Chapo Trap House - 370 - WeWork Will Set You Free (11/25/19)

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Amber talks us through the saga of WeWork, another in a long line of dumb tech start ups headed by a dumber leader emblematic of our dumbest economy. We then help talk you through some potential political minefields of your upcoming Thanksgiving Dinner Tables. WE ARE RETURNING TO THE UK FOR ELECTION SHOWS! LONDON 9 Dec., LIVERPOOL 11 Dec., TICKETS HERE: http://gigst.rs/CTH Amber's WeWork piece in Jacobin: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/wework-adam-neumann-con-artist-grifter-entrepreneur WeWork umbrella thread: https://twitter.com/neerajka/status/1173997679363407872 [editor's note: sorry about the slight audio issues in this episode and the last. working to fix our recorder asap, bear with us.]

You already found a mouse you like I do but you can always go better The G Pro maybe Yeah, because I thought it was a scam and then someone I respected was like this is a good mouse And then I'm probably not gonna do it But I would never take a recommendation for a mouse for someone I didn't respect. It was like a respected gamer Talking about the final mouse There's no such thing Felix is like, you know, how many houses do you how many mice do you need Felix? It's like, you know more than I got

Never enough fear than I own and more than I need Oh, yeah, pick up a mic. Oh This is all right. We're good. All right. That was a close one. Yeah. Good mechanics. Good mechanics. Good save GGs only guys So today, I don't know if you guys saw this today a hero Visited the White House today. It was a surprise visit. You know, I got up this morning and I was like Emergency White House, you know press conference, you know meet in the Rose Garden Announcement there and what do you know it the hero dog that killed al-Baghdadi was there With the president and Melania in the Rose Garden to I don't know get the Medal of Honor or something

Hence oh really Pence was there the brave dog who ran up to Baghdadi and bit him on the groin and then he did the cross-eyes much like in a Straight to DVD sequel to Beethoven Beethoven second Yeah, but I just like obviously the fact that The president is giving a press conference with a fucking dog More and more people are saying he's the best boy is literally don't deserve dogs But I just want to highlight one reaction to this today and when I saw it like I had to actually like find the original tweet to Make sure I wasn't being punked like that. It wasn't a joke or something

Comes courtesy of a Joan Walsh who writes of this of again Trump talking to a fucking dog in front of the press Hippo promoted to detective. She says of this. This is terrifying Trump and Melania exude coldness to Conan the hero dog Melania whose coat is slightly macabre and then in parentheses to me But others may find it lovely moves away from Conan multiple times One out of three. What are there? I need to see the other. Okay. I need all of three of these Well, the other ones I must insist as a suja has pointed out or all about how Trump has Refuses to name the breed of dog, which is like, okay

She goes on to say Trump tells you how incredible this particular type of dog is repeatedly But he clearly can't remember the name of the breed or other. Yeah, he doesn't He's not the yeah, he tells us he really wanted the dog muzzled which tells you about his fear Conan is a tough cookie. We learn still nothing about his breed Trump repeatedly jokes about sickening the dog on journalists. Also again, his command of the language rivals Maybe a five-year-old terrifying, but I just love it. Just like say the breed don't dead-name Conan It's just uh, yeah, no, I mean what is like a Belgian? What was macabre about the coat was a cover little skulls, okay?

So was it was one of those no fear hoodies I from what I can cool from what I can discern of it. It sort of looks like Cruella Deville Like maybe the coat itself is made out of other dogs that have been given the Look yeah, I like though that she had to say well to me because she knew she was going to offend some of her like lib Breeders who probably like actually do have the Cruella Deville coat And of course, I think I like the juxtaposition with bringing the hero dog to the White House like on the same day that Was it his own secretary of the Navy resigned over him pardoning a war criminal fucking that it's It's stupider than that because

Gallagher is the one who got off because the guy who the main witness On stance changed his testimony. So he was not he didn't need to be pardoned, but he what he had been disciplined by Navy and Trump ordered all the reversed Including and apparently this is what it was all over The special pin that he got from fighting the special boy pin that what's it called the Trident Trident But he's a special little he's got a special little pin given the pin and they were said sir respectfully I did not I did not what swear to uphold the Constitution to give this man a pin

I refuse and then the secretary of the Navy resigned and it really is amazing that so much of this horrible Machinery of death is about jewelry when it comes down to it. No one's really like Queen here Oh, God, no, then generals and our admirals like They need their they need their jewels and I mean I need all of my good boy pins. Otherwise, no one will know I'm a good boy if the Navy seals are cool because like they just Their entire thing is just larceny and murdering people including like other people. Oh, yeah They find out they're stealing but they're like the most zero-sum like cynical psychotic way of living your life But they're it's also like I'll never forget the way the day they took away my special

Special pin the worst day of dishonor ever. I mean when that when When the man with more jewelry than me said I couldn't Special jewelry when they said that I couldn't wear the brochita war for injecting Hugo Chavez with cancer cells That was I knew I country lost its way. I mean you think it'd be good enough just not to do any jail time for just like Wantonly shooting children in a war. Yes, seriously. Just like take the W. You fucking asshole, but it's it's the pin Yeah, he needed they needed that you know, it's what you need a special little pin. Well, anyway, I just want to say congratulations to Conan the hero I don't I don't agree with President Trump on a lot, but like I'm glad the

Accomplishments of you know, the non-human member, you know people we share this planet with Should be recognized in some official capacity. Did you know that like when a hero dogs get home? Like hippies at the airport like pretend to throw tennis I believe that I believe the breed of dog of the the hero dog though is a Belgian Malinois or something like that. Yeah, it was bred to like bite minors There's just one ISIS guy who's saying to everyone else look look don't don't be so mad. It's not the dog It's the owner All right, let's start the show

Okay, we are back but before we Begin our regularly scheduled activities. We have an important announcement. Oh, yeah top at top of the morning to you England As you know, you're having an election and because of our pact with the devil We're coming back to you to cover the election Do it well this election season The election paint on her for Westminster for the Palace of Westminster

And Ireland We're gonna be there me Matt and Amber for a few UK election special shows on Monday December 9th We will be at Bush Hall in London and on Wednesday December 11th We will be in Liverpool England at the Liverpool Philharmonic music room You can find tickets to these shows at gigarty.rs We're gonna put it the link in the description

Payment is only taken at Bitcoin and Ethereum No, we're back for you know, we were last there about six months ago and You know, we thought we were about to go on this 15-city tour of the South They called an election and he said no, we've got to go back to where we just were six months ago and do exactly two shows in Liverpool and London right on the eve of your election where you know, we hope we hope the absolute boy wins We will never be able to go to the South like dude. We're sorry, but just never want you so badly Yeah, we really want to but it just

Legally impossible for us now. Oh, we had my hopes set on going to St. Petersburg I mean, it's due to the contract we signed that specifically says we have to tour all of Scandinavia New Zealand and Australia Before we can even consider doing a date in Raleigh. Yeah locked in. I really really really wanted to go to Texas we're gonna do a big Texas tour and So the thing is I'm doing is one a series of one-man shows in Singapore The unable to do it. So sorry

It's gonna get caned on stage You're lucky. You just got that fucking ticket in Glasgow. You throw your cigarette butt on the ground in Singapore They're gonna roast you out of spit. Yeah, and I'll be a symbol of freedom for people. Did you pay that ticket? No, right? I was actually I was actually gonna pay that because I was like well like this is like a very punitive country and I could see myself not being allowed back in for not paying the smoking ticket, but Straight up lost it He looks he has attachments in the UK. Yeah, this is my life is a John LeCarr novel Oh, that's not even his real name. Anyway, he's talking about the villain in Cars 3

Yeah, exactly I mean, I will say this about Johnny McQueen. I will say this about John LeCarr He did just sign that open letter in the Guardian about how he can't possibly support Corbyn's Sounds to me like he's in neutral gear Always a spook. Well, as you know, you know election season a lot of there's a lot of cross talk a lot of you know back and forth going on and We plan to be there for a week to suss things out Find the real anti-Semites and bring you The sort of election coverage that you're used to getting from Chappell trap house

There's no one better to suss things out with than Matt Christmas I mean, I don't want to know spoilers, but I mean Virgil you will be announcing your official endorsement of Joe Swinson and the Lib Dem Party That is a spoiler I don't know how you could possibly preference that statement with no spoilers. Well, you know, I'm just I'm trying to sell here, dude All right. Well, we've got a Chappell Royal Flush here today. It's a it's a full house We're all here. And why don't we kick things off this episode? Amber has just recently written a piece in Jacobin about the I don't know how you describe it a phenomenon con

scam scam that is We work sure you're probably aware with them But just to kick things off Amber you begin your article as I think all You know American any any piece of serious American cultural or political analysis should begin with an extended metaphor relating to the Simpsons and the town of Springfield. Yes, could you discuss? So I Like to use a literary frame to discuss current politics. Sometimes it's children's books sometimes the Simpsons and really just those two things but the Simpsons I have the extended theory that there are three Springfields and There's Springfield the good it's when they they all get together and you know march out to maybe get hit by a

Meteorite or it's when they unionize or whatever and they're noble and egalitarian Their string field the mob. We've already we know exactly what that is They you know smash snakes in the middle of the town or whatever leave Bart in a in a well but then there's like Springfield the suckers and And it's it's it's the most fun premise for a Springfield and it's when the entire town gets duped into something really stupid because there are a bunch of marks and rubs and I think there's kind of it kind of betrays like a an ambivalence towards populism But it also is just like the best it's just the best episodes

It's the monorail episode where they're dumb and they get taken by landly the casino episode another one of my favorites It's fantastic. I mean like those I think that there's some of the best episodes when the entire you know When the entire town gets taken by a by a con But my argument is actually that like actually elites are like the biggest suckers And the we work thing is probably the best example of that ever. It's better than it's better than fire festival It's it's better than fucking pheronose because at least with that you could be like well I guess I don't really know how blood works So, you know like like you could sort of like get why people didn't get that but or fire festival fire festival

Yeah, it's just like I don't know there's a bunch of celebrities attached. I'd want to see Ja Rule too sure who wouldn't The delvi thing I mean, she's obviously like free. She's a folk hero free Anna delvi All she did was steal from super rich people who is Anna delvi again. Oh god. She was the fake heiress. Oh, right, right She's like I am Raising funds to make a club that is it's just for art. It's going to have art But then also it is a dance club, but then also it is a hotel and then And it's it's all of the things it's like it's like the most like confusing European rich people business idea in the world and she really did believe in it too

And she ruled and she knows she never apologized at her trial and everything So I I don't get why like Elizabeth Holmes is walking around and Anna delvi is in Rikers But nonetheless, we work I think is the best one because it is the biggest Dumbest scam of our era. So it'll be so you know, we have these figures like Elizabeth Holmes The the fire festival guy Billy McFarland and then Anna delvi who's sort of like a modern Patricia Highsmith character Yeah, yeah, she's mean so you know added to this cannon now We have a guy named Adam Newman. Oh Adam Newman's amazing when I started reading about this I started reading the coverage in FT and then Business Insider and I think one of the reasons

Like people aren't paying much attention to this and how weird it is is because it most of the reporting comes from FT and Business Insider And it's all subscription stuff and I'm the only person who actually reads FT and Business Insider But it had this they've just been covering these slow leaks forever of just the like rapid downfall of this place And so much of it is tied to this insane person Adam Newman who is I think I described to Felix the most Israeli man ever So he's like looks alone. Oh my god. So it's like it's kind of like this weird I think like Noah Colwin had the best line where he said like like Israel culturally is the fast fashion of Judaism It's like it's like a whole country was H&M And like that really covers it so like Adam Newman is is this particularly type type of like Israeli guy who's like an

alpha hippie jock or Like half like, you know kibbutznik half IDF and he's not actually he wasn't IDF He was in the Israeli Navy, which I don't even know if that's better or I don't know what the intro like I think the Israeli Navy just stops people in Gaza from going fishing. I think that's kind of it, right? Yeah, okay so he's First thing barefoot guy serious barefoot guy like not like like they would have talked about him walking around the office Barefoot just drinking a hundred and forty dollar bottles of tequila, but also barefoot on the streets of Soho

In New York, he was a bit. He's a fucking barefoot. It's legal guy in the New York streets Which I'm sorry like I know we talk a lot about how the police are overly punitive But like arrest anyone who does that immediately that's a broken window It's like an exanacentric guy he was Like there's just so many stories and shit like that comes out for him But he was like a psychopath who had this deranged idea of like basically ruling the world and creating an empire that he would pass down to his children like and the children's children like Indefinitely and it was based entirely off of just like real estate. There was nothing interesting about it

It had this really dubious designation as a tech company because they like tracked what the the we workers were doing But like any workplace does that now? Yeah, so that's what makes it a tech company and not just like a new kind of slum lord Yeah, but like any anyone else also like there's like keystroke stuff and any office stuff like it's all Everyone's being tracked all the time. Yeah. Yeah, we're all being tracked. I don't know who's doing it But one of us is tracking all the rest. I'm doing it. I can like stop if you guys Was that bad? But like it just just to here's an incredible detail that you had in this story about this Adam Newman guy again Before he got into we work and I want to get into like what actually that was and like what his plan or vision for

Hard to figure where to start. Yeah, two incredible details is that before he got into we work Adam Newman's first billion-dollar ideas were a Collapsible woman's shoe. I look tried to find as much information on this as I possibly could because I don't know what that is As a woman who often wears shoes that were designed for women. I don't know what he means I assume it's like, I don't know like a dress shoe that you know when you did that's uncomfortable So, you know, you want to take it off at the end of the night, you know, like like 4 a.m.. On New Year's Eve You see women like holding their high heels on the subway, right? Yeah, that's a hot look Why would he take that away from us? I guess he thinks that's not

Efficient he wants to make them more poor Okay, okay, okay It's like woman. She's got her high heels on like this is the commercial for I'm joining him in his shoe venture The first like 20 seconds of commercial just her feet No sicko shit. What is this selling nothing? No sicko shit, but like she's walking around. She's like, you know, I've got your reports I got the productivity sheet, you know, I don't know what people do in an office As far as I know, they're just sort of like using AOL and instant messenger all day I don't know what goes on, but we can fill that in and

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, and you see like her shoes against like the like wingtips of the guy with the corner office Again, I've never worked in an office. I don't know and then cut to Olympic platform in like a CrossFit gym that's like CrossFit Herosity, you know one of those made-up words they get to the gym and she like removes the heel part and but like fucking puts on like a Flat part right their Olympic lifting. They're like tactical. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and then then like we're still on her feet We're still on her feet This commercial is 25 minutes long

and she's Added the Bushwick art show and she turns them into foam posits for some shit I don't know but that's that's what you would you do them for well, I think you're getting it what you know What I discern from this is that you know, he walks around barefoot in the fucking streets in New York He's obviously a foot guy like he's just trying to clearly got a foot thing He's just trying to invent something that'll give women another excuse to take off their shoes in like social or public settings Even more insane than the collapsible woman shoe though. His second big idea was baby clothes with padded knees What what's up?

Yeah, what's up, man? A few other people have noticed that this is quite sus But my my thing is that it was just like okay even Not looking at the susness like don't babies already have like padded knees. I mean I Guess the idea is kids like they heard they heard their knees while they're learning to crawl But I don't a lot of babies and I've never seen one with scabs on their knees. I don't think it's a real issue No, it's not it's not an issue facing the baby community. Yeah, they're very low on the baby list of demands I know I mean I've I had considered myself a member of that community

So you tried a bunch of dumb shit basically before being like well, what if I just did real estate? It's like so what what was what is it? I mean, I think we're all vaguely familiar with we work But like what would actually how do you break into this this brilliant idea? well, he started out with like buying one building in New York and Breaking it up into smaller spaces and renting them out, you know real ground-breaking shit. That's disruption Yeah, it's total disruption and it did well enough that he actually sold that first business and then started we work with a second partner and

he had a Lot of early investors because there is Some there is like a lot of number of data to suggest that like people do spend money on co-working spaces Some of it was pretty cost prohibitive the fact that a lot of these were in like the most expensive Real estate in the most expensive cities in the world and that it was sort of ridiculous So the big thing it ended up that ended up selling we work is that it was like this this like luxury office experience Where it was just like there was like kombucha on tap and like, you know, that's I don't know like it We would just all of those perks that are you I don't know

It's insane to me because I think of something like Ford Landia. Do you know what Ford Landia was remind me though Henry Ford started a company town of like of like a rubber plant in the middle of the like the Brazilian jungle And that worked out great. Yeah, it went in and then everything was fine. It was a great idea So it was like fraught with problems from the get-go and eventually the thing that Insided the employees to riot was that they built a cafeteria and the employees Were like, oh, you're trying to keep us here when we want to go home during our lunch break So they just like tore the place up now cut to like 2019. You have a bunch of like cocked tech workers being like Oh, it's amazing. I never have to leave work. I can eat here all day and I can bring my dog and blah blah blah

So like American workers like a horrifying thing, but it is a pretty good business model for a certain type of worker The problem is he completely overestimated the number of people who could afford or even wanted to do something like this You're right here. They spent a ton on marketing believing that they were destined to rake in a rentier's ransom from freelancers Gig workers and small business owners are the key and I for startups Hey, why not build your tenuous bubble on a whole bunch of other smaller even more tenuous bubbles? It's the dumbest thing in the world if you explained it Like if you just like pulled someone off the street and explained the premise and like growth pattern of we work

Just like a random person. They would be like this stupid and isn't it by now one of the number one Tenants in like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, like a ton of major cities. I think Hong Kong They're like one of the number one tenants, which means that when it was looking like it was gonna all collapse It's like, oh, we're just gonna have another housing crisis Yeah, or another like in the in the retail sector this time caused by just like yeah every building half the buildings Occupy rented in downtown, New York, Chicago are fucking empty. Yeah, so like I mean there is a germ of an idea there Which is there is this like growing class of like urban precariat like you know Of what a previous generation would just work in an office

But are now pretty much the cords have been cut and they're all just kind of on their own Yeah, and you know, let's be honest working in a coffee shop sucks, you know, those people are actually working The wing is fake and it's all just a bunch of like girls going in to design handbags on laptops in a place with that desks So they're also going under too by the way So how like we work is basically just like a slightly less exclusive version of the wind you what I didn't get about it It's like you you you become a member of we work and you essentially like have it part like a membership to be going to any We work location or are you just literally renting a chair a specific desk you can rent a whole office space You can rent stuff where it gives you rights to like like a voucher to schedule time in the conference room

I like it's it is like a community office with all of the Like problems that would entail Like I said that you booked the the Sagittarius conference room for 430 But oh like you move it to the Capricorn space We're having a dog party in there Did you see it was already like thin gruel, but then they were like well, let's expand to absolutely everything they started doing Fucking apartments in gyms and an elementary school like this terrifying dystopian elementary school In the meantime, do you remember that?

Twitter thread. I don't know if anyone saw this. So somebody had a we work space for their company and It had a sliding glass door and there had been a umbrella on the wall And when they went to close the door one day the umbrella fell and lodged against the end of the sliding glass door So they could not open it and no one could figure out how to get in and so they were just paying for this space They couldn't use for weeks Staring at the umbrella and no one knew what to do and there was no staff to figure it out They ran out of staff a lot That so there's so much shit that happened that it couldn't even make it in there, but like they they had to

Employ a bunch of like cleaners and maintenance people that were like non-union who eventually went on strike And then they didn't have the money to pay them and at one point one of the better like leaked memos Was like to the cleaning staff and it was like so they have like free on-site mouthwash at we work obviously But they were running out of money to fill the the complimentary mouthwash stations So one of the memos to the cleaning staff was please don't put glass cleaner in the mouthwash station I take responsibility for that. I have you guys know I have a tech company called we wash What we do is we rent mouthwash from CBS Multiple retailers

using horizontal integration and several facets of production These vis a vis a vis the the six sigma management theory and we what we do is we rent mouthwash to we work Mmm, and then like when people spit it out we collect it But you know there was Because of errors with horizontal immigration we did perhaps sell them glass cleaner But our R&D team is proving that those are the same thing.

All right, Nestle, here's another thing you bring up is the cult-like aspect of the management of this company in that this Adam Newman guy staffed all the most important positions with his close family members and friends who were all fanatically devoted to him. Insane people. And sort of like a belief, not just in making money, but in a kind of pseudo-ideology of this guy and his company. Oh, they were pretty sure they were gods. Like, it was absolutely insane. Like, the fact that he was going to pass down the company in perpetuity to, like, his descendants, like some fucking vassal lord.

Like, the guy was completely, like, he had an absolute god complex. And for some reason people believed him. Well, I mean, the other thing that got some press around this is, of course, his wife, whose name is Rebecca Paltrow Newman, who is indeed the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow. Also studied Buddhism and business at Virgil's Alma Mater of Cornell. That's not a major. But you say here, Rebecca Paltrow Newman was brought on board and given the title of Strategic Thought Partner. When they're together, when him and the guy and Gwyneth are together and all their friends.

That is the least vaccinated room that has ever been used. No one is less vaccinated. When we get together, it's the most vaccinated. Correct. But now you're talking about how Rebecca, previously, this is blood chilling. Opened a private, quote, conscious entrepreneurial elementary school in New York. The tuition range from $22,000 to $42,000 a year. Jesus Christ.

That was with the mission of attracting parents with this mission statement. We are committed to elevating the collective consciousness of the world by expanding happiness and unleashing every human superpowers. If you could spend $22,000 a year on your kid's fucking elementary school, they don't need superpowers. They already have them. Yes, loving parents. You said, of course, this elementary school is closed after a year. Yes, yes, it did. All the gyms closed, the apartment's no one to rent them, and they can't even fill the WeWork spaces.

You also mentioned about how Adam Newman's dad would sit in on board meetings, even though he wasn't officially a member of the company. This is exactly Rob Reiner's character in Wolf of Wall Street, where they just bring in one guy's dad to just sit in. And you compare it to Wolf of Wall Street, like the antics among the company parties and things like that, but it's like Wolf of Wall Street, except not cool. It's not cool. And also, in Wolf of Wall Street, they thought they were like kings. At WeWork, they thought they were gods. They wanted to elevate the consciousness of the world. Yeah.

It's like Mon-on-Sheila shit. Fucking Omshimrikyo. Yeah. WeWork announces exciting new transportation venture. We talked about putting WeWorks on Mars, a seasteading WeWork. Even Elon Musk was like, nah, man, you're too weird for me. Like Omshimrikyo. Yes, exactly.

I have an idea. My great dream is one day people will do paperwork on Mars. Again, all through, the basic idea is a coffee shop with laptops that you pay extra to go to and pretend to work all day. Yes. Yeah. And they somehow trick people into it being referred to as a tech company, which it really just isn't, really just fucking real estate. But like the SoftBank, who like bankrolled a lot of the shit, originally it was like traditional like real estate, you know, people, it's who you would expect. Then SoftBank, who's like half of their, it's the biggest private lump sum of money ever created.

And it's all from the Saudi royal family. For cubicles. The sounds don't know what it was. And they just really liked this guy, Sun, who headed up SoftBank, because he, after the Khashoggi thing, he kept his meeting with the crown prince when everyone else was like, oh, no, I just found out I have some place to go. And he was like the one guy who's like, hey, let's just like meet in a quiet place. And they're like, here's $45 bajillion. And so like by just saying like, I'm not put off by that whole dismemberment thing, they basically got a blank check because like in, in the crown prince's eyes, this like, you know, legitimize them as a business venture or whatever. Loyalty.

Yeah, loyalty. Just in favor of shit. Like you said, like the shady sources of the money and the actual like fraud and con going on here. So much fraud. But what were some of the examples of the sort of rowdy sort of corporate culture of Adam Newman and his like, you know, cult of, yeah. So it started out really early with like what my mom calls mandatory fun, which like is a thing in a lot of office spaces where it's like, okay, we're doing a retreat now, which means you don't get to go home. You don't get to like, you know, you have no work like life division. It's like, now we're going to have a retreat, we're all going to have fun and like in a very early one, they ran out of like firewood for an upstate thing.

And so Adam Newman just starts throwing furniture onto the fire. The resorts. And people are like, wow, this guy is crazy. That's insane. And like it was kind of like a little legend. And then things got completely insane because they started getting their valuation by the end of it before plummeting was $47 billion, which is an absurd, absurd, absurd valuation. But like by the end, they were just doing like, what's what's a music festival? I'm punk.

I go to see music indoors. I don't know what this music is. Oh my God, you're so old. Fun, fun, fun, hullabaloo. Did the season in Buffalo this December, we're going. I mean, like it was whatever one of the one of the British ones, they still do. The Redham festival. No, Glastonbury.

Glastonbury. So they were just doing Glastonbury where they would just literally have like thousands of employees and they would hire like Florence and the machine and like the chain smokers or whatever that tarot band is. Both of those bands, those are the people I actually played, although I do like Florence and the machine. Nonetheless, they would play and you would, they made them all camp outside and have this experience. Oh God. That was like their bounding thing. And like we were accommodations dependent on how much you were willing to spend out of pocket.

So some people got to stay in these like luxury yurts. And then there's this like other woman who has this story where she said she woke up and she was just in a regular like TP style tent. And she saw like the piss collecting at the top of the tent and just hope that it wasn't going to leak through and fall on her head. Because everyone was just like vomiting and like shitting and like having sex at this company retreat in a fucking filthy field. And by the way, no plastic straws or meat were allowed. Oh, this sounds a lot of fun. Like this is something I've noticed someone pointed this out the other day on Twitter. But that companies in the last decade or so have really emphasized that they're replacing any outside of work social life that you have.

Yeah. And it is, I mean, it's stuff like this. And it's, we work like the most ridiculous example, right? Because they're making you, they're making you go to like a shittier version of Woodstock. And pay to do it. Right. Pay to do it. And it's, and it's somehow filthier and more disgusting and a bigger corporate liability.

I mean, it's like, it is like this guy is obviously a fucking dumbass, but he's insane. Everyone else, like every other company that does this is like, it's actually like pretty cynical because everyone's horribly lonely and everyone has this like spiritual desire for community. And so after companies like this, any number of company that people work for have eroded that have eroded like any sense of togetherness you'd have with people because every moment of your life is already spent working or worrying about work or worrying about like the next 50 years you have to work. So you won't be fucking homeless. They're making it so that your entire spiritual need is filled at the workplace doing doing things like fucking after hours, happy hour or workplace karaoke. Yeah. And it's like not quite as insidious as the employer provided health care thing, but it's another thing that prevents you from ever fucking leaving. Yeah.

It's like they give me health care, but also they give me a warm friendship hug. Yeah. And like you compare this to like, for Landia, those people rioted the second they thought that their, that their employers were trying to keep them on site for lunch. And now we're like, oh, we get kind bars. It's horrifying. The French wouldn't fucking stand for this. No. I want my three hour lunch and I'm going to get drunk and I might not come back.

Remember that Wall Street Journal story about WeWork where they said that in 2016 they had to lay off 20% of their workforce. Oh yeah. And they gave the announcement. This whole time they kept doing massive layoffs. But when they gave the announcements in the room, they, they's like, we're laying everybody off and then they brought out tequila shots and run from run DMC. Like, yes, you're fired, but here's some fresh beats. Yeah. You know, he's like had his like bottles of his $140 tequila around that he would like make people drink with him, like, including during interviews, which means like one, I like, I'm not even getting paid for this.

And like, you're making me, this is like, this is like fraternity hazing. Can I speak to this effect from as somebody who has actually worked on WeWork? Oh, that's right. So you work on a big floor. There are like 20 companies there. You can't tell what anybody else does. And as far as they don't know either. Yeah.

You can, you can only deduce because every... Well, one of them was planning the fire festival. Because every surface is glass. So you can see what everybody does and you can only deduce that they're like selling like algorithmically generated jewelry that is, you know, like advertised exclusively on Instagram. But like every single day, a different one of these, this culture trickles down that every single one of the day, a different place is having like a party at lunch. Yes. There's a constant effect of there being constant parties at your workplace or like puppy parades or some kind of like yoga teacher leading a class that you yourself are not invited to because your workplace only gets one of those every other week. So it's this feeling of working in a giant playground that is constantly distracting, that is constantly taking up your conference rooms.

But you still have to do work around it in this alienating colorful glass filled space. It was a truly awful experience and no amount of like, you know, to bully that I stole from other people's party leftovers could make up for it in any place. But, you know, taking four minutes to walk from my unit to the cafeteria to get the complimentary cucumber water and walk back, I guess, absorb time of my day there. So that's part of it. I think also like the party stuff serves to like, you know, the mandatory fun on all this like, you know, like ersots like intimacy serves to like quiet your, you know, maybe skepticism about the project at large, because they've already started doing interviews with people who like left we work. And they're like, they're like cult members, they're like, I don't know, it just seemed like it made sense at the time, but now I'm like $47 billion. What the fuck were we doing? Just this is another detail speaking to the fraud and the grift going on here. This is one of my favorite details. It says in 2019, Adam Newman trademarked the word we and then changed the name of his company to the we company and then sold the rights to use it back to his own company for $5.9 million.

Yeah. So he sold the word we to himself and use the company money to pay himself $6 million so that he could use the word we. And to this date, that is the only thing he has ever gotten caught on where they're like, come on, man, it's a bridge too far. And so he just after scrutiny gave the money back. There has been like no amount of like, you know, like legal action or anything. He was just like, okay, this is a bit much. Just straight and vessel. I know. I know.

So like overall, like the overall like, and you know, this, this company is circling the drain now because of, you know, Well, I mean, it's been like, first of all, when you go back even two years into this, when it was already incredibly overvalued, every single fucking, well, not every single, but most like American like business reporting were like, wow, it's disruption. And meanwhile, you have like these like stoic Brits at financial times being like, this is stupid. And like, well before they realized it was like a massive ridiculous over overvaluation, they were like, well, let's compare this to a competitor. So there's another company called IWG that has the exact same kind of business model. I mean, they're not trying to like build office spaces on Mars or whatever. But like the exact same thing they have, they own almost the same amount of real estate.

And yet they turn a profit. We work has never turned a profit. It has been hemorrhaging money since the get go. They turn a profit and their valuation was at like, I can't remember the exact number, but something like 6 billion. And we were for some reason at 47 billion and they were a money pit. This is a larger idea of like fraud, not just in like personal criminal sociopathy and messianic complex. But the overall absurd and distorted nature of our economy at large. You start with the idea that like a company that just basically rents cubicles to downwardly mobile, you know, urban precariat, you know, coffee sippers or whatever,

is valued at $47 billion and got like their money from this like thing called soft money. It's a giant black soft bank. Soft bank. Yeah. Soft bank. Yeah. Soft money. My money real soft right now. That is a black hole of money. Yeah.

Provided by the Saudi royal family. Yeah. It's literally from their sovereign wealth. Yeah. And it seems like it's going to be just about propping up the housing market, right? Like there's too big to fail. It's like we can't have the retail housing market in every American city collapse overnight. Yeah.

And then it's like all of these Leviathan companies like Uber and Amazon that are like technically worth even more than that on paper, don't even turn a profit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. We have also to figure out what the what the profit for data is like we're like, oh, this is going to be the new thing. And but like that's a bubble too. You can't just keep selling what people like click on Instagram to everyone. That is a very limited like there's a ceiling to how much money that will make you.

People aren't just going to pay for information. We've had this happen before with advertising too, where we figured out that it's like, well, it kind of only sort of sometimes works. I don't know. Those tulips just seem to keep only going up in value. Yeah. I mean, that is, I feel like the, I mean, the next financial collapse is going to be. The next financial collapse is going to be hilarious. Oh my God.

It's going to be a bunch of Adam Newman's. Yeah. But like the that is, I feel like that's the understated thing and people will actually, I saw somebody talk about how there was like a big thing. There was a study about how online advertising mostly doesn't work. And one of the, I saw us a fellow blue check reply to this guy and he was like, don't you know people's fucking entire livelihoods are on the line. Everyone kind of knows online advertising doesn't work. Yeah. I think they, everyone kind of knows that it's bullshit, but every somehow we built everything on this now.

So it's got to keep working. The data economy is so inflated and it's like, well, like, I don't know that like anyone's actually going to be able to make that much money off of how many like poppy videos I heard. My family, they've known me for 29 years. They talk to me every day. They get to listen to me when they're not talking to me. They get to read just like whatever things I don't even think about saying before saying them on my timeline. And come Christmas, they, I think they're still thinking like, what the fuck do we buy this? What is he like?

Who is this person? Right. How well can this data work? I got a targeted Instagram ad the other day. Could you lend me to adopt a mind sniffing rat? Do it. That's a rat that get him to sell mine. Marty, I love him.

Well, you know, I think you guys are being too hard on this new guy. He might be a fraudster. His whole thing might be moonshine, but it's all in pursuit of a greater good. I don't know if you saw this. I'm going to do my own little impromptu reading series here, an article today in the Jewish telegraphic agency. X we work CEO Adam Newman helped Jared Kushner on mid East peace plan. Oh, I talked about this because Ivanka and Jared went to Rebecca's birthday party in Italy. They're called quite close.

What's funny that he's involved in Jared's Middle East peace plan because I remember reading that Jared, Jared's actual like Israel Palestine like solution is literally we work for Palestine. Yes. Yes. Also, another thing Adam Newman said, because people were like, Hey, isn't Saudi Arabia like bad? Eventually he said, Well, I am doing more for Saudi Arabian women than any country because I am teaching them to code. That's true. I want to read this.

There's just so much. No, there's some great quotes from this. So this is all I condensed from a vanity fair piece that came out last week. The ousted CEO of we work Adam Newman believes a quote. He was even capable of solving the world's thorniest problems, including the Arab Israeli conflict. Newman assigned we works director of development, Ronnie Bahar to hire an advertising firm to produce a video for Kushner, showing what an economically transformed West Bank and Gaza would look like. Citing to the magazine reported citing two unnamed sources Bahar said he only advised on the video and no we work resources were used Kushner

use the video during the Bahrain conference, which launched the economic portion of the Trump administration's peace plan. So he was like hanging out with him, Kushner, Muhammad bin Salman and Stephen Hadley. So this is the best quote. So this. So this all happened before the Khashoggi killing and then that caused a big problem in the PR world. That was an oopsie doopsie and and Stephen Hadley was talking to long time Bush administration. Real heads know deep cut war criminal was talking to Adam Newman and Adam Newman was despairing of this mistake that that MBS had made and said that the bin Salman mess could have been more avoided if bin Salman had the right mentor.

He said that mentor was himself. Apparently, they're also involved in Kabbalah. Their guy, their Kabbalah rabbi, who they said was the rabbi and then wasn't there rabbi. And then they just named him the spiritual leader of work and introduced him that way at a conference. That guy is in a ton of trouble for using basically like Scientology style abuse tactics to get donations to like the Kabbalah center. Yeah, I love to work for a company that has a spiritual guru and mentor. Oh, oh, oh, great. I ran afoul of the company's wizard.

He's going to turn me into a dude for missing my quarterly projections. Gavin in warlocks is going to have my. So Amber, like how did this all like out of the wheels start like, you know, Adam Newman has resigned now as he overworked. Like how did this all start? He voted himself out by the way. How did this all start like falling apart? So they started to notice that they had like a direct comparable competitor and they started comparing the money and they were like, this is fucking stupid. It got way out of hand.

Also, this isn't some kind of like new technology. It's real estate, it's office spaces. And like you have like just bar napkin math shows that this is completely insane. Like you again, anyone on the street would just be like, yeah, that sounds dumb. But for some reason, business people are like, I'm so smart. Only dumb people think this is dumb. Well, Amber, like that gets to like how you sort of conclude the piece that I really like, like thinking again about Springfield as a kind of body politic. Right.

This sort of multifaceted representation of the best, worst and, you know, mediocre aspects of the American public. So Marge versus the Monterey. Yeah, like the fraud, the fraudulent element of this. I think that what you get out here is that like, whether it's their nose or this or like pretty much most of like the tech economy. There is no bigger mark in American culture right now than the wealthy. Yeah, they're just massive suckers because they're so they're first of all, they're completely isolated. So like, even if they're wrong, there's no risk, nothing's they're accountable to no one anymore. They have like their wealth is sometimes literally sovereign.

No one will hold them accountable for it. Two, like they're just money drunk and have like these God complexes. And like the weird thing about Newman is like, I think he's one of those people that like is so insane that he doesn't know he's grifting anymore. Well, that's what everyone is. I mean, look at the fact he was actually consulted by fucking world leaders on the Padidhi's piece. I think that's been deviled to everyone. He's a moron. Meanwhile, it wasn't too like too long ago that he was like, oh, there are ethical concerns with getting money from Saudi Arabia.

So he visited a fucking, it was one of these things to where he wasn't supposed to have. He would do these things where he would hide the staff, the support staff to make the company look lean. And he would make like secretaries and stuff like hide and not be photographed. He wouldn't take them places. And then there was like multiple times where apparently like he's like, we're traveling lean. It's just us. We don't need help. But then he would be like, go from New York to London and be like, oh, shit, we need someone to make copies.

So they would fly in a bunch of assistants to work for six hours and then fly them back hoping that no one would see them. I don't, I mean, like, I think there's just too high of labor laws there for him to be able to abuse. But anyway, he goes to fucking LA to meet with one of these like Saudis at his like LA mansion. And one of the people who was there, who was like one of his assistants who I guess wasn't supposed to exist, but eventually leaked this stuff was like, there's just like a tiger walking around the fucking place. And in his mind, he's like, you know, this is really a mentorship problem. Like, no, you should never be some if you're in a if you're in a place where you see like James Bond bad guy shit, you're in a bad business. Yeah, no, if there's a trapdoor anywhere, do not hang around there.

I think but the fact that they're all just like, if you look at them and you're like, these people are delusional. This is this could never work. I mean, there's another good example. But it's just like it really tells you that the defining characteristic of this moment we're in whatever we want to call it, like late capitalism or the twilight of the elites or as Felix would call it, the era of the suns. Is that everything is everything winds to a halt and like all these machinery stops working and everyone's too fucking stupid and complacent at the top to figure out how to fix it. They're just all deciding, well, I'll just believe the fantasy.

Well, they're all just like eating the lotus. Like, yeah, no, we're just going to because we have the money and we can afford to just keep doing this. And if we create something like we work, well, it'll eventually become so important to the real estate market that it can't collapse, no matter how bad an idea it is. And so we're just going to keep piling the money into these insane King Ludwig and fantasies. And until eventually it just collapses because no one they're off in. It's also just like a better plan because like the intra elite grift, like who has more money to grift? Yeah, it's just they're all in cloud Cuckoo Land.

And you can you can never truly get grifted because everything is so interconnected that it can't actually collapse. Yeah, everything happened. But everything Adam Newman, literally, like they were like, we have to remove this person. He is insane. He was just he would just like, by the way, like just led Zeppelin Trash, his own we workplaces, which is like the least cool way of being like a decadent fucking like he's like, we man, we played Pac Man all night. He's fucking sucked. He's fucking sucked.

It's so lame. It's the lamest way of being decadent. You can imagine. I think I broke the kombucha tab. Awesome, dude. And like he was just he'll just be fine. So they had just like a meeting where they're like, you're insane. And this is overvalued and this is going to be a huge disaster.

And he was like, you know, I think my own presence has become a distraction. I would like to gracefully bow out and they're like, here's $1.7 billion. Nothing happens to you. Nobody gets consulting fees in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The whole thing is strange. Nothing will happen to him. I mean, I guess like Masayoshi Sun, like lost his position at Softbank, he's still worth billions of dollars. He is still a literal billionaire.

Nothing will happen to these people. They are the biggest suckers in the world and it doesn't even matter. The only way that this guy is going to be brought down is if he steps on a piece of glass on Houston Street and gets gang green. And of course not getting Western medicine and antibiotics, but just like jamming a crystal up his ass and then he just dies. That's the only hope. His wife, when she was giving a speech as his whatever at one point said. Strategic thought leader. Strategic thought leader.

She said, one of the most significant things about being a woman is finding your soulmate and learning to support him and bring him to his vision. She's like, first of all, she can't possibly be his only wife with language like that. You know, there's some other wives. Yeah, that sounds like I think that was a quote from Jim Jones's wife. I feel like Steve Jobs should have been the canary in the coal mine for this age because you have this guy who was as backstabbing, conniving, cynical, awful as any billionaire could be elevated to a godlike status. I mean, you saw those pictures of people weeping at Apple stores when he died and essentially not for making anything new. He didn't. He didn't make anything new.

He just stole from other people. He fucked people over. But the way he died was Steve juice. Right. He could have. He could have lived easily. If anyone's going to live, it's him. But he thought he could outthink the norms.

He thought he could outthink the only system that could benefit him. Dumbass suckers do chemo therapy. I'm not some fucking Rube. Right. Hand me that kombucha. Yeah. So this guy who is like prided himself on being more clever than anyone around who like made the only real Faustian bargain you can make was just fucking over everyone you fucking know. Just giving up any meaning of life, having really no friends, nothing, no actual human connection for billions of dollars and to be worshiped as his visionary.

He died because he thought he was smarter than cancer. He thought he could just shove naked juice up his fucking asshole and live forever. There's no bigger sucker than the smartest guy in the room. I remember Fran Liebowitz saying that she knew it was all beginning to completely come apart when people started talking about Steve Jobs in terms that were previously reserved for like Da Vinci or Picasso. Yeah. Artists of, you know, world historical caliber. But I guess just like to close out the we work thing, you should have concluded by again, like there's this is the vision of the economy that we have that we work as a perfect example of in which charismatic messianic lunatics. Hoover up billions of dollars from mass murdering oil oligarchs in Saudi Arabia.

Don't create anything. Don't make any money, but still cash out for billions of dollars because they made an office that said like grind hard every day and like, you know, kind of like a courier font text art. Contrast that with let's say, you know, an alternate vision of an economy that is democratically controlled and run in a collective self interest. I don't know what the word for that is. I think we know, but the knock on that is that like, you know, oh, like big government always waste your money or like it's always kind of talked about in terms of being fraudulent or like a pyramid scheme. But it's like at the end of the day, the like we feel like a collectively controlled economy, even it's done by like, you know, classic stereotypical, you know, late era Soviet bureaucrats could not possibly waste our money. They're more egregiously or dumber than these people. There's no way that the masses are dumber or bigger suckers than billionaires. You look at the way they get grifted and it's so much worse than like, you know, the average person could get grifted.

It would be and, you know, I'm not talking about like, you know, everyone doing some big horizontalist vote, you know, to figure out like how exactly we budget everything. But something where there were some level of accountability where people had to where there were repercussions to someone for making it perhaps like a dumb mistake or a bad gamble. Maybe that we could even just a little bit of a move in that direction economically, and we wouldn't see like the degree of idiotic, decadent grifting that we now see with like the we work thing. It is the biggest, dumbest scam in American history, and it is hilarious. The other lookout, though, for a chopper, we're opening a couple like satellite pop up office locations in Brooklyn that are sort of like our sort of podcasting studios where like you can rent it from us. You know, we'll take a percentage of your Patreon, but we'll helping you start podcasts and like creative pod spaces that are, you know, for former tanneries and radioactive watch deposits from the iguanas. It will be fine because obviously your podcast will be a lucrative success and then like everyone wins.

It's just like a never ending win. Yeah, we'll be charging you rent for the podcast space, but also taking a percentage of whatever future earnings your podcast. And there's kombucha and once a week you get to hold our hands. Yeah, I will be, I will be starting a revolutionary new IUD sharing program. Young look up for that. Well, speaking of accountability, I mean, there's accountability in the kind of national or global economic and democratic sense, but way more importantly, there's accountability to your close relatives, family members and friends. And there is no better time to make them accountable than of course Thanksgiving. Like if you've if any relative, if your Mima or Pepe has ever expressed any even mildly socially reactionary point of view, this upcoming week is the time to hold them accountable.

There's nothing I enjoy more than going home. I see my family on Thanksgiving, gather them around the turkey and do a Maoist style struggle. They get a giant piece of paper and write all of their years crimes and capitalist voting and then wrap it around their head and hit him with shoes for a good. Thanksgiving is of course this week. It's it's it's Turkey Day coming up. We're all going to be forced to spend time with our families. You know, I know that's excruciating. Oh, God, if you've got like an uncle who's a sock damn and one who's an ML. Oh, God, yeah, I'll be watching football in the other room.

I just want to grill. Yeah. You know, it's it's it's going to be excruciating. Like, you know, like these these political discussions will come up. So I have created here for you and like I've come up with a couple of what I think are going to be some like stock counter arguments that you are dear sweet listener are going to have to put up with if you deem to share your political beliefs or, you know, opinions at the things at the dinner table. So I would like to I'm going to I'm going to pitch you these arguments and we're going to do sort of like a chopper like a snappy answers to stupid questions that we're just going to sort of like go around. I'm going to give you the argument and then I want you to come up with each of you come up with a a either sincere or purposely vexing and mad an encounter argument that can be employed at will this coming Thursday. So, you know, I'm like I'm these questions are pulled from like an experience of like sort of a you a kind of a dirtbag Bernie supporter.

I'm assuming you're going to go home to sort of maybe not full chud relatives but you know sort of Democrat Libb relatives. Maybe we can do some versions of this for chud relatives, but these are the ones I've come up with for sort of Libb relatives and family members. OK, first argument goes like this, you know, I really like Bernie, but I just think Warren is more realistic and will be able to really get things done in small incremental ways that overall adds up to meaningful change. And I just I trust her more to, you know, really get things done. Shut the fuck up. Let's go in a circle. Amber, what is what is the first counterattack to that argument? Pass.

I actually just had this experience, so I'm very exhausted by it. And basically it involved me patiently discussing policy with a beloved family member because I have a rule that I don't condescend or yell at anyone who I've ever vomited on because it's just basic filial piety. So yeah, I don't I don't really have also I don't have that many like super libs. So like I'm actually happy when I get to talk to a Libb and not someone who, you know, like I would vote for Trump, but he's a little too Jewish. Like that's really the problem. Like I a lot of my family kind of airs more in that direction. You know, how would you attack this this this sticky wicket? I would I would get up and I would leave. I would maybe I would fix it to go play. Maybe not. I would go out in the living room, go out to the driveway, call an Uber, take it to the airport, just get on out of there. Yeah, I would do a mute all notifications on my phone in case people are calling me saying, where are you? You know, no time for that.

Also, there's bars at airports now. Often you can smoke there. Why don't you wake up like I fucking love you so much, dog. But it's like, how could you fuck? You're the real fucking drug addict. All of you are so fucking pathetic. How dare you look at me with those knives in your eyes when I only come here trying to bring love. That's good. That shut the fuck up. No, that's I would say that the the pseudo pseudo sophisticated critique that these are more realistic is actually incredibly naive. Because everyone's saying that is essentially forgetting the entire Obama administration.

They're forgetting the fact that we now have a ideologically coherent Republican Party that has control of levers of power and of obstacles to legislation that are constitutionally. I mean, they're there in the Constitution that we never thought it would. It was not designed to have this system was not to cone was not designed to coincide with something like the modern Republican Party. So it has mechanisms within it to prevent anything from happening. So that means any political strategy that involves it does winning an election and then trying to negotiate through the the halls of power as they currently exist. The U.S. Senate as it exists, the Supreme Court and the judiciary as they exist is incredibly naive. You are not grappling with the reality of the situation. And the reality of the situation is that only by radically restructuring the game, creating a political realignment that essentially uses popular participation to overwhelm the dykes that have been put up in front of progressive change. And then also to create points of leverage outside of government that can further that agenda like through strikes and labor organizing that that is the only realistic plan that is up to the challenge of dealing with the actual situation as it stands.

I just try to stick to Medicare for all. Okay, well, right. But they say but that's they would say I want that too, but hers is a better way to get here. No, but I just like this is like the thing is just like even I don't even zoom out to like large ideological things because my family will just like glaze over and go get drunk. I'm just saying this is specifically for the Warren people. Yeah, is that they are there their point of view and what they're proud of is how they see they're more sophisticated than than Bernie and his blunt detail less agenda. And I'm saying that the details that's picking that shit out of pepper that's missing the forest for the trees. You brought Medicare for all my next Thanksgiving argument is sounds like this.

Sure, Medicare for all sounds good. I want everyone to have health care, but I like my private insurance plan. Why should I have to shut the fuck up? I think I'd say no, you don't like I really do like I'm like all you do is bitch about it. Like that's like one of the easiest again, it like I turn into a single issue voter at at like holidays because it's like the easiest thing for me to talk to like my conservative and liberal family about or just even the apolitical things because it's just like it's so concrete. It's kind of a gift politically to have something to talk about, whereas like one of my weird uncles will be talking about tort reform and he doesn't really know what he is, but it's really mad. But like you can say health care and people know what that is. And like, I think going through like the five points of Medicare for all is just like, you know, this is superior.

You know, this is superior to what you have. The only time you ever like your health insurance policy is when you're worried about other people getting free health care. Any other time you're like my fucking health insurance. And it's like just imagine if you didn't have to deal with them. Virgil, you I mean, you've already left. So yeah, you're at the airport. You're doing and you get up and you get out of there. Don't even say a word. Don't even look them in the eyes. They don't they don't they don't deserve that.

You don't owe these people anything. Go to the airport, block all their phone numbers, you know, filter all their email addresses, have that directly go to spam or go to some kind of see Alice scam Trojan horse email auto response. Get on the plane. Turn your phone off. Put it on airplane mode. All the Hotel Transylvania films you can watch pick one. You don't need to watch like the Hotel Transylvania is one through three to understand Hotel Transylvania four in my experience. Felix, generally, if someone says like, well, I like my insurance. That's their argument against Medicare for all like you.

That person's just dead inside. You're not convincing. They're lying either to you or to themselves. They're lost. They're lost soul. You're never going to get them back. You're just looking at it's 28 days later. You know, if you had a gun, you should shoot that relative.

But, you know, you don't you don't yet to fly to Thanksgiving and thanks to, you know, cock transportation laws. You can't take your gun to Thanksgiving, even though it's the most likely time for a kinetic self-defense scenario. So what you do is you become an agent of chaos. And what that means is your youngest relatives just start telling them at random that they're adopted, especially if they're not. Just sort of create mayhem and that will heighten the contradictions, the turkey day contradictions. And by the end, when your uncle finally leaves, he will not have his health insurance in him. Also, by the way, fun fact, my grandpa has a picture of Donald, a framed picture of Donald Trump in his house. He is basically a lifelong Republican.

He is completely insane and he unequivocally supports Medicare for all. He has what I like to call Tulsi energy. He's a little he's like, you think he's going to zig, but then he's aggs. So I would tell them if I didn't think that they were completely dead inside, I would say you don't like your health insurance. You like having health insurance. You like being able to have it. And if you had Medicare for all, you would still have health insurance. It would cost you way less.

And it would be more comprehensive. And if they said, no, I really like it because of my network or something like that. It's all about like keeping your own doctors. Well, then you pull out the matte brooding card, which is that if it as it most likely is, if it's employer insurance, then your employer controls that and they can change it whenever they want to. They always do very few people keep health insurance for very long because every few years the company goes, yeah, we can save a few cents, you know, a day on this. So we're switching to a different provider. And then you have no say in it at all. So the system doesn't even give you the certainty that you think it does.

I see my response to this is like the sincere response is that all of this is based on the confusion between health care providers and health care insurance. But like what you like is your doctor or having someone be there for, you know, when you need it, but nobody actually likes their health insurance. My actual actual response is similar to Felix as we've all intuited this. If you personally, sincerely like your private health insurance plan, it should be taken away from you and not replaced with anything. You should just have your health care taken away from you as punishment for being like that. For being an insurance company cook. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

But no one does. No one really does. Like no one's like, what a great business. All right. These are, as you'll see, like the way I imagine these are all variations on a theme because, you know, it's basically the same arguments are going to come up again and again. But you have to be have variations on the answers. And the other big one is going to be the pseudo clever retort that you know, Bernie's not really going to all these things. He's probably, you know, there's no way that's going to pass Washington, right?

So like nothing's going to happen. He's not going to get anything done. It's not realistic. My, my response to being scoffed at is usually to scoff back. And like, you can kind of psych people out. I mean, whatever, we're getting into Amber's weird intense psychological family drama here. But to just be like, you're like, you don't really think that I'm like, you don't really think that he can get elected. Can you like, you just kind of have to scoff back and like, he's one of the most popular politicians in America.

What's your a key to it and make their point if you seem childish and unrealistic. Yeah. To you, who is bitch made? I usually do a kind of tautological retort to that, which is basically being like, not with that attitude. It's being like, you are the one who is willing these things not to happen, especially with my family. We're like, well, I agree with all these things. It would be great if we could have free college, free Medicare, free all these things. But you know, we, how it's never going to happen. You're like, you are the one being the problem in this situation.

That's a very good one actually. That's like a much more wholesome version of what I do where I'm like, what are you fucking dumb? Of course he can win. Anyone else got some counters to this one? Yeah. Your family members are essentially strangers. You have no bonds with them except for, you know, the accident of birth. Moved flight to Toronto. Just meet up with a gang of bohemian queers.

Adopt them as your new family. Smoke PCP. Plot elaborate heists with them. Yeah, does that, uh, is that, uh, cautious skepticism, get you any pussy, bro? Is that, uh, that's sort of like reason incrementalism. You just whisper that in a girl's ears. She just rives in anguish, bro. Does it get him wet when you talk about like realistic legislative goals homie?

I bet you're fucking crushing that uncle. Uh, I, I got three words. President Donald Trump. Here you go. How do you say with confidence that you think you know what's realistic in politics when Donald Trump is the president of the United States? It happened. I know everyone's trying to pretend it didn't or they fucking Russians, uh,

did the Konami code on our fucking election servers or something, but he fucking won something that no one thought could possibly happen in 2015. Even it was a joke. It was a Simpsons punchline 20 years ago and it happened. How the fuck do you know it's possible and realistic? Nat has already ruined Thanksgiving. This is, this is how to prevent, you know, having a good time playing with the Xbox connect later.

No, but it's good. It's a good answer though. It is like literally like, look, we've already proven that everything is possible. Yes. Everything is possible. Everything is permitted. Everything under the sun. Here.

Nothing is true. Two quick ones. Bernie's just too old. He's 76. Just had a, you know, mild to semi serious heart attack. He's too old. You know, he can't, he can't just drop dead and all, you know, like, you know, he's too old.

I just say he has two big new beautiful baboon hearts and he'll be fine. Once you've done so many drugs that you no longer live within the frame of this reality, move to a cabin in the woods. Go insane there. It's fine. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what place that you're in. This room is interchangeable.

And let this be the last room that you ever see. Virgil's Thanksgiving plan is just the movie Mandy. He's running against a guy who is just big Mac cheese in a fucking, you know, Jell-O-Mole. I mean, he's, they're all old as shit except for Mayor Pete, who's the fucking Damien in the, the Sam Neil Omen movie. All right. Well, this is my, this is my last one. Again, this is, I'm really telling you this to like my own experience, but Pete Buttigieg,

I mean, he's just so smart. He's just, he's so clearly like, I think we just need a smart young go-getter like him. I have, I like, I have like a, a Buttigieg sibling, mainly because I'm from Indiana and we really don't have a lot going on. But I did actually, I was there recently and I saw exactly one Buttigieg sign. I don't think anyone knows who he is there. Like there's like this weird brief initial identification with him. And I think what people actually do like about him is that they're like, oh, he's like a troop,

but he's gay, but he's from the middle of the country. He has something everyone likes. Like, no, this is a one size fits none little asshole. But like, what about like, he's just so, he's smart. No, he's dumb. What is the proof of this? He speaks all those languages. No, he doesn't.

That's why he's lying. He's a road scholar. So the fuck what? We should also just like, just talk about how he's a massive liar. He's a massive liar. He's a massive liar. If they say that, punch him in the fucking locker. He speaks fake Norwegian.

He has fake black friends. He like, no, he's just a massive liar. If you, if you have a relative that is speaking highly of Pete Buttigieg, speaking more, you know, again, this is a very will specific thing, speaking to will specific situation. If they're speaking highly of Pete Buttigieg, it is a good idea to back them into a corner and ask them what happened to Jeffrey Epstein. Because they probably know they were probably involved.

At least they might have some intel. I will say this. I was going to say it. If we didn't get to it. If you do have mega relatives like I do, Epstein, that's it. Just talk about Epstein. They, they, they're all, they've already have a thing. No, of course they do.

But you just keep talking about it. You just keep talking about Bob Barr, talk about his dad, talk about the whole, just talk about the DOJ and how they've ruled in the suicide and Alexander Acosta. Acosta and Trump just talk about all of it. And they can like, they'll just give you Pepe's back or whatever. But I mean, it's just, it's just, do you really want to argue about fucking single payer with some fucking mega dipshit? No, that's tedious. Talk about whether or not you can strangle yourself and, you know, and underground bubble cities and shit like that.

Choose your battles. And when it's not worth having, just like make up conspiracy theories of your own and like have fun with it. Like just have a good time. Enjoy your family over the Thanksgiving. Yeah. Me and my grandsons, we're going to meme our soy relatives. We're going to just meme all over the cucks. We've made a grouper with their late grandmother. They love her.

They love the grouper. We're going to have a great time. I've just imagined that there has been a funeral in the last three years where grandma's on the slab and there is a grouper on the easel. I have been laughing about this idea. So like imagine like suddenly your, your father and your children have a great relationship, but it's just to make you support Donald Trump. Like how would you feel? You'd be like, it's kind of nice that they're working together, but they're making groipers and making really bad like fuck CNN parody rap songs. Sing to me.

I really, I wish it's impossible for this to happen unless it was like, you know, I get married and I have a father in law type thing. But I kind of want this to happen to me. I like, I legitimately sometimes like I want people to argue with me and I will just take on positions. I don't believe in just no one's that combative. No, it's unfortunate. You seem to have like a nice family. Yeah, they're two nights. The extended family is like two nights.

I've said some. I like your sister. She yells a lot. My sister has, you want to, you want to meet someone who can play contrarian corner. My sister is, she's had some of the best ones I've ever heard, but no one really takes us up on it. I don't know. This year I'm just going to say that I believe in Gaulism. Hopefully that gets some reaction out of somebody.

But no, no one's, I'm the only person who's just really rotten, like combative personality. So we'll see. I just don't break your brain. Just have a nice time. Eat too much food. Make shit up. If you, if you can't convince anyone, like, don't like waste your breath. I mean, you can have a good time, but you'll like be sacrificing an opportunity to, like I said, hold your grandparents accountable for, you know, voting for Nixon in 1972.

Yeah, you can. You want to. Just like Elizabeth Warren did, by the way. Do you want to, do you want to walk away from Thanksgiving, leaving your uncle unread pilled, not going his own way? So there you go. I hope everyone, both my co-hosts and you, the listeners, have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, no matter how you choose to celebrate it by abandoning your family and going to live in the woods to take, you know, disassociatives like Virgil has pitched to, you know, try to bedevil them through maddening arguments you don't actually believe in by Felix. Watching succession is worse than being a concentration camp guard. Come to my Thanksgiving to find out why.

I'm showing a little loyalty and chillness like Amber or just I'm screaming at them. I like math or learning a hobo code. There you go. A dishonest man lives here. What do you say? Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. Oh, and please check the show description for our the upcoming UK tour dates.

UK, UK, UK. This will be Matt. Oh, my. It'll be bloody biscuits and gravy. And Matt will be doing this the whole time he's in the country. If you have any hot tips about some big election stories, don't tell us. Don't tell us. We don't care.

All right. It's Alexa, guys. Bye. Bye-bye. How about them transparent dangling carrots? Thank you, India, thank you, terror, thank you, silence, thank you, frailty, thank you, consequence. Thank you, thank you, silence. How about me not blaming you for everything?

How about me enjoying the moment for once?