The AFR Magazine is unmatched in style and substance - and 2016 was no different. Our journalists have been to the beach with Kelly Slater, New York with Frank Lowy and to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park with airline rivals Geoff Dixon and Brett Godfrey.

So, just in case you missed any of it, here are some of the highlights from the magazine.

How Frank Lowy helped rebuild Ground Zero

Purchasing a 99-year lease on four floors of the World Trade Centre for US$420 million ($585 million) was a big risk for Westfield's Frank Lowy. The numbers might not have stacked up, but Frank could see the opportunity for global branding and would not be deterred. For a man highly focused on numbers, he paradoxically believes they are not everything.

Westfield first won the lease for the World Trade Centre retail precinct in 2001, a mere six weeks before terrorists chose that exact spot to change the world forever. Today, Frank Lowy is upbeat, almost 15 years have passed since the devastation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and here he is, preparing to open Westfield's part of the rebuilt World Trade Centre.

Poppy King on failure, success and going global

Poppy King is staring at me forcefully. Her large, intense green eyes sit either side of a strong nose. She wears little make-up except a slash of fire-engine red lipstick in the style worn by 1940s movie sirens.

A successful, smart, funny 44-year-old who's been based in New York since late 2002, King has carved out a niche as a global beauty guru. She's not only built two businesses but also worked for a worldwide cosmetic powerhouse, written two books, taught entrepreneurship and is about to roll out a clever, simple nail invention.

Judith Neilson on art and architecture, love and life

It was January 2012 when architect William Smart answered a phone call from Judith Neilson. After a decade obsessed with contemporary Chinese art, the White Rabbit Gallery founder was about to embark on her second love.

"She asked me what I was doing and if I was busy," recalls Smart over coffee at his eponymous Surry Hills architectural practice. "She said she wanted me to build a new house for her, and that she wanted it to be the best house in Sydney."

"I hung up the phone and knew this had been the phone call you might wait your whole life for," Smart says with a smile. "This was the opportunity to do something great."

Paul Bassat's journey from start-up whizz to venture capitalist

The future is where Paul Bassat says he lives too much. "The restless person thinks about the future, which is the mode I'm in," he says. "I'd like to be more in the present and less in the future."

He's not talking about a Jetsons-style future of flying cars, nor the "Beam me up, Scotty" imagined transporter of Star Trek. Rather, he dwells in a place where technology start-ups are offering real and novel ways to better arrange the world and the global economy. The start-ups that aspire to be the next Google, Airbnb, Apple, Facebook or SEEK.

Bassat left SEEK five years ago, stepping down as co-chief executive. Now he's one of the wealthy men who invests money with hungry entrepreneurs, who remind him of himself. But Bassat isn't just any venture capitalist; there are plenty of them. He's the best-networked venture capitalist in Australia, and the most influential. 

Campaign Monitor's bid to be next Atlassian

Once occupied by global law firm DLA Piper, this two-floor space is home to Campaign Monitor, an email marketing company many think might eventually become Australia's next $1 billion tech giant.

At last, Harry Triguboff hits No.1 on BRW Rich List

Triguboff knows what customers are buying, where and when, how they're financing their deals and how often they've bought Meriton apartments over the years – and there are many repeat customers.

Australia's richest person is across all the detail of the property empire he built, over 53 years, into a giant estimated to be worth more than $10 billion today. And at the age of 83 he has no intention of it ever being any different.

Having been a member of the BRW Rich 200 for all the list's 33 years, Triguboff, the Jewish migrant who arrived from China to finish high school in Sydney in 1948, finally reaches number one this year. 

"I've worked very hard and I still work very hard," Triguboff tells The Australian Financial Review Magazine. "I like it. I enjoy it. And I think it's very good for my health, and what's good for my health is very important to me."

Cultural Power: Waleed Aly says 'what we're all thinking'

Waleed Aly began pondering the fact not much of substance goes viral. Slapstick? Sure. Controversy? Certainly. Outrage? Most definitely. But the things that really fire up the internet are "very rarely rich concepts", he says.

Then along came Sonia Kruger. The breakfast television host blew up the internet one Monday in July after espousing her view that immigration of Muslims should be stopped so she could "feel safe".

By 6.30pm the following night, Aly had a new take on the issue – one that would go on to be viewed by 11 million Facebook users and be shared about 190,000 times. Instead of piling onto Kruger, calling her racist and picking apart her argument, he suggested people take a moment to consider her fears and those of others, and come back with "radical generosity in the face of their hostility, even when it hurts".

The next day, with the online response to Aly's notion at 4 million and counting, a panel of business and political leaders seated around the Fairfax Media boardroom table voted the 38-year-old Aly the country's most culturally powerful person.

How champion surfer Kelly Slater is shaking up fashion

"He was doing radical manoeuvres. I thought, 'this guy is going to wreak a fair bit of havoc' . . . that, and he had the lethal competitive attitude of a great white shark."

How well these words sum up the guy who has me in an eye-lock, a disrupter who wants to shake up the murkiest corners of the clothing business, the ones in which dirt-cheap sweatshirts are piled high.

Here's a revolutionary who won't just suck it up and shut up about an international supply chain that's broken at pretty much every stage.

Overt Power 2016: Who really runs Australia?

Malcolm Turnbull loomed large over Australia when he seized the prime ministership from Tony Abbott a little over a year ago. It was incredible how a single event changed the political mood of the country and made him the most overtly powerful person in Australia.

At first, Turnbull's grand statement stirred the belief that he would use the most powerful office in the land to lay out an agenda and get the country moving. Everyone from out-of-work miners to university graduates to those managing companies, where business plans depend on policy certainty, watched and waited.

Labor leader Bill Shorten moved to second spot on our overt power list, up from eighth last year, because he demonstrated his power and influence in the past 12 months by setting an agenda to which the government was forced to respond.

Barry Lambert's $34 million investment in medicinal cannabis

Lambert drinks a cappuccino he's just bought at the local café. It's a charming family scene – except for one thing. At the table beside him, his son Michael is committing a crime that carries a sentence of up to two years' jail.

Asked how he feels about the use of an illegal cannabis product to treat his 4-year-old granddaughter Katelyn, the 70-year-old Lambert, who has sat quietly as his family squawks and scraps around him, pauses a little awkwardly before answering softly but firmly.

"Bad laws deserve to be broken. I am fully supportive. It is the right thing to do." 

Ex-airline rivals team up for tourism venture

Earlier this year, former Qantas boss Geoff Dixon and his long-time rival at Virgin Australia, Brett Godfrey, cast their eyes towards Central Australia. Their dream: to create a world first luxury walk in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

The one-time aviation kings want to establish a 50-kilometre walk through the park complete with lodgings where walkers can bed down as they tramp the three or four-day route.

Once fierce competitors, in September 2015 they joined forces to create the Australian Walking Company, through which they plan to build luxury walks and accommodation in national parks across mainland Australia.