A longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, Tad Friend is a cultural decoder. He has written about Hollywood actors, venture capitalists, prison inmates, wildlife traffickers, tech innovators, envelope-pushing athletes, and more. His story about suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge inspired the documentary film The Bridge and the song “Jumpers” by the American rock band Sleater- Kinney. In 2020, he won a James Beard for his examination of plant-based meat. Friend is the author of two memoirs, Cheerful Money, a fondly critical look at his WASP heritage, and In the Early Times, a raw and honest book about the emotional legacy left by his father. It was named a best book of 2022 by The New Yorker, and John Irving called it “a dazzling account of the author’s endeavor to love, but not imitate, his father.” Friend is also the author of the collection Lost in Mongolia: Travels in Hollywood and Other Foreign Lands, which prompted Steve Martin to anoint him “the finest writer who has never done stand-up comedy working today.”