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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What still in Chicago met me. This is the part
two of our episode on Adam Annointment and We Work.
I'm Robert Evans, hosted Behind the Bastards podcast Bad People
Talk About Them Introduced poorly. My guests in part two,
as with part one, are Dan Jordan's. I pointed at
the wrong ones of you don't worry about it, but

(00:22):
I know which ones you are? Should I do the bit?
Robert what? Robert what? I don't understand the bit. It's
the beginning, it's the opening bit. Never mind, okay, Jordan?
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

(00:46):
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?

(01:13):
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

(01:36):
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

(01:59):
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,

(02:20):
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,

(02:41):
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

(03:01):
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

(03:22):
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

(03:42):
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

(04:05):
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

(04:28):
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.

(04:51):
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

(05:12):
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

(05:33):
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

(05:53):
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

(06:18):
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

(06:42):
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,

(07:03):
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

(07:23):
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

(07:43):
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

(08:06):
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,

(08:27):
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,

(08:48):
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

(09:11):
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

(09:32):
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

(09:53):
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.

(10:15):
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

(10:38):
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

(11:00):
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,

(11:21):
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,

(11:42):
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

(12:03):
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

(12:24):
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.

(12:46):
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

(13:07):
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,

(13:30):
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

(13:52):
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,

(14:16):
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

(14:39):
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

(15:02):
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

(15:24):
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

(15:46):
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

(16:10):
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

(16:32):
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.

(16:52):
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.

(17:14):
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

(17:34):
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,

(18:00):
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

(18:24):
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

(18:45):
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,

(19:08):
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,

(19:29):
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

(19:51):
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,

(20:15):
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,

(20:37):
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

(20:59):
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

(21:21):
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,

(21:41):
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?

(22:02):
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.

(22:23):
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

(22:45):
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

(23:07):
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

(23:27):
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,

(23:50):
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

(24:14):
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

(24:35):
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,

(24:56):
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

(25:17):
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

(25:41):
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.

(26:04):
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

(26:26):
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,

(26:49):
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.

(27:14):
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

(27:35):
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,

(27:58):
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

(28:18):
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

(28:40):
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

(29:03):
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

(29:24):
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

(29:44):
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,

(30:06):
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

(30:30):
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,

(30:51):
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.

(31:15):
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

(31:43):
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

(32:04):
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

(32:27):
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

(32:48):
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.

(33:10):
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

(33:30):
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

(33:53):
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

(34:14):
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

(34:37):
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,

(35:00):
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

(35:22):
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

(35:44):
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

(36:06):
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.

(36:27):
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

(36:48):
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

(37:09):
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?

(37:29):
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

(37:53):
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

(38:14):
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

(38:36):
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

(38:58):
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

(39:20):
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

(39:42):
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

(40:03):
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

(40:23):
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

(40:45):
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,

(41:06):
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

(41:28):
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

(41:55):
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

(42:16):
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

(42:40):
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

(43:02):
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.

(43:23):
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,

(43:45):
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

(44:07):
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,

(44:27):
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.

(44:50):
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.

(45:11):
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

(45:32):
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

(45:52):
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

(46:16):
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.

(46:38):
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,

(47:02):
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

(47:23):
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

(47:45):
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

(48:05):
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

(48:26):
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

(48:47):
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,

(49:09):
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

(49:31):
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,

(49:52):
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

(50:14):
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

(50:36):
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

(50:56):
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

(51:19):
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

(51:40):
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

(52:01):
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

(52:23):
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

(52:46):
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,

(53:12):
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

(53:35):
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,

(53:58):
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

(54:19):
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

(54:42):
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

(55:03):
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,

(55:27):
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

(55:51):
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

(56:15):
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

(56:38):
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

(57:00):
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.

(57:26):
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

(57:48):
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,

(58:12):
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

(58:37):
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

(58:59):
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

(59:19):
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

(59:41):
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

(01:00:05):
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.

(01:00:26):
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.

(01:00:48):
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

(01:01:10):
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.

(01:01:31):
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.

(01:01:53):
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,

(01:02:15):
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,

(01:02:38):
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

(01:02:58):
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

(01:03:21):
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.

(01:03:46):
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

(01:04:07):
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

(01:04:30):
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

(01:04:52):
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

(01:05:13):
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.

(01:05:35):
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

(01:05:56):
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

(01:06:17):
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

(01:06:38):
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

(01:07:00):
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,

(01:07:21):
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,

(01:07:45):
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,

(01:08:06):
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

(01:08:27):
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,

(01:08:47):
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

(01:09:07):
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.

(01:09:32):
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

(01:09:55):
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

(01:10:17):
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

(01:10:38):
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.

(01:10:59):
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

(01:11:20):
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

(01:11:42):
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,

(01:12:02):
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

(01:12:24):
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

(01:12:46):
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

(01:13:09):
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

(01:13:31):
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,

(01:13:55):
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,

(01:14:17):
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

(01:14:38):
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,

(01:14:59):
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

(01:15:22):
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

(01:15:43):
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

(01:16:06):
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

(01:16:28):
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

(01:16:50):
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

(01:17:11):
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

(01:17:33):
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

(01:17:57):
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

(01:18:18):
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

(01:18:40):
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

(01:19:02):
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

(01:19:25):
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

(01:19:47):
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

(01:20:07):
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

(01:20:32):
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

(01:20:55):
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.

(01:21:17):
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

(01:21:38):
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,

(01:21:59):
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

(01:22:23):
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

(01:22:45):
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

(01:23:10):
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

(01:23:31):
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

(01:23:52):
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,

(01:24:14):
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

(01:24:37):
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

(01:24:57):
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

(01:25:30):
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,

(01:25:57):
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.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: The Idiot Who Made, And Destroyed, WeWork