Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your Saturday capsule of the best new work at Puck.

It was another incredible week: Matt Belloni evaluated David Zaslav’s options for WBD; Bill Cohan relayed Wall Street’s preferred outcomes; and Dylan Byers presaged the Ellisons’ legal strategy for acquiring their target. Meanwhile, Kim Masters pondered the NBCU C.E.O. non-succession drama; Eriq Gardner analyzed MrBeast’s nine-figure hamburger-related lawsuit; John Ourand surveyed executives on the NBA’s sports betting headache; Julia Alexander scrutinized Apple’s F1 bid price; Lauren Sherman broke the news of Marc Jacobs’s likely new owner; Rachel Strugatz got to the bottom of Kering’s beauty sell-off; Sarah Shapiro dissected the rise of golf fashion; Ian Krietzberg pored over the latest A.G.I. manifesto; Marion Maneker connected with Phillips C.E.O. Martin Wilson; and Julie Brener Davich investigated the design scene in London.

Also: Julia Ioffe offered a Putin marriage story; Leigh Ann Caldwell conferred with Sen. Mike Rounds on A.I. and Pete Hegseth; Abby Livingston captured Kevin McCarthy’s failure to launch his second act; and Peter Hamby got his hands on some proprietary polling data.

Lauren Sherman reveals Marc Jacobs’s likely new boss and previews the Grace Wales Bonner era at Hermès’s.
and…
Rachel Strugatz identifies the real winner in Kering’s beauty pivot.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro examines the rise of Malbon Golf.

Marion Maneker chats up Phillips C.E.O. Martin Wilson.
and…
Julie Davich brings home the goods from the Pavilion of Art and Design fair in London.

Eriq Gardner unearths the details of MrBeast’s explosive new lawsuit.
and…
Kim Masters reports on NBCU’s leadership vacuum.

Ian Krietzberg chronicles the latest pursuit of a non-B.S. definition of A.G.I.

Dylan Byers spotlights the Ellisons’ secret legal weapon.
and…
Julia Alexander interrogates Apple’s F1 deal.
meanwhile…
John Ourand gathers the sotto voce conversation on the NBA’s sports betting headache.

Bill Cohan runs the numbers on Zaz’s various dealmaking options.

Leigh Ann Caldwell talks to Sen. Mike Rounds about A.I. policy and Pete Hegseth’s governance journey.
and…
Abby Livingston details Kevin McCarthy’s fundraising ineptitude.
and…
Peter Hamby pinpoints Trump’s weakness in a new set of polls.
meanwhile…
Julia Ioffe shares Putin’s meet-cute story with his ex-wife.

Dylan and Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell track the proliferation of the D.T.C. media industry on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and RedBird frontman Gerry Cardinale consider the evolution of sports business models on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren and supermodel-turned-entrepreneur Molly Sims play the hits on Fashion People.
and…
John Heilemann and Rep. Ro Khanna profile the left’s new guard on Impolitic.
and…
Matt foreshadows the possible WBD outcomes with Wolfe Research’s Peter Supino on The Town.
and…
Julia Ioffe discusses her acclaimed new book, Motherland, with Peter on The Powers That Be. And speaking of which…

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On Wednesday afternoon, I arrived at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and headed right to Medina, a restaurant on Florida Avenue, to toast my partner Julia Ioffe upon the publication of her new book, Motherland, a feminist history of Russia. As longtime Puck subscribers know, Julia was born in the Soviet Union before immigrating to Maryland in the ’80s and eventually becoming the foremost chronicler of the modern Russian state and its despotic architect, Vladimir Putin.

Long before she became the definitive voice on Putin’s war in Ukraine, appearing everywhere from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to Real Time With Bill Maher, Julia had been nurturing this critical project. Back when I was recruiting her to our recently incorporated company, in the spring of 2021, she would talk about the book during our long, late-Covid-era chats. She was laser-focused on this magnum opus, whose plot mirrored her own personal story. During one of those early conversations, I remembered making her a double-barreled promise: Puck would be a success, I told her, and I’d throw her a book party whenever Motherland was ready for publication.

The rest, of course, is history. Julia joined as one of our earliest and most recognizable stars. Her reporting and analysis on Putin, Zelensky, and the D.C. blob scene helped define our company’s ambition and character. Meanwhile, she would spend nights and weekends bringing Motherland to life. So on Wednesday, I was thrilled to make good on my promise. In the presence of our partners and swells like former press secretary Jay Carney, former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, superagent Gail Ross, Washington Zelig Tammy Haddad, the incomparable Post doyenne Sally Quinn, and a zillion others, I was proud to toast Julia and Motherland, which was recently listed as a finalist for the National Book Award. You can order it on Amazon, and dabble in my favorite chapter—about Putin’s courtship of his now ex-wife—which we recently excerpted in Puck. Spoiler alert: Putin in Love isn’t exactly ready for the Nancy Meyers treatment.

The next day, I headed to the Riggs for the latest iteration of Puck’s Power Breakfast series: a riveting conversation between my partner Leigh Ann Caldwell and Sen. Mike Rounds, the most influential A.I. enthusiast in Congress, who is playing a leading role in shaping Capitol Hill’s regulatory approach to the still-nascent technology. Not everyone is a morning person, but Rounds came out swinging—articulating a clear vision of Congress’s responsibility and acknowledging that the governing body hasn’t always led by example. (We are in the midst of a government shutdown, after all.)

But Rounds really became animated when the conversation turned to the antics of Pete Hegseth. Rounds in the Ring, the piece adapted from their conversation, is an important reminder that even the most high-minded tasks, such as governing the tech of the future, require working through issues with persnickety people. In government, as in any job, everything is politics. It’s a story as old as time, and what you can always expect to read about in Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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