Speaker 1: What still in Chicago met me. This is the part
Speaker 1: two of our episode on Adam Annointment and We Work.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, hosted Behind the Bastards podcast Bad People
Speaker 1: Talk About Them Introduced poorly. My guests in part two,
Speaker 1: as with part one, are Dan Jordan's. I pointed at
Speaker 1: the wrong ones of you don't worry about it, but
Speaker 1: I know which ones you are? Should I do the bit?
Speaker 1: Robert what? Robert what? I don't understand the bit. It's
Speaker 1: the beginning, it's the opening bit. Never mind, okay, Jordan?
Speaker 1: Right where you asking? Where you ask a question you
Speaker 1: can ask would be interesting a question in their podcast.
Speaker 1: I have planned several questions in the podcast Robert, do
Speaker 1: you like music? Yeah? In the podcast that these two
Speaker 1: do where they talk a little bit about Alex Jones. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jordan's who normally is the person who comes in cold,
Speaker 1: asks Dan a question at the start, and I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: because you hit me hit me up with a question. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's see, Robert, have any experience with roller coasters? What's um?
Speaker 1: I've only ever loved one roller coaster, Jordan's and it
Speaker 1: wasn't a roller coaster, Um, it was a It was
Speaker 1: a it was a virtual reality sort of experience, and
Speaker 1: six Flags over Texas US a little bit, a little bit,
Speaker 1: you were like a like an F sixteen pilot breaking
Speaker 1: the sound barrier. It was very cool. Not really a
Speaker 1: roller coaster. I don't really like roller coasters. I've been
Speaker 1: on a number of them. It's fine, it's just not
Speaker 1: my thing. Um but but I liked that ride and
Speaker 1: then six Flags took it away from you. Specific one day,
Speaker 1: One day I will take vengeance. Okay, that is that
Speaker 1: is I want to clarify that is absolutely a terroristic
Speaker 1: One day they're gonna wake up and it's only gonna
Speaker 1: be five flat not damn it. Yeah, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: at least I'm gonna take at least eight of those flags.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that percentage. It's hard
Speaker 1: with the ballpark. And my answer is I liked that one.
Speaker 1: Mr Toad's Wild Ride thing that wind in the willows,
Speaker 1: that is that gets drunk and the bar Rabbit one run.
Speaker 1: I love that one before and then in a different
Speaker 1: way after I realized how racist there was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a real Before it was just like, this
Speaker 1: is a fun ride. I'm seven and after it was like, really, really,
Speaker 1: still it is two thousand and four. That's that's Splash Mountain, right,
Speaker 1: isn't it that that's the one that has the bray
Speaker 1: rabbit and because I think at the end of it
Speaker 1: you go over the waterfall and it killed that guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so, and that there's so much to unpack
Speaker 1: about Splash Mountain. I mean it has that Song of
Speaker 1: the South can action to it. There's also like a
Speaker 1: tradition of people flashing on the way down, like for kids,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. There's a lot going on with a
Speaker 1: very complicated Disney parks in general. My favorite was You
Speaker 1: Go Up, and my favorite the velveteen dream Wrestler Fantasty.
Speaker 1: They should have a velveteen Rabbit ride where they just
Speaker 1: take something the children love individually and destroy it in
Speaker 1: front of less of a ride and more of child abuse.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if it were Adam, it would be a
Speaker 1: bottle of tequila. Yes, thank you for bringing it back
Speaker 1: to Adam Noyman. Great transition, very smooth. So we ended
Speaker 1: the last episode with with we work nearing its height
Speaker 1: until seventeen with a lot of money just gets this
Speaker 1: in flush four point four billion dollars fucking cash, which
Speaker 1: they used to make Adam's dumbest dreams come true. Dizzy
Speaker 1: double back to the baby clothes in a way. Now
Speaker 1: to the KKK crawlers, it did advocate. Now, before we
Speaker 1: get into all that what he did with all this
Speaker 1: VC money, I want to start this episode. I'm talking
Speaker 1: a little bit about cults some more. Now. We Work
Speaker 1: has been described by a number of former employees as
Speaker 1: quote like Annoyment has been described as a cult leader.
Speaker 1: Former employees often call his personal charisma almost intoxicating. One
Speaker 1: former executive said, if you had to go to war,
Speaker 1: you wanted him to be your general. Another recalled his
Speaker 1: sense of himself is beyond human. When you're in a
Speaker 1: room with Adam, he can almost convince you of anything.
Speaker 1: There are certainly Colt like tactics at use and we Work.
Speaker 1: Colts endeavored to separate their members from the wider world
Speaker 1: and the friends and family they have outside the cult,
Speaker 1: and you could argue that things like thank God it's
Speaker 1: Monday and mandatory after ours fun events fulfill that role.
Speaker 1: They also rely unconsciousness alteration directs. This is all stuff
Speaker 1: we've talked about keeping people tired exhausted, fucked up, And
Speaker 1: of course the fact that I I will note in
Speaker 1: a point of fairness that the fact that Ada himself
Speaker 1: was often one of the drunkest people in the company
Speaker 1: makes this a little bit less manipulative. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like he kind of just digs that stuff. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be a much clearer red flag if he was
Speaker 1: not drinking and handing out alcohol. Yeah yeah, that that
Speaker 1: would be that would be deliberately drugging his employees. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's more complicated than just he's a cult leader,
Speaker 1: but he uses a lot of those tactics um clearly,
Speaker 1: maybe just sort of you get the feeling with him
Speaker 1: that it's a lot of it's not as much intentional
Speaker 1: as it is like instinctive um, which I guess is
Speaker 1: how we get our first cult. Some people just know
Speaker 1: how to do that. Know, my family was in a
Speaker 1: cult whenever I was born, so I know all of
Speaker 1: the tricks and all of the ways that you get
Speaker 1: kind of accidentally swept up in all of that ship
Speaker 1: and then next thing you know, everybody's wearing the same
Speaker 1: clothes dancing around a fire to journey. Yeah, tragic, that's
Speaker 1: the just the drain everybody's circles. Although people should consider
Speaker 1: joining the cult that I'm gonna start where you go
Speaker 1: give me the elevator pitch. We're people to talk in elevator.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a mix of people gifting me
Speaker 1: with large amounts of machetes, getting really high and shoving
Speaker 1: Adam Noyman off of buildings. It's gonna be a good Colt. Oh,
Speaker 1: I was just I was just cont there's a there's
Speaker 1: a shelf life to this thing. Is there's one Adam
Speaker 1: Noyman there is? There is the great thing about shoving
Speaker 1: people off of building says there's always more people in
Speaker 1: more buildings. That's true. Or if you can just keep shoving,
Speaker 1: which is our motto, just keep you, just keep shoving.
Speaker 1: They're going to this Adam we work situation. Maybe we haven't,
Speaker 1: like actual time hasn't really hit that point at so
Speaker 1: I can't say now if we're going to compare it,
Speaker 1: now him into a cult leader and we worked to
Speaker 1: a cult Keith renieris Nexium. Colt might be the best
Speaker 1: one to reference Listeners to Part three of our series
Speaker 1: on Keith Ranieri and Nexium. What recalled that he hosted
Speaker 1: a yearly event called Vanguard Week, where followers from all
Speaker 1: over the globe would fly in to celebrate Keith's birthday.
Speaker 1: In the same vein, we Work had Summer Camp, an
Speaker 1: annual event where employees would gather, celebrate, and network. Here's
Speaker 1: The New York Times talking about this fun Setadays. All
Speaker 1: kinds of activities were offered, yoga acts, throwing leaf printing,
Speaker 1: a drum circle, along with entertainment by an expensive array
Speaker 1: of visiting performers. The chain Smokers once played and received
Speaker 1: we Work stock as part of their fee, while the
Speaker 1: weekend was flown in from Toronto by helicopter. Tenacious We
Speaker 1: an employee band, has also performed sounds insufferable. That's terrible.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to see the real version. It
Speaker 1: was just so much everything. One former executive said, alcohol, drugs.
Speaker 1: There was not a lot of food. That was the
Speaker 1: only thing. There wasn't a lot of anything that would
Speaker 1: bulwark you against against the alcohol day drugs. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: super high already, but I'm very hungry. I'm gonna eat
Speaker 1: all of these mushrooms. Yeah, just for some that has
Speaker 1: happened to me once and I It's not a great food. No,
Speaker 1: nor is it a great idea? As you were describing
Speaker 1: that festival, I did point at you very aggressively because
Speaker 1: they kind of almost swung you with the ex throwing,
Speaker 1: didn't they look my My cult would indeed center around
Speaker 1: lots of drugs, throwing axes, dancing around fires the weekend.
Speaker 1: Well that song often actually I do, I do, but
Speaker 1: like but that's all sounds suspiciously like the great outdoor games. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: there's no I feel like I feel like adding an
Speaker 1: element of competition to throwing sharp objects at inert things
Speaker 1: cheapens it. You just you just throwing axes and knives
Speaker 1: for the joy of throwing sharp things at wooden thing,
Speaker 1: the purity of the exact exactly now. Summer camp included
Speaker 1: educational interludes like speeches from quantum physicist Michael Brooks, alongside
Speaker 1: beer pong and dancing to electronic music. And in the
Speaker 1: midst of these days long buccan oals two employees plagued
Speaker 1: with drugs, limitless alcohol, little food, and less sleep. Adam
Speaker 1: no Himan would preach his gospel. In a two thou
Speaker 1: thirteen summer camp. He took to the stage to say,
Speaker 1: I think the thing that all of us know is
Speaker 1: that if you want to succeed in this world, you
Speaker 1: have to build something that has intention. Every one of
Speaker 1: us is here because it has meaning, because we want
Speaker 1: to do something that actually makes the world a better place,
Speaker 1: and we want to make money doing it. The crowd
Speaker 1: reportedly broke into wild cheers at this. One former senior
Speaker 1: executive who was there later recalled, so many of the
Speaker 1: people were young and had never worked in a real company.
Speaker 1: They bought all of it. I realized after I got
Speaker 1: there it was a cult now. Summer Camp started as
Speaker 1: an event on the land of some of no Himan's friends,
Speaker 1: but in two thousand seven teen moved to the English
Speaker 1: country side. Using some of the billions of new money
Speaker 1: pumped into via soft banks four point four billion dollar infusion,
Speaker 1: they flew employees in from all around the world. Attendees
Speaker 1: reported that they were allowed to walk up to the
Speaker 1: bar and ask for multiple entire bottles of wine at once.
Speaker 1: People played Edward forty hands with fancy bottles of rose,
Speaker 1: which is what I would do. Yeah, that part sounds great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when you realize the liquor is free and expensive
Speaker 1: and they'll just hand you bottles that's what you do.
Speaker 1: Have you ever done that? Hands? Yeah? The worst thing
Speaker 1: I've done in fucking Lubyana Slavinia was you can buy
Speaker 1: two liters of wine in a gigantic juice box for
Speaker 1: about a dollar and a half um, and you mix
Speaker 1: it with equal parts pepsi, and it is the worst idea.
Speaker 1: Do you duct tape those to your hands? I know,
Speaker 1: we just drank um. I blacked out, throwing an empty
Speaker 1: bottle on top of the stranger's roof, and I came
Speaker 1: to alone without any of my friends near me, receiving
Speaker 1: a falafel from somebody having already paid with my phone,
Speaker 1: gone nine in the morning, like eight hours later, just
Speaker 1: the first time, only time that's ever happened. We're just like,
Speaker 1: I black out and I come back in the middle
Speaker 1: of a transaction. Yeah, I had no I was alone,
Speaker 1: but I had lost the friendship content I I did
Speaker 1: that once. I taped duct tape forties to my hands wine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's terrible. It's terrible because you eventually have to bee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's steel reserve. Isn't something anyone should drink two of? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely true. Yeah, me and my buddy has also
Speaker 1: had a thing we did called freedom forties. That was
Speaker 1: you have to chugle forty and nine minutes and eleven
Speaker 1: seconds for else the terrorists win. It's just shockingly hard
Speaker 1: to do because forties are ghastly. Yeah, it's really the
Speaker 1: best way to forget now. One employee later told The
Speaker 1: New York Times that she realized it was time to
Speaker 1: quit we work when she woke up in a t
Speaker 1: p at summer camp to find one of her colleagues
Speaker 1: outside pissing on her tent. That employee later told New
Speaker 1: York Magazine talked to any community manager unto twenty four
Speaker 1: and it's the greatest weekend of your life. But I
Speaker 1: am not here to get paid on now. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote one more time from that New York Magazine article
Speaker 1: discussing the two thousand eighteen Summer Camp, which spoilers would
Speaker 1: prove to be the last one At last year's event,
Speaker 1: According to Report and Property magazine, a British real estate publication,
Speaker 1: Norman sat on stage next to his wife and McKelvey
Speaker 1: as the crowd, saying O leo, leo, le we were
Speaker 1: employee from India started chanting let's go, we work, Let's
Speaker 1: go while another from California screamed, you're changing the world, Adam.
Speaker 1: We love you. Augusto Contreras, we were employee from Mexico City,
Speaker 1: proposed to his girlfriend next to a dodgeball tournament. I
Speaker 1: felt like I was surrounded by my extended family. He
Speaker 1: told the company blog. He had been at we work
Speaker 1: for seven months, so they find the people who are
Speaker 1: vulnerable to this, and they're very vulnerable to When you
Speaker 1: said that it was the last one. I expected that
Speaker 1: story to be something like really tragic or like fire festivally,
Speaker 1: but just it was just like performed there. Though you're
Speaker 1: sucking in people who need what this pretends to provide,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really provide it. But that's coming later now.
Speaker 1: That Fast Company article I've quoted from a couple of
Speaker 1: times in this episode was released in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: and it provides even more detail on the profoundly culti
Speaker 1: way that Adam presented himself at company events. Quote. A
Speaker 1: beatles course bounces off the bear concrete walls of what
Speaker 1: was once JP Morgan's headquarters come together right now, the
Speaker 1: nearly thousand chattering. We were employees who filled the event space,
Speaker 1: look towards the stage expecting CEO Adam Neuman to appear
Speaker 1: from the wings at any second. Instead, he sprints down
Speaker 1: the center aisle and giddy conversations evolve into a cheer.
Speaker 1: When John Lennon trills over me, Norman leaps onto the stage,
Speaker 1: sticking the landing. This is the way this guy is
Speaker 1: presenting himself to his employees, and it kind of seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of made it up. Yeah, well has
Speaker 1: already come out. Yeah yeah, they should know better, they
Speaker 1: should know, but people never learned about this. I mean,
Speaker 1: World War two came out and we all know what
Speaker 1: happened in two thousand sixteen. So have you have you
Speaker 1: ever watched like the presentations that like MLM is like
Speaker 1: the multiple market, Yeah, this is exactly similar. I've watched
Speaker 1: a number of those, like those seminars and the gatherings
Speaker 1: that they do, and that has all of those those
Speaker 1: signs I I wanna know. I try to repeat frequently
Speaker 1: that I think everybody has a kind of grift that
Speaker 1: they're vulnerable to, no matter how smart, because there has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with intelligence. It's it has everything to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that everybody has needs, and particularly
Speaker 1: secret needs that even they don't know how to voice
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. And if someone other than you,
Speaker 1: particularly predators, what they're good at is seeing things and
Speaker 1: others that they don't see in themselves but that are present.
Speaker 1: If they're able to pick that out, they'll get you. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how smart and well read you are,
Speaker 1: they'll get you. Um. We all have a thing. And
Speaker 1: Adam found a group of people who I think we're
Speaker 1: raised on stories like Apples. You know the history of
Speaker 1: the Apple core, Google, these companies that like change the
Speaker 1: world and had these like grand visions and like these
Speaker 1: in the legendary leaders. Um, and everybody got super fucking
Speaker 1: rich too. And Adam knew how to create the feeling
Speaker 1: that that's what was going on here. It wasn't it's
Speaker 1: just leasing office space. It wasn't literally like Google that
Speaker 1: that is like a revolution. We organized the world's information
Speaker 1: Apple We changed the fundamentally the way that daily life
Speaker 1: exists for billions of people. Those are companies where you
Speaker 1: really can't oversell, at least the impact of what's happening.
Speaker 1: These people are leasing office space. But he may not
Speaker 1: feel like that. Yeah, but there's kids that that's part
Speaker 1: of why it is. It is like He watched that
Speaker 1: Apple commercial where the hammer is thrown into the giant
Speaker 1: screen and all the all the drones are there, and
Speaker 1: he was like, what if I made all those drones.
Speaker 1: Those guys were super cool. Yeah, that seems like that's
Speaker 1: the thing I want to do. I want to throw
Speaker 1: a hammer and ship that'll whether there. Everything will fall.
Speaker 1: Then it's really terrible. It's hard for me not to
Speaker 1: think that, like, none of this would be possible without booze.
Speaker 1: Like it's like, there's it's not for nothing that alcohol
Speaker 1: is in every story you made about we were It
Speaker 1: really seems very be inflated. The only way to have
Speaker 1: achieved the inflated sense of self confidence that was clearly
Speaker 1: a major aspect of this would have been to give
Speaker 1: everyone free guns, which is how my cult's gonna work.
Speaker 1: I thought it was machetes and don't do it enough. Man,
Speaker 1: It's really it's got to be an a K forty seven.
Speaker 1: I understand now. That makes you feel like a revolutionary,
Speaker 1: like holding a calash. That's what I hear. And then
Speaker 1: we're going to shove people off the buildings. I don't
Speaker 1: know him in at first, but to the bullets. They
Speaker 1: have to each according to the bullets they deserve. That
Speaker 1: really good, Like I should also abstain from this bit.
Speaker 1: And here's our special third guest, FBI agent Chicago is
Speaker 1: actually a lot more than one of you. Okay, right now.
Speaker 1: The entire Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms m not
Speaker 1: fans now. And they have deep dish pizza. I refuse
Speaker 1: to try it. That's fine, Yeah, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Every everyone I know from Chicago has said that it's
Speaker 1: fine from Chicago, like, oh, you gotta try to do yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now it's like Cali Max as good as Tech Max.
Speaker 1: Let's say it lived in both fair enough, not nearly
Speaker 1: as good. Pizza fight, you know, speaking of dog fight,
Speaker 1: it's not speaking of dog fights. Um, speaking of dog fights,
Speaker 1: you know who would never train dogs to fight that
Speaker 1: at one point, at one point you probably would assume
Speaker 1: he wouldn't when he was five, And like a five
Speaker 1: year old Michael Vick, someone who is incapable of hosting
Speaker 1: dog fights is the sponsors of this show, Silky, one
Speaker 1: of the better a transitions on this series. Off we go,
Speaker 1: We're back. Ah. What I loved about those products and
Speaker 1: services was that none of them were for dog fights.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. Sometimes you just can't abandon the
Speaker 1: dogfight when you should. It's no, it's hard to it's
Speaker 1: hard to abandon the dog. But it's also rare these
Speaker 1: days for me to guess on a podcast that isn't
Speaker 1: sponsor a via dog fighting. It is. Well, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just should say, if you use the promo code bastards,
Speaker 1: you get access to the twenty four hour streaming dog fights,
Speaker 1: all the best dog fights we got chihuahuas, and all
Speaker 1: the saber metrics about the fighting. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay. So
Speaker 1: uh Now, shortly after Adam no Uhman founded We Work,
Speaker 1: he'd made what seemed to be at the time an
Speaker 1: impossible promise that his company would one day beat out
Speaker 1: JP Morgan and become the largest private office tenant in
Speaker 1: the city of New York. Given that New York is
Speaker 1: New York, that's a pretty huge deal. Like, so, JP
Speaker 1: Morgan was prior the most office, the gigantic bank worth
Speaker 1: all of the money in the world. Is so saying
Speaker 1: I'm going to beat them, that's a big that's a
Speaker 1: big thing to to hit. But in two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: this dream became a reality. We Work now lee five
Speaker 1: million square feet over fifty locations across the city. So
Speaker 1: all of it still not making money, correct, not a profit.
Speaker 1: They're making money, but not net not net. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: those locations, as we got into a little bit released
Speaker 1: with venture capital money, not actual profits made by the company.
Speaker 1: And those offices were kept full due to free rent
Speaker 1: offers in lease buyouts, which is not a strategy that
Speaker 1: can continue forever. You could just you could give people
Speaker 1: homes for less. It does make more sense. It does
Speaker 1: feel like people talk about like we can't afford universal healthcare,
Speaker 1: and then it's like how much money did we work
Speaker 1: blow through, which just like even outside of how much
Speaker 1: money did we spent on the F thirty five, which
Speaker 1: is actually vastly higher like but still and if he
Speaker 1: like housed people instead of all these offices, those people
Speaker 1: would get tons of booze. Yeah, yep, they be drunk
Speaker 1: as ship. Now. SoftBank's massive investments seem to confirm Adam's
Speaker 1: grand post about the importance of his company, and his
Speaker 1: ego swelled. Consequently, he started talking to colleagues about his
Speaker 1: desire for eternal life. This is like moon base all
Speaker 1: over here. Nope, nope, no, this is where Dan's ears.
Speaker 1: He invested in Life Bio Sciences, a Life Extensions start
Speaker 1: up to further this end. The company mission is to
Speaker 1: create a future where age related decline is not a
Speaker 1: fact of life, and I'm increasingly throughout wild ideas for
Speaker 1: ways we Were could expand to areas well outside of
Speaker 1: its wheelhouse. Sometime after seventeen two seventeen, he started talking
Speaker 1: about starting an airline called We Fly. This is some
Speaker 1: ship where you're like, you look in history and you're like,
Speaker 1: how is it The people got sold on alchemy and
Speaker 1: the philosopher's stone and internal life, and then you look
Speaker 1: at that guy in your life. Yeah, they're still there.
Speaker 1: They're still doing it. In fairness, we Fly kind of
Speaker 1: like it's it's to find enough name for an airline.
Speaker 1: It's just like, what's your experience renting buildings to companies?
Speaker 1: What do you want to do? Run an airline? What
Speaker 1: is an airplane? But in office sky office exactly. That
Speaker 1: is actually where these episodes were written, so exactly airlines
Speaker 1: in Iceland that used to the world of warcraft airlines
Speaker 1: and there was whizz Air, which is the worst airlines started.
Speaker 1: It's like a bike share company and their next move
Speaker 1: is like we'll run an airline. Turns out those skills
Speaker 1: do not translate. Not weird now, Adam increasingly throughout wild
Speaker 1: ideas for ways we were it could expand into areas
Speaker 1: well outside. Oh right, I read that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so we fly his one. There was also
Speaker 1: talk of we sail and something called we sleep, which
Speaker 1: I have no idea what that was supposed to be. Yeah, astresses,
Speaker 1: maybe like a sleep lab. He briefly discussed his ambition
Speaker 1: to become Israel's Prime minister, before amending to say that
Speaker 1: if he ran for any office, it would be for
Speaker 1: president of the world. Little part of how you know
Speaker 1: this was a little bit CULTI is that if my
Speaker 1: boss this podcast, Jack O'Brien, somebody have great respect for
Speaker 1: I've worked with him eleven twelve years now, the vast
Speaker 1: majority basically all of my working life. If he told
Speaker 1: me seriously that if he ever ran for office, it
Speaker 1: would be for president of the world, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a bad joke, I would just start punching. And
Speaker 1: I love Jack, but that's what you do when you
Speaker 1: care about someone and they say you just start hitting them.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a mentality. That needs to be gone from.
Speaker 1: It needs to be hit. Yeah, you don't. You just
Speaker 1: don't do that, especially when it's paired with like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to put money into life extension technology and I
Speaker 1: want the president of the world. I'm going to hit
Speaker 1: you with this brick. This is what needs to happen. Now,
Speaker 1: become a problems response to that President of the world
Speaker 1: with one eye. You will not have both of your
Speaker 1: eyes while you do it. I will make sure of that.
Speaker 1: I think it is inevitable that if there is a
Speaker 1: president of the world, they will have one eye, but
Speaker 1: there will be an ipatch situation because it will be
Speaker 1: a dystopian like water World type of what is the
Speaker 1: name Dee Boy from Friday? The President of the World
Speaker 1: and fifth Element. That's a great president. That's the one.
Speaker 1: That's the one that I'm all about. I I will say,
Speaker 1: as an anarchist, I have a lot of different, conflicting,
Speaker 1: always shifting ideas about about how I think the world
Speaker 1: ought to be. One thing I'm certain of is that
Speaker 1: based on my ideology, if I ever think someone might
Speaker 1: become the president of the world, I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to hit him with a brick. I think that's fair,
Speaker 1: although I also think that, Yeah, I think that anytime
Speaker 1: you hear someone say like, I want to be president
Speaker 1: of the world, Like, what scares me about that is
Speaker 1: not the possibility they will become president of the world.
Speaker 1: It's just what that implies about their mental state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like because it's like this is this is trouble.
Speaker 1: Like I would I would have a very negative reaction
Speaker 1: to somebody who was like, I'm going to be president,
Speaker 1: because that's a bad thing to want to be um,
Speaker 1: But somebody wants to be president of the world, that's
Speaker 1: a bricking that's a bricking mentality. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: truth is the only people that should be empowered the
Speaker 1: people who don't want to be in power. And that's
Speaker 1: why we're fucked. Now, all of this we've been talking
Speaker 1: about for several minutes now was a paragraph and I
Speaker 1: haven't read the last sentence and the most insufferable sentence.
Speaker 1: In the two eighteen summer Camp, Adam Neuman promised that
Speaker 1: we work would solve the problem of children without parents
Speaker 1: and then eradicate world hunger. We're going to kill children
Speaker 1: without a parents. Just start gating orphans. They shan't be hungry.
Speaker 1: Though we works value sword past ten billion, then past
Speaker 1: twenty billion. Adam Neuman was now, on paper at least
Speaker 1: a billionaire himself, so there was no indication of how
Speaker 1: he planned to solve those problems, No on whatsoever. Well,
Speaker 1: a little bit, we'll get get a little bit of that,
Speaker 1: a little bit patient and Elizabeth Warren made a white paper.
Speaker 1: You know, he actually, if he had, that would have
Speaker 1: been more thought than I think he gave to it. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: He immediately started bragging after becoming a billionaire again on
Speaker 1: paper that his personal goal was to become the world's
Speaker 1: first trillionaire. Do we not have brick Brickham Good, No,
Speaker 1: we don't have one. No, Jeff Bezos is like Jeff's
Speaker 1: and Bill Gates or like at a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: million something like that. That's not even all that close
Speaker 1: to a trillion. I have so little interest in money
Speaker 1: stuff that I just assumed we had a couple. I
Speaker 1: feel like it is a matter of like the survival
Speaker 1: of civilization level importance that we not let anyone reach
Speaker 1: that level. Yeah. I feel like it's a matter of
Speaker 1: survival and don't allow billionaires to exist until No, I mean,
Speaker 1: we've we've got to stop that. Yeah, that's a bricken.
Speaker 1: If I want to be a trillionaire, that's a brick
Speaker 1: in I see a shirt in your future, that's a brick.
Speaker 1: That's a brick. And you want to be I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hit you with a brick. I just gotta do it.
Speaker 1: If you were a stand up comedian touring the Midwest,
Speaker 1: you would sell a lot of that's a brick in shirts. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now the reality of Adam's wealth was less impressive. He
Speaker 1: made millions as we work, CEO, because that's what CEOs do,
Speaker 1: and he made millions more from having the company, least
Speaker 1: from properties he owned. But he also had borrowed more
Speaker 1: than seven hundred and forty million dollars against his stock
Speaker 1: in the company, a thing that is legal. For some reason,
Speaker 1: he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of his
Speaker 1: own shares. This was often done in a very shady fashion.
Speaker 1: For example, in two fifteen, he sold tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of shares. Then he had the company
Speaker 1: launched a stock buyback program to buy employee shares of stock.
Speaker 1: The buy back program offered employees a per share price
Speaker 1: that was markedly lower than what Annoyman had been paid
Speaker 1: for his stock, and since Adam stock sales weren't public,
Speaker 1: we Works employees didn't realize they were being screwed to
Speaker 1: subsidize adams lifestyle. Man, I feel like all those guys
Speaker 1: who are like, Okay, here's what we'll do to increase productivity,
Speaker 1: create a cult and funk over everybody work with could
Speaker 1: really be served by like reading all the literature where
Speaker 1: they're like, if you pay people a living wage and
Speaker 1: give them benefits and give them time off, they will
Speaker 1: work more for you on their own. Jordan, that is
Speaker 1: not how you become president of the world. It's definitely
Speaker 1: not is that, you know how you've become president of
Speaker 1: the world. It's racism. Racism now because it's the world.
Speaker 1: It's a number of different racisms. Because you've got to
Speaker 1: be able to it's a balance Mexicans, Tibetans, you gotta
Speaker 1: really all over the world. It's really religion. But even
Speaker 1: then you've got to I wonder, I wonder what it'll be.
Speaker 1: I wanted we might see it in our lifetimes, and
Speaker 1: I'm really I'm really curious. Yeah, I'm really curious to
Speaker 1: see whether or not it's a racism or a religious,
Speaker 1: a gutry thing. Well not just which one, which plane
Speaker 1: to which sort of bigotry wins, you know, because I
Speaker 1: feel like it will be one president who's like, funk,
Speaker 1: all these different individual races that I've calculated will maximize
Speaker 1: my vote, and one president will be like fuck this
Speaker 1: specific right, So it would be like a like a
Speaker 1: focus tested racism versus instinctual racism. I mean, it's actually
Speaker 1: going to come down to Hillary versus Trump again. Very frustratingly,
Speaker 1: the m p A has to review type of racism
Speaker 1: in a bunch of focus groups. Got now. During this time,
Speaker 1: Adam and Rebecca bought a ninety million dollar collection of
Speaker 1: homes around the world, including a sixty acre estate in
Speaker 1: Westchester County. Kids made it that marriage worked. I expected
Speaker 1: to divorce by now. You know, it's weird when you
Speaker 1: have hundreds of millions of dollars it's easy to stay married,
Speaker 1: which really speaks to how unpleasant Jeff Bezos is marriage
Speaker 1: must have been. Anyway, I'm not gonna comment on that anymore. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a twenty one million dollar mansion in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area with a room shaped like a guitar. They
Speaker 1: hired several nannies for their children, two personal assistants, and
Speaker 1: a chef. Even as much money as ad him was worth,
Speaker 1: his spending was incredibly excessive, and so was We Work spending. Well.
Speaker 1: Adam's craziest ideas, like establishing an airline, never went into production.
Speaker 1: The company did embark on a number of side hustles
Speaker 1: At his direction. They created We Live, essentially a very
Speaker 1: expensive apartment complex with no privacy. Adam said this would
Speaker 1: drive suicide rates down because no one feels alone. Elevator
Speaker 1: talk getting really uncomfortable. But is that is kind of
Speaker 1: the natural progression if they're like making this company, if
Speaker 1: it is like Comedy Towns. Yeah, yeah, you've created this,
Speaker 1: like this is the workspace we now on that, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you then get into like now we're getting into
Speaker 1: your living Yeah, I'm trying to create a workplace slash
Speaker 1: living space. So why not just They also created a
Speaker 1: gym I think it was called we Rise. Um that
Speaker 1: should be their bakery. That should be their bakery, I know,
Speaker 1: I know missed opportunities. And then they created We Grow.
Speaker 1: This was a school that Adam hoped would eventually expand
Speaker 1: into a project to house all the world's orphans Jesus
Speaker 1: at Adam said this fucking sentence, You guys. Adam said,
Speaker 1: if we GROW's planned to save the orphans, we want
Speaker 1: to solve this problem and give them a new family,
Speaker 1: but we work family. I'm speechless. It's terrifying if what
Speaker 1: kind of person says that. I just just straight Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a moment I wonder this this is this
Speaker 1: is a question like in the movie of this this
Speaker 1: dude's life, does he have that scarface moment where it's
Speaker 1: like you can see him just go past that point
Speaker 1: and it's like everything past this is just gonna be
Speaker 1: It's probably that night on the roof. It was that
Speaker 1: night on the roof. Maybe here there I can get
Speaker 1: people to do anything if they'll drink this this poop
Speaker 1: beer could be anything on the roof. And then, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to be an insufferable movie, isn't it?
Speaker 1: That makes him into like a cool another social network.
Speaker 1: I want to do it like a Wall Street. But
Speaker 1: it turned out that even when you satirize, there needs
Speaker 1: there should be a law that when you do a
Speaker 1: movie like Wolf of Wall Street, there needs to be
Speaker 1: a seven minute scene where the character ships himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really unbecoming him, embarrassing, and make it uncomfortable for the audience.
Speaker 1: You know, it should be hard to get over that hump.
Speaker 1: You should expect it to be over like three minutes,
Speaker 1: and then it just not not like funny, not like
Speaker 1: the vomiting scene in Team America, like just just bad,
Speaker 1: just a bad thing to be a part of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it happened, I feel like that's a regulation we
Speaker 1: could pass. I think. I think so it's by and
Speaker 1: by partisan appeal. The Ship the Movie Shooting bill has
Speaker 1: passed through both houses and is now on the president's desk.
Speaker 1: He was reportedly unable to sign today as he was
Speaker 1: too busy chopping off his enormous poop so that it
Speaker 1: could flush in less than ten flushes. That did happen.
Speaker 1: That's just that, that's just part of politics. You can't
Speaker 1: remove that from the history books. Yeah, amazing. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be really funny if we get past as a nation
Speaker 1: him being in office and don't collapse into a civil war.
Speaker 1: Do you hear people talk about the dignity of the
Speaker 1: presidency again, Like, really, it's gonna it's gonna be like,
Speaker 1: I hope I get to be on TV at some
Speaker 1: point when that happens and just what what what is left?
Speaker 1: Did you hear the poop speech? I mean, historically the
Speaker 1: dignity of the presidency was lost, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: after Andrew it was always it was always an illusion.
Speaker 1: Jackson presented himself in a stately manner and stuff like
Speaker 1: like a six ft wheel of cheese is where I
Speaker 1: get off the off four on? That's the that's the
Speaker 1: best thing he did. Yeah, we call six ftee. I
Speaker 1: feel like than accusing everyone else in the country of
Speaker 1: needing fifteen flushes to get their poop down the toilet,
Speaker 1: and every everyone listening knowing like you couldn't get a
Speaker 1: poop down? Could you? The president yourself? There the speech?
Speaker 1: No one else is having trouble with this. Here I
Speaker 1: am having pooped for four days. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you can you can say that like the office is
Speaker 1: undignified historically forever. But I think there is a value
Speaker 1: to a shared delusion, and that's kind of gone. There's
Speaker 1: a value, but it's not a good or a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's just a value. The same fifteen has a value. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: when we last, before we went on this aggression, I
Speaker 1: said that Adam wanted to solve the problem of of
Speaker 1: of parentless children and give them a new family. That
Speaker 1: we make the digression because that is it is. It's
Speaker 1: a nuts fucking sentence. Now before we work could house
Speaker 1: the world's orphans, though we're gonna put them on trains.
Speaker 1: It hands that nobody's ever done this before, and we'll
Speaker 1: send it all the way across the nation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's better than that. Um, it's better than that, but
Speaker 1: dumber um. We in order to make we grow get
Speaker 1: to the point where it could house all of the
Speaker 1: world's orphans, it was going to start as a luxury
Speaker 1: boutique school for the children of rich people, charging the
Speaker 1: very wealthy in New York City thirty six to forty
Speaker 1: two dollars a year to educate their small children. This
Speaker 1: seems like the opposite the world's problem with making it
Speaker 1: impossible for them to afford like I had. I'm like
Speaker 1: flying down to a group of Syrian refugees fleeing like
Speaker 1: a barrel bombing and it lib and like putting a
Speaker 1: hand on one of their shoulders and saying, in like
Speaker 1: twenty years when the cost comes down, take care of
Speaker 1: you right now, No way for now, it's just Sean
Speaker 1: Penn's kids, and they're getting a great education. I believe.
Speaker 1: Do you know who Sean Penn is? Oh you're dead now.
Speaker 1: We Grow was Rebecca Noyman's project, his wife. She had
Speaker 1: been a core part of WE Work from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Of course, in two thou seventeen, the company had hired
Speaker 1: Soul Cycle founder Julie Rice is their chief brand officer,
Speaker 1: but when Rebecca came back from eternity leave later that year,
Speaker 1: she decided she wanted the title for herself and took it,
Speaker 1: so Julie had to quit. Okay, according to WE Works
Speaker 1: established business practices, she should have been fired. I'm disappointed
Speaker 1: by this. She was, That's what happened because she was
Speaker 1: originally the chief brand officer, but then Rebecca got it.
Speaker 1: Now support this decision. Apparently, Rebecca is somewhat famous among
Speaker 1: WE Workers for firing people she met and got bad
Speaker 1: vibes from. One example is a mechanic for the company
Speaker 1: Gulf Stream Private Jet who was ship can't because Rebecca
Speaker 1: quote didn't like his energy. So she's the kind of
Speaker 1: person we are all we all like now. Obviously, she
Speaker 1: was the perfect person to design a brand new school
Speaker 1: from the ground up. Rebecca, of course, had no relevant
Speaker 1: experience in education and also what children and running a school?
Speaker 1: What if these kids have bad vibes, well then then
Speaker 1: you just kill you throw them off the top of
Speaker 1: that build. Real trouble of someone who's like, so, what
Speaker 1: was missing from public education was more capriciousness yea, and
Speaker 1: good vibes. Yeah, she had nowhere elm in experience, but
Speaker 1: she didn't think that really mattered. She told interviewers that
Speaker 1: her vision for We Grow was a new, conscious entrepreneurial
Speaker 1: school committed to unleashing every child superpowers. At the school's opening,
Speaker 1: she reportedly stated, in my book, there's no reason why
Speaker 1: children in elementary schools can't be launching their own businesses.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Labor laws, man, if they're running ship Jordan's
Speaker 1: I mean, if you like, I'm going to hire a
Speaker 1: bunch of eight girls to work in this coal mine.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to do a school where like, hey,
Speaker 1: you it's cool to do a lemonade stand and learn
Speaker 1: some lessons from it. I don't know how I'm not
Speaker 1: going to die on that hill argue against that, But
Speaker 1: it sounds like that's not what she's talking about No, No,
Speaker 1: she wants them making their own. WI didn't twins even
Speaker 1: wait until they were eighteen to start their fashion brand
Speaker 1: or whatever. I think they did. And I think that
Speaker 1: maybe working their entire childhood had some negative mental health implications,
Speaker 1: But I don't want to speak for them. It's it's
Speaker 1: telling that kind of the best case scenario for children
Speaker 1: who work a lot as children as McAuley Colkin, Well,
Speaker 1: his best role was in Party Monster, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's fucking awesome part of them. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: great life. I like McCauley culkin, and I'm glad he
Speaker 1: made it out. He's also good and saved. He's also
Speaker 1: good and saved. It's tough, is what I'm saying, being
Speaker 1: a child who works heavily as a child. It's not
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not good for children. Maybe should children shouldn't
Speaker 1: work a lot. Give me the backing of thousands upon
Speaker 1: thousands of psychological studies and then I will listen. You
Speaker 1: know what, psychologically it would be awesome for kids in
Speaker 1: school fucking looking at payroll infant because it's like you
Speaker 1: talked about, like like like child actors and actresses. Um,
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of them have very negative experiences. It's
Speaker 1: it's very it's a damaging thing, which is why, like
Speaker 1: we have so much respect like Daniel Radcliffe's parents who
Speaker 1: are like, no, we're not gonna let our kid move
Speaker 1: to fucking Los Angeles, like you either film it and
Speaker 1: you because we're just not going to put him through that. Um,
Speaker 1: it's tough. It does things to them, and they're not
Speaker 1: in charge. They actually have a lot of people there
Speaker 1: who support them, and it's still is very difficult to
Speaker 1: deal with healthily having a kid managing payroll, having a
Speaker 1: kid managing like debt and like vent your capital, and
Speaker 1: like what a bad idea. It seems woefully stupid. Now
Speaker 1: We Grow launched in the fall of two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: It was housed and we works headquarters. Problems immediately cropped
Speaker 1: up due to the fact that Rebecca and her colleagues
Speaker 1: said failed to anticipate minor details like paying the school
Speaker 1: security guards. HR had apparently forgotten to add them to
Speaker 1: pay roll, so this was an immediate bump in the log.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you don't pay the people, the little people when
Speaker 1: you're trying to start a school for entrepreneurs. Sure you're
Speaker 1: gonna make mistakes that entrepreneurs should make to be fair
Speaker 1: under no circumstances should not make to be fair. A
Speaker 1: second grader was in charge of HR and security. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so these things will happen now, it's a learning experience.
Speaker 1: Other problems. Other problems came as a result of Becca's
Speaker 1: own peculiar preferences. She made a rule that parents were
Speaker 1: allowed to wait in the school lounge to pick up children,
Speaker 1: but nanny's had to wait outside in the vestibule. This
Speaker 1: was reportedly because Rebecca didn't want her own children's nannies
Speaker 1: to enter the school. One person close to the school
Speaker 1: told interviewers the whole thing was about her and what
Speaker 1: was right for her children. Yeah, what if I made
Speaker 1: a school based on down Navvy? Gotcha? Yeah? Rebecca herself
Speaker 1: told Fast Company something similar. She claimed that the inspiration
Speaker 1: for We Grow had come when she and Adam were
Speaker 1: looking for fancy, rich people schools for their five kids,
Speaker 1: and quote, we couldn't find the school that we felt
Speaker 1: would nurture growth. These children come into the world, they
Speaker 1: are very evolved, they are very special, they're spiritual. They're
Speaker 1: all natural not entrepreneurs, natural humanitarians. And then it seems
Speaker 1: like we squash it all out of them in the
Speaker 1: education system. Well it sounds familiar. This is this is
Speaker 1: very reminiscent of like kind of a lot of the
Speaker 1: extreme right homes cool kind of. Uh, yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: aspects of a lot of different things. Yeah, in that,
Speaker 1: you know, like everything else. The Norman's embarked on We
Speaker 1: Grow put style before substance. The school was designed by
Speaker 1: a famous architect and featured a vertical garden and whatever
Speaker 1: acoustic clouds are on the ceiling. We Work bought an
Speaker 1: alternative college startup mission You in order to hire a
Speaker 1: CEO for We Grow, who presumably knew something about teaching kids.
Speaker 1: Curriculum included classes on mindfulness, yoga, meditation, and farming. All
Speaker 1: meals were vegetarian. I don't have any problem with the
Speaker 1: last two parts for context, Uh, mindfulness and meditation. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're not a great idea for teaching kids. I don't know,
Speaker 1: can't hurt. Therefore, we'll talk about mindfulness in another episode.
Speaker 1: As We Work matured and started spaces Yeah, fuck that ship.
Speaker 1: Take down meditation. Don't think I wouldn't have litt nearly
Speaker 1: as many fires as have been in my life if
Speaker 1: I if I thought, and I've learned so much from
Speaker 1: those fires. What happens when insulation catches on fire, what
Speaker 1: happens when drywall catches on fire, what happens when shingles
Speaker 1: catch on the fire. Basically what happens when people catch
Speaker 1: on fire? All lessons I wouldn't have had if I
Speaker 1: had thought more. That's a good point. Thank you, all right.
Speaker 1: I retrenedat my supportive meditation. As We Work matured and
Speaker 1: started expanding into every conceivable realm Adam began to revamp
Speaker 1: his ideas about the WE generation. He modified this to
Speaker 1: what he called me plus w That's what I was
Speaker 1: waiting for. I literally was about to say that he's
Speaker 1: going to say it's the ME generation, but never mind you,
Speaker 1: and then he's going to get super bus pepsie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he explained at a We Work summit. Quote, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you want to be your own person, have your own goals,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, you understand it being a
Speaker 1: part of something greater than yourself is an amazing opportunity
Speaker 1: and actually makes you stronger. Now. Adamate earlier claimed that
Speaker 1: We Works multibillion dollar valuation was much more based on
Speaker 1: our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple
Speaker 1: of revenue, pointing out that his real estate leasing business
Speaker 1: was not a real estate business but instead a community company.
Speaker 1: We're not selling office space. Community. It's amazing that the
Speaker 1: thing that can't be sold. People are always telling us
Speaker 1: that it's just not about money. It's only about money again,
Speaker 1: people who will die immediately without a little bit more
Speaker 1: of it, right, but we can put them on trains
Speaker 1: and solve homelessness or some ship. I don't know, I've
Speaker 1: noticed at this point, like there's been literally no conversation
Speaker 1: at all about like people having good experiences and we
Speaker 1: work offices, like I'm sure they exists. That actual community
Speaker 1: that he intends to build. Actually, there's a lot of turnover.
Speaker 1: It's not like early Apple, where's like people stay for
Speaker 1: fucking ever um or a lot of stuff you hear
Speaker 1: about early Google. There's a ton of turnover. But he's
Speaker 1: not even talking about this. The great thing that he's
Speaker 1: bringing into the world being about the employees of we work.
Speaker 1: It's the people who rent the office space. And it's
Speaker 1: always vague and undefined idea community too, because it's not real.
Speaker 1: He's again he's telling this to the bosses, but I
Speaker 1: mean in reality if you're living, if you're working in
Speaker 1: a WE work space, it's just a very mundane office space,
Speaker 1: like if you're working in the slightly better interior design.
Speaker 1: You know, I worked. I worked at a shared office
Speaker 1: space for for a while and it was just that
Speaker 1: was fine. Everybody was there. I could never like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I I can't be productive in a space
Speaker 1: where I can't wander around shirtless with an a R
Speaker 1: fifteen strapped in my chest. We all have our process
Speaker 1: strapped or taped. No no, no, no, no, no, no
Speaker 1: no no. I have a very nice slingk um Now
Speaker 1: several um you know who doesn't sell SLINKs for a
Speaker 1: fifteen maybe yet, although we're courting them the products and
Speaker 1: services and the sponsored this show. We're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a thing that we won't talk about after this
Speaker 1: will be a mystery for the nine of you who
Speaker 1: are listening. After that digression about dog fighting. UM strange,
Speaker 1: Michael Vick is still listening. Michael Vick big support, really
Speaker 1: huge into the podcast. Uh and you know what I
Speaker 1: support north of sixty of what he's done with his life.
Speaker 1: A lot of passes, A lot of passes were good.
Speaker 1: It is rent on time for a spell. He was
Speaker 1: a good football player. I don't know anything about Michael
Speaker 1: Vick other than the dog fighting and football. Those are
Speaker 1: the only two things I know. Is I don't know
Speaker 1: anything about the football. I know he was a footballer,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I can't analyze him. He was
Speaker 1: pretty good. He's running were more than a yards. Okay,
Speaker 1: never mind, he was good. He was good at the
Speaker 1: balls at Okay, that's good. That's good. Well, no, because
Speaker 1: of the dog fighting. But now I understand more. Now.
Speaker 1: Adam Neuman's most constant refrain when he talked about We
Speaker 1: Worked his employees was this, and this is a quote.
Speaker 1: We are here in order to change the world. Nothing
Speaker 1: less than that interests me, and for a while it
Speaker 1: seemed like that really might be happening. By two eighteen,
Speaker 1: We Worked had four hundred and sixty six thousand members
Speaker 1: working at a four five locations and more than one
Speaker 1: hundred cities in twenty eight countries. It had more than
Speaker 1: doubled its revenue every year of its existence. Not only
Speaker 1: was it Manhattan's largest tenant, but in Central London controlled
Speaker 1: more space than anyone but the British government. So this
Speaker 1: is like like you can't overstate like how much this
Speaker 1: company fucking expands rights are. If you own anything in London,
Speaker 1: you're an evil person, including the British government. It seems
Speaker 1: to be all the metrics of like success are all
Speaker 1: just sort of geographical and and and not based on
Speaker 1: actually profit anything other than just based on and. And
Speaker 1: they don't own these buildings leasing them. Yeah, they're leasing them.
Speaker 1: So even even the geographical brag is kind of a liability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's you can't be the most profitable, profitable company if
Speaker 1: you're essentially a middleman. It seems like that shouldn't be possible.
Speaker 1: It seems like you're almost offering nothing just in the
Speaker 1: way of getting off it. I wonder if this will
Speaker 1: ever crash and burn in a page or two. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's going. As the summer of two that's
Speaker 1: an eighteen rolled on, there were increasing signs of trouble
Speaker 1: within the company. One warning came out of what could
Speaker 1: be plausibly described as Adam's good intentions, his desire to
Speaker 1: ban the eating of meat, or at least the subsidizing
Speaker 1: of the eating of meat by his company by exchanging
Speaker 1: it for tequila from The Wall Street Journal When Mr
Speaker 1: Neuman announced in July two, eighteen, via video call from Israel,
Speaker 1: that the company was banning meat. Executives in New York
Speaker 1: were caught off guard with little explanation from Mr. Neuman,
Speaker 1: A group huddled around to determine a rationale. They settled
Speaker 1: on sustainability and the mechanics of what would be banned
Speaker 1: and how. They determined employees couldn't expense meals with meat
Speaker 1: and that, but that they could eat it in company
Speaker 1: offices so long as the company didn't pay. Former employees
Speaker 1: say they have since seen Mr. Norman eat meat, so
Speaker 1: he gets a hair up his ass that eating meat
Speaker 1: is bad. Fine, I'm even out down with the idea
Speaker 1: of a big company being like, we're not going to
Speaker 1: use company money to support the ending of me anymore. Good? Fine? Uh,
Speaker 1: but the aristocracy, yeah, exactly, Like the important thing here
Speaker 1: is not the meat thing. It's the idea that like,
Speaker 1: this guy has an idea, and now what is a
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar company changes has to change on a dime,
Speaker 1: And that's not good. But I honestly think he's like
Speaker 1: not going far enough, like still letting people eat meat
Speaker 1: in the office like that a living Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if here illegally do that. To be honest, yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd probably. I don't know if you could legally stop
Speaker 1: people on their lunch breaks from eating whatever they wanted.
Speaker 1: Back when I worked at Group On, like people who
Speaker 1: would you know the microwave fish stuff and that's just
Speaker 1: been a complete disaster. Different but you couldn't stop them
Speaker 1: eating fish. You just can't microwave it. Man. I'd like
Speaker 1: to you know, what's fun about laws in America is
Speaker 1: technically a lot of things you can't do, but you
Speaker 1: just do it and people won't bother you. That is true.
Speaker 1: And I have a story to tell you about him
Speaker 1: as Chetti and Nap the bomb. But when we were
Speaker 1: prepared to go public, they basically bribed the major exchanges
Speaker 1: by promising to list on them if they would ban
Speaker 1: meat and single use plastics from their cafeterias. The president
Speaker 1: of the New York Stock Exchange agreed to cut out plastics,
Speaker 1: but refused to remove meat. NASDAC turned them down, but
Speaker 1: offered to create a new index the WEE fifty of
Speaker 1: companies committed to sustainability. So that's okay, you're a big
Speaker 1: hating on plastic and against that. That's fine, I'm absolutely
Speaker 1: fine with that. But that with this dude, that's like,
Speaker 1: and we're going to take the money we saved from
Speaker 1: that and invest it in frocking like this, Yeah, funked up,
Speaker 1: Like I have no trust in him. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: it's a more of a like he agrees to cut
Speaker 1: that requirement out off they create a Nasdaq index about
Speaker 1: sustainable companies named after we Wreck. He's got to cut
Speaker 1: it out with the WEE stuff. Yeah, I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of They rebranded the we essentially exting people for
Speaker 1: climate justice. That's yeah, fine, I guess so. Uh. We
Speaker 1: Work and getting off the ground at this point and
Speaker 1: secured major investments because of its charismatic founder, but now
Speaker 1: that the company had matured into a multibillion dollar enterprise,
Speaker 1: it was still run as an extension of the personal
Speaker 1: will of Adam Neuman. In November of two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: Adam showed up late and profoundly hungover to a meeting
Speaker 1: with Kaldoon Khalifa al Mubarik, the CEO and managing director
Speaker 1: of the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi. This was
Speaker 1: a critical meeting. We Work was on track to lose
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars that year, and Mubarak had
Speaker 1: gotten nerves us about all the money that he had
Speaker 1: gambled on the company's success. Adam's job at this meeting
Speaker 1: was to reassure a Mubarik the fact that we Work
Speaker 1: CEO couldn't stay sober long enough to take a meeting
Speaker 1: worth potentially billions of dollars rightfully angered the board that
Speaker 1: will happen. No, Eman couldn't have cared less. In the
Speaker 1: summer of two eighteen, he'd worked out a deal with
Speaker 1: Masayoshi and soft Bank to sell the bulk of we
Speaker 1: Work stock to that company for sixteen billion dollars. This
Speaker 1: is the only relatable thing that I've heard about, this
Speaker 1: showing up to a meeting ngover Ngover, even though I've
Speaker 1: never been sober in a meeting. All Right, I get
Speaker 1: this guy a little bit at least, but it is like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna be honest if there were billions
Speaker 1: of dollars on the line and probably show up sober
Speaker 1: to the meeting, probably, Yeah, I got a self destructive streak.
Speaker 1: I think I would. I think part of me would
Speaker 1: really want to tank this meeting on a on a
Speaker 1: like important level, which is why I would never have
Speaker 1: the meeting. I would sit staring at the bottle, but
Speaker 1: thinking about all of the explosives that the billions of
Speaker 1: dollar militias. I feel like buildings to toss people off. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'll just be sitting in a meeting just being like,
Speaker 1: I'm like the only person right now there's a chance
Speaker 1: to assassinate you, should I do. If you had a
Speaker 1: billion dollar meeting tomorrow, you'd show up drunk as ship
Speaker 1: or hungover. But if you had to go through all
Speaker 1: the steps that this dude has had to go through
Speaker 1: to get there, there's a decent chance by then you'd
Speaker 1: be like, all right, I'm gonna take this serious. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do take it seriously. This thing that like the
Speaker 1: thing that I built for taking. You would become acclimated
Speaker 1: to the cultright building. If you had a critical meeting
Speaker 1: about your book, you would probably force yourself to be
Speaker 1: in the kind of mind state to deal with Like
Speaker 1: a publisher, you would hope so and if you and
Speaker 1: if you didn't, that's true, that's true. And if you didn't,
Speaker 1: that's a bad sign. Side. Yeah, I want to become
Speaker 1: president of the world. I feel like, that's okay though, right, Robert,
Speaker 1: where give me that brick ambition? Right? This is Chicago,
Speaker 1: there should be bricks everywhere. City of Bricks. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a nickname now. Uh so, yeah, No, Man had worked
Speaker 1: out a plan with mass Ayoshi into this an eighteen
Speaker 1: to sell the book of We Work stock for sixteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars to soft Bank. Now, Vanity Fair says that
Speaker 1: this was Annoyman's escape plan. Quote, he and his investors
Speaker 1: would be insanely rich. This was a pivotal moment. A
Speaker 1: form where we work executive or called Adam was acting
Speaker 1: like the soft Bank deal was done and we would
Speaker 1: be flushed with cash. So he was planning and again
Speaker 1: like cashing out and escaping, which kind of hits the
Speaker 1: fact that he doesn't believe any of this. He was
Speaker 1: just trying to get a big enough investment that he
Speaker 1: could get the funk out. That's the thing that these guys,
Speaker 1: like every time we go through a story about these
Speaker 1: types of guys, they're one failing is they take the
Speaker 1: grift too far and they don't know when to just bail.
Speaker 1: Like like with the guy we talked about, Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: he should have just bailed a while back. He nailed
Speaker 1: his grift, He got what he needed. Could have walked
Speaker 1: away with the net worth five dollars way more than that,
Speaker 1: ye minimum, Yeah, after after the election, probably could have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like at a great golden parachute. They're not capable to
Speaker 1: get out, and they just don't do it because the
Speaker 1: more smart none of them more smartest. Tom from my
Speaker 1: Space no cash out, six hunt million bucks doesn't destroy democracy,
Speaker 1: goes and retires. I got nothing against Tom. Did he
Speaker 1: cash there for six hullion years? He did great, And
Speaker 1: you know what, he didn't destroy democracy? Yeah anything. He
Speaker 1: provided bands a way to share their mediocre music files. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody's ever been like, oh man, my space really facilitated
Speaker 1: the younger. Nobody hates Tom. He's rich as ship and
Speaker 1: it's fine. You know what, though, you know, almost everybody
Speaker 1: who was on my Space, who was old enough to
Speaker 1: have been on it, has a negative opinion of him
Speaker 1: because you were forced to be his friend, and we
Speaker 1: should forgive him for that. You know what, I'll go
Speaker 1: about and say, the only cool person worth hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars Tom Tommy Tommy, So he's got the
Speaker 1: soft bank deal. It doesn't matter that he shows up
Speaker 1: hungover to a meeting with the head of the Abu
Speaker 1: Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund. But then that soft bank deal
Speaker 1: for sixteen billion dollars falls through because people other than
Speaker 1: Masayoshi Sawn took a look at the company financials and
Speaker 1: decided that we work, which was losing at this point
Speaker 1: billions of dollars a year. Maybe he wasn't the best
Speaker 1: way to invest sixteen billion dollars. Massa Yoshi agreed to
Speaker 1: invest another two billion, but at the rate we weren't
Speaker 1: burnstree now, which is still This is why I say
Speaker 1: two things. Money isn't real and it's dumb as shit.
Speaker 1: Ye don't listen, your company's fucked. Here's two billions, here's
Speaker 1: two billion dollars. This is what happens when you have
Speaker 1: a group of people around you who is willing to
Speaker 1: say no to you. And then it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's only two billion. I was like, never mind phones,
Speaker 1: this guy stupid eat them all. So at the rate
Speaker 1: we work burned through cash. Two billion dollars brought the
Speaker 1: company eight months or something like that, eight nine months.
Speaker 1: They lost one point three billion in the first six
Speaker 1: months of this year. Eight months that's insane. Eight nine.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do the exact one point one
Speaker 1: point three billion in six months, So eight nine months
Speaker 1: seems fair. Um. Yeah, it's absurd um and less than
Speaker 1: uber loses m Yeah. Now it's like real estate expenses, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's leases leases. Other people will pay him lease
Speaker 1: and he's giving them free rent in order to suck
Speaker 1: them in. Yeah, but he just keeps giving free rents.
Speaker 1: They just keep moving around. Business. It's a terrible business. Great,
Speaker 1: that's a great, that's that's a that's a scheme. Yeh.
Speaker 1: Ever he basically yeah, essentially in every way but the
Speaker 1: legal way. Yeah, which is the best kind of scheme. Problem,
Speaker 1: it does seem like he should be fired out of
Speaker 1: a catapult for his crimes. Now. So again, the two
Speaker 1: billion dollars just gave we worked months of breathing room,
Speaker 1: not what they really needed. And so Adam started to
Speaker 1: get desperate for more funding. And I'm gonna quote again
Speaker 1: from Vanity Fair. So he started dog fighting. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is where our sponsors, dog Fighter without any comes
Speaker 1: into the product. Use code bastards on dog fighter and
Speaker 1: you'll get all right, the quote from Vanity Fair. According
Speaker 1: to sources, he pitched Apple CFO Luca Mastree on doing
Speaker 1: a deal with we Work. It's unclear why Apple would
Speaker 1: want to invest in we Work, and not surprisingly, the
Speaker 1: company passed. Uh Norman went to Google and proposed a partnership,
Speaker 1: They too passed. Noman batted around other investment ideas. He
Speaker 1: early discussed buying Slack. He sat there saying, what companies
Speaker 1: can we buy? Maybe we should buy Slack, A former
Speaker 1: executive recalled. When no Himan returned to we Works New
Speaker 1: York headquarters later that winter, he seemed desperate. He barked
Speaker 1: orders and haphazardly reorganized divisions, at one point having as
Speaker 1: many as twenty direct reports. According to a former we
Speaker 1: Work executive, Massa said We're going to be a trillion
Speaker 1: dollar company. He shouted, according to a former executive who
Speaker 1: heard it, you're thinking billions and we should be thinking trillions.
Speaker 1: You people need to be better than you are. New
Speaker 1: Himan seems shocked by the scale if we Works losses.
Speaker 1: Sources say he tangled with we Works then CFO Already
Speaker 1: Menson over the cash squeeze. Menson declined to comment, but
Speaker 1: a former senior executive said ne Himan drove the decision making.
Speaker 1: Nothing could happen without Adam. Former executive said, ne Himan
Speaker 1: often reacted poorly. You don't bring bad news to the
Speaker 1: cult leader. One said, I've never heard that before. No
Speaker 1: bute's making you know, making that that's pretty more than one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like that all phrase killed a messenger. That's
Speaker 1: right us. It's one of those things where Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: is a guy come back to a lot because, um,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of this in him, but he
Speaker 1: also had I guess it's a difference of they both
Speaker 1: both ne Himan and Jobs have this kind of deep
Speaker 1: understanding of the human psyche that allows them to manipulate
Speaker 1: people in a profound way. Jobs uses it to figure
Speaker 1: out something people want that they don't know they want,
Speaker 1: and then deliver it and create changes the entire world.
Speaker 1: The smartphone he knew before anyone else what exactly everyone
Speaker 1: in the world wanted to carry in their pocket and
Speaker 1: would addict them and everything. And he was right. Nor Himan,
Speaker 1: he knows how to manipulate people, uses it to get
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in investment, but provides nothing. Um, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say what Jobs right is in
Speaker 1: that good obviously because the smartphone is complicated, is ship
Speaker 1: and ins of that. But at least it's a thing.
Speaker 1: It's more you can't argue with it. Not it's not
Speaker 1: a Ponzi game. It's not. It's it's maybe like Heroin,
Speaker 1: but it's not a Ponzi s game. Yeah. This guy's
Speaker 1: just a lot of ideas, Yeah, and mostly the idea
Speaker 1: of how to convince investors. He's a made a little
Speaker 1: Banny yah. Yeah. Still, there were bright spots for we
Speaker 1: Work in two thousand eighteen. Earlier in that year, JP
Speaker 1: Morgan had led a seven hundred million dollar bond offering
Speaker 1: for we Work, while Adam's Charisma had started to fail
Speaker 1: with Masayoshi had worked on JP Morgan's CEO, Jamie Diamond.
Speaker 1: Jamie Diamond is a profound piece of ship. One of
Speaker 1: the architects of the two thousand and eight elect h
Speaker 1: financial crash, probably j first participation, No, of course not.
Speaker 1: He's a CEO. Specifically that we held those people accountable
Speaker 1: to make sure that it would never happen again. Now
Speaker 1: we went to jail for the eventual dog fighting ring.
Speaker 1: He ran with Annoyman and that's when Michael took Jamie
Speaker 1: Demons Bank headed Diamond's Bank handed Adam a hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar personal loan and a five million dollar personal credit line.
Speaker 1: That's not that much for him though, right, like based
Speaker 1: on too much, sure, but like you were saying, like
Speaker 1: two billion dollars, he was worth four billion at this
Speaker 1: point on paper, right, but he's also got seven million
Speaker 1: dollars that he was the company, right, Yeah, that's tough.
Speaker 1: I feel bad, like just being broke, uh way better,
Speaker 1: but you're rich way better than that. When you're that broke.
Speaker 1: It comes back around a ridge. Yeah, you know, that's
Speaker 1: the way it works. For some reason. I remember I
Speaker 1: played I played a SIM game. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was like in my early teens. That was essentially like
Speaker 1: creating an apartment building tower. I remember that so clearly,
Speaker 1: and I was really good at it. And I feel
Speaker 1: like I would run we work a lot better than
Speaker 1: that if I just had a simisit well, because you
Speaker 1: wouldn't try to make it everything. You would try to
Speaker 1: run a very simple company that least's office space to
Speaker 1: people that needed, which is fine. Knowing Jordan need to
Speaker 1: put a movie theater in the basement where you're supposed
Speaker 1: to put parking and they're just no. But you do
Speaker 1: remove the fire escapes because that ship's expensive. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and the extinguishers detectors, buildings don't catch on fire. If
Speaker 1: I know one thing about Chicago history, it's that fires
Speaker 1: never happened. It's all a myth. Is definitely real and
Speaker 1: od up. Now, Adam was heard to brag to people
Speaker 1: that Jamie Diamond, one of the architects again of the
Speaker 1: financial crash, was now his personal banker and might soon
Speaker 1: leave JP Morgan to run Adam's family investment office. Speaking
Speaker 1: of family, Adam and started bragging that his children would
Speaker 1: follow him as the leadership of we work. And speaking
Speaker 1: of unfathomable nepotism, let's talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: Adam's relationship to Jared Kushner. They hung out of that fire.
Speaker 1: They hung out a lot. See, it turns out that
Speaker 1: the Neuman's and the kush clan are actually very close friends.
Speaker 1: Don't call them that. That is what the clans Betsy
Speaker 1: Davie's work with. They did body shots a lot. The
Speaker 1: funk is going on is all evils surrounded by itself.
Speaker 1: Prince ran security at the school. Yeah, and also did
Speaker 1: body shots. Yeah, you came back to life just to
Speaker 1: run thing now. Jered clearly believed in Adam's promised ability
Speaker 1: to change the world. In the summer of two thousan eighteen,
Speaker 1: We Work executives rather suddenly learned that Adam had been
Speaker 1: drafted by Kushner to work on Ja Cush's Mideast peace plan.
Speaker 1: I will Nouman had put We Works director of Development
Speaker 1: Ronnie Behar, on the task of finding an advertising firm
Speaker 1: to put together a video for Kushner about how an
Speaker 1: economically revitalized West Bank and Gaza might look this. I
Speaker 1: am never I'm never ever envious of their money. I
Speaker 1: don't want I don't even understand a billion dollars. But
Speaker 1: the confidence that it takes, the ridiculous, insane confidence that
Speaker 1: it takes for you to be a shitty We Work
Speaker 1: CEO and be like, I think you know what I'm
Speaker 1: going to solved for the s an obviously sing company
Speaker 1: and the son of a man who went to prison
Speaker 1: for real estate scams. YEA, to sit kind, be like
Speaker 1: you know this thousand, this this conflict. I think we
Speaker 1: can deal with this year. I think we can bang
Speaker 1: it on in four years. All I can think of
Speaker 1: is like, do they do they like like each other?
Speaker 1: I think, so, what do you think they didn't? I
Speaker 1: think that's why he gets this this task part. Wonder
Speaker 1: if they're even capable of liking each other. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like fraud. I mean, like, yeah, right, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I don't think. I think Trump maybe does.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: he believes in himself. But I think Kushner is just
Speaker 1: that deluded and dumb and has always been rich and
Speaker 1: totally special. And I think I don't think. I think
Speaker 1: might actually know he's a con artist. I really I
Speaker 1: go back and forth on the guy. I think Kushner
Speaker 1: really is genuine about his beliefs. I just think he's
Speaker 1: stupid as ship. No. I think that I think Trump
Speaker 1: is so analogous to Alex Jones that it's it's insane,
Speaker 1: like that idea of you waffling back and forth like
Speaker 1: is this guy stupid? Does he know? Is he insane?
Speaker 1: What does he do? And I don't waffle on Kushner.
Speaker 1: I think he's just never not been rich and has
Speaker 1: no concept of reality. I think that I think that
Speaker 1: about Kushner A lot of people around him I don't know.
Speaker 1: Adam might be in the same boat, or he might
Speaker 1: be like a literal sociopath. I really don't know with Adam,
Speaker 1: but I think Kushner is just completely out of out
Speaker 1: of reality. So sources close to Adam Noyman tend to
Speaker 1: credit the four point four billion dollar infusion of soft
Speaker 1: bank cash with inflating Adam's ego beyond the realm of
Speaker 1: sanity in the what how could it not? How could
Speaker 1: it not that that is fair? Like, of course that
Speaker 1: would break you. If I got four point four billion dollars,
Speaker 1: I would have a thousand tanks tomorrow. I hate journey
Speaker 1: and I would make people dance around a fire journey
Speaker 1: if something who wouldn't it's it's It is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of giving someone a mental illness. To give that much money,
Speaker 1: it's terrible for you. There's a lot of data on that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the money in the international success. If we worked at him,
Speaker 1: sit down meetings with world leaders, discussing the refugee crisis
Speaker 1: and problems of peace and war with people like the
Speaker 1: President of Canada. So what he does is least space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now he is working with world leaders. Yes, on,
Speaker 1: I assume the thing that he's an expert at leasing space,
Speaker 1: solving the refugee crisis. Okay, that's very different that now, No, same,
Speaker 1: not the same thing. See the reason all these people
Speaker 1: are leaving Syria nothing not enough leases. But char al
Speaker 1: Assad reduced the number of leaser arguments. Big thing was like,
Speaker 1: there's no leases. He only guessed non least space right now.
Speaker 1: One former executive claims, when Adam got in front of
Speaker 1: world leaders, it was like he started thinking he was one.
Speaker 1: And I'd like to quote now pularly bat shit insane
Speaker 1: Gizmono article which covers Adam's ambitions as a global peacemaker,
Speaker 1: and this might be the most deluded paragraph anyone's ever written.
Speaker 1: The paragraph itself is not deluded, but what it's about
Speaker 1: is so deluded. I can't fucking describe it. I will
Speaker 1: ship and baby's mouth right now? Is that? No? But
Speaker 1: you should put down your mic. In conversations with people
Speaker 1: inside and outside the company, Norman's pronouncements became wilder. He
Speaker 1: told one investor that he had convinced rama Manuel to
Speaker 1: run for president on the we Work agenda. Emmanuel did
Speaker 1: not respond to a request for common Norman told colleagues
Speaker 1: that he was saving the women of Saudi Arabia by
Speaker 1: working with Crown Prince Mohammed been Salmon to offer women
Speaker 1: coating classes. According to a source, in another meeting, Norman
Speaker 1: said three people were going to save the world. Ben Salmon,
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner and Norman. Shortly after the news broken October
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen that Saudi agents tortured dissident and
Speaker 1: Washington Post columnist Jamal ka Shogi and carved his body
Speaker 1: with a bone saw, likely on order from the Crown
Speaker 1: Prince himself, no Himan told George W. Bush's former national
Speaker 1: security advisor, Stephen Hadley that everything could be worked out
Speaker 1: if Ben Salmon had the right mentor. Confused, Hadley asked
Speaker 1: who that person might be. According to a source familiar
Speaker 1: with the meeting, no Himan passed for a moment and said, me,
Speaker 1: you are on a special level of deluded George W.
Speaker 1: Bush's former national security advisors, like, this guy is a
Speaker 1: fucking idiot. I always killed hundreds of millions of people.
Speaker 1: This hundred nuts. Honestly, I believe that rom part though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's within the rama. Believable. We work agenda within
Speaker 1: the rama. He wanted to be Ben Salmon's mentor that
Speaker 1: that dude, terrible guy but not an idiot, would ship
Speaker 1: him out. Like Adam spent the first half of twenty
Speaker 1: nine team preparing for we worked long awaited I p O.
Speaker 1: In the startup world, initial public offerings are the stuff
Speaker 1: of legend. When Apple went public, it created hundreds of
Speaker 1: millionaires in a matter of minutes. Even the secretary got rich.
Speaker 1: Google's ibri oh brought even more multimillionaires into the world
Speaker 1: employees if we were clearly expected their i PO would
Speaker 1: bring the same windfall. CEO Adam Neuman showed no outward
Speaker 1: signs of worry his company even valued at forty seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars earlier in the year, the fact that he
Speaker 1: hoped would bring even more VC money in and ideally
Speaker 1: convinced Soft Bank that we worked was safe to keep
Speaker 1: pumping money into. And who would will convince any of
Speaker 1: my not convinced listeners money isn't real and as dumb
Speaker 1: as shit? What kind of what kind of person is
Speaker 1: forty seven billion dollars? That's that's an insane number. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's idiotic. It is an idiotic number. Yeah, twelve
Speaker 1: thousand people who I don't know what they're doing picking lamps.
Speaker 1: It is its enables these lunatics. The entire system is
Speaker 1: built by them and I but there has to be
Speaker 1: something grunt worker at one of these moodies or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's just like they're not worth as much, guys. And
Speaker 1: then the top Yeah, I think all of the grunt
Speaker 1: workers are like, yeah, this grift hang gonna last long
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna get my nineteen dollars an hour. Look
Speaker 1: at these assholes. Yeah. So the reality of we work
Speaker 1: success was less attractive than the forty seven billion dollar valuation.
Speaker 1: By two en more than twelve billion dollars of venture
Speaker 1: capital and debt had been pumped into the company and lost.
Speaker 1: And while it's true that we works revenue had doubled
Speaker 1: every year and also lost hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: per year and eventually billions of dollars per year, and
Speaker 1: there were no signs of this trend debating. On September eighteen, nineteen,
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal published a massive expose a on
Speaker 1: we Work, revealing details about its toxic internal culture and,
Speaker 1: more worryingly to the suits, details about Adam's own self dealing.
Speaker 1: The report based in part on the August filing his
Speaker 1: employees had made to the SEC as part of the
Speaker 1: I p O process revealed that Adam had taken out
Speaker 1: more than seven and forty million dollars in personal loans
Speaker 1: on his company's stock. Since Adam was dyslexic, he had
Speaker 1: to have his advisers brief among the revelations and the
Speaker 1: story while he huddled with his people to work at
Speaker 1: a response to the damning article, investors and board members
Speaker 1: called for him to step down. Adam was initially defiant,
Speaker 1: telling one colleague, I'm never not going to be CEO,
Speaker 1: but that was not in his hands anymore. We Work
Speaker 1: CFO held a conference call with the board of directors
Speaker 1: and said that Adam had to step down. Jamie Diamond
Speaker 1: soon joined the consensus, arguing that We Work would never
Speaker 1: get investors to pump in more money. While Neuman was CEO,
Speaker 1: the company that had been worth forty seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: mere weeks ago now teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: In the end, Adam stepped down. His wife was for
Speaker 1: to leave the company too, but don't worry about them.
Speaker 1: They walked away with a severance package worth roughly one
Speaker 1: and a half billion dollars and she's still a license
Speaker 1: and a licensed certified excuse me, very different. Who's the
Speaker 1: licensing board for yos? I mean she knows the Dollai
Speaker 1: Lama she was at his birthday. Yeah, uh massa yo
Speaker 1: she saw agreed to pump another nine and a half
Speaker 1: billion dollars until we Work as a rescue package. All
Speaker 1: talk of exponential growth and world conquest were gone, though
Speaker 1: We Grow was shuddered suddenly, leaving dozens of wealthy parents
Speaker 1: with no fancy school to send their children to. Many
Speaker 1: were presumably forced to go with avert your eyes, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: public schools, since the best private schools all have long
Speaker 1: waiting lists. Four thousand employees, one third of we Works workforce,
Speaker 1: were laid off. More layoffs are likely to come. And
Speaker 1: that is more or less where things in now and
Speaker 1: I'm vaporized. More than ten and a half billion dollars,
Speaker 1: stole another one point five billion dollars, put thousands of
Speaker 1: people out of jobs, and raise the costs of real
Speaker 1: estate in cities throughout the globe. Yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: that's a little side effect of this that oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that gets sort of under recognized. Well, the part where. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like even as this collapses, all the people who
Speaker 1: would have used the space or we're using it before
Speaker 1: now it might be prohibitive for them before the landlords
Speaker 1: are going to collapse, which isn't my primary worry. But
Speaker 1: still compared to him, people who operated reasonably legitimate businesses. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just a lot of human shrapnel in the wake
Speaker 1: of this. But he's got a billion and a half dollars.
Speaker 1: Good for him, No, not no, no bad So, Jordan,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about dream I have. It's
Speaker 1: a dream of a group of people, group of human beings,
Speaker 1: pushing for the greatest potential, vibrating off of one another, positive, positive,
Speaker 1: positive vibration. We got machetes, we got machetes. We're all drunk,
Speaker 1: really drunk, and we're just we're just shoving noumans off
Speaker 1: the buildings, just right off the top, maybe a cushioner
Speaker 1: or two. Right now. I have a personal sense of
Speaker 1: morality that I believe for crewe you'll you'll learn to
Speaker 1: subsume that to the group. Just let that go for
Speaker 1: a little one. There you go. I feel like a
Speaker 1: temporary suspension of morality is fine when now we all
Speaker 1: got to shave our heads. We live in yurts. These
Speaker 1: are all key aspects. Do I get to push him myself? Yes?
Speaker 1: What if? What if I were to tell you you'll
Speaker 1: get cubicle on Mars? Oh yeah, this ins in Mars?
Speaker 1: Ye quite questions? Yeah oxygen, no, but you won't need
Speaker 1: it by the time we get there. Yeah, the kids
Speaker 1: provide the oxygen. I'll take the deal. So, gentlemen, this
Speaker 1: is the Adam Neuman story. An asshole who did nothing
Speaker 1: but scam people. Seems fell apart pretty recently. It seems
Speaker 1: just within the last couple of weeks. I do like
Speaker 1: his meteoric rise and fall to only having one point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars really a tragedy. We should subsidize an
Speaker 1: extra couple of billion. Yeah. Absolutely, where's Massa Yoshi with
Speaker 1: that sixteen billion dollars? H Hen I've got something to
Speaker 1: sell him, and it's called regularly and it's like the
Speaker 1: Massa Yoshi. The whole reason he has all that money
Speaker 1: is that he invested a bunch of money in a'll
Speaker 1: Li Baba back when it was tiny and one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things ever. But like, clearly he's a dumb
Speaker 1: guy who got lucky once I'd tell him that to
Speaker 1: his face, I think you're dumb. I don't think you're
Speaker 1: very smart. You get taken in by this ship that's
Speaker 1: crowd fund an opportunity for Robert to tell him to
Speaker 1: more people need to do that to these people. I
Speaker 1: watched the documentary recently. I was in UM. I was
Speaker 1: in Amsterdam, UH and I had an attend an opportunity
Speaker 1: to attend a movie at the documentary festival that they
Speaker 1: hold there, and it was a documentary about the World
Speaker 1: Economic Forum in Davos, and it was the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where as I was giving it, UM, we found
Speaker 1: out that like uh, I think Cloud Schwab, the guy
Speaker 1: who founded it, was like like three rows behind us
Speaker 1: in the room and stuff, like they did a Q
Speaker 1: and A with them afterwards. But this documentary, which will
Speaker 1: be I think out for the general public sooner, is
Speaker 1: very much worth watching UM. And it's about like behind
Speaker 1: the scenes at Davos, the first one that's been able
Speaker 1: to do that. So it's really a lot of interesting stuff,
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of like you get a feel
Speaker 1: for these people as human beings and what they actually believe. UM,
Speaker 1: I mean they are that's the problem. UM So there's
Speaker 1: a great moment in it where the head of green
Speaker 1: Peace confronts Gyr bolson Yaro in a in a like
Speaker 1: a suare sort of thing about ostensibly like she's talking
Speaker 1: to the whole thing about how she wants to like
Speaker 1: confront him and these other people with their damage to
Speaker 1: the climate. And she gets a chance to and she
Speaker 1: basically says like, well, you know, we're looking at what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do the Amazon, like everybody's watching, and then
Speaker 1: walks away and Jerry like clearly doesn't give a ship,
Speaker 1: like doesn't have the least impact on her, and all
Speaker 1: of her friends are like, I can't believe how brave
Speaker 1: you are. You're so brave, you did this great thing,
Speaker 1: and like that's the fucking problem. Like if you go
Speaker 1: if you go up to Jai, your bolson Yarrow and
Speaker 1: you don't have a lining of questioning that's going to
Speaker 1: make him awkward, bottle him, hit him in the face
Speaker 1: of the bottle. Nobody does that to these people. Nobody
Speaker 1: bottles him. Nobody bottle that is true. I will, I
Speaker 1: will back you up, and that no one does do that.
Speaker 1: What do y'all, what do y'all? What do y'all think
Speaker 1: at the end of this, I don't know. It's it's interesting,
Speaker 1: like I when you whenever you hear a story like
Speaker 1: this about somebody who like there's a like real like
Speaker 1: not terrible and he's got a billion dollars although that
Speaker 1: is terrible, but like whenever there's a big fall, it's
Speaker 1: just so clear over and over, like there's so many
Speaker 1: times at which where there should have been like, hey,
Speaker 1: you said you wanted sucking offices on Mars. You you
Speaker 1: want to be president of the world. There's like indications
Speaker 1: along the way they're like someone should have stepped in,
Speaker 1: and just we have a system that's based on no
Speaker 1: one ever stepping in. Like as long as the pretense
Speaker 1: is there in the appearances of um, you know, like
Speaker 1: this is moving in the right direction, people are profiting
Speaker 1: off it that then there's no incentive to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you seem um like you're acting out here. There's something
Speaker 1: there's something you're acting out that we should probably deal with.
Speaker 1: We just let it happen and then it just plays
Speaker 1: its course and everyone gets hurt. That's how I feel. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the way I view it is because I'm trying to
Speaker 1: exist in the present without losing my mind. Um So,
Speaker 1: the way I view it tends to our like trying
Speaker 1: to find a historical context to all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And these types of lunatic grifters have been around since
Speaker 1: the fucking beginning. It's only the scale that has gotten larger.
Speaker 1: So I never know if this shared imaginary idea of
Speaker 1: forty seven billion dollars which just doesn't exist, it's like
Speaker 1: it's just an imaginary, it's just fantasy. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's not like that's too much different from so many
Speaker 1: you know, like obviously the stock exchange crash, because all
Speaker 1: of that ship was imaginary. To go back further and
Speaker 1: you get to so many different times the economy collapsed
Speaker 1: in London because that was all imaginary too, like all
Speaker 1: of this ship. And the only thing that's changed though,
Speaker 1: is that now a company like we Work is influencing
Speaker 1: some dumb guy who invested in Ali Baba along with NBS,
Speaker 1: and now he's given power to help solve the Middle
Speaker 1: East peace. Price seems qualified, you know, like it used
Speaker 1: to be contential guy just sucked up the people in
Speaker 1: the financial world died, not like sucking the entirety of
Speaker 1: this part of the problem. With our system is that
Speaker 1: if you're good at one thing and that one thing
Speaker 1: allows you to make money, then we decide you're good
Speaker 1: at everything, because money is really the only thing that matters.
Speaker 1: So you get to control healthcare, you get to control
Speaker 1: foreign policy, you get to pick where the army guys go.
Speaker 1: I mean, how different is it like the idea that
Speaker 1: this guy is having conversations about foreign policy? How different
Speaker 1: is it? Then Trump was a landlord and is now president.
Speaker 1: How how different is it than a king? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy's parents were the king, so now he's in charge
Speaker 1: of the army. Yeah. And what was the original reality
Speaker 1: show but the Royalty. It's smarter than the monarchy, but
Speaker 1: not a lot. The original reality show might have been Royalty.
Speaker 1: But the one that will change the game is you
Speaker 1: getting tricked by every cult leader and really want to
Speaker 1: That would be a great I want to find out
Speaker 1: it's one of those like I want to against the best,
Speaker 1: would fail every Yes, that's the problem. You just need
Speaker 1: to reduce those people. I want to enter the pushing
Speaker 1: them off a building. Okay, here's here's my new pitch. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I don't get taken in by the cult, later
Speaker 1: I get all of their money and power. Let's raise
Speaker 1: the stakes for both of us. You can't have their
Speaker 1: power because you're constitutionally incapable from doing the emotional equivalent
Speaker 1: of raping people, which is what cult leaders do. And
Speaker 1: their money isn't real. Yeah, sometimes it is. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: is Hubbard's that ship, it's my motherfucker had real lucra.
Speaker 1: He owed it all to somebody else. He just kept it,
Speaker 1: didn't tricked them into giving him stack. None of these
Speaker 1: guys are as good as lr H. He's success the
Speaker 1: ones on what was it Operation White White Snow White.
Speaker 1: I was more a fan of the time he made
Speaker 1: his own at Navy Retinue. God, I love l Ron Hubbard.
Speaker 1: You can't not love the guy to the Admiral Andy
Speaker 1: Daly is l Ron Hubbard nol Ron Hubbard should burn
Speaker 1: in hell twice. We're gonna end this episode ignoring Jordan's
Speaker 1: statement with a statement of our undying love to l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard and uh some plugs. We we do a
Speaker 1: podcast called Knowledge Fight about Jux Jones. We put out
Speaker 1: too much content. People can find it by googling, uh
Speaker 1: knowledge Fight dot com or website, and you know we're
Speaker 1: on iTunes and all that stuff on Twitter at Knowledge, Underscore,
Speaker 1: Fight and I am Jordan's um a comedian. Uh Still,
Speaker 1: technically speaking, I am not busy, so go ahead and
Speaker 1: book go to bed. Jordan is available for any dates
Speaker 1: in g no Mo absolutely. Gnome is high on my list.
Speaker 1: I will will also do corporate gigs exclusively only only only. Okay,
Speaker 1: well then I will work for we work for. I
Speaker 1: guess twice the cost of a normal comedian. We riff,
Speaker 1: but you gotta send him up. You got to send
Speaker 1: him up double economy class. That's twice his economy. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having there has been a lot of fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that has been fantastic and it's a pleasure to meet
Speaker 1: you in in real life human person. Well, thanks for
Speaker 1: inviting me to your wonderful city. Chicago, the city that
Speaker 1: sleeps occasionally never is often awake, slightly broad shoulders, but
Speaker 1: not very the city of angels that is regularly awake
Speaker 1: but often asleep, with broad shoulders, and also an apple
Speaker 1: that is large and windy. The city of grandfathered in
Speaker 1: four am bars. I feel like it's what we should
Speaker 1: be known as. Ye, that's a good nick. That's true here. Huh,
Speaker 1: there's grandfathers. It completely changed my opinion of your city
Speaker 1: based on that knowledge, and I was going to just
Speaker 1: sl under it for years out. But now that I
Speaker 1: know that, um now there's a bar near my place
Speaker 1: that is apparently so old they open at nine am.
Speaker 1: It's against the law to sell alcohol before eleven. But
Speaker 1: if you've just been around long enough, all bets are
Speaker 1: off beat space every Oh well, I'm Robert Evans. This
Speaker 1: has been behind the Bastards, behind the Bastards dot com sources,
Speaker 1: Bastards pod, Twitter, Instagram, I'm on Instagram and dad, I right, Okay,
Speaker 1: continue listening to this podcast. Listen to Knowledge Fight. It's
Speaker 1: what I listened to when I'm at the gym, when
Speaker 1: I'm driving, when I'm masturbating shamefully in someone else's kitchen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Knowledge Fight the podcast for all those moments. That's what
Speaker 1: we set out to be. So there's t shirts on
Speaker 1: t public for my show and coming soon. I forgot
Speaker 1: what the T shirt was. I think you're going to
Speaker 1: make a mastur patent John College Fight. If you accidentally
Speaker 1: catch yourself in the mirror, don't look Bye.