Hey, this is Lindsay People's Editor-in-Chief of the Cut.

This month on our podcast in her shoes, we talked to designer Mara Hoffman.

Hoffman was just awarded CFDA's environmental sustainability award and also

released her first dress made entirely from recycled fabric. We hope you'll

join us for this month's series sponsored by evening. My beat here at Recode centers on tech billionaires, who they are, what drives them, and what

exactly they spend their fortunes on.

And these days one answer to that last question is politics.

So I try and chart the gushure of billionaire money flowing into American elections.

Often in secret.

Joining me on the show today here is my editor at Recode, Sam Oldman.

Hey Sam.

Hey Teddy.

So last week we published a story from you about one of these billionaires. Reed Hoffman, the founder of

LinkedIn, board member of Microsoft, and a major democratic political donor. So I

think this conversation is a chance for us to talk about why out of the many people in Silicon Valley you could be covering, why did we focus on Reed Hoffman?

He's not really a household name the way that Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos are.

Let's talk about what makes him an interesting character in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, I mean, he's someone who has a ton of money, but more so is one of these people who sees themselves as a quote-unquote

thought leader, right? He sort of coins terms that are used in startup land.

He has a podcast which is tons of listeners.

And he's basically sort of cultivated this image

as one of the good guys of Silicon Valley.

...