Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: A Summer Special

0:00I guess we can't call it a midlife crisis, an end of life crisis. I guess now's the time to have it. A Twilight Crisis. I like Twilight Crisis. That's a bit more polite than what I said. You're like Death Crisis? Yeah, yeah. Get your coffin out.

0:16Welcome to Second Thought, your place for hot takes on pop culture and a healthy dose of unpopular culture. I am Suzy Weiss and I'm here with... Danidute. And we are very lucky to be joined by one woman with the best name in the world. Carson Griffith. Thank you for being here, Carson. Of course. Thank you for having me. Whether you are a rich person, whether you want to be a rich person, whether you love rich people or are excited to see their heads put on stakes, we're all interested in the subject of the ultra-rich. And we are living in a bountiful time of billionaires. There's something like 3 ,000 billionaires.

0:54And for a little bit of time there, Elon Musk was actually a trillionaire. Here to help decode everything that's going on in the world of the obscenely wealthy is one Carson Griffith. She writes the substack called Rich People Shit. There is no yacht she has not been on. There is no dog au pair she has not interviewed. I am so excited to have her on the podcast today to take a look back at Summer and all of the rich people shit that you and I were not invited to. That's right. How did you get the name Rich People Shit? So I've been a journalist longer than I would like to admit. Okay. Because then I'd have to admit how old I am.

1:30But people would always ask me, what do you cover? And I got really sick of explaining trend stories, profiles. Right. So I just kept saying rich people shit because that's what it summarized as. That's so good. So eventually when I decided to write a newsletter, I just called it rich people shit because that's what I had been saying for so long was my journalism beat. But people often call it now RPS. So rich people shit or RPS. It's RPS. And what a time for RPS of like, what are we calling it? The second gilded age, the age of the trillionaire. There's something I read on RPS, 3 ,000 billionaires.

2:10How do you like apprehend the like economic moment we're in? I think it's a really wild time that people have so much interest in this right now. You know, the New York Times has a wealth and power reporter that was hired right before I started my newsletter. The Wall Street Journal has one on the same beat that was hired after I started my newsletter. I think because of economic inequality right now, people are just amazed at this overabundance of wealth and power and who's acquiring it and how they're using it right now. And whether you don't want to look away or you want to look directly at it, these are the stories that people are interested in right now.

2:48They really are. what is the, like, what's the craziest thing rich people are doing right now where it shocked even you? One of the stories I wrote about was how a billionaire, who I'm not going to say, but if you go to my newsletter, you can see, ships his own mattress to Clarich's whenever he stays there because he insists on staying on his own mattresses because he does not think that Clarich's mattresses, which are amazing, the best mattresses in the world. It's the Clarich's, yeah. There's a hotel in London for those who don't know. Yes. It's the most expensive hotel in London. Their mattresses aren't even good enough for him.

3:26So whenever he stays there, he ships his own. Do you think this is a Halstein? 100%. So that's actually the type of mattresses they have at Claridge's. What? They have Halsteins? Yes. And he's getting the Halstein replaced? That's crazy. For those of you who are not rich AF like us, a Halstein's mattress is filled with horsehair, and that's what makes it fancy. I dated a very rich girl once And I slept in that bed Really? Yeah What were your thoughts On the first hair mattress? You know it made it very hard To break up Because I wanted to sleep In that mattress Yeah you were like Just giving me 20 more minutes In the Hallstein That's wild Yeah I mean it was great It wasn't like Oh my god This is a life changing sleep For me But I think Drake famously has one Jay-Z and Beyonce Drake's is like $100 ,000 I think Yeah He got it tricked out He got it with the tinted windows So he puts this mattress on his plane and brings it with him to the clarages yeah so it's just there you know people are so specific when you have more money than you can count or you can spend in a lifetime they they become obsessed with things you know or there was another woman who i spoke to this summer her she she trains dogs on how to walk on yachts because apparently puppy sea legs are a thing.

4:42So I spoke to her for a story I did for the FT, which I continued on to my sub stack. But you know, there's just it's it's endless stories. That's the thing. Carson, one of my favorite stories that you've written this summer, and there were many was about the no influencer sign in a small local antique store in Nantucket, which caused enormous backlash on social media among influencers like Paige Lorenz, who started talking about like, you know, God forbid a woman have her own business, that type of thing. So why don't you tell us about the no influencers sign? I was actually the first to report on this story, which happened by chance because Four Winds Craft Guild in Nantucket, where my family's been going for a long time on and off.

5:29My grandmother actually purchased me a purse from the store a long time ago, but I was following the account and they didn't have many followers. But, and my friend sent this to me and said, oh, look, this is new. They have this no influencer sign. So I put it in my newsletter. But I don't think they thought it was going to be a big deal at all. John Silva owns this store. He opened it in 1948. His family purchased it, I think, in the 80s. But that's how long the store has been around. The problem is these purses, which I think now start at$1 ,800, they're just baskets. They're baskets? So these are basket handbags.

6:07That's what the big thing is. But they've been around for so long and they're essentially like the Birkin bags of Nantucket. Oh god yeah. So they get lines outside the store. You know one of the arguments is influencers bring them business but the store does not really need them need that business. So a lot of people will queue in line just to go in and take photos. He put the sign up I think not expecting it to be a big deal at all and as more and more people saw it and it got more play it became a huge thing on the island at the same time this year as you mentioned Paige Lorenz opened Dairy Boy Paige Lorenz has more than a million followers and she was getting lines of 80 people or more outside her store she had is also as a strong it's called Dairy Boy so that's her brand which she started I want to say two and a half years ago around again but yeah Dairy Boy has a pop-up which i believe is going to be permanent now on nantucket so it was kind of a fight between this long institution and these influencers and he was saying you know it's you know they were actually saying they were being discriminated against the influencers yeah it does run afoul of the civil rights act of 1965 to say that you can't have influencers in your in your basket yeah bag store they were actually saying it's the same thing as discriminating against uh gender and race they went as far as to say i mean that's awesome she that's actually amazing good for them you really have to like own you have to you have to really believe like your shit don't stink to say that that's incredible that's amazing um i mean she's the rosa parks of this generation now we're all thinking let me clarify i don't think it was page who said that but there were influencers specifically who said how is this any different than discriminating against gender and race well because you're born an influencer is the thing it's you can't help it yeah actually You actually come out of the womb with a camera and a ring light over your head.

7:58Being like, guys, this is the cutest store. I mean, if I owned a store, I'd kind of be like, okay, do it. But then you got to pay at a certain point. But Dan's a little bit of an influencer. So how do you navigate that? Just tip well. Okay. First of all, I wouldn't consider myself an influencer in that I'm not like trying to make money off of it or going to restaurants and be like, pay me. And I'll do a, I do these Gen Z reviews where I make fun of rest. Like I make fun of those reviews and I'm like, come with me to the hottest pasta restaurant in town yeah the voice is crazy but it's like um the what bothers me is there are a lot of influencers who will hit you up and be like you want you want someone to press you got to pay me and i'll give you good press it's like has nothing to do with how good the food's going to be even it's just like i'm going to come do these stories and so i get that that culture is really annoying for these businesses at the same time there's a reason you get these lines out of all the fro-yo places is because the line culture is out of control i mean because everyone's seeing the same shit on TikTok.

8:55And so they're all, they all want to be a part of the action. Yeah. And I think, I think with this business in particular, they were just saying, of course, we're not saying influencers aren't welcome. They can come in, but we don't need people just coming in, taking photos and leaving. We want real customers. And that was, you know, and so after this all happened, they started actually selling the influencer signs. So these, and these influencer signs are called quarter boards. They're the signs that people put on their houses in Nantucket when they name their houses. Because you know in Nantucket, all the houses have names.

9:25Have names. You know, like left house from the ocean or like whatever you want to call it. Four florals. That's some good rich people shit, by the way. That's good lore, yeah. You naming your house? That's some rich people shit. Yes. And it's a name to house with C-section. But it has to have a quarter board. And so there's inside quarter boards and outside quarter boards. The outside quarter boards are more expensive, obviously. Of course. So the inside ones, I think they're selling them for$5.75. and then the outside ones are like 2 ,200, I forget. But then of course that made the influencers even more mad that said that they, you know, was this planned?

10:00Are they doing it as a, like a opportunity to make money off of this controversy? And so then they got even more angry. Oh my God, the quarter boards. It's just so endless. I love that. I mean, this kind of speaks, I think, to a larger trend of like old school versus new school, like old money socialites versus influencers, maybe in this case, or, you know, even just people who have been there a long time versus these like young hordes of camera wielding people. And I think you see this. We had another story about a luxury resort in Mexico canceled a YouTuber stay. Just because you can pay doesn't mean we're going to accommodate your like circus antics.

10:42Yeah. And I think the interesting thing about that was he was going, he's a very, well-known YouTube reviewer, and he has his own whole thing that he does. And when he showed up, they basically knew exactly what he was doing, and he was going to pay. And they basically said, we're not ready for him, so no matter what, he can't come in. Wow. So it was a 4 ,000-a-night hotel, and they just wouldn't let him come in to check it out, because they knew what he was about, and they didn't want the review to be negative. That was the Amman in Mexico. Oh, interesting. I think it's less about discrimination and more about etiquette.

11:21And it's like there are restaurants that are that are saying you can't use your cameras. And I think that I like those places. I like when you walk into a place or a comedy club. Comedy clubs are notoriously check your phone in at the door. And I feel like it's more about etiquette and less about what you're doing with the content. It's more about like it's so it's so disruptive to, you know, the the experience that everyone is trying to have. And you can't force everyone to be like an extra in the movie you're making. That's another thing. It's you know, I mean, if you're putting content up, are you really always being considerate of like the people in the background?

11:56Because if it's going to be seen by hundreds of thousands, not everyone wants to be in the background of these videos or photos. Yeah. Do you think influencing has ruined summer travel? I think it has, you know, definitely some people are more private than others. And it's exposed it more, you know, something else that we were talking about. I have a lot of friends who are British. And they would always say after Wimbledon season was over, they all headed to the south of France. That was their thing they did. As one does. As one does. And they said Americans have now ruined that for them. You know, they can't go to Saint-Tropez without an American spraying them with a champagne bottle or other areas surrounding.

12:35this and I think this is because of social media you know I mean growing up I didn't even know what the south of France was really you know but I don't think there's a person in America who doesn't know now thanks to social media it's a different world we live in now I think it's definitely messed up travel for my rich friends in that their kids are running where they go now because they see on the kids see on tiktok where everyone's going and they want to go they're like take me to fort to the mommy in italy and it's like why the hell do you know about this exactly what is that it's like a fucking place in italy there were fort to the mommy fort to the mommy yeah um wow someone's not rich at this table everyone it's actually me i've never i don't travel i'm sort of i don't like kind of constitutionally i just don't do it but like they just want to go that's a good thing yeah exactly but the kids just want to go because they want to be able to post a picture and show or their friends that they went there, and they forced their parents to take them.

13:33It's weird. People need to lay down the law. Yes. But there's an expectation, too, I think, because it's on Instagram, of people thinking that they're owed multiple international trips of year because they see these other people doing it. And since before social media, when was that a thing? When was this, it's summer and I'm not in Europe and I have FOMO thing. It's so prevalent now. It's like if you're not in Europe during summer and you're seeing everyone in Europe, if you're like, oh. I mean, it feels like there's a lot of people who are on vacation all the time. And the weird part is they're going to sort of just the same, they're just seeking out the same level of like restaurant or experience that they could get in New York.

14:13It's just like collecting how many zip codes you could have a yellowtail hamachi crudo in or whatever. It's like, it's the same dish over and over. It's like, it's the miso glazed salmon. It's the striped umbrella. There seems to be something about travel where it's not even so much about going outward as upward to like the more exclusive uh hotel the harder to get to beach that you have to take a little ferry to i think you wrote about antiparos oh yeah yeah uh well i mean one of the things i wrote about this week was there's different it's like obvious classic and discreet places and the obvious ones are basically the ones that are being overrugged overexposed by all these people that they want to go to what's an obvious um well it's like mykonos you know it's like St.

14:59Tropez. It's like Ibiza. It's like these places. And last time I was in London, everyone's like, you've got to go to the Carbone. You just got it. And I'm like, why? Why wouldn't I do that in New York or Miami? You're telling me that the one restaurant I have to go to when I'm in London is the Carbone. They're like, but it's so good there. It is. Also, friends of Bulnazar, you should go to the Carbone in London. You should go to the Carbone in London. I love Mario and his fiancee, Kate. They're great. But why do I need to go to the one in London? It's insane. It's just like, that's the spot you're telling me to go to?

15:31Yeah, well, all the places, it's like a homogination. Like, all of the places are themselves the same. And you mentioned Ibiza, and I do want to talk about the birthday party of one Ray Dalio. Every summer, I rediscover that my body's preferred sleeping temperature is that of an industrial freezer. Anyone else? I was sick of flipping my pillow every five minutes, so I finally switched out my whole sleep situation for Cozy Earth. And I really don't know what I was waiting for. The rib knit pajama set is incredible. It's best worn after a full day of sweating in muggy New York City to feel instantly refreshed.

16:04These PJs are made from viscose and bamboo and are genuinely breathable. Cozy Earth stands by everything they make. There's a lifetime warranty and 30 days of hassle-free returns if something's not right. Head to CozyEarth.com and use my code SUZY, that's S-U-Z-Y, for an exclusive 20 % off. That's code SUZY for an exclusive 20 % off. And if you see a post-purchase survey, mention that you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Ray Dalio, who is the founder of Bridgewater, which is an investment firm, hedge fund, he turned 77 and he went on a wild trip to Ibiza for his birthday. He celebrated the occasion at the hyper club called Universe, but with no vowels.

16:45With no vowels in it. Universe. Universe. Universe. Where he partied past 4 a.m. and shared clips on social media. And then he also shared a heartfelt post about watching the solar eclipse in Spain. Here's my question. What is a hyper club? It sounds like a maximum security prison. Like it sounds like a bad thing actually. So there's a couple of things I love about this story. Because first, this club, I think it cost something wild, like$80 million to build. It's a huge club. It was also just built last year. And this year it was rated by DJ Magazine. Oh, that's when you know. Shout out to DJ Mag.

17:20That's the magazine we're all reporting on for our news. The paper of record for absolute dirt bags. That's where I'm going for my news. The number one club in the world. So this is where he chose his birthday, first of all. But it has like these crazy acrobats and shows. And it's just a really wild thing. But also anyone who knows anything about Ray Dalio knows this is not a guy who's like going clubbing. Yeah. He's like into meditation. He's into like relaxation practices. So if someone was like Ray Dalio is going to have a 77th birthday party at Universe, no vows, they would not think that this was the same guy.

17:59So that's why this is such a funny story. It's extremely expensive. I went on a bachelor party and it's with like one of my Eurotrash friends. And it's like very like you get a VIP area and it's like it's like fifteen thousand dollars for the night. No, I'm sorry. Absolutely not. Ray Dalio is better than this. I mean apparently not it seemed like a very I don't know if this is like I guess we can't call it a midlife crisis an end of life crisis yeah an end of life I guess now's the time to have it a twilight crisis to go to universe and then he was I like twilight crisis that's a bit more polite than what I said you're like death crisis yeah yeah get your coffin out but the then like the like sort of like hippie woo woo like solar eclipse it's like as soon as selfishness can be eradicated from this earth we will know peace and each other and God.

18:50And it's like, what is going through this guy's mind? I mean, I didn't even know about the solar eclipse. But that's the funny thing about Ibiza is that those two things do live in the same place. There's clubbing and drugs and gross. And then there's like wellness and like, you know, Pilates and, you know, cold plunge. It's like what Miami wants to be. Yeah. It's like if, it sounds like if Burning Man was an island. Oh, that's actually a perfect way to think about it. Is that the idea? It's very much like that. Do you find that people like as boomers just accumulate so much wealth and are aging that they're just throwing these insane blowouts?

19:23Yeah, I mean, there's a story I love that was in the Wall Street Journal that I put in my newsletter was the boomers are spending all their children's inheritance on purpose. Yes. And they actually started something called the Ski Club, which I believe stood for like spend kids inheritance. That's what the Ski Club is. And it's a Facebook group and they're all in it together and they're literally spending their children's inheritance together. because they have all this money and they're like we don't know what to do with it and it's because you know like their kids are not working to how they feel they worked to get this money I mean shouldn't that make them feel the opposite if their kids don't have the money that they should save the inheritance well I think they feel their kids aren't working as hard as they did right like why do we have to save this money for these bratty kids to then waste it we might as well waste it right now yeah good for them ski I'm learning new things ski I'm trying to mom and dad if you're listening do not join the ski club yeah you are not authorized to ski yeah no skiing either for your both your joints and for my bank account finance guys are so fascinating to me like if you were to describe them as a species how would you do that my ex-boyfriends that's the whole species it's their own species is that your type uh i mean sometimes accidentally but yeah it's you know it happens it happens and then tech guys who spend their money very differently it seems yeah I mean I think there's an attempt there with tech guys to appear like cooler off the bat right like more relaxed even though it's not necessarily the case well they're nerds trying to be cool and finance guys are douchebags trying to be powerful man yeah right they're like we're James Bond really right and it's like you could just be a rich money guy and that'll be fine you don't also have to like have an appreciation for leather goods yeah you It could be like Ina Goods, Ina Gardens' husband.

21:13Jeffrey. We love Jeffrey. Do you see Ina? Is Ina like, speaking of things you can't buy, like an invitation to Ina Gardens' house, how do you do that? That's real wealth. No, I've seen her twice at Leo 1909 Shelter Island, and I'm like, I will always go to this restaurant if you believe in it. Like, if this has your stamp of approval, I will eat here for the rest of my life. I mean, that's real influencing. Oh, my God. Ina's the original influencer. Yeah. Well, Martha's the original influencer. Yeah, I love Martha. We love Martha. In this house, we put some respect on Martha's name. In this house, we believe in science, and we believe in Martha Stewart.

21:51Those are two good things to believe in.

21:56Speaking of rich people, which is all we've been talking about this whole episode. Yeah, that's our transition from rich people to rich people. The billionaire hedge fund mogul John Overdeck is in the midst of the largest divorce trial in New Jersey history. and they have a lot of real housewives there so you have to assume that's a large pot of money to be fighting over john's wife laura is seeking say it with me now 6.2 billion dollars worth of his 80 billion dollar firm he countered in court by offering 10 of that uh this month laura was barred from testifying in the case after she hacked into john's email and stole of his mail how did you catch wind of this amazing divorce story so it's so funny you brought that part up because I was just reading the development again this morning.

22:40I think this story could be a TV show, really, because he started Two Sigma in 2001, and they got married in 2002 with no prenup. What's Two Sigma? That's his hedge fund. Okay. There's no prenup here with this marriage, and New Jersey is really interesting because they do have spousal law, that shows that a non-partner in a firm can still take support for what they've done, basically, in a marriage behind the scenes. Not all states say that. Okay. There's a lot of business and marriage separation in states, but not New Jersey. So it basically says, your spouse has helped build your business, even from the home.

23:27It's kind of mafioso. There's like a mafia element of it. It's a Sopranos law. Yeah, it's a Sopranos law. Like, oh, she didn't work, but she stayed home, raised the family, built the home. if there's no prenup there, you owe her part of your business. But then, you know, she hit a snag because in court, the judge said, well, you illegally accessed his emails. So that doesn't necessarily mean she's not going to get the share of his business that she's asking for, but she doesn't get to, she had all of these witnesses that she wanted to move forward to say, this is why I'm owed the share of the business I'm saying.

24:02And the judge said, you can't do that because you illegally accessed his email. Oh, as long as the email. $6.2 billion she's asking for? Out of the 80 million. How good is your bolognese, babe, if that's what you're asking, that you're cooking for the big dinner? He originally offered her something like$620 million, and she said that was a slap in the face. And then he was like, then his lawyer came back and said, well, after taxes, it's actually like$730 million. These numbers are just out of this world. They're out of this world. That's why it's like crazy. But he also has a business partner in Two Sigma.

24:40So if she actually gets this, it makes it. It's screwing him. And his ex-wife. Yeah, or eventual, actually. We don't know what's going on there. But like it makes it a whole other thing because like does she become a partner in the firm then? Oh, yi, yi, yi. Wow. OK, so why they get divorced? Do we have any details of that? They all get divorced. I know. No. It was just the timer went off and that was it? I just wonder if this is his Melinda, who will his Lauren be? You know what I mean? It's always like the first wife. She's loyal. She helps build the thing. And then it's just a rupture. And then he goes on to just have fun.

25:20You end up going to clubs without vowels. Yeah, you end up going to clubs without vowels. That's exactly it. Maybe we'll find out on the next season of Real Housewives of New Jersey. This is really, it's just so much money. It's so crazy. I would hack into an email. I mean come on. I love how these Jersey girls do divorce. It's always like like remember like the Jared Kushner's dad's was like a crazy one. Oh yeah. Like a honeypot. Yeah the uncle like set him up with a prostitute or something. Things are going crazy in Jersey. It's like there's no fault of divorce. Just give her half like let's move on I think.

25:52Yeah no 700 million is insulting. That's like what were the inside things and the outside things in Nantucket? The quarter boards. The quarter boards. The inside quarter boards. And the outside quarter boards. Why do you need an inside quarter board? You know the name of your own house. The inside quarter boards are for the cheapos. The ones who only get$700 million settlements are inside quarter boarders. Inside quarter boarders. Do you feel like we're in divorce? When's divorce season? I don't know, actually. You know, it's probably, I don't know if that would be before or after tax season. Because it's got to be one or the other.

26:25It has to be one or the other. They definitely plan around that. Yeah. I think it's probably just before like April 14th probably has a lot of them because you want to write you want to write it all off we're about to enter into a really really annoying era because all of the Millennials are about to go through their first divorces they're like the peak Millennials 36 so that means the oldest Millennials like around 45 so you can be expecting a lot of quite annoying think pieces and essays I think about Millennial divorces in the coming years Oh, interesting. What's a good headline for? For a millennial divorce?

26:57I had to be me. I wasn't being heard. Belle Burden had a great divorce memoir. Did you read it? Oh, yeah. Strangers. That's a huge one. People are so, you know, Gwyneth's starring in it. And there was the whole New Yorker article about it. Where do you come down? I mean, I think it's interesting, but really I'm just more interested in the movie. Yeah. That'll be my final say on it. Gwyneth can do no wrong. Gwyneth can do no wrong. She's hosting a party in honor of Sam Altman this weekend. Are you going? Or next weekend? No, no, but I wrote about that today. Oh, really? I mean, the interesting part of it is, you know, because people are all up in arms, but she's an early investor in OpenAI, so that makes sense.

27:35And she's an investor in Andrel. She's very kind of, she's really interesting, Gwyneth. Oh. She doesn't adhere to the same, like, political, like, scripture that it seems the other really famous rich ladies do. Not at all. She was one of the first ones who came out to support Rick Caruso for mayor in LA. And she also like dropped like a, an ad for like a condo in Tel Aviv. Oh yeah. I saw that. That was wild. It came out of nowhere. She's like, I like my condo in Ramat Kamarine, whatever the hell it's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like her running and like doing the bodies. She's like, we're going uptown.