My father has been cleaning up the garage. I saw him this weekend and asked him how it’s going. “It’s getting there,” he said. My father is 98 and he’s been working on this project for decades. The garage, it should be noted, is already pretty damn...

My parents rotated their mattress this week.  Dad keeps a schedule written on an envelope that gets tucked between the mattress and the box spring. It was the seventh time in almost 25 years. It was last rotated on the Ides of March 2024. Before that:...

Imagine winning a Pulitzer Prize without knowing you entered. That’s evidently what happened to Bloomberg News, according to an account by Lachlan Cartwright in the newsletter Breaker Media. Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait got a call from...

One thing you won’t find in the SparkNotes version of the Great Gatsby is the memorable last line: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  It’s among the most enduring phrases in American literature, but it...

Jefferies CEO Rich Handler is out with his annual list of suggestions for how to succeed at the firm in particular and life in general.  “What You Need to Know as a Summer Intern” is a list of 20 recommendations for how to get the most out of a few...

I met up with StockStory Founder Adam Hejl 👋 at the Eska Bakery in the Karlin section of Prague. I had the scrambled eggs with onion and chives. He had the poached egg with fermented wheat and mushrooms. Karlin has become the destination for the...

It’s possible to travel fast and light. My perspective on when and where and how to travel is being influenced by two influencers.  Jeremy Maluf and Kevin Droniak are two New York City-based content creators who document their adventures on Instagram....

Sign up to receive Surface Area or follow me on Linkedin or Twitter. Book a meeting here to talk about ghostwriting from my agency, Principals Media. Business Insider dropped a bombshell this week when it said it would lay off more than a fifth of...

Sign up to receive Surface Area or follow me on Linkedin or Twitter. Book a meeting here to talk about ghostwriting from my agency, Principals Media. There’s a Memorial Day parade every year in the beach town where my parents live.  I didn’t make it...

Sign up to receive Surface Area or follow me on Linkedin or Twitter. Book a meeting here to talk about ghostwriting from my agency, Principals Media. I spent an evening last week in the basement of The Whiskey Cellar, a bar in the East Village, listening...