Speaker 1: What's in Chicago? Meet me? I'm in Chicago. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards, the show that tells
Speaker 1: you everything you don't know about the very worst people
Speaker 1: in all of history. And today I'm in the Windy
Speaker 1: City that Never sleeps on a big apple, Chicago, Illinois,
Speaker 1: with my co hosts today, the hosts of the Wonderful
Speaker 1: Knowledge Fight podcast, my favorite podcast, Dan and Jordan's. That's
Speaker 1: I don't know your last names? Wow, it's irrelevant. We're
Speaker 1: not allowed to say our last names on television sales.
Speaker 1: So Mr mixel Plick situation will to another dimension should
Speaker 1: we say our names? Oddly enough, I have a friend
Speaker 1: who's like that, and it's Mr. He said his name
Speaker 1: backwards twice though, so you got him? Yeah, you got
Speaker 1: you terrible. You can only visit him on certain occasions
Speaker 1: for having us. You know, it's nicely in Chicago. There's
Speaker 1: so many, so many choices of people you could sit
Speaker 1: down lot, a lot of things going on in Chicago.
Speaker 1: I was surprised at the cars um as a Southerner
Speaker 1: and then and then a West Coaster. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: you had them here yet. But that's good. It's good.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good. Once the once the city burned
Speaker 1: down the first time, we were like, well, let's wait
Speaker 1: for the second to get some cars, but we decided
Speaker 1: against it. Well, I'm I'm proud of y'all. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on in Chicago. Mainly it's cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: Have you been yelled out about food at all? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Actually I have a tail. This will be
Speaker 1: dropping an episode of Worst Year Ever. But we went
Speaker 1: totally on accident. When we were covering Cody Johnson, Katie
Speaker 1: Stile and I were coming the Midwest Profest. We went
Speaker 1: to accidentally what has to be one of the fanciest restaurants.
Speaker 1: It's one of fancies restaurants, maybe the fanciest I've been
Speaker 1: to in my life, so I'm guessing it's one of
Speaker 1: the fancier ones in Chicago. No, it was the Capital
Speaker 1: grill Um. It was a place that, like, we walked
Speaker 1: in and they asked to take our coats and we
Speaker 1: said no, and they immediately looked like, oh, you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to be here. That is just not done. But
Speaker 1: they seated us and we ordered lobster bisk which was fantastic.
Speaker 1: The food was was phenomenal um. And as I was
Speaker 1: eating my bisk, the waiter walked by and gave me,
Speaker 1: fetched me a look of pity and said, sir, is
Speaker 1: there something wrong your soup spoon? I had used the
Speaker 1: wrong spoon, I was. I was half sure the problem
Speaker 1: was going to be that you put ketch up in
Speaker 1: the b which is frowned upon. Not quite that much
Speaker 1: an animal, but I am apparently a filthy animal because
Speaker 1: I used Yeah, you know, um, I'm I'm deeply ashamed
Speaker 1: as Chicaglan's allow us to resolve or what does that call?
Speaker 1: Absolve you of your food since yeah, I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to double down. No, I don't give a
Speaker 1: sh about bisk. So we we have never been to
Speaker 1: a swanky I look like I've ever. It was purely
Speaker 1: by accident that we went. Jordan thought Julia Bays was
Speaker 1: a cold sup really did It's not really. This is
Speaker 1: on the way here. Every soup that's not clam chatter.
Speaker 1: I assume it is gus paco. I don't know other suits.
Speaker 1: Jordan didn't know. I did not know about Tripe. That's
Speaker 1: a shame. I really don't think. Once I learned about Tripe,
Speaker 1: it did not bother me that I didn't know about
Speaker 1: it this long. It's not good. Um so, uh, normally
Speaker 1: y'all host a podcast, you sit around, drink novelty beverages
Speaker 1: and talk a little bit about Alex Jack. It's true.
Speaker 1: We're not doing anything like that today, nothing even vaguely
Speaker 1: reminiscent of that. You told me earlier that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about somebody that has nothing to do within
Speaker 1: for war, couldn't be lesson. I was almost convinced it
Speaker 1: was a trap. No, we talked about Alex Jones before.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, normally I would have you on to
Speaker 1: to discuss someone in Alex Jones's universe because that's your wheelhouse.
Speaker 1: But sometimes the sausage just gotta be made. You are
Speaker 1: the sausage packers nearby. Yeah, I'll take it. Chicago has
Speaker 1: not had sausage packing for a while, but I think
Speaker 1: we'll we'll start the project again. Well, um, do you
Speaker 1: guys know the name a little fella named Adam Neuman? No,
Speaker 1: it does ring a bell. Have you heard of a
Speaker 1: company called we Work? Yes? Is that guy? Oh boy,
Speaker 1: oh boy? And he is a real piece of ship. Okay,
Speaker 1: now that sounds right. So I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna dive into this, to
Speaker 1: dive into the ship right now. Um so well, now,
Speaker 1: I actually scrolled to the bottom of the page, very professional.
Speaker 1: This is how the sausage gets made when we don't
Speaker 1: print it out. Adam no discernible middle name, Neuman was
Speaker 1: born in Tel Aviv, Israel, on a n seventy nine,
Speaker 1: very close to my birthday. I'm already very invested in
Speaker 1: this story. And you were also born in Televisi correct,
Speaker 1: well the American television Yes, yes, which is Van Eys, California. Yes.
Speaker 1: He gets a lot of ship about the right to
Speaker 1: return laws for California, which is you do not have
Speaker 1: them stay the funk out of California. Just too many
Speaker 1: people here. Um so yeah. When he was seven, his
Speaker 1: parents divorced and his mother moved to New York City
Speaker 1: to do her medical residency. Adam and his sister av
Speaker 1: moved in with her. Now I found other variations about them.
Speaker 1: Story that climed to split happen when he was nine,
Speaker 1: and that they moved to Minneapolis first. I think he
Speaker 1: lies a lot on this show. Whenever it's like I've
Speaker 1: heard multiple stories about his life about like specifically when
Speaker 1: he came Like yeah, like in so consequential details, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I ran into both. Um. We don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of granular details of his childhood, UM,
Speaker 1: like not a lot of anecdotes about him as a kid. UM,
Speaker 1: but we know it was rough. He was severely dyslexic,
Speaker 1: still is severely dyslexic. You don't just um, is that
Speaker 1: why we work as one word? Maybe? Does that? Is
Speaker 1: that a dyslexic thing? I don't think it is welcome
Speaker 1: Behind the Beasts the podcast where we slandered dyslexia and
Speaker 1: talk about terrible people. H So, yeah, he was dyslexic,
Speaker 1: couldn't read it write at all until the third grade.
Speaker 1: UM and his mom moved constantly, so he lived in
Speaker 1: a lot of different homes and usually didn't spend enough
Speaker 1: time in any one place to build strong attachments to
Speaker 1: people there. I get that a little bit. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety, when he was eleven, Adam's mom moved
Speaker 1: back to Israel his family and he settled in a kipputz.
Speaker 1: Gives no much about kipputz is ku. I know a
Speaker 1: little bit about kid butts is like, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a commune essentially, right, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like an Israeli type of commune thing. I'm got
Speaker 1: to talk about him a little bit. The first Kipputz
Speaker 1: was founded in a place called dia Gania and you
Speaker 1: know in Palestine at the time now now the nation
Speaker 1: known as Israel uh in nineteen o nine and nineteen ten. Now,
Speaker 1: this is two complex a topic to do justice too
Speaker 1: as an aside in this episode, but it's reasonably accurate
Speaker 1: to say that the inspiring motivations behind the establishment of
Speaker 1: the first kibbutz is kibbutze Um. I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: what's correct. I don't know yetish Um is a mix
Speaker 1: of Zionism, admiration of like literal classical Spartan values um
Speaker 1: and communism. So it's like a millity. It was like
Speaker 1: an initially like very militant. So like when the Israeli
Speaker 1: War for Independence or war the Nakba, whichever term you
Speaker 1: prefer to use, when that happened, a lot of like
Speaker 1: the cells of like Israeli um or not, I mean,
Speaker 1: they weren't is rather at that point of like of
Speaker 1: like Jewish partisans who like we're active, we're like based
Speaker 1: around kibbutz is and stuff, and like there are kibbutz
Speaker 1: is that were like manufacturing arms and stuff and like
Speaker 1: later wars and stuff. So there's like a militant swing
Speaker 1: to them, but also very leftist, very communist, very like
Speaker 1: like like communitary. Yeah, yeah, I assume that will never
Speaker 1: go wrong. And yeah, just a really fucking complicated thing.
Speaker 1: And I I please don't take this, like read up
Speaker 1: more on them. I I don't want to, like, and
Speaker 1: they're all different too, so I'm sure there's a lot
Speaker 1: of kibbutz is that that are very different backgrounds. But
Speaker 1: I found like a really fun lecture on the history
Speaker 1: of kibutz is by guy named Henry Near who was
Speaker 1: a professor some fucking college, and I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: that now. It was governed by all the members gathered
Speaker 1: in their weekly meetings. Meals were eaten in common in
Speaker 1: the central dining hall, which also served as a social
Speaker 1: and cultural center, and other items of consumption were distributed
Speaker 1: freely or in accordance with the principle to each according
Speaker 1: to his or her need. In its early stages, all
Speaker 1: decisions were taken in common by all the members. That's
Speaker 1: the idea of the chibuts, like pretty practical ground democracy
Speaker 1: sounds pretty pretty all right, Yeah, it sounds like every
Speaker 1: one way to live. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: about the making arms part. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: going to sign up for that. Do you want to
Speaker 1: make some arms? It's not my thing. Little bit arms here,
Speaker 1: a little bit arms there. I just feel like I
Speaker 1: don't have the right kind of like dexterity in those skills.
Speaker 1: Really really want kids for making because they're little fingers
Speaker 1: getting all those holes. Yeah, pop, a little little baby fingers.
Speaker 1: H nobody makes an a k forty seven like a
Speaker 1: couple of three month olds. They really, they really know
Speaker 1: how to start now. Women and men both worked all
Speaker 1: day in the kibbutz is kibbutz um um. Their children
Speaker 1: were cared for in small groups, looked after by individuals
Speaker 1: were a mix of teacher and nanny. Kild spent time
Speaker 1: in their parents home after working hours, but most cases
Speaker 1: slept with other kids in a children's house at night.
Speaker 1: In the early days, at least all of the kibbutz
Speaker 1: is were part of a utopian movement towards a better society.
Speaker 1: One of the founders of the first kibbutz, Joseph Barretts,
Speaker 1: wrote this in his memoirs. We were happy enough working
Speaker 1: on the land, but we knew more and more certainly
Speaker 1: that the ways of the old settlements were not for us.
Speaker 1: This was not the way we hope to settle the country,
Speaker 1: this old way with Jews on top and Arabs working
Speaker 1: for them. Anyway, we thought that there shouldn't be employers
Speaker 1: or employed at all. There must be a better way.
Speaker 1: Very left wing, very like like utopian projects. I just
Speaker 1: want to emphasize that. Yeah, this being this show, though
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for a hammer to drop. Yeah, it goes
Speaker 1: into not not as utopian direction. There's all around. They're
Speaker 1: not all at least the same that they were so
Speaker 1: obviously in the early days they were all about agriculture. Um,
Speaker 1: some still focus on that, but today they serve in
Speaker 1: a variety of industries. For example, Kibbutz sasa Uh serves
Speaker 1: the Israeli military making special military grade plastics. Is two
Speaker 1: hundred members sold some eight hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: in products in two thousand tens. These are not all,
Speaker 1: These are not small, but yes, necessarily and that's a
Speaker 1: sizeable business. Yeah, And Kibbutz near m where Adam Neuman
Speaker 1: spent his formative years, currently hosts an innovation center that
Speaker 1: seems to focus as an incubator for the Israeli tech
Speaker 1: industry and looks like literally any tech building in San
Speaker 1: Francisco from the pictures I've seen, so like these are
Speaker 1: no longer like like necessarily like rule or like like
Speaker 1: hard scrabble things like there's big businesses that are are
Speaker 1: operated in these um Now. By the time Adam and
Speaker 1: his family arrived at Kibbutz near Am, Kibbutz has had
Speaker 1: moderated significantly from their early radical leftist ideology, and rather
Speaker 1: than being educated in a group of children on site,
Speaker 1: he went to the share Hannegev. I'm so sorry for
Speaker 1: surely pronouncing that school, which is near to Gaza Strip.
Speaker 1: His mother worked as an oncologist at a nearby hospital.
Speaker 1: Um and living in the kibbutz and taking partners communal
Speaker 1: life was something that Adam's mom valued. He later recalled,
Speaker 1: it was important to my mother that we all do
Speaker 1: something special. So, yeah, every rite up you're going to find.
Speaker 1: This guy's life focuses on his time in the Kibbutz.
Speaker 1: It seems to be something out of himself. May has
Speaker 1: made a point of discussing with every journalist who interviewed him. Um,
Speaker 1: despite how often it comes up, you seldom here in
Speaker 1: the details of his time there. One of the few
Speaker 1: scraps I ran into came from a Hearts article. As
Speaker 1: a child who lived in a lot of places, one
Speaker 1: of the hardest things for me was to join a
Speaker 1: new community. It was hardest at the Kibbutz, but that
Speaker 1: was also one of the most impressive communities. I remember
Speaker 1: how much fun it was to be a child in
Speaker 1: the Kibbuts. I feel like I would probably speak the
Speaker 1: same but also like, you know, not very in detail
Speaker 1: about like the time when I lived in like I
Speaker 1: don't know, Boston. Yeah, I don't remember much of it,
Speaker 1: but I could probably be like, you know, hey, it
Speaker 1: made me who And you get the like he really
Speaker 1: drives home that it was like a formative thing for him,
Speaker 1: but you also get the the idea that was kind
Speaker 1: of painful. He talks a lot about how, um, the
Speaker 1: other kids that he that were on the Kibbitts had
Speaker 1: all been born and like grown up there, and he
Speaker 1: had moved there when he was like eleven or twelve
Speaker 1: or so. UM, so that was like obviously difficult. He
Speaker 1: would have been something of an outsider. He says, he
Speaker 1: like made his way in and it was really rewarding.
Speaker 1: I kind of get the feeling that maybe this guy's
Speaker 1: never quite felt like he belonged anywhere. It's like a
Speaker 1: new kid in school, but the school happens to be
Speaker 1: a commune, and nobody wants you there, and nobody wants
Speaker 1: you there. Yeah, maybe I don't know. I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up in that particular Israeli kibbutz um. Now.
Speaker 1: As a young adult, Adam went to the Israeli Naval
Speaker 1: Academy and served in the Navy for five years. So
Speaker 1: he didn't do like the minimum service you need to do,
Speaker 1: Like he he made a thing of it. Um. He
Speaker 1: retired as a captain or left the service as a captain. Um.
Speaker 1: Once he'd done his time, he followed in his mother's
Speaker 1: footsteps and moved to New York. He was twenty two
Speaker 1: years old, and it was two thousand one, widely considered
Speaker 1: to be the very best year in history to move
Speaker 1: to the game. I remember well the Blueprint three or
Speaker 1: now the Blueprint dropped, the Yes first album that was
Speaker 1: really really good, The Strokes first album that was awesome.
Speaker 1: All of those, All of those happened on on a
Speaker 1: day that I don't think anybody remembers for any reason
Speaker 1: at all. No, no, uh. Two thousand one particularly like
Speaker 1: the fall, early winter, like autumn. Great time to be
Speaker 1: in New York. The two thousand one particularly good time
Speaker 1: to be a dance punk was taken the nation by Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic. So he moves there in a perfect time. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: his sister Avy had already beaten him to New York.
Speaker 1: She had been a former team Miss Israel and then
Speaker 1: managed to turn that into a career as a model.
Speaker 1: She was very successful model and is very famous in
Speaker 1: his room, much more famous than actually he is to
Speaker 1: this day. Um. He stayed in her Tribeca apartment while
Speaker 1: he worked to figure out what his future would be.
Speaker 1: Eventually he settled on business and enrolled at Baruch College.
Speaker 1: In between classes, he and his own words, spent his
Speaker 1: first years in New York hanging out at clubs and
Speaker 1: quote hitting on every girl in the city. Um he
Speaker 1: looked for you know, spent the rest of his time
Speaker 1: looking for get rich quick schemes. His first months in
Speaker 1: the USA brought with them some sobering revelations about American culture. Quote,
Speaker 1: it's bullshit, yeah kind of actually yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: propag around the world. Okay, that a lot of other
Speaker 1: people are also try and get rich quick sche people
Speaker 1: like me. It seems like a lot of people really
Speaker 1: wish they could get rich quick. The whole thing about
Speaker 1: the American character being con artists, and it's a mix
Speaker 1: of con artists and gold rushers. Like the honest people
Speaker 1: are looking for a gold rush, the not honest people
Speaker 1: are con artists. The goal is always the same. Which
Speaker 1: has spent his little time living in the part of
Speaker 1: America that exists for people who aren't rich, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is hard, and then filled with go fund means for insulin.
Speaker 1: So far, the places for Americans who aren't rich are
Speaker 1: are not great. Most people want to get out of there.
Speaker 1: You know, I, for one, don't understand why you would
Speaker 1: want to live anywhere but the Pacific Palisades. But you know,
Speaker 1: my butler lives elsewhere, and he says, it's there's there's, there's,
Speaker 1: there's decent parts. You fly him in for the week
Speaker 1: days or is he a weekend butler, Like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you split custody of the butler with your ex wife.
Speaker 1: He takes, he takes, he takes a bus in and
Speaker 1: he's you know, there's there's a tracking chip on him
Speaker 1: when he's in the palaceine. We don't want to stay,
Speaker 1: good lord though, not after dark unless there's a party,
Speaker 1: in which case we deliver a small series of electric
Speaker 1: shocks every fifteen minutes. We didn't get too comfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, ethics, Um so yeah. Adam had a
Speaker 1: rough arrival to the United States. Um and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote him now. After I arrived in the United States,
Speaker 1: I realized that in the army is really had to
Speaker 1: be part of something bigger than themselves. The things that
Speaker 1: I had experienced in my life all came together in
Speaker 1: our life. We had a lot of movement and a
Speaker 1: lot of new things. So I feel sorry for someone
Speaker 1: who's having a bit of a hard time, because I
Speaker 1: know what it's like to be new. Um. He found
Speaker 1: that he was like really frustrated by particularly the distance
Speaker 1: and kind of facelessness of American culture. Elevator rides were
Speaker 1: the things that most struck him. He recalled later to
Speaker 1: an interviewer that whenever he would travel up the elevator
Speaker 1: in his sister's apartment, he would wonder, why is nobody
Speaker 1: talking to each other? We're in the same building. How
Speaker 1: come you don't know everybody? Oh? Man, man, if somebody
Speaker 1: talked to me in an elevator, I lose my ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely furious. To be fair, I've had those very similar thoughts.
Speaker 1: But every time I've tried to act the opposite, it's
Speaker 1: been a disaster. No, they don't want to be to say,
Speaker 1: I look like me. Yeah, it's a it's a captive environment.
Speaker 1: There's no escape route. That's that's the issue there. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: until the door's open, it seems very suspicious. You strike
Speaker 1: up a conversation in those now those times when we've
Speaker 1: as a culture just decided shut it down. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: start a conversation in the bathroom, the bus, the bus,
Speaker 1: never elevators. No, I keep a tear gas grenade on
Speaker 1: me at all times. Anyone talks, I just pulled that pen.
Speaker 1: I will in the conversation that I will begin a
Speaker 1: conversation if we're stuck in the elevator, and I'm just
Speaker 1: at the place where I have to poop in the corner.
Speaker 1: Back in that situation, I'm going to start with a sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be rough for all of us. I
Speaker 1: think we'll make it through. There are different protocols for
Speaker 1: once you get to that point. The only place in
Speaker 1: America it's okay to talk to people is in lying
Speaker 1: at the movies. That's a good one that works. That's it,
Speaker 1: really okay, that's it. Say yeah. Other than that, zip
Speaker 1: it yeah, keep it, keep it shut. Doctor's waiting room
Speaker 1: under no circumstances, no no eye contact blames. A holding
Speaker 1: cell is probably a good place. Like yeah, you in
Speaker 1: on as more like collaboration. Yeah, you're you're you're in
Speaker 1: a holding cell. You're getting something cooking in the beginning
Speaker 1: of the movie blow, that's yeah, that's a rich scheme.
Speaker 1: In the in the works, I can say a lot
Speaker 1: of people at guns stores want to have conversations with
Speaker 1: you while you're waiting. You should not. You should not
Speaker 1: talk to those people. It does not end well. You
Speaker 1: will learn uncomfortable things about them. Um. Yeah, I imagine
Speaker 1: every conversation at a gun store starts with my ex
Speaker 1: wife and that's where it goes. Well, the government, let
Speaker 1: me tell you about the government. Federal government. Either that
Speaker 1: or I got a lot of fucking gophers on my property.
Speaker 1: How many misdemeanors for I can't buy one of these
Speaker 1: no more. I imagine the people around there are full
Speaker 1: of trivia. It is actually it's just mostly firstly gun trivia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very accurate. Yeah, you know they change the way the
Speaker 1: feed and ramp loads back in nineteen sixty two, so
Speaker 1: that's a yeah, it's very very boring in general. Um so, yeah.
Speaker 1: Adam gets to the US fresh out of the military
Speaker 1: is frustrated at like the distance and the kind of
Speaker 1: soullessness lack of communication in American culture. Um yeah. He
Speaker 1: challenges his sister Abby to a friendmaking competition, uh, to
Speaker 1: see who could learn the names and established cordial social
Speaker 1: relationships with the most people in the building the fastest.
Speaker 1: This is the first time. This is the beginning of
Speaker 1: me saying fuck this guy. Yeah, this is it. It's
Speaker 1: him trying to people like, let's have a friendship contest.
Speaker 1: Fuck that guy out. You're trying to gamify like natural
Speaker 1: interaction between people. That just seems weird. Also, his sister's
Speaker 1: name is Addie. I'm a hack and a fraud and
Speaker 1: and spelled it wrong, not added. Yeah, so is that
Speaker 1: long for something? Probably? I don't know. It's just sister.
Speaker 1: She didn't do anything wrong. Um. They get into what
Speaker 1: they get into a contest to see who can like
Speaker 1: build the most cordial social relationships the fastest. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: she absolutely wins this contest very quickly. They like, almost immediately.
Speaker 1: This guy seems like a creep. She's a model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy is weird. He's trying to start conversations elevators.
Speaker 1: And she's one of the most beautiful. Yes, she wins. Handle.
Speaker 1: She has like six times as many friends in after
Speaker 1: a week. It is not a not a close not
Speaker 1: a close thing, not a near run game. Um. But
Speaker 1: Adam claims as a result of their contest, the entire
Speaker 1: energy of the building changed to what what people would
Speaker 1: he be bothered, borrow, shooker from each other. He was good,
Speaker 1: he says, it was good, Okay, all right now. Is
Speaker 1: a common refrain in Adam's interviews, both the difficulty of
Speaker 1: meeting new people when you move, a lot of the
Speaker 1: cold and informal nature of life in American society. Uh.
Speaker 1: And oddly enough, this sort of like understanding that whatever
Speaker 1: it is about our hyper capitalist world makes people not
Speaker 1: want to connect with one another was paired in Adam
Speaker 1: with a deep bone level belief in the goodness of capitalism. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's interesting. That doesn't make sense on any level.
Speaker 1: It will continue to not or maybe it will. Capitalism
Speaker 1: alienates us from each other, and damn it, it's awesome,
Speaker 1: so good I believe in. It's more of a capitalism
Speaker 1: alienates or people in capitalist societies are alienated. What if
Speaker 1: we could find a way using capitalism to make them
Speaker 1: less alienate? You just gotta put like financial incentives for
Speaker 1: that friendship contest. See oh boy, that sounds like it's
Speaker 1: a disingenuous friendship that got to turn this into like
Speaker 1: a reality show? Are there other friendships than those based
Speaker 1: on money? Like my friendship with my butler, for example,
Speaker 1: I don't know his name. Why would you? Yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: like why would I? It seems odd? But no, when
Speaker 1: his wife died because you couldn't afford her insulin, I
Speaker 1: did consider sending a flower, but then I thought it
Speaker 1: kind of sends the wrong message. Well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you inject the flower of insulin. That's a real bad one,
Speaker 1: especially that. I just I didn't want him to think
Speaker 1: he could talk to me in my elevator. Right, right,
Speaker 1: that's a good call. You make him take the dumbwaiter,
Speaker 1: of course. Oh well absolutely, I mean either that or
Speaker 1: the stairs. Yeah, I usually the stairs. Yeah now um.
Speaker 1: Adam after this, decided to drop out of college and
Speaker 1: launch himself into a frenzy of ill conceived business ventures. First,
Speaker 1: he started a business selling women's shoes with collapsible high
Speaker 1: heels for reasons I cannot quite explain. Probably one of
Speaker 1: those like uh like operations, you know, like cut Co,
Speaker 1: the knife people. He's probably some women's shoe company he
Speaker 1: got hooked up with, right, No, No, he started, he
Speaker 1: started a business. He did, so he started there was
Speaker 1: two business. I'll give him credit for that. His first
Speaker 1: two businesses are not consum Their products just bad. They're bad,
Speaker 1: but they are He is trying to start a legitimate
Speaker 1: business that sells a product. We are three people here
Speaker 1: who have very little use for collapsible heeled shoes. Perhaps
Speaker 1: I'm not going to speak for the women listening as
Speaker 1: to whether or not that's a good idea, but he
Speaker 1: did not execute it well, as proven by the fact
Speaker 1: that the company didn't. All right, now, I think I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit late, but here's my pitch. Put some
Speaker 1: wheels on those. Do you remember those? Yeah? I don't see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: soap shoes, collapsible high heels and expanded drop you know,
Speaker 1: perfect perfect. Uh. Next, he made the leap to selling
Speaker 1: specialty baby clothing. Um collapses, of course, actually breakaway baby clothing.
Speaker 1: Turned out that's attracted so very well to the wrong people.
Speaker 1: Absolutely to the wrong people. Stress it's about to dance.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Vatican ordered seven million in dollars worth,
Speaker 1: which was really watch out. Um. Yeah. The ones he
Speaker 1: designed were called crawlers with a K and there were
Speaker 1: normal baby pants with kneepads sewn into the legs, which
Speaker 1: actually meshes uncomfortably with my Vatican joke. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: think the Vatican has carpet though, so you don't need
Speaker 1: to what So, in order to distract us from that,
Speaker 1: whatever you like to point out, I did not take
Speaker 1: part in that. That's good. You know who else? Do
Speaker 1: you know who else is a conscience subjector? And the
Speaker 1: realm of priests in molesting baby sponsors, the sponsors and
Speaker 1: that is. That is that is an ant plug products.
Speaker 1: And we're back. We're back, and we're talking about Adam
Speaker 1: Neuman and his so far god awful attempts to make
Speaker 1: it big in America. Women's shoes, patted knee baby to
Speaker 1: his credit, real businesses, actual things I've heard. No, Okay,
Speaker 1: are you telling me that his name is a annoy many? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It is, Okay, there we go. It is. I just
Speaker 1: needed that cleared upper hero. I just needed to be Yeah,
Speaker 1: the guy. It's the superhero whose power is talking to
Speaker 1: you in an elevator. Yeah, his power is never taking
Speaker 1: the hint. I feel like I have a completely unfair
Speaker 1: picture of this guy already in my head, but you don't.
Speaker 1: I think I've nailed him so um. Now, Adam had
Speaker 1: started Crawlers with a hundred thousand dollar investment from his grandmother.
Speaker 1: By the time the financial crisis slammed down in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, he'd spent every dime of that investment, and
Speaker 1: his almost shockingly bad idea for a company was nearly
Speaker 1: out of gas. He had to hire a law you're
Speaker 1: just to renew his visa to stay in the USA.
Speaker 1: Comes from wealthier family, not like rich, but well an
Speaker 1: off off that his grandma had an extra hundred K. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that this difficult time for Adam's business prospects proved
Speaker 1: to be the most important period of his life. For
Speaker 1: one thing, it's when he met his future wife, Rebecca Paltrow.
Speaker 1: He was twenty eight at the time, and Rebecca recalls
Speaker 1: that he was really, really thin, and he was shaking
Speaker 1: because I think he was smoking too many cigarettes, and
Speaker 1: he was engaged in a friend making contests. And then
Speaker 1: we got married. She claimed simultaneously that when she first
Speaker 1: talked to him, she realized both that he was full
Speaker 1: of ship and that he was her soul mate. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's shocking portrait of another person. Yes, I guess
Speaker 1: that's the most self aware thing you could say. It
Speaker 1: is the most self aware thing she has ever said. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: they went out for lunch and Adam couldn't appored to
Speaker 1: pay for anything or for the cab ride because he
Speaker 1: was he was broke. You accept novelty, baby clothes, hated
Speaker 1: not um. Rebecca insulted him for talking a big game
Speaker 1: but having no actual money, and Adam justified it by
Speaker 1: calling himself an entrepreneur whose money was all an inventory. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they got to either married a couple of
Speaker 1: months later. Um, so like very very quickly. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they getting better at making friends. He's gotten a lot,
Speaker 1: but he's good, good at making this one friend now.
Speaker 1: At the time, Rebecca had done a little bit more
Speaker 1: with her life than her her paramore. She'd been a
Speaker 1: stock trader for like a week or two. Um, She'd
Speaker 1: spent time in a Buddhist monastery and been to the
Speaker 1: Dali Lama's birthday party because she's rich as well. Um,
Speaker 1: she toured with Michael Frantie and Spearhead what not playing.
Speaker 1: She was just wandering, are you are you? Are you
Speaker 1: a Spearhead fan? No, I've actually weirdly, I was a
Speaker 1: friend of mine from high school last night and one
Speaker 1: of the things I've always accused him of is being
Speaker 1: super into Spearhead, and he claims that that is not
Speaker 1: true at all. I literally they literally were something that
Speaker 1: I was yelling about last night. Why would that's a
Speaker 1: wild coincidence. It's because they have a line in one
Speaker 1: of those songs like there's a war on cancer, war
Speaker 1: on drugs, war on police, war on hugs. I'm like,
Speaker 1: there is not a war on hugs. There is absolutely
Speaker 1: a war on have you been in an elevator recently? Zero? People?
Speaker 1: When you try to hug someone on it, they do
Speaker 1: not appreciate it. Dan, My mind is completely blown that
Speaker 1: this lady went on tour with Spearhead. Yeah, she went
Speaker 1: on tour with Spearhead. Spearhead. Uh. And it's here I
Speaker 1: should drop that she's Gwyn With Paltrow's first cousin. Oh
Speaker 1: I totally knew that. Yeah, yep, Now keep that one
Speaker 1: in mind. Yeah, the the goopy of it all. Now,
Speaker 1: Rebecca and Adam started dating and she helped him quit smoking,
Speaker 1: and so she said cousin first cousin, Yes, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1: They started dating. She helped him quit smoking and soda.
Speaker 1: She introduced him to kabbala, the Jewish mystical tradition, and
Speaker 1: worked to stop him from obsessing over money so much.
Speaker 1: I assume that worked. It absolutely Dutch. So this is
Speaker 1: the end of the is the end of the story.
Speaker 1: Good episode, guys, good good um. This is about a
Speaker 1: man who played a friend game in his building. We
Speaker 1: hate him and that is the end of his crimes
Speaker 1: play game. That's kind of endearing this episode. This episode
Speaker 1: is just about getting our fans to hunt this man down.
Speaker 1: He lives in a small apartment in Van Nuys. Now
Speaker 1: so so grab a gun? No? Um? So yeah. She
Speaker 1: tried to make him stop obsessing of her money, and
Speaker 1: Adam later recalled Rebecca said, stop no more talking about money.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about wellness, happiness, fulfillment, and if
Speaker 1: the money is supposed to follow, it will, and if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, it doesn't matter because we will be happy
Speaker 1: and fulfilled. That's an asshole says, that is the thing
Speaker 1: a rich asshole said. No poor asshole has ever said
Speaker 1: if the money is supposed to follow, will know? They say,
Speaker 1: what about the insulin? Poor assholes say like food is good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Boy ass will say like we gotta fucking make rent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it was clear though, that making funkloads of money
Speaker 1: was the only thing that would actually make Adam happy
Speaker 1: being fulfilled. The baby close game was not working out,
Speaker 1: But while he was failing at a second business, Adam
Speaker 1: fell in love with the building where Crawlers had its
Speaker 1: office space, an otherwise empty former warehouse in Brooklyn's rapidly
Speaker 1: gentrifying Dumbo neighborhood. Neighborhood. Yes, I know, I every new
Speaker 1: thing I learned about New York. So many fucking racist
Speaker 1: crows in that Neighborhood's terrible. It's awful. They had to
Speaker 1: have a warning Disney. Plus, the strangest juxtapositions of my
Speaker 1: life was as a child the racist crows and Dumbo,
Speaker 1: and then as an adult the very different but also
Speaker 1: similar racist crows in Fritz the Cat but very different.
Speaker 1: Why don't even like the Rick? Is? It really directly
Speaker 1: deals with things like police violence against the black community.
Speaker 1: Very complicated film, the most complicated film with a mouse
Speaker 1: Nazi bike? Was he a mouse? Which species was the
Speaker 1: Nazi biker? I have no idea. I just remember Fritz
Speaker 1: the Cats, the one with the bag, right, I'm way off.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of a completely different cat now, I remember
Speaker 1: what we're actually telling Fritz. Fritz the Cat is the
Speaker 1: one about the cat who fox. Yeah, thinking I was
Speaker 1: thinking about a different great movie. I've never seen it,
Speaker 1: not tripping um, but have seen it five or six
Speaker 1: times and remember enjoying it and also feeling confused and
Speaker 1: conflicted at certain parts. Ralph Bakshi, everybody a lot of
Speaker 1: check him out, got really turned on by certain things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of the all had the same issue watching the
Speaker 1: Robin Hood Disney movie if you remember that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of complicated feeling Dale's rescue rangers.
Speaker 1: Fritz is interesting because all of the all the black
Speaker 1: people are crows um, much like in Dumbo, but all
Speaker 1: of the police are literal pigs um. And it's it's
Speaker 1: quite a film made in like the sixties seventies weird
Speaker 1: movie Don't Haven't Haven't Seen a good breakdown on on
Speaker 1: the Haven't Seen it sober Maybe I should maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we're talking about horrible, horrible racist propaganda. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was, though. I think it was about as woke
Speaker 1: as possible for the era. But I may be wrong
Speaker 1: on that. I remember enjoying it. This has been too
Speaker 1: long a aggression on Fritz and Cap So yeah, the
Speaker 1: baby Clothes game, you know they so yeah. Adam falls
Speaker 1: into the building where the Crawlers had its office space,
Speaker 1: which is an empty warehouse in Brooklyn's Dumbow neighborhood. He
Speaker 1: meets up with the neighborhood Joshua Goodman and tells him
Speaker 1: give me the building. Goodman was like, no, I assume
Speaker 1: that that knife point that he told him the building,
Speaker 1: it's great. It's gonna be great to be like the
Speaker 1: kind of person who could just be like, I want
Speaker 1: that build, get that building. So Goodman's like no and
Speaker 1: shoots back because basically Adam is not saying like, give
Speaker 1: me ownership of the building. He's saying like, let me
Speaker 1: control the space and rent it out. It's empty. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Goodman is like, why would I do that? You
Speaker 1: sell baby clothes. Goodman makes a good point here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know nothing about this industry point annoyment response. Your
Speaker 1: business is empty? What do you know about real estate? Good? So,
Speaker 1: all right, what do you know about business? Asshole? Let's
Speaker 1: do this your tip for tap this all day. In
Speaker 1: an impasse, he he convinces Goodman UM, and Goodman pairs
Speaker 1: with Adam and his business partner, a guy named Miguel
Speaker 1: mckelby who had grown up in a commune in Oregon,
Speaker 1: so they both have that sort of background. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: And together they found a company called Green Desk, which
Speaker 1: was billed as an environmentally friendly coworking space. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: the idea for green guests was actually based on a
Speaker 1: failed business plan Adam had created for a competition at
Speaker 1: Burrut College before he dropped out. Uh. The idea was,
Speaker 1: in his words, community structured real estate, which would meld
Speaker 1: working in living space together in a manner reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the Kibbutz. The plan failed to progress to the second
Speaker 1: round of the contest, and Adam complained to the dean
Speaker 1: about this, and the dean told him there's no twenty
Speaker 1: three year old or any inexperienced real estate person who
Speaker 1: will ever be able to raise enough money to do
Speaker 1: anything like concept living. So I really feel like that
Speaker 1: reminds me more of like when the railroad barons built
Speaker 1: their own cities and use their own currency and ship
Speaker 1: like that made people live on them. So that's that's
Speaker 1: where I'm at right now. I feel like that business
Speaker 1: model has been tried before. You your heading right in
Speaker 1: the right direction. So now, Green Desk though, wasn't a
Speaker 1: whole lot like a kid, but it was basically a
Speaker 1: way for small businesses and individuals working as contractors to
Speaker 1: least short term office space for an affordable price. Um
Speaker 1: and this one up being a really fucking smart move
Speaker 1: because in two thousand and eight the economy collapsed, uh,
Speaker 1: and there were suddenly a ton of people out of
Speaker 1: work and switching careers and businesses looking to cut costs,
Speaker 1: and Green Desk did really well. We have an overhead projector,
Speaker 1: we have a table, there's pens. None of you have money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: within a year the business was valued around three million dollars.
Speaker 1: So they do not that very successful. Not that that's
Speaker 1: probably more successful than the other two of his business.
Speaker 1: While neither of the other two succeeds, neither of them
Speaker 1: made money. No, no, this is his first success. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Goodman was like, we should maybe do this in more buildings.
Speaker 1: This is a good idea. Let's expand, you know, conservatively
Speaker 1: to other spaces and you know, see see how far
Speaker 1: this plan takes us continue and try another couple of spaces.
Speaker 1: But Noman in to Kelvier like fun that we're going
Speaker 1: to start another business. So they sell out their shares
Speaker 1: in Green Desk in two thousand ten for about three dollars.
Speaker 1: Most of the money went to the guy who owned
Speaker 1: the space. Obviously, um they used this seed money to
Speaker 1: launch We Work. Now. Unlike Green Desk, which had been
Speaker 1: a modest ambition based around um compromise with an uncertain landlord,
Speaker 1: We Work was from the beginning a bold vision. Adam
Speaker 1: Neuman wanted to create what he called a capitalist kibbutz,
Speaker 1: a global network of work spaces that would eventually extend
Speaker 1: beyond merely short term office rentals. So what he'd like
Speaker 1: to do is create a capitalist commune. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a contradiction there, but you can't. I can't
Speaker 1: put my finger on it. They both start with C.
Speaker 1: I guess a literation is my issue? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they should have fixed that and host um. Now, from
Speaker 1: the beginning, they had trouble convincing landlords that they wanted
Speaker 1: to rent them space of their vision. McKelvey, his partner,
Speaker 1: later recalled, we didn't have credibility or credit. We had
Speaker 1: no business taking out of forty square foot lease. But
Speaker 1: using Adam's charisma, his ability to convince people, which is significant. Uh,
Speaker 1: they managed to board, but not for friendships. I mean,
Speaker 1: not compared to his sister, but she is a model. Uh. Now.
Speaker 1: In that same interview, Nouman explained that the landlords needed
Speaker 1: a lot more than just a vision. In the end,
Speaker 1: they were unable to convince one person to rent them
Speaker 1: one floor in a building as a trial run. But
Speaker 1: this was a wild success and over the next five
Speaker 1: years we work expanded all over the world at an
Speaker 1: astonishing pace. People started to invest millions, and then tens
Speaker 1: of millions, and eventually billions of dollars in the company
Speaker 1: with Adam would sell them on the idea he presented
Speaker 1: we work as much more than just a real estate company.
Speaker 1: He spoke about creating the first physical social network. All
Speaker 1: I hear is en Ron. Said, you just described Enron
Speaker 1: to me, That's all I'm hearing. Yeah, it's interesting you
Speaker 1: said physical social network, and they immediately me and Jordans
Speaker 1: both deep inhale. Yeah. Who that sounds like bullshit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got a lot of bells. Okay, especially knowing what we
Speaker 1: work is, you know, like and like it just absolutely
Speaker 1: it was like this. What I wanted to do was
Speaker 1: build a flag factory that only build giant red flax.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going for right here, gotcha, Probably more
Speaker 1: successful than baby clothes. Yes, I mean I could actually
Speaker 1: use a couple of red flags. Um, I am full
Speaker 1: of them. Um. Yeah. He wanted to create the first
Speaker 1: physical social network, and when he would like explain what
Speaker 1: that meant to people, he said he wanted we work
Speaker 1: offices to not just be places where people worked. He
Speaker 1: wanted them to be places where people could talk about
Speaker 1: their jobs, their families, their problems, and love. It's not
Speaker 1: like an office, like like a neighborhood. I think is
Speaker 1: more the idea he was trying to recreate that like
Speaker 1: fifties style idea of a neighborhood, but condensed within specially
Speaker 1: catered and decorated office buildings that he owned and sold
Speaker 1: access to. Feel that this is the this is him
Speaker 1: rigging the friendship contests. That's what I'm hearing right here.
Speaker 1: This is this is him just being like, fucking sister,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'll show her my business is going to
Speaker 1: be a friendship competition. You do feel like this was
Speaker 1: the result of him fuming over losing the friendship contest
Speaker 1: and reading like an old history of the labor movement
Speaker 1: that talked about company towns. Or he's like walking home
Speaker 1: after his sister wins and he hears that St. Peter,
Speaker 1: don't you call because I can't sold the company's store.
Speaker 1: Wait a tick light bulb exploitation. It's an absurd thing
Speaker 1: to try to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: A very silly idea, obviously, idea of like let's were
Speaker 1: short term office pace totally reasonable than the context of
Speaker 1: businesses people can run, will need it, why not, which
Speaker 1: is what Green Desk was. That's not what Adams trying
Speaker 1: to sell. Does Green Desk continue like through as I
Speaker 1: don't know, probably I think so. Um, But yeah, Adam,
Speaker 1: this is a dumb idea, a stupid idea to to
Speaker 1: like literally any normal person. But Adams this idea to
Speaker 1: normal people. He was selling this idea two investors. And investors,
Speaker 1: if I know one thing about capitalism, are all super
Speaker 1: fucking dumb. The more money they have to invest, the
Speaker 1: dumber they is. Robert money equals intelligence. How many times
Speaker 1: do rich people have to tell us that there are
Speaker 1: betters and that's why is the most profitable company in
Speaker 1: the world. Of course it doesn't lose two billion dollars
Speaker 1: every six months or so. What a silly thing? People
Speaker 1: wouldn't take money? And what kind of company could exist
Speaker 1: losing that much money on a regular basis? Oh god?
Speaker 1: So Adam sold this idea to investors and also to
Speaker 1: his employees. Um. And the answer to how he sold
Speaker 1: this very dumb idea basically boils down to the fact
Speaker 1: that he was really fucking charismatic on one on one situations.
Speaker 1: So he made friends with these investors. He more like
Speaker 1: cult members. Now there's a really good New York Times article,
Speaker 1: Adam Neuman in the Art of Failing Up, which pretty
Speaker 1: good way to frame it. Um, I'm gonna read section
Speaker 1: of white people in America. I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: section from that article that I think in capsulates the
Speaker 1: way Adam both led and sold his company. Quote and
Speaker 1: this is from to that. Yeah, Adam Neuman stood on
Speaker 1: the fifty seventh floor of the Woolworth Building, the neo
Speaker 1: Gothic skyscraper that was once the tallest in the world.
Speaker 1: It was late on a Friday night in two thirteen,
Speaker 1: and the wee Work founder and chief executive had just
Speaker 1: made a move to add the top thirty floors to
Speaker 1: his rapidly expanding real estate dealings. Mr Neuman and three
Speaker 1: employees had already enjoyed a few drinks when he decided
Speaker 1: to bring them to tour his latest coup. In the
Speaker 1: gutted out space, they tossed beer bottles into empty elevator shafts,
Speaker 1: listening to them clink on the way down. Then Mr
Speaker 1: Norman told them all to follow him out to the
Speaker 1: ledge No guardrails, no enclosures, just four inebriated startup executives
Speaker 1: teetering on the edge of death. I was up there
Speaker 1: with him at the top of the world, and he said,
Speaker 1: everything is going to be amazing, recalled Harrison Webber, we
Speaker 1: worked editorial director at the time. Then Mr Norman picked
Speaker 1: up an old beer bottle, a remnant apparently from some
Speaker 1: previous bender. He asked the employees to drink the rank liquid.
Speaker 1: Everyone took a swig except for Mr Webber. The end
Speaker 1: of lost. It felt like a loyalty thing, he said.
Speaker 1: In that moment, I felt what a deeply persuasive person
Speaker 1: he is. Man. I assumed that he would be up
Speaker 1: there the way I would, which is just screaming at them.
Speaker 1: Do it. Man, You would have to know that I'm
Speaker 1: still CEO. I'll give you one shot, right fucking now,
Speaker 1: if the balls. That is how you get investment. You
Speaker 1: can't be too charismatic when you're doing that. I honestly
Speaker 1: feel like that behavior is very similar to a lot
Speaker 1: of people that I may have been annoyed by in
Speaker 1: past jobs. You know, like that that that does not
Speaker 1: seem far afield from some professional douches. It's just it's
Speaker 1: a real bummer. It's a it's an elevation of scale.
Speaker 1: Like if if the shitty bosses that I've had had
Speaker 1: that kind of bullshit charisma as well as just an
Speaker 1: insane psychopathic confidence, then they would try and do the
Speaker 1: same ship Like, it's just a different level of abuse
Speaker 1: of power. And I can't even like suggest music to
Speaker 1: people lest I feel like they're going to reject me
Speaker 1: for it. Let alone, like drink this swill. Yeah, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: and it's a testament to how good he wasn't doing
Speaker 1: this to most people that by two thousand fifteen, we
Speaker 1: workers valued at more than ten billion dollars. They rented
Speaker 1: out hundreds of properties on multiple continents, So whatever you
Speaker 1: can say about them, at least in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's fucking working like Gamebusters. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's such like things just don't exist anymore. There's nothing,
Speaker 1: there's no money, not real, it's it's imaginary. It's entirely imaginary.
Speaker 1: This story really illustrates a couple of things. To me, One,
Speaker 1: money isn't real, and to money is like dumb, not
Speaker 1: in the sense like odds. It's so dumb that like
Speaker 1: we have to live in our capitalisry. Know, money is
Speaker 1: dumb in the sense that like money makes bad decisions.
Speaker 1: The more you have of it, the worst decisions you make.
Speaker 1: That tends to be the truth. And and the story
Speaker 1: of We Work is the story of a lot of
Speaker 1: people with infinite resources making horrible decisions until their resources
Speaker 1: are less infinite. It's like it's like Tarantino's career, like
Speaker 1: one he got enough cash, a he makes movies that
Speaker 1: are probably an hour too long. But when he was
Speaker 1: when he was coming up, it was like perfectly paced,
Speaker 1: right time, all that stuff. You're making the argument that
Speaker 1: like you've got to stay hungry, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: But when this dude was hungry, he made collapsible shoes.
Speaker 1: I'm saying, you've got to surround yourself with people who
Speaker 1: are going to say no whenever you have a dumb idea.
Speaker 1: But this isn't a dumb idea, clearly. Well, at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's a great idea. I get it. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever I think I've talked
Speaker 1: to like maybe two people who have used we Work spaces,
Speaker 1: and I've talked to a lot of people in my life.
Speaker 1: That seems it seems like a low engagement. It'll make sense.
Speaker 1: Why what's going on here a little bit later? Great question.
Speaker 1: I have a desk A desk. Now. In articles at
Speaker 1: the time around two to sixteen, we Work was kind
Speaker 1: of hitting it's zenith. Adam and those around him tended
Speaker 1: to credit their meteoric rise on the hip cool flare.
Speaker 1: They brought to what was traditionally at the least soulful
Speaker 1: part of a person's life. The office we work spaces
Speaker 1: were decorated in like a variety of super cool like
Speaker 1: funky hip furniture, Like they absolutely have kegs. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's situation, but it works longer than Pucci did. Um.
Speaker 1: They had funky, comfortable furniture, kombucha and beer on tap um.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from a six article. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool, bro, it's cool bro. We got fucking got
Speaker 1: we got briz bro. I may have actually worked at
Speaker 1: a company that supplied a couple of WE work locations
Speaker 1: with coffee. I may have actually dealt with their their
Speaker 1: their corporate structure before. Probably not talk about this. I
Speaker 1: will say that I worked in the past at an
Speaker 1: named company that had a Thirsty Thursday where they provided
Speaker 1: employees initially with unlimited beer and wine on Thursday afternoons,
Speaker 1: and people made horrible decisions. Um, it was a really
Speaker 1: bad idea actually to give a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are united by nothing than that they work in the
Speaker 1: same building access to unlimited free alcohol once a week.
Speaker 1: There was some of there was some of that vibe,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the group on until someone threw up in
Speaker 1: one of the social rooms and then they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's uh anymore. I've always thought a lot of my
Speaker 1: inner office relationships could have been improved by less inhibitions
Speaker 1: any of the way to run an office really is
Speaker 1: once a year you just dose everyone against their will
Speaker 1: and consent with like nine to ten hits of M
Speaker 1: d M A, like enough that they're hallucinating, like not
Speaker 1: just rolling, but like really can't control their bodies. You've
Speaker 1: got to go to nine or ten o three. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a Graham apiece at once, So really just
Speaker 1: overdose the whole Office's the elderly woman who sits at
Speaker 1: the front desk, who's going to be our our test
Speaker 1: subject there, and then friendship and then friendship contest. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a few days after until people are ready
Speaker 1: to have a friendship contest or talk. But us um so,
Speaker 1: I found a fun quote in a two sixteen Fast
Speaker 1: Company article about when it was that made we work special,
Speaker 1: And this was a very positive article. This is back
Speaker 1: before anyone's got questions about we work up. It has
Speaker 1: to be the beer, a co worker tells me, believing
Speaker 1: that the secret to we work success is the always
Speaker 1: on tap brewin its kitchens. But the hip, fun millennial
Speaker 1: things people most often site when they try to describe
Speaker 1: we work are almost irrelevant. As I discover while working
Speaker 1: from two New York locations this winter, the room full
Speaker 1: of old arcade games at the two two two Broadway
Speaker 1: location is empty all day, and the controllers for a
Speaker 1: nearby and Nintendo sixty four sitting a neat line, wrapped
Speaker 1: tightly by their cords in a way that suggests they've
Speaker 1: been undisturbed for some time. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I see only three people pull the famous we work tap.
Speaker 1: Mostly people inside we Work are just working. They had
Speaker 1: all this, like video games and beer, but they also
Speaker 1: had like a really strict dress code. You get the
Speaker 1: feeling that's the kind of thing like you and for
Speaker 1: a job interviewed, we work, and so we're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to beer from the tap, but if you
Speaker 1: actually take it during the job interview, they'll be like,
Speaker 1: everybody's watching you out of the corner. They're just like,
Speaker 1: we'll see what you do. But there is a lot
Speaker 1: of drinking, which we'll get too later. It's just not
Speaker 1: when you choose to now more than beer, We work
Speaker 1: owed a success to investors. Its whole business hinged on
Speaker 1: getting angel investors in giant companies to invest hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars into its expansion, not unlike Uber and
Speaker 1: The reason so many of these very moneyed individuals were
Speaker 1: willing to trust Adam know Hman with fortunes that could
Speaker 1: have funded whole nations is that he was very good
Speaker 1: at selling them on a stupid dream up to the roof,
Speaker 1: taking him up to the roof, making drink his piss yeah,
Speaker 1: or invest in my company, fucking. The focus of his
Speaker 1: promises sent it around his time in the Kibbutz. He
Speaker 1: would weave a story to investors of the idea that
Speaker 1: office space could fulfill the same role of the kibbutz
Speaker 1: and creating community and inspiring creativity. He invented his own
Speaker 1: buzzword term, this is going to piss you off Montere
Speaker 1: Montere that basically turned down Jordan's Mike before. The weed Generation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the weed generation, he w W weed generation. Weed generation.
Speaker 1: That's what he used to describe millennials who'd grown up
Speaker 1: int a world where renting and not owning was the
Speaker 1: norm and no employment in situation was likely to last
Speaker 1: more than a couple of years. Now, most people view
Speaker 1: this as a star of generation. Most people view this
Speaker 1: is a problem for millennials, but Adam Cooman viewed it
Speaker 1: as a marketing opportunity. The weed generation, he told investors,
Speaker 1: cares about the world, actually wants to do cool things,
Speaker 1: and loves working. And when he made these claims, it
Speaker 1: was not without any kind of backing. In two sixteen,
Speaker 1: a group called Project Time Off for at Least a
Speaker 1: study on the work habits of millennials. They measured members
Speaker 1: of our demographic for habits evident of what they called
Speaker 1: work martyrdom. Now, work martyrs are more likely to forfeit
Speaker 1: vacation days, more likely to work excessive hours, and more
Speaker 1: likely to be seen as workaholics by their colleagues. Than
Speaker 1: members of any other generation. Yeah, when Adam going the
Speaker 1: frames this as loving to work, it sounds like one thing.
Speaker 1: But if you read the statements that that Project time
Speaker 1: Off study found, millennials tended to agree with. I think
Speaker 1: you're presented with a much darker picture. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to read four of them right now. No one else
Speaker 1: at my company can do the work while I'm away.
Speaker 1: I want to show complete dedication to my company and job.
Speaker 1: I don't want others to think I am replaceable. I
Speaker 1: feel guilty for using my paid time off. That's not healthy.
Speaker 1: Those are symptoms of deep problems within our Yeah, you
Speaker 1: might as well have just been like, I'm drowning. I
Speaker 1: am all the dying. I'm drowned. I know the bottom
Speaker 1: can fall out at any moment. Everything about my life
Speaker 1: could be on the street in three weeks. Um. That's
Speaker 1: that's what that says to me. I broke my foot,
Speaker 1: now I'm homeless. Yeah, exactly. These are signs of panic
Speaker 1: at the reality of poverty and it's very imminent nature
Speaker 1: in most of our lives, not signs of a love
Speaker 1: of work. And I think Adam knows that. Born in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, He's not a millennial the cut offer
Speaker 1: that is usually one, but he's close enough that I
Speaker 1: think he gets what it's like for the folks in
Speaker 1: the Weed generation. But he also understands how employers think.
Speaker 1: If you are running a company, you want your employees
Speaker 1: to spend unreasonable hours at the office and to vote
Speaker 1: themselves irrationally to the work that is great for your
Speaker 1: bottom line. Nap rooms, yoga classes, and free beer seem
Speaker 1: like perks, but the goal in providing all that is
Speaker 1: to keep you in the office longer, working more hours.
Speaker 1: I think what Adams sold more than anything was a
Speaker 1: vision to employeers of employees who made work the center
Speaker 1: of their very life. Here's another Adam Nouman quote from
Speaker 1: that Fast Company interview. If you understand it, being part
Speaker 1: of something greater than yourself is meaningful, And if you're
Speaker 1: not just driven by material goods, then you're part of
Speaker 1: the Weed generation. All right. So I am wondering how
Speaker 1: many people have shipped him, because the numbers not no
Speaker 1: knives on the roofs. You can make a knife out
Speaker 1: of anything. That really would have been the just way
Speaker 1: for the story to end. There really was a moment
Speaker 1: where just a little trip and we would have been saved.
Speaker 1: We work all over. This would have had to happen
Speaker 1: infinite universes. There was a banana peel up. This is
Speaker 1: actually the only universe where he wasn't shoved off that roof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew we were living in the wrong one the
Speaker 1: universes where he was the police didn't even prosecute. And
Speaker 1: this is someone told them the story and they were like,
Speaker 1: you know what. No. This is also the only universe
Speaker 1: where the baby clothes thing didn't take off. Yeah, I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: Great idea. And because babies are always complaining about their knees.
Speaker 1: About babies, as your baby had to have knee surgery,
Speaker 1: I think you need these. He made blow shop pants
Speaker 1: for babies. I retract my interaction with this bit now.
Speaker 1: So Adam is not a dumb guy. Uh. Anti materialism,
Speaker 1: like anti capitalism, has grown up among members of our
Speaker 1: generation because we've been largely cheated out of the promises
Speaker 1: that our system may do older generations. Adam's anti materialism, however,
Speaker 1: is not a rejection of capitalism. It's a way to
Speaker 1: make capitalism more profitable. If you convince workers at their job,
Speaker 1: provides them with a variety of non material benefits. Then
Speaker 1: you can work them harder while paying them less. Now,
Speaker 1: if a potential investor needed proof that millennials could be
Speaker 1: sold on Adam Neuman's vision of the workplace as a neighborhood,
Speaker 1: they need look no further than the actual staff and
Speaker 1: we work. I'm gonna quote from the New York Times
Speaker 1: right up here. It's actually really weird to think about.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to interrupt you with people work at we work.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a big company. Yeah, that's that's so.
Speaker 1: I think of it as like an empty space. We
Speaker 1: work at we will, but you gotta like manage all
Speaker 1: that ship sales people got the whole Yeah. Yeah, Now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from that New York times pace about
Speaker 1: sort of the culture of the company. Boy, it might
Speaker 1: be a mike down clip for you, Jordan. Across podcasts,
Speaker 1: people have learned that Jordan to put the mic down
Speaker 1: is now the John Munch of podcast. Mr Neuman would
Speaker 1: convince employees to take shots of pricey Don Julio tequila
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten dollars a bottle, work twenty hour
Speaker 1: days at ten two am meetings. He convinced them the
Speaker 1: smoke marijuana at work, dance to journey around a fire
Speaker 1: in the woods on weekend excursions, smoke more pot, drink
Speaker 1: more tequila. Even people who don't really seem the tequila
Speaker 1: type would go along with his act, including a pre
Speaker 1: White House Jared Kushner who imbibed while scoping out of
Speaker 1: property in Philadelphia. In his view, we work didn't simply
Speaker 1: subly office space to workers. It's supplied them with kombucha,
Speaker 1: cold brew coffee, and an ecstatic sense of community. They're
Speaker 1: coming to us for energy for culture. Mr Noyman would say,
Speaker 1: don't stop, I'm doing alright, I'm doing fine coiled spring. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You guys want to guess if Jake Coush is going
Speaker 1: to play a bigger role in this episode. I get
Speaker 1: the sense he is. Oh, he absolutely is. He accidentally
Speaker 1: entered into a friendship contest. He did, he did, and
Speaker 1: everyone lost. You know who he's And he's getting the
Speaker 1: people who work for him to be his friends. He's
Speaker 1: forcing them to drink and smoke at work, fine and
Speaker 1: drunk in order to break down their defenses, forced them
Speaker 1: to continue working as hard as humanly possible, while at
Speaker 1: the same time, we're shipping him as something of a
Speaker 1: charismatic guy. And it sounds familiar to me, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why it doesn't. It sounds like nothing that's
Speaker 1: ever been done before. As a loyalty test, he makes
Speaker 1: them dance around a fire to Journey, which is mathematically
Speaker 1: the douciest thing you could possibly do. All right, now,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna be We're not gonna be attacking Journey
Speaker 1: on this podcast. You know, the keyboardist for Journey is
Speaker 1: married to Paula White Cane, Trump's spiritual advisor. That makes
Speaker 1: complete sense. Yeah, that's entirely that's entirely Yeah, Jane, that
Speaker 1: makes total sense. And I have now stopped believing. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna hold on to that feeling. What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? We all in sky just stopped turning. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to You're gonna have to switch back to Rush.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they did that one too. That was That's
Speaker 1: a better song that don't stop believing it. And faithfully,
Speaker 1: that's not a great song. No, it's not that great.
Speaker 1: Although in the music video there's a great shot of
Speaker 1: Steve Perry shaving his mustache looking really sad. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, man, gotta go gotta go do shows,
Speaker 1: gotta shape this mustache off. He wasn't faithful to it.
Speaker 1: This is the most affecting moment. This is the push.
Speaker 1: It's stuck with me, stuck with now. Adam's wife, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: was a major part of the whole operation. She eventually
Speaker 1: became the chief brand Officer or and then a little
Speaker 1: bit not a job, that's not a job. Refused it pass.
Speaker 1: She was an integral part of designing the feel of
Speaker 1: we work as a brand, stop it, get the funk out.
Speaker 1: As a certified yogi and more importantly, and more importantly
Speaker 1: certified Jordan, Sorry, what's more legitimate than a certified yogi?
Speaker 1: A certified yogi? He is the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Speaker 1: It went to the dog Le Lama's birthday. I'm doing great,
Speaker 1: so I'm doing all next, total sense. There's rigid certification
Speaker 1: for this is something you gotta do. Eight years of school,
Speaker 1: you do, five year internship. Honestly, you don't know this.
Speaker 1: It's actually easier to be an on college. Remember reading
Speaker 1: the autobiography of a yoga Big Yogi Bio three Rama
Speaker 1: Rama Krishna or whatever his name is, And he said
Speaker 1: specifically after he learned how to float. That was when
Speaker 1: he got his certification. To me, that was it. The
Speaker 1: government regulations once he got the power of levitation now
Speaker 1: um Rebecca as a cert of ideogi and a cousin
Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow was an expert at adding wui New Age
Speaker 1: nonsense to what should have been like a business um.
Speaker 1: She repeatedly claimed in interviews that when she met Adam,
Speaker 1: she was suddenly taken with a strong belief that he
Speaker 1: could save the world. In an episode of the School
Speaker 1: of Greatness, an insufferable YouTube show, she said this, My
Speaker 1: intention was never to find a way to make the
Speaker 1: most money. My intention when I met him was just
Speaker 1: how do we expand this good vibration to the planet.
Speaker 1: I just gotta explain the vibration. I'm gonna expand Adam's
Speaker 1: good vibes. Has anybody ever defined megalomania to her? It
Speaker 1: wouldn't take. I'm gonna tell you right now, it would
Speaker 1: not would not take. I apologize Whyneth Paltrow's first cousin. Always,
Speaker 1: every time I think of words, I assume that people
Speaker 1: understand their meaning and apply them. I'm having a really
Speaker 1: tough time because I was coming in with a fairly
Speaker 1: positive view of her, know, her cousin life, because you
Speaker 1: said earlier that like when they first met, she made
Speaker 1: fun of him, she told him, and she married him
Speaker 1: and got involved in his business. I kind of thought like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe she's pretty cool. And then everything every added detail,
Speaker 1: just like Nash, she's not good. You're full of shit,
Speaker 1: like me, I can use you as a weapon now.
Speaker 1: Adam embraced the image of the guru ceo. He threw raucous,
Speaker 1: wild parties in the office where employees were all but
Speaker 1: forced to drink. He walked around barefoot and would have
Speaker 1: his personal trainer meet him in his office and then
Speaker 1: walk around afterwards drenched in sweat to lead his employees.
Speaker 1: It seems like a good get with Doesn't Jack do
Speaker 1: a little bit of that that Twitter stuff, like maybe
Speaker 1: not forcing his employees to drink, but having like sort
Speaker 1: of a groove vibe jacket Twitter. Oh yeah, absolutely. Every
Speaker 1: time I watched Silicon Valley, the only thing I can
Speaker 1: think of is I don't know how to parody these
Speaker 1: people anymore. You can't go there, you can't go extreme enough.
Speaker 1: You know it not And it's crazy. Oh no. The
Speaker 1: products and services that support this show. I'm a product
Speaker 1: that supports Robert. I have no downsides and should be
Speaker 1: bought immediately. That's a parody. We work, Actually, you work.
Speaker 1: Our only sponsors are coke Industries, and of course there's
Speaker 1: some cidy every nor Dine Defense Systems nor Dine. If
Speaker 1: a wedding has to be blown up at range with
Speaker 1: the thermobaric warhead, it has to be nor Dine. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: worlds in a great shape, right products, we're back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about we work, a perfect company that never did
Speaker 1: anything wrong. And that's the end of the episode. Yeah, alright, Now,
Speaker 1: as we work expanded and opened new branches around the world,
Speaker 1: Adam's partner Miguel designed office spaces with narrow hallways and
Speaker 1: large open desks to encourage spontaneous encounters. And let me be,
Speaker 1: let me be this real quick. They are still not
Speaker 1: making any money. Correct um, their profits double or their
Speaker 1: revenue doubles every year, right, but no, they're not making
Speaker 1: any much. There we go now, so spontaneous encounters is
Speaker 1: a real fun way to say bottleneck. Most employees also
Speaker 1: hot desk, which meant they didn't have assigned desks. They
Speaker 1: just wound up wherever they could get in the morning. Now,
Speaker 1: this was supposed to make things feel free and open,
Speaker 1: but it really resulted in employees spending huge junks of
Speaker 1: their day finding somewhere quiet enough to get some work done.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a nime, but I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: an office. I better have a motherfucking desk, now, um,
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to go to an office, and
Speaker 1: you can't make me. I have enough guns at this
Speaker 1: point that nobody can um. Adam attempted to cultivate a
Speaker 1: capitalist Kibbutz style culture by hosting yoga classes, wine tastings,
Speaker 1: networking panels, and all night drinking bouts that employees were
Speaker 1: expected to attend. He says, fun drinking like mandatory. Really
Speaker 1: feel like he's he's doing the Kibbutz thing, but that
Speaker 1: from each to each part he's skipping that part. We're
Speaker 1: going to come to that. There's a quirt that's that
Speaker 1: like everything's good, but I'm exploiting you. Doesn't sound very
Speaker 1: I thought the Kibbitts was cool, but no one liked me.
Speaker 1: What if they had to have forced them to exploited
Speaker 1: the What if they'd be homeless if they didn't what
Speaker 1: if I got them all really up? Also, they're wasted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we Work offices were in blasted with slogans on
Speaker 1: the wall like hustle Harder and love what you do.
Speaker 1: He could be seen as either motivational or haunting, depending
Speaker 1: on your personal attitude. It's the Cowboys locker room, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rapid growth came with equally rapid turnover. A few employees
Speaker 1: were able to handle at them or we work for
Speaker 1: very long. The expansion was so rapid and turnover was
Speaker 1: so high that no one seemed to notice it was
Speaker 1: all built on sand. We Work would offer potential corporate
Speaker 1: clients free rent and a volunteer to buy out their
Speaker 1: existing leases. This brought clients and do we Work properties,
Speaker 1: but required huge amounts of money, which was furnished by
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars in VC cash. Many companies
Speaker 1: began surfing through a series of free rent deals at
Speaker 1: Sundry we Work properties, doing the corporate equivalent of signing
Speaker 1: up for Uber with a burner email to take advantage
Speaker 1: of a week of free rides. So this is that
Speaker 1: he's keeping spaces open. How he's justifying the massive expansion.
Speaker 1: You get free rent you get like will buy out
Speaker 1: your fucking lease. So the idea is that eventually they'll
Speaker 1: own so much space that everyone will have to use them.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like with Uber. Eventually, like we're gonna
Speaker 1: burn through money now, but at a certain point will
Speaker 1: be the only ones able to offer this service, and
Speaker 1: then the money will low. They'll do the loss Leader
Speaker 1: Walmart thing, where it's like they're we're willing to take
Speaker 1: a hit on this just to make sure all the
Speaker 1: other stores in the town out of business, and then
Speaker 1: we'll raise prices. And unlike Walmart, Walmart's an objectively brilliant
Speaker 1: idea store where I can buy nine millimeter bullets Time
Speaker 1: cop DVDs in Arizona iced Tea within ten feet of
Speaker 1: each other. That's not the necessity. Were the necessity. They're
Speaker 1: a thing that exists. Look, if you have time Cop
Speaker 1: on DVD, Arizona iced Tea and enough nine millimeter ammo,
Speaker 1: you can get all the other necessities. I can't afford
Speaker 1: Time Cop had to torrent it. It's unfortunate, it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: From Walmart dot Com and a two thousand and fifteen
Speaker 1: industry conference, Adam Neuman declared, we are in a consumption
Speaker 1: phase like nothing that has ever been seen mean humans
Speaker 1: or we were we were? Yeah. He matched these words
Speaker 1: with actions by embarking on a mass leasing frenzy, committing
Speaker 1: we work to filling up more and more office space
Speaker 1: and more and more cities around the globe. One executive
Speaker 1: told The New York Times there was no discipline as
Speaker 1: to how Adam approved leases. Another recalled no one knew
Speaker 1: what anyone was doing. Now. Empty facilities were being filled
Speaker 1: by offering businesses free rent, which kept the show game
Speaker 1: moving along and kept we works valuation rising because all
Speaker 1: the investors are seeing is how fast this ship is
Speaker 1: expanding and revenue isn't doubling every day net revenue. Different
Speaker 1: story the revenues though, so it looks like, Okay, once
Speaker 1: we get through this consumption phase, this is going to
Speaker 1: be making a funkload of money. When you say that
Speaker 1: they're signing leases and there's clients, is this like I
Speaker 1: have a small business and I want to use the
Speaker 1: office space. Is that the lease that we're talking about
Speaker 1: or is it him having least he's leasing space from
Speaker 1: landlords in many cases paying being like I'll pay you
Speaker 1: double whatever your current tendants are paying. For the space
Speaker 1: because he just wants to have the right to all
Speaker 1: of the space. That's the idea. You you acquire all
Speaker 1: of the space, and he's he's a brilliant appreciator. Just
Speaker 1: double whatever they're paying. Now. By two fifteen, We Work
Speaker 1: was worth an estimated ten billion dollars in monopoly money.
Speaker 1: Keeping all this going wasn't exhausting for employees. One of
Speaker 1: them later recalled, quote, we would joke that we worked
Speaker 1: like slaves. Adam would have meetings on Sunday and you
Speaker 1: could never miss those. Sometimes it wouldn't happen. It would
Speaker 1: happen hours late, and you'd be there all night. You'd
Speaker 1: cry in the bathroom all the time. Good bit. It
Speaker 1: really feels like the lesson that tech venture people learned
Speaker 1: from Enron was we should try harder to get away
Speaker 1: with it. Only one of them died. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're good. We work CFO for a time. Was Aerial Tiger,
Speaker 1: one of Adam's navy buddies. He phone officer. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: not really. I'm a CONSCIENTI objector to that joke. He
Speaker 1: frequently threatened to fire people while wandering we works open
Speaker 1: desk office from Vanity Fair. Quote every two weeks, Area
Speaker 1: would get a print out of payroll and he would
Speaker 1: go through the red and redline the ship out of it,
Speaker 1: saying he wanted to reduce people's pay. A former executive
Speaker 1: set I remember walking through the office in Area would
Speaker 1: loudly say, why do we have all these people? I
Speaker 1: could do what they're doing with two people. So I
Speaker 1: got healthy kind of like that guy healthy work. He
Speaker 1: is actually the most reasonable person. That's a vibe. The
Speaker 1: guys shouting that in the office not a healthy vibe.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm trying to paint the picture of here,
Speaker 1: what's your what's your payroll strategy? Well, I either give
Speaker 1: a thumbs upper thumbs down and one of them die.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't like that guy in
Speaker 1: the real world, but like in a movie, I might
Speaker 1: want to play him, you know what I mean. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of feeling. Yeah, Matthew McConaughey would be get
Speaker 1: picked for that. In June of two thousand fifteen, We
Speaker 1: Work raised four d and thirty four million dollars more
Speaker 1: to fund their reckless growth. Right around that same time,
Speaker 1: thirty two b J's Service Employees International Union, which represents
Speaker 1: cleaners in New York launched a protest outside if we
Speaker 1: Works offices. Their issue was the fact that Neuman and
Speaker 1: mcklby used non union labor to clean their offices for
Speaker 1: ten dollars an hour, which is like half what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to get paid in the city of New York. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: Neuman attempted to deal directly with picketing cleaners by approaching
Speaker 1: them with a New York Times reporter behind him and
Speaker 1: talking about his own background as an immigrant. And then
Speaker 1: here with not but a hundred thousand dollars from my grandmother,
Speaker 1: free booze and kombucha for all. Uh. This didn't work.
Speaker 1: They didn't They didn't buy that ship. Did you take
Speaker 1: him to the roof? Uh? Yeah, I don't think he
Speaker 1: got to. I think they heckled him immediately. Adam later
Speaker 1: told a reporter with Fast Company, the last thing I
Speaker 1: was going to do was work with the union because
Speaker 1: I didn't believe that it's fair to blackmail someone to
Speaker 1: do something. You're literally a landlord. Oh boy, oh boy.
Speaker 1: Now frustrating, he did eventually sit down with Hector figaroa
Speaker 1: the union president. Figaro recalled, rather than talking about the issue, itself.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have a conversation about who we are
Speaker 1: as people? What do you think about stars? Then he
Speaker 1: got me really drunk, was off the roof. Figaro was
Speaker 1: too smart for that ship. He pressed the issue, and
Speaker 1: eventually Adam agreed to hire back unionized cleaners for eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six an hour and health benefits. Figaro was so
Speaker 1: grateful that he got his way that he gave Adam
Speaker 1: a union jacket for what it's worth. He walked away
Speaker 1: from the interaction feeling positively towards Adam. God Less positive
Speaker 1: was the fact that, in two thousand fifteen, and San
Speaker 1: Francisco landlord kicked out two tenants rights organizations from their
Speaker 1: offices to make room for we work. Adam had offered
Speaker 1: to pay double the rent, which guaranteed him the space
Speaker 1: and ensured that San Francisco's homelessness problem would get even worse.
Speaker 1: This may seem out of character for someone raised in
Speaker 1: the socialistic nexus of the kibbutz, but in later interviews,
Speaker 1: Adam was quick to mention that he considered the kibbutz
Speaker 1: um to be failed social experiments. Their chief law, in
Speaker 1: his eyes, was that everyone made the same amount of
Speaker 1: money that's the problem. Community was important to him, but
Speaker 1: only up to the point where you exhibited any weakness.
Speaker 1: Adam said, on one hand, community, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you eat what you kill. So that's where the spartan
Speaker 1: kind of culture comes in there. I got you. I
Speaker 1: don't think so, because the actual kibbitz Is would have
Speaker 1: totally ship. So this guy is just a piece of ship. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and has a real misunderstanding of what if I could
Speaker 1: evict everybody in the Kippitts. Yeah what am I going
Speaker 1: to evict them for not being cool enough or drinking
Speaker 1: patron with me? But but I'm sure he would rationalize
Speaker 1: it like, all right, this like let's say in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: this housing organization, we take over their their lease here
Speaker 1: or whatever. But they can just use the wee work space.
Speaker 1: They just use the way work space. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: there's something like that's how you sleep at night knowing
Speaker 1: that you know you've just created value. Man, it's value.
Speaker 1: It's good to create value. Sure, And then these people
Speaker 1: trying to help homeless people get to get funked up
Speaker 1: at work exactly guys. Anyway, In two thousand seventeen, Adam
Speaker 1: got on the phone with an executive from Blackstone, a
Speaker 1: major investment firm, to complain because it had invested money
Speaker 1: in a rival company. Do we work at work? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Working out. Adam also refused to work with landlords who
Speaker 1: lease based to other coworking companies, and he sued several
Speaker 1: of these rivals for trademark infringement. Your work you are work,
Speaker 1: WE Labs and high Work. He said, we're all infringing
Speaker 1: on WE works copyright. Well, Adams company did not claim
Speaker 1: exclusive rights to the word work. He believed they owned
Speaker 1: the use of that word after a two letter pronoun
Speaker 1: So that was the company's argument. So you so they
Speaker 1: are saying that if you put any two letters in
Speaker 1: front of work, you are infringing. Are infringing on we
Speaker 1: words copy right right? Okay. I feel like he might
Speaker 1: sue you or hire you to give his employees mandatory
Speaker 1: to working lessons. We're going to test this. I we
Speaker 1: got to do it now. While the company's valuation rose,
Speaker 1: there were worrying signs that beneath all the glamour, this
Speaker 1: was just a grift. And two thirteen, Neuman tried to
Speaker 1: buy a stake in a Chicago building that planned to
Speaker 1: lease space until we Work. The board rejected this idea
Speaker 1: because it would be a conflict of interest for Neyman
Speaker 1: to personally own property that his company leased. That's a
Speaker 1: little bit, a little bit, it's called propertical integration. It's
Speaker 1: vertical integration. That's totally called stealing money from investor. Nobody's
Speaker 1: ever had an issue with it now in Dealers. In fourteen,
Speaker 1: Adam maneuvered himself into control of the board of directors
Speaker 1: so he could approve his plan of personally buying up
Speaker 1: a number of properties and leasing them back to his
Speaker 1: company for millions of dollars. We Work eventually signed lease
Speaker 1: agreements with four buildings Neuman owned since two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: They paid almost seventeen million dollars to his properties. This
Speaker 1: is essentially theft to venture capital money, funneling it directly
Speaker 1: into the owner's pocket without informing the people paying of
Speaker 1: what's happening. See if it wasn't him getting the money,
Speaker 1: I'm fine venture capital stealing money from ventual capital. Venture capital. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he is. It is because I have some sort
Speaker 1: of moral compass or whatever. But I'm fine with other people.
Speaker 1: Robin Hooding, Yeah, I'm not going to do it. It
Speaker 1: just it is a huge grift and an obvious one
Speaker 1: on the go. It wasn't obvious at first. This actually
Speaker 1: came out until a while later when they filed for
Speaker 1: their I p O and all the stuff became public knowledge.
Speaker 1: Now as the grift sput on, Adam continue to motivate
Speaker 1: his employees with impossible stories of where the brand was
Speaker 1: going into this. In fifteen, he claimed, we work Mars
Speaker 1: is in our pipeline and red red flag, red flag this, dude,
Speaker 1: that's a little bad. You know, they can go to
Speaker 1: Mars in our world. Once you say my business is
Speaker 1: going to Mars, that means we're in med bed territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's generally. When if I were in that meeting,
Speaker 1: I'd have to walk away, you know what a good
Speaker 1: ride on the chance you're talking literally have to leave.
Speaker 1: He told his employees that he'd met with Elon Muskin,
Speaker 1: offered the company's services and prepping a future Mars mission.
Speaker 1: And I just love the thought that he thinks the
Speaker 1: company that leases office space with him anything to contribute
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah. At the same time, I completely believe
Speaker 1: him that he didn't say he met with Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: He also said that Musk turned him down. Um, which
Speaker 1: makes sense. Even Elon Musk is a little bit like
Speaker 1: no this said Mars. I have a I have a
Speaker 1: monopoly on the Mars graft right now, buddy, don't don't
Speaker 1: try and step on my game. Now. Grand visions of
Speaker 1: the future were mixed with Adam's own growing reputation as
Speaker 1: something very much like a cold leader. I'm gonna yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you absolutely did. I'm going to experience I
Speaker 1: know a cult leader when I see one. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from New York Magazine. Within We Work, a
Speaker 1: mystique quickly developed around Neuman, who did little to downplay
Speaker 1: it until recently. An executive conference room at we Work
Speaker 1: headquarters was decorated with a large photograph of Neuman's surfing
Speaker 1: a wave. He is bragged about working twenty hour days
Speaker 1: and regularly called executive meetings that would begin after midnight.
Speaker 1: I've had meetings that started at two am where he
Speaker 1: joined us forty five minutes late. But that meeting was
Speaker 1: worth millions of former We Work executive course. Many we
Speaker 1: could not stand shipping ourselves in the room. Yeah, many
Speaker 1: people told me they bought into We Works Grand mission
Speaker 1: only when Neuman was doing the preaching. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of every week we work, employees were required to stay
Speaker 1: after work for a thank God it's Monday team building
Speaker 1: event that could last for hours. Okay, so they also
Speaker 1: made them exhausted and tired and less than capable of
Speaker 1: making fully realized decisions. All the things that meeters don't
Speaker 1: heard of that before. No, it's all the things you
Speaker 1: don't do as a cult leader. Check gotcha? No, I
Speaker 1: mean would typically speak, after which employees often walked around
Speaker 1: handing out shots of tequila that people were expecting to
Speaker 1: consume every time on out. He brings me back in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One former employee says Neuman offered her tequila during her
Speaker 1: job interview, and liquor was a constant presence at pretty
Speaker 1: much every company event, another perk for the largely millennial staff.
Speaker 1: I'm picturing this dude like with a lamp shade on
Speaker 1: his head. Yes, many employees know the name of no
Speaker 1: Himan's favorite tequila, Don Julio nineteen forty two, and offices
Speaker 1: around the country would keep it stocked for when he
Speaker 1: came to visit. One morning. In two thousand fourteen, not
Speaker 1: long after We Work open a new location in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. An employee arrived to find the game room trashed.
Speaker 1: There were cups lying around the room which smelled to
Speaker 1: him like weed. When the employee reviewed the security footage
Speaker 1: from the night before to identify the culprits, he saw
Speaker 1: Neuman and Michael Gross we Works vice chairman, drinking and
Speaker 1: partying on time Crisis Arcade machine. We smelled weed and
Speaker 1: there was also like an empty cups. Yeah, I really
Speaker 1: feel like I have no problem with that. Of all
Speaker 1: of the things so far, he owns this business. He
Speaker 1: got drunken high. It's not like he was It's not
Speaker 1: like it was tweaking on like crystal meth or anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm cool with a this stuff, the exploiting labor and
Speaker 1: that bullshit. I'm again, you do get the feeling that
Speaker 1: when he wasn't around, the people didn't really drink or party. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: My my experience with like workplaces that have alcohol and um,
Speaker 1: it's like most people don't. Yeah, even even it's alable now,
Speaker 1: not everyone bought the permanent party vibe of the company,
Speaker 1: and two fifteen we Work bought a fancy private jet,
Speaker 1: which Adam Neuman immediately took to using all over the world.
Speaker 1: He smoked weed and it constantly, sometimes breaking international law
Speaker 1: to do so. His former chief of staff, Medina Barty,
Speaker 1: got pregnant and had to stop traveling with Neuman to
Speaker 1: company events because he refused to not hot box the
Speaker 1: company play and when she was in it good stuff.
Speaker 1: She wound up filing a federal complaint against Adam for,
Speaker 1: among other things, retaliating against herford getting pregnant. That's what
Speaker 1: I was, according to the Washington Post. Party. According to
Speaker 1: the Post, Barty quote alleges that female employees were subjected
Speaker 1: to sexually offensive conduct, disparage for taking maternity to leave,
Speaker 1: and often paid significantly less than their male counterparts. According
Speaker 1: to a complaint filed Thursday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
Speaker 1: Barty had two children during her more than five years
Speaker 1: at we Work and claims Neuman referred to maternity leave
Speaker 1: as retirement and vacation. According to the complaint, she alleges
Speaker 1: she was demoted after both pregnancies and replaced by men
Speaker 1: at higher wages and given no instruction about her new responsibilities.
Speaker 1: So cool, Yeah, now, that story didnt drop until two thousand,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen. The company was still right and High, flushed
Speaker 1: with billions of dollars in VC money and on its
Speaker 1: way to becoming the largest private office renter in New
Speaker 1: York City. In the spring of that year, Neuman met
Speaker 1: the CEO of soft Bank, Masayoshi saw at a dinner.
Speaker 1: Masayoshi held the purse springs to soft banks hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollar investment fund. He was one of the biggest investors
Speaker 1: in the startup world or the rest of the world matter.
Speaker 1: Adam badly wanted his money. He invited Massa on a
Speaker 1: tour of the company offices, and Massa told him he
Speaker 1: had twelve minutes to listen to a presentation. Ne Himan
Speaker 1: gave him the pitch and followed him out to his
Speaker 1: car when it was over, continuing to pick and then
Speaker 1: he played Massa Yoshi takanakas seven goblins, I assume for
Speaker 1: twelve minutes, right, I don't understand that joke in anyway?
Speaker 1: All right? Somehow Adam won Masayoshi Sun over. The elder
Speaker 1: businessman told Neuman that the only problem with his business
Speaker 1: plan was that we Work was thinking too small. It
Speaker 1: should move from leasing office space to small businesses and
Speaker 1: working to leasing space to all businesses. Massa Yoshi offered
Speaker 1: him four point four billion dollars on the spot. All right,
Speaker 1: no bad. It seems like a bad idea, right, it
Speaker 1: seems like a ridiculous thing to do. What you should
Speaker 1: do is own your own country. Yes, that's kind of
Speaker 1: where this goes. Yeah, okay, this is right. Isn't this
Speaker 1: now just becoming entirely like real estate base because like,
Speaker 1: if you're going to go to bigger companies, then you're
Speaker 1: going to need a building, an entire building that you
Speaker 1: would then rent to them. Yeah, you would rent to
Speaker 1: them instead of them renting it, because they all rent
Speaker 1: their spaces. It's a stupid idea. This is an inversion
Speaker 1: of reality as a business model. It's it's this this
Speaker 1: thing people talk about with Steve Jobs, this reality distortion
Speaker 1: field that he had, Like Adam clearly has that ability,
Speaker 1: and he enraptures this guy and convinces him that like
Speaker 1: this dream of changing the world, changing work is more
Speaker 1: than just like what it actually is, which is we
Speaker 1: rent office space. Ya Um. I don't understand how he
Speaker 1: did it, but he did it, and he got four
Speaker 1: point four billion fucking dollars to do it. That's that's
Speaker 1: one of those things that I've I've talked about on
Speaker 1: our podcast is like I would love to just like
Speaker 1: measure whether or not, like I want to talk to
Speaker 1: this guy and see if he can get me on
Speaker 1: his Like, I want to measure my ability to fight
Speaker 1: off a cult leader. I really don't want you to
Speaker 1: do that because I know that you'll loseta. I gotta
Speaker 1: I was, I was born in it. I need closure
Speaker 1: on my life. I have to defeat a cult leader
Speaker 1: before I can grow as a person. I mean, we
Speaker 1: could hunt down Adam Noyman and throw rocks at him.
Speaker 1: I am that count. I don't think I trust you
Speaker 1: to go to the roof with Adam. Trust me to
Speaker 1: the roof byself. Yeah, I would. I do think that
Speaker 1: if should you know, our lives ever go in that direction.
Speaker 1: Let's say some investor gives us four point four tonight,
Speaker 1: I would to start my cult that I've been working
Speaker 1: on for years. I feel like a nice offshoot of
Speaker 1: that would be, like maybe we make a reality show
Speaker 1: where we try and do terrible terrible cults of personality.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, speaking of terrible cults of personality, the episodes
Speaker 1: over part one, and it's time for you to plug
Speaker 1: your own cults of personality. Sure, um, well, we do
Speaker 1: a podcast called Knowledge Fight that people can find just
Speaker 1: by I guess googling it. It's on iTunes and talk
Speaker 1: about on Spotify. That's true, various other places around and
Speaker 1: then you know we have Twitter and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's a knowledge Underscore Fight. And I'm Jordan's I am
Speaker 1: somewhat of a comedian and if you're looking to book me,
Speaker 1: I'm available. Tweet tweet at go to that Jordan. That'll
Speaker 1: be that'll do it. If you run a comedy, then
Speaker 1: you and no Alaska, please force Jordan to come up.
Speaker 1: I want to try to say that's for this, not
Speaker 1: you go, I can't come. No, just Jordan's come on.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna follow. I'm gonna send you. I want to
Speaker 1: send I want to send you to Panama. I want
Speaker 1: to get you both opposite sides of the hemisphere. Alright,
Speaker 1: Panama song the whole time they're drinking Kabba wabbo in
Speaker 1: honor of Adam Noyman. Well, I'm Robert. This is my podcast.
Speaker 1: You're listening to it, so you know what it is.
Speaker 1: You can find the sources on behind the Bastards dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at
Speaker 1: bastard pot. You can find me on Twitter at I
Speaker 1: Right Okay, And you can find love in your heart
Speaker 1: anywhere you also find a dollar because capitalism, my friends,
Speaker 1: is the essence of love. And that's you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to write out on h