This 'as-told-to' essay is based on a conversation with Juli Ford, a 57-year-old real estate agent and certified senior advisor based in Massachusetts. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When my children were young, we saw my parents all the time.

We lived very close to each other in South Plymouth, Massachusetts, and my parents always helped with the kids. From the time they were born, Wednesdays were Grammy and Grampy Day.

My dad got sick in 2005. When we learned in the summer of 2011 that he probably didn't have much time left, we talked about what life would be like after he was gone, including where my mom would live.

When he passed in December 2011, my mom was not ready to live with us. At 68, she had never lived on her own. She'd been with my dad since she was 15.

Then, in April 2015, a house in Pembroke, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes from South Plymouth, came on the market. The second I saw it online, I thought, "Oh, this is perfect."

The house had a beautiful in-law apartment

The house is 4,300 square feet, and the basement is about 800 square feet. Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

My mom fell in love with the home's basement apartment. It's full of beautiful natural light. It's one bedroom with a den, a full kitchen, a fireplace, its own laundry, 1.5 baths, its own outdoor patio, and two entrances.

We made an offer within two days. We bought the house in April 2015 for $630,000.

My mom had no interest in ownership. Instead, she made a financial contribution toward the down payment equal to what she would have paid in rent for the next five years.

She also gave us money every year for utilities. Last year, she started making a bigger monthly contribution to help cover household expenses. She essentially has not had to pay rent for 10 years, and as the house gets older, the cost of maintaining it grows.

It was a dream when we first moved in

My mom helped me a lot with my kids, especially with their schooling. My kids were 10 and 11 when she moved in, and they were homeschooled. We drove around a lot because we were going to museums and other activities in Boston. She sometimes helped with driving, and she became their English teacher because her first career was teaching English.

Grammy Wednesdays continued when we moved into the house, and my kids, who are 20 and 22 now, would go down and visit her on their own.

My mom has exceptionally good boundaries. I'm sure we did things differently than she would have done with our kids, but she's always been very good at keeping her opinions to herself.

My mom is still independent, but needs our help now

At 82, she's a bit less independent than she was 10 years ago because of health issues. Still, she has privacy: I don't know everything that she does all the time, and we can go days without seeing each other. Other times, we see each other a lot more often.

We have had a few medical emergencies with my mom, so I got in the habit of keeping my phone next to my bed. There have been a few times that she's had to call me.

I cannot imagine how much harder it would be to be a daughter of an aging mom if we weren't in the same house. I would be so much more concerned about her being alone and getting lonelier. It would be more time-consuming for me if I had to go somewhere else to support her.

The house gave us other financial benefits

In the beginning, the only financial benefit I really thought about of combining households was that we could get a nicer house than my husband and I could afford on our own.

Around the time we got this house, my brother's family went through a foreclosure after his wife had been hit by a drunken driver and had a traumatic brain injury. They had a lot of housing instability during that time because she was unable to work and had massive medical bills. They were not sure where they were going to live.

Because we combined households with my mom, we were able to tap into the equity in this house to help them. We took out a home equity loan and bought a small, lovely house, and rented it to them. We weren't really making any money on it, but the rent was paying the bills.

Within two years, they recovered their credit enough that they purchased the house from us. They were able to rebuild their financial well-being in that house.

We used the proceeds from the sale to buy a vacation property in Vermont, which we turned into an Airbnb for four years. When we sold it, we paid off our kids' student loans.

We were all able to build wealth because we combined households with my mom. We feel so proud and grateful. It's not something I saw coming 11 years ago.

I see multigenerational living as one of the most compelling solutions to our elder care and affordable housing crises. Bringing families together around this is really an underutilized solution.

Bernie Sinclaire calls herself a "mommunist."

For nearly two years, the 38-year-old has raised kids with her best friend in their shared Manhattan apartment — and she couldn't recommend the setup more. She and Anabelle Gonzalez, 39, have a household rhythm: they trade off chores, cooking, and doing crafts with their elementary-age children. Better yet, the pair splits bills in one of America's most expensive cities.

"We'll be laughing on the couch, playing with our kids, and dinner is made, and the kitchen is cleaned," Sinclaire told Business Insider. "It's been mind-blowing to be able to just sit and talk. That was not something that I experienced when I was in a relationship, and it was not something I was able to enjoy as much when I was a single mother."

In a city where paychecks are stretched thin and monthly daycare costs rival rent expenses, New Yorkers are pinching pennies. A recent report from the Mayor's Office found that it costs the average family $159,000 to live and raise children in the five boroughs, and that's just for basics like housing and healthcare. Sixty-two percent of all residents — and the vast majority of single-parent households — don't earn enough to meet their cost-of-living threshold. It's hardest for mothers, who are often paid less than men and shoulder more childcare responsibilities.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office with a mandate to make the city more affordable. He has announced a plan for universal childcare for toddlers and preschoolers, which builds on the existing NYC Public School free 3-K program. Other proposals aim to lower the cost of apartments, buses, and food. It's a big task, especially as the city's housing demand continues to outpace supply.

To make ends meet, Sinclaire and Gonzalez became a dual-income household with a combined $200,000 — and really fun wallpaper.

"This is not the Mojo Dojo Casa House," Sinclaire said, referring to Ken's bachelor pad in the "Barbie" movie. "This is the Barbie Dream House."

'A utopia'

The concept of a "mommune," or commune of moms, has always made sense to Sinclaire. She was raised in Italy by a single parent, and said she watched her mother have to "choose between poverty and partnership." She wanted to avoid being financially dependent on a man.

"That was a dream and a wish from early on: to create a family not centered on male partnership and not centered on romance," she said. "Friendships are way more long-lasting, and it didn't make sense to me to have my children's welfare and financial security hinge on something that data shows over and over again is not really working for most women."

Sinclaire and Gonzalez met at an NYC graduate school in 2013 and stayed in touch when they became mothers. Sinclaire has two sons, ages 4 and 9, and Gonzalez has a 7-year-old daughter. Gonzalez had divorced when Sinclaire pitched moving in together.

"It took me time to process because you don't really hear about that type of alternative family," said Gonzalez, who grew up in Brooklyn. She didn't agree right away. "At first I was like, 'Okay, girlie, I love you, but what are you talking about? Then I cried at the end of the conversation because it sounded like a utopia."

The pair initially settled into Sinclaire's existing two-bedroom apartment, then upgraded to a three-bedroom, two-bathroom Harlem unit costing $4,550 a month. Their monthly rent is roughly $600 higher in the new place, but they say the space is essential as their kids grow. Their two incomes allow them to stay local. In upper Manhattan, about 52% of renter households spend 30% or more of their income on housing, the threshold housing economists typically define as unaffordable.

Both women teach at the same public high school, and said their finances have become more stable since they began sharing costs. Last year, Sinclaire earned $94,278 after deductions and Gonzalez earned $106,952, tax documents reviewed by Business Insider show. They split the $600 monthly grocery bill 50/50, then Gonzalez covers WiFi, and Sinclaire pays the electricity bill.

Childcare is divided, too. Sinclaire's youngest son is now old enough for free 3-K (which saves over $1,000 each month), and the others are in public school. The two moms trade drop-offs, pick-ups, and watching the kids. When there's a gap, they call their part-time caregiver. "She's been with us forever," Sinclaire said. "And we don't have as many hours for her as we did before, but she's our lifeline." Their monthly childcare costs average $600, with Sinclaire paying a larger share because she has two kids.

Since starting the "mommune," Sinclaire said she saves about $1,200 more each month, which goes to her emergency fund, retirement, and kids' college accounts. Gonzalez said they also spend less on takeout and impulse purchases because they can split household responsibilities and avoid burnout — something that wasn't the case in either of their previous relationships. That time and energy savings can't be overstated, she said.

"You want to be honest about your soul and boundaries and your lifestyle up front," Gonzales said. "Talking about money is uncomfortable — and it has been uncomfortable for me and for Bernie because it was the first time we, as friends, were talking about it — but it's important to talk and be honest about money."

'A New Yorker forever'

Gonzalez is the first to wake each morning to start breakfast. "I don't do measurements," she said, but each plate turns out delicious anyway. Sinclaire — a recipe loyalist — prefers cooking dinner.

Their children act like siblings and enjoy playing together, with occasional squabbles. The moms are each other's support system, and treat all three kids like their own.

"I think that if you're blessed to have a big community, you might not see this as something very different," Sinclaire said. "But if you are, like many mothers, 'default parenting,' and you're overwhelmed and you've lost your sense of self, friendship is lifesaving."'

Sharing a life has given the two more space for their creativity. Gonzalez co-owns a clothing brand. Sinclaire has been able to spend more time on art and is turning years of handwritten journals into a book. Saving money has also given the family more resources to travel. They took the kids to Mexico recently and plan to take their "first solo mommy trip" to Turks and Caicos this summer.

The pair hasn't sworn off romance, but they wouldn't trade it for the "mommune."

"A lot of times people are like, 'This is crazy, that you're going to move in with another woman,'" Sinclaire laughed. "And I said, 'How is that more crazy than moving in with a man that you met online and having children with him?'"

"Yes, we do date," Gonzalez added. "But anybody who dates people will understand that you live in your house and I live in mine."

Even when the kids get older and move away, the moms don't think they'll part ways. There are simply too many Jon Hamm TV shows, Cardi B albums, and nightlife spots for them to appreciate together. They see the "mommune" lasting long past their child-rearing years.

Plus, rent isn't getting any cheaper, and neither of them wants to leave NYC.

"I'm a New Yorker forever," Gonzalez said. "I love my city."

• Pokémon cards have become valuable assets on the playground and in cafeterias.
• Preteen collectors aren't playing around: They view the cards as investments and a tool to build value.
• I caught up with kids at a recent trading event. Here's what I learned.

My introduction to Pokémon was the cartoon, which premiered in the US when I was five. My brother watched and built a small collection of cards, only for them to be stolen, marking the end of his short-lived hobby.

I hadn't really thought much about the pocket-sized monsters since then, aside from when Pokémon Go became an inescapable phenomenon in 2016.

Then, a few months ago, a couple of my colleagues with elementary school-aged kids said Pokémon was back, but it wasn't the game they remembered.

Thanks to the internet and smartphones, today's kids treat their Pokémon collections like stock portfolios. Kids bragged, some inaccurately, about million-dollar cards, and parents coached their youngsters on how to make the best trades.

I decided to see for myself and headed to the hottest club in New York for the under-16 set: Bleecker Trading.

The financial center

On a Thursday during spring break, the hobby shop on the Upper West Side was welcoming, with boxes of free pizza stacked near the door and a Pikachu balloon signaling that it was open for business.

Business, indeed. During my afternoon at the Bleecker Trading, I watched as dozens of kids wheeled and dealed, spewed financial jargon — like appreciation and interest — that I didn't learn until I was twice their age, and negotiated with adults.

Last year, Pokémon was the world's No. 1 toy product by sales — though perhaps it should be thought of more as a commodity and less as a plaything. Over the past year, Pokémon cards have outperformed both the Dow and the S&P 500, according to Card Ladder's Pokémon index, which tracks market performance on several resale platforms.

Edi, a nine-year-old from Switzerland, was visiting his dad in New York and had begged to visit Bleecker Trading. When I walked in, he was in the middle of shaking hands with the shop owner, Matt Winkelried, to mark a successful deal.

Edi understands how valuable cards can be.

"The best card costs more than a house," he told me.

He's not wrong. In February, a rare Pikachu sold for $16.5 million, setting a record. Edi's own top card cost about $300 or $400, his dad said.

In a back corner, three teenagers were in the middle of a trade. One said he was happy to make a cash deal. Another said, with a bit of jealousy, that the other's grandma always buys him good cards.

They were emphatic about the reason they collect: the money.

They seemed a bit bemused by my amazement. Duh, they understood the basics of investing and how to read stock-like charts that track the values of specific cards.

They prided themselves on trading fairly and following the rules (including sanitizing their hands before engaging, as demonstrated by Bleecker Trading staff). In fact, they seemed downright responsible with their money.

A couple of tables over, RJ and Jasper, who were there with their dads, told me about how they keep some packs and boxes of cards unopened — a strategy Winkelried likened to a low-risk investment like bonds.

It's tempting to rip through them, RJ said, so he keeps them under his bed in a bag. Out of sight, out of mind.

I asked what he was saving for. "A rainy day," Jasper, who keeps track of the interest on various cards, told me.

The kids, it turns out, may be all right.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hady Kfoury, the founder and CEO of Naya, a Middle Eastern-inspired food chain. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I created Naya to share the authentic Middle Eastern flavors I grew up with, in a modern and fast-casual way. Today, we have 43 locations. We're adding 12 more this year, and 25 next year. Our goal is to reach 200 locations by 2030.

It takes a lot of work and it's a competitive environment.

I'm very proud that I'm a CEO and still so hands-on. I work a lot — and I'm not saying this is a healthy lifestyle.

I wake up around 6 a.m.

I try to have a peaceful hour before the rest of my family wakes up. Recently, I've been exercising in the morning because I find it difficult to do it after work, especially if I get home late. So I try to work out between 6:20 and 6:50.

I call my mom at 6:50 a.m. every morning

I call my mom usually every day at 6:50 a.m. We speak for about five to 10 minutes.

My mom is an unbelievable cook and she hosted a lot growing up. She would have 20 to 100 people over for dinner and cook everything from scratch, with flower arrangements and everything. She's a great resource when it comes to understanding the food trends in Lebanon.

I don't eat breakfast during the week

Monday through Friday, I drink tons of coffee but no breakfast. On weekends I eat a heavy breakfast. I don't know why, but that's how my body works.

I wake up my kids and my wife prepares breakfast for them. Then we leave home by 7:50 a.m. and walk to school. My children go to a French International school. Lebanon was a French colony for many years and it was my first language. So I wanted to pass that down to my kids.

I refuse to have an assistant

Our office is next to Grand Central and I head there after dropping my kids off around 8:15 a.m.

I refuse to have an assistant and I schedule everything myself. I'm very into routines and habit. I don't want to have to talk to someone right after I finish a call. I'd rather take a half-hour break and tackle my emails first. It would be very hard to have someone schedule my day and not know what I really need between meetings.

I go to Naya every day

We're surrounded by roughly eight or nine restaurants within a few minutes walking distance. So I go to one every day.

I switch up a lot, but my go-to order is a chicken kebab with a lot of tahini. 70% of our sales go to chicken shawarma. So I try to have that as well, to confirm consistency.

I try and be as incognito as possible. If I go during a lunch rush, I avoid talking to the team and just evaluate the experience. The quality of the food is extremely important.

Sometimes on my way to work, I'll go into a restaurant before opening. I try to make it feel like I'm a partner — not the boss — and everything is business as usual. I ask workers if anything is bothering them, how things are moving, and then I do some spot checks on food quality and cleanliness.

I have a lot of calls to import ingredients

I don't want to turn Naya into an import-export business but I'd love to get 20 to 30% of our products to come straight from Lebanon. We need to be authentic and true to our toots.

It takes a lot of coordination because there's a seven-hour timezone difference. Lebanon also operates differently and that's another challenge. Samples can take time, especially when it's a refrigerted product, so it's a lot of communication.

The tariffs add another layer of complications. I've been trying to negotiate and split the difference between us and our manufacturers. It hasn't been so bad for Lebanon so far, but the uncertainty stresses us.

I have dinner with my aunt once a week

Similar to my mom, my aunt is an unbelievable cook. We have dinner together once a week at her place and she cooks a little bit of everything, but with a big focus on Lebanese food. It's very hard to take her recipes and scale it commercially, but she's an unbelievable person to go for new ideas.

I work 14- to 16-hour days

I try to get home by 7:30 p.m. It's important for me to have dinner with the kids. I try to limit myself to two to three business dinners or events per week. When I have those, I go straight from the office to dinner and then I'm back home by around 10 p.m.

I'm constantly working. I check my emails on the subway and while I'm walking on the streets of New York. Even when I watch TV, I try to shift to something industry-related, either from an entrepreneurial perspective or cooking.

Right now, we're emerging and there's so much going on, that I think my presence is very important. So it's an easy 14- to 16-hours a day.

I used to get copies of every review

I can't sleep well knowing that I have so many unread emails. For almost 17 years, I would get a copy of every customer review from Yelp, Google, or customer support.

About three months ago, I handed it over to someone that I trust who has a great grip on the customer experience. Now she sends me weekly reports on how things are going and I reduced my email intake by at least 150 emails per day.

Sometimes I would get emails with a complaint and even if it was 11 p.m., I would email the general manager and ask what went wrong. I learned I should not do that because it stresses out the team and it's not healthy.

I spend my summer weekends in Connecticut

I try to disconnect as much as possible on the weekends, but I still have to spend four or five hours catching up. I love to work a bit on Sunday just to get ready for Monday before it gets crazy.

I spend my summer weekends in a town called Litchfield, Connecticut. We're part of a community that has tennis courts. I play four or five hours on Sunday. It's a lot of socializing and fun.

I play chess before bed

I was told to stop playing chess before bed and give myself an hour break. I'm hooked on Chess.com, where you can play with real people. It's a great way to end my day.

I try to read half an hour before bed and completely disconnect. I love reading, but I don't do more than five to 10 pages a night.

I go to bed around 11:30 p.m. My sleep score varies, but it never goes above 80. I'm trying to get better at that. I try to avoid wine at night. When I don't drink and I disconnect from screens an hour or two before bed, I sleep much better.

• Seven years ago, Matthijs van der Ham won a lottery to rent a tiny home in the Netherlands.
• One of the main reasons van der Ham has stayed is the village feels safe for his 13-year-old son.
• Instead of complaining about noise, his neighbors turned his son's birthday party into a mini festival.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matthijs van der Ham, 44, an architect and woodworker. For seven years, he and his 13-year-old son have lived in Minitopia,'s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

Seven years ago, when our landlord told me the apartment on a farm where I lived with my seven-year-old son was coming off the rental market, I needed to find somewhere else to live.

Around the same time, a tiny house became available at a Minitopia village in 's-Hertogenbosch, the first of several in the region. I was already familiar with this particular village because, earlier that year, I'd helped a friend build a home there.

The Minitopia Foundation held a lottery for the rental and hundreds of people applied. With a bit of luck, I won. Within three weeks of losing our apartment, I had the keys to our tiny house in 's-Hertogenbosch.

Living in a tiny-home village has been liberating

When I first moved here in 2019, it was common for tour groups to walk through the site and for drones to fly overhead to film life here. That's less common now. There are many more projects like this around the world, and tiny homes are becoming increasingly normal.

Back then, the site was mostly concrete. Over the course of my time here, however, it has become much greener. Every year, I plant trees along the street and invite the neighbors to join. They often do. On a typical street, the local government would probably remove trees like that or make you go through a long approval process. Here, if I want to plant trees, I can.

In my spare time, I like to create art from wood. On a normal residential street, if someone saw a man walking around with an ax, they might call the police. Here, people ask what I'm making and tell me how nice my art is.

In a place like Minitopia, the entire street feels like your living space, unlike in normal neighborhoods where everything is clearly defined: fenced gardens, parking spaces, a road, a pavement.

Here, there are no fences and no strict boundaries. It's much more fluid. When you live in a space that is less rigid, it becomes easier to think that way, too. Living like this has been liberating, and I feel freer than I used to.

Minitopia is a fantastic community for raising children

I've always been happy here, especially when it comes to raising my son. It's a great place for kids to grow up. It feels safe, and there aren't many cars passing through.

My son is always strolling around outside before returning at a set time. It's really nice that children have the opportunity to explore here. That's one of the main reasons I've stayed.

Another reason is that the people are really great. A few years ago, I threw a party for my son's birthday. At first, I only invited his classmates. Then we ended up inviting their families and everyone at Minitopia. There are more than two dozen homes here.

It turned into a small festival. We had a food truck, music, and neighbors lending chairs and helping out. In a normal neighborhood, we'd have received noise complaints, but at Minitopia, everyone just wants to have fun.

We do a lot together as a community, which is special. Every Tuesday, we have a get-together where we make art, eat, and talk. On New Year's Eve, we had a big party.

You can keep to yourself if you like, but I love that there are so many opportunities to do fun things together.

I've never been tempted to move

Though I rent this house, it feels like my home. I handle most of the maintenance, and I'm free to change it as I see fit. For example, I've made some improvements, such as adding a roof over the porch.

While my dream is to one day live on a piece of land with better soil so I can garden more, at this point in my life, living in a tiny home village works well for us.

In my seven years here, I've never once been tempted to leave.

Scott Galloway never claimed to be an activist.

"I'm too lazy, selfish, socially minded," he told Business Insider on a February call about his unlikely leadership of two movements at once, both with Big Tech in the crosshairs. "I saw an opportunity for a new form of economic activism," he said, "but I'm a long way from being a Cesar Chavez or refusing to give up my bus seat."

Later in our call, he analogizes his "Resist and Unsubscribe" initiative — which urges Americans to unsubscribe from Big Tech to protest the Trump Administration's immigration crackdown — to the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycotts. At one point, he calls activists "more noble" than himself. Seconds later, he describes not wanting to "get on a call with a bunch of people in Birkenstocks."

I asked his cohost, Kara Swisher, the same question: Is Scott an activist? Not in a traditional sense, she texted me, or he would have formed a coalition. "I got a lot of pings from people who do organizing that this was a dumb way to do it," Swisher wrote. "It wasn't."

If you don't know Galloway's name, you've certainly seen his clips. The executive-turned-professor-turned-podcaster rakes in millions from his center-left media empire, including four podcasts, two newsletters, and six books, the latest about how young men are socially and economically disadvantaged, thanks in part to Big Tech. He's a sort of shock jock for the TikTok age — and his 400,000 followers there love it.

In recent months, his anti-Big Tech efforts have made him an even bigger lightning rod. He's been disinvited from two speaking gigs, he said, because the hosts didn't "want controversy." (He declined to share which gigs: "I'm hoping they invite me next year.") He's also heard from CEOs or chief marketing officers of 20% of the companies he's targeted, he said, who have mostly been kind. He says he's disappointed because he wishes they felt more threatened.

It's a surprising turn for the serial entrepreneur and business school professor. He's a provocateur, a testosterone-injecting multimillionaire who students call a "dick." Is this the man who can move the masses to quit Amazon Prime cold turkey?

Galloway is a businessman at heart. Even his activism is done through the market.

After federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Galloway launched his Resist and Unsubscribe campaign. The best way to catch President Donald Trump's attention, he reasoned, was the market. Since, he said, corporations were providing the "data, infrastructure, and logistics" to assist with Trump's immigration crackdown, it was time for Americans to vote with their dollars.

He wanted to walk the walk — and that meant cutting his own subscriptions. He quickly found that he'd been paying for some duplicates: four Apple TV Plus accounts, three ChatGPT subscriptions. He had four AT&T contracts, of which "three are for Blackberrys and iPads that have been in landfills for the last decade," he told me.

The Galloway family also found some workarounds. His son found a "probably illegal" way to watch the Premier League without Paramount+. He binge-watched "Heated Rivalry" before dumping HBO Max. The hardest app to give up was Uber, which he said on his podcast was costing him $34,000 a year.

On stock ownership, Galloway is more mixed. He's hesitant to sell his Amazon shares while the stock is down, but he said he did sell down almost all of his Apple shares.

"I'm especially offended, personally, by Tim Cook," he said. Galloway said that Cook paints himself as a "soft, gentle, nice guy" while sucking up to Trump at the "Melania" premiere. ("I'm not a political person on either side," Cook recently told Good Morning America.)

He plans to move his money out of Goldman Sachs and is debating whether to choose a regional US bank or the Royal Bank of Canada.

If you're worried that you can't fully unsubscribe, he gets it.

"I don't have entire moral clarity around this," Galloway said. "I still have an iPhone, and I'm not giving it up."

As February came to a close, Galloway felt contented. Resist and Unsubscribe had hit 23 million views on social media and 2 million unique site visits, he said. An estimate on his website shows how much market capitalization the movement would wipe out if 5% of visitors canceled two subscriptions. As of this story's publication date, it calculated just over $281 million in losses.

When Galloway first started talking about the plight facing America's young men five years ago, it produced a "gag reflex," he said. People compared him to manosphere influencer Andrew Tate and accused him of misogyny.

Galloway has said that young men are more economically and socially disadvantaged than young women. He points to the stats. Young men account for only 42% of students at four-year universities, and 63% of young men are single. "If you go into a morgue and there are five people who died by suicide, four are men," he said.

His book, "Notes on Being a Man," published in November, is a how-to guide for the disenfranchised young man in your life. Of course, young people are reading for pleasure less and less. His most encouraging feedback comes from mothers, Galloway said.

The book has also received plenty of criticism. In her review in The New Yorker, Jessica Winter writes that Galloway thinks "men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, but just not as much as before."

Galloway seemed taken aback. "I think that's a total misinterpretation of what I've written about," he said. Those on the left — which he groups The New Yorker into — seemed to think that young men don't have problems, he said. "They are the problem."

"We have decided, in the social hierarchy, young men are less deserving of empathy than women," Galloway said.

Galloway also faced misogyny accusations from women online after calling himself a "'50s dad" who wasn't sure if there should be mandatory paternity leave. He said that dads are a "waste of time" in the first few months of a child's life, and that their only jobs are to keep babies from drowning and "make sure moms don't lose it." In The New York Times, Jessica Grose called it "loud and wrong."

On this subject, Galloway was more remorseful. "The comments on paternity leave were meant to be funny," he said. "They weren't. It was stupid, and so far I've paid a fairly significant reputational price."

He was less sympathetic to the Times, which he said "made a cartoon out of my comments so that they could play guardians of gotcha."

Stirring up controversy has long been part of Galloway's brand. Why not double down?

"I try to be provocative, I try to be funny, I try to say what I'm thinking," he told me. "Against paternity leave? No, that's absolutely not the message I want to communicate."

It's easy to think that Galloway hates Big Tech to the bone.

Tech is the target of both of his movements. He accuses the industry of helping to push young men down; in his book, he analogizes Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg to heroin dealers standing outside a middle school. Then, for Resist and Unsubscribe, he asks you to stop paying these companies entirely.

Indeed, on our call, Galloway spared no barbs for the tech CEOs. "I don't think there's any way feasible that he could be described as a good person," he said of Zuckerberg.

But the tech industry is full of his friends, his former coworkers, and the people who made him rich. Galloway is an entrepreneur, after all; he made (some of) his millions on the sale of the business intelligence firm, L2. He wrote a book about Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, which he called a "love letter."

Of the executives targeted by Resist and Unsubscribe, Galloway said that half are acquaintances, a quarter are "friendly" with him, and one or two are friends. "I find that they're, on the whole, good people," he said of tech executives.

That's what makes his shift to organizing so surprising. He's not raging against an industry from the outside; he could well be part of the in-crowd if he wanted to. He was a successful business executive with a vengeful spirit, then a snarky podcaster — and now a man trying to save the world.

Galloway said that humans are "net gainers" from Big Tech — but that we're also net gainers from pesticides and fossil fuels. What's Big Tech's emission? "Rage," he said.

Pesticides and fossil fuels are regulated by the government. For tech, we often rely on a benevolent CEO, Galloway said. He's not sure they exist anymore.

"If we're waiting on the better angels of Mark Zuckerberg to show up, don't hold your breath," he said.

• Clémence de Lutz owns Petitgrain Boulangerie, one of LA's most popular bakeries.
• On opening day in 2024, she sold out of croissants in about an hour. Today, there's often a line out the door.
• She credits her small business's success to social capital, intentional hiring, and radical hospitality.

When Clémence de Lutz answered my phone call at 1 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in late February, she'd already been awake — and working — for 12 hours.

De Lutz owns Petitgrain Boulangerie, a tiny bakery tucked between a delicatessen and a nail salon on Los Angeles' iconic Wilshire Boulevard. Five days a week, her alarm goes off at 12:48 a.m., giving her just enough time to get out of bed, walk the 10 blocks to the shop, and start shaping croissants by 1 a.m. She relieves her 23-year-old daughter, who works the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. night shift.

Those early hours aren't for show. They're key to good business.

The most foot traffic happens between 8 a.m., when her bakery opens, and 10:30 a.m., she explained: "If we don't have enough things to sell because we shaped too late or they went into the proofer too late, then we lose money."

From 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., she works alone in the kitchen.

"It's my favorite time of day," said the mother of three, "because I just listen to true-crime podcasts."

At 3 a.m., a second baker arrives, followed by three more, staggered at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., and 6 a.m. Front of house clocks in at 7 a.m., and the doors open an hour later. Regulars often line up well before then to secure their favorite pastries, including the most popular item: the plain croissant.

On Fridays, she typically works a half-day and focuses on business development. The Friday we chat is different.

"This week, I'm short-staffed," she told me, stepping out of the kitchen to take the call. "I have a nice, healthy 45 minutes ahead of me. I'm just waiting for things to rise in the proofer."

De Lutz was born in Paris and moved with her family to Washington, D.C., when she was eight. Summers were spent selling ice cream and washing dishes at the inn and restaurant her grandparents owned in the south of France. "My parents would just drop us off for the summer and be like, 'Work for tips,'" she recalled.

She studied film and anthropology at Syracuse University, then moved to Los Angeles with plans to make documentaries. She tried the corporate route first, taking an executive assistant job at Fox, but it didn't last. "I just couldn't find my footing until I went back into food in my early 20s and was like, 'Oh, this is what feels normal,'" she said. "Chaos feels normal."

Turning a cubicle cookie side hustle into a career

While a desk job wasn't a great fit for de Lutz, it led to a side hustle that would change the course of her career. She'd collect cookie orders from coworkers throughout the week and deliver her handmade creations on Fridays. Her cubicle cookie business eventually landed a spot on KCRW's "Good Food," an appearance she says "changed my life." She quit her job, rented a commercial kitchen, and began working as a ghost pastry chef for restaurants. Baking evolved into teaching and consulting. For years, she helped other bakeries build menus and streamline systems, work that also served as real-time education on what it takes to succeed in the industry.

When the opportunity to run her own bakery fell into her lap — a friend she'd consulted for called her up and said, "Hey, I'm retiring, do you want my space?" — she jumped.

Taking over an existing kitchen space in LA typically comes with expensive delays and red tape. In Los Angeles County, she explained, commercial kitchens that sit empty for 90 days or more can trigger a permit reset. So, "when you find an owner who is willing to work with you and close the day before you want to open and just kind of negotiate key money for buying out the equipment, you can never pass that up."

She has lived lean, she said, with no credit card debt or loans, so the risk of opening felt manageable.

"The values I grew up with have very little to do with money. In France, it's not customary to value money or wealth. It's really valuing being a tradesperson, being an expert in your field," she said. "Taking risks was always easy because I had nothing to lose."

Opening day: Selling 300 croissants in 1 hour

Petitgrain opened in May 2024. From the start, demand outpaced production.

Opening day, she made about 300 croissants. They didn't last more than an hour. On day two, she about doubled the number and sold out again.

Since opening, the bakery has drawn steady crowds from Wednesday through Sunday, the days it's open. Today, the operation is close to its ceiling.

"We're pretty maxed out," she said. Her 870-square-foot kitchen, equipped with one double-stack oven and one small proofer, produces 32 "books" of croissants a day. A book yields roughly 24 to 30 croissants, putting the daily volume at 700 to 900. Though the croissant is the top seller, she offers a variety of other pastries, including cinnamon, cardamom, and sausage rolls, as well as cookies, quiche, and scones.

The business worked from the get-go because she understood her baseline costs and built for sustainability. It helped that her landlord was committed to renting to small businesses at below-market rent, she added: "Rent is $4,100 a month, and we knew how much we needed to make to make rent."

Early on, she kept a second job teaching baking classes, but within a couple of months of opening, she sold her share of the cooking school to focus fully on Petitgrain.

De Lutz said Petitgrain's average monthly sales have climbed about 131% from 2024, when she first opened, as the team slowly increased production. Small upgrades, such as undercounter freezers, have helped drive another 20% in growth over the last few months, she added.

Her secret sauce: Social capital and 'radical hospitality'

Having ripped open one of her flaky masterpieces myself, it's hard to agree with de Lutz when she claims her croissants are "overhyped."

"I'm not kidding," she said when I chuckled. "I wake up every morning at 12:48 a.m., and my first thought is: 'How can I live up to this hype?' It's a lot of expectations, but it's sort of what drives you to be excellent."

A big part of her immediate success, she believes, was timing. When Petitgrain opened, interest in croissants surged across Los Angeles.

"Everybody all of a sudden wanted to write about croissants," she said. "It was just really lucky timing."

Less visible, and perhaps more impactful than trends, however, were the relationships she'd built from being in the food and hospitality community for so long. Social capital, she said, is "the most important part of my story." While it's hard to quantify, "I think that has the biggest return."

Her hiring model and teambuilding strategies are unique. At Petitgrain, she practices what she calls "both-of-house" training: everyone in back of house learns front of house, and everyone in front of house works at least one back-of-house shift weekly.

That way, "everyone understands the product better and has respect for their team members," she said. She also rejects a traditional hierarchy and instead aims for shared accountability, anchored in wages.

"My business model is based on generous hospitality," she said. "Everybody needs to earn a living wage, not like $20 an hour. Everyone here, with tips, is making at minimum $30 an hour. I don't want anyone to have to work a second job."

To make that work, she runs a tip pool, and she protects it. She refuses to hire ahead of revenue.

"Because the tip pool is such an important part of everybody's paycheck, I'm really cautious," she said. "I cannot bring in a new team member until we grow sales between 6 and 8% at a time because, if I add an extra person before revenue grows, everybody's tip pool gets diluted."

As of early 2026, she has a team of 13 bakers and baristas. When she does hire, credentials aren't her priority. She's looking for kindness, hustle, and curiosity.

"I don't care if you went to culinary school. I don't care if you worked at a Michelin-star restaurant," she said. "Honestly, it's not hard to make a croissant. It really isn't. But if you are curious, if you are humble, if you work hard, you'll figure it out. And 99% of the time, that yields a really great team."

Underneath all of it is what she calls her core belief system: radical generosity, expressed through radical hospitality.

"There's never a time when I have been radically generous and regretted it," she said.