What’s it like to be extraordinarily wealthy, brain-wise? Who and what are we hoping to see at the Oscars? And which of our critics is now married to Daniel Radcliffe? Answers ahead.
RICH PEOPLE THINGS
This Is Your Brain on ‘Being a Billionaire’
Money changes (almost) everything.
Lane Brown found a handful of one-percenters who were willing to talk to him about what it’s like, psychologically, to be that rich. It was tough to get people who were willing to chat, with one exception — Mark Cuban, who responded to a cold email the same day and was super chatty. It may be that life without any friction is kinda boring. We’re so lucky we’ll never know! There’s a lot to unpack here, including whether current TV shows and novels portray rich people accurately. I also wanted to talk to Lane about the practical side of writing a piece like this. How did he win these billionaires over?
I hear there was a bit of a tortured wrangling process involved in getting sources for this article.
It was horrible. I sent at least almost a billion requests for this, and so little came back that it was just pathetic. I sent so many requests, and I think I ended up finally talking to about a dozen people. I used to wrangle celebrities for this magazine and that was miserable, too — my rate of success was not great, but I was also pretty good at it. I got Taylor Swift once without even promising her a cover. I got David Letterman after one phone call. And this was like a tenth of that success rate. Nobody wanted to talk about this topic.
One of the things I enjoyed about the piece is that it enacts the same thing that some of the subjects were complaining about, which is that portrayals of rich people tend to be flattening caricatures — rich people are either ridiculous or depraved, sometimes both, on TV. One of your subjects said that he had to go back to Dickens to find a good rich person in a novel. And the reader almost inevitably draws the conclusion that it’s because they don’t exist. Do you think it’s possible to be a good rich person? Are there, in your experience, good rich people?
I think there are definitely normal rich people. None of my sources were in the Epstein files.
Oh, well, in that case!
Haha, yes, so, they therefore have my full endorsement. But really, I don’t think that the money is necessarily the thing that makes all of these evil billionaires evil. I did look into the studies. There are studies that say that you lose all your empathy once you become rich. And if you look at the design of these studies, they’re so flimsy that it’s hard to take them seriously. But, yeah, like David Roberts says in the story, rich people run the gamut. One of the things that made me interested in this topic is that every single TV show is about rich people now. I just watched All Her Fault, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. Sirens, The Perfect Couple …
They all have Nicole Kidman in them.
Whether she’s there or not, she’s there in spirit. If you’re wondering who murdered the poor person in the water at the beach, it’s always Nicole Kidman’s husband. And so that just becomes a little annoying.
It never crossed my mind to be annoyed by this.
Yeah, the portrayals of them, they’re usually dumb, and it’s like, some of them must have figured out something. Even if you’re reading this from the perspective that all of these people are evil, do you really want to underestimate your enemy like that?
Who was the most approachable rich person you interviewed?
Mark Cuban, who is also the richest person in the story. I emailed him at, I think it was like 12:13 or something on a Tuesday afternoon, and then by 5:50, I got a text message that said, “Hey, it’s Mark. I’m in my car and I have time. Want to talk?” God bless him, he was just about as approachable as a guy who once owned the Dallas Mavericks could possibly be.
AWARDS SEASON
7 Good Reasons to Watch the Oscars
Spoiler: Some of us are just tuning in for Matt Berry.
Here’s what to expect from the Oscars, as well as our “Oscar Futures” columnist’s final predictions. If you haven’t seen all the nominated movies yet, here’s how to do that. Some of us here at the magazine are watching the Oscars for work, but not everyone is watching because they’re professionally obligated.
“I’m interested in how Sinners performs. I’m not the world’s No. 1 Sinners fan, but I am a huge One Battle After Another hater. I liked Michael B. Jordan’s SAG Awards speech, and the prospect of him winning Best Actor is exciting.”
“I am curious if they will mention the L.A. fires even once.”
“I wonder who will wear ‘ICE Out’ pins.”
“As a Conan diehard, I’ll be watching again this year.”
“Even if I were not professionally obligated, I would be tuning in to hear Matt Berry wondering what the fuck he was doing there.”
“I’m tuning in to the Rob Reiner tribute.”
“Because I live less than a mile from the venue, I’ll be paying attention to this.”
THEATER
Sara Holdren and Daniel Radcliffe Are Now Married
Congrats to the happy pretend couple!
If you go to Daniel Radcliffe’s audience-participation show Every Brilliant Thing, you might be conscripted into playing a role in the show. That’s what happened to our critic Sara, whom Radcliffe recruited to portray his love interest. According to the show’s reps, he had no idea that it was a press night or that she was a critic. Fate brought us here.
But what about your marriage?! I hear you holler. Well, we met in the college library. He lent me Twilight and I lent him Percy Jackson and the Olympians. (We were into YA, I guess.) He took me to meet his parents, who seemed great — they played and sang jazz around the piano. His mother was bright and funny and dramatic, though I know that’s only one side of her, and I saw how scared he was for her. I proposed (I know!). People threw confetti at our wedding, and his dad made a wonderful toast. And this is the potential of Every Brilliant Thing: Though it can stray into PSA territory, you can never really resent it because then a shy-seeming, silver-haired stranger stands up and actually starts to cry as he tells you and Daniel Radcliffe how much he loves you and how beautiful you are together.
The magic of live theater means we’ll never get to witness this exact version of the show, but we can still go see it and hope something equally special happens.
Click Your Way Out
Like I keep saying, the CBK headband is too painful to wear!
But I love the cheeky earrings in Jalil Johnson’s closet sale.
I Love Boosters, explained.
Perimenopause keeps finding new ways to suck.
There’s grace and beauty in having only one pierced ear.
“A24 this A24 that have you ever considered A24 hour stay at the psych ward?”
People literally in my DMs asking me if I think Connor Storrie will be at the Oscars after-parties. How the hell should I know??? (Okay, fine, he’s busy shooting a movie in New Jersey.)
Ha, what’s normal defined as? Rich people are pathological given their circumstance.