The New World

The road to Rick Rubin’s house was long and winding for Joshua Kushner, who’d traversed more than might be gleaned from the surface glint of his life. On November 17, 2023, Kushner was the 38-year-old spouse of a supermodel, brother and in-law of American political royalty, and founder and CEO of what had very suddenly become one of the most coveted venture capital firms in the world. He was also the grandson of survivors of the Novogrudok Ghetto massacres—indigent refugees who over the course of the Cold War built a New Jersey real estate principality that their son, Josh’s father, expanded into a multistate empire before his conviction on felony charges and sentencing to federal prison, and before the White House activities of his older brother, Jared, put Josh in the crosshairs of a torrid political convulsion of which he’d wanted no part. None of which had anything to do, at least at first glance, with why he wanted to see Rick Rubin, whom he’d never met.