Good morning,

It was another amazing week here at Puck: Teddy Schleifer and Eriq Gardner weighed S.B.F.’s fate; Lauren Sherman revealed some Arnault fils intrigue; Dylan Byers unearthed a Jeff Bezos frontrunner at The Washington Post; William D. Cohan explained what the “Smiling Crocodile” wants from Bob Iger; Tina Nguyen and Abby Livingtson chronicled the Capitol Hill hunger games; Baratunde Thurston hacked Silicon Valley’s 404 alert; and Julia Ioffe weighed in on the horror of the terrorist attack in Israel.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan predicts what Nelson Peltz can extract from Bob Iger.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers breaks the story of a new WaPo C.E.O. finalist.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni dives into TSwift economics.
and…
Julia Alexander unearths Netflix’s cable 2.0 advantage.
and…
Jonathan Handel explains what the actors really want.

SILICON VALLEY:
Baratunde Thurston maps the digital divide.
and…
Teddy Schleifer offers some Caroline Ellisonology and swaps S.B.F. notes with Eriq Gardner.

WASHINGTON:
Julia Ioffe mourns the tragedy in Israel.
and…
Abby Livington and Tina Nguyen pour one out for Steve Scalise.
and…
Peter Hamby uncovers a Kamala Harris value prop.
and…
Tara Palmeri chronicles Trump’s own version of the Eras Tour.

PODCASTS:
🚨 Do yourself a favor and download Julia Ioffe’s brilliant new narrative audio series, About a Boy, which remains one of the top shows in the country!
and…
Tara Palmeri and Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman get into Capitol Hill kremlinology on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw discuss the evolving streamer class system on The Town.
and…
Peter Hamby and Dylan Byers discuss Mark Thompson’s new CNN on The Powers That Be.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

To that end, I recall having a conversation more than two years ago with Teddy Schleifer that was equally impactful. It was early Spring 2021, and my partners and I were building Puck out of a charming studio apartment on Bank Street. Teddy had just joined the company as one of our first full-time employees. We’d known one another for years, but had never worked together before, so we were immersing ourselves in a series of deep conversations about his beat. In particular, he was familiarizing me with all the plots and subplots and the characters who made it all come to life.

At one point, he mentioned a young man I’d never heard of before named Sam Bankman-Fried, allegedly the richest person in the world under thirty, a crypto deity. I yawned slightly and rolled my eyes: I’d never heard much about this S.B.F. guy, but the world of crypto wasn’t entirely my cup of tea. Also, call me old fashioned, but I still hail from a generation where people wear long pants to work, comb their hair, and look people in the eye when they speak.

Teddy politely cut me off and explained that this was all entirely the point. S.B.F. had earned his billions in the largely unregulated subterranean backwater of finance, and now he was riding his cash and quirks toward a sort of Kardashian hyper-relevancy. Like what, I asked, naively. He then enumerated all the celebrity partnerships, the big buddies in pro sports and Hollywood and the burgeoning pet causes in Washington. Indeed, we were building Puck to reflect the small world that straddles Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and there was perhaps no better avatar than S.B.F., himself.

The best part of my job is that I get to learn from the best. Indeed, after that conversation Teddy integrated Sam Bankman-Fried as one of the core characters within his beat. As S.B.F.’s empire crumbled a year ago, Teddy established himself as the leading journalist on the story. His piece about his visit with Sam under house arrest, The Only Living Boy in Palo Alto, is another entry in the Puck literary canon.

Since S.B.F.’s trial started last week, Teddy has been a fixture in the courtroom. On some level, as he’s conveyed to me, it’s been a surreal experience. He’s about the same age as Bankman-Fried, and the only journalist who has truly known him pre-fame to post-fortune. His dispatches from the courtroom are a masterclass in reportage, scrutiny, and empathy, even as the screws tighten and Sam’s future unequivocally darkens. The S.B.F. case is, of course, about financial fraud. But it’s also about insecurity, risk addiction, and emptiness.

If you’re tight on time this weekend, I’d suggest turning your attention to two pieces, in particular. First, Teddy on S.B.F.’s Expected Value Calculation, which lays out the psychological dimensions that enmeshed Bankman-Fried in this mess. I’d also recommend Teddy’s Caroline in My Mind, which offers a courtroom analysis of Caroline Ellison, S.B.F.’s former colleague and erstwhile paramour, and perhaps the second most intriguing character in this imbroglio. Both works are excellent character studies and examples of expert reportage—and the complete quintessence of what you should expect from Puck.