"Surround yourself with whip-smart, self-aware, non‑performative people." That was the single step recipe for a happy life, according to my journalist dad.
My dad, Sy Pearlman in 1961. His first year delivering the news.
Dad carefully assembled endless combinations of these triply rare people, for dim sum brunches, 2,546 Saturdays in a row, from 1966 to 2015.
Royal Seafood. Dad's favorite brunch spot from 2002 to 2008.
Trees is my project to find, interview, and gather them.
All interviews start with the same question — "Can you tell me an 'If not for...' story about someone who's had an indelibly positive effect on your life?"
Writer at The New Republic, lecturer at Yale, and speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, Walter Shapiro. Recorded over the air.
Host of the Slate Political Gabfest and CEO of CityCast, David Plotz, Recorded at his home in Washington, DC.
Author, photographer, and symphonic clarinetist, Arlene Alda. Recorded at her and her husband Alan's New York City apartment.
Artist, illustrator, author, and New Yorker cover maker, Christoph Niemann. Recorded at his studio in the Mitte district of Berlin.
To listen to more interviews, shoot me an email me and I'll add you to the distribution list. ted@especiallytrees.com
They run the gamut from 3-day, 25-person, private-chef-equipped, agenda-less destination retreats…
Katie, a set designer, and Eugene, a comedian and actor; knight in tarnished armor and stop-motion animator, Joseph, with Peggy, a bookseller; vegetarian pigs; and chef Cali.
At Temple Guiting Manor in the English Cotswolds.
to one-on-one, neighborhood lunches...
Susan and Suzanne, both first-time novelists, at Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs in Denver.
"The best lunch date of my life. We were there for two and a half hours but could easily
have stayed for five."
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Founder of Tattly &
Creative Mornings.
to three-headed, topical phone conversations.
Composer and guitarist, Joel Newton, playwright, director, and university professor, Jonathan Bernstein, and saxophonist and composer, Paul Carlon, gang tackling two questions — 'What makes something elegant?' & 'Why is or isn't it important to you to make things that are elegant?'
Why did you start Trees?
Dad started having me tag along to his brunches one Saturday in 1980. I loved it. Grown-ups who talked and listened to each other like they did were totally new to me.
Nom Wah. Site of my first tag-along.
When I got to college six years later, I had one goal. "Find and gather people who remind me of dad's brunch friends."
It became a lifelong hobby.
My first gatherings happened in the rathskeller-like dining room below Cornell University's Sage Hall.
When the pandemic descended in 2020, I finally decided to turn it into a full-time project.
Who are you?
I'm Ted Pearlman.
My dad, Sy; me; and dad's brother, Boris, a radiologist. At Glen Wild Lake, New Jersey, 2004.
I’m married to Allison, an architect. We live in Denver, Colorado, with our ridiculous eleventh-grader, Oscar, and our couch potato Newfoundland dog, Mabel.
Way back when, Oscar and his first Newfoundland, Tatou, were a bit famous on Youtube for entertaining each other.
I have a BA in Music (Cornell University ’90). Until 2012, I worked at technology companies, including Sony and IBM. From 2012 to 2020, I helped a small cadre of technology CEOs find specialists to help them tackle acute challenges.
One of my clients, CEO Phil Caravaggio, collaborating with Rodrigo Corral on the book design for Ray Dalio's New York Times bestseller, 'Principles.'
Where can I find out more about your dad?
Dad's all-time favorite quotation. From one of the Avvaiyars (ancient, female Tamil poets).
How do you decide who to invite to each gathering?
I look for a fourth way people overlap. What makes them laugh. What they do with the bulk of teir time, the challenges they're wrestlng with.
A Corkscrew Willow in Amstelpark, near Wan Shun, my favorite spot for dinner gatherings in Amsterdam.
How do you find these people?
Mostly through referrals.
Laura, a social worker, Renee, a nurse, Deb, a children’s librarian, and Courtney, a horticulturalist, at Saigon Bowl in Denver.
Why do you call this project, Trees?
The night before my first dim sum brunch with dad's friends, he and I watched From Russia with Love, featuring Bond's arch enemy, the evil organization, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion).
The next day, at the brunch , everyone was wearing "Hi Ted, I'm [fill in the blank]" name tags shaped like maple leaves.
Afterward, on the walk uptown to our apartment, somehow those experiences melded in my eleven-year-old brain and, as we passed 59th St., I declared to dad that his fourteen-year-old dim sum brunch project now had a codename, T.R.E.E.S. (Truthful, Righteous Executive for Eviscerating S.P.E.C.T.R.E.).
Over the years, it has evolved into my word for anyone who reminds me of dad and his friends.
Bringer of the maple leaf name tags, Tommy Tomizawa, reporting for Stars and Stripes, 1958.
Who created the illustration at the top of this page?