The Profile: The longevity guru who fell from grace & the founder battling the company board
This edition of The Profile features Peter Attia, Banksy, Chip Wilson, and Mark Oppenheimer.
Good morning, friends!
Last week, I joined Jim O’Shaughnessy on his podcast, Infinite Loops.
We covered a wide range of topics — from the traits of successful people to freedom of speech to how my upbringing has shaped the work I’ve chosen to pursue. (If you’re interested, you can also revisit our 2021 conversation, where we discussed my decision to leave FORTUNE, the business of content creation, and how my writing has evolved.)
I’ll share the new podcast episode as soon as it’s published.
As an aside: one of my favorite pieces Jim has written is his guest essay for The Profile on the value of writing letters to your children.
It literally prompted me to start writing letters to my children, and I think you’ll enjoy it, too.
PROFILES.
— The longevity guru who fell from grace [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The founder battling the company board
— The biographer telling Judy Blume’s story
— The artist behind the Banksy mystery
— America’s most valuable used-car retailer
PEOPLE TO KNOW.
The longevity guru who fell from grace: Peter Attia built a longevity empire on trust. In this profile, Bloomberg reports that the newly released Epstein files exposed a years-long relationship that now threatens the credibility behind his entire brand. The fallout has been swift and merciless. Business partners are backing away, his bestseller has stumbled, and a figure once seen as the voice of wellness is suddenly looking a lot more like the world he claimed to rise above. (Bloomberg; alternate link)
“The biggest problem with becoming friends with you? The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”
The founder battling the company board: Lululemon’s founder is back in attack mode, arguing that the brand he built has lost its creative edge and become bloated, cautious, and forgettable. This time, though, his complaints land harder. Wall Street, former insiders, and even customers seem to agree that the company’s North American business has gone stale. The piece’s core tension is whether Chip Wilson is just another aggrieved founder who can’t let go or whether he is the person saying out loud what everyone else is already thinking. (FORTUNE)
“Lululemon has lost its soul.”
The biographer telling Judy Blume’s story: Mark Oppenheimer spent years researching Judy Blume and, with Blume’s cooperation, set out to write the definitive story of her life. But once she read the draft — returning it with hundreds of comments and a 40-page memo — the relationship cooled, and she stepped away from the project entirely. When a living subject invites a biography into being, how much truth are they really prepared to see once it’s no longer theirs to control? (The New York Times; alternate link)
“When you decide to write a biography, you don’t work for the subject. You work for the reader.”
The artist behind the Banksy mystery: Reuters claims that it has unmasked the legendary street artist Banksy. This investigation posits that the artist is Robin Gunningham, who later legally changed his name and continued operating behind an even more ordinary identity. What makes the piece especially strong is that it’s a portrait of how Banksy turned anonymity itself into a business model and a source of power. (Reuters)
COMPANIES TO WATCH.
America’s most valuable used-car retailer: Carvana’s comeback is one of the market’s strangest success stories: a used-car retailer once left for dead is now booming again. How? The company’s explosive growth rests on debt, subprime credit, and a tightly controlled Garcia family machine that investors have decided to trust. If demand holds, Carvana looks like the Amazon of cars, but if the credit cycle turns, the whole model could crumble. (Bloomberg; alternate link)
“If anyone but my son asked me to invest in this idea, I’d have politely told them to leave my office.”
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