What is up with this new CBS video?
Free letter today.
Good morning everyone.
I had a lunch meeting yesterday afternoon at The Odeon and it felt especially cozy. I learned that the restaurant replaced their heating system a few years ago. There was a lot of good neighbor-ing happening on the streets of Tribeca, strangers helping each other carry strollers over deep icy puddles.
My second meeting was high above Central Park, which was still mostly white with snow. It got me thinking about what the other best views of the park are. There’s the sixth floor of Bergdorf Gooodman, over by where The Row’s stuff is. MO Lounge in the Mandarin Oriental (where that famous photo of Ariana and Ethan was taken) is a bit higher up and also has a sprawling view of the park. (Has anyone been to the spa in there recently? How was it?) Sometimes I wonder if Andrew Ross Sorkin has a deal with God where DealBook aligns with peak foliage season — the backdrop of his annual conference, at Jazz at Lincoln Center, is a set of expansive windows that look over the park. And then of course, from bundled up within the park, you can climb to the top of Belvedere Castle.
Today’s letter includes: Leon Black at the Knicks game, Bari Weiss fanfic, using liquified mushrooms to make vegan caviar, and Vogue’s new social media manager will have Fridays off.
Hundreds of protestors gathered at the Hilton Garden Inn in Tribeca last night, where ICE employees are rumored to be staying. A Feed Me reader sent us a video of the scene outside. Per The New York Times, dozens of demonstrators were arrested after occupying the hotel’s lobby.
Leon Black made an appearance in a recent Knicks Instagram post.
Pete Wells published a thoughtful essay about developing better habits with his beverages. I read this after dropping two pebble-sized sugar cubes into my coffee. “Sometimes it seemed to me that I had a richer, more rewarding relationship with alcohol than I did with all but a handful of humans,” he wrote. “It was an inexhaustible field of study, an incandescent companion during great meals, a reliable consolation on dull ones. And it brought me close to my real friends, at least some of them, some of the time.”
Max Stein, manager to Leandra Medine, Casey Lewis, Chris Black, and yours truly, was profiled by New York Magazine this week.
Bari Weiss is encouraging her newsroom to double down on “scoops.” At her first all-staff meeting at CBS this week, she said “We are not producing a product enough people want,” and that reporters should focus on getting more “scoops of ideas, scoops of explanation.” I keep thinking about how her newsroom keeps leaking items to the press. If that trust doesn’t currently exist, it probably never will.
And I really hate the way this video of all the new contributors was edited. I don’t know why the CBS team didn’t have all of these people come into the studio to create a cohesive video. It says to me that Bari is rushing to get announcements out. As one friend pointed out this morning, she could have at least had people introduce themselves to provide some sort of consistency. This is how I imagine the conversation went:
Bari: “Cut a promo of our new contributors with old mismatched podcast clips.”
Editor: “Are you sure? We could make a good promo with a week of time and a studio.”
Bari: “NO. Old clips. Use royalty-free music that makes it sound like a truck commercial. Use big whoosh hit sounds like a 90s movie trailer. Make sure you use a mix of serif and san-serif fonts.”
Going forward, this is always a safe format to introduce a group of people: green screen + chair + heavy contrast black and white filter.
CBS News@CBSNewsTough questions. Straight answers. CBS News has gathered the sharpest minds on the topics that matter most. @elliotackerman @PeterAttiaMD @AlinejadMasih @arthurbrooks Roger Carstens Caroline Chambers Clare de Boer Sir Niall Ferguson Roland Fryer, Jr. @hubermanlab @coldxman5:19 PM · Jan 27, 2026 · 465K Views247 Replies · 87 Reposts · 827 LikesOne of my readers built this site for browsing wine lists at restaurants around New York.
Vogue is hiring a social media manager. The role is Sunday-Thursday, which is an interesting note. Maybe Sundays have been proven to be higher-engagement days than Friday.
I learned from Brenda Weischer’s podcast this week that Caviar Kaspia serves vegan versions of their baked potatoes with truffle instead of caviar. Through some additional research, I learned that the vegetarian version of the caviar is made from liquified and spherized truffle. Lovely…
Sam Youkilis is gifted at image-making. His Instagram feed has changed the way a certain subset of millennials travel and capture their own vacations (although wise travelers know it’s a fool’s errand to try to replicate someone else’s vacation). It’s impressive to see how his work has transferred from cinematic iPhone videos to a short documentary made with a whole team. I hope we see more work like this from him this year.
The most common forms of male contraception right now are condoms and vasectomies. Bloomberg wrote about the new forms of male birth control (from gel to oral pills) that are being developed, and how funding has been an issue because of concerns that men won’t actually want to use these methods.
Skip the trip to Sephora. Fara Homidi Beauty founder Fara Homidi will help you shade-match via DM today.
I’m very excited to see who ends up getting the new Wet Paint columnist role at Artnet. Writing the art world’s most popular gossip newsletter is a potentially life-changing role…
Alex Mill’s spring collection looks like it was put together with color swatches from David Hockney’s “Self Portrait with Blue Guitar.” Alex Mill’s brand director, Rose Florence, told me she shot most of the collection on iPhone and Super 8.
Thanks for pointing out how truly wild that CBS video was - so many totally meaningless soundbites, composed haphazardly. Let's berate employees for "not producing a product enough people want"...and then produce content no people want.
Also: would women trust men’s word that they’re on a birth control pill?