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The INSIDER Summary:

• People metabolize caffeine at different speeds.
• Caffeine contains colon-stimulating agents that move particles along the gut.
• Try not to drink more than two 8 ounce cups per day.

We've all been there, folks. That first sip of coffee at work and BAM! You gotta poop. You have no choice but to do the unholy thing in the communal toilets, and blame it all on Rick. But why? 

We spoke with Jacqueline Aizen (aka Jacqueline Shimmiezz), registered dietitian and professional belly dancer (apt!) about why, exactly, the roast brews up your gut. Here's what she had to say:

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Clik here to view.The INSIDER Summary:  

• The Chinese invented sushi before the Japanese.   
• They were also the first ones to add dairy into flavored ice, making every ice cream fan's dreams come true. 

Chances are, you’re wearing something right now that was made in China (even if you have trouble spotting a bunk Chinese restaurant). But beyond sneakers and smartphones, the Chinese have a long history of creating amazing stuff. The ancient Chinese contributed paper, gunpowder, the umbrella, and the compass to civilization. And when it comes to food, China's impact extends far beyond tea and chopsticks. Here are some foods you probably didn't realize you have the Chinese to thank for.

Sushi

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No doubt the Japanese perfected the whole raw-fish-and-rice thing, but they got the idea from the Chinese. Long before Americans began worrying about fake sushi, people in Southeast Asia and Southern China started preserving fish by wrapping it in cooked rice, letting it ferment or pickle for up to a year before eating it. The resulting halitosis may have been one of the reasons the Chinese invented the toothbrush in 1498.

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NOW WATCH: The US government just sank a giant ship on purpose — and the footage is amazing

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•People eat at Costco's food court out of convenience after they've worked up an appetite walking through the many aisles.
•The pizza and churros are great, but you might want to avoid the Polish sausage. 

No one really wants to eat in Costco's food court. You do it because pushing an oversized cart full of enormous mayo jars and gallons of laundry detergent works up a hearty appetite that even the most generous end-of-aisle sample can't satisfy.

The food court's like a greasy light at the end of a very well-stocked tunnel. But not all items are created equal. To sort the good from the bad, I -- a Costco virgin with a brand-new card -- rolled into the mega-store and ordered one of everything in order to save you some post-shopping heartache. And heartburn. Here's how it all stacked up.

9. Polish sausage

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Clik here to view.They say you eat with your eyes, and if that is true, then my retinas were woozy before this wrinkly, green pepper-bedazzled sausage even hit my lips. It looked like Donatella Versace's big toe after a three-hour dip in the Adriatic Sea. And it tasted minty. Pass.

8. Hot dog

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Clik here to view.I'm not a snob. I'll eat two dirty-water dogs for breakfast without blinking an eye. So when I discovered people swear by Costco's version, I got excited. But this hot dog was just… odd. When I bit into it, it actually kind of exploded. Like the innards were just dying to get out after years of captivity. Those innards were crazy-salty, off-puttingly greasy, and kind of mealy.

I will say this, though: The bun is delicious. It's super-soft and a little Wonder Bread-esque. So maybe get a crate of Kirkland buns before you go. Then literally any other brand of hot dog.

7. Chicken Caesar salad

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Clik here to view.What do you get when you put a pile of iceberg lettuce, a mound of chicken chunks, and a pinch of half-frozen shredded cheese into a big plastic bowl with a lil' cup of Caesar dressing and a questionably low price point? You get Costco's de facto "healthy item."

It's not bad, per se. It's just incredibly basic. And since it doesn't explode in your mouth or look like my grandpa's thumb, it has an advantage over at least two things in the food court

6. Turkey provolone sandwich

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Clik here to view.This was surprisingly intense. With cheese, herbs, and Italian dressing flavor coming out like a firework grand finale of deli tastes, it was actually kind of hard to eat. It tastes like a turkey sandwich, times 1,000. Like Costco's R&D department was like, "Hey, let's make this turkey sandwich taste like a turkey sandwich that's stuffed with a turkey sandwich that was made with turkeys who have been fed a strict diet of only turkey sandwiches for their entire lives." Which is to say, it's a bit much for such a simple concept.

5. Berry sundae/chocolate vanilla swirl

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Clik here to view.They were… I mean, yeah…. they're fine. It's soft-serve ice cream. It's hard to screw this up.

4. BBQ brisket sandwich

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Clik here to view.In real life, this actually looked better than it did on the stock menu shot, which hardly ever happens. The brisket tasted…. agreeable? Yes, yes it did. I'm still kind of surprised by that. The coleslaw that came lovingly atop was also fresh, and that Wonder Bread-esque bun held it all together. A+.

But here's the catch (there's obviously a catch): The BBQ sauce was one of the weirdest things I've ever tasted. It was sweet, and not subtly so. More like, "Wait, did they melt 300 Skittles and put them on top of this brisket? Why did they do that?" Like the turkey sandwich, it was hard to eat because it was just too much. A couple bites in and my taste buds were begging me to suck on some seaweed. Or perhaps lick the bottom of my shopping cart wheel. I tried both.

3. Chicken bake

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Clik here to view.People legitimately love this thing, which is kind of like a mutant Hot Pocket stuffed with chicken, three kinds of cheese, bacon, and Caesar salad dressing. That weird mishmash of flavors turns out to taste like somebody hollowed out a jumbo-sized breadstick and filled it with Chunky Pub Style Chicken Pot Pie™ soup. Which, as you can tell by its placement on this list, is not a bad thing.

2. Churro

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Clik here to view.Like everything else in the food court, it's strangely soft and chewy. It actually tastes like somebody took a Funfetti cake, sucked out the Funfetti (but kept the fun!), stuck that inside a sugar-coated tube the size of my forearm, and covered it in cinnamon. It is not "authentic." I do not care. It's soft and cakey and delicious. I have nothing snarky to say about it. And I never will.

1. Pizza

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Clik here to view.Pizza is like sex. It's always good, unless it burns your mouth and then adds insult to injury by calling you nine months later saying, "Hey, you have to give me money for the next 18 years because we forgot to use a napkin."

You know what I mean.

At any rate, the pizza at Costco isn't what you would call "great." You wouldn't be like, "Hey Grade-School Soccer Team, let's all celebrate today's win with a nice big Costco pizza!" But you would be like, "Hey honey, let's drown our sorrows in pre-packed cheese and concerningly soft dough after we're done buying 1,800 rolls of toilet paper."

It's a product of its time and place. And its place is Costco, its time is whenever you have a minute to pull your overstuffed cart over. It serves this moment in your life near perfectly. And for that, it deserves a second of your recognition. Or at least a casual head nod as you plan your escape from the store.

Oh, and get the plain cheese, as the toppings only dilute this pizza's bargain-basement greatness. Trust me. I ate every hypnotizing inch of it.

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Clik here to view.The INSIDER Summary:

• Most of us get through the day with coffee.
• Try an espresso shot mixed with tonic.
• For a small caffeine fix, get a 4 oz. cortado which is equal parts espresso and milk. 

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NOW WATCH: Here are all the musicians who declined to perform at Trump's inauguration so far

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• Most of us tend to stick to the same coffee order every day.
•Although it can be tough to remember the differences between each drink, baristas around the country encourage coffee drinkers to try out different options. 
•The next time you are in a coffee shop, swap your usual cup of coffee for a Cortado, Macchiato, or Flat White. 

Hip coffee shops can be intimidating places. You have to order off a menu full of complicated words surrounded by judgey people wearing fancy-looking vests. And mustaches. There are so many dastardly looking mustaches you think you're in an old-school spy movie. It's also tough to remember the difference between a cappuccino and an Americano. But, you don't want to look like a fool when you approach the bar and there's not enough time to Google it. So you obviously order yourself a latte, the one drink you know, and then get the hell out of there. But that's a mistake.

We spoke to baristas from around the country to find out what you should be ordering but aren't. All of these underrated coffee drinks should be available at your local serious coffee shop. So read these, and walk in next time with a ton of confidence, mustachioed men be damned.

Miel latte

If you've ever watched a barista get tired from pumping syrup into your coffee, consider this as an alternative which is made with honey (or miel in French). "The miel latte is a great drink when you're craving sweetness but want to avoid sugar-based syrups, like in a vanilla latte," says owner Roland Baker of Miami's Vice City Bean. "It's a delicious combination of espresso, honey, cinnamon, and creamy milk. Our coffee shop makes miel lattes hot or iced." He also says it's tasty with almond milk, if you want to temporarily abandon liquid cow's gold.

Espresso and tonic

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Clik here to view.The drink is technically simple: It's just a shot of espresso mixed with a glass of tonic. But the flavors are more complex than you might think. Justin DeWaard, the manager of coffee quality at Nashville's Barista Parlor Golden Sound, likes "the sweetness of the tonic alongside the carbonation of the chilled tonic water, as it delivers the espresso in an effervescent and aromatic combination." And unlike some other drinks with tonic, you won't get fired for drinking one at work!

Cortado (aka piccolo/Gibraltar)

While you might be used to toting around a Starbucks coffee cup the size of a human infant, there is something to be said for turning your attention to a much smaller drink like the cortado (which is usually around 4oz). "A cortado is essentially a small latte with roughly equal parts espresso and milk," explains Josh Taves, director of quality control and business development at Denver's Novo Coffee. "A drink this size allows the espresso to shine through with a lot of nuance while being complemented by the perfect amount of sweetness from the milk."

1+1

You learned in school that 1+1 = 2. But 1+1 can also mean that you're drinking a tasty coffee concoction you've probably never had before. Tyler King, owner of LA's Coffee Commissary, explains that the drink is a larger shot of espresso (40g vs. the standard 30g) that's split between two tumbler glasses. Then, steamed milk is added to one of the half shots, and the tumblers are served side by side. "We love this because you get to experience an espresso purely, and then as it relates to milk," he says. "Plus, you basically get two drinks for one."

Macchiato

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Clik here to view.The word "macchiato" literally means "marked" or "stained" in Italian, like your shirt with marinara sauce after you've had an Italian meal. Kevin Hoffman, a barista and store manager of Cleveland's Rising Star Coffee Roasters, digs the drink because of the small amount of dairy in it. He says that it sweetens the espresso and brings out the more subtle flavor notes in the coffee. Hoffman adds that it's a good next step if you've just been knocking back shots of plain espresso for a while.

Flat white

While you might have first heard about this drink at Starbucks, it's actually from Australia -- or New Zealand depending on who you ask. The drink has two shots of espresso, 6oz of steamed milk, and microfoam on top. (Microfoam is the fancy-pants term baristas use for that aerated milk that makes for beautiful espresso art.) Barry Dry, the owner of NYC's Hole in the Wall, says that this drink is great for someone looking for a latte that has a stronger coffee flavor. "It has less milk than a latte, so you can taste the coffee a bit more."

Americano

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Clik here to view.There are just two ingredients in this drink -- espresso and water -- but don't let its simplicity fool you into thinking it's a boring drink. Andrew Timko, a coffee roaster at Blueprint in St. Louis, is a big fan of the Americano and thinks it's underappreciated. "All we're doing by adding water to the espresso is affecting the strength of the beverage. It provides a really nice extracted coffee." If you want a big espresso drink sans the dairy, this is the perfect drink for you.

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NOW WATCH: NASA just released over 100 images of Pluto — and the footage is breathtaking

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Clik here to view.The INSIDER Summary:

• When flying with children it is best to sit toward the back of the airplane.
• While you don't want to carry too much onto the plane, always remember to bring an emergency bag filled with your child's ffavorite books, a few small toys and some snacks.

If you're reading this, you already know: Flying with a toddler is terrible. No offense to lovely small humans everywhere, but they are genetically designed to wreak havoc upon enclosed spaces, especially when they're old enough to walk but too young to sit still for eight minutes. And though the obvious solution would be to never travel again until your child is old enough to actually feel and respond to guilt, that's not always realistic. 

My goal today is not to try and make you believe there's some glorious, joyful way to fly with a toddler. That will never happen. Instead, let's just minimize the damage. Make it tolerable, a slightly uncomfortable thing you can power through, like getting a flu shot or watching a movie sex scene with your grandparents. And it starts with a few easily fixable common mistakes.

Mistake 1: Carrying anything onto the plane

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Clik here to view.This should be a no-brainer, but I've seen parents with children also lugging their carry-ons on top of diaper bags and car seats and Ready for School Elmos. It makes no sense. Most likely, you already had to check a stroller, or some other equipment, and once you do that, you might as well rid yourself of all possible clutter.

The cheap way to do this, of course, is to go through security and then wait until the gate agents make that plea to check bags. Then magnanimously present your bags and check them for free. But think ahead. Pack whatever you'll need for the flight (magazine, iPad, tiny bottles of gin, etc.) amongst your child's stuff, or in your emergency bag (more on this below).

Mistake 2: Not packing an emergency bag 

You know how Special Forces people and cool clandestine agents with eye patches always have some sort of emergency attache case packed with cash and passports and guns and Big League Chew and stuff? Well, you need the same type of thing, except instead of cash and guns, it should have all the things that calm your child down: her favorite books, a few smaller toys, maybe an applesauce packet, some Goldfish, Cheerios, and those toddler cookies that taste like cardboard.

The emergency in this case is when you need to buy time once you've exhausted all normal forms of entertainment. But don't make the rookie mistakes of: 

A) Offering up an emergency toy or snack when your child is otherwise occupied

B) Using more than one emergency item at a time. The idea is to extend each one as long as possible. If you've exhausted all your items in the first hour, you're going to have a different kind of emergency. 

Mistake 3: Getting onto the plane with your child with your boarding group 

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Clik here to view.When you travel alone, it's nice to board the plane early. You can settle in, scan your Twitter feed for mentions, and passive-aggressively like your exes' photos on Instagram. When you have a child, that loitering is 20 extra minutes of non-flight time where people are shuffling through the aisles and swinging giant bags. 

Instead: Send one parent onto the plane during normal boarding time with the essentials -- the kid's seat, the bags, etc. They can set everything up and then do all of the aforementioned stuff on their phone while the other parent stays in the concourse with kiddo till the very last second. In fact, I often tell the person at the gate to just let me know when the final, final boarding call is, and we'll come in then. 

In the meantime, I race my daughter around frantically, trying to get her to expend so much energy that by the time she does get on the plane she's a perfect angel and sleeps for the entire trip*. 

* This has literally never happened. 

Mistake 4: Flying with your child in your lap

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Clik here to view.It's one thing if your kid is young and immobile. You can just hold them and rock them and they're effectively a bag of groceries strapped to your body that might occasionally spit up. But have you ever tried to hold a squirmy 14-month-old who has just discovered walking and who wants to practice this talent over and over again? It's like trying to grip a greased pig, if that pig were also able to shout nouns at you and stare woundedly into your soul. 

The FAA allows children 2 and younger to fly for free in an adult's lap. It's an enticing deal, if only because plunking down $300 for your 18-month-old to fly to a wedding she'll never remember feels like a punch in the gut. But don't get cavalier. First buy seats for the parents, blocking off a middle seat. Next, as your flight approaches, call the airline to inquire as to whether the plane is full, and explain your predicament in a self-deprecating and polite way. (Note that this is infinitely more effective if you have status on said airline.)

Airline employees often also have children, and will be sympathetic to your cause. We've had nice agents actually block that middle seat if the flight wasn't packed, and so we were basically guaranteed the peace of mind of an actual seat for our child. Saved the day. But on longer flights at peak times, this is risky business. You might just need to suck it up and plunk down for the kid's ticket, because no one in history has survived a five-hour flight with an 18-month-old in their lap. I'm pretty sure I read that on Wikipedia. 

Mistake 5: Sitting at the front of the plane

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Clik here to view.Common plane logic suggests that you want to sit as close as you can to the front, where you get to leave the plane sooner and you feel smugly first-class adjacent. But toddlers upend common plane logic. Retreating to the rear of the plane works for three reasons: 

A) The very back seats tend to not be reserved, even in full flights. The chances of getting a free seat for your child increase exponentially. 

B) You're right next to the bathrooms, which -- in any other case -- would be kind of gross and unfortunate. But this allows for easy escape in case you're the gross/unfortunate one. 

C) The very back of the plane where the flight attendants hang out is the closest thing you'll find to an active play area. Assuming your child will not annoy them, the attendants often let the kid roam around, and give them little snacks, and think they're cute for six to 10 minutes before encouraging you to return to your seat. Now you're 10 minutes closer!

Mistake 6: Raising your voice 

Look, at some point, your child will do something sub-optimal. Perhaps throw her drink at the person's head in the seat in front of you. Maybe run down the aisle screaming Italian swears. Maybe she'll realize she's on a weird flying car and has been for several hours and missed her nap. Whatever the case, we've all been around babies yowling or shrieking on a plane. People are used to that. It happens. What people aren't used to, is when it's a parent throwing the tantrum. 

I've been on planes where a parent lost it and screamed at their child, and it's infinitely more uncomfortable and embarrassing and unnerving than a baby crying. So even if your child has somehow managed to rip off a priest's toupee and wave it around while attempting to unlatch the emergency exit doors at 35,000 ft, be cool. You can be stern and decisive without the yelling. 

If everything else fails, download Sesame Street on your phone, hand it to your child, slump in your seat, order a gin & tonic, and accept defeat to the soothing sounds of Super Grover, Cookie Monster, and Murray Has a Little Lamb. The plane has to land sometime.

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Clik here to view.The INSIDER Summary:

• Quick dinners don't have to be unhealthy.
• Preparing a meal in 10 minutes may sound impossible, but here are recipes from chicken wraps to zucchini pasta that will leave you feeling good. 

Most quickie dinners rely on not-so-healthy standards, like a mountain of simple starches or a huge hunk of meat. It's hard enough getting dinner on the table fast, never mind finding something that is good for you too. Isn't it just easier to order a pizza? Well, we scoured Pinterest for the feel-good dinners that you can churn out in 10 minutes. Here are our favorites.  

Egg drop soup

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This soup is a healthy, adult version of Cup Noodles. Seriously, it takes only a little more effort than using a microwave. You will barely have to pause your Netflix show to make a flavorful, soul-warming bowl. Recipe here. 

Cauliflower rice

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If you haven't heard of the cauliflower craze, where have you been? The real game-changer and time-saver in this recipe is Trader Joe's Riced Cauliflower. The beautiful thing about cauliflower rice is not only is it healthy, but it's also super fast to cook, much, much faster than actual rice. Add in some eggs, veggies, or meats (if that is more your thing) to make a healthy takeout alternative. Recipe here.

Portobello pizzas

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To be clear, pizza can never be replaced in our starchy, starchy hearts. But this recipe gets pretty damn close. To those living the low-carb, gluten-free life -- or just, you know, week -- portobello mushrooms are a hearty, umami-rich sub-in for the standard dough-based crust. Covered in bright tomato sauce, gooey cheese, and pepperoni (or any topping you like!), it won't taste like diet food. Recipe here.

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New media mogul Ben Lerer is beefing up the finance and business side of Group Nine Media — the holding company he created in October that tied together NowThis, Thrillist, The Dodo, and Seeker — with a $100 million investment from Discovery.

The idea behind Group Nine was simple: consolidation worked in TV, and it would work again in digital video.

“Brands and agencies want fewer points of contact,” Lerer told Business Insider. “The idea that you can talk to one company and just do more is something that really works. It worked in the TV business.”

This thesis got some more ammunition from The Information last week, which reported that brands are looking for larger digital media deals, in a way that favors bigger publications over smaller ones.

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Clik here to view.“We’ve been hearing that for a long time,” Lerer said. “Fewer, bigger partners.”

In moving toward the goal of having Group Nine be one of those few big partners, on Monday the company announced two key hires: new CFO Judd Merkel, formerly the CFO of Droga5, and new Head of Global Business Development Miguel Burger-Calderon, formerly the president of Elite Daily.

Lerer pointed to Merkel particularly as instrumental in helping Group Nine develop into a disciplined and sustainable business.

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Clik here to view.“While we aren’t in the exact same business [as agency Droga5], there are a lot of similarities and common ground from his experience,” Lerer said. “There is a certain [financial] discipline in running agencies. Agencies grow profitably. That’s a common trait between almost every great agency … A lot of discipline around margin management.”

Lerer said he wants to make sure that what Group Nine is building will endure, and isn't just a flash in the pan.

Four cultures

So far Lerer said the plan for integrating the four brands hasn’t changed fundamentally since October.

“What we thought this was going to look like is what it’s going to look like,” he said. And he said that the integration of the tech platforms of the different Group Nine companies would be completed soon. “The data [will be] living in one place really shortly.”

That doesn’t mean that creating Group Nine has been easy, however.

“There have been tons of growing pains,” Lerer said. “It is really hard to take four cultures and then have those four cultures live together, and create a fifth culture, Group Nine, and do it when you are sprinting to put the business together, to centralize as quickly as we can.”

Thrillist pains

One painful moment was layoffs last month at Lerer-founded Thrillist, which cut over 20 staffers. Lerer characterized the layoffs as part of a change in direction of Thrillist itself, and not as part of the combination with other Group Nine brands. Group Nine as a whole expects to add 100 people to its headcount in 2017.

“When we went and built video the first time, we did some stuff wrong,” he said of Thrillist. “We made some mistakes I’m responsible for, other people in management [too]. We had to fix those things to grow at the speed we should … In the race for digital scale, brands can lose themselves. They’re a tech site that starts writing about politics because that’s where eyeballs are. I don’t think we were horribly guilty of that, but we extended coverage into a few areas that weren't core to the mission of Thrillist.”

Thrillist employees have also recently criticized management for being slow to respond to unionization efforts (after over 85% of editorial employees signed union cards). Lerer declined to comment on the record about the situation, but pointed Business Insider to this statement from Thrillist president Adam Rich:

“The union has asked to be recognized without a vote; however, we want to ensure that all employees have the opportunity to participate in making this choice. Ultimately this is the decision of our employees: we celebrate their right to exercise their personal power of choice, and will support their decision.”

The other side

With the integration of the Group Nine brands nearly complete on the technical side, Lerer is looked toward developing new forms of content across the brands.

One particular area of focus is in creating premium video that can make the jump between digital and traditional TV. That’s a big reason Discovery invested the $100 million in October.

“There’s a lot of work going on in super premium original [video],” Lerer said. “You’re going to see lots more of that across all Group Nine brands.” The discussions with traditional TV companies Lerer was talking about in October will soon start bearing fruit, he said.

In all, Lerer described the Group Nine integration since October as like swimming across a fast-moving and rocky river. In October they had all just jumped in, and now, Lerer said he can feel that the other side is coming.

Business Insider parent company Axel Springer is an investor in Group Nine Media.

SEE ALSO: Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer explains why Discovery just invested $100 million and made him a new media mogul

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NOW WATCH: Tony Robbins shares the simple financial advice he learned from working with the smartest financial people in the world

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Group Nine Media, the holding company that tied together four media brands in October — Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo, and Seeker — was created in a deal totaling $585 million, according to a new SEC filing on Tuesday.

The filing also lists $14 million to be "used for payments to any of the persons required to be named as executive officers, directors or promoters."

That $585 million includes the $100 million investment from Discovery Communications, disclosed at the time. (Seeker, Discovery's digital network, was one of the Group Nine brands.) 

The deal reflects the increasing stakes in the maturing online media market, putting Group Nine in a class of well-capitalized publishers including The Huffington Post, Refinery29, Vice, BuzzFeed, and Vox. These companies have secured huge investments from traditional media giants, or been absorbed by them.

The thinking

According to Group Nine CEO Ben Lerer, the idea behind the combination was simple: consolidation worked in the TV business, and it would work again in the digital video market.

“Brands and agencies want fewer points of contact,” Lerer told Business Insider in March. “The idea that you can talk to one company and just do more is something that really works. It worked in the TV business.”

The ideal outcome for all the Group Nine companies, according to Lerer, is creating a 360-degree product that spans both the world of social media and the world of TV. Accomplishing that, he said, will be much easier with the business sides of the brands merged.

The Lerer family

A big part of the creation of Group Nine came down to Lerer’s family, he told Business Insider in October. Ben’s father Ken, who cofounded NowThis, has been instrumental in many New York digital media companies including The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and even Business Insider, where he was an investor and board member until the sale to Axel Springer. Ben's sister Izzie founded The Dodo.

The family element “made [the deal] possible,” Ben Lerer told us in October. “There was 1,000% transparency … No posturing or staredowns.” There was trust, and a frank discussion of whether the move would be best for Thrillist, NowThis, and The Dodo.

Now, it turns out, that deal was worth $585 million.

Business Insider parent company Axel Springer is an investor in Group Nine Media. 

SEE ALSO: Netflix is 12 times as popular as its streaming competitors among younger viewers

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NOW WATCH: An irresponsible obituary for the Great Barrier reef has gone viral — here’s what’s actually going on

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Clik here to view.The summer I turned 23, I auditioned for and ultimately landed a gig as a cruise ship singer on board the Queen Mary 2.

It wasn’t exactly my dream job at the time, but was a sort of rite of passage for recently graduated actors who hadn’t yet found their footing on Broadway or London’s West End.

For entertainers eyeing the pecking order among ships and cruise lines, the Queen Mary 2 - Cunard Line was considered one of the most prestigious in the world. At least I had that to hang onto.

I was initially contracted for a six-month voyage with additional on-land rehearsals, but this was extended several times. I ended up spending the better part of a year at sea.

When we arrived at the cruise terminal at Southampton, UK, I was overwhelmed at the vessel’s sheer mass. Looming 200 feet above the water, and four football fields long, the ship was a colossus. On board, I was one of about 1,200 employees and 2,600 passengers.

In essence, I was entering a floating city, untethered to any land or culture, with its own rules and nowhere to escape once you left port.

It got weird, is what I’m saying. If you ever work on a boat, you’ll run across some of these truths. But I’ll spare you the months spent at sea and cut straight to the strangest stuff I saw onboard.  

Cruise employees are all sleeping with each other

You’ve heard the rumors and, yes, it’s true: Everyone working on your cruise ship is sleeping with everyone else. And, often, a fling gets real. Love really can bloom in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Three of my colleagues in the entertainment department met spouses on the cruise where I worked. The staff hails from all over the world; one English colleague whose wedding I attended married a South African man. A German colleague married a woman from central Africa and set up in Hamburg.

It beats Tinder, surely.

... But sleeping with guests is a fireable offense

One line that very few people crossed: sleeping with guests.

It’s a fireable offense, one that few people I knew transgressed. Among female employees — a much smaller population — the number was practically zero, despite that we were constantly asked out on dates and approached by male guests.

This may seem flattering, but it really just became tiresome. A word to gents looking to hook up with a cruise staffer: Don’t ask. If it’s really a dream of yours, apply for a job on a ship.

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Guests get caught doing filthy things after hours

On board most ships is a spa area reserved for “sea days” — the time spent traveling to the next port. During the day it’s filled with passengers, but after hours the singers were allowed to sneak in and relax-a-vous.

One night a castmate and I were heading to the steam room when we heard some unusual noises reverberating off the tiled walls. When we pushed the door open we were met by a couple well old enough to be our grandparents, indulging in a little fellatio fun. Horrified, we scrambled. My poor friend lurched on the slick floor, grabbed for something to steady himself, and landed his hand on a set of false teeth that had been laid out on the bench.

Never did go back to that spa.

Employees aren’t allowed to party at port

As a singer, I had some of the same status as officers, meaning that I was allowed to dine pretty much wherever I pleased, even in the fancier guest restaurants and bars. I was also able to drink in the Ward Room, an officers bar where I downed enough $1 gin and tonics that I had to rechristen them “gin and regrets.”

But we were still at work, and overdoing it on the clock was still a fool’s move.

A woman who worked on the ship’s perfume counter drank with us one afternoon on the island of Tortola, and promptly forgot she wasn’t on vacation. The higher-ups on a ship take this extremely seriously, often breathalyzing staff upon re-entry.

Unsure of what to do, we helped her to the gang plank and then filed in one by one. When she didn’t appear behind us, we looked out of a porthole only to see her attempting to board the wrong ship. She was immediately fired, and had to pay for her flight home.

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There’s a caste system among the workers

By the end of my first night at sea, I could feel the ship’s distinct and unsettling class system. Singers were near to the top of it, and soon I realized the cleaner who came to my cabin daily to change sheets and bring towels wasn’t considered my colleague, but my staff.

The pecking order among the onboard crew was most stark at meals. Below deck there were three dining tiers: the officers mess, the staff mess, and the crew mess. Your rank determined which mess you were allowed to dine in.

The officers (heads of departments, people involved in steering the ship) ordered freshly made food from a menu. The staff (entertainers, people in the office) were offered steam table grub, which was fairly grim but passable.

The crew mess, however, was not for the faint. The lowly engine workers and cleaners, who mainly hailed from the Philippines and India, were given mountains of rice and cuts of meat and fish that included pork knuckles, chicken feet, and fish heads. Then, at Christmas, someone decked the fish heads in little Santa hats.

You get paid in cash — and it adds up

When I worked in 2008 I was making about $4,000 a month — a tidy haul, considering all my expenses were covered. Payment arrived as an envelope stuffed with $100 bills. I felt like a drug runner, dashing back to my cabin to secret my stash about the room: a grand in a shoe, another in my toiletry bag.

Depending on your country of origin, you may not have to pay tax on this income since you are earning your salary in international waters. After a while, the money piles up. A friend of mine who took on several cruise ship contracts bought a house. I, on the other hand, moved to New York.

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You get really good at curing sea sickness

Sea sickness is a real thing. In my experience, the larger the ship, the less motion you feel. But on one occasion, as we sailed the Atlantic, a wave hit the side of the ship where my cabin was hard enough to throw me out of bed.

On particularly turbulent days, you discover that people from different parts of the world bring their own cures. While most Westerners pop a pill and have a lie down, Chinese workers taught me to eat 10 kiwis (no more, no less). Filipino workers insisted that green apples were the cure. I favored popping the pill and then lying down and eating apples and kiwis.

Walking at sea is harder than you think

Finding your sea legs takes time. One afternoon a friend of mine, having been aboard a week, felt he had the balancing act down and sprang to help an elderly passenger in a wheelchair. The man — a double-amputee war vet  — was enjoying his first cruise. As my friend pushed the chair, a wave hit the ship; off-balance, he dumped the veteran splat onto the deck in front of dozens of horrified passengers. The man was fine, but my friend never lived it down.

Everyone lives a parallel dating life

On a boat, you’re stuck with the same faces day in and day out. In the end, long nights at sea lead to some bad bunking decisions. After dating an officer for about three months and practically living in his cabin with him, I discovered he had a fiancee on land.

Not only that, she was due to come onboard for a cruise, so I had to gather my belongings and slither back to my quarters. A more experienced friend told me that this sort of behavior wasn’t unusual. You had your relationship at sea and your relationship on land. The more I looked around at career cruisers, the more I noticed it was standard practice.

Just a word to the wise if you ever shack up with a cruise employee.

Ruthie Darling is a British writer and flagrant fashionista based in Brooklyn and a contributor to Salon, Hello Fashion Monthly, Boro Magazine, and Bushwick Daily. On Instagram, she’s @ruthiedarling.

SEE ALSO: Military packing secrets that will make you a better traveler

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NOW WATCH: For $159,000 you can fly around the world on this 27-day luxury air cruise

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For something that literally happens to everyone, death is a remarkably taboo subject in American culture.

It makes some sense, though. Who wants to think about the lights going off permanently, let alone deal with the actual logistics of dying?

That's why I'm here. I'm a funeral director. I help you with the things you don't want to deal with. 

No, it's not exactly like "Six Feet Under." Yes, you have to go to school to be a funeral director, at least in New York State.

Everybody always seems surprised when I tell them that – maybe they think any guy selling bootleg Yankees hats off the street could throw on a suit and start handling funerals and grieving families.

That's ridiculous, for a lot of reasons. Not only are you dealing with dead bodies, which, beyond being frightening to most people, can also be host to all kinds of diseases, but there's also the governmental red tape and transactions that could see tens of thousands of dollars changing hands. It's certainly not a career someone could jump into blindly and excel at… especially given some of the situations I encounter regularly.

These are just a few slices of what it's like to be a New York City funeral director, one of the most overlooked, but essential, careers a person can have.

A normal day is never what YOU think of as a normal day

For starters, I want to clear something up: Every now and then I'll run into someone who thinks it's crazy that funeral directors charge money for what we do. It's not. We do the job that other people can't or won't do. We provide a valuable service to the community. We're not looking to rip you off, we're just looking to be compensated for the work we do. Most people don't have to deal with questions about whether they should make money in exchange for working hard, but death can elicit some strange behavior in the living.

My normal workdays are filled with events most people won't ever experience in their lives. Picking up and tending to dead bodies, dealing with grieving families, taking funerals out to churches and cemeteries. To put it into perspective, remember that day at work when you spilled coffee on your pants and had to walk around with a huge stain all day? Well, my version of that involves throwing out a white shirt I was wearing because body fluid got all over it. The body fluid wasn't mine. Yeah.

SEE ALSO: After a year working on a cruise ship, I learned the 'floating cities' have their own rules

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• Kenny Gould followed one of the USDA's food plans for a month. It cut his normal grocery budget almost in half — from $80 to $42.

• He shopped at a different store each week: his local chain, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and a food co-op. 

• He was able to buy plenty of healthy food and still save money.

Who used to spend $80+ per week on groceries? This guy. I'm a single white millennial male and I spent $80 per week on groceries because I could. I thought everyone did. Well, not everyone. But enough people that I didn't have to think about my behavior as an aberration.

Then I attended an event at a local bar called The Livermore. On this particular evening, oral historian Clara Gamalski had invited the community to see the findings of a three-month experiment called "Free Snacks: A Survey of Pittsburgh," during which she'd interviewed city residents about their food preferences: Oscar Mayer bologna or Citterio mortadella? Cheetos or Pirate's Booty? She presented her findings during the event and set up a station inside the bar to conduct additional interviews. While waiting my turn, I met a man named Jeff.

Jeff was an educator with two degrees. But for the past six years he'd only been able to find part-time teaching work.

"I'm on a tight food budget," he said. "Today I spent $2."

The dude was like 6'4". Thick.

"How are you surviving on $2?" I asked.

"Three-for-$1 cheese curls at the corner store," he said, "and two-for-$1 candy bars at CVS."

I was floored. And Jeff's predicament got me thinking really hard about food budgets, so I started researching.

According to a report by the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, almost half of the city’s population lives in a food desert. The term has a technical definition which basically means that the residents of a certain area don't have easy access to a grocery store. The USDA also reports that 42.2 million people lived in households with no access to nutritious, affordable food in 2015.

In order to help people stay on track with their food spending, the USDA releases four monthly budgets called food plans, each designed to provide a nutritious diet at a different cost.

Strapped for cash? Go with the Thrifty plan. If you have a little more disposable income, you can try the Low Cost plan, and then the Moderate. For the most expensive plan, try the Liberal.

The plans vary by sex and age, with a Thrifty millennial male (that's me!) getting $42.60 to spend per week, or about $6.13 per day. In other words, that's the low end of what I should be spending on food. For the high-end Liberal plan, I'd get $75.10, or $10.73 per day.

Could I — an $80-plus-per-week spender — eat like a Thrifty millennial male? Is that budget even tenable at most grocery stores? To find out, I spent a month shopping at a different grocery store every week: my local grocery chain, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and a natural foods co-op.

Each week, I bought the same simple baseline meal of chicken and shells. After that, I spent whatever I had left on the groceries that I needed to sustain myself for the week. No eating out unless it fit into my $42.60 (spoiler: it never did). And no accepting free meals or snacks.

I was worried: I teach yoga and typically run a few miles every day. I always shoot for the USDA five servings of fruits and vegetables. The rest of my diet generally consists of yogurt, eggs, and lean meats. Could I sustain myself on a little more than half my normal budget?

No matter the answer, I felt that the experiment would have strong repercussions. If it was possible to eat on the USDA Thrifty Plan, it'd mean that overspenders and under-spenders alike would have a more sustainable path toward a nutritionally dense future.

And if it wasn't? Then our country needed a serious wake-up call about the affordability and accessibility of food.

SEE ALSO: Tips that pay off: 5 August goals to make you richer by September

The local grocery chain: the week that I surprised myself

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During my first week, I spent $37.72 at Giant Eagle — a full $5.18 less than the USDA recommends for the Thrifty Plan — and bought the ingredients for my chicken and shells meal, plus mushrooms, peppers, and onions for omelets every morning and turkey sandwiches for lunch. Can you spend the same amount and eat organically and locally? Probably not.

But that's because many local grocery stores don't often carry organic goods or stuff from small regional farms. My local chain also has a spinoff brand, Giant Eagle Market District, a different store that does carry more local and organic products. The prices are higher than at the regular Giant Eagle, but then again, when I made a concerted effort to keep down my grocery costs, I found myself with an extra $5.18. It's almost an extra day's worth of food on the Thrifty Plan — two days for Jeff.

Chicken and shells total cost: $12.23
Weekly total: $37.72

Trader Joe's: the week that heaven sent

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I'll be honest. Walking out of my local grocery store with all my food felt good, but walking out of Trader Joe's with the food I bought almost felt criminal. I drove home rubbing my hands together and cackling like Gargamel the Evil Wizard, convinced that I had just pulled a heist. While Trader Joe's stocks no shortage of reasonably priced pre-packaged indulgences, I stuck to my health-conscious diet of fruits, vegetables, eggs, and lean meats. For $39.68 I bought more than enough for the week.

While this probably isn't news to anyone, it was shocking to see exactly how much I could get for $39.68. Before this experiment, I never laid it all out on a table. At Trader Joe's I got enough food to last two weeks, and good food too: I'm talking organic produce, cage-free eggs, protein bars, and semi-dried green figs. Even a round of goat cheese.

Driving past McDonald's on the way to the store, I saw that even a Big Mac and fries costs $5.69. So either I'm getting slowly poisoned and the joke is on me or Trader Joe's is a godsend for Thrifty, health-conscious shoppers.

Chicken and shells total cost: $13.34
Weekly total: $39.68

Whole Foods: the week that things looked dicey

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It was only after hitting Whole Foods during week three that I got a little scared that I might not have enough food for the week. I did, but barely: no snacks, no indulgences, no mercy. Let's break it down.

Each day, I got approximately a kale leaf, a slice and a half of cheddar cheese, a slice of turkey (only when I got home did I realize that I'd forgotten bread), half a banana, two eggs, and a bowl of chicken and shells for dinner. Hardly enough to sustain an active lifestyle.

Whole Foods thrives by maintaining a monopoly on "healthy." The marketing convinces health-conscious shoppers like myself that local grocery chains and Trader Joe's offer inferior products. But do they? As I've already seen, Trader Joe's offers organic produce for less. So does Giant Eagle and Giant Eagle Market District. So why did I risk my life trying to grab the last carton of eggs from the sharp clutches of an angry soccer mom?

Unless Whole Foods can convince me of an alternative value proposition, it doesn't make sense for a person on a low budget to shop there. Yes, it offers specialty items like Madécasse direct-trade chocolate and Sambazon smoothie packs (the key ingredient in your Instagram account's favorite acai bowl), but these tasty luxuries easily slip out of reach when considering a stringent financial plan.

Chicken and shells total cost:$19.34
Weekly total:$39.35

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Airplanes are notorious for being giant flying petri dishes. The rush to turn flights around in mere moments, day in and day out, makes them akin to a bath towel you always air-dry but never wash.

The FAA has nothing to say about how often and how thoroughly planes are cleaned, so the airlines are in charge.

Guess where that leaves you. When Skytrax rated the 20 cleanest airlines in the world this year, EVA Airways was tops, but no US carriers made the list. But how dirty is dirty, exactly?

SEE ALSO: This website tells you when to find the cheapest hotel in different cities

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NOW WATCH: 8 details you might have missed on season 7 episode 4 of 'Game of Thrones'

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The best small towns to visit in America are easy to commit to for a weekend.

But if you're going to full on move to a small town, you gotta be selective.

Pick wrong and you'll be bored, underpaid, and isolated.

But pick right, and you can get all the best aspects of a metropolis — energy, creativity, charm, excitement — without the up-yours prices and the built-in migraines.

So we asked dozens of writers around the country to find the small American cities (with a max population of 70,000) where they'd put down roots. We looked for up-and-coming hotspots (think, Asheville 10 years ago), underappreciated gems, and towns where a person with verve could scratch out a cool life. Places where you can raise kids and those kids can raise dogs and those dogs can raise hell. And where, when your friends visit from the city, they take a seat on your porch and say, "Damn, this is nice. What does your mortgage cost, again?"

SEE ALSO: How I cut my $80-a-week grocery budget in half without eating less

Hood River, Oregon

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Bisbee, Arizona

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Port Chester, New York

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Affordable rents and a bustling downtown that'll make you forget Brooklyn.

Population: 29,000

No need to live in Bushwick or Williamsburg to feel like you're a New Yorker. Just an hour-long train ride north from Grand Central, and you'll find yourself in Port Chester. This Westchester County village has all the allure of a poppin' Brooklyn neighborhood, minus the bulls---.

Obscenely high rent? Not here. Mayor Dennis G. Pilla told The New York Times, "Millennials are moving here from the outer boroughs and other places because of the bang for the buck." You can land a 1/1 apartment for $1,600, aka what you'd pay in NYC only if your aunt owns the building. Maybe you could even (hold onto your hat, now) buy.

And get this — there's actually stuff to do. Since the Capitol Theatre (built in 1926) was reopened in 2012 by Brooklyn Bowl owner Peter Shapiro, huge acts like Bob Dylan, Father John Misty, and the Pixies have been booked. The fleeing New Yorkers ensure a healthy appetite for bars, brunches, and well-respected restos.

You can hit bartaco or Mario Batali's Tarry Lodge, or scarf down a chili cheese dog from Hubba's, a hole-in-the-wall shop that's been around for over 100 years. Then gaze around at the once-sleepy town for people who still can't bring themselves to admit they might one day wind up in Connecticut. —Rebecca Strassberg

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• Ben Lerer founded Thrillist and is now the CEO of Group Nine, a digital holding company for four brands: The Dodo, Seeker, Thrillist, and NowThis.
• Lerer comes from a family of founders. He works closely with his father, Ken, who cofounded the the Huffington Post, and his sister, Izzie, who founded animal brand The Dodo. But he has some words for people who accuse him of only being successful because he has successful parents.
• Discovery recently invested $100 million in Group Nine; the company's valued at nearly $600 million.

Ben Lerer spent his 20s cofounding Thrillist, a local-recommendation site for "civilized bros," and he's now the CEO of digital holding company Group Nine.

Earlier this year he huddled with his father, Huffington Post cofounder Ken Lerer, and sister, The Dodo founder Izzie Lerer, to talk about a crazy idea they code-named "Project Family." That ultimately turned into Group Nine, a merger of four brands: Thrillist, The Dodo, video news network NowThis, and Discovery's science site, Seeker.

The process was difficult and messy.

"This is not deal making for the faint of heart," Lerer told Business Insider's podcast, "Success! How I Did It.""These companies have different boards with different investors, with different priorities. They have different management teams."

But they got it done, and Discovery invested about $100 million in the new entity.

Lerer told us how he went from a self-described "decently spoiled kid" to a digital-media mogul, and what drives him to be ambitious despite the large shadow his successful father casts.

You can listen to the full interview with him on "Success! How I Did It," here:

Subscribe to "Success! How I Did It" on Acast or iTunes. Check out previous episodes with:

• PayPal CEO Dan Schulman
• Former Pepsi and Apple CEO John Sculley
• Angel investor Jason Calacanis
• Former Microsoft CEO and LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer

Following is a transcript of the podcast; it has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Alyson Shontell: We're really excited to have you, Ben — thanks for coming.

Ben Lerer: Thanks for having me.

Shontell: You founded Thrillist in 2006, so that would make you an old-timer in media.

Lerer: Yup — you're an old timer too! Remember we met in 2008? So you are also very old.

Learning entrepreneurship from a young age

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Clik here to view.Shontell: It's true — but you've been at this for a long time and you are from a family of founders. Your dad, Ken Lerer, cofounded the Huffington Post [now HuffPost] and was involved in all sorts of things, like BuzzFeed — even Business Insider. Your sister is a founder — she did The Dodo and she's now at Group Nine, where you are. So you guys do companies. How did that shape you growing up?

Lerer: That's shaped by my dad. For the largest portion of my childhood, he was building a corporate-communications company called Robinson Lerer Montgomery, and then went to work for AOL during the AOL–Time Warner merger. And then after that he took a little time to figure out what he wanted to do next and started HuffPo. For most of my childhood, with, like, one two- or three-year exception, he was always running his own businesses. I never, even for a second, thought about what an actual job would be for myself because I never saw the person who I looked up to having a traditional job.

Shontell: So corporate America was never on your radar? It was always, like, I'm going to start something — that's what I know how to do?

Lerer: I, admittedly, grew up like a decently spoiled kid, and so I didn't think about my future. I was a selfish little kid doing my own thing and I was a perfectly good student or whatever, but I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. But I was always around media and entrepreneurship, and so that was what always interested me, but not in any particular way until obviously you graduate from college and the rubber hits the road and you're like, 'What the hell am I going to do with my life?' And that's when I first went and worked in hospitality. I worked for André Balazs straight out of school.

Shontell: And you went to Penn.

Creating Thrillist

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Lerer: I went to Penn, and then came right home and moved back to New York and worked for André for a little while, and I think what I really loved about André's business was not the hospitality piece of it but the brand piece of it. And then we had this idea for Thrillist really, on the back of our own personal need, which was living in New York. And girls I knew were reading DailyCandy, and I felt like there should be something for people like me.

So a buddy from college, Adam [Rich], and I spent nights and weekends going out and eating a lot and drinking too much and checking out New York and fancied ourselves experts on fun. So that was the impetus for Thrillist, and we started it with really pathetically humble beginnings, and the media landscape evolved around us.

Shontell: So a lot to unpack there, the first of which is DailyCandy. DailyCandy, for people who might not remember, was a big email company. I think it sold for something like tens of millions of dollars.

Lerer: It sold for 125 million bucks, to Comcast.

Shontell: A ton of money. And so you want to create —

Lerer: I mean, that was like the media exit of the decade.

Shontell: Right. This is before it exits, though, you see an opportunity.

Lerer: Yeah, I mean a consumer opportunity. So what did I know about advertising or the business that DailyCandy was in? All I knew is that DailyCandy was influential with women who I knew, so they would read DailyCandy and they would do the things DailyCandy told them to do and it seemed like there was value in that. I didn't know what their business looked like, but I knew that it was clearly growing and they had been out and raising money and Bob Pittman had funded them.

Shontell: And he's now the head of I Heart Media.

Lerer: Yeah, and Bob had sort of famously founded MTV, and he's now the chairman of I Heart. But in between he built a fund called the Pilot Group, which was a private-equity fund that did some good deals and some not-as-good deals, and DailyCandy was one of the good deals, certainly. We had this idea for Thrillist, which was like a de-facto copycat of DailyCandy but with a guy's tone.

Shontell: So a newsletter for guys about how to have fun in Manhattan.

Lerer: A newsletter for guys in Manhattan. Right, exactly. And by the way, it was for a specific kind of guy. It was like Ben and Adam, age 22, 23.

Shontell: So bros.

Lerer: Real d-bags. No — I mean, yeah, bros. Civilized bros. And we ended up going to Bob. We launched Thrillist. That doesn't take a lot of money to start sending an email out to your friends, but we got a little traction, and we were right that there was an opportunity in the market. We went to Bob's fund and said, "Hey, we're doing this thing. You guys are in DailyCandy. Do you want to invest with us?"

It's fortunate he did, because actually, if you think about New York 11 years ago, there was no startup ecosystem, so nobody graduated class of 2003 Penn with me and decided to go and launch a tech company or a media company. Everyone wanted to go to Wall Street, everyone wanted to go to consulting, everyone wanted to go to business school, or everyone wanted to go to law school. That was the way.

So if Bob's fund wasn't there to give us $250,000 in the seed check, I don't know what we would have done, and I sort of had a "I'm not taking money from my dad" thing. Not that he would have given it to me, but we were, like, "Let's go raise money and do this thing and try to build it the right way." And I honestly saw it as just a learning experience. I didn't have a vision for what the future of this would look like, and we did an OK job treating every dollar like it was our last and, over what in today's startup world is an unacceptably long period of time, built a brand. It's just unbelievable how in the startup world it takes a decade to make a brand that anyone gives a sh-- about.

Finding an audience of 'civilized bros'

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Shontell: Right, and so now raising money in media-land, it's a lot easier, but back then it was really tough to raise money for anyone, let alone a guy who maybe didn't have a vision, who was trying to start a newsletter company.

So what was the first iteration of Thrillist? What was that first newsletter you sent? And how did you start getting that initial traction?

Lerer: The first newsletter we sent was about a restaurant that is no longer with us, called El Rey Del Sol, which was on 14th Street. It was a Mexican restaurant that we liked, and on the fourth of May, we sent out an email telling people about what they should do on Cinco de Mayo the next day. We still read it at our company anniversary party each year because it was just so atrocious, and I mean, it's like a pleasure to read because anything is possible if that was the first piece of content we created and we built an actual company out of it.

Shontell: So who were the poor recipients of this first sad little email?

Lerer: Six hundred people, who were everyone in my contact list. And actually we were supposed to have launched several weeks prior but the day we were going to launch, we realized that we had not considered the mechanism for actually sending the email. And so I think literally we loaded it up in my Outbox and then got that kickback note that was, like, "You've sent this to too many recipients." I mean, it was as pathetic as it gets, so we hired whatever the cheapest email-newsletter-delivery thing is, and for $29 a month, which was like, "How dare they charge so much money for the service?!" And we sent out our first one.

I will say that, for whatever the quality of the content was, the one thing it had was soul. Regardless of whether it was this super-thoughtful, sophisticated whatever brand, it was a brand. It had a consistency, and it had a way of thinking about the world, and an attitude, which was, "Squeeze as much fun and enjoyment out of every day as you can." And that principle is something that even 11 years later, while the brand has been through a bunch of growth and change, it still comes back to that core proposition around, "Do the things you love better, appreciate the world around you, have fun."

Shontell: And so when did Bob come into the mix? How many of these letters were you sending before you got money to sustain yourself?

Lerer: I would guess maybe we had been creating content for somewhere between three and six months.

Shontell: And did you have traction?

Lerer: Yeah, we had traction. I think we had week over week growth that was accelerating and we had good engagement. I remember that first year where we put local businesses on the map, legitimately, where we went in and we covered something and it became one of those places where there's a line around the corner and the line doesn't stop and we got a reputation for being good at picking winners and presenting it in a light that was just different.

Shontell: So when did you start to shape your vision and realize this could actually be a real, big business?

Lerer: When DailyCandy sold was the first time we ever picked our head up. So we built for two or three years and it was getting bigger and bigger, and we always had DailyCandy's trajectory to compare it against. I remember it was, like, can you get to 35,000 subs in your first year? If you do, you're on DailyCandy trajectory. Then, can you get to 150,000 subs in year two? If you do, you're on DailyCandy trajectory.

And so we had these things that we drove toward, and then there was the same in revenue, and so we had these early DailyCandy metrics that we tracked against and tracked favorably against for two or three years, then they sold for this sort of big number. We worshipped DailyCandy and thought that they were this behemoth. But a little bit of it was "OK, well, great, we're on their trajectory, so my phone must not be working because no one's calling and offering us $125 million for the business — I don't know what's going on."

Shontell: And how many cities were you in at this point?

Lerer: I don't know: eight or 10 or 15 or six. But it felt substantive enough. The audience was great quality, but it was an email newsletter. You know, think about the reach that brands have today. Business Insider has interacted with more people since we've been sitting here than Thrillist did that year. It was hard to say, "Well, where does this thing go?" And we got this bug in our head that there was an opportunity to take this hyper-engaged consumer and find ways to monetize them outside of advertising. And we said, "What else can we do with them?" And just about this time I started investing.

Shontell: And what year is this?

Lerer: Two thousand nine.

Teaming up with his dad to find and fund startups

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Shontell: So you are now in a bunch of markets, you've got a good subscriber base, advertisers are interested, they're working with you, but one of the rules a lot of media companies try to follow is don't just have one revenue stream. One thing that you guys figured out and that you tried was a lot of people were pairing commerce and content.

Lerer: That's that turning point for us.

Shontell: Right: So you found this company, JackThreads, and they were a clothing company and you bought them.

Lerer: And this was because I was investing. Is it worth giving that backstory? The LHV backstory? So my dad is running HuffPo, or he's the chairman of HuffPo, and I'm building Thrillist and — actually this comes back to BI — Henry Blodget, my dad's friend, calls him and says, "I'm starting this thing and I'm raising a little bit of money," and so my dad says, "Hey, my friend Henry's starting this thing — what do you think?" He sort of, like, asks my opinion, but like certainly not asking me for any money, because I don't have any, and we're, like, OK sure. So we give Henry a little bit of money and then we make eight or 10 investments in a year or so, and then they start to do well. Just like BI, they're all starting to gain a little momentum. One of them is —

Shontell: BuzzFeed.

Lerer: BuzzFeed — smart, yes, one of them is BuzzFeed.

Shontell: I know your portfolio better than you do.

Lerer: Right, yup. My dad one day comes to me and goes, "Hey, you know what, I'm an old dude. I've been around a little bit; it's really interesting what's happening right now. Your friends want to go and do tech startups suddenly. I feel like something is happening here and we should try to get involved."

And I said: "Yeah, I appreciate that point. I have a job, you have a job, and I don't even know what you're talking about." And he said, "We should raise a fund and do some investing."

And I said, "That's actually not a terrible idea." The real impetus for it was he read the funding story about Foursquare and he's, like, "I wish we had invested in that." And I'm, like, "I know those dudes. We could have invested in that."

And that was when he said: "You know all the kids are starting companies, and I bet I could raise a little bit of money for us from my friends. Let's put these things together and see if we can start a little fund." And so we raised an $8.5 million fund.

Shontell: And this is Lerer Ventures.

Lerer: And so we started investing and that was an amazing vintage of New York companies. The first generation of great New York tech companies. Then, when my dad sold HuffPo, he said, "Well, what am I going to do now?" And this LV thing is really working and we said, "Let's make this a little more serious," and so then we went and raised another fund and since have raised six funds, each one just about doubling in size from the one before, and we've made over 300 investments in early-stage technology companies and a lot of them are direct-to-consumer commerce, and so I got obsessed with direct-to-consumer commerce.

When I was running Thrillist, I said, "How do we take these direct-to-consumer-commerce companies that we're investing in and some of that philosophy and marry that with what we're building at Thrillist?" JackThreads was a company which was an advertiser at Thrillist, and a successful advertiser — they spent money with us and people signed up, spent money with them, and we said "right time, right place, right value," and we decided to buy JackThreads six years ago at Thrillist to get into content and commerce.

Selling versus spinning out, an emotionally draining experience

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Shontell: So you buy this company and it does boost your revenue a bunch, but then eventually you end up spinning it out. What happened?

Lerer: We brought it in and we started growing two businesses at once: a media business and a commerce business. And as is sometimes the case, the new thing that comes in is the shiny object, and so we start putting a lot of focus into integrating it in, into investing it and growing it, and JackThreads explodes and starts growing super quickly. And you turn back and look at your media business a year later and go, "Ah, that hasn't grown because we haven't put any time into it and we haven't invested money into it and we sort of took for granted that it was going to continue to grow."

You then go back and go, "OK, we've got to get this media business back on track, and then you turn back and look at your retail business six months later and go, 'That's not growing as fast as it was.'" So then we get to this point and go, "OK, guys, we need to divide and conquer, and we need to start growing our management team, we need to put more resources against this." We went out and raised a Series A from Oak, from Fred Harmon at Oak, and that was to fund growth in both business and Fred came in.

Shontell: And he's been an investor in a lot of media companies — Bleacher Report, a bunch.

Lerer: Bleacher, HuffPo, NowThis, Brit and Co. Fred gets it, and we built a great relationship with Fred. A lot of investors loved the idea, but it was harder to raise money than it should have been. We were like, "Eh, look, it is what it is, let's just put our heads down and grow these two businesses" and a few things happened.

One is, each of them started changing, and so Thrillist started becoming more gender-neutral as the audience got bigger, and JackThreads got into the business of making its own stuff, and both businesses as we were investing started requiring more capital, and they need different kinds of capital, and they need different kinds of talent, and so then we built separate management teams and the businesses, which at one point were in the same boat, or in boats sitting beside each other going the same direction, started diverging.

And so you know, whatever it was, two and a half years ago, I think, when we ended up closing the financing, Axel Springer came in and invested and as part of their investment, they basically said, "Look, we love your media business, and we want to grow your media business." As you would know, they are fans of the media business and are now the owners of BI. And actually this was within the same month that they bought BI.

Shontell: This is about two years ago.

Lerer: Two years ago, OK. That's when we closed. I think we looked at Thrillist and said, "A lot has happened in the media business and the rise of social and the opportunity that we saw around the corner with video — which is now the very foundation of what Group Nine is all about — we said there's this bigger, more exciting thing happening and we don't want to be half in, half out, and we want to go and grow media. We said, "Let's spin JackThreads and put it in a separate thing. It'll become an LHV investment and we'll bring in new money and a new CEO and it'll have its own course and it will be a separate thing from us."

So we did that and put our head down on Thrillist and just focused and grew like a weed, and it was like that reminder of, we're good at this business, if we pay attention and if we don't lose sight of the fundamentals of what we're trying to build. And so we grew Thrillist really nicely, and then all the while had this idea that there were changes happening in media that were big and exciting.

That time Thrillist almost got bought by Axel Springer or Viacom

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Shontell: Some would look at the big and exciting changes in media and actually be a little bit scared because it means a lot more investment, a whole change in business model to some extent as different medias keep forming. So some would look at that and be, like, "OK, this is time to get out. I've built a great thing, I've built a great brand, I've done this for eight years or whatever it had been at that point. I'm done."

Did you think that? Like, I know that there had been rumors of acquisition talk along the years at Thrillist. What was the closest you ever came?

Lerer: The closest we ever came was when we did the spin of JackThreads, because that was emotionally hard. That was physically hard. You build the team, you build the culture, it's all your people and we're, like, "This is going to be hard," and it was. And that was a moment where when we were splitting the two things. We got really close to selling it and we had multiple people who I think would have bought it and who we were having real conversations with.

Shontell: Like who?

Lerer: Like Axel. We spent a bunch of time with them. It was in the press that we spent a bunch of time with Viacom. By the way, I don't think that selling is in any way, shape, or form giving up or copping out or throwing in the towel — at all. I just thought that it wasn't really the right time for us, and this again comes back to my dad.

At that time, he said something to me that was really important, that was a big driving factor, where he said, "Look at what's happening in media, look at the changes that are going on. This feels like the cable-TV business to me in the '80s, where you have these strong brands that people care about with big growing audiences on the new distribution platforms on social, and it's like the Wild West, and the money's not all there yet but the audiences are huge and, boy, history's repeating itself."

He said, "I see something happening. I remember being almost your exact age, in 1982, and seeing consolidations start to come to cable, and I didn't have a front-row seat. You have your buy-in. You have a chip to play a real role here in Thrillist. You own one of the 20 or 30 or 40 brands that matter in digital, and if I were in your shoes, I would think about taking what you have and doubling down. So you don't build a brand in the wind to get bought, but you build the next holding company."

And we thought about that idea and it sounded really compelling. I literally just looked at everything happening in digital media and I said, "If I started Thrillist again today, how would I built it? What would it look like?" You build totally around your consumer, you unapologetically go to where they are, you unapologetically create in the format that is going to get the most distribution. Go to where the people are and build giant brands that tons of people love and like money always does follow these things.

Creating Group Nine and becoming king

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Shontell: So you now run Group Nine, which ended up kind of consolidating all these things into one.

Lerer: The Dodo, NowThis.

Shontell: All these very different companies.

Lerer: And Thrillist.

Shontell: They were all media. How did that discussion happen? How did you decide, "OK, we're going to take NowThis, The Dodo, have them all agree to join," and then come up with this structure where you're suddenly king?

Lerer: Rude! So the structure was — I mean, this is not like deal making for the faint of heart.

I definitively remember this: It was a year ago, it was during the summer because I remember where I was running. I was running outside and I was having a call with Fred and I was telling him about this idea and he said, basically, "Don't quit your day job." Like, "Good luck putting these things together. It's a really great idea, but these companies have different boards with different investors, with different priorities. They have different management teams."

There was a lot of crossover investors, so Axel was in Thrillist and Axel was in NowThis. Greycroft may have been in two out of three, LHV was in all three, Fred Harmon, I believe, was in all three of them. The only outside investor of scale at any of the companies, other than Axel and Fred and Lerer, was Discovery, who was a big investor at The Dodo. It took a lot of spending time with the management teams of the other businesses to all have a meeting of the mind on how this would look and what the structure would be, and we were right about a bunch and wrong about a bunch, and we continue to learn as we put the businesses together.

The philosophy was, if we're going to build the biggest digital holding company for a bunch of reasons, it would make sense to be partnered with one of the biggest traditional holding companies. And so because Discovery had had a very positive experience with the Dodo, and because we thought that it just aligned with us for a bunch of reasons, they were one of a very small handful of folks that we sort of teased this idea to, which we called Project Family. It was our secret name, and Discovery was decisive and aggressive and ambitious and self-aware, and they said, "This is hard and we're doing this here. Let's be all in with you guys while we make a big investment, let's also contribute our digital footprint, and we're not going to try to compete with you. You guys will build digital and we're going to do what we do great and we'll find ways to partner in a thousand different ways, but Seeker will be part of the Group Nine family and so Seeker is our fourth brand."

Shontell: So you're creating content for platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat and you're pumping it out to them and you're letting them be the distribution. Do you guys even need websites or are you just doing distributed?

Lerer: We have websites. I think a website is there because of search and because if you're building brands that answer questions that people might have, you should be there for those people. I think you build them for hyper fan bases. We'll have tens and tens of millions of uniques across our properties because we have brands that matter.

Shontell: Those are people coming to your websites to check it out.

Lerer: Yeah, and we'll have big audiences there. That is an output of having brands that matter. That's not the business.

Shontell: So you're the head now of four different brands?

Lerer: Well, each brand has its own leads. So I'm not the head of the brands; I'm the head of the holding company that owns the brands. But the brands operate totally independently from an editorial perspective. Lots of shared learning, shared insights, shared technology, shared go-to-market from an advertising perspective. Like, we're consolidating at the sort of Group Nine level as much as we can to get best practices and learning and efficiency but the brands themselves are wholly independent editorial operations with their own mission, their own soul, their own direction.

Shontell: And you said that Discover went all in, they invested about $100 million into this new digital entity, holding company, and I think you were valued at $580 million through this deal.

Lerer: I think we want to build the best content brands and the best IP creation brands for the next generation of consumers, and part of the philosophy of creating great content is creating content with the user at the center, meaning, we're going to make it for where people are, not for where we can capture them or trap them.

Shontell: Right: where it's convenient for them. One thing that it seems like you guys and a lot of other folks are really doubling down — and this probably comes into play when you talk about disrupting cable and cable coming together with print and all that — is video. Video is taking over; social video is everywhere.

Are you all video content now? Is that where you're heading? Is text dead? What's happening?

Lerer: We're not all video content. Text is not dead.

We want to first think how a story is told in sight, sound, and motion, but with a lot of stories, that's not the best way to consume, that's not the best way to distribute. And so the idea is we're building brands, brands that stand for something, they're going to create a wide array of content. Most of it, probably, is going to be video, but that is not to say at all that like we don't believe in non-video content, and Thrillist is a perfect example. We're winning James Beard Awards for our journalism and our feature writing, and telling really interesting and important stories. Huge numbers of people are relying on us to come and read about local food and drink, and that's part of being a brand that does everything that your audience could want you to do, but we're a video company.

You know, Facebook is not a social network; Facebook is a mobile-video-distribution platform. All these platforms are trying to build the mobile version of television, and there's a really good reason for it because there's upwards of $70 billion in the US TV market that they would all like to have, and so we're building on the backs of the pipes, and the pipes want video because people want video, and because the business is in video, and so we're building the future of TV networks — and that's video.

What he says to people who say success breeds success

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Shontell: So a couple of personal questions to wrap this all up. Don't worry — not too personal.

Lerer: Oh, my God.

Shontell: We've talked a lot about where you came from and your dad and how he's been a big influence on your life, and I would say that one of the biggest criticisms that people who are successful who have successful parents get is “success breeds success, and you are successful because you came from privilege."

So I don't think that you would have stuck it out and gone through all this pain of building a 10-year-plus media company if that were the only thing driving you, but how do you respond to that? When people have that criticism, what do you say?

Lerer: What I would say is like, yeah, I totally get that, and who am I kidding? I just told you the story of my career, and arguably the two most important decisions I've made were in some way, shape, or form taking my father's advice, so I'm hardly shying away from the idea that my dad has been incredibly helpful to me. His success is not what has been helpful for me; he actually helps me. He gives me the best advice ever. So what can I say? I mean, yeah — he's been helpful.

Shontell: But can you be successful without it? Like, not you personally, but in general.

Lerer: Well, of course you can be successful without it.

Shontell: Can you build a big company?

Lerer: Of course you can, and people do that all the time.

I've had the benefit of having him help me, and it's been helpful, and I believe I'm more successful because of the help I've gotten from him, so I'm not going to shy from away from it and be, like, "I would do it all without my dad." My dad has not given me money for my companies, but he's been helpful, and, by the way, where's the line between nepotism and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? I think that there are people who know my dad, who think my dad's smart, who maybe give me an extra look because they're, like, "Hey, maybe this guy comes from OK genes," and my sister has been pretty successful, like, clearly something OK is going on. We're not morons. I will lean right into, like, "My dad has helped my career and I appreciate it, and I'm happy to acknowledge it."

Shontell: Well, you should never apologize for where you came from, and I think it's a huge testament to you that you've been so ambitious and built such a great career for yourself regardless.

Lerer: That is so sweet of you.

Shontell: Where does that ambition come from? You could have just sat back and been like a sloppy college kid forever, but you're not that person and you built this huge media company that you want to become even bigger, so you're working your butt off. What drives you and how did you get that ambition?

Lerer: One, insecurity, the great motivator.

Shontell: I think when you have successful parents, too, you want to prove that you can do it yourself.

Lerer: You know what's funny, I agree with that. At the same time, I grew up in Manhattan and went to Dalton, and many of my friends had super-successful-whatever parents, and it didn't turn out to be the great motivator for all of them. For me it's fear of failure, first and foremost — that's a huge driver. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is, and then a lot of it is just the meaning of life. What is your life and how do you make the most of it?

There are so many times where this is hard and I'm like, "Oh man, I could live an easier life," but it's not actually appealing. Why get out of bed in the morning? You've got to do stuff and make stuff, and particularly I think Group Nine is really mission-driven. There's been nothing that has been a greater pleasure for me than with this political environment and this disgusting president to have NowThis news be part of our portfolio and to see the change that they're making and the people that they're giving voices to. That's amazing, and I'm really proud of the work that they're doing and feel lucky to be a part of it, and that's an example of, like — that's being alive.

Shontell: Great. Well, thank you so much, Ben. It's been fun.

Lerer: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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NOW WATCH: 8 easy ways to fix common iPhone problems

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Clik here to view.Nothing against the classic American summer vacay or anything, but September is a wildly underrated month to take a beach trip.

As coastal towns transition into the off-season, you'll be paying winter prices for summer temperatures.

For some inspiration on the best beaches to hit, we asked our friends at TripAdvisor Rentals to run some numbers and find us the areas with the most dramatic price drops if you were to book for September rather than August, comparing average weekly rates for a two-bedroom rental.

Not only that, we looked for spots with attractions and amenities that are best enjoyed with far fewer people around. Everyone's in school, so spread out, take all the sand you need.

SEE ALSO: Why it seems like everyone else can afford the things you can't

1. Pawleys Island, South Carolina

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Average weekly September rental: $1,157
Off-season savings: 32%

It's exceedingly tough to pick just one barrier island to visit in Carolina's laid-back Lowcountry, but if a nap in a rope hammock, sunsets over the creek, and some damned delicious seafood are among your top priorities, check out Pawleys Island.

The tiny town of PI remains "arrogantly shabby" year-round, and September will treat you right with warm water, a wide, sparsely populated beach, and far less scandalous prices. Historic houses here date back to the late 1700s, and the area offers some impressive dining and golf courses. Up the road, Huntington Beach State Park is one of the best bird-watching spots in the state, and the must-visit Brookgreen Gardens features grand sculptures and a surprisingly diverse zoo.

Nights are best spent tapping along to some local blues band at the PIT (Pawleys Island Tavern), which you'll find hiding in the trees down a pothole-ridden drive off Highway 17.

2. Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts

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September weekly average: $2,305
Off-season savings: 22%

Summering on the Vineyard is typically reserved for people whose car payment is more than your mortgage. Early-falling on the Vineyard? An achievable dream! Rentals are a solid $600 cheaper per week, so you can take in the gorgeous cliffs, beaches, cycling trails, and historic cottages with a little less financial guilt.

You'll also be basking in near-perfect temperatures that never go much over 80 degrees or below 60. Actually getting there takes a bit of effort as it's only accessible by boat or plane, but with far fewer people clogging up the joint, that only enhances those remote getaway vibes.

3. Orange Beach, Alabama

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September weekly average: $1,359
Off-season savings: 28%

The tiny towns along Alabama's Gulf Coast are arguably the most beautiful in the state, and Orange Beach, home to Gulf State Park, is one of the highlights. The idyllic white sand beaches and turquoise water are every bit the Gulf Coast postcard you'd expect in Florida, with a far lower price tag and a fraction of the crowds.

The high-rises along the shore empty out after Labor Day, meaning shorter wait times at hugely popular restaurants like Big Fish and Fisher's Upstairs. And don't worry, the party at Pirate's Cove — one of the best beach bars in America — will still be going strong on the weekends, even in the off-season, but you won't have to reserve your pontoon boat months in advance to get there and enjoy it.

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Clik here to view.The INSIDER Summary:

• LaCroix Water has quickly become everyones go-to refreshment. 
• Now you can take your love for LaCroix to another level with LaCroix cocktails. 
• Here are 11 deliecious cocktails you should try to make if you're obsessed with LaCroix Water. 

Picture it: It's a lazy, hungover Sunday afternoon. You're lounging around in your indoor saltwater Jacuzzi or, more realistically, on your friend Steve's super-uncomfortable couch, nursing a freshly cracked can of LaCroix, when a brilliant idea pops into your aching head. "Hey," you marvel, brushing nachos off your undershirt in an attempt to sit up straight. "This is great, but how much better would it be with alcohol?!?"

Well, bud, you're not alone. LaCroix cocktails — LaCroixtails, if you will — are a definite thing, so much so that we got NYC-based bartender Maggie Eckl — who slings her drinks at none other than the Spirited Awards' Best Bar in the World, Dead Rabbit Grocery & Grog and the phenomenal new Black Tail — to put together these 11 original recipes in your honor. So pick up a few sixers (of sparkling water, that is), stock up on home bar essentials, and saddle on up — we're in for a bubbly ride.

Tequila and Tangerine

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This potent, tangy cocktail can be served with or without ice. I like to use Olmeca Altos, a smooth tequila blanco (i.e., clear in color and assertive in flavor), for its citrus notes and agave aroma, but feel free to go with any blanco tequila of your choosing.

.75 ounce grapefruit juice
.75 ounce sweet Italian vermouth (like Cocchi di Torino)
1 ounce tequila blanco
Tangerine LaCroix

Combine grapefruit juice, vermouth, and tequila in a tall glass over ice. Add Tangerine LaCroix to fill. Pop in a straw and enjoy.

GT and Lime

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Berry Cobbler

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