To go to the synagogue with one's father on the Passover eve - is there in the world a greater pleasure than that? What is it worth to be dressed in new clothes from head to foot, and to show off before one's friends? Then the prayers themselves - th...
Books give us insight into other people, other cultures. They make us laugh. They make us think. If they are really good, they make us believe that we are better for having read them. You don't read a book - you experience it. Every story opens up a ...
I initially wanted to work in the music industry more on the A&R side. While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business, so you could sa...
There is no greater country on Earth for entrepreneurship than America. In every category, from the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, where I live, to University R&D labs, to countless Main Street small business owners, Americans are taking risks, e...
Technological transformations give you the chance to set up new and ambitious ventures. That's what I did with FastWeb and that is what we are doing with Babelgum. This is much more than TV because we are making the content available all across the w...
Conflict photographers grapple with two worlds that are themselves often in conflict - the one where bombs fall and bullets fly, where adrenaline runs high, and the other, back home, which is comparatively secure, and where the big event of the day m...
In the early days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, I was completely in sympathy with it. I felt that it established a new era in the history of the modern world. I was so overwhelmed by it that, if people made any unfriendly comment, I would vigoro...
The talk-box thing that T-Pain does is something new and different for this generation because they don't know about Zapp or Teddy Riley. I think he's creative and has made the talk-box his own in the hip-hop world, but if these young ones studied th...
I started with the book 'Boardwalk Empire' and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before ...
Sometimes living in a room that's badly designed isn't the worst thing in the world. Trust me - this is a fact! Living in a room that has no design whatsoever is even worse. I've learned this from my many clients over the years that have moved into n...
We know that dismantling old oppressive regimes is a great deal faster and easier than building new flourishing democracies. Chinggis Khaan once said, 'It was easier to conquer the world on horseback than to dismount and govern.' True validation of d...
If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world - all you hear about on the news is all the bad stuff everyday, but what was refreshing to me was after that, you saw how many good people there are out there. ...
I believe in breakfast. It's the one meal that my kids usually eat without a fuss, so that's huge. As for myself, I can't function without it, and I see it as a great way to get some healthy greens in, some coffee, and on a good day, maybe even some ...
If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts...
Advances in technology - hugely beneficial though they are - render us vulnerable in new ways. For instance, our interconnected world depends on elaborate networks: electric power grids, air traffic control, international finance, just-in-time delive...
I'm a sucker for entertainment and escapism as much as the next person. I like silly and lowbrow stuff, but I get nervous when I indulge in that too often. I want to know what's going on in the world. I have a morbid fear of being surprised by bad ne...
Documentaries - my God, there is so much going on in our country and in the world today that every time you open the newspaper or turn on the radio or watch the news on TV there is another documentary subject. We're getting the headlines for a second...
I don't believe complete assimilation is possible, at least not for anyone who has an active, open mind. Every step, every entry into the flows of existence can be seen as a beginning, a commencement of a brand new way of seeing oneself in the world....
Successful con men are treated with considerable respect in the South. A good slice of the settler population of that region were men who'd been given a choice between being shipped off to the New World in leg-irons and spending the rest of their liv...
There are many things I'm looking forward to in 2013, both personally and professionally. Plans for new restaurants in the U.S., including Eataly Chicago, are underway, and I'm gearing up for the 2013 Ironman world championships in Hawaii - if I'm lu...
I do tend to be an anxious fellow, and I do tend to see the world as a little darker than perhaps it genuinely is, but I also do appreciate much more than a rosy scenario, I appreciate straight news.
