| | | In today’s newsletter: Paul McCartney on writing “Eleanor Rigby”; Candace Parker wins the title; and imagining the monsters of New York. | | | | The online-teaching platform MasterClass had a rather humble start—that is, if you can consider anything involving Serena Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and the mega-best-selling writer James Patterson to be humble. The company launched, in 2015, with those three stars teaching classes on how they came to excel in their fields. Now, as Tad Friend writes in his deep dive in this week’s issue, the catalogue of fastidiously polished classes is well over a hundred and growing, with MasterClass valued at more than $2.7 billion and expected to go public soon. Like nearly all tech companies, though, MasterClass aims to be something far grander than its current form, which Friend describes as a combination of “TED talks, the great-books canon, shouty Peloton instructors, even Netflix-and-chill.” The company’s chief operating officer explained, “I think it’s legitimately possible for us to create an algorithm that builds a personalized catalogue that leads you to become the best person you can be.” Still, there is a note of skepticism, even from those who have starred in classes, about just how much mastery is possible from several hours of video instruction. Daniel Pink, who has recorded a class on sales and persuasion, says, to get really good at basketball, for example, “you’re talking about a totally different service, where for x amount of money Steph Curry will come to your house and summon you from bed at 5 A.M. and force you to shoot one thousand jumpers and then do suicides for an hour. You’re talking about a concierge service—MasterCoach.” —Ian Crouch, newsletter editor Read “Can MasterClass Teach You Everything?” Tad Friend has also written about Impossible Foods’ plans to solve climate change, the perils of artificial intelligence, and the dangerous allure that draws people to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. | | | | All the Lonely People Dept. |  Personal History Writing “Eleanor Rigby”“Growing up, I knew a lot of old ladies. . . .” How one of the Beatles’ greatest songs came to be. By Paul McCartney | | | | | Cover Story | | This week’s cover artist, Edward Steed, discusses his love for the many eccentric creatures that can be found on New York City’s sidewalks, and reveals his shocking indifference toward Halloween: “I have never celebrated it in any way.” | | | | Dept. of Culture | |  Art work courtesy Yuji Agematsu and Miguel Abreu Gallery - MOMA PS1’s survey show “Greater New York,” which was slated to open in 2020, but was delayed by the pandemic, “amounts to something of a time capsule: a collection of judgments that predate a period so tumultuous it feels like an age,” Peter Schjeldahl writes.
- Candace Parker brings it home: After a career in Los Angeles, the W.N.B.A. star returned to Chicago and won a championship. “When the ball reached Parker, with the title in reach,” Louisa Thomas writes, “it was impossible not to imagine fate at work.”
- “It did not occur to me that stuff on Broadway was for me,” Keenan Scott II, the author of the newly opened play “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” tells Michael Schulman. “It’s hard to invite people to spaces where they don’t see themselves.”
| | | | Editor’s Pick |  Photo Booth What Old Money Looks like in America, and Who Pays for ItBuck Ellison serves bluebloods up for public scrutiny as only one of their own could. By Chris Wiley | | | | | Fun & Games Dept. |  Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz The fewer clues you need, the more points you receive. By Liz Maynes-Aminzade |  Crossword A Challenging Puzzle Rosalind’s cousin in “As You Like It”: five letters. By Elizabeth C. Gorski | |  Daily Shouts The Most Memorable Compliments I Have Received Affirmations from a straphanger, a gynecologist, and others. By Meghan Turbitt |  Daily Cartoon Monday, October 18th By Colin Tom | | | | | | P.S. The third season of HBO’s “Succession” premièred last night, and the members of the Roy family are back to their squirm-inducing squabbles, power plays, and hapless thrashing—as when, in the season’s first episode, they appear on an airport tarmac, paralyzed by indecision about which private plane to take where. In a recent Profile of Jesse Armstrong, the show’s creator and writer, Rebecca Mead summed up this combination of humor and pathos: “In general, the show makes affluence look vaguely diseased, and emphasizes the ways in which even the very rich cannot be entirely insulated from the drudgery of inconvenience.” | | | | Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. | | | | | | | |
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