Part Two: The Idiot Who Made, And Destroyed, WeWork

Right where you asking? Where you ask a question you can ask would be interesting a question in their podcast. I have planned several questions in the podcast Robert, do you like music? Yeah? In the podcast that these two do where they talk a little bit about Alex Jones. Uh. Jordan's who normally is the person who comes in cold, asks Dan a question at the start, and I guess yeah, because you hit me hit me up with a question. Oh,

let's see, Robert, have any experience with roller coasters? What's um? I've only ever loved one roller coaster, Jordan's and it wasn't a roller coaster, Um, it was a It was a it was a virtual reality sort of experience, and six Flags over Texas US a little bit, a little bit, you were like a like an F sixteen pilot breaking the sound barrier. It was very cool. Not really a roller coaster. I don't really like roller coasters. I've been on a number of them. It's fine, it's just not

my thing. Um but but I liked that ride and then six Flags took it away from you. Specific one day, One day I will take vengeance. Okay, that is that is I want to clarify that is absolutely a terroristic One day they're gonna wake up and it's only gonna be five flat not damn it. Yeah, I'm gonna take at least I'm gonna take at least eight of those flags. I don't know how to do that percentage. It's hard with the ballpark. And my answer is I liked that one.

Mr Toad's Wild Ride thing that wind in the willows, that is that gets drunk and the bar Rabbit one run. I love that one before and then in a different way after I realized how racist there was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a real Before it was just like, this is a fun ride. I'm seven and after it was like, really, really, still it is two thousand and four. That's that's Splash Mountain, right, isn't it that that's the one that has the bray rabbit and because I think at the end of it

you go over the waterfall and it killed that guy. Yeah, I think so, and that there's so much to unpack about Splash Mountain. I mean it has that Song of the South can action to it. There's also like a tradition of people flashing on the way down, like for kids, there's a lot. There's a lot going on with a very complicated Disney parks in general. My favorite was You Go Up, and my favorite the velveteen dream Wrestler Fantasty.

They should have a velveteen Rabbit ride where they just take something the children love individually and destroy it in front of less of a ride and more of child abuse. But yeah, if it were Adam, it would be a bottle of tequila. Yes, thank you for bringing it back to Adam Noyman. Great transition, very smooth. So we ended the last episode with with we work nearing its height until seventeen with a lot of money just gets this in flush four point four billion dollars fucking cash, which

they used to make Adam's dumbest dreams come true. Dizzy double back to the baby clothes in a way. Now to the KKK crawlers, it did advocate. Now, before we get into all that what he did with all this VC money, I want to start this episode. I'm talking a little bit about cults some more. Now. We Work has been described by a number of former employees as quote like Annoyment has been described as a cult leader.

Former employees often call his personal charisma almost intoxicating. One former executive said, if you had to go to war, you wanted him to be your general. Another recalled his sense of himself is beyond human. When you're in a room with Adam, he can almost convince you of anything. There are certainly Colt like tactics at use and we Work.

Colts endeavored to separate their members from the wider world and the friends and family they have outside the cult, and you could argue that things like thank God it's Monday and mandatory after ours fun events fulfill that role.

They also rely unconsciousness alteration directs. This is all stuff we've talked about keeping people tired exhausted, fucked up, And of course the fact that I I will note in a point of fairness that the fact that Ada himself was often one of the drunkest people in the company makes this a little bit less manipulative. It's sort of like he kind of just digs that stuff. Yeah, it would be a much clearer red flag if he was not drinking and handing out alcohol. Yeah yeah, that that

would be that would be deliberately drugging his employees. Yeah. Yeah, So it's more complicated than just he's a cult leader, but he uses a lot of those tactics um clearly, maybe just sort of you get the feeling with him that it's a lot of it's not as much intentional as it is like instinctive um, which I guess is how we get our first cult. Some people just know

how to do that. Know, my family was in a cult whenever I was born, so I know all of the tricks and all of the ways that you get kind of accidentally swept up in all of that ship and then next thing you know, everybody's wearing the same clothes dancing around a fire to journey. Yeah, tragic, that's the just the drain everybody's circles. Although people should consider joining the cult that I'm gonna start where you go give me the elevator pitch. We're people to talk in elevator.

I mean it's it's a mix of people gifting me with large amounts of machetes, getting really high and shoving Adam Noyman off of buildings. It's gonna be a good Colt. Oh, I was just I was just cont there's a there's a shelf life to this thing. Is there's one Adam Noyman there is? There is the great thing about shoving people off of building says there's always more people in more buildings. That's true. Or if you can just keep shoving, which is our motto, just keep you, just keep shoving.

They're going to this Adam we work situation. Maybe we haven't, like actual time hasn't really hit that point at so I can't say now if we're going to compare it, now him into a cult leader and we worked to a cult Keith renieris Nexium. Colt might be the best one to reference Listeners to Part three of our series on Keith Ranieri and Nexium. What recalled that he hosted a yearly event called Vanguard Week, where followers from all over the globe would fly in to celebrate Keith's birthday.

In the same vein, we Work had Summer Camp, an annual event where employees would gather, celebrate, and network. Here's The New York Times talking about this fun Setadays. All kinds of activities were offered, yoga acts, throwing leaf printing, a drum circle, along with entertainment by an expensive array of visiting performers. The chain Smokers once played and received we Work stock as part of their fee, while the weekend was flown in from Toronto by helicopter. Tenacious We

an employee band, has also performed sounds insufferable. That's terrible. I don't even want to see the real version. It was just so much everything. One former executive said, alcohol, drugs. There was not a lot of food. That was the only thing. There wasn't a lot of anything that would bulwark you against against the alcohol day drugs. Yeah, I'm super high already, but I'm very hungry. I'm gonna eat all of these mushrooms. Yeah, just for some that has

happened to me once and I It's not a great food. No, nor is it a great idea? As you were describing that festival, I did point at you very aggressively because they kind of almost swung you with the ex throwing, didn't they look my My cult would indeed center around lots of drugs, throwing axes, dancing around fires the weekend. Well that song often actually I do, I do, but

like but that's all sounds suspiciously like the great outdoor games. No, no, no, no, there's no I feel like I feel like adding an element of competition to throwing sharp objects at inert things cheapens it. You just you just throwing axes and knives for the joy of throwing sharp things at wooden thing, the purity of the exact exactly now. Summer camp included educational interludes like speeches from quantum physicist Michael Brooks, alongside

beer pong and dancing to electronic music. And in the midst of these days long buccan oals two employees plagued with drugs, limitless alcohol, little food, and less sleep. Adam no Himan would preach his gospel. In a two thou thirteen summer camp. He took to the stage to say, I think the thing that all of us know is that if you want to succeed in this world, you

have to build something that has intention. Every one of us is here because it has meaning, because we want to do something that actually makes the world a better place, and we want to make money doing it. The crowd reportedly broke into wild cheers at this. One former senior executive who was there later recalled, so many of the people were young and had never worked in a real company. They bought all of it. I realized after I got

there it was a cult now. Summer Camp started as an event on the land of some of no Himan's friends, but in two thousand seven teen moved to the English country side. Using some of the billions of new money pumped into via soft banks four point four billion dollar infusion, they flew employees in from all around the world. Attendees reported that they were allowed to walk up to the bar and ask for multiple entire bottles of wine at once.

People played Edward forty hands with fancy bottles of rose, which is what I would do. Yeah, that part sounds great. Yeah, that's when you realize the liquor is free and expensive and they'll just hand you bottles that's what you do. Have you ever done that? Hands? Yeah? The worst thing I've done in fucking Lubyana Slavinia was you can buy two liters of wine in a gigantic juice box for about a dollar and a half um, and you mix it with equal parts pepsi, and it is the worst idea.

Do you duct tape those to your hands? I know, we just drank um. I blacked out, throwing an empty bottle on top of the stranger's roof, and I came to alone without any of my friends near me, receiving a falafel from somebody having already paid with my phone, gone nine in the morning, like eight hours later, just the first time, only time that's ever happened. We're just like, I black out and I come back in the middle

of a transaction. Yeah, I had no I was alone, but I had lost the friendship content I I did that once. I taped duct tape forties to my hands wine. Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible because you eventually have to bee. Yeah, it's steel reserve. Isn't something anyone should drink two of? Yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah, me and my buddy has also had a thing we did called freedom forties. That was you have to chugle forty and nine minutes and eleven

seconds for else the terrorists win. It's just shockingly hard to do because forties are ghastly. Yeah, it's really the best way to forget now. One employee later told The New York Times that she realized it was time to quit we work when she woke up in a t p at summer camp to find one of her colleagues outside pissing on her tent. That employee later told New York Magazine talked to any community manager unto twenty four and it's the greatest weekend of your life. But I

am not here to get paid on now. I'm gonna quote one more time from that New York Magazine article discussing the two thousand eighteen Summer Camp, which spoilers would prove to be the last one At last year's event, According to Report and Property magazine, a British real estate publication, Norman sat on stage next to his wife and McKelvey as the crowd, saying O leo, leo, le we were employee from India started chanting let's go, we work, Let's

go while another from California screamed, you're changing the world, Adam. We love you. Augusto Contreras, we were employee from Mexico City, proposed to his girlfriend next to a dodgeball tournament. I felt like I was surrounded by my extended family. He told the company blog. He had been at we work for seven months, so they find the people who are vulnerable to this, and they're very vulnerable to When you

said that it was the last one. I expected that story to be something like really tragic or like fire festivally, but just it was just like performed there. Though you're sucking in people who need what this pretends to provide, it doesn't really provide it. But that's coming later now. That Fast Company article I've quoted from a couple of times in this episode was released in two thousand sixteen, and it provides even more detail on the profoundly culti

way that Adam presented himself at company events. Quote. A beatles course bounces off the bear concrete walls of what was once JP Morgan's headquarters come together right now, the nearly thousand chattering. We were employees who filled the event space, look towards the stage expecting CEO Adam Neuman to appear from the wings at any second. Instead, he sprints down the center aisle and giddy conversations evolve into a cheer. When John Lennon trills over me, Norman leaps onto the stage,

sticking the landing. This is the way this guy is presenting himself to his employees, and it kind of seems like a lot of made it up. Yeah, well has already come out. Yeah yeah, they should know better, they should know, but people never learned about this. I mean, World War two came out and we all know what happened in two thousand sixteen. So have you have you ever watched like the presentations that like MLM is like

the multiple market, Yeah, this is exactly similar. I've watched a number of those, like those seminars and the gatherings that they do, and that has all of those those signs I I wanna know. I try to repeat frequently that I think everybody has a kind of grift that they're vulnerable to, no matter how smart, because there has nothing to do with intelligence. It's it has everything to do with the fact that everybody has needs, and particularly secret needs that even they don't know how to voice

a lot of the time. And if someone other than you, particularly predators, what they're good at is seeing things and others that they don't see in themselves but that are present. If they're able to pick that out, they'll get you. Um. It doesn't matter how smart and well read you are, they'll get you. Um. We all have a thing. And Adam found a group of people who I think we're

raised on stories like Apples. You know the history of the Apple core, Google, these companies that like change the world and had these like grand visions and like these in the legendary leaders. Um, and everybody got super fucking rich too. And Adam knew how to create the feeling that that's what was going on here. It wasn't it's just leasing office space. It wasn't literally like Google that

that is like a revolution. We organized the world's information Apple We changed the fundamentally the way that daily life exists for billions of people. Those are companies where you really can't oversell, at least the impact of what's happening. These people are leasing office space. But he may not feel like that. Yeah, but there's kids that that's part

of why it is. It is like He watched that Apple commercial where the hammer is thrown into the giant screen and all the all the drones are there, and he was like, what if I made all those drones. Those guys were super cool. Yeah, that seems like that's the thing I want to do. I want to throw a hammer and ship that'll whether there. Everything will fall. Then it's really terrible. It's hard for me not to think that, like, none of this would be possible without booze.

Like it's like, there's it's not for nothing that alcohol is in every story you made about we were It really seems very be inflated. The only way to have achieved the inflated sense of self confidence that was clearly a major aspect of this would have been to give everyone free guns, which is how my cult's gonna work. I thought it was machetes and don't do it enough. Man, It's really it's got to be an a K forty seven. I understand now. That makes you feel like a revolutionary,

like holding a calash. That's what I hear. And then we're going to shove people off the buildings. I don't know him in at first, but to the bullets. They have to each according to the bullets they deserve. That really good, Like I should also abstain from this bit. And here's our special third guest, FBI agent Chicago is actually a lot more than one of you. Okay, right now. The entire Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms m not fans now. And they have deep dish pizza. I refuse

to try it. That's fine, Yeah, don't worry about it. Every everyone I know from Chicago has said that it's fine from Chicago, like, oh, you gotta try to do yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's like Cali Max as good as Tech Max. Let's say it lived in both fair enough, not nearly as good. Pizza fight, you know, speaking of dog fight,

it's not speaking of dog fights. Um, speaking of dog fights, you know who would never train dogs to fight that at one point, at one point you probably would assume he wouldn't when he was five, And like a five year old Michael Vick, someone who is incapable of hosting dog fights is the sponsors of this show, Silky, one of the better a transitions on this series. Off we go, We're back. Ah. What I loved about those products and services was that none of them were for dog fights.

That's true. That's true. Sometimes you just can't abandon the dogfight when you should. It's no, it's hard to it's hard to abandon the dog. But it's also rare these days for me to guess on a podcast that isn't sponsor a via dog fighting. It is. Well, and you know, I just should say, if you use the promo code bastards, you get access to the twenty four hour streaming dog fights, all the best dog fights we got chihuahuas, and all

the saber metrics about the fighting. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay. So uh Now, shortly after Adam no Uhman founded We Work, he'd made what seemed to be at the time an impossible promise that his company would one day beat out JP Morgan and become the largest private office tenant in the city of New York. Given that New York is New York, that's a pretty huge deal. Like, so, JP Morgan was prior the most office, the gigantic bank worth

all of the money in the world. Is so saying I'm going to beat them, that's a big that's a big thing to to hit. But in two thousand eighteen, this dream became a reality. We Work now lee five million square feet over fifty locations across the city. So all of it still not making money, correct, not a profit. They're making money, but not net not net. Yeah. Now, those locations, as we got into a little bit released with venture capital money, not actual profits made by the company.

And those offices were kept full due to free rent offers in lease buyouts, which is not a strategy that can continue forever. You could just you could give people

homes for less. It does make more sense. It does feel like people talk about like we can't afford universal healthcare, and then it's like how much money did we work blow through, which just like even outside of how much money did we spent on the F thirty five, which is actually vastly higher like but still and if he like housed people instead of all these offices, those people would get tons of booze. Yeah, yep, they be drunk

as ship. Now. SoftBank's massive investments seem to confirm Adam's grand post about the importance of his company, and his ego swelled. Consequently, he started talking to colleagues about his desire for eternal life. This is like moon base all over here. Nope, nope, no, this is where Dan's ears. He invested in Life Bio Sciences, a Life Extensions start

up to further this end. The company mission is to create a future where age related decline is not a fact of life, and I'm increasingly throughout wild ideas for ways we Were could expand to areas well outside of its wheelhouse. Sometime after seventeen two seventeen, he started talking

about starting an airline called We Fly. This is some ship where you're like, you look in history and you're like, how is it The people got sold on alchemy and the philosopher's stone and internal life, and then you look at that guy in your life. Yeah, they're still there. They're still doing it. In fairness, we Fly kind of like it's it's to find enough name for an airline. It's just like, what's your experience renting buildings to companies? What do you want to do? Run an airline? What

is an airplane? But in office sky office exactly. That is actually where these episodes were written, so exactly airlines in Iceland that used to the world of warcraft airlines and there was whizz Air, which is the worst airlines started. It's like a bike share company and their next move is like we'll run an airline. Turns out those skills do not translate. Not weird now, Adam increasingly throughout wild ideas for ways we were it could expand into areas

well outside. Oh right, I read that a little bit. Oh yeah, so we fly his one. There was also talk of we sail and something called we sleep, which I have no idea what that was supposed to be. Yeah, astresses, maybe like a sleep lab. He briefly discussed his ambition to become Israel's Prime minister, before amending to say that if he ran for any office, it would be for

president of the world. Little part of how you know this was a little bit CULTI is that if my boss this podcast, Jack O'Brien, somebody have great respect for I've worked with him eleven twelve years now, the vast majority basically all of my working life. If he told me seriously that if he ever ran for office, it would be for president of the world, and it wasn't

like a bad joke, I would just start punching. And I love Jack, but that's what you do when you care about someone and they say you just start hitting them. It's a it's a mentality. That needs to be gone from. It needs to be hit. Yeah, you don't. You just don't do that, especially when it's paired with like I'm trying to put money into life extension technology and I want the president of the world. I'm going to hit

you with this brick. This is what needs to happen. Now, become a problems response to that President of the world with one eye. You will not have both of your eyes while you do it. I will make sure of that. I think it is inevitable that if there is a president of the world, they will have one eye, but there will be an ipatch situation because it will be a dystopian like water World type of what is the name Dee Boy from Friday? The President of the World

and fifth Element. That's a great president. That's the one. That's the one that I'm all about. I I will say, as an anarchist, I have a lot of different, conflicting, always shifting ideas about about how I think the world ought to be. One thing I'm certain of is that based on my ideology, if I ever think someone might become the president of the world, I'm going to try

to hit him with a brick. I think that's fair, although I also think that, Yeah, I think that anytime you hear someone say like, I want to be president of the world, Like, what scares me about that is not the possibility they will become president of the world. It's just what that implies about their mental state. Yeah, it's like because it's like this is this is trouble.

Like I would I would have a very negative reaction to somebody who was like, I'm going to be president, because that's a bad thing to want to be um, But somebody wants to be president of the world, that's a bricking that's a bricking mentality. Yeah, I mean the truth is the only people that should be empowered the people who don't want to be in power. And that's

why we're fucked. Now, all of this we've been talking about for several minutes now was a paragraph and I haven't read the last sentence and the most insufferable sentence. In the two eighteen summer Camp, Adam Neuman promised that we work would solve the problem of children without parents and then eradicate world hunger. We're going to kill children without a parents. Just start gating orphans. They shan't be hungry. Though we works value sword past ten billion, then past

twenty billion. Adam Neuman was now, on paper at least a billionaire himself, so there was no indication of how he planned to solve those problems, No on whatsoever. Well, a little bit, we'll get get a little bit of that, a little bit patient and Elizabeth Warren made a white paper. You know, he actually, if he had, that would have

been more thought than I think he gave to it. Yeah. Uh. He immediately started bragging after becoming a billionaire again on paper that his personal goal was to become the world's first trillionaire. Do we not have brick Brickham Good, No, we don't have one. No, Jeff Bezos is like Jeff's and Bill Gates or like at a hundred and twenty million something like that. That's not even all that close to a trillion. I have so little interest in money

stuff that I just assumed we had a couple. I feel like it is a matter of like the survival of civilization level importance that we not let anyone reach that level. Yeah. I feel like it's a matter of survival and don't allow billionaires to exist until No, I mean, we've we've got to stop that. Yeah, that's a bricken. If I want to be a trillionaire, that's a brick in I see a shirt in your future, that's a brick. That's a brick. And you want to be I'm gonna

hit you with a brick. I just gotta do it. If you were a stand up comedian touring the Midwest, you would sell a lot of that's a brick in shirts. Yeah. Yeah. Now the reality of Adam's wealth was less impressive. He made millions as we work, CEO, because that's what CEOs do, and he made millions more from having the company, least from properties he owned. But he also had borrowed more than seven hundred and forty million dollars against his stock

in the company, a thing that is legal. For some reason, he sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of his own shares. This was often done in a very shady fashion. For example, in two fifteen, he sold tens of millions of dollars worth of shares. Then he had the company launched a stock buyback program to buy employee shares of stock.

The buy back program offered employees a per share price that was markedly lower than what Annoyman had been paid for his stock, and since Adam stock sales weren't public, we Works employees didn't realize they were being screwed to

subsidize adams lifestyle. Man, I feel like all those guys who are like, Okay, here's what we'll do to increase productivity, create a cult and funk over everybody work with could really be served by like reading all the literature where they're like, if you pay people a living wage and give them benefits and give them time off, they will work more for you on their own. Jordan, that is not how you become president of the world. It's definitely not is that, you know how you've become president of

the world. It's racism. Racism now because it's the world. It's a number of different racisms. Because you've got to be able to it's a balance Mexicans, Tibetans, you gotta really all over the world. It's really religion. But even then you've got to I wonder, I wonder what it'll be. I wanted we might see it in our lifetimes, and I'm really I'm really curious. Yeah, I'm really curious to see whether or not it's a racism or a religious,

a gutry thing. Well not just which one, which plane to which sort of bigotry wins, you know, because I feel like it will be one president who's like, funk, all these different individual races that I've calculated will maximize my vote, and one president will be like fuck this specific right, So it would be like a like a focus tested racism versus instinctual racism. I mean, it's actually going to come down to Hillary versus Trump again. Very frustratingly, the m p A has to review type of racism

in a bunch of focus groups. Got now. During this time, Adam and Rebecca bought a ninety million dollar collection of homes around the world, including a sixty acre estate in Westchester County. Kids made it that marriage worked. I expected to divorce by now. You know, it's weird when you have hundreds of millions of dollars it's easy to stay married, which really speaks to how unpleasant Jeff Bezos is marriage

must have been. Anyway, I'm not gonna comment on that anymore. Um. Yeah, they had a twenty one million dollar mansion in the Bay Area with a room shaped like a guitar. They hired several nannies for their children, two personal assistants, and a chef. Even as much money as ad him was worth, his spending was incredibly excessive, and so was We Work spending. Well. Adam's craziest ideas, like establishing an airline, never went into production. The company did embark on a number of side hustles

At his direction. They created We Live, essentially a very expensive apartment complex with no privacy. Adam said this would drive suicide rates down because no one feels alone. Elevator talk getting really uncomfortable. But is that is kind of the natural progression if they're like making this company, if

it is like Comedy Towns. Yeah, yeah, you've created this, like this is the workspace we now on that, why wouldn't you then get into like now we're getting into your living Yeah, I'm trying to create a workplace slash living space. So why not just They also created a gym I think it was called we Rise. Um that should be their bakery. That should be their bakery, I know, I know missed opportunities. And then they created We Grow.

This was a school that Adam hoped would eventually expand into a project to house all the world's orphans Jesus at Adam said this fucking sentence, You guys. Adam said, if we GROW's planned to save the orphans, we want to solve this problem and give them a new family, but we work family. I'm speechless. It's terrifying if what

kind of person says that. I just just straight Yeah, there was a moment I wonder this this is this is a question like in the movie of this this dude's life, does he have that scarface moment where it's like you can see him just go past that point and it's like everything past this is just gonna be It's probably that night on the roof. It was that night on the roof. Maybe here there I can get people to do anything if they'll drink this this poop

beer could be anything on the roof. And then, oh, this is going to be an insufferable movie, isn't it? That makes him into like a cool another social network. I want to do it like a Wall Street. But it turned out that even when you satirize, there needs there should be a law that when you do a movie like Wolf of Wall Street, there needs to be a seven minute scene where the character ships himself. Yeah, really unbecoming him, embarrassing, and make it uncomfortable for the audience.

You know, it should be hard to get over that hump. You should expect it to be over like three minutes, and then it just not not like funny, not like the vomiting scene in Team America, like just just bad, just a bad thing to be a part of. Yeah, because it happened, I feel like that's a regulation we could pass. I think. I think so it's by and by partisan appeal. The Ship the Movie Shooting bill has passed through both houses and is now on the president's desk.

He was reportedly unable to sign today as he was too busy chopping off his enormous poop so that it could flush in less than ten flushes. That did happen. That's just that, that's just part of politics. You can't remove that from the history books. Yeah, amazing. It's gonna be really funny if we get past as a nation him being in office and don't collapse into a civil war.

Do you hear people talk about the dignity of the presidency again, Like, really, it's gonna it's gonna be like, I hope I get to be on TV at some point when that happens and just what what what is left? Did you hear the poop speech? I mean, historically the dignity of the presidency was lost, you know, I guess after Andrew it was always it was always an illusion. Jackson presented himself in a stately manner and stuff like like a six ft wheel of cheese is where I

get off the off four on? That's the that's the best thing he did. Yeah, we call six ftee. I feel like than accusing everyone else in the country of needing fifteen flushes to get their poop down the toilet, and every everyone listening knowing like you couldn't get a poop down? Could you? The president yourself? There the speech? No one else is having trouble with this. Here I am having pooped for four days. And yeah, I mean you can you can say that like the office is

undignified historically forever. But I think there is a value to a shared delusion, and that's kind of gone. There's a value, but it's not a good or a bad thing. It's just a value. The same fifteen has a value. Yeah. Now, when we last, before we went on this aggression, I said that Adam wanted to solve the problem of of of parentless children and give them a new family. That we make the digression because that is it is. It's

a nuts fucking sentence. Now before we work could house the world's orphans, though we're gonna put them on trains. It hands that nobody's ever done this before, and we'll send it all the way across the nation. You know, it's better than that. Um, it's better than that, but

dumber um. We in order to make we grow get to the point where it could house all of the world's orphans, it was going to start as a luxury boutique school for the children of rich people, charging the very wealthy in New York City thirty six to forty two dollars a year to educate their small children. This seems like the opposite the world's problem with making it

impossible for them to afford like I had. I'm like flying down to a group of Syrian refugees fleeing like a barrel bombing and it lib and like putting a hand on one of their shoulders and saying, in like twenty years when the cost comes down, take care of you right now, No way for now, it's just Sean Penn's kids, and they're getting a great education. I believe. Do you know who Sean Penn is? Oh you're dead now.

We Grow was Rebecca Noyman's project, his wife. She had been a core part of WE Work from the beginning. Of course, in two thou seventeen, the company had hired Soul Cycle founder Julie Rice is their chief brand officer, but when Rebecca came back from eternity leave later that year, she decided she wanted the title for herself and took it, so Julie had to quit. Okay, according to WE Works established business practices, she should have been fired. I'm disappointed

by this. She was, That's what happened because she was originally the chief brand officer, but then Rebecca got it. Now support this decision. Apparently, Rebecca is somewhat famous among WE Workers for firing people she met and got bad vibes from. One example is a mechanic for the company Gulf Stream Private Jet who was ship can't because Rebecca quote didn't like his energy. So she's the kind of

person we are all we all like now. Obviously, she was the perfect person to design a brand new school from the ground up. Rebecca, of course, had no relevant experience in education and also what children and running a school? What if these kids have bad vibes, well then then you just kill you throw them off the top of that build. Real trouble of someone who's like, so, what was missing from public education was more capriciousness yea, and

good vibes. Yeah, she had nowhere elm in experience, but she didn't think that really mattered. She told interviewers that her vision for We Grow was a new, conscious entrepreneurial school committed to unleashing every child superpowers. At the school's opening, she reportedly stated, in my book, there's no reason why children in elementary schools can't be launching their own businesses.

Mm hmm. Labor laws, man, if they're running ship Jordan's I mean, if you like, I'm going to hire a bunch of eight girls to work in this coal mine. I mean, if you want to do a school where like, hey, you it's cool to do a lemonade stand and learn some lessons from it. I don't know how I'm not going to die on that hill argue against that, But it sounds like that's not what she's talking about No, No,

she wants them making their own. WI didn't twins even wait until they were eighteen to start their fashion brand or whatever. I think they did. And I think that maybe working their entire childhood had some negative mental health implications, But I don't want to speak for them. It's it's telling that kind of the best case scenario for children who work a lot as children as McAuley Colkin, Well, his best role was in Party Monster, which I'm sure

he's fucking awesome part of them. That's a that's a great life. I like McCauley culkin, and I'm glad he made it out. He's also good and saved. He's also good and saved. It's tough, is what I'm saying, being a child who works heavily as a child. It's not Maybe it's not good for children. Maybe should children shouldn't work a lot. Give me the backing of thousands upon

thousands of psychological studies and then I will listen. You know what, psychologically it would be awesome for kids in school fucking looking at payroll infant because it's like you talked about, like like like child actors and actresses. Um,

obviously a lot of them have very negative experiences. It's it's very it's a damaging thing, which is why, like we have so much respect like Daniel Radcliffe's parents who are like, no, we're not gonna let our kid move to fucking Los Angeles, like you either film it and you because we're just not going to put him through that. Um, it's tough. It does things to them, and they're not

in charge. They actually have a lot of people there who support them, and it's still is very difficult to deal with healthily having a kid managing payroll, having a kid managing like debt and like vent your capital, and like what a bad idea. It seems woefully stupid. Now We Grow launched in the fall of two thousand eighteen.

It was housed and we works headquarters. Problems immediately cropped up due to the fact that Rebecca and her colleagues said failed to anticipate minor details like paying the school security guards. HR had apparently forgotten to add them to pay roll, so this was an immediate bump in the log. Sometimes you don't pay the people, the little people when you're trying to start a school for entrepreneurs. Sure you're gonna make mistakes that entrepreneurs should make to be fair

under no circumstances should not make to be fair. A second grader was in charge of HR and security. Yeah, so these things will happen now, it's a learning experience. Other problems. Other problems came as a result of Becca's own peculiar preferences. She made a rule that parents were allowed to wait in the school lounge to pick up children, but nanny's had to wait outside in the vestibule. This was reportedly because Rebecca didn't want her own children's nannies

to enter the school. One person close to the school told interviewers the whole thing was about her and what was right for her children. Yeah, what if I made a school based on down Navvy? Gotcha? Yeah? Rebecca herself told Fast Company something similar. She claimed that the inspiration for We Grow had come when she and Adam were looking for fancy, rich people schools for their five kids, and quote, we couldn't find the school that we felt

would nurture growth. These children come into the world, they are very evolved, they are very special, they're spiritual. They're all natural not entrepreneurs, natural humanitarians. And then it seems like we squash it all out of them in the education system. Well it sounds familiar. This is this is very reminiscent of like kind of a lot of the extreme right homes cool kind of. Uh, yeah, there's some aspects of a lot of different things. Yeah, in that,

you know, like everything else. The Norman's embarked on We Grow put style before substance. The school was designed by a famous architect and featured a vertical garden and whatever acoustic clouds are on the ceiling. We Work bought an alternative college startup mission You in order to hire a CEO for We Grow, who presumably knew something about teaching kids. Curriculum included classes on mindfulness, yoga, meditation, and farming. All meals were vegetarian. I don't have any problem with the

last two parts for context, Uh, mindfulness and meditation. Maybe you're not a great idea for teaching kids. I don't know, can't hurt. Therefore, we'll talk about mindfulness in another episode. As We Work matured and started spaces Yeah, fuck that ship. Take down meditation. Don't think I wouldn't have litt nearly as many fires as have been in my life if I if I thought, and I've learned so much from

those fires. What happens when insulation catches on fire, what happens when drywall catches on fire, what happens when shingles catch on the fire. Basically what happens when people catch on fire? All lessons I wouldn't have had if I had thought more. That's a good point. Thank you, all right. I retrenedat my supportive meditation. As We Work matured and started expanding into every conceivable realm Adam began to revamp

his ideas about the WE generation. He modified this to what he called me plus w That's what I was waiting for. I literally was about to say that he's going to say it's the ME generation, but never mind you, and then he's going to get super bus pepsie. Yeah, he explained at a We Work summit. Quote, on one hand, you want to be your own person, have your own goals, and on the other hand, you understand it being a part of something greater than yourself is an amazing opportunity

and actually makes you stronger. Now. Adamate earlier claimed that We Works multibillion dollar valuation was much more based on our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple of revenue, pointing out that his real estate leasing business was not a real estate business but instead a community company. We're not selling office space. Community. It's amazing that the thing that can't be sold. People are always telling us

that it's just not about money. It's only about money again, people who will die immediately without a little bit more of it, right, but we can put them on trains and solve homelessness or some ship. I don't know, I've noticed at this point, like there's been literally no conversation at all about like people having good experiences and we work offices, like I'm sure they exists. That actual community that he intends to build. Actually, there's a lot of turnover.

It's not like early Apple, where's like people stay for fucking ever um or a lot of stuff you hear about early Google. There's a ton of turnover. But he's not even talking about this. The great thing that he's bringing into the world being about the employees of we work. It's the people who rent the office space. And it's always vague and undefined idea community too, because it's not real.

He's again he's telling this to the bosses, but I mean in reality if you're living, if you're working in a WE work space, it's just a very mundane office space, like if you're working in the slightly better interior design. You know, I worked. I worked at a shared office space for for a while and it was just that was fine. Everybody was there. I could never like, I don't know, I I can't be productive in a space where I can't wander around shirtless with an a R

fifteen strapped in my chest. We all have our process strapped or taped. No no, no, no, no, no, no no no. I have a very nice slingk um Now several um you know who doesn't sell SLINKs for a fifteen maybe yet, although we're courting them the products and services and the sponsored this show. We're back. We're talking about a thing that we won't talk about after this will be a mystery for the nine of you who are listening. After that digression about dog fighting. UM strange,

Michael Vick is still listening. Michael Vick big support, really huge into the podcast. Uh and you know what I support north of sixty of what he's done with his life. A lot of passes, A lot of passes were good. It is rent on time for a spell. He was a good football player. I don't know anything about Michael Vick other than the dog fighting and football. Those are the only two things I know. Is I don't know anything about the football. I know he was a footballer,

but I don't know. I can't analyze him. He was pretty good. He's running were more than a yards. Okay, never mind, he was good. He was good at the balls at Okay, that's good. That's good. Well, no, because of the dog fighting. But now I understand more. Now. Adam Neuman's most constant refrain when he talked about We Worked his employees was this, and this is a quote. We are here in order to change the world. Nothing less than that interests me, and for a while it

seemed like that really might be happening. By two eighteen, We Worked had four hundred and sixty six thousand members working at a four five locations and more than one hundred cities in twenty eight countries. It had more than doubled its revenue every year of its existence. Not only was it Manhattan's largest tenant, but in Central London controlled more space than anyone but the British government. So this is like like you can't overstate like how much this

company fucking expands rights are. If you own anything in London, you're an evil person, including the British government. It seems to be all the metrics of like success are all just sort of geographical and and and not based on actually profit anything other than just based on and. And they don't own these buildings leasing them. Yeah, they're leasing them. So even even the geographical brag is kind of a liability. Yeah, that's you can't be the most profitable, profitable company if

you're essentially a middleman. It seems like that shouldn't be possible. It seems like you're almost offering nothing just in the way of getting off it. I wonder if this will ever crash and burn in a page or two. I'm pretty sure it's going. As the summer of two that's an eighteen rolled on, there were increasing signs of trouble

within the company. One warning came out of what could be plausibly described as Adam's good intentions, his desire to ban the eating of meat, or at least the subsidizing of the eating of meat by his company by exchanging it for tequila from The Wall Street Journal When Mr Neuman announced in July two, eighteen, via video call from Israel, that the company was banning meat. Executives in New York were caught off guard with little explanation from Mr. Neuman,

A group huddled around to determine a rationale. They settled on sustainability and the mechanics of what would be banned and how. They determined employees couldn't expense meals with meat and that, but that they could eat it in company offices so long as the company didn't pay. Former employees say they have since seen Mr. Norman eat meat, so he gets a hair up his ass that eating meat is bad. Fine, I'm even out down with the idea of a big company being like, we're not going to

use company money to support the ending of me anymore. Good? Fine? Uh, but the aristocracy, yeah, exactly, Like the important thing here is not the meat thing. It's the idea that like, this guy has an idea, and now what is a multi billion dollar company changes has to change on a dime, And that's not good. But I honestly think he's like not going far enough, like still letting people eat meat in the office like that a living Yeah, I don't know if here illegally do that. To be honest, yeah,

i'd probably. I don't know if you could legally stop people on their lunch breaks from eating whatever they wanted. Back when I worked at Group On, like people who would you know the microwave fish stuff and that's just been a complete disaster. Different but you couldn't stop them eating fish. You just can't microwave it. Man. I'd like to you know, what's fun about laws in America is technically a lot of things you can't do, but you just do it and people won't bother you. That is true.

And I have a story to tell you about him as Chetti and Nap the bomb. But when we were prepared to go public, they basically bribed the major exchanges by promising to list on them if they would ban meat and single use plastics from their cafeterias. The president of the New York Stock Exchange agreed to cut out plastics, but refused to remove meat. NASDAC turned them down, but offered to create a new index the WEE fifty of companies committed to sustainability. So that's okay, you're a big

hating on plastic and against that. That's fine, I'm absolutely fine with that. But that with this dude, that's like, and we're going to take the money we saved from that and invest it in frocking like this, Yeah, funked up, Like I have no trust in him. Yeah, And it's it's a more of a like he agrees to cut that requirement out off they create a Nasdaq index about sustainable companies named after we Wreck. He's got to cut

it out with the WEE stuff. Yeah, I'm a big fan of They rebranded the we essentially exting people for climate justice. That's yeah, fine, I guess so. Uh. We Work and getting off the ground at this point and secured major investments because of its charismatic founder, but now that the company had matured into a multibillion dollar enterprise, it was still run as an extension of the personal

will of Adam Neuman. In November of two thousand eighteen, Adam showed up late and profoundly hungover to a meeting with Kaldoon Khalifa al Mubarik, the CEO and managing director of the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi. This was a critical meeting. We Work was on track to lose hundreds of millions of dollars that year, and Mubarak had gotten nerves us about all the money that he had

gambled on the company's success. Adam's job at this meeting was to reassure a Mubarik the fact that we Work CEO couldn't stay sober long enough to take a meeting worth potentially billions of dollars rightfully angered the board that will happen. No, Eman couldn't have cared less. In the summer of two eighteen, he'd worked out a deal with Masayoshi and soft Bank to sell the bulk of we

Work stock to that company for sixteen billion dollars. This is the only relatable thing that I've heard about, this showing up to a meeting ngover Ngover, even though I've never been sober in a meeting. All Right, I get this guy a little bit at least, but it is like, you know, I'm gonna be honest if there were billions of dollars on the line and probably show up sober to the meeting, probably, Yeah, I got a self destructive streak.

I think I would. I think part of me would really want to tank this meeting on a on a like important level, which is why I would never have the meeting. I would sit staring at the bottle, but thinking about all of the explosives that the billions of dollar militias. I feel like buildings to toss people off. Absolutely, I'll just be sitting in a meeting just being like, I'm like the only person right now there's a chance

to assassinate you, should I do. If you had a billion dollar meeting tomorrow, you'd show up drunk as ship or hungover. But if you had to go through all the steps that this dude has had to go through to get there, there's a decent chance by then you'd be like, all right, I'm gonna take this serious. I'm gonna do take it seriously. This thing that like the thing that I built for taking. You would become acclimated

to the cultright building. If you had a critical meeting about your book, you would probably force yourself to be in the kind of mind state to deal with Like a publisher, you would hope so and if you and if you didn't, that's true, that's true. And if you didn't, that's a bad sign. Side. Yeah, I want to become president of the world. I feel like, that's okay though, right, Robert, where give me that brick ambition? Right? This is Chicago,

there should be bricks everywhere. City of Bricks. Yeah, that's a nickname now. Uh so, yeah, No, Man had worked out a plan with mass Ayoshi into this an eighteen to sell the book of We Work stock for sixteen billion dollars to soft Bank. Now, Vanity Fair says that this was Annoyman's escape plan. Quote, he and his investors would be insanely rich. This was a pivotal moment. A form where we work executive or called Adam was acting like the soft Bank deal was done and we would

be flushed with cash. So he was planning and again like cashing out and escaping, which kind of hits the fact that he doesn't believe any of this. He was just trying to get a big enough investment that he could get the funk out. That's the thing that these guys, like every time we go through a story about these types of guys, they're one failing is they take the grift too far and they don't know when to just bail. Like like with the guy we talked about, Alex Jones,

he should have just bailed a while back. He nailed his grift, He got what he needed. Could have walked away with the net worth five dollars way more than that, ye minimum, Yeah, after after the election, probably could have. Yeah, like at a great golden parachute. They're not capable to get out, and they just don't do it because the more smart none of them more smartest. Tom from my Space no cash out, six hunt million bucks doesn't destroy democracy,

goes and retires. I got nothing against Tom. Did he cash there for six hullion years? He did great, And you know what, he didn't destroy democracy? Yeah anything. He provided bands a way to share their mediocre music files. Yeah, nobody's ever been like, oh man, my space really facilitated the younger. Nobody hates Tom. He's rich as ship and

it's fine. You know what, though, you know, almost everybody who was on my Space, who was old enough to have been on it, has a negative opinion of him because you were forced to be his friend, and we should forgive him for that. You know what, I'll go about and say, the only cool person worth hundreds of millions of dollars Tom Tommy Tommy, So he's got the soft bank deal. It doesn't matter that he shows up hungover to a meeting with the head of the Abu

Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund. But then that soft bank deal for sixteen billion dollars falls through because people other than Masayoshi Sawn took a look at the company financials and decided that we work, which was losing at this point billions of dollars a year. Maybe he wasn't the best way to invest sixteen billion dollars. Massa Yoshi agreed to invest another two billion, but at the rate we weren't burnstree now, which is still This is why I say

two things. Money isn't real and it's dumb as shit. Ye don't listen, your company's fucked. Here's two billions, here's two billion dollars. This is what happens when you have a group of people around you who is willing to say no to you. And then it was like, oh, it's only two billion. I was like, never mind phones, this guy stupid eat them all. So at the rate we work burned through cash. Two billion dollars brought the company eight months or something like that, eight nine months.

They lost one point three billion in the first six months of this year. Eight months that's insane. Eight nine. I'm not going to do the exact one point one point three billion in six months, So eight nine months seems fair. Um. Yeah, it's absurd um and less than uber loses m Yeah. Now it's like real estate expenses, right, Like it's leases leases. Other people will pay him lease and he's giving them free rent in order to suck them in. Yeah, but he just keeps giving free rents.

They just keep moving around. Business. It's a terrible business. Great, that's a great, that's that's a that's a scheme. Yeh. Ever he basically yeah, essentially in every way but the legal way. Yeah, which is the best kind of scheme. Problem, it does seem like he should be fired out of a catapult for his crimes. Now. So again, the two billion dollars just gave we worked months of breathing room, not what they really needed. And so Adam started to

get desperate for more funding. And I'm gonna quote again from Vanity Fair. So he started dog fighting. Yeah, and this is where our sponsors, dog Fighter without any comes into the product. Use code bastards on dog fighter and you'll get all right, the quote from Vanity Fair. According to sources, he pitched Apple CFO Luca Mastree on doing a deal with we Work. It's unclear why Apple would want to invest in we Work, and not surprisingly, the

company passed. Uh Norman went to Google and proposed a partnership, They too passed. Noman batted around other investment ideas. He early discussed buying Slack. He sat there saying, what companies can we buy? Maybe we should buy Slack, A former executive recalled. When no Himan returned to we Works New York headquarters later that winter, he seemed desperate. He barked orders and haphazardly reorganized divisions, at one point having as

many as twenty direct reports. According to a former we Work executive, Massa said We're going to be a trillion dollar company. He shouted, according to a former executive who heard it, you're thinking billions and we should be thinking trillions. You people need to be better than you are. New Himan seems shocked by the scale if we Works losses. Sources say he tangled with we Works then CFO Already

Menson over the cash squeeze. Menson declined to comment, but a former senior executive said ne Himan drove the decision making. Nothing could happen without Adam. Former executive said, ne Himan often reacted poorly. You don't bring bad news to the cult leader. One said, I've never heard that before. No bute's making you know, making that that's pretty more than one. Yeah, it's it's like that all phrase killed a messenger. That's

right us. It's one of those things where Steve Jobs is a guy come back to a lot because, um, he had a lot of this in him, but he also had I guess it's a difference of they both both ne Himan and Jobs have this kind of deep understanding of the human psyche that allows them to manipulate people in a profound way. Jobs uses it to figure out something people want that they don't know they want, and then deliver it and create changes the entire world.

The smartphone he knew before anyone else what exactly everyone in the world wanted to carry in their pocket and would addict them and everything. And he was right. Nor Himan, he knows how to manipulate people, uses it to get billions of dollars in investment, but provides nothing. Um, and I'm not going to say what Jobs right is in that good obviously because the smartphone is complicated, is ship and ins of that. But at least it's a thing. It's more you can't argue with it. Not it's not

a Ponzi game. It's not. It's it's maybe like Heroin, but it's not a Ponzi s game. Yeah. This guy's just a lot of ideas, Yeah, and mostly the idea of how to convince investors. He's a made a little Banny yah. Yeah. Still, there were bright spots for we Work in two thousand eighteen. Earlier in that year, JP Morgan had led a seven hundred million dollar bond offering for we Work, while Adam's Charisma had started to fail with Masayoshi had worked on JP Morgan's CEO, Jamie Diamond.

Jamie Diamond is a profound piece of ship. One of the architects of the two thousand and eight elect h financial crash, probably j first participation, No, of course not. He's a CEO. Specifically that we held those people accountable to make sure that it would never happen again. Now we went to jail for the eventual dog fighting ring.

He ran with Annoyman and that's when Michael took Jamie Demons Bank headed Diamond's Bank handed Adam a hundred million dollar personal loan and a five million dollar personal credit line. That's not that much for him though, right, like based on too much, sure, but like you were saying, like two billion dollars, he was worth four billion at this point on paper, right, but he's also got seven million dollars that he was the company, right, Yeah, that's tough.

I feel bad, like just being broke, uh way better, but you're rich way better than that. When you're that broke. It comes back around a ridge. Yeah, you know, that's the way it works. For some reason. I remember I played I played a SIM game. I remember when I was like in my early teens. That was essentially like creating an apartment building tower. I remember that so clearly,

and I was really good at it. And I feel like I would run we work a lot better than that if I just had a simisit well, because you wouldn't try to make it everything. You would try to run a very simple company that least's office space to people that needed, which is fine. Knowing Jordan need to put a movie theater in the basement where you're supposed to put parking and they're just no. But you do remove the fire escapes because that ship's expensive. Yeah, no,

and the extinguishers detectors, buildings don't catch on fire. If I know one thing about Chicago history, it's that fires never happened. It's all a myth. Is definitely real and od up. Now, Adam was heard to brag to people that Jamie Diamond, one of the architects again of the financial crash, was now his personal banker and might soon leave JP Morgan to run Adam's family investment office. Speaking of family, Adam and started bragging that his children would

follow him as the leadership of we work. And speaking of unfathomable nepotism, let's talk a little bit more about Adam's relationship to Jared Kushner. They hung out of that fire. They hung out a lot. See, it turns out that the Neuman's and the kush clan are actually very close friends. Don't call them that. That is what the clans Betsy Davie's work with. They did body shots a lot. The funk is going on is all evils surrounded by itself. Prince ran security at the school. Yeah, and also did

body shots. Yeah, you came back to life just to run thing now. Jered clearly believed in Adam's promised ability to change the world. In the summer of two thousan eighteen, We Work executives rather suddenly learned that Adam had been drafted by Kushner to work on Ja Cush's Mideast peace plan. I will Nouman had put We Works director of Development Ronnie Behar, on the task of finding an advertising firm to put together a video for Kushner about how an

economically revitalized West Bank and Gaza might look this. I am never I'm never ever envious of their money. I don't want I don't even understand a billion dollars. But the confidence that it takes, the ridiculous, insane confidence that it takes for you to be a shitty We Work CEO and be like, I think you know what I'm going to solved for the s an obviously sing company and the son of a man who went to prison for real estate scams. YEA, to sit kind, be like

you know this thousand, this this conflict. I think we can deal with this year. I think we can bang it on in four years. All I can think of is like, do they do they like like each other? I think, so, what do you think they didn't? I think that's why he gets this this task part. Wonder if they're even capable of liking each other. You know, it seems like fraud. I mean, like, yeah, right, I don't think so. I don't think. I think Trump maybe does. I don't think. I don't. I don't know how much

he believes in himself. But I think Kushner is just that deluded and dumb and has always been rich and totally special. And I think I don't think. I think might actually know he's a con artist. I really I go back and forth on the guy. I think Kushner really is genuine about his beliefs. I just think he's stupid as ship. No. I think that I think Trump is so analogous to Alex Jones that it's it's insane, like that idea of you waffling back and forth like

is this guy stupid? Does he know? Is he insane? What does he do? And I don't waffle on Kushner. I think he's just never not been rich and has no concept of reality. I think that I think that about Kushner A lot of people around him I don't know. Adam might be in the same boat, or he might be like a literal sociopath. I really don't know with Adam, but I think Kushner is just completely out of out

of reality. So sources close to Adam Noyman tend to credit the four point four billion dollar infusion of soft bank cash with inflating Adam's ego beyond the realm of sanity in the what how could it not? How could it not that that is fair? Like, of course that would break you. If I got four point four billion dollars, I would have a thousand tanks tomorrow. I hate journey and I would make people dance around a fire journey if something who wouldn't it's it's It is the equivalent

of giving someone a mental illness. To give that much money, it's terrible for you. There's a lot of data on that. Um. Yeah, the money in the international success. If we worked at him, sit down meetings with world leaders, discussing the refugee crisis and problems of peace and war with people like the President of Canada. So what he does is least space. Yeah, and now he is working with world leaders. Yes, on, I assume the thing that he's an expert at leasing space,

solving the refugee crisis. Okay, that's very different that now, No, same, not the same thing. See the reason all these people are leaving Syria nothing not enough leases. But char al Assad reduced the number of leaser arguments. Big thing was like, there's no leases. He only guessed non least space right now. One former executive claims, when Adam got in front of world leaders, it was like he started thinking he was one.

And I'd like to quote now pularly bat shit insane Gizmono article which covers Adam's ambitions as a global peacemaker, and this might be the most deluded paragraph anyone's ever written. The paragraph itself is not deluded, but what it's about is so deluded. I can't fucking describe it. I will ship and baby's mouth right now? Is that? No? But you should put down your mic. In conversations with people

inside and outside the company, Norman's pronouncements became wilder. He told one investor that he had convinced rama Manuel to run for president on the we Work agenda. Emmanuel did not respond to a request for common Norman told colleagues that he was saving the women of Saudi Arabia by working with Crown Prince Mohammed been Salmon to offer women coating classes. According to a source, in another meeting, Norman said three people were going to save the world. Ben Salmon,

Jared Kushner and Norman. Shortly after the news broken October two thousand and eighteen that Saudi agents tortured dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal ka Shogi and carved his body with a bone saw, likely on order from the Crown Prince himself, no Himan told George W. Bush's former national security advisor, Stephen Hadley that everything could be worked out if Ben Salmon had the right mentor. Confused, Hadley asked

who that person might be. According to a source familiar with the meeting, no Himan passed for a moment and said, me, you are on a special level of deluded George W. Bush's former national security advisors, like, this guy is a fucking idiot. I always killed hundreds of millions of people. This hundred nuts. Honestly, I believe that rom part though, Yeah, that's that's within the rama. Believable. We work agenda within

the rama. He wanted to be Ben Salmon's mentor that that dude, terrible guy but not an idiot, would ship him out. Like Adam spent the first half of twenty nine team preparing for we worked long awaited I p O. In the startup world, initial public offerings are the stuff of legend. When Apple went public, it created hundreds of millionaires in a matter of minutes. Even the secretary got rich.

Google's ibri oh brought even more multimillionaires into the world employees if we were clearly expected their i PO would bring the same windfall. CEO Adam Neuman showed no outward signs of worry his company even valued at forty seven billion dollars earlier in the year, the fact that he hoped would bring even more VC money in and ideally convinced Soft Bank that we worked was safe to keep

pumping money into. And who would will convince any of my not convinced listeners money isn't real and as dumb as shit? What kind of what kind of person is forty seven billion dollars? That's that's an insane number. It's it's it's idiotic. It is an idiotic number. Yeah, twelve thousand people who I don't know what they're doing picking lamps. It is its enables these lunatics. The entire system is built by them and I but there has to be something grunt worker at one of these moodies or whatever.

It's just like they're not worth as much, guys. And then the top Yeah, I think all of the grunt workers are like, yeah, this grift hang gonna last long that I'm gonna get my nineteen dollars an hour. Look at these assholes. Yeah. So the reality of we work success was less attractive than the forty seven billion dollar valuation. By two en more than twelve billion dollars of venture capital and debt had been pumped into the company and lost.

And while it's true that we works revenue had doubled every year and also lost hundreds of millions of dollars per year and eventually billions of dollars per year, and there were no signs of this trend debating. On September eighteen, nineteen, the Wall Street Journal published a massive expose a on we Work, revealing details about its toxic internal culture and, more worryingly to the suits, details about Adam's own self dealing.

The report based in part on the August filing his employees had made to the SEC as part of the I p O process revealed that Adam had taken out more than seven and forty million dollars in personal loans on his company's stock. Since Adam was dyslexic, he had to have his advisers brief among the revelations and the story while he huddled with his people to work at a response to the damning article, investors and board members

called for him to step down. Adam was initially defiant, telling one colleague, I'm never not going to be CEO, but that was not in his hands anymore. We Work CFO held a conference call with the board of directors and said that Adam had to step down. Jamie Diamond soon joined the consensus, arguing that We Work would never get investors to pump in more money. While Neuman was CEO, the company that had been worth forty seven billion dollars mere weeks ago now teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

In the end, Adam stepped down. His wife was for to leave the company too, but don't worry about them. They walked away with a severance package worth roughly one and a half billion dollars and she's still a license and a licensed certified excuse me, very different. Who's the licensing board for yos? I mean she knows the Dollai Lama she was at his birthday. Yeah, uh massa yo she saw agreed to pump another nine and a half

billion dollars until we Work as a rescue package. All talk of exponential growth and world conquest were gone, though We Grow was shuddered suddenly, leaving dozens of wealthy parents with no fancy school to send their children to. Many were presumably forced to go with avert your eyes, gentlemen, public schools, since the best private schools all have long waiting lists. Four thousand employees, one third of we Works workforce,

were laid off. More layoffs are likely to come. And that is more or less where things in now and I'm vaporized. More than ten and a half billion dollars, stole another one point five billion dollars, put thousands of people out of jobs, and raise the costs of real estate in cities throughout the globe. Yeah, that's that's a that's a little side effect of this that oh yeah,

that gets sort of under recognized. Well, the part where. Yeah, so like even as this collapses, all the people who would have used the space or we're using it before now it might be prohibitive for them before the landlords are going to collapse, which isn't my primary worry. But still compared to him, people who operated reasonably legitimate businesses. Um, it's just a lot of human shrapnel in the wake of this. But he's got a billion and a half dollars.

Good for him, No, not no, no bad So, Jordan, I want to tell you about dream I have. It's a dream of a group of people, group of human beings, pushing for the greatest potential, vibrating off of one another, positive, positive, positive vibration. We got machetes, we got machetes. We're all drunk, really drunk, and we're just we're just shoving noumans off the buildings, just right off the top, maybe a cushioner

or two. Right now. I have a personal sense of morality that I believe for crewe you'll you'll learn to subsume that to the group. Just let that go for a little one. There you go. I feel like a temporary suspension of morality is fine when now we all got to shave our heads. We live in yurts. These are all key aspects. Do I get to push him myself? Yes? What if? What if I were to tell you you'll get cubicle on Mars? Oh yeah, this ins in Mars? Ye quite questions? Yeah oxygen, no, but you won't need

it by the time we get there. Yeah, the kids provide the oxygen. I'll take the deal. So, gentlemen, this is the Adam Neuman story. An asshole who did nothing but scam people. Seems fell apart pretty recently. It seems just within the last couple of weeks. I do like his meteoric rise and fall to only having one point five billion dollars really a tragedy. We should subsidize an extra couple of billion. Yeah. Absolutely, where's Massa Yoshi with

that sixteen billion dollars? H Hen I've got something to sell him, and it's called regularly and it's like the Massa Yoshi. The whole reason he has all that money is that he invested a bunch of money in a'll Li Baba back when it was tiny and one of the biggest things ever. But like, clearly he's a dumb guy who got lucky once I'd tell him that to his face, I think you're dumb. I don't think you're

very smart. You get taken in by this ship that's crowd fund an opportunity for Robert to tell him to more people need to do that to these people. I

watched the documentary recently. I was in UM. I was in Amsterdam, UH and I had an attend an opportunity to attend a movie at the documentary festival that they hold there, and it was a documentary about the World Economic Forum in Davos, and it was the kind of thing where as I was giving it, UM, we found out that like uh, I think Cloud Schwab, the guy who founded it, was like like three rows behind us in the room and stuff, like they did a Q

and A with them afterwards. But this documentary, which will be I think out for the general public sooner, is very much worth watching UM. And it's about like behind the scenes at Davos, the first one that's been able to do that. So it's really a lot of interesting stuff, a lot of kind of like you get a feel for these people as human beings and what they actually believe. UM,

I mean they are that's the problem. UM So there's a great moment in it where the head of green Peace confronts Gyr bolson Yaro in a in a like a suare sort of thing about ostensibly like she's talking to the whole thing about how she wants to like confront him and these other people with their damage to

the climate. And she gets a chance to and she basically says like, well, you know, we're looking at what you're gonna do the Amazon, like everybody's watching, and then walks away and Jerry like clearly doesn't give a ship, like doesn't have the least impact on her, and all of her friends are like, I can't believe how brave you are. You're so brave, you did this great thing,

and like that's the fucking problem. Like if you go if you go up to Jai, your bolson Yarrow and you don't have a lining of questioning that's going to make him awkward, bottle him, hit him in the face of the bottle. Nobody does that to these people. Nobody bottles him. Nobody bottle that is true. I will, I will back you up, and that no one does do that. What do y'all, what do y'all? What do y'all think

at the end of this, I don't know. It's it's interesting, like I when you whenever you hear a story like this about somebody who like there's a like real like not terrible and he's got a billion dollars although that is terrible, but like whenever there's a big fall, it's just so clear over and over, like there's so many times at which where there should have been like, hey, you said you wanted sucking offices on Mars. You you

want to be president of the world. There's like indications along the way they're like someone should have stepped in, and just we have a system that's based on no one ever stepping in. Like as long as the pretense is there in the appearances of um, you know, like this is moving in the right direction, people are profiting off it that then there's no incentive to be like, hey,

you seem um like you're acting out here. There's something there's something you're acting out that we should probably deal with. We just let it happen and then it just plays its course and everyone gets hurt. That's how I feel. Anyway, the way I view it is because I'm trying to exist in the present without losing my mind. Um So, the way I view it tends to our like trying to find a historical context to all of this stuff. And these types of lunatic grifters have been around since

the fucking beginning. It's only the scale that has gotten larger. So I never know if this shared imaginary idea of forty seven billion dollars which just doesn't exist, it's like it's just an imaginary, it's just fantasy. Yeah, yeah, So it's not like that's too much different from so many you know, like obviously the stock exchange crash, because all

of that ship was imaginary. To go back further and you get to so many different times the economy collapsed in London because that was all imaginary too, like all of this ship. And the only thing that's changed though, is that now a company like we Work is influencing some dumb guy who invested in Ali Baba along with NBS, and now he's given power to help solve the Middle

East peace. Price seems qualified, you know, like it used to be contential guy just sucked up the people in the financial world died, not like sucking the entirety of this part of the problem. With our system is that if you're good at one thing and that one thing allows you to make money, then we decide you're good at everything, because money is really the only thing that matters. So you get to control healthcare, you get to control foreign policy, you get to pick where the army guys go.

I mean, how different is it like the idea that this guy is having conversations about foreign policy? How different is it? Then Trump was a landlord and is now president. How how different is it than a king? Yeah, this guy's parents were the king, so now he's in charge of the army. Yeah. And what was the original reality show but the Royalty. It's smarter than the monarchy, but not a lot. The original reality show might have been Royalty.

But the one that will change the game is you getting tricked by every cult leader and really want to That would be a great I want to find out it's one of those like I want to against the best, would fail every Yes, that's the problem. You just need to reduce those people. I want to enter the pushing them off a building. Okay, here's here's my new pitch. Right, Okay, if I don't get taken in by the cult, later I get all of their money and power. Let's raise

the stakes for both of us. You can't have their power because you're constitutionally incapable from doing the emotional equivalent of raping people, which is what cult leaders do. And their money isn't real. Yeah, sometimes it is. Sometimes it is Hubbard's that ship, it's my motherfucker had real lucra. He owed it all to somebody else. He just kept it,

didn't tricked them into giving him stack. None of these guys are as good as lr H. He's success the ones on what was it Operation White White Snow White. I was more a fan of the time he made his own at Navy Retinue. God, I love l Ron Hubbard. You can't not love the guy to the Admiral Andy Daly is l Ron Hubbard nol Ron Hubbard should burn in hell twice. We're gonna end this episode ignoring Jordan's statement with a statement of our undying love to l Ron Hubbard and uh some plugs. We we do a

podcast called Knowledge Fight about Jux Jones. We put out too much content. People can find it by googling, uh knowledge Fight dot com or website, and you know we're on iTunes and all that stuff on Twitter at Knowledge, Underscore, Fight and I am Jordan's um a comedian. Uh Still, technically speaking, I am not busy, so go ahead and book go to bed. Jordan is available for any dates in g no Mo absolutely. Gnome is high on my list.

I will will also do corporate gigs exclusively only only only. Okay, well then I will work for we work for. I guess twice the cost of a normal comedian. We riff, but you gotta send him up. You got to send him up double economy class. That's twice his economy. Thanks for having there has been a lot of fun. Yeah, that has been fantastic and it's a pleasure to meet you in in real life human person. Well, thanks for

inviting me to your wonderful city. Chicago, the city that sleeps occasionally never is often awake, slightly broad shoulders, but not very the city of angels that is regularly awake but often asleep, with broad shoulders, and also an apple that is large and windy. The city of grandfathered in four am bars. I feel like it's what we should be known as. Ye, that's a good nick. That's true here. Huh,

there's grandfathers. It completely changed my opinion of your city based on that knowledge, and I was going to just sl under it for years out. But now that I know that, um now there's a bar near my place that is apparently so old they open at nine am. It's against the law to sell alcohol before eleven. But if you've just been around long enough, all bets are

off beat space every Oh well, I'm Robert Evans. This has been behind the Bastards, behind the Bastards dot com sources, Bastards pod, Twitter, Instagram, I'm on Instagram and dad, I right, Okay, continue listening to this podcast. Listen to Knowledge Fight. It's what I listened to when I'm at the gym, when I'm driving, when I'm masturbating shamefully in someone else's kitchen. Yeah, Knowledge Fight the podcast for all those moments. That's what we set out to be. So there's t shirts on

t public for my show and coming soon. I forgot what the T shirt was. I think you're going to make a mastur patent John College Fight. If you accidentally catch yourself in the mirror, don't look Bye.