“Did you see this?” one wrote. “Is this real? If anyone knows, it’s you.”

“Were you invited to this?” another asked.

X user , who works in tech and science policy, tweeted the invitation out with the caption: Gwyneth Paltrow is the apex predator of taste. You say taste is the new moat. Only she has the courage to host an al fresco dinner at the Hamptons home in honor of Sam Altman.

The responses to Kukoff’s tweet varied from angry to hilarious (my favorite: Those of the woo-woo persuasion will note that regardless of [whether the invitation is] AI generated or not, the alleged dinner takes place after an eclipse. Intriguing.)

By the time I got home from my own dinner last night, I had answers to all of my friends’ questions, plus plenty of details that had not yet made their way onto X. The dinner itself, meanwhile, has yet to be reported by the mainstream press, but has been verified to be happening. The details (and the invitation) after the jump.

Also in today’s letter: Sotheby’s eyes an entire luxury empire, John Mayer tickets hit the Hamptons black market, Julia Koch expands on Meadow Lane, Brian Moynihan plays word games with Wall Street, Eric Schmidt unloads a superyacht, patterned sheets make a comeback, billionaires build bunkers for their Ferraris and more…

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Vacation destinations have always carried a certain amount of social information and cultural capital, but in 2026, with social media turning every summer into content, the distinctions feel more pronounced than ever. Some places have become so universally recognizable and heavily trafficked by the same international summer crowd, that they now fall squarely into the Obvious category. Others have been popular for so long that they have achieved the safer status of Classic (here’s looking at you, Newport and Porto Cervo). And then there are the places that remain Discreet, which does not necessarily mean unknown so much as requiring a little more knowledge, effort or reason for being there (hat tip to Point O’Woods, Sylt and Sandhaam).

Plum Sykes recently got at the same phenomenon in her Substack piece, “Why the ‘Cool Rich’ Adore Antiparos,” in which she distinguishes between Rich People and Cool Rich People by, among other things, where they disappear to in the summer. Her basic argument is that inconvenience has become a luxury of its own. RPS will add to this by saying places like Saint-Tropez and Southampton are almost too easy, while Antiparos requires flights, ferries, and enough logistical friction to thin the herd. (Although that is the problem with Discreet places—eventually someone writes about them).

None of these categories are fixed, which is why this is very specifically the 2026 version. Comporta has been inching toward Classic for years, and Antiparos is getting more attention by the week. Mykonos, after all, did not start out as Mykonos.

That is usually how it happens. A place starts with the people who know, then comes the wave of people who heard about it from them, and eventually everyone is going. Give it enough time, though, and some destinations manage to come out the other side as Classics. And that’s about when the NO INFLUENCERS signs start going up.

So you tell me: what else belongs where on this Venn diagram of Obvious, Classic and Discreet summer vacation destinations in 2026? Paid subscribers, chime in.

Plus: Jeff Bezos can’t get into the Indian Creek Country Club, a new members club delayed until 2028, Bronson van Wyck’s 300-person Ibiza Pharaoh’s Ball, natural diamond prices collapse, a $100,000 US Open hotel package, boomers spending the kids’ inheritance on luxury travel, a $723 million divorce offer, Anthropic’s CEO’s wife and her very unexpected résumé, Penn cracks down on application shortcuts, the secret off-market superyacht boom, and more.

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All after the jump!

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She wasn’t wrong. Just a day after Phia—the AI shopping agent co-founded by Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe—unveiled its new closet feature, Vêtir (French for “to dress”) posted a pointed message to Instagram: “Imitation may be the highest form of flattery...” with a reminder that it “invented the AI digital closet.” The company never mentioned Phia by name, but it was obvious it had raised a significant number of eyebrows. So, RPS decided to look into it a little more. After all, Phia has already had a busy summer. In July, Bloomberg reported that the startup had been taking credit—and affiliate commissions—for purchases it allegedly never influenced. Independent affiliate researcher Ben Edelman went further, publishing technical findings that he said showed Phia’s app had been overriding other creators’ affiliate links in the background, a practice commonly referred to as “cookie stuffing.” Within 48 hours of Bloomberg’s story, affiliate platform Impact suspended Phia’s account.

The company has also drawn criticism for its marketing rollout, including the use of AI-generated creator personas that many users initially believed were real people. Some users have also accused Phia of taking a little too much inspiration from the wishlist app Locker, described as the “Pinterest for online shopping.” Taken together, Phia has developed something of a reputation for…Let’s call it pushing boundaries in pursuit of growth. So this copycat-closet-app question is worth a discussion. More on that after the jump.

For those of you who couldn't care less about a nepo-baby's wardrobe app (fair enough, although Phia has now raised $43.5 million from what looks more like a Vanity Fair Oscar party guest list than a cap table), there are plenty of other things to talk about today: some interesting factoids about private clubs scouting Palm Beach real estate, Bank of America spending $250 million a year on GLP-1 drugs, Vogue World headed to San Francisco in 2027, star memoir editor Whitney Frick, a power couple separating but keeping their business empire intact, wealthy Californians are flocking to New Zealand's golden visa program, and more.

And I know the plan was to roll out a new section, The Ledger of Good Decisions, this week, but I’m still tinkering with the design. That will have to wait till next time. Keep sending suggestions!

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We’re already a few days into August, but I couldn’t let July disappear in the rearview mirror without doing the monthly roundup (it really is the perfect thing for cocktail fodder). So let’s dive in.

Serena Williams returned to Wimbledon at 44. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post reported that The Polo Bar is moving by 2029, but those close to the situation have said “not so fast.” RPS reported Nantucket’s “NO INFLUENCERS” sign before the story ended up nearly everywhere else (with very, very little credit from others), and tickets to The Odyssey were listed for as much as $10,000 before the show had even opened. Mamdani put nearly one million potential pieds-à-terre into a searchable database, and SpaceX lost $1.2 trillion in value. Chanel bought Charvet, and auction sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips rose 70 percent. UBS also came out with a rather less celebratory statistic: global wealth was up 10.8 percent, while median wealth in the US has fallen 20 percent since 2020. So before we get any further into August, here’s a canonical list of what people were talking about in July.

In today’s letter, Paige Paul joins Substack, an A.I. wunderkind marries an Anthropic insider while his $45 billion fund implodes; Ferrari’s first “P” car heads to auction for as much as $20 million; Gen Z brings its parents to job interviews; and Sag Harbor gets The Corner back.

After the jump!

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Today, we’re going to talk about something near and dear to my heart: The Polo Bar. It is one of New York’s great institutions, not just because of its high-powered and well-curated clientele or the near-impossibility of securing a reservation, but because it has turned eating a hamburger in a windowless basement into one of the city’s most enduring status rituals. That’s the power of Ralph Lauren for you. It really is magic.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ralph Lauren was in talks with Related Companies to move The Polo Bar four blocks north, from its current East 55th Street home to the ground floor of a new 53-story office tower at 625 Madison Avenue. A day or two later, the New York Post published what it labeled an “Exclusive,” claimingg to have confirmed that the deal was done. The Post added that Related had offered the restaurant at least two years of free rent and that its new location would be significantly larger when the tower opens, which is expected to happen in the summer of 2029.

Naturally, this produced a minor panic among the Polo Bar faithful. I received a flurry of phone calls from concerned regulars asking what I thought. I didn’t want to bother anyone at The Polo Bar (the entire staff there is amazing), and it had already been reported by the Wall Street Journal. Instead, I found the detail that paid subscribers may remember from the last newsletter: asking rents at the Polo Bar’s current property have doubled since 2019, reaching as much as $205 per square foot. This information is publicly available, if you have the time and inclination to go looking for it.

Things became even more interesting when I posted my little rent story on the RPS Instagram account. (If you’re not following it yet, you really should: @readrps. I mean, don’t I jam it down your throats enough every other letter, anyway?) First, people became extremely opinionated in the comments about The Polo Bar itself and what might happen to its particular magic if it traded its clubby basement on East 55th Street for the ground floor of a gleaming new office tower. But the most interesting part? People began claiming that, despite the Wall Street Journal story and all the coverage that followed, they knew for a fact (a fact!) that The Polo Bar was not moving. The comments section caught fire, particularly after one of the people disputing the reports identified himself as a Polo Bar employee. (And I confirmed, he is).

So today, we’ll examine the discrepancy between the published reports and current Polo Bar employees who maintain that the restaurant is not moving, including the one who described the story as “a rumor that has gotten out of hand.”

We also have a ton of interesting stuff to go over, because it has been quite a busy month hasn’t it? Aren’t things supposed to slow down in the summer? Today’s RPS also covers Nantucket camp counselors saving a woman and her cats from a house fire, Fellini Coffee opening a second Upper East Side location, Shopify’s CEO supporting more voting power for wealthy taxpayers, Mary’s Fish Camp returning to the West Village, Palantir spending $17.2 million on its CEO’s private flights, and the Waldorf Astoria turning its Grand Ballroom into a tennis court. All after the jump!

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Today, we’ll be talking about a new private-aviation club designed to sit above fractional-ownership programs such as NetJets. Its membership tells us something revealing about who is getting rich now (and how old they are), and what they want once flying private is no longer exclusive enough.

I also have the cover of today’s New York Times Sunday Styles section (my eighth section cover for the paper in the past decade across three different sections) on Sammy Nussdorf, the 29-year-old founder of Meadow Lane. We talk about his addiction and recovery, how he turned a Tribeca grocery store into a genuine phenomenon, and asked Bobby Flay makes of the whole thing. There is a two-week embargo on reporting that did not make the final piece, but if there is interest, I will share more when I can.

Plus: the real-estate math behind the Polo Bar’s move, an update on Spence’s Madison Avenue expansion, the last Greek island money may not have reached, Montauk’s 60-foot sculpture war, Hasbro’s cardboard gold mine, and more…after the jump.

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A lot of you already know the story of this newsletter. I have trickled it out here and there, usually while cringing at the details: I was sick with the flu, only a couple of weeks out from the abysmal end of a relationship with a love-bombing PE partner, left with more questions than answers, and lying in bed f…

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It’s a little later than usual, but between the holiday and the fact that July seemed determined to keep making news well into August, our monthly Rich People Shit accounting of the stories that dominated conversations took a beat. We could have skipped straight to everything that’s already happened this month, but we’d be remiss not to look back first. June was too big a month to ignore.

We had The Tell dispute escalating with Amy Griffin’s defamation countersuit, Peter Thiel’s invite-only network DIALOG suffering a data leak, Anthony Haden-Guest suing Libbie Mugrabi over what he alleges was a years-long campaign of harassment and defamation, the Knicks ending a 53-year championship drought, FIFA expanding the World Cup once again, Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior collection, Spencer Pratt coming surprisingly close to a place in Los Angeles’s mayoral runoff, and SpaceX finally going public in one of the biggest IPOs in history. And that’s just a few of the big things that happened.

So before we start thinking about July’s list—which is already giving June a run for its money—here’s everything people couldn’t stop talking about (in both loud and hushed tones) last month.

Today’s newsletter is jam-packed, since I’m a day or two behind. It’s got a celebrity calling the Nantucket Police Department, a nepo-baby at Wimbledon, an Aspen hotel going international, details on the official Palm Beach International airport name change, my latest piece of writing on luxury places across the country to fly-fish and more.

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There was the uniform: a Ralph Lauren flag sweater one summer, a Tommy Hilfiger stars-and-stripes rugby the next, both bought with the same unspoken understanding that this was simply what you wore that week of the year. Jack Rogers sandals were non-negotiable for any boarding school girl. Maybe you were handed the J.Crew catalog in June and told to pick out a bathing suit before the good colors sold out, back when the blueberry pie at the farm stand was still a few dollars, not the $80 it runs now. There was a red Igloo Playmate in the trunk, a Weber kettle grill in the yard, red Solo cups on every table, no matter the zip code, because these were the props of the holiday, non-negotiable regardless of tax bracket. You showed up to the party in the family’s old Defender, the very truck that die-hard collectors are now reportedly paying upward of $300,000 to have stripped down and rebuilt, engine and all, per a recent Wall Street Journal report from Chavie Lieber, because nostalgia for a truck that once hauled hay is apparently worth six figures now. And something about the holiday always made you feel a little bit like CBK at the family compound in Hyannis Port, even if your house didn’t have a name.

But things are different now. Where the old status symbols were about knowing the right references, the new ones are about scale. The wooden water skis have given way to eFoils. The hot dog comes topped with caviar. The pie is now $80. There are Yeti Tundra 350s running north of $1,300, packing seafood towers that cost four times as much. And the single biggest status marker of a Fourth of July weekend this year isn’t the car in the driveway or the boat at the dock, it’s whether you have a chef on hand for your guests.

This year alone, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married at Madison Square Garden. Barney Greengrass is doing a pop-up out of Babe’s Diner in Sag Harbor (and RPS was the first to break the news). And Michael Rubin threw his annual White Party at his $50 million oceanfront estate in the Hamptons. (For the best coverage I’ve seen so far, check out Rory Satran’s newsletter, The Hamptons Chronicle).

Still, plenty of it hasn’t changed: the fireworks crack open over the water same as always, the lobster rolls slide out of their buns onto the sand, and somewhere in every town in the country, someone is waving a flag along a parade route with no idea what an eFoil is, and no interest in finding out.

Have a great holiday everyone. No matter how you celebrate it.

And for those looking for non-holiday contact, we’ve got it: everything to do in Nantucket this weekend, the prep school admissions process when it comes to athletes, the Hampton Jitney A/C situation, a new private club at the Four Seasons Downtown New York, one of the most eligible bachelors in New York is off the market and more…

Prep school pipeline, Nantucket Fourth of July, Hampton Jitney, Michael Rubin's White Party, Ivanka Trump, Four Seasons Club 27, luxury hotel memberships, Laurence Milstein, Thomas Isen, Richie Jackson, Paige Lorenze's bachelorette, Chicken Box, Reddit snark and more….

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More on the trip once I’m home. I’m flying straight from here to Sag Harbor on Friday, but until then, let’s talk about something decidedly American in honor of the Fourth of July: the safest street in the Hamptons. I thought I knew the answer. Then I started asking around.

So instead of declaring a winner, I think it’s more fun to turn it into a debate. One street is in Sagaponack, one is in Southampton and one is in East Hampton. Read the cases, then tell me which one you think deserves the title. (Paid subscribers, I’m looking at you.)

And for those of you who couldn’t care less about the Hamptons—or who have simply had their fill of them this summer—we’ll also be talking about how Ned’s Club decided not to raise their dues after RPS reported on their emailing debacle, $600 Hamptons blowout surge pricing, fake Vanity Fair covers, Warren Buffett's Gates Foundation pause, Wimbledon debentures, the new luxury arms race for access, and more. After the jump!

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But leaked documents can only tell you so much. Until now, no former Dialog employee has explained what it was really like to work inside the organization. RPS spoke with a former Dialog employee in what we believe is the first interview with someone who worked behind the scenes. They agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, and we have removed identifying details to protect their privacy. What emerges is a version of Dialog that is, in some ways, stranger than the headlines.

Perhaps the interview’s biggest revelation, however, concerns Peter Thiel himself. Despite becoming the public face of Dialog after the leaks, the former employee says Thiel was largely absent during their tenure. He rarely attended programming, eventually allowed his membership to lapse, and, despite efforts to bring him back, remained far less involved than many people assumed.

The interview also offers an unusually candid look at how Dialog viewed its own members, how people were evaluated behind the scenes, why some attendees became anxious about being constantly judged by their peers, and why the former employee believes the internet has fundamentally misunderstood what Dialog actually was.

Their conclusion may be the most memorable line in the entire conversation: “Working there convinced me the Illuminati could never exist.” (For more background, I suggest reading the Wired story on the Dialog leak here. Dialog’s executive director, Raffi Grinberg, also has a rather active Substack How to Be A Grownup—another thing the press has not noted—but it seems unrelated to the network).

If you can’t commit to—or stomach—a whole interview about the wannabe Illuminati, don’t fret: we also have Amazon's OpenAI dilemma, why Cannes Lions felt different this year, the World Cup Fan Matrix, Nantucket's population mystery, a Hamptons real estate scandal, and an evening supporting the East End's invisible workforce.

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In London, June is packed with social fixtures like Royal Ascot and the Queen's Club Championships. In Aspen, this past weekend was the Food & Wine Classic. Today, though, we're talking about a different food and wine festival, one that may soon become the most exclusive in the world.

You haven't heard about the Gstaad Wine & Food Festival yet — but that’s about to change. The soon-to-be most exclusive food and wine festival in the world will debut in the Swiss Alps in June 2027, capped at 1,500 guests, with Albert Adrià, Alain Ducasse, and Daniel Boulud already on board, Château Pontet-Canet and Château Cos d'Estournel among the confirmed wineries, and no chef cooking for more than 70 people. For comparison, the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen just wrapped its 43rd year yesterday with 5,000 weekend passes sold. This is something else entirely. I spoke to the two men behind it, Sacha Lichine — founder of Whispering Angel — and Lee Brian Schrager, who created both the South Beach and New York City Wine & Food Festivals, to find out everything. Foodies and winos won’t want to miss this (neither today’s issue or the festival).

Sworn off the juice entirely and just cranked your Ozempic pen up another notch? Don't worry. It's not all vintages and tasting menus today. We've also got why even $15 million condos can't erase the memory of Surfside, David Hockney's impossibly chic funeral, status-symbol car-washers in the Hamptons, the Hamptons' changing Fourth of July pecking order, and more.

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Today, we’re diving into one of the more interesting shifts happening in New York’s private club scene. British members club Maison Estelle has abandoned its plans for an Upper East Side townhouse after learning it wouldn’t be able to secure a liquor license if it intended to use the rooftop, a key part of the club’s…

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But you’re going to have to forgive me, because it really was that good. Words like “epic” and “best ever” and “glamorous” were being thrown around. And if that wasn’t enough, people started writing about it — before the thing was even over. So I’m going to need a pass on this one. It’s like expecting a Volvo and getting a vintage Ferrari. You knew it was going to be good. Just not that good.

Which is why I was planning on giving you a full debrief today. But then some news came up. So you’ll be getting the party analysis later this week, and today, you’ll be getting the story of how Ned’s Club, the private membership club arm of The Ned hotel brand, emailed their members about raising their annual dues and accidentally forgot to CC everyone. That’s right. The email blasts, which were sent May 22nd and continued today, went to a hundred members at a time. RPS has the details below.

Also in this issue: the NBA Finals' hottest collectible, $900 professional parade spot-holders, Wall Street's work-from-home exception, Southampton embraces giant public sports screenings, BLADE's 8-minute U.S. Open helicopter shuttle, a rare look inside Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman's private art collection, and why Boston will be partying two hours later than Nantucket this summer….

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After my party Wednesday, which was followed by back-to-back dinners and lunches, I needed some time to myself. Time to recharge the social battery. I watched the Knicks alone in my apartment, working away on my computer, until it got very clear we were about to win. Then I walked out into the street.

It was like there was a block party going on. People were running up and down, screaming out their windows, shouting from their balconies. Strangers were hugging, and strangers were hugging me. There were pockets where the crowds were so dense I had to shout excuse me over the celebrating just to break through. These are streets that have been quiet at 11pm on a Saturday since Covid. Now they were raging. A guy on a bike was driving around handing out Knicks-colored cookies. There were fireworks. Someone was sabering a champagne bottle on the front doorstep of their brownstone. People were dancing in the spray. I'm seeing some insane photos of trash on the streets today, and they're making me cringe — but last night, it felt otherworldly.

Speaking of the Knicks: today we'll be talking about the members club that won the watch parties. Organically, for weeks I'd been hearing that Crane Club, the restaurant and members lounge from Tao Group Hospitality, was the best place to catch the Knicks games if you couldn't be there in person. The place had televisions (plural); people were spending money, a lot of it; and the room was always full of the type of people you want around while watching a game — real Knicks fans who just happened to be hedge fund managers, sports agents, and the type of people who actually know what they're cheering for. And word of mouth on Crane only got louder as the playoffs went on. So today I pinged Noah Tepperberg, Co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality, who I've known for as long as I've lived in New York — which is to say, longer than either of us would probably like to admit.

And for the non-New Yorkers sick of hearing about Knicks mania, I’ve got plenty for you too: a look at Nantucket’s thrift store wars, an over-abundance of English country houses with not enough buyers, the hair combs from The Row’s SS26 show finally up for sale (if you’re fast), an update on the SpaceX IPO (plus a recap of a phone call I had with Elon Musk six-ish years ago), major lay-offs coming to the Lambs Club by July 27, a first look at Soho Farmhouse in Hudson Valley, and more.

As for my party last Wednesday — and what a party it was, huh? — I’ll save the full debrief for its own letter: the logistics, the photos, all of it.

But today, we’ve got other things to chat about.

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Regular readers will remember BLADE’s Hamptons Limitless Pass, the all-you-can-fly package between Manhattan and the Hamptons. This year, the pass costs $25,000, up 39 percent from last year’s $18,000 price tag. The Limitless means you can fly as many times as you want, no blackout dates, on a Bell 407 helicopter or amphibious seaplane, Manhattan to the Hamptons seven days a week through Labor Day, with JFK and Newark transfers included. Recently, I started hearing stories about what some people do with unlimited helicopter rides at their disposal.

Considering there are only 15 weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the appeal is obvious. Once people have it, behavior goes one of two ways: nothing changes, or things get a little unhinged. I want to talk about the hilarious stuff people do to cash in on an unlimited helicopter pass. After all, there is a reason these passes sell so well.

In fact, I assumed they had sold out entirely. It turns out BLADE simply stopped marketing them. (In actuality, I’m hearing that if you call directly, there are still a handful available.) Considering how long it took me to get out East on Friday, perhaps it really is money well spent. After all, we’ve still got 13 weekends left in the summer.

Also in today’s letter: a new members club coming to Nantucket, Cotswolds drama thanks to Ellen Degeneres, Donohue’s Steak House’s official closing date, wunderkind chef Flynn McGarry on where all the spring vegetables went, Benjamin Millipied and Roland Garros, what everyone is saying about the SpaceX IPO, Caryn Zucker and David Rubenstein tied the knot and more…

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This is the longest I’ve gone without sending a letter since launching RPS. A weekend was involved, so perhaps I can give myself a pass. The real culprit, however, is a combination of deadlines and the RPS party, which is now less than a week away.

Actually, “party” may be underselling it. At this point, it feels more like an event. The whole thing has become so absurdly over-the-top that it will rival many of the weddings I’ve attended. If you’re confirmed, consider this fair warning. And while the guest list is technically closed, Founding Members operate under a different set of rules. (You can RSVP whenever you’d like. You’re family.)

Today, I want to talk about Texas, which is currently tied with Connecticut as RPS’s fourth-largest subscriber state. (You can probably guess the top three: New York, California, and Florida.) For most of the pandemic, every story about a wealthy person was a Florida story. Every editor wanted Florida. Every hedge fund manager was moving to Miami! Every billionaire was buying in Palm Beach! And every magazine writer seemed to have a theory about what would happen when New Yorkers discovered boating.

I know because I spent years writing those stories. Then something strange happened. The people who spent years talking about Florida? They suddenly started talking about Texas. And I don’t mean just Austin. I mean Texas Texas.

Late last year, I was working on a story for The New York Times that had absolutely nothing to do with Texas. My editor nevertheless asked whether we could somehow wedge it into the story. Suddenly, Texas was everywhere.

Part of the fascination is economic. The state has become a magnet for corporate relocations, energy investment, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and finance stuff. Dallas increasingly competes for firms that once would have defaulted to New York. Austin continues to attract founders and venture capital. Wealth is flowing in to the the Lone Star state from both coasts. Economics only explains part of the story. And the more interesting part is what happened after all those people arrived.

That brings us to Boerne. Located about thirty miles north of San Antonio, the affluent Hill Country town (pronounced BUR-nee) is now one of the most desirable addresses in Texas. No, really. Part of this is because Boerne used to be really private. Until Bravo showed up.

Last month, the network announced a new reality series set in Texas Hill Country that will follow a group of affluent women in the area. In most places, this would barely qualify as news. As Andy Cohen-aficionados know, Bravo has spent the better part of two decades turning wealthy ZIP codes into entertainment. You’ve got Beverly Hills, Orange County, New York, Miami. But the community of Boerne’s reaction was unusually intense. That’s what I want to talk about today.

And if you don’t mess with Texas—or reality television—there is plenty more for you in today’s letter: a Barney Greengrass pop-up coming to Babe's in Sag Harbor next month, Pan Am's newly announced Pan Am Journeys, a 19-day Africa journey aboard a semi-private jet (all yours for $129,000), Prada's members-club-but-not-really-members-club takeover of The Chelsea Hotel, a little-known Upper East Side restaurant that just earned two stars from The New York Times, and more.

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JPMorgan put out a 2026 summer reading list, and when I shared it, they reshared me. I had no idea it would land the way it did on Instagram, but I’m thrilled to have so many new subscribers because of it. (Who knew my biggest traffic drivers this month would be reshares by JPMorgan and Lindsay Lohan? If that’s not range for a newsletter, I don’t know what is.)

It did make me realize how much appetite there is for curated summer reading lists from people who know what they’re talking about — and one suggestion that came in from the inbox stuck out.

Once upon a time, summer reading meant whatever your English teacher assigned. Today, many ambitious students have a second list: the one recommended by the private college counselors helping them navigate applications and think about what comes next. Sophie Sajnani, founder of River Consulting, kindly shared the list she gives her students. Sajnani works with teenagers from schools including Dalton and Spence, as well as families across New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and other major cities.

There are a lot of college counseling companies out there, but River Consulting sets itself apart with one of the first AI literacy programs designed specifically for high school students. Sajnani comes from a software engineering background — and yet she still believes reading is one of the most important habits a student can develop. The future is here whether we like it or not; it’s nice to see someone holding on to the things that still matter.

“We believe critical thinking comes first,” she says. “Strong reading and comprehension skills are the foundation that allows students to thoughtfully evaluate AI-generated output.”

The full list is below. And if you’re already fully stockpiled with books for the season, RPS has plenty of other things for you too, including Shelter Island’s most expensive house sale, YALE pivoting on standardized testing, the definition of a “med-a-terre,” a Carbone expansion for the Thompson Street location and more.

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