Only time will tell what lasting innovations will come out of this Age of Ideas, but one thing is certain: There are a lot of ideas. Last week, Scott Salyers, a casting director for ABC’s Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to a panel of investors, positioned himself in a classroom at Columbia […]

Robert Benmosche, the colorful, self-described “in-your-face” CEO that brought insurance company AIG back from the brink of collapse (with a heavy assist from the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and of course the American taxpayer), has announced his retirement. His resignation comes five years after taking over management in 2009, at the height of the financial […]

According to Wikipedia, there are nearly 22,000,000 registered “Wikipedians”: contributors to the online encyclopedia’s treasure trove of content, responsible for writing and editing everything from entries on the Presidents of the United States to theList of Fictional Raccoons. Of those users, “Only a minority are regular contributors,” according to the site. “And only a minority […]

As Barney Frank once told Tim Geithner, you aren’t going to be able to sell anyone with the slogan, “things could have been worse.” Nonetheless, the former Treasury Secretary was doing his best last week in New York, during what his press person called a “three week blitz,” to promote his memoir, Stress Test: Reflections […]

There was a problem with the cookies. When Jordan Metzner and Juan Dulanto launched Washio, it had already distinguished itself from other laundry and dry-cleaning services. There was no storefront, no rotating rack, no little pieces of paper to keep track of. Customers ordered their clothing picked up via the website or a mobile app, […]

Just before Christmas last year, the doorbell rang at our apartment in Brooklyn. It was UPS, bearing a large package for my partner, Josh. “Is that it?” he asked, bounding down the stairs, eyes on fire. “Is that my sous vide?” A flurry of paper and Styrofoam peanuts revealed a stainless-steel object, which Josh carefully […]

“Oh, that old thing,” Salman Rushdie groans when you bring up the fatwa issued against him by the Ayatollah over his depiction of Mohammed in his novel The Satanic Verses, recently the subject of a lengthy and oddly nostalgic Vanity Fair piece. “It was 25 years ago!” he says. But Vanity Fair says he still […]

You’d think five years of being protested, vilified, burned in effigy, berated by Congress, and compared to blood-sucking cephalopods would break a man. That being called to court to testify not once but twice in civil trials against corrupt managers at the firm he oversees might rob him of whatever shred of joie de vivre […]

Boobs! Boyfriends! Baywatch! Pamela Anderson is iconic for her role as the ultimate babe. Now she would like you to know there are brains inside that body, thank you very much. But is this a woman on a quest to find her true self—or has Pam been one step ahead of us all along? “Omigod!” […]

Andrew Ross Sorkin looks vaguely confused. A while back, he interviewed eccentric hedge-fund squillionaire Ray Dalio, who sent him to a meditation class, and now all of a sudden, the New York Times scribe and CNBC host is here, onstage at the Axa building on a Tuesday night, hosting an event titled “Meditation: Creativity, Performance, and Stress.” […]

“How many Americans know that I am here in New York right now?” Chen Guangbiao asks, sitting in an armchair between his translator and his publicist in his suite at the Essex House. “How many media outlets have written about me?” An assistant offers him a cup of jasmine tea, which he blows on pensively. […]

Sometimes New York City feels like a small town. So it is when Ben Lerer arrives to dinner on a recent Tuesday night at Empellón Taqueria in the West Village. Sitting at one table is a girl he met in Ibiza a few summers back. At the next is one of the founders of Birchbox, […]

The weather keeps changing. Five minutes ago, the sky above Key Biscayne was clear blue, the palm trees were swaying in time with the music, and the sun was shining like it been hired for the occasion. Which, given the occasion, didn’t seem entirely implausible. But then, just like that, the air went from sultry […]

Earlier this year, when he was preparing to leave his position as secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner gave a series of interviews,including one to New York. Because his post-office plans were a subject of much speculation at the time by everyone, including his own big-mouthed father-in-law, Geithner told New York he had instituted a Rule, which was to […]

Can someone get Richard Parsons a proper drink? “I should have asked for a double,” he says, regarding the miniature glass of Moscato in front of him. He cranes his head and beckons the waitress, who whisks it away. “I should have asked for a triple,” he says, when she returns with the glass only […]