft prices on her phone to see if she could somehow get a bargain ride for $7. “Winter road conditions,” it read. “Prices are higher than normal.” She texted an extended family member, the only person she knew with a car. He’d bailed her out so many times that he’d begun charging her $10 per ride plus interest if she paid late. “Sorry,” she wrote, and a few minutes later she was in his car and then walking back into her living room, where Dave Jr. was sorting through his father’s boxes, looking for more life insurance forms.
“Oh good. You made it home, kiddo,” he said, but she didn’t look up at him.
“How was work?” he asked, and she took off her A&W hat and started moving toward her room.
“Guess what?” he said. “I think Senior might have been trying to set us up with some kind of life insurance.”
She started to walk by him, and he reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder. “I know it’s been hard lately,” he said, and finally she turned to look at him.
“It can’t keep going like this. It’s pathetic,” she said. She stared at him for a moment, waiting for him to say something, until eventually he looked back down at the papers in his lap.
\* \* \*
What he wanted to tell her was that she was right, that he was sorry, that some days he couldn’t stand to read her text messages because they made him feel ashamed. But instead he walked outside and tried to solve his problems the only way he’d ever known — the way his father had taught him. He put on boots and heavy-duty gloves and started looking for some kind of work.
Nobody was calling his lawn-care business in the dead of winter. He couldn’t get to any construction sites without a car. He stood outside the garage and scanned his small yard for moneymaking potential until he noticed the large wheelchair ramp the Department of Veterans Affairs had built a few years ago for his father. It looked like it was made from decent quality aluminum. If he could take it apart and sell it for scrap, he guessed it was worth a few hundred dollars or more.
He called a friend to ask for a ride to the scrapyard and promised to give him 20 percent. “Come on. I need this,” he said.
“Fine,” his friend said. “Be ready by 4.”
He put on headphones and started taking apart hundreds of heavy aluminum poles. The screws were frozen in place and his fingers were numb inside his gloves. He yanked and pulled and pried each pole loose and then tossed them into a pile in his yard. He had been working ever since he turned 14, when Dave Sr. was a restaurant manager at the airport and gave his son his first job. It started at 4 a.m., and Dave Sr. came in to wake up his son each morning at 3:30 with a splash of cold water on his face. “Don’t waste a workday,” he liked to say.
He’d taught Dave Jr. that hard work was a generational family trait, but Dave Jr. had also learned that the value of that work had changed. His grandfather had been a skilled carpenter in the 1950s, when half of all household wealth in the United States belonged to the middle class, and he’d earned enough to retire by 60. Dave Sr. had worked mostly union jobs, making a steady salary for the first half of his career even if the wages never quite kept pace with inflation. Dave Jr. had turned 18 and settled for contractor work, which meant there were no retirement benefits and the next paycheck was never guaranteed. And now his daughter Brionna was one of a record 44 percent of U.S. workers in low-wage jobs. Only 17 percent of the country’s wealth now belonged to the middle class, which no longer included the Ramseys.
Dave Jr. kept ripping the ramp apart. The pile of aluminum was a small mountain now. “Going to get us a big haul,” he wrote to his friend, and then he dragged it to the driveway at 3:45 p.m. and waited. “Probably worth three hundred, maybe more,” he said. He was going to buy an urn for his father’s ashes and then put some of those ashes into a pendant for Brionna. Maybe they would go together to California and scatter the rest on a beach.
He smoked a cigarette and waited in the driveway. It was 4 p.m. It was 4:15. He called his friend and left a message. He smoked another cigarette and called again, and a few minutes later his friend messaged back. “Sorry. Can’t today,” he wrote.
Dave dropped his gloves down into the pile of aluminum, stomped out the cigarette and walked into the house. Kristal was sitting in the living room, going through another box of Dave Sr.’s papers.
“Can we get just one day where things don’t get worse?” Dave said.
“I think I found something,” she said, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
“It’s like I’m dealing with A and then B hits,” he said. “Then C hits. Then D. Then A comes back around and knocks me out. It’s just down, down, down, and —”
“Hey!” Kristal said again. “Look. I found something.”
She reached into the box and held up a small notebook. Dave looked at the cover and recognized his father’s neat handwriting in all uppercase.
“Life insurance,” it read.
\* \* \*
Inside the notebook was a neat grid of phone numbers and life insurance plans with AARP, Physicians Life, Global Life, Guardian Insurance, Netspend and Mutual of Omaha. Each one included premium amounts and email addresses. “Family members to be insured,” Dave Sr. had written at the top of one page, and then he’d listed the names of family members he wanted to receive money.
“David Ramsey Jr. — $10,000.”
“Kristal Renee Grauman — $10,000.”
“Brionna Cheyenne Ramsey — $15,000.”
“Moriah Cheyenne Ramsey — $20,000.”
“I knew he wouldn’t go out with nothing,” Dave Jr. said, drumming his hand against the cover of the notebook, and then he dialed the first 1-800 number listed in the book.
“Please hold for the next available agent,” said the automated robot, who answered on behalf of Global Life, and Dave Jr. waited for 48 minutes until finally he was patched through to a representative named Vic. “I don’t see anything current for this policy,” Vic said, and he transferred Dave to an accounts specialist, who sent him to a supervisor, who transferred him to the retirement division, which transferred him back to Vic.
“It looks like he set it up in 2017 but never activated it,” Vic said. “Sorry we don’t have better news.”
“That’s okay. He probably went with another company,” Dave Jr. said, and he moved to the next phone number in the notebook.
AARP said it didn’t have a policy on file. Guardian Life said its policy had been canceled in 2020, when Dave Sr. missed a payment for $228.23. Mutual of Omaha said that yes, actually, they did have an account on file, but it was a 401(k) plan that had been emptied in 2010. “Thanks for checking,” Dave Jr. said, after three hours of making calls. He punched in the next number for Netspend, which told him that the policy was owned by Stonebridge, which had merged with TransAmerica, which had transferred some policies over to Putnam.
“Please say your policy number,” another recording instructed, and Dave Jr. enunciated 18 numbers and letters.
“Sorry. I’m having trouble finding that,” the recording said, and it placed him on hold. He plugged his cellphone into a charger. He’d been hitting dead ends for five hours, and he’d exhausted almost every lead in the notebook. “We’re sorry for the delay,” the recording said, as Dave Jr. waited through 14 more minutes of hold music, until his WiFi signal dropped and the call disconnected. He twisted the bill of his baseball hat. He took an anti-anxiety medication. “Pretty soon it’ll be me having a heart attack,” he said, and then he called back the 1-800 number, waited through the same series of transfers, and repeated the policy number until finally he reached a person who introduced herself as Michelle.
“Michelle, thank goodness,” he said. “I’ve been doing circles all day and I just need someone to actually help without transferring me.”
“Okay. I can do that,” she said. “Let’s get all the information we can.”
“Thank you,” he said. He gave her the policy number. He gave her the activation date. He gave her his father’s birth date and Social Security number, and the names for each family member he’d hoped to insure.
“Hmm,” she said. “I’m not seeing anything. Are you sure he actually set it up?”
“He wrote all this down,” Dave Jr. said. “He wanted to leave something. I can tell it was important to him. Can we look again?”
He gave her his father’s last three home addresses. He gave her his list of previous employers.
“Still nothing,” she said, and she asked if she could place him on a short hold. The music started, and he threw his phone against the couch. “Damn it!” he said. He clenched his fists. He banged his fists against his head. He wiped his eyes and looked again at the notebook, the evidence of his father’s last attempt to reverse three generations of backward mobility. Dave Jr. put the phone back up to his ear until the hold music ended and another automated voice came on the line.
“Please state the full name of the account you’re calling about,” the recording said.
“David Ramsey Senior,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that.”
“David M. Ramsey Senior,” he said, louder this time.
“I’m sorry. I —”
“David Michael Ramsey Senior!” he shouted, but there was no record of that name and nothing left to find.
# The real Mission Impossible: saying 'no' to Tom Cruise
Investors who heard [Tom Cruise](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/tom-cruise/) speak via video at [Paramount](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/paramount/)’s Feb. 15 investors’ event must have come away thinking his relationship with the company was all harmony. Calling Shari Redstone his “dear friend,” he lavished praise on the studio and noted his “over 37-year relationship with Paramount that I’m very proud of and very grateful for.”
The audience would never suspect that the infuriated star had lawyered up a year earlier when the studio notified him that *Mission: Impossible 7* would have a 45-day theatrical window — far shorter than his usual three-month run — before streaming on Paramount+. It’s a fight that remains unresolved as the parties agreed to postpone the battle until the film is finished, which it isn’t. Cruise has balked at getting it done until he’s put a great deal of *M:I 8* in the can.
That wasn’t the only point of friction. As Paramount flailed for material to pump up its fledgling streaming service, would Cruise allow his longtime studio home to develop a *Days of Thunder* series for the streamer? That idea was strangled in its cradle. The idea of developing a *Mission: Impossible* series was no-go, too, even though the property had begun life in the 1960s as a CBS show.
*M:I 7*‘s release date has been pushed four times; it’s now set for July 2023. By holding on to the film as a work in progress while working on the eighth, Cruise and his writer-director, Christopher McQuarrie, ensure that Paramount won’t have much luck imposing budget restrictions on what is allegedly the final installment in the franchise. It also gives Cruise — who has creative control — flexibility with respect to the cliffhanger ending of *M:I 7*.
With hundreds of millions on the line, says a knowledgeable source, Cruise and McQuarrie take a perhaps surprisingly improvisational approach to filmmaking. McQuarrie first encountered Cruise on the 2008 film *Valkyrie*, which McQuarrie co-wrote and co-produced. He started collaborating on the *Mission* movies when he went to work on the script for the fourth installment, 2011’s *Ghost Protocol*, mid-production. He directed the fifth, 2015’s *Rogue Nation*, during which he figured out the third act only in the middle of shooting. The sixth installment, 2018’s *Fallout*, involved more of the same budget-fracturing spontaneity. This unpredictable approach is Cruise exercising the power he’s accrued from bringing in $3.6 billion in box office starring as Ethan Hunt over three decades.
Cruise (center) in a scene from *Mission: Impossible: Fallout*. The reflection in the door is director Chris McQuarrie, who has worked with Cruise on four *M:I* installments. David James /Paramount /Courtesy Everett Collection
The notion that a studio can control spending on a Cruise movie is dismissed by executives who have been in the trenches with him. One says a studio can only hope to “influence” Cruise and McQuarrie. “Tom looks at \[the money\] he delivers to the studio,” says another. “Why wouldn’t you go do whatever you want? Who’s going to tell you not to?” These executives say Cruise is driven by his own perfectionism. “It’s not always in the best interest of the budget, but he is incredibly detailed and willing to put in an enormous amount of time and effort on every aspect,” says a source on *M:I 7*. “The guy does give every ounce of his being to this endeavor,” confirms another.
The still-unfinished *M:I 7* has already hit a breathtaking $290 million budget, with tax incentives. Cruise and McQuarrie did a little work on *8* as *7* got underway — enough to say they had started the film — but shooting on *8* is underway now. Sources say Cruise has persuaded Brian Robbins, the new president and CEO of Paramount Pictures, to give him more money to finish the seventh film and make the eighth, arguing (with some justification) that inflation has driven up expenses.
No one can be blamed for COVID-19, or for the lousy luck that had *M:I 7* start its shoot in northern Italy, hit hard early in the pandemic. Ultimately, both Cruise and McQuarrie — neither of whom was believed to be vaccinated at the time — contracted the virus, according to sources. McQuarrie’s illness was so severe that he was hospitalized in London, a source says. (Why the two weren’t vaccinated isn’t clear, but in Cruise’s case, it apparently was not because Scientology has taken a position against it, as some in town have speculated. Sources familiar with the organization’s policy say it has left the decision up to members.) Neither Cruise nor McQuarrie responded to a request for comment.
The decision to make the films was set in 2018, when Paramount Pictures’ then-CEO Jim Gianopulos and his team flew to London to hear a pitch for the two installments. Everyone in the meeting would have known that Gianopulos had to say yes. Paramount’s cupboard was bare. The *Transformers* films had stalled; the 2017 installment, *The Last Knight*, had gone well over budget and would lose $100 million, according to a knowledgeable source. The studio had no other surefire franchises.
But the *Mission: Impossible* series was stronger than it had ever been.
In 2006, Cruise hit a low with the $398 million gross of *Mission: Impossible III*, after he dinged his reputation with his appearances on *Oprah* and the *Today* show. But he had repaired his relationship with his fans, and *Fallout* was the highest-grossing movie of the series, the 2018 release pulling in $791.6 million worldwide — more than $100 million higher than the previous entry. “You would make \[*Mission: Impossible*\] *7* and *8* even if you had a full slate,” a studio veteran points out. “They weren’t crazy expensive by the standards of Marvel, of Bond.” The sixth film had cost about $180 million with rebates, but the relentless drive for bigger stunts and more locations kept pushing up the cost of the films.
At the pitch in London, there was a treatment but no scripts. “The hardest part of running a studio is your desperate need for tentpoles,” says an executive who has managed a previous Cruise film. “If you don’t have a locked script, it’s impossible to pencil \[the budget\] out.”
As anyone who has heard a Cruise pitch will tell you, the star is very hard to resist. “He is the consummate salesman,” says an executive who has experienced Cruise’s powers of persuasion. “His ability to charm people and his enthusiasm are completely genuine.” McQuarrie was just as compelling. In January 2019, Cruise announced the next two installments, with the first to be released in July 2021 and the second in August 2022.
Then *M:I 7* became one of the first major productions to run headlong into the pandemic. On Feb. 24, 2020, just days before filming was to begin in Venice, Paramount announced that it was shutting down the production “out of an abundance of caution.” According to a source, Cruise was then still in London, stricken with an illness that was not believed to be COVID-19.
The production moved to Rome, only to stop again March 9, when the Italian government locked down the country. Cast and crew resumed work in July after British authorities gave the production special dispensation to skip a mandatory 14-day quarantine. After Cruise called the country’s minister of culture, Norway also gave permission to shoot without observing the country’s 10-day quarantine requirement. (The British tabloid *The Sun* reported that Cruise paid $676,000 for a cruise ship so cast and crew could isolate.) Back in Italy in October 2020, the film shut down for a third time after a dozen people on set tested positive for the coronavirus. According to a source, one of Cruise’s security guards had a gathering in his hotel room that also led to some cases. The production moved to Venice, only to be shut down for the fourth time because of positive tests.
Cruise and Hayley Atwell on the set of *Mission: Impossible 7* in Rome in October 2020. Samantha Zucchi/Insidefoto/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
In December 2020, with the production shooting outside London, *The Sun* got hold of an audiotape of Cruise dressing down the crew, supposedly after he saw a couple of people standing too close together. Framing the production as a model for the industry, he said, “I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherfuckers!” He added, “If I see you do it again, you’re fucking gone!” The overall public reaction seemed supportive, with an article in *The Atlantic* calling it “cathartic, even comforting” to hear Cruise call for safety.
After that, Jake Myers, credited as an executive producer on *Rogue Nation* in 2015 and a producer on *Fallout* in 2018, left the production. He had been set to remain with the franchise through the final film. A source says he was taking the blame for lax protocols. Myers did not respond to requests for comment.
On Feb. 14, 2021, McQuarrie posted on Instagram that the production just needed a few “finishing touches” (which it still awaits). Meanwhile, in response to a COVID-19 surge in the U.K., the shoot shut down for the fifth time.
\*\*\*
Early in 2021, in the midst ofthese struggles, Gianopulos informed Cruise that the film would receive a 45-day theatrical window before moving to Paramount+. The studio had to know how unwelcome this news would be.
Says an associate, “Jim was bridging between what \[Paramount’s\] Shari \[Redstone\] and \[president and CEO\] Bob \[Bakish\] wanted and what Jim felt was the right thing to do,” which was to protect the relationship with Cruise. “Part of the reason \[Jim\] is gone is that Shari and Bob thought they could wave a magic wand” and persuade the star to accept the shortened window.
Sure enough, Cruise was having none of it. Seeing himself rightly as Paramount’s most important, not to mention longest-term, partner, he was said to be furious. He had no intention that any of his movies would play for a day less than his standard three-month run. “For him, 45 days is like going day-and-date,” says a Paramount source. He also felt that setting a date when the movie could be seen on the service would discourage people from going to the theater.
Cruise is one of the last dollar-one gross players in the business, so box office receipts are key to his compensation. (He makes much more from the films than the studio does.) A source says Gianopulos had relied on the advice of Paramount Pictures COO Andrew Gumpert that the studio had the power to shrink *M:I 7*‘s theatrical window. (Paramount declined to comment.) But language in Cruise’s contract said the movie had to be handled in a manner consistent with the previous film. Cruise called his lawyers.
For Gianopulos, who tended his talent relationships as carefully as anyone in the business, this kind of breach was undoubtedly deeply upsetting. He had so few key relationships to protect at Paramount and had already fought to hold *A Quiet Place Part II* for theatrical release to avoid a clash with John Krasinski. A source says Gianopulos tried to use data to show Cruise that the industry had changed and most of the film’s box office revenue would be generated in the first 45 days. “That was not an easy thing for Jim to have to do,” this insider says. “Tom is so committed to theatrical.” The two sides agreed to postpone the argument.
Meanwhile, the production continued to battle delays. It shut down after shooting in Abu Dhabi when the British government required a 10-day quarantine for the returning cast and crew. It shut down for a seventh time in early June 2021, when 14 people tested positive. The outbreak was blamed on dancers who were shooting a nightclub scene and were close to the star. Sources say some of Cruise’s family members that were with him on the production were stricken, and then Cruise and McQuarrie.
Paramount had a $100 million insurance policy and maintains that Federal Insurance Company must pay for the added costs of moving locations to dodge the virus, dealing with multiple shutdowns, and incurring the extra expense of complying with COVID-19 protocols. The insurer paid $5 million for losses incurred due to an unspecified castmember’s February 2020 illness at the outset of the shoot — presumably Cruise’s indisposition that was not COVID. The insurer declined to pay for most of the other expenses incurred, prompting Paramount to sue. The case is pending.
For weeks in the summer of 2021, rumors had started to circulate in Hollywood that Gianopulos would be replaced by Brian Robbins, the head of Nickelodeon and chief content officer of kids and family for Paramount+. Robbins had a digital background and was believed to have won Redstone over with his plan to devote himself to building the streaming service with relatively inexpensive fare. Gianopulos, thinking his position was secure, went to London in September to negotiate with Cruise and McQuarrie, who had made a late decision to throw a submarine sequence into *M:I 7*. The submarine was already set to appear in *8*, and adding it to *7* would, of course, contribute to cost overruns on that film. Sources say Gianopulos wanted to close out the budget on *7* and he wanted a script for *8*, which would be key to making at least an attempt to control the budget.
While Gianopulos was trying to work out those points, Paramount announced that he was being replaced by Robbins. Though not entirely unexpected, the news rattled Hollywood veterans, who were watching the industry undergo rapid transformation and wondered whether Paramount would even be a movie studio anymore. A knowledgeable source says Bakish told Gianopulos the studio would be downsized and steer away from big movies, instead focusing on franchises like Robbins’*PAW Patrol*, which had generated a movie that streamed on Paramount+ the same day it opened in theaters with no pushback from the animated characters. (The film made $144 million at the box office.)
According to this source, Bakish told Gianopulos, “It’s going to be a very different studio going forward, like nothing you’ve ever run before.” A Paramount insider says Bakish conveyed “that going forward the studio was going to be much more closely integrated with the company.” That appears to be code for catering to the streaming service. Whether Redstone will really try to compete in streaming against larger competitors like Disney and Netflix, or whether she will ultimately sell her media empire, remains an open question.
Under the new regime, Paramount has sent somewhat confusing signals about its plans for movies. At its February investor day, producer J.J. Abrams announced a new *Star Trek* project that would start shooting at the end of the year, with the cast from the rebooted version, which includes Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña. But castmembers had no deals in place, no idea that they were expected to start filming this year or that any announcement of the project would be made. Sources said there was no completed script, no budget, no green light.
Robbins — despite his past as a child actor, director and producer — has never made a mega-budget movie and certainly never dealt with anything on the scale of a *Mission: Impossible* before. He has set about developing a relationship with Cruise, but he couldn’t persuade the star to finish *M:I 7* before moving on to *M:I 8*. He did, however, ask for and receive a script for *8*. But that script doesn’t seem likely to be set in stone — after all, Cruise and McQuarrie decided to add a submarine to *7* after the film was supposed to have been wrapped.
The challenges before Robbins are clear. He has to manage the cost of *M:I 8*, theoretically Cruise’s last outing as Hunt and no doubt the most ambitious of the bunch. And he still has to resolve the standoff over the seventh movie’s theatrical window, which will presumably also involve the handling of the eighth. Cruise has shot some of the latter film in South Africa, but will have to hit pause for the publicity tour for *Top Gun: Maverick*, a film that studio insiders are certain is going to be a hit and thus make their biggest star an even more valuable partner.
A veteran of Tom Cruise movies laughs when asked how Robbins is likely to fare. This is the way these things go, he says: “Tom says what he wants and the studio says what it wants. And then Tom gets what he asked for.”
*This story first appeared in the March 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. [Click here to subscribe.](https://subscribe.hollywoodreporter.com/sub/?p=THR&f=saleb&s=IH1402HR20)*
So, this is happening, isn’t it. Apple is really going to beat Netflix and Amazon to the Oscar. Maybe? Probably? Definitely? *CODA*, the deaf family drama that rivals dismissed as a Hallmark movie—and a *remake* of a Hallmark movie, no less—seems, with each guild win and momentum marker, to be the favorite to win best picture on Sunday. Vegas still has *CODA* as virtually dead even with *The Power of the Dog*, and *Belfast* could be a late spoiler, but at least around L.A., the race doesn’t feel that close. It feels like it’s over.
Apple C.E.O. **Tim Cook** will attend the show on Sunday, I’m told, and if he walks out of the Dolby Theater with the top prize, he will have triumphed just two and a half years after formally entering the film and TV business. *Two and a half years.* Netflix and Amazon, after more than a decade of original content, and five years of aggressively throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at lavish campaigns, will have been outplayed by their richer tech rival. This isn’t exactly inventing the Macintosh or iPhone, but for a consumer products company that has always positioned itself as *creative* rather than *utilitarian*, reaching the apex of Hollywood would be a triumph. Even **Steve Jobs** would be mildly impressed.
Sure, but Apple is worth nearly $3 trillion these days, more than a dozen Netflixes, so it just *bought* the Oscar it coveted. Not really. People who follow Apple for its hardware might not realize that’s not quite how it works. If it was, **Jeff Bezos** would have simply delivered an oversized novelty check on behalf of *Manchester By the Sea*, and **Ted Sarandos** would display about five best picture Oscars in his L.A. lobby, not that smattering of lesser trophies.
I won’t rehash the details of this year’s campaigns, or litigate why I think *King Richard* (poor box office, thanks to HBO Max), *Power of the Dog* (too slow; anointed too early), and *Belfast* (not on streaming; reminds people of Ukraine) lost steam. Winning best picture requires a delicate combination of the right movie at the right time, down-and-dirty politicking among a global body of nearly 10,000 artists (plus all the precursor awards groups), outright media manipulation, great luck, and *millions of dollars* to get the film seen and talked about.
It ain’t easy. The experts I consulted believe Apple spent about $20 million to $25 million in awards marketing on *CODA*, plus all the Apple-owned platforms and billboards in key markets. That’s about what streamers spend on a major contender these days, but the equivalent of a loose quarter in Cook’s sneaker, of course. (Apple, which treats the non-sycophantic press about as well as its factory employees in China, declined to comment on any of this.) Most people believe that Netflix and Amazon actually spent more this season on *Dog* and *Being the Ricardos*, respectively. So while money is *required*, it’s never been—and still isn’t—the dispositive factor, and overspending can backfire. If Apple wins on Sunday, it will have done so fair and square.
To me, beyond the campaign speculation, the more interesting question is *how* Apple climbed toward this moment in the Hollywood spotlight, with big ramifications for everyone who works in, and consumes, entertainment. So it’s worth looking, piece by piece, at how Cook and his team pulled this off.
---
Back in early 2017, Apple’s **Eddy Cue** embarked on a mini-listening tour of Hollywood. I know this because I was part of it, and I wasn’t alone. Cue, whose purview as senior V.P. of services included Apple’s transformative music business, was quietly surveying the town, with **Jimmy Iovine** as his consigliere, in advance of what he hoped would be another disruptive move: the hiring of an executive (or, it turned out, *two* executives) to lead Apple’s much-gossiped-about foray into film and television.
When I met with Cue at the Mr. C hotel in Beverly Hills, it was clear that he knew what he *didn’t* know about entertainment, but he knew enough not to trust the talent agents in his ear, who were mostly lobbying to install their preferred person as the coveted buyer with the Cupertino war chest. That summer, Cue settled on **Zack Van Amburg** and **Jamie Erlicht,** the longtime Sony Pictures Television leaders, to curate a service, later named AppleTV+, that pointedly did *not* take aim at the Netflix content firehose. HBO-style curation, almost exclusively name-brand stars, and what Cook later called stories with “a good message” that “make people feel good at the end.”
They stumbled almost immediately, mishandling the buzz around Apple’s first big series, *The Morning Show,* to the point where critics were all but guaranteed to shoot it down. The premiere of Apple’s first movie, the **Samuel L. Jackson** drama *The Banker*, was canceled amid sexual abuse allegations against the son of the film’s subject. And remember that hyped “unveiling” of the service at Apple H.Q. in March 2019, where everyone from **Oprah** to **Chris Evans** to **Steven Spielberg** gathered for… *no real reason whatsoever*? After years of masterful product launches, AppleTV+ seemed more like the Newton.
We can argue the extent to which Apple has recovered. Van Amburg and Erlicht still make a lot of shows that should be better than they are. *Lisey’s Story*, for instance, managed to get me, a **Stephen King** diehard, very excited…and then super angry that the adaptation had **Julianne Moore** and **Clive Owen** but was unwatchable. Still, *Ted Lasso* is *gigantic* and an awards magnet, and the service writes huge checks when it wants something, like the recent Formula One movie package with **Brad Pitt**. Agents and talent love Apple because it has eagerly bought from outside studios (though that is said to be changing), and it can hardly plead poverty. Plus, unlike Netflix or the traditional studios, AppleTV+ doesn’t seem to require an *actual business model* around its content efforts. At least not yet.
Who’s actually watching? Like everything in streaming, *who knows*? It’s impossible to judge success without consumption data. The Information reported in November that Apple TV+ had signed up 40 million global accounts and 20 million paying customers, but others say the numbers are lower. (Plus, who knows what the average revenue per user is, anyway.) It’s certainly not delivering Netflix, Amazon or even Disney+ numbers. And quality-wise, it’s *not* HBO, at least not yet, but it does feel like the content is getting better. AppleTV+ seems to have a reason for existing now.
---
And then along came *CODA*. To say Apple lucked into a probable best picture winner belies the *looooong* journey that this movie took to the small screen. The project was actually set up about five years ago at Lionsgate, the *La La Land* studio, which paid for writer-director **Sian Heder** to develop the script. With a planned $15 million budget, *CODA* got stuck in that no-man’s-land for movies these days: Too expensive for the indie model without major stars, which was difficult given the desire to cast non-hearing actors, and too cheap to compete with studio projects.
So Lionsgate let *CODA* go, and **Patrick Wachsberger**, the studio’s film co-chairman, negotiated into his exit deal in May 2018 to take it with him. (Lionsgate retained a small stake in the net profits of the movie, I can reveal.) Wachsberger teamed with **Philippe Rousselet** of the French production company Vendome, and the distributor Pathe, which cobbled together financing and shot the movie in Massachusetts in Summer 2019.
This is the part where Apple, in the avalanche of awards press coverage of *CODA*, usually says it stepped up with a $25 million bid at Sundance 2021, and the rest is history. That’s *kinda* true. But the P.R.-approved narrative obscures a much messier backstory. Yes, Apple beat Amazon with that record-breaking bid, but the film *had already been sold* by Pathé in many territories. That was a *huge* problem because Apple wanted *global* rights, and the company isn’t used to writing a big check and *not* getting what it wants.
The whole “pre-sale” model—selling distribution rights territory-by-territory to secure a loan to make a movie—has been the engine of the indie film business for decades. Until, of course, Netflix and the other global streamers came along, demanding *all* rights (or as many as they can get) in splashy acquisition deals. When a pre-sold film turns out great and streamers come calling, those territories are then offered kill fees, sometimes with a nudge from the agents, who effectively tell the distributors to play along *or else*. The streamers say it’s a guaranteed premium, which is true. But the entire indie market is predicated on making multiple bets in the hope that a handful turn into commercially viable films that pay for the flops, so pressuring a distributor to accept go-away money on, say, the hottest Sundance sensation in years, is not ideal for them. It’s the gambling equivalent of pulling a 21 and taking even money instead of capitalizing on the blackjack.
For *CODA*, which hit the “virtual” Sundance at the height of the pandemic, CAA and ICM Partners agents began salivating over the global Apple deal, then set about figuring out how to make it work with those pre-bought territories. And remember, *CODA* was based on *La Famille Bélier*, a 2014 French film that did pretty well, so many distributors had paid a premium for rights to the remake. Adding to the problem: The trade press covered the huge Apple deal *before* anyone told those rights-holders.
Predictably, they went nuts, giving [blind quotes](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/berlin-2021-coda-apple-streamers-4140191/) to the media like, “We intend to release it as planned in our territory, as it says in the contract we signed.” That put the agents and **Matt Dentler**, the indie film veteran who runs Apple’s film group, in a tough spot. Dentler is said to have essentially told the agents to figure it out, and the agents had to report back that several rights-holders weren’t budging. Team Apple was furious and contemplated walking away from the deal, according to multiple sources on both sides. “It got incredibly heated,” according to one person involved. “An uncomfortable experience for everyone,” said another.
Many territories—Mexico, Italy, and Japan, for instance—held firm on their rights. But CAA’s **Roeg Sutherland** and **Sarah Schweitzman** were able to help Apple buy out several territories. Imagine you’re the German film distributor Tobis, which pre-bought *CODA* and then agreed to sell its interest to Apple. Yes, you got a buyout—and a hefty one, according to sources—but you could have had the likely winner of the best picture Oscar, which *exponentially* increases its value across theatrical and home video forever. “The short term kill fee is never going to make up for the outsize loss of a best picture winner,” notes **Tom Quinn**, the indie film distributor who runs NEON and shepherded *Parasite* to its 2020 coronation at the Oscars.
Quinn is among those fighting against the kind of global streaming buyouts that threaten the pre-sale model, and with it the entire business that gave rise to *CODA*. The debate went nuclear when word circulated at last year’s Berlin Film Festival that to avoid *CODA*\-like problems, agents wanted to insert *mandatory* buy-back language in pre-sale deals. “It would mean taking all the risk on flops and capping our upside on hits,” **Ricardo Costianovsky**, a Latin America distributor, complained at the time. “It would be fatal.”
Agents mostly backed off, and, indeed, the global buyout issue seems to be losing steam as theaters re-open, according to a few insiders I talked to. One told me outright that buy-backs were “dead.” We’ll see. Netflix, which played hardball on last year’s best picture contender *The Trial of the Chicago 7*, for instance, did agree to take **Maggie Gyllenhaal**’s *The Lost Daughter*, a multi-Oscar nominee this year, while leaving key territories on the table.
Obviously, the power of Apple was an elephant in all these deal rooms. The company saw *CODA* as catnip for Cook’s vision of AppleTV+ as a home for uplifting stories, a prestige-populist play with an on-brand message that helps paint the company as an emotional indie and not, notably, as the largest corporation in the world. To Apple, *CODA* is art, but it’s also marketing, and the company is nothing if not an expert marketer.
That messaging—complete with an awareness campaign for deaf inclusion and a trip for the cast to D.C. this week to meet **President Biden**—came to define the *CODA* experience. That prompted a number of Oscar veterans to ask me why Apple’s Hollywood efforts seem to have been so embraced by the community when, say, the size and spending of Netflix are still met with skepticism in many quarters. It’s a good question with a couple answers, I think:
- *Netflix was first:* Amazon’s best picture nomination for *Manchester* was pioneering for a streamer, but Netflix is usually perceived as streaming’s Oscar interloper, and even responsible for killing movie theaters. Now its size and volume of contenders make it the 800 pound gorilla in awards campaigning. Netflix gobbled up all those Sunset Boulevard billboards; instead of just hiring campaign consultants, it bought out the company of **Lisa Taback**, the ruthless campaigner for **Harvey Weinstein**, and built a massive in-house awards machine; it spends crazy money on tastemaker events and those dumb hardbound books that we all toss in the recycling bin; it runs digital and TV ads for individual categories, not just entire films. Others do these things too, but people seem to cringe more when they see the Netflix largesse. I still believe that’s why *Roma* lost to *Green Book* in 2019, and it’s probably a factor in why *Dog* lost its frontrunner status this year.
- *The Apple brand halo:* People love Apple, and Hollywood people *especially* love Apple. Whether we realize it or not, that branding influences our perception of its projects. I just bought a new iPhone 13 Pro, so I’m as guilty as you.
- *The curation:* For all its mediocre projects, AppleTV+ feels curated, and Netflix, increasingly, does not. It’s harder for Netflix to position itself as the home for Oscar-caliber work when we all see that *Love Is Blind* and *The Adam Project* dominate its weekly Top 10. Yes, all studios and networks release populist garbage, but the Netflix awards messaging somehow feels disingenuous to some.
- *The handling:* Sarandos, who will host his annual Oscar Eve toast in his backyard on Saturday, has prioritized taking care of top filmmakers. But with the Netflix volume, it’s harder to give everyone the **Cuaron** or **Scorsese** or **Campion** experience. I’ve heard from agents that the Apple film group isn’t as overburdened as Netflix, nor does it have the ego that comes with 222 million subscribers. “Netflix is a factory,” said one victim of the awards gauntlet.
Will this entire narrative change if *Dog* or *Belfast* triumphs on Sunday? Probably. And both *CODA* or *Dog* would be the first pure streaming release to win the top Oscar, so either way, we’re about to see a huge and telling moment in movie history. If it’s *CODA*, Tim Cook will credit the filmmakers, which he absolutely should. But it’s his own handling of Hollywood that most allowed this moment to happen.
Credit...Illustration by Tom Hodgkinson; David M. Benett/Getty Images (Jay Penske)
A quiet Hollywood power broker with a famous name goes on a buying spree that has given him Rolling Stone, South by Southwest and a private island. What more does he want?
Credit...Illustration by Tom Hodgkinson; David M. Benett/Getty Images (Jay Penske)
- March 26, 2022
For the media executive Jay Penske, [awards season](https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/awards-season) is money season. It’s the time of year when Disney and Netflix, along with the other studios and streamers, demonstrate their love for the talent by spending millions on For Your Consideration ads in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, as well as the niche outlets Gold Derby, IndieWire and TVLine. All of those publications, which cover things of special interest to Oscar and Emmy voters, are part of Penske Media Corporation.
Mr. Penske, a 43-year-old son of a billionaire, has expanded his company greatly in the last few years, pulling off a series of buy-low acquisitions that have turned him into a behind-the-scenes power broker. In addition to the Hollywood trades, he owns [Rolling Stone](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/business/dealbook/rolling-stone-penske-media-wenner.html), Billboard, Vibe and [Women’s Wear Daily](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/business/media/penske-to-buy-fairchild-media-for-100-million.html), and he has a controlling stake in the annual South by Southwest festival.
“Jay Penske has become the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment publications,” said [Stephen Galloway](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/books/review-truly-madly-vivien-leigh-laurence-olivier-stephen-galloway.html), a former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter who is now the dean of the Chapman University film school.
The flurry of deals, announced in a steady drumbeat of news releases, was not all that sexy, given Mr. Penske’s focus on old-school publications at a time when [Substack](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/business/media/substack-newsletters-journalists.html) and [TikTok](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html) were hot topics in media circles.
But the moves have made him someone to be reckoned with, a mogul who can shape perceptions of Hollywood and its players. And his company has become a prime landing spot for the tens of millions spent annually on Oscars and Emmys advertising, a market that has heated up in recent years as streaming platforms [spare no expense](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/media/netflix-academy-awards-oscars.html) in their quests for prestige and attention.
Mr. Penske made himself into a publisher after growing up the youngest son of the automotive industry titan [Roger Penske](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/sports/autoracing/roger-penske-indycar.html), a onetime professional racecar driver, known as the Captain, who started his business, Penske Corporation, once his racing days were done. The father’s success made the Penske name all but inescapable. On any street you may see one of the more than 360,000 trucks and vans belonging to his transportation fleet, with the family name in bold black lettering on the side.
Up until a decade ago, Jay Penske was one of many scions looking to move upward in Los Angeles. From the start, he was driven by a desire to make the family name known for something other than his father’s accomplishments, said the media entrepreneur [Rafat Ali](https://skift.com/), who met Mr. Penske more than a dozen years ago. “I think he has a chip on his shoulder and wants to prove himself,” he said. “He was hustling back then not to be known as Penske — to prove himself not to the world, but to his family.”
Mr. Penske, who declined to be interviewed for this article, entered publishing in earnest in 2009, when he bought [Deadline Hollywood Daily](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business/media/17blog.html), a take-no-prisoners entertainment news site started by the journalist Nikki Finke. A few years later, it became apparent that his ambitions went beyond watching over a scrappy digital outlet, when he set his sights on [Variety](https://www.google.com/search?q=penske+buys+variety+nyt&oq=penske+buys+variety+nyt&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60.4940j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), the age-old show business publication that was challenged by the transition to online media.
The veteran Hollywood executive Sandy Climan put him in touch with Daniel S. Loeb, a hedge fund investor, and the two hit it off over breakfast at the Montage Beverly Hills. Months later Mr. Penske called Mr. Loeb to say he was closing in on a Variety deal — but his financing had collapsed.
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Credit...via Variety
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Credit...Victoria Will (cover image), via Hollywood Reporter
“He’s super-close to his dad,” Mr. Loeb said. “His dad could have written that check in a heartbeat. But I think Jay would rather have let the deal go off the rails before going to his dad for anything other than emotional support.”
Mr. Loeb’s fund provided the $26 million in debt and equity Mr. Penske needed to clinch the sale. (That investment made Mr. Loeb a part owner of Variety; Mr. Penske has since bought back his stake, Mr. Loeb and a Penske Media spokeswoman said.)
After acquiring Variety, he continued his spree, picking up faded properties at bargain-bin prices. In 2014 he bought [Fairchild Fashion Media](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/business/media/penske-to-buy-fairchild-media-for-100-million.html), the owner of Women’s Wear Daily, from Condé Nast. In 2017 he bought Jann Wenner’s 51 percent stake in [Rolling Stone](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/business/dealbook/rolling-stone-penske-media-wenner.html); two years later he acquired the [remaining 49 percent](https://www.google.com/search?q=penske+completes+rolling+stone+purchase&oq=penske+compl&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0i512j69i57j0i22i30l7.1541j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8), after a cash infusion from a Saudi company. In 2020 Mr. Penske bought 80 percent of The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe.
Last year he made his move on South by Southwest, becoming a majority shareholder in the annual tech, film and music festival, which had run into money troubles because of the pandemic. (It made its return this month, after having been shut down the last two years.) Along the way Mr. Penske added ARTnews, Art in America, Dirt, Beauty Inc. and Spy.
“Jay grew up with great wealth, but in L.A. there are rooms that are not open to just any rich guy,” said [Matthew Belloni](https://puck.news/author/matthew-belloni/), who leads entertainment industry coverage for a new publication, [Puck](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/business/media/jon-kelly-newsletter-start-up.html), and who was the top editor of The Hollywood Reporter before Mr. Penske took over. “Owning all of these publications makes him a must-know.”
In an industry that rewards attention seekers, he stands apart because of his penchant for privacy. He avoids red carpet events, almost never gives interviews and has no social media footprint. “He prefers to let the brands speak for themselves,” a Penske Media spokeswoman said.
Credit...Illustration by Tom Hodgkinson; Xavier Bonilla/NurPhoto, via Getty Images
## ‘Dragon, Dragon’
Mr. Penske lives in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles with his wife, Elaine Irwin, 52, a former Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein model who was previously married to the rock star John Mellencamp, and their daughter. He keeps an apartment in New York and recently bought a [private island in the Bahamas](https://robbreport.com/travel/destinations/bahamas-blue-island-private-jet-2729234/).
He grew up in New York City, Monmouth County, N.J., and Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where Penske Corporation has its headquarters. Family vacations took place at Deer Valley in Utah, a ski resort that was partly owned by his father from 1987 to 2017. “They were a country club family,” said Tom Bernard, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, who lived for a time near the Penskes and knew the young Jay.
One of five siblings in a boisterous, competitive family, he distinguished himself in hockey and lacrosse at the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey, and Orchard Lake St. Mary’s, a Catholic prep school in Michigan. He was an all-state hockey player, and in 1997 he was named an All-American lacrosse player. A photo of him still hangs in a St. Mary’s athletic facility, showing him mid-stride on the lacrosse field in his No. 7 jersey, which the school retired.
His father is a grand figure, beloved in the racing world. He started Penske Corporation in 1969 after racking up 55 victories behind the wheel. One of his company’s divisions owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the home of the Indy 500. Another subsidiary runs Team Penske, the organization whose drivers have won more than 600 races. In 2019, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jay Penske and Ms. Irwin were among the guests in the Oval Office who looked on as former President Donald J. Trump placed the medal around the patriarch’s neck.
Jay showed signs that he would go his own way not long after his 2001 graduation from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to Los Angeles and threw himself into businesses that had nothing to do with the nuts, bolts and engine noise of the family trade. An early venture was Firefly Mobile, a company that offered phones designed for children, with large buttons. He also bought promising URLs, including Mail.com, which he built into an email portal business and eventually sold at a profit.
The writer [A. Scott Berg](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/books/review/a-scott-berg-by-the-book.html), who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Charles Lindbergh and a National Book Award for his study of the editor Maxwell Perkins, was a friend and mentor to Mr. Penske when he was new to Los Angeles. The two bonded over their shared love of books, Mr. Berg said in an interview, adding that he was struck by the younger man’s apparent distaste for Hollywood and the media.
“When I met Jay Penske, he viewed two industries with contempt: show business and magazines,” Mr. Berg said. “For whatever reason, he seems to have changed his mind. Maybe he recognized their commercial value, or maybe he came to appreciate their content. One thing I knew from the night I met him in the summer of 2002 was that he was a serious bibliophile.”
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Credit...Wonwoo Lee/ZUMA, via Alamy
Mr. Penske gave full expression to his passion when he opened a bookshop in the Beverly Glen neighborhood of Los Angeles. He named it Dragon Books, after a collection of tales he had loved as a child, “[Dragon, Dragon](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dragon_Dragon/NorOCOKDMLUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover),” by John Gardner. The store, with its 18th-century French mantel, wood paneling and Doric columns, became a favorite of antiquarian book lovers. Two hundred people, including his parents, attended the opening in 2006, and Mr. Berg did a brief write-up for Vanity Fair.
“While a serial prep-school expellee, he became a serious reader of 19th-century novels,” he wrote of Mr. Penske. “Soon he began collecting, starting with works by Kierkegaard and Mencken. When moving to Los Angeles in 2002, he discovered he had 28,000 volumes, half of which he’s now selling to sustain his passion for new acquisitions. He shelved each book himself, and he often mans the cash register.”
He didn’t hold himself entirely aloof from his father’s world. In 2007, with the investor Steve Luczo, he started an IndyCar team, Luczo Dragon Racing. Now fully owned and operated by Mr. Penske and called Dragon Racing, it has competed in the Formula E racing series, for electric cars, for nearly a decade.
In 2009, he dove into publishing with the purchase of Deadline. Built on Ms. Finke’s lively voice, it was a gleefully rude digital upstart that made Variety and The Hollywood Reporter seem like house organs for the movie studios and talent agencies. Mr. Penske and Ms. Finke added some reporting muscle when they lured Nellie Andreeva away from The Hollywood Reporter and Mike Fleming from Variety. Deadline’s minuscule staff regularly scooped the competition.
With Mr. Penske’s entree into the media business came media attention. The gossip site [Gawker](https://www.gawker.com/5301581/jay-penske-the-hard-partying-si-newhouse-wannabe-of-bel-air) took notice of him — at age 30 he was seen at parties in the company of the Benihana heiress Devon Aoki — and labeled him “the hard-partying Si Newhouse Wannabe of Bel Air,” a reference to the longtime Condé Nast chairman.
Ms. Finke left Deadline after Mr. Penske’s purchase of Variety amid reports that she preferred that he remain focused on Deadline, rather than attempt to revive a competitor. She started a new blog and used it to refer to him as “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” After mediation with Mr. Penske, she [shut down the site](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/business/media/nikki-finke-goes-silent-in-reported-legal-dispute-with-penske-media.html); since then, she has not reported on the entertainment industry. (Ms. Finke declined to comment.)
Her onetime colleague Mr. Fleming had nothing but praise for the publisher. In an interview, he noted that Mr. Penske flew to New York to attend [the wake](https://deadline.com/2012/11/mike-fleming-is-back-and-most-grateful-370855/) for his father, who died in 2012 from injuries sustained during Hurricane Sandy. “That told me everything I needed to know,” said Mr. Fleming, who is now Deadline’s co-editor-in-chief with Ms. Andreeva.
The visit took place during an eventful time for Mr. Penske. The year 2012 was also when he got arrested in Nantucket. According to a Nantucket Police Department report, Mr. Penske and his brother Mark were urinating in a parking lot outside the Nantucket Yacht Club late at night when a woman approached. “Jay turned and continued to urinate on her boots,” the report said. After the woman alerted the police, the brothers apparently tried “to flee.”
An officer intercepted Jay, and his brother was found on the back staircase of an apartment building, according to the report. The Penskes were locked in a police station cell, only to be released soon afterward. Coverage of the incident was widespread, with reports in Auto Week, The Daily Mail, ESPN and Politico, among other publications.
Mr. Penske has not spoken publicly of that night and has kept his silence when faced with public criticism in other instances. One came after his 2017 purchase of a Black church in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles for $6.3 million. Mr. Penske’s plan to convert it into a home for his family [drew protests](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-05/column-should-a-black-church-in-venice-be-turned-into-a-mansion-for-a-rich-white-family). He has since sold the property.
In 2018, he accepted a $200 million investment from the [Saudi Research and Media Group](https://www.srmg.com/en/home), a publicly traded company. The investment became a point of contention later that year, when Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who wrote a regular opinion column for The Washington Post, was murdered and dismembered in a Saudi consulate office in Turkey. The United States government concluded that the killing had been carried out by a team [reporting directly](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/jamal-khashoggi-killing-cia-report.html) to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.
Mr. Penske did not publicly address the investment, even as his publications reported on the pressure faced by companies with financial ties to Saudi Arabia. In some articles, the Penske outlets mistakenly reported that his company had received money from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is overseen by Prince Mohammed, rather than the Saudi Research and Media Group. After [The Wrap](https://www.yahoo.com/video/why-does-jay-penske-media-011203202.html) reported on the matter, a number of Penske Media articles were updated to correct the error.
“PMC has disclosed the small minority investment from SRMG to all of its stakeholders and brands,” a Penske Media spokeswoman said in a statement. “Any statement to the contrary is purely an attempt to create a false narrative. It is further disclosed in every article any PMC brand writes about Saudi Arabia.”
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Credit...Brent Smith/Reuters, via Alamy
## ‘This Guy Is Serious’
Ten Penske Media employees interviewed for this article describe their boss as someone who stepped up for publications in trouble. “Jay Penske came in and saved this business,” said Dea Lawrence, the chief operating and marketing officer of Variety. “He is a hero to the publishing world.” His company has more than 1,350 employees, according to the Penske Media vice chairman Gerry Byrne, nearly half of them journalists and content creators.
After the company bought a controlling stake in Vibe and Billboard, which have offices in New York, he flew there to meet with each new employee. “This was in the middle of the pandemic, and so I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is serious!’” said Datwon Thomas, the editor in chief of Vibe. Mr. Thomas met Mr. Penske for lunch at Bryant Park Grill in Midtown. “Jay knew a lot about me and my background,” he said, “and he knew a lot about Vibe.” Four other Penske Media employees said that Mr. Penske makes a practice of meeting with each of his new employees soon after acquiring a property.
Mr. Penske will sometimes play hardball with the staff. When [Tatiana Siegel](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/author/tatiana-siegel/), a longtime Hollywood Reporter journalist, accepted a job at [The Ankler](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/business/media/ankler-janice-min-richard-rushfield.html), a subscription newsletter started by the show business writer Richard Rushfield that has expanded under the former Hollywood Reporter top editor Janice Min, Mr. Penske put a stop to the move. Ms. Siegel’s contract included a noncompete clause, and Mr. Penske held her to it. The parties eventually agreed that Ms. Siegel would decamp to Rolling Stone, committing 80 percent of her work to it, with the remainder going to The Ankler.
“Jay has been by far the best owner I’ve worked under at The Hollywood Reporter,” said Ms. Siegel, who joined the magazine in 2003. “My situation was unique, and it was resolved amicably.”
The upstart publications Puck and The Ankler pose a new threat to Penske Media’s hold on entertainment coverage. The competition is reminiscent of what took place more than a decade ago, when Deadline had the old guard quaking. Mr. Rushfield said that start-ups may have an advantage over entrenched publications, because they are not beholden to anyone.
“If you’re at a publication like Variety, for example, the number of things a studio has over you is hard to keep track of,” Mr. Rushfield said. “You need friendly access to studio executives and agents gift wrapping your scoops. You need people for covers. You need people to speak at your conferences.” The result, he continued, is that “publications with different business models, and more aggressive reporting, can elbow their way in.”
Mr. Penske may be able to counter the newcomers through the magic of synergy. The addition of South by Southwest has given him another way to promote all things Penske. The latest iteration of the festival, which is in Austin, Texas, included concerts hosted by Rolling Stone and live episodes of podcasts from The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.
Shortly before the first day, [Variety](https://variety.com/2022/film/festivals/sxsw-austin-film-festival-in-person-covid-1235200114/) published a glowing article headlined “‘SXSW Is My Whole Life’: An Ode to the Austin Festival as It Makes Its In-Person Return.” You can read it online, where, up until Oscar voting ended on March 22, it was surrounded by For Your Consideration ads.
# My guiding principles after 20 years of programming
*🇨🇳* [*FLMN*](https://twitter.com/flmn) *kindly translated this to Chinese* [*here*](https://www.jitao.tech/blog/2020/03/my-guiding-principles-after-20-years-of-programming/)*.*
I’ve been programming since 1999 and this year I’ve officially coded for 20+ years. I started with Basic but soon jumped into Pascal and C and then learned object oriented programming (OOP) with Delphi and C++. In 2006 I started with Java and in 2011 I started with JavaScript. I’ve worked with a wide range of businesses from robotics, fin tech, med tech to media and telecom. Sometimes I had a different hat as a researcher, CTO, TPM (technical product manager), teacher, system architect or TL (technical leader) but I’ve always been coding. I’ve worked on some products that served millions of people, and some that failed before being released. I worked as a consultant and I even had my own startup. I have spent lots of time on open source projects, closed source projects and internally open source projects (proprietary code that is developed by a community inside the company). I’ve worked with tiny microcontrollers all the way to mobile and desktop apps to cloud servers and lately serverless.
For my 20 years programming anniversary, I tried to list the top principles that have been accumulated over the years as my guiding principles through my career:
1. Don’t fight the tools: libraries, language, platform, etc. Use as much native constructs as possible. Don’t [bend](https://medium.com/free-code-camp) the technology, but don’t bend the problem either. Pick the **right tool** for the job or you’ll have to find the right job for the tool you got.
2. You don’t write the code for the machines, you write it for your colleagues and your **future self** (unless it’s a throw away project or you’re writing assembly). Write it for the junior ones as a reference.
3. Any significant and rewarding piece of software is the result of collaboration. Communicate effectively and collaborate openly. Trust others and earn their trust. Respect people more than code. Lead by example. Convert your followers to leaders.
4. Divide and conquer. Write isolated modules with separate concerns which are loosely coupled. Test each part separately and together. Keep the tests close to reality but test the edge cases too.
5. Deprecate yourself. Don’t be the go-to person for the code. Optimize it for people to find their way fixing bugs and adding features to the code. Free yourself to move on to the next project/company. Don’t own the code or you’ll never grow beyond that.
6. Security comes in layers: each layer needs to be assessed individually but also in relation to the whole. Risk is a business decision and has direct relation to vulnerability and probability. Each product/organization has a different risk appetite (the risk they are willing to take for a bigger win). Often these 3 concerns fight with each other: UX, Security, Performance.
7. Realize that every code has a life cycle and will die. Sometimes it dies in its infancy before seeing the light of production. Be OK with letting go. Know the difference between 4 categories of features and where to put your time and energy:
**Core:** like an engine in a car. The product is meaningless without it.
**Necessary:** like a car’s spare wheel. It’s rarely used but when needed, its function decides the success of the system.
**Added value:** like a car’s cup-holder. It’s nice to have but the product is perfectly usable without it.
**Unique Selling Point:** the main reason people should buy your product instead of your rivals. For example, your car is the best off-road vehicle.
8. Don’t attach your identity to your code. Don’t attach anyone’s identity to their code. Realize that people are separate from the artifacts they produce. Don’t take code criticism personally but be very careful when criticizing others’ code.
9. Tech debt is like fast food. Occasionally it’s acceptable but if you get used to it, it’ll kill the product faster than you think (and in a painful way).
10. When making decisions about the solution all things equal, go for this priority:
**But don’t follow that blindly because it is dependent on the nature of the product. Like any career, the more experience you earn, the more you can find the right balance for each given situation. For example, when designing a game engine, performance has the highest priority, but when creating a banking app, security is the most important factor.
11. Bugs’ genitals are called **copy & paste**. That’s how they reproduce. Always read what you copy, always audit what you import. Bugs take shelter in **complexity**. “Magic” is fine in my dependency but not in my code.
12. Don’t only write code for the happy scenario. Write [good errors](https://medium.com/hackernoon/what-makes-a-good-error-710d02682a68) that answer why it happened, how it was detected and what can be done to resolve it. Validate all system input (including user input): fail early but recover from errors whenever possible. Assume the user hold a gun: put enough effort into your errors to **convince** them to shoot something other than your head!
13. Don’t use **dependencies** unless the cost of importing, maintaining, dealing with their edge cases/bugs and refactoring when they don’t satisfy the needs is significantly less than the code that you own.
14. Stay clear from [**hype-driven development**](https://blog.daftcode.pl/hype-driven-development-3469fc2e9b22). But learn all you can. Always have **pet projects**.
15. Get out of your comfort zone. Learn every day. **Teach** what you learn. If you’re the master, you’re not learning. Expose yourself to other languages, technologies, culture and stay curious.
16. Good code doesn’t need documentation, great code is **well documented** so that anyone who hasn’t been part of the evolution, trial & error process and requirements that led to the current status can be productive with it. An undocumented feature is a non-existing feature. A non-existing feature shouldn’t have code.
17. Avoid overriding, inheritance and implicit smartness as much as possible. Write pure functions. They are easier to test and reason about. Any function that’s not pure should be a class. Any code construct that has a different function, should have a different name.
18. Never start coding (making a solution) unless you fully understand the **problem**. It’s very normal to spend more time listening and reading than typing code. Understand the domain before starting to code. A problem is like a maze. You need to progressively go through the code-test-improve cycle and explore the problem space till you reach the end.
19. Don’t solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Don’t do **speculative programming**. Only make the code extensible if it is a validated assumption that it’ll be extended. Chances are by the time it gets extended, the problem definition looks different from when you wrote the code. Don’t **overengineer**: focus on solving the problem at hand and an effective solution implemented in an efficient manner.
20. Software is more fun when it’s made together. Build a sustainable **community**. Listen. Inspire. Learn. Share.
I don’t claim to be an authority in software development. These are just the wisdom I earned along the way. I’m sure this list will be more mature after another 20 years.
If you liked what you read, follow me here or on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexewerlof/).
iOS
3 years ago