Young Money

Young Money Plot Summary

Introduction

In the summer of 2010, I found myself sitting in a cramped conference room on Broad Street, competing against thirty young Wall Street recruits in an Excel spreadsheet-formatting competition. The instructor, a statuesque Russian woman named Valentina, had given us unformatted financial data that needed to be transformed into pristine, presentation-ready documents in record time. The all-time record was thirty-five seconds, set by a junior analyst from an investment bank called Moelis and Company. As I struggled with my task, I realized I was witnessing the birth of a new generation of financial professionals—one formed in the crucible of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. This moment crystallized what would become a three-year investigation into the lives of young Wall Street workers who started their careers amid the ruins of the 2008 crash. While most reporting focused on senior executives and regulatory reforms, I became fascinated with the twenty-somethings who, despite Wall Street's catastrophic fall from grace, still flocked to its doors. What drew them to an industry in disgrace? How did they navigate its transformed landscape? And most importantly, had the crash changed the DNA of Wall Street's culture by altering the makeup of its newest recruits? By following eight young financial workers from their first days on the job through their formative years on Wall Street, I discovered a financial industry in transition, whose future would be shaped by these accidental witnesses to history.

Chapter 1: The Pipeline: How Wall Street Recruits Its Young Talent

The path to Wall Street begins long before anyone sets foot on a trading floor. For decades, elite universities have served as the primary hunting grounds for investment banks seeking fresh talent. At schools like Harvard, Princeton, and Penn's Wharton School, the finance recruiting machine operates with military precision. During fall semester of junior year, banks descend on campuses to hold information sessions in packed auditoriums, where polished representatives extol the virtues of their firms while carefully avoiding any mention of the staggering workloads or the financial rewards that await successful candidates. These sessions typically feature promotional videos with inspirational taglines: "In the finance world, every day is a new day. Some days, fortunes will be made. Other days, history will." The messaging is calculated to appeal to achievement-oriented students who have spent their lives moving from one prestigious credential to the next. Banks position themselves as the logical next step for ambitious graduates, offering structured two-year analyst programs that promise skill development, prestige, and the possibility of extraordinary wealth. What's rarely discussed is how these programs were specifically designed as "two and out" experiences, creating a revolving door of talented but ultimately dispensable young workers. The 2008 financial crisis temporarily disrupted this well-oiled recruiting machine. Applications to investment banks plummeted at elite schools as students questioned both the stability and morality of financial careers. At Harvard, the percentage of seniors entering finance dropped from 28 percent in 2008 to 17 percent in 2011. But by 2010, the machine was humming again, albeit with some adjustments. Banks began emphasizing their social utility rather than just their profit-making prowess. They talked about "giving back" and "making a difference." As one Goldman Sachs analyst explained, "Money is part of it. But mostly, they do it because it's easy." By creating a structured recruiting timeline that delivers job offers months before graduation, banks provide anxious achievers the security they crave. Interestingly, many students who enter finance have no particular passion for the industry. The typical recruitment pattern reveals a paradox: despite Wall Street's reputation for risk-taking, its recruiting process appeals most to the risk-averse. These are students who excelled in structured academic environments and seek to continue that pattern in their professional lives. They are drawn to the clear path, the early security of a job offer, and the validation that comes with landing a position others covet. One banker described it as "incredibly risk averse," explaining that if a prestigious bank offers you a high-paying job in September of senior year without much effort, many students will prioritize that over more uncertain paths. For those who make it through the process, the reward is entry into a world that promises wealth and influence—but at a cost that few fully understand until they're deep in the trenches of their first year on the job. The pipeline is designed not just to select talent, but to shape it, molding malleable young minds into the next generation of financial warriors, regardless of the industry's post-crash reputation.

Chapter 2: Baptism by Fire: First Year Struggles and Disillusionment

The first year on Wall Street is designed to be a crucible. New analysts quickly discover that their prestigious degrees and academic achievements count for little in an environment where endurance, attention to detail, and unfailing loyalty are the primary currencies. A typical investment banking analyst works between 80 and 100 hours per week, often staying at the office until 2 or 3 a.m., only to return by 8 a.m. the next day. These punishing schedules aren't just the result of actual workloads but are embedded in the culture as a rite of passage—a way to separate those who can "handle it" from those who can't. The actual work performed by first-year analysts is rarely intellectually challenging. Most spend their days building Excel models, formatting PowerPoint presentations (known as "pitch books"), and triple-checking numbers for client meetings. One analyst described the experience as "being on call 24/7 for what is essentially glorified secretarial work." The real challenge isn't the complexity but the mind-numbing repetition combined with the impossible standards of perfection. Senior bankers routinely reject work for minuscule errors—a misaligned cell in Excel, a font that's the wrong size, or a comma out of place in a 200-page document. And these rejections often come at midnight or later, forcing exhausted analysts to start over. Personal relationships become early casualties of the banking lifestyle. One analyst named Derrick struggled to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend Erica, who drove two and a half hours from Wisconsin to Chicago each weekend to see him. During one visit, Derrick promised her a Sunday night dinner with no interruptions. By 10 p.m., after multiple cancelled plans and emergency trips back to the office, Erica reached her breaking point, texting: "I can't do this anymore. You have to choose what's more important to you—this job or me." Chelsea, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst, saw her long-distance relationship similarly deteriorate as her weekends became consumed with work. Beyond romantic relationships, friendships wither and hobbies disappear as young bankers have no time for anything but sleep and work. The physical toll is equally severe. Many analysts gain the "Seamless Belly" (named after the food delivery service that provides their desk-bound meals), develop insomnia, and turn to various substances to cope. Some rely on Adderall and Modafinil to stay alert during marathon work sessions, while others self-medicate with alcohol during their rare nights off. An academic study by Alexandra Michel found that during years 1-3, bankers "construed their bodies as objects that the mind controls," working through exhaustion and illness, telling themselves: "For the next few years, work has priority. I'll worry about my health then." Perhaps most profound is the psychological transformation. Young people who entered banking with diverse interests and progressive values find themselves increasingly narrow in their concerns and conservative in their outlook. They begin speaking in financial jargon, evaluating all aspects of life in terms of return on investment, and gradually adopting the worldview of their superiors. As one analyst put it: "You sort of lose your non-finance friends. For the first time, it's almost like money matters." This transformation is not accidental but fundamental to Wall Street's assimilation process—a deliberate reshaping of identity that prepares young bankers for decades of service to financial institutions, regardless of the social cost.

Chapter 3: Inside the Machine: Goldman Sachs and the Elite Culture

Goldman Sachs has long stood as the pinnacle of Wall Street institutions, a place where even the receptionist might know more about finance than executives at lesser firms. In the post-crash era, two young analysts at Goldman—Jeremy and Samson—discovered how the firm's legendary culture operated from the inside. Their experiences revealed both the power and the pathologies of an institution that had emerged from the financial crisis battered but still dominant, its core practices largely unchanged despite public scrutiny and new regulations. The physical environment of Goldman's new headquarters at 200 West Street—a $2.1 billion monument to the firm's financial prowess—embodied its post-crisis mentality. Completed in 2009, the building featured fortress-like security, a Sky Lobby with amenities including a gym and cafeteria, and trading floors where thousands of screens flickered with market data while phones rang incessantly. As Samson noted upon arriving, there was "an odd sterility to it"—something about the building felt fortified, "as if the entire place had been sanded down to make it a little more secure and a little less welcoming." The architecture seemed designed to keep employees and information securely inside while keeping outsiders at a total remove. Inside this fortress, Goldman maintained its notorious hierarchy. The sales and trading divisions (where Jeremy and Samson worked) operated on different schedules and cultural norms than the investment bankers upstairs. Within these divisions existed further stratification: "hot" desks like commodities trading and mortgage securities, where huge profits could be made, versus "cold" desks like equity sales that were less prestigious. For summer interns hoping to secure full-time positions, this created a frantic "desk scramble"—a cutthroat competition where students jockeyed for assignments on the most profitable teams. One managing director explained Goldman's core value bluntly to Jeremy: "Making money. Making as much money for myself and the firm as possible. You know, if money is not your main concern here, you should leave." Despite surviving the financial crisis better than many rivals, Goldman's culture had been rattled by public scrutiny. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued the firm over its creation of mortgage-backed securities that were allegedly designed to fail. Internal emails surfaced in which executives referred to these products as "shitty deals" while marketing them to clients. Goldman eventually settled for $550 million without admitting wrongdoing, but the incident exposed the firm's dual nature: the careful, client-focused image it projected externally versus the profit-at-all-costs mentality that often prevailed internally. Samson, who worked on the mortgage desk at the center of the scandal, found himself defending Goldman to friends and family: "Obviously it's bad that people lost money, but they were sophisticated investors who should have known about the risks." The most transformative aspect of Goldman's culture was how it reshaped young analysts' personalities. Jeremy, who entered as a thoughtful, idealistic Columbia graduate interested in sustainable energy, gradually became sharper, more impatient, and focused primarily on self-preservation. After being berated by a managing director named Penelope for minor errors, he found himself adopting similar behaviors toward others. Samson observed this change in his friend: "Dude, fucking listen to me when I talk," Jeremy snapped during one lunch, causing Samson to think, "he'd caught the Goldman bug as well." Even Samson, once cheerful and easygoing, began experiencing depression and anxiety so severe that his roommate gave him a countdown clock to mark the days until he could quit. What made this transformation particularly insidious was how it happened under the guise of meritocracy. Goldman prided itself on being a place where anyone with talent could succeed, regardless of background. But in practice, the firm rewarded those who most fully internalized its values and suppressed any moral qualms about their work. As Jeremy later reflected: "There's a kind of inherent conflict between ethical business practice and fiduciary duty. As a person working for a public company, your duty is making money for your shareholders, but what if that means doing wrong?" This question, rarely asked aloud at Goldman, haunted many young analysts as they balanced the prestige and compensation against the gradual erosion of their former selves.

Chapter 4: The Turning Point: Occupy Wall Street and Identity Crisis

In September 2011, three years after the financial collapse, a protest movement took root in Zuccotti Park, just blocks from Wall Street's major institutions. What began as a small encampment of activists quickly grew into a global phenomenon known as Occupy Wall Street, with its rallying cry of "We are the 99 percent" resonating far beyond Lower Manhattan. For young bankers who had joined the industry after the crash—who had nothing to do with the crisis personally—the movement forced an uncomfortable reckoning with their chosen careers and identities. Ricardo, a J.P. Morgan analyst who stumbled upon the protests while heading to dinner one evening, was startled by what he saw: not just the usual handful of anti-capitalist demonstrators, but a mini-civilization with tents, a kitchen, library, and signs proclaiming "Banks got bailed out—we got sold out!" While senior bankers could dismiss the protesters as uninformed or naive, younger financiers found it harder to maintain emotional distance. Many were the same age as the protesters and sometimes shared their concerns about inequality. Jeremy, looking down from his Goldman Sachs office window at demonstrators below, felt a strange disconnect: "It was so crazy to be on that side of things," he recalled, conscious of how easily he might have been among the protesters had his career path been slightly different. The protests catalyzed existing doubts many young bankers harbored. Derrick, who had moved from Chicago to New York for a private equity job, found himself sympathizing with Occupy's message while still working in high finance. "Everyone at my job jokes about Occupy Wall Street, but there is a problem in this country," he confessed. "My dad's up there, intelligence-wise, with anyone I work with, but the money doesn't flow to him like it does to the guys I work with. It's the system." This growing awareness of structural inequalities made the traditional justifications for financial careers—meritocracy, capital allocation efficiency, creating value—ring increasingly hollow for some young workers who saw the arbitrary nature of their own rewards. The movement's impact extended beyond Wall Street to college campuses, where banking recruitment had traditionally gone unchallenged. At Yale, a senior named Marina Keegan wrote an influential essay questioning why so many talented classmates were heading to finance despite having diverse passions: "What bothers me is this idea of validation, of rationalization... I just haven't met that many people who sound genuinely excited about these jobs." At Princeton, students disrupted banking information sessions with coordinated protests: "We are here to ask you for a moment of reflection... When you came to Princeton as a wide-eyed freshman, you probably didn't dream of working at Goldman Sachs. What happened?" The percentage of Ivy League graduates entering finance began declining noticeably. Even those committed to staying in finance found themselves adopting defensive mechanisms. Some began concealing their employers in social situations. "I lie whenever I go out now," Jeremy admitted. "I tell people I'm a consultant, a lawyer, whatever—anything but a Wall Street guy." Others developed rationalizations: they were just passing through finance briefly, they would use their wealth for good causes later, or they were changing the system from within. A few embraced cynicism as protection against moral doubt. "Nobody goes into finance to do charity," one Harvard student explained matter-of-factly. But for many, Occupy had permanently altered how they viewed themselves and their work, removing the possibility of professional innocence. The identity crisis triggered by Occupy revealed something important about post-crash Wall Street: its cultural confidence had been profoundly shaken. The protests didn't cause banks to significantly change their practices, but they did accelerate a generational shift in how young financiers understood their role in society. No longer could they assume public admiration or moral neutrality for their career choices. As recruitment on elite campuses became an opt-in rather than opt-out decision, Wall Street found itself competing for talent in ways it never had before, forcing firms to reconsider not just who they hired but how they justified their existence to a more skeptical generation.

Chapter 5: Exodus: Tech Startups and Alternative Career Paths

By 2011, as Wall Street continued struggling with profitability and reputation issues, a new competitor for elite talent emerged from the West Coast. Silicon Valley tech companies, riding high on the success of Facebook's anticipated IPO and Apple's dominance, began systematically recruiting young bankers away from finance. The shift was seismic—in 2013, Harvard Business School saw the percentage of graduates heading into tech nearly double from 8% to 18%, while finance dropped from 34% to 27%. What made this exodus particularly significant wasn't just the numbers, but what it revealed about changing values among ambitious young professionals. The tech industry's appeal operated on multiple levels. First was the lifestyle contrast: While Wall Street demanded 100-hour weeks in formal attire, tech companies offered flexible hours, casual dress codes, and work environments designed for collaboration rather than hierarchy. One tech executive who successfully recruited dozens of analysts explained: "They're insecure, they're risk-averse, and they're afraid. But they have the work ethic, and they're smart as hell. If you can peel them away, they can be rock stars." Companies from Facebook to Google began holding informal recruiting events in Manhattan, sending simple emails to analysts: "I'll be at the Ace Hotel from 7 to 10 p.m., and you're welcome to stop by if you're curious to hear more about what we're doing." More fundamentally, tech offered a different relationship to work itself. Unlike banks, which primarily moved money around existing systems, tech companies created tangible products and platforms. For young people disillusioned with finance's abstract value, the chance to build something concrete proved deeply appealing. Jeremy, who eventually left Goldman for a tech startup, explained: "On one hand, to anyone who asks me, 'Should I go work in finance?' I'd say, 'Fuck no.' But at the same time, having that business experience is hugely valuable." Tech offered a way to leverage finance skills while escaping its culture—and often with substantial financial upside through equity compensation. The exodus was accelerated by Wall Street's diminished compensation. In 2011, bonuses across major banks fell 20-30%, with many analysts receiving half what they might have expected pre-crisis. Meanwhile, regulations like Dodd-Frank and Basel III were making it harder for banks to generate profits through proprietary trading and other high-risk activities. One analyst lamented, "Not that I was ever part of the old days, but I think I'm resigned to the fact that the world of 2007 is never coming back." This new reality made the opportunity cost of leaving finance much lower than before. Entrepreneurship became another escape route. Samson partnered with a fellow Goldman dropout named Colin to launch a mobile ticketing startup, writing in his journal: "I worry that I'm a lazy piece of shit... I feel like I'm going to be throwing up a lot in a bit, from the stress, from terror that I might be ruining my life. But it's much better to throw up because of leaps you've made rather than because you're caged." On his last day at Goldman, after sending his resignation email, he posted on Twitter: "I quit. #madeit #peaceoutazkaban"—comparing his departure to escaping from the prison in Harry Potter. What made this exodus significant wasn't just individual career changes but the shifting cultural center of gravity. A 2011 survey ranked Google, Apple, and Facebook as the most coveted workplaces among young professionals; JPMorgan Chase, the highest-ranking Wall Street bank, came in forty-first. A Harvard professor observed: "There was probably a time when the smartest people here all went into finance or consulting. It's pretty scattered now." This redistribution of elite talent toward tech and entrepreneurship represented not just a temporary reaction to Wall Street's troubles but a deeper reassessment of what constituted meaningful work and success in the post-crash economy.

Chapter 6: The Aftermath: Has Wall Street's Culture Really Changed?

Five years after the financial crisis, a secret society of Wall Street executives gathered at the St. Regis Hotel for their annual black-tie induction ceremony. Kappa Beta Phi, a fraternity whose membership included top executives from nearly every major financial institution, was conducting its traditional ritual: forcing new inductees to perform humiliating skits in drag while veteran members drank heavily and exchanged inside jokes about the financial crisis. During one performance, new members sang a parody of "YMCA" called "Bailout King," while another banker performed a song about the crisis set to "Dixie" while wearing a Confederate flag hat. This scene, witnessed by an undercover reporter who managed to sneak into the event, revealed a disturbing truth about Wall Street's post-crash transformation: at the highest levels, very little had fundamentally changed. Despite years of public outrage, congressional hearings, and regulatory reform, the inner culture of finance remained largely intact—self-congratulatory, dismissive of criticism, and remarkably unconcerned with the real-world consequences of its actions. When discovered, members reacted not with shame but anger, offering the reporter bribes and threatening violence to prevent the story's publication. For the young analysts who had joined finance after 2008, this disconnect between public contrition and private arrogance created cognitive dissonance. They had entered an industry that was publicly committed to reform, with CEOs like Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein speaking earnestly about banks' responsibilities to society. Yet in day-to-day operations, they witnessed the same aggressive profit-seeking behaviors that had characterized pre-crash Wall Street. Samson noted in his journal: "Work fucking sucks. I can't tell if my job sucks anymore than anyone else's job... If I were learning something and around people I liked, I'd be much happier, and the hours wouldn't fucking matter." Some changes were undeniable. Banks had become more risk-averse, maintaining larger capital reserves and shuttering proprietary trading desks in response to new regulations. Compensation had decreased substantially—in 2012, average Wall Street bonuses were 38% below their 2006 peak. Employment in New York City's securities industry remained 10% below pre-crisis levels. These structural changes constrained banks' activities, but they didn't necessarily transform their underlying values or incentive structures. The most significant shift may have been generational. Many young financiers, having witnessed both the crash and its aftermath, approached their careers with greater skepticism than their predecessors. They were less likely to view finance as a lifelong commitment and more inclined to question the social utility of their work. As one ex-analyst who joined a tech company explained: "I don't think we should put all the bankers to death... but the people who do shit in the world—Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, the guy who built Instagram—they're not sitting there taking orders from someone who's incrementally more experienced than them, at a company where they won't have any actual power until they're thirty-five or forty. They're doing their own thing." However, there remained a fundamental tension between individual disillusionment and institutional persistence. Even those most critical of the system found themselves changed by their time within it. Jeremy, who eventually left Goldman for a startup, noticed how his personality had hardened during his time there—he had become "sharper, more unsparing" and "quicker to point out others' mistakes." The socialization process was powerful enough that even those who escaped its grip often carried traces of Wall Street's worldview with them. And for every analyst who left finance, many more stayed, gradually normalizing practices they had once questioned. The question of whether Wall Street's culture had truly changed remained open-ended. The crisis had shaken the industry's confidence and altered its practices, but not necessarily its fundamental nature. What had changed most clearly was Wall Street's place in American society—no longer unquestioningly admired, but subjected to moral scrutiny by both outsiders and its own newest members.

Chapter 7: The New Normal: Life After the Golden Handcuffs

By 2013, the generation of financiers who had started their careers amid the ruins of the financial crisis were reaching a pivotal career juncture. After three or four years in the industry, they faced a decision that would shape not just their professional trajectories but their identities: stay in finance and fully commit to its path, or break away and forge something different. Their choices revealed the various ways young people reconciled their ambitions with the moral complexities of post-crash Wall Street. For some, like Ricardo at J.P. Morgan, adaptation proved the path of least resistance. Having survived the brutal first years in investment banking, he had been promoted to associate in the Latin American banking group—a position with better hours, more responsibility, and substantially higher pay. "I feel like I've gotten my life back," he said, noting that he now worked "just seventy or eighty hours a week" instead of the hundred-plus of his analyst days. Ricardo had never dreamed of banking as a child—he had wanted to be a doctor—but he found the financial security and structured advancement of banking increasingly comfortable. While he maintained some distance from the industry's excesses, he had made peace with his place within it. Others made clean breaks, often at great personal risk. Samson walked away from Goldman Sachs on his 27th birthday to launch a mobile ticketing startup with a fellow analyst, writing in his journal: "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. We are free at last... I don't want to be a Carl Icahn or Bill Gross or Steve Schwarzman. I want to be an L.A. Reid, a Richard Branson, a Michael Jackson—where the shit I create will impact people forever." Jeremy similarly left Goldman for a tech startup that soon raised millions in venture capital. Even Chelsea, who had suffered through miserable years at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, eventually found the courage to leave for a smaller financial firm that paid her 60% less but restored her sense of purpose. The financial industry itself began adjusting to these new patterns of talent retention. In 2013, Goldman Sachs formed a task force to examine working conditions for young analysts and announced it was ending its "two and out" analyst programs, encouraging junior bankers to take weekends off. "The goal is for our analysts to want to be here for a career," explained Goldman's co-head of investment banking. After a 21-year-old Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern in London died following three consecutive all-nighters, that bank too launched a review of junior banker work practices. These reforms came not from moral epiphany but pragmatic recognition that the industry could no longer rely on an endless supply of elite talent willing to sacrifice everything for a finance career. For those who stayed in finance, the challenge became maintaining some sense of ethical boundaries in an environment that constantly pushed them toward prioritizing profit above all else. Derrick, working in private equity, struggled with his firm's approach to acquired companies—cutting jobs, outsourcing, and loading businesses with debt to extract quick returns. "I have this two-sided fear," he confessed. "One fear is that I'll stay in private equity and wake up when I'm thirty-five and find out that I'm not necessarily that much smarter or better than I was when I was twenty-five. The other is that, here I am on this path, and if I don't fuck it up, I'll be wealthy." Perhaps the most telling pattern was how few of the young financiers I interviewed had ended up exactly where they expected. J.P., laid off from Credit Suisse during a downsizing, found himself working in corporate finance for a hospital chain. Arjun, after recovering from a serious autoimmune disease, moved to Brazil to work for an infrastructure investment firm. Soo-jin left risk management at Deutsche Bank for a client-facing role at a commercial bank. Each had been shaped by their Wall Street experience—sometimes hardened, sometimes humbled—but had ultimately charted a course that balanced financial security with personal values. The post-crash generation of financiers may never fully escape the formative experience of entering an industry in crisis. They learned early that even the mightiest institutions could fail, that public respect could evaporate overnight, and that promised riches could vanish before being realized. This knowledge made them both more pragmatic and more questioning than their predecessors. As they ascend to positions of greater influence in the coming decades, their decisions will reveal whether Wall Street's brush with mortality truly changed its soul, or merely taught it to be more careful about appearances.

Summary

The 2008 financial crisis fundamentally altered Wall Street not primarily through regulation or restructuring, but by changing who entered the industry and how they viewed their place within it. The generation of financiers profiled in this narrative—who joined banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Credit Suisse just as the dust was settling from the crash—found themselves in a strange limbo. They had nothing to do with creating the crisis, yet inherited both its practical consequences (reduced compensation, industry contraction, public hostility) and its moral burdens. Their journeys reveal a financial industry caught between maintaining its traditional practices and adapting to new realities, ultimately producing a more tentative, less confident form of American capitalism. The most profound legacy of the post-crash era may be the redistribution of talent that followed. As finance lost its unquestioned status as the default destination for elite graduates, industries like technology and entrepreneurship gained a new influx of ambitious young people. This shift reflects a deeper reassessment of what constitutes meaningful work in contemporary society. While money remains powerful, the post-crash generation has shown greater willingness to balance financial rewards against personal values, work-life sustainability, and social impact. The future of Wall Street will depend not on whether it can restore its former profitability—it largely has—but whether it can convince the most talented members of coming generations that its work matters beyond the bottom line. The culture that emerges from this negotiation will shape how capital flows through our economy for decades to come, determining whether finance serves broader social purposes or remains primarily self-referential in its aims.

About Author

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Kevin Roose

Kevin Roose is an award-winning technology columnist for The New York Times, and the New York Times bestselling author of three books: Futureproof, Young Money, and The Unlikely Disciple.He is the host of “Rabbit Hole,” a New York Times-produced podcast about internet culture, and a regular guest on “The Daily,” as well as other leading TV and radio shows. He writes and speaks regularly on many topics, including automation and A.I., social media, disinformation and cybersecurity, and digital wellness.Before joining The Times, he was a writer at New York magazine, and a host and executive producer of "Real Future," a documentary TV series about technology and innovation. He lives in the Bay Area.

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