Elon Musk faces a lawsuit from former Twitter employees alleging deliberate contract breaches, including forced resignations, ignored severance agreements, and directives to evade rent payments totaling millions. Executives like Steve Davis allegedly ordered staff to skip lease fees and halt RSU vesting, while Hawkins resigned after being pressured to find $500 million in savings through fraudulent accounting. The hosts condemn Musk's treatment of workers as criminal theft, suggesting his chaotic transition prioritizes cost-cutting over human dignity, potentially setting a dangerous precedent for corporate governance and employee rights in the tech industry. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Trust Your Girlfriends00:03:38
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know the famous author Roll Dahl.
He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
But did you know he was a spy?
Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
All episodes are out now.
Was this before he wrote his stories?
It must have been.
What?
Okay, I don't think that's true.
I'm telling you, I was a spy.
Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists.
We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
They put on Lizzie McGuire 2 a.m. video on Demand This Guy's 2 a.m. 2 a.m., whatever time it is.
Lizzie McGuire and I'm like wild bats you were with me.
It was like a first like closet moment for me where I was like, they're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
I was like, she's beautiful, but I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
I'm not like.
Listen to Last Culturalistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's Fleetwood My Max?
I'm Robert Evans, and this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we talk about the album Rumors, which was written by a bunch of people who, when they were making it, were all bastards to one another.
Oh, yeah.
With me today to talk about rumors is Cody Johnston and Katie Stoll.
How are we doing today, everybody?
So good.
So thrilled to be here to talk about rumors with you.
You know what I always think about?
I always think about how hard it must have been to be Christy McVeigh.
You know, you got Stevie Nicks there.
What do you do?
She was wonderful.
R.I.P. Absolutely wonderful.
She got a little outshone.
Shined?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Outshun.
It's hard.
It's hard to be up against that.
You know, I'm sure she was aware of it.
And I think that, I think that bleeds through.
That's part of the part of the feel that the album has.
But more easy than these.
Whose favorite song on rumors?
Favorite song?
What do we got?
Is everyone just going to say the chain?
I was going to say, I was going to say the chain, too.
It's just too hard to not say.
Well, there's also something great about.
I was talking about this over the weekend.
Just like Fleetwood Mac in general, they're an amazing band because you'll hear a song and you'll not know that it's necessarily Fleetwood Mac because they've got such a wide range of sound and vocalists.
But yeah, I was going to say the chain.
Head.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, it's hard, but there's a lot.
Yes, it's the chain.
Are you talking?
I also like go your own way.
Yeah.
Oh, hell yeah.
Absolutely.
A soul dust woman.
Old A side and B side.
Are we talking about it?
Gold dust woman.
The Chain Song Choice00:16:04
Like, there's.
Yeah, A and B. Why would you split them up?
Yeah.
All right.
Dreams.
I'm sorry.
There's so many people.
Oh, dreams.
Fuck.
Silver Springs.
Yeah.
Secondhand news, I think, would be mine after the chain.
That's just such a fucking banger.
You're right.
There's secondhand news.
Oh, my God.
What a great album.
What an incredible album.
Should we start playing it?
Speaking of hand news, just listen to rumors and think about how all of the lives lost in the cocaine industry were worth it.
Thank God.
Thank God.
No, we should probably get on.
This is a podcast.
You know what the business is, right?
We've been doing this for five years.
You guys have been on dozens of times, probably.
Now, we're doing a little bit of a different thing this year.
We have another court case to go over.
The last time I had y'all both on, we talked about the big lawsuit against Fox News and we went through the legal filing that Dominion's lawyers had against that after all the discovery.
Today, we are reading through a legal complaint from Wolfram Arnold, Eric Frozy, Tracy Hawkins, Joseph Killian, Laura Chan, Pitlars, and Andrew Schlakesher.
Man, why did all of you have complicated names to say?
Unbelievable.
So these guys are all.
Honestly.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm against them already.
Oh, wait, no.
They're suing Elon Musk.
So I'm back on their side.
So each of these people are former longtime employees of Twitter.
And I'm very frustrated by this legal document from the start because the first sentence of the introduction reads, plaintiffs are each longtime former employees of Twitter.
And then in parentheses, colloquially and hereafter referred to as tweeps.
Hate it.
Wait, so they're the tweets?
They're the tweeps.
Tweeps.
Oh, tweets.
They're choosing to be referred to as tweeps.
That is too twee.
That's too twee.
Yeah, it's waste.
Yeah, what is going on with you?
Is it that they legitimately had so much pride in old Twitter that they had to do this?
Because it's a bad decision.
I'm legally.
Did the tweeps decide to call themselves the tweeps?
I can't imagine their lawyer insisted on it.
Right.
Depends.
Yeah, that was a big part of their culture, right?
That term was used to talk about them and it was on all their little merch and stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, we're talking in the law.
Maybe you don't need to do that.
Yeah.
Maybe you could, yeah.
The alley.
Maybe you want to be taken seriously.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They couldn't.
Horrible.
I mean, Twits is right there, but I can't.
Twits is right there.
On connotation.
The Twarps.
Yeah.
So, you know, these people who the lawsuit informs us have more than 60 years of collective experience working for the company were all either fired or constructively discharged by Twitter right after Musk took over.
Some of these guys were pretty senior.
There's a vice president in there.
There's a global lead in there when they got shit canned.
Quote, and due to that seniority, some of them were in the room where it happened after Musk's takeover of Twitter, privy to and participants in high-level discussions and deliberations among Twitter's new leadership after the merger.
Led by Musk and the cadres of sycophants who were internally referred to as the transition team, Twitter's new leadership deliberately, specifically, and repeatedly announced their intentions to breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations.
And they put those words into action.
Plaintiff Killiam was forced to resign from Twitter after being repeatedly and specifically directed to violate California's building codes in ways that potentially put tweep lives at risk.
See, if you say it like that, you're making a very serious allegation.
And I can't take it seriously when you think people's lives.
Because I was immediately like, tweep?
Oh, yeah.
No.
I'm going to be honest, guys, I'm okay with tweeps dying.
You know, I'm not okay with people dying, but tweeps.
But tweeps?
That's some other thing.
Yeah.
When they say the phrase, they were in the room where it happened.
Is that in italics?
No, it's in quotation marks.
I think it's a reference to that book by that Trump staffer in the room where it happened.
I think it also, knowing the content and the context and the fact they're calling someone sweeps, I think that it also might be a Hamilton reference.
Oh my God.
Are you kidding me?
There's a song called Hamilton.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure.
Oh, yeah, there is from Hamilton.
Cody and a White House.
Did you watch Hamilton?
Yeah, it was on one of those streamers and I watched the Christmas.
I couldn't stomach it because of Lynn Manuel.
I couldn't.
I've got a lot of thoughts on it.
Oh, my God.
He's really corny, and I think he shouldn't have been the guy in the show.
Oh, yeah.
Can't sing shouldn't be there, whatever.
It's fine.
The room where it happened is the White House memoir of John Bolton, former national security advisor.
So they're either a Twitch Hamilton or a John Bolton reference.
Either way, I'm not going to be able to do it.
They're calling themselves tweeps.
It's definitely a Hamilton reference.
That's no question.
Guys and girls, everyone.
Guys and dolls.
Do you want us to take you seriously?
Don't call yourself tweeps.
Don't call yourself sweeps and don't reference either Hamilton or John Bolton.
Not in your legal filing.
Don't be in the first three sentences.
Like, you are alleging that Elon Musk ordered you to violate California building codes in a way that put human lives at risk.
You don't need to be twee.
Like, we don't need to make this like shit.
I'm just, I'm very frustrated.
You don't need to put on a pantsuit and sing hallelujah while you're away.
Over the fucking Twitter old guard.
Yeah, very funny.
I expected to be more immediately on board with the people suing Elon Musk because I hate him so much, but they have done the hard work of making me right in the middle so far.
I am here.
I am steering down the median on a fucking crotch rocket at the moment.
In ways that potentially put tweep lives at risk.
In building the Twitter hotel rooms Musk wanted for tweeps, he would be pushing to work through the night.
Plaintiff Hawkins was forced to resign after Musk and his transition team fundamentally changed the nature of her job and threatened her professional reputation by directing Twitter to breach its leases and essentially steal space from its landlords.
Elon doesn't play rent.
They're still doing a little stealing space from landlords.
I don't know.
Again, I'm very frustrated.
I'm not going to stay against Nuffily 4 yet.
Because the thing that Elon that comes next is one of Elon's transition team members told Hawkins Elon doesn't pay rent.
And Elon told me he would only pay rent over his dead body.
And I'm frustrated at the degree of like, again, especially since he spent so much time flipping out over crime in San Francisco.
He's like this big law and order fascist weirdo now.
The fact that he just refuses to pay rent, like fuck him, like that makes me extra angry for Elon Musk.
But also like, I don't know, it is hard to make someone get too outraged about stealing from like a giant corporate landlord.
Yeah, there's a lot of tension here.
If you want me to be like, well, maybe there's one cool corporate landlord, I don't know, send in like mercenaries to force Twitter out of their offices, right?
There's an idea.
Impound their servers, you know, like be a real asshole about it.
And then at least you'll be a cool like corporate ghoul, you know?
Go for it, guys.
Do do what, think about, think about what that guy, the bad guy in Robocop, would do in this situation.
You know, there are ways.
He would send, he would send Bodaker in to like fucking beat the shit out of Elon Musk when he's having a cocaine party.
You know, that, that's what he, you know, I don't know.
Yeah, if Ed209 destroyed Twitter's offices, I'd be like, all right, well, I'd be like, okay, one landlord gets to stay a landlord.
So both Killian and Hawkins were told that from Musk, the fact that Twitter was legally or contractually obligated to pay a particular sum would be irrelevant to the decision of whether to actually pay it when that amount came due.
That Musk operated on a zero cost basis and that Twitter would therefore simply decide afresh for each significant expense whether or not it wanted to pay what it owed.
This seems very illegal, but he's got enough money that it's not, right?
Like, because he can just hold it up in court for forever.
And it'll be fine.
It's very frustrating.
There's a lot of people on the streets in San Francisco because they couldn't pay, you know, what they owed in rent or whatever.
And Elon's just going to continue advocating they be put in death camps, I guess.
That's cool.
Exactly.
It is interesting how differently we treat these two very different examples of rent evasion.
Like, I would be surprised if the total number of people evicted in San Francisco last year, like the amount that they owed that got them evicted, equaled what Musk has failed to pay on his property.
100%.
Yeah.
It's just thinking about...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Okay, back on board with the tweets.
Yeah, back on with the tweets.
The tweets say that Musk flatly refused to pay them their contractually required severance.
This was severance that Twitter and Musk had in order to induce tweeps to stay through the close of the merger, promised would be paid if Musk conducted a layoff, in which Twitter and ex-holdings had bound themselves to pay under the terms of the merger agreement.
Seems clear that they owed this money.
And basically, the allegation is that Musk never even intended to pay people, right?
Like he was just lying to get people to work without pay, which is like, I don't know, that's in like the neighborhood.
Like, you're not allowed to make people work without paying them.
No, I would say it's not just in the neighborhood.
It's staunchly like.
Yeah, that seems like crimy.
That's like the town.
Even if it's not crimy, it's unethical and immoral, and he's a bad person.
I'll just, I'll, uh, throw that out there.
Yeah, but how could it not be crimy?
Yeah.
Musk went so far as to insist publicly that tweeps he fired are not entitled to any severance at all beyond Warren Act notice.
In hindsight, it appears that he also inserted a legally ineffective, specific no third-party beneficiaries clause in the merger agreement's provisions relating to severance in a failed attempt to prevent tweeps from enforcing those provisions.
Plaintiffs bring this action for a declaratory judgment against the merger agreement and the related but independent promises and representations to the tweeps entitle them to the promise severance to recover that severance as well as punitive damages for defendants' flagrant bad faith.
Yada yada yada.
They quote a bunch of laws that Musk probably did in fact break.
Yeah, so we go in, we detail the case of like a couple of these people.
They're just kind of like listing their work histories, which I don't feel like we need to know for any particularly working reading.
Yeah.
Worked at Twitter, spent a lot of time as a tweeper, tweeping up, you know, pretty hard.
Defendant Musk is, on information and belief, a citizen of the state of Texas, residing in Boca Chica, Texas.
I wonder how much time he spends in Boca Chica, but people have been allowed to fake being from Texas for forever.
We had a whole president do it once.
Look it up, people.
All right.
So now we're up to the factual background statement here.
This litigation arises out of Twitter's attempt.
Sorry, my mouse.
This litigation arises out of Twitter's attempt to avoid paying its ex-employees the severance it promised them.
Twitter made these promises many times and in many ways.
Twitter made these promises in their initial offer letters to the plaintiffs.
Twitter made the same promise explicit in its agreement to sell the company to Musk, negotiating for a clause in the agreement that protected its employees by ensuring they would receive severance at least as favorable during the post-merger period as they had under the old management.
And Twitter went out of its way to make additional promises and representations to its employees to allay their concerns in advance of its purchase by Musk and to convince them to stay employed at Twitter pending the close of this transaction.
Twitter broke all these promises, breaching its enforceable agreements with its former employees in the process.
Now, I'm going to say this right now.
I suspect the people who sold Twitter to Musk, the former people running it, the former board, were well aware that all these employees were going to get fucked and simply didn't care because they got their bag, right?
Yeah, that's why the deal was made because I offered them so much money.
I don't have any sympathy or I don't know, care for the people that sold Twitter in general.
No, no, I mean, I, I, yeah, it seems like they ought to be liable to some extent, too.
Like, there's some sort of due diligence.
They should, I'm sure they did enough legally.
I don't think they're actually have any exposure there.
Um, I just think it's immoral.
Um, yeah, so it just kind of goes through the details of the merger, the details of like how they uh set up this severance agreement.
Um, so Twitter committed to providing employees with two months' base salary or incentive-based salary for sales employees, prorated performance bonuses through as through all as though all triggers for such bonuses has been hit.
The cash value of any RSUs, those are like internal stock units that would have vested within three months of separation, uh, cash contribution through the continuance of healthcare coverage.
So, it's like a pretty good severance agreement.
I think it's better than we got it cracked.
Um, yeah, you know, that's that sounds right.
Yeah, that sounds what they're doing.
I can't speak to that because they never hired me.
Yeah, full time.
Well, they, uh, yeah, I, I, corporate America, uh, something none of us have any issues with.
I don't know.
All these tweets, yeah, these tweets seem like they were promised a pretty sweet deal if they stayed on to like ensure the company didn't fall apart right before the deal.
And then, Musk immediately started using months later.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Um, so they list some of the different things that, like, uh, you know, Musk said during the process of like that whole back and forth over whether or not he was going to acquire it, the lawsuit against Twitter.
Um, okay, here we get to a point where we have that's titled, Twitter's employees are worried about the pending Musk Takeover, and Twitter makes representations to address their concerns.
This should be some inside gossip with the promise of Twitter being acquired by one of its fiercest critics.
Many tweeps were understandably very concerned about their future, particularly about the potential effects of the merger on their jobs.
Layoffs had already been discussed as a possibility even prior to the acquisition, and it was widely reported that cuts would be needed as a consequence of the additional debt that Twitter was incurring as part of the acquisition.
Given his criticisms, it was also viewed that Musk would make additional material changes at Twitter.
Twitter took these concerns very seriously.
If a significant number of tweeps were worried enough about their future to seek new employment, it would harm Twitter's ability to continue to function smoothly while the deal was in process.
Twitter, therefore, took several steps to reassure its employees.
They negotiated this merger agreement.
Let me get down here to the next set of good stuff.
Twitter also benefited from a degree of stability via employee retention during the pendency of the acquisition and the related litigation.
That reduced the chances of an acquisition threatening material adverse event, protecting the chances the deal would be consummated.
And Musk, in extending an offer to entice employees to stay pending his acquisition, also received stability, the promise of a company that would be, when he completed his takeover, largely in the condition it was made before the offer, allowing him to begin to reshape Twitter from a stable foundation.
Nevertheless, tweeps remain concerned about the consequences of the acquisition.
Twitter issued an acquisition FAQ to provide employees with a resource.
The FAQ detailed reassurances and representations to employees regarding their compensation, how equity grants would be handled.
Musk's Insurance Premiums00:07:07
It explicitly stated that in the event of a layoff, any employee whose job is impacted would be eligible for a severance.
They had meetings and stuff about this.
Twitter orally communicated to its employees that Musk had made the severance stability promise and the merger agreement.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At one point, a tweet posted to Twitter's internal Slack tagging Twitter's C-suite leadership and communicating that the details of Twitter severance would be critical to employees' decisions to remain pending the close of the merger.
So yeah, they're really building a case here that like the entire both the value to the people who owned Twitter and ran it previously and the value to Musk was reliant upon folks staying and keeping the site stable and that they had to do that.
To do that, both of them basically had to run a con on the workforce of Twitter.
And I think it's been more of a con on Musk than it has been on like it like he he's it has kind of fallen apart for him as well because the news just came out today that the company's valued at about a third of what it was when he bought it but I laughed out loud.
Both of them definitely like had to screw over all of these people in order to in order to like carry out their plans.
Like it seems pretty clear what was going on all around here.
Yeah, they just wanted everyone to shut up so they could make the deal happen.
Yeah.
Almost immediately upon a Musk's arrival at Twitter, he instead purported to terminate executives for cause.
On information and belief, this occurred in some cases within hours of the takeover.
In fact, on information and belief, Musk did not even intend to have Twitter pay the director's office and officers' indemnification and insurance premiums as required by section 6.6 of the merger agreement.
On information and belief, a Twitter employee with access to Twitter's accounts and capacity to execute the payment made that payment despite Musk's specific objections, preventing a breach of the merger agreement.
And this employee was fired for doing so.
So basically, Musk was required to pay like indemnification and insurance premiums as part of the merger agreement, which is like that's something he's required to do under state law to keep the company like functioning legally.
And he directed an employee to like cancel the payment because he's saying basically don't pay money for anything.
And so this person follows the law and makes the payment and Musk fires them.
That's wow.
Very funny.
Good leadership.
Yeah, no, no.
That is good leadership.
Yeah.
So obviously, once up.
Oh, just that broken brain thing of just like you're so rich and powerful, and you have this idea of yourself and your view that you're like, just don't do it.
Just don't do anything.
Right.
Just like, it doesn't matter.
Like the idea of like buying this company and just like, we're not going to spend any money.
And if we do, you're fired.
It's like the idea that that would work out for him.
Well, just when you're that rich and powerful, you get away with lots of stuff.
Look at him not paying rent.
I mean, yeah, and you think you can, and I mean, maybe he can, and nothing will come of this.
It's like, are you really?
Yeah.
It's interesting also seeing all this stuff because first we saw it as one might call it secondhand news.
Yeah.
Heard act in the day when you get like these little tidbits, these little snippets of like, yeah, this person said that he did this.
And just seeing it all laid out in this legal complaint is interesting.
It is interesting.
And I think, so a lot of this is kind of going over the stuff that was reported one way or the other, like as it was happening.
So if you don't remember back on November 3rd, 2022, after the acquisition, he sent out an email basically saying, hey, we're going to have a meeting tomorrow and you'll know who's getting shit canned.
The next day, November 4th, they fired half of the company.
It seems like the layoffs were largely organized by SpaceX and Tesla employees who sort of like came in and helped him build lists.
Yeah, yeah, he brought in, that's what's alleged here at least.
On information belief, Muskud used engineers from his other companies, Tesla and SpaceX, to help determine which tweets would be included in the November 4th layoff.
And then sorry, putting engineers in charge of that is so worse.
Especially since so much of the jobs aren't engineering.
Like, for example, being the people who pay to keep mandated insurance.
No, it's just like this like weird like billionaire engineer brain.
I can imagine.
Like people in HR or people that are trained for these kinds of conversation is one thing, but engineers.
Yeah, also like the people who are worst at, I don't know, managing.
Do you think that they just got people in the room and played go your own way?
Yeah, you should go your own way.
Ah, man.
What a bet.
No, you nailed it.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, at this point, Twitter's been gutted, you know, much like a big game hunter who gets impaled by a Tusk.
There we go.
I was going to say much like Stevie Nick's in that breakup, but I like him.
Oh, well, yeah.
Okay.
That's that all that works too.
So the next thing that happens is they start firing people after this like first wave of layoffs.
You know, those are, they're agreeing to pay severance and they're going to fuck with a lot of those people on severance.
But in order to avoid paying severance, the next thing that Twitter does is they start over the next few days firing even more people saying they were in violation of Twitter policy.
These are for cause terminations.
So like they don't have to do the same things they have to do in like layoffs, R.E. severance.
So it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's fuckery.
It's also like bad for people's careers.
It's one thing if like, yeah, that company, the, the, the, the boss gutted it and everybody got laid off, but they didn't necessarily do anything wrong.
That doesn't necessarily hurt your chances of getting hired again, as opposed to like getting fired for violating company policy, which can, which is extra shit.
Making a payment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, or for paying a mandated insurance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know who does follow the law?
Probably.
It couldn't possibly be products and services.
I think it has to be.
It's got to be.
Yeah, it is.
Most do.
Most do.
Nearly all of them do.
I mean, we are sponsored by the Sinaloa cartel, who have a little bit of a history of rule breaking.
But for the most part, all of our sponsors are law-abiding.
Who doesn't have to do that?
For breaking rule-bending.
Bad boy.
Yeah.
Or girl.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rules for Big Money00:03:01
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, And dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budgetista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
That's great.
It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Breached Vendor Contracts00:10:53
Oh, we're back.
We're back and we're going to continue because as our fans always say, don't stop.
Oh, boy.
They voted on Lambs.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is really the episode of some of our fans's dreams.
Oh, boy.
We should.
That's what I'm doing.
Yeah, no, yeah.
There we go.
Ouch.
Oh, no, I accidentally started playing rumors on my phone.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the allegations against Musk are based on, well, you know, the phrase they use is based on information and belief, but what is that if not rumors?
If not rumors.
Okay, this is too much.
Red bullet.
Like for the place.
Yes, we're having fun.
Good stuff.
Good stuff.
So the next thing that Musk announces is that Twitter's ending its remote work policy and all workers have to immediately report to a physical Twitter office.
This was a real problem for people who lived like hundreds of miles from Twitter offices and could not do this.
Musk updated the policy after this was pointed out to him and said that Twitter would allow for a transition period for remote workers who live too far away to move to a location closer to Twitter.
That's a good decision to like uproot your entire life and move across country for a job that appears to be collapsing every minute.
Does indeed need you there?
Yeah.
And probably won't exist in like six months.
That seems like a good call.
Later, the policy morphed into one in which managers could allow their reports to work remotely if they chose to, but would themselves be fired if the employees they allowed to work from home did not perform up to Musk's undefined and unarticulated standards.
What a great working environment.
Well, he's not a very articulate person.
No, I don't know.
No, he's dumb and kind of an asshole.
Yeah.
The owner of a social media communication platform is so bad at communicating.
Well, he's not, he bought it, you know, like he purchased.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's it's pretty cool.
So in mid-November, Musk sent another email with a link to an online form and an ultimatum.
Any Twitter employee who wanted to keep their job at Twitter would need to affirmatively indicate their consent by checking a box on an online form to a more hardcore working environment, which would mean long hours at high intensity.
And in a transparent attempt to avoid the severance obligation to which he had bound himself, Musk unilaterally decreed that employees who did not affirmatively check the box would be deemed to have voluntarily resigned in exchange for two months of non-working leave and a single month's post-separation pay.
That's cool.
What a, yeah.
How you run a company is how you show your employees that you're going to do a good job.
Well, it's really important.
Doesn't he want people to like have kids and raise a family, but like he also wants them to like spend like 12 hours a day sleeping at the office?
Yeah, I'm not sure that.
Well, does he want everybody to have kids and raise a family?
There are certain types of people that have kids and raise family.
He also cuts paternity and maternity leave for his employees as well.
He doesn't want his employees doing that.
Other people are.
Full of contradictions, that one is.
Yeah, vaguely other people should be doing that.
So as part of this wave of layoffs, a substantial number of employees were laid off because they did not immediately affirmatively agree to the material changes to their working conditions that Musk had demanded.
And yet that still wasn't enough.
After the November 17th layoff, Musk again turned to engineers from his other companies to conduct code reviews of code written by Twitter employees.
The code reviews were a clear pretext to attempt additional four-cause firings.
The reviewers lacked the context to meaningfully evaluate the code, and the reviews were completed in an amount of time that was clearly insufficient for any good faith approach of the task.
After the code reviews, Twitter fired multiple employees on the pretext that their work was not up to standard.
Many of those employees had received uniformly positive performance reviews prior to being fired.
Other employees were put on performance improvement plans in a transparent attempt to lay the groundwork for future for-cause firings.
The slapdash, bad faith nature of these reviews was open and obvious.
Some managers acknowledged that they were instructed to stack rank their employees so that at least some of the employees in each group would be fired or placed on performance improvement plans, even if all were performing adequately.
Other managers specifically informed employees that the managers had placed on PIPs that the employees should keep doing what they were doing because their performance did not require improvement.
Other managers could not identify the standard by which they had assessed particular performance as requiring improvement.
And at least some fired employees were informed that they had been fired by mistake and asked to return to work.
All told, on information and belief, Twitter laid off, fired, or engineered the resignations of over 5,000 employees within less than two months.
That's beautiful stuff.
Real impressive leadership right there.
I was going to just say firing, all of this stuff is very time consuming.
All of the work that's being put into fucking over the employees and firing them.
And then, oh, whoops, these are the ones that arguably too much attention when there's vital things that need to be done at the company.
Anyway, sorry, Cody, what were you going to say?
Oh, no, that's true.
It's just, there's, he did that interview, an interview recently where they talked about this.
And basically, he's like, yeah, we're going to try to hire a bunch of people back.
And maybe people we fired will want to come back.
Like, very recently, like, this is the plan.
And it's just so because he didn't even like, I saw some Twitter blue subscribers be like, oh, I love, I love this because like, you know, being able to own your mistakes.
No, no, no.
He didn't say it was a mistake.
He said that he had to do it.
This is all this is all in the pretext that like, I have to get rid of this many people.
I have to.
And now that he did, he's like, well, we'll hire them back.
That's still not admitting the mistake.
He's still saying he had to do it.
He's just saying he's going to do this new thing now.
And it's very funny that he thinks these people are going to return to work because I guarantee you they are never going back again.
Oh my God.
Why wouldn't they?
Katie got out of the way.
Oh my gosh.
Get out of here.
Oh man.
I was just agreeing.
I was so glad.
That was so good.
Love it.
Good stuff.
Yeah, you make loving fun, Robert.
That's something no one has ever said to Elon Musk.
No, they have not.
Oh, fuck.
So let's go to the story of one of the people who's a party to this lawsuit, plaintiff Hawkins.
Hawkins was Twitter's vice president of real estate and workplace, responsible for its office leases and managing its offices.
So you can tell this person's not going to be long for the company because Elon's no longer dealing with any of that.
Yeah.
It talks about her whole career, which I don't really care about.
But yeah, so she's not opposed.
It says that she was not opposed to the merger or the concept of Musk as Twitter's new CEO.
She received word of the impending merger deal while on family vacation.
Didn't know a lot about Musk at the time.
I don't think that's possible, but okay.
It just seems weird that you wouldn't know a lot about Elon Musk and live in the bay and the tech industry.
But yeah, maybe.
Probably.
Well, I guess it's like, you can not know about him, but you can know.
That guy's the Tesla guy.
Yeah, he's the Tesla guy.
That's probably what she means.
Given the uncertainty, her focus in the period leading up to the merger and the leadership she provided her team centered around one basic principle.
Let's focus on doing our jobs and protecting our people.
During the pendency of the merger, employee retention was a critical concern, as we've talked about, yada, yada, yada.
Musk, okay, as the closing of the merger approached, Musk's behavior heightened Hawkins' concerns.
He showed up to an all-hands meeting exactly once, arriving late and spending his time talking about extraterrestrials.
Oh, is that the, I bet that's the one where he also talked about gizmos and how he likes gizmos?
That may be.
I think that may come a little bit later.
But it's very clear.
He was talking about aliens this whole time.
And all of these tweeps were just saying, I don't want to know.
It's so right.
It's so, he's such a work.
It's just like one of those that he thinks he's so interesting.
And like, oh, everyone's so boring.
I have great conversations.
But he's only got these stock things.
He has like a thing he says about aliens and a thing he says about simulations.
And that's it.
Like, that's his idea of like.
Yeah, it's very much like a push-button get-bacon attitude to comedy.
Yeah.
Like, but like, he thinks it's like this like deep, like interesting conversation that goes beyond his one like talking point about it.
But, you know, maybe stuff.
Maybe he's not.
Maybe he's fascinating.
So he's he shows up once.
He bullshits about aliens.
Even after that meeting, Hawkins kept an open mind, hoping that Musk's odd behavior would not impact his leadership once he took over Twitter and the employees were part of his team.
But Hawkins also formed a strong determination to remain at Twitter, at least throughout any transition period, in order to shepherd her team through the transition.
The reality of Musk's new directives and operation of Twitter almost immediately shattered that determination.
Upon Musk's arrival at Twitter, he brought with him a transition team of executives and sycophants from his other companies, from whom Musk directed Twitter's employees to take direction.
This is the transition team.
He also brought over Tesla engineers to, upon information and belief, make retention and termination decisions.
The transition team decreed that no managers were allowed to communicate with their teams via Slack.
Which just like just nukes the business, right?
Like this is the only way we communicate from most things.
And you're like, nobody gets to do this.
They froze all payments to vendors until they could be verified.
No explanations were ever given as to like what this meant or why it was being done.
Yeah, basically, Twitter was just breaching contracts en masse without like informing the vendors or the employees communicating with these vendors as to why.
Faced with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding invoices with no reasonable expectation of timely payment, many of these vendors informed Twitter that they would not be performing further work for Twitter until those invoices were paid, which is, by the way, part of why DeSantis's announcement was a failure is that Twitter hadn't paid a major vendor that was responsible for like keeping Twitter spaces up and online.
Frozen Payments Explained00:03:43
Yeah, specific spaces.
Yeah.
Yeah, very funny.
But you know who does pay all their vendors because their vendors are me.
They pay you over and over.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's that's who I get paid.
Yeah.
So help me get paid.
Terrible.
Did you get paid, Robert?
Did you get paid?
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modern.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Yeah.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
That's great.
It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iTart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Oh, yeah, we're back and I'm counting up my money.
I'm counting up my money, which is why everyone calls me the Goldust Woman.
Black Mirror Scenarios00:15:20
I don't know.
That one was going to be hard to fit in.
That was going to be hard to fit in.
I was wondering how I was going to.
That's good.
That was really good.
But I mean, the other one is going to be a little bit more.
I think you're praising me a little too much.
It was.
It is your show, Robert.
You did both miss one that I did a little bit ago.
What did you do?
Yeah.
I was pretty proud about this.
But yeah, I've also forgotten which one I did.
I missed one.
Listeners, you can go search for it.
It was like seven minutes ago, you know?
Nobody commented on it.
Pull up the set list for rumors and figure out which one I did.
That's a little, you'll get a prize.
You'll get a prize.
I'm not going to tell you what it is.
And like Elon Musk, I will probably not follow through with this promise.
But, you know.
Did you say it's a little lie?
Was it not that funny?
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm telling you sweet little lies.
Oh, man.
Good stuff.
So, yeah.
Twitter fired these vendors when they were like, you know, had issue with not getting paid.
Musk attempted to halt the payment of his employees' contractually mandated November RSU vests.
Like these people were guaranteed by their contracts a certain like number of vested like internal stock units that he's just saying attempting to not pay people.
God, what a piece of shit.
Robert Caden was fired shortly after the November vest payments went through.
On information belief, Caden was fired because of his actions in making the November RSU payment in compliance with Twitter's obligations over Musk's objections.
Delana Brand, Twitter's chief people officer and Hawkins' direct manager, handed in her notice within days after the merger closed because she was disgusted at how people were being treated.
On or about October 30th, 2022, Hawkins attended a meeting with Steve Davis, Jared Burchall, and many of Twitter's global leaders.
In that meeting, Davis announced several changes that boded ill for Hawkins' team and her role at Twitter.
First, he announced that Twitter's sourcing and procurement team should handle all lease negotiations from that point forward, despite lacking both personnel and experience sufficient to handle this task.
Next, he announced that the company would no longer be working with brokers to procure and negotiate leases.
This choice ran in conflict with every established standard and practice of commercial real estate management.
And obviously, this is like a massive burden on the in-house staff, which has just been like cut viciously.
The only justification given for changes was Elon wants this.
Very soon thereafter, Davis informed Hawkins that Twitter needed to find $500 million in annual savings.
So to do this, just a half billion.
Yeah.
Sophie, by the way, I'd like us to find half a billion dollars in savings this year for the company.
Can we get the team on that?
Sure.
Maybe get the engineers on that.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm willing to cut out coffee.
Garrison's going to need to find like $300 or $400 million.
And yeah, together, I think that'll do it.
My $100 million in coffee and another $300 or $400 million, we can make it.
Sure.
I think that might be too much coffee anyway.
Yeah, I mean, you're probably right.
It'll be good for my heart.
No, I should just switch to cocaine again.
That was just like 20 or 30 million a year.
I was going to say tea, maybe, maybe switch to tea.
Wow.
I don't know about English.
Well, I don't know.
I don't think Fleetwood Mac did too much tea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rumors wasn't made on Earl Gray, Cody.
That was made on China White.
Anyway, to accomplish this, each global lead was given a massive spreadsheet that had to be filled out every single day, identifying possible savings opportunities.
Hawkins' spreadsheet covered 30 locations and upwards of 50 leases.
The pressure to fill in the spreadsheet on time was immense.
Expectations from above made it clear that compliance was prioritized above accuracy.
That's a good thing.
You know, you're making a good team when people are like, you don't actually need to do your job as long as you're on time.
That is wild.
That's so funny.
That's super funny.
It's that, it's that Marvel thing where like, like five months ago, they were like, we're going to stop focusing on quantity and start focusing on quality.
It's like, yeah, you got to do it.
What were you guys doing before?
How would you describe what you were doing prior to this?
Make sure it's good first.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty good stuff.
For example, Twitter instructed Hawkins to identify leases for cancellation.
When she identified potential sites and leases that could be terminated for cost savings, Hawkins and her team took the time to document risk factors involved in downsizing or terminating these leases.
One of the big things is that if you break a lease, you often have to pay a fee.
Like if you do that with your apartment, you might have to pay like an extra month of rent.
If you do that for like a giant corporate lease for thousands of workers, it could be significantly more money.
One would imagine.
Yeah.
And it notes when the time came to present their conclusions, this added context was not well received.
When informed of the risks of termination fees during a meeting on November 3rd, 2022, Steve Davis said, well, we just won't pay those.
We just won't pay landlords.
Davis also tore to Hawkins, we just won't pay rent.
Those are direct quotes from Davis, per Hawkins' best recollection.
To the extent that they are not word-for-word accurate, they are extremely tight paraphrased, bad, bad, bad.
Hawkins is shocked because part of her job is reputation-based.
Like, I am the person managing leases for this company, and we will meet our obligations.
Yeah, we pay on time.
We pay amounts.
Yeah.
In general, we pay.
Again, it's one of those things that in order for Elon to meet his cost-saving goals, this woman has to destroy her future in the business, knowing that she will immediately get shit canned as soon as possible.
It's just like such a gross guy and way of looking at people and looking at business.
Like, it's hard to do.
Presumably, he looks through people.
He doesn't look at them.
No, he is incapable of seeing or caring about human beings.
Yeah, they're all sort of tools or little pieces for his lack of a plan, I guess.
Players only love you when they're playing.
Yeah, that's what everyone says about Elon Musk.
I don't know.
That one was shoehorned in.
I see.
It's okay.
Look, a lot of these are going to be half-assed guys.
We're just not going to make them all work very well.
Unwilling to be involved in, let alone responsible for such thefts, Hawkins resigned the next day.
He is asking her to steal.
She did so despite her internal commitment to remain through the transition to protect her team because she had no other choice.
Yeah, I get that.
That kind of scans.
Like, he is saying, I need you to commit a series of crimes for me, Elon Musk, a man incapable of loyalty.
So, yeah.
Right, that's the other thing.
Like, there's no, like, there's just even if you're like on his good side at one point, it's worth nothing.
Yeah.
It's worth nothing.
And you're worth nothing to him.
And as soon as you even, like, not even like barely a challenge will turn him around.
And then you're gone.
Who becomes the scapegoat for things actually in this situation when shit hits the fan?
You know, they're more likely to get wrapped up in that.
Elon Musk isn't.
Clearly, he can evade all of it.
We've all seen succession, I think, right?
We've seen it.
Maybe Robert hasn't.
No, I, yeah, it happens.
Yeah, I don't know.
Like, I get why she did what she did.
So Killian is the next person we talk about, Joseph Killian.
He was Twitter's global head of construction and design.
He was immediately given Hawkins's duties after she quits.
He worked directly with the transition team and was directed by Steve Davis and Liz Jenkins, who worked for the boring company, and Pablo Mendoza, a venture capitalist who invested with Musk.
Yeah, so that's that's that's cool.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
Yeah, I mean, it's a big scam, but they still are a company.
They dug that stupid hole in Las Vegas.
I went through that like he's dumb as fuck.
I feel like they're not a company anymore.
I mean, they have engaged in what are effectively a series of cons, like roping in local governments to agree to work with them and then actually like pulling it out and then like canceling other more viable transportation plans.
Yeah, just to fuck with like public transportation.
So I just noted like this guy, Killian, gets given Hawkins' job and he's being managed by Steve Davis and Liz Jenkins, who work for the boring company.
And then there's this bit, which is amazing.
Killian was also directed in these activities by Nicole Hollander.
On Information and Belief, Hollander was not employed by any of Musk's companies.
On Information and Belief, Hollander is Steve Davis's girlfriend and the mother of his child.
So Musk's like transition team are just like hiring their girlfriends to manage the people in committing real estate fraud.
It's so again, is that like amazing where it's like, yeah, if you like say on Information and Belief, Hollander was living at Twitter headquarters with Davis and their infant child, who was a month older.
What the fuck?
Yeah, family values.
Awesome.
Despite not being employed by any of Musk's companies, Hollander nonetheless had full instructional authority over Killian and the rest of his team with regards to the transition.
Almost immediately, Musk's zero-cost basis policy reared its head.
Killian was informed by the transition team that he would have to justify his spin to Musk personally, and that if Musk was not convinced that the expenses were necessary, he would simply default on his contractual obligations and let the expenses go unpaid.
In early November, Davis sent a 3 a.m. email to 15 or 20 managers complaining about Twitter's rent obligations, which totaled $130 million annually.
In this email, Davis specifically compared Twitter's rent obligations to SpaceX's, noting that Twitter had one-tenth as many employees as SpaceX, but paid five times as much rent annually.
Of course, Twitter had significantly more employees when it first incurred its rent obligations.
Killian quickly became concerned that Musk intended to stop paying rent on Twitter's outstanding leases, breaching the contracts and placing the company at risk of being evicted.
Indeed, Musk's attorney, Alex Spiro, loudly opined that it was unreasonable for Twitter landlord, Twitter's landlords to expect Twitter to pay rent since San Francisco was a shithole.
Oh my God.
Is that the only thing you need to not have to pay rent?
Yeah, this city with a fraction of the violent crime of, for example, many parts of Texas is, yeah, it's...
I was just going to say, because if that's the case, I think we could apply it to a lot of places.
Yeah.
I'm so frustrated by this man and all of the people around him.
He's a very hatable man.
Yeah, he incredibly hateable old man or piece of shit, whatever.
Musk even went so far as to prevent Twitter from paying the janitorial staff for the work they had already provided after the janitors complained about being fired.
In essence, it quickly became clear to Killian that Musk's intended method of operation was to obtain services from vendors without any intention of keeping the agreements or paying for services requested and received.
In other words, robbing people, like stealing from them.
Theft, the thing that he's complained about happening on the streets of San Francisco.
Yeah.
Well, it's okay if you wear a suit and do it.
Yeah, it's great if you wear a suit and do it.
Absolutely.
Again, it's what kind.
Yeah.
I'm agreeing with you.
It's, yeah.
I really like it.
I know I'm not wrong.
I feel like if we're going to have these really fucked up stand your ground laws, you know, where people can basically like commit murder if they feel like their car is going to get stolen or something.
I feel like you should have the right to do that if you're like a janitor working for Elon Musk.
Like you should, you should be allowed to draw on him.
Yeah, I think that this is a self-defense situation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I whatever.
I don't know.
This is this is so disheartening.
Yeah, it's really, it's like really, really disgusting.
Yeah.
And it's just, I guess I've seen some of the veil get lifted and sort of like people's like rose-colored glasses on about him be taken off a bit, but it's just obvious the kind of person he is and like how he doesn't really care about a lot of the stuff he says he cares about.
It's just, I don't know.
It sucks.
Hate it.
Yeah, it sucks.
He just cares about being, yeah.
He's, he's, he's, he, he sees himself primarily as an entertainer because for some reason, like all of the worst people in America, his primary goal is to like be famous for making people like laugh or whatever.
Like, it's weird because like stand-up comedians are the most miserable people in the world.
And also all of the worst, richest people desperately wish they were a stand-up comedian.
Like you saw it when fucking, what's his name?
Yeah.
Dave Chappelle brought him out that like, oh, if you could only, if you could only have an audience eating out of the palm of your hand, you would be happier than you've ever been in your life.
But like.
It's the one thing you can't buy.
And we've talked about that on various shows that we've been on or have.
But, you know, obviously this was not a cool kid.
He was, he's not a well-liked person.
The only cachet that he's ever had is his money.
He's not even a smart, innovative person.
Every idea he's had is someone else's idea that he's tanking.
I mean, are any of his businesses doing well?
Yeah, you've seen a lot also with like the AI quote unquote boom, where it's so clear some of this is just like, oh, you just wish you were a little more creative.
Like, you wish that's what you're doing.
That's why they hate writers.
That's why you hate artists.
You hard musicians writers.
You hate musicians.
You hate creators because you can't do it well or you're not praised enough for it or whatever.
And so you have to have the machine do it poorly.
Think what we actually need to solve most of our problems, a basic income that ensures that people could just paint or make music or do comedy and survive.
And here's the key part: then we use AI to give the people who are worst at it a fan base so they feel like they're successful and they don't become Steven Crowder.
Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah.
We make Ben Shapiro feel like he's got fans, yeah.
They'll never meet them if they do the yeah, exactly.
And then we can have a daily watch person doesn't exist account where they make, like, oh, this is a fake person is made with a bunch of people.
Fake Audience Accounts00:06:39
Yeah, an audience of them following and clapping and clicking the like button, praising his bad pilot.
Now, now I'm envisioning like a bunch of people.
I know they're saying that a what?
Now I'm envisioning like a black mirror episode where some journalist is like confused at how there's so many Ben Shapiro fans of his TV writing, or like how Elon Musk is such a successful stand-up comedian, and he like he cracks the case, and then like the FBI has to come destroy him because they're you have like, you don't know what we're keeping it banana.
Like, we have to let them think they're good.
Let the algorithm do it.
But I mean, this scenario, look, was it a couple days ago?
The godfather of AI comes out saying, oh, this could be our lead to our artists.
The end of the world.
Now I'm like, maybe this is our positive reframe.
Yeah.
But you know what's even better than AI providing a fan base for all of the weirdo right-wing culture warriors who got into advocating genocide because nobody laughed at their jokes.
I don't want to know.
Oh, well, it's you.
Oh, it's both of you.
Oh, thank you so much.
This is our time to plug stuff.
Yeah.
I thought it was a time to do one last fleetwood Mac reference.
Oh, I mean, we could.
We still can.
I did.
This has been a total, has been one of my dreams.
No, that was bad.
That was good.
That was good.
I'm proud of you.
Being here to stay with you guys.
Oh, we have a show called Some More News that Cody hosts on the YouTube channel and a podcast that Cody's going to tell you about now.
It's called Some More News.
And you can watch it on youtube.com/slash the name of the show, probably.
And Even More News is the name of the podcast version, which is more of a different kind of show, but it's the same people where podcasts are available.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So check them both out.
Check it out.
Google the names of our names and you'll find all the stuff that we do.
Google, Google Katie Stoll, Google Cody Johnston, or Google them by their nicknames, C Money and K Money, which is exclusively how I refer to them in private.
It's true.
It's true all the time.
I don't really respond because I always forget.
Yeah.
That's how I type it out.
When I'm saying it, I just call you both Kamuni.
But they seem to know.
They know.
This has been.
Oh, I definitely, that works.
Kamani.
Kamani.
Yeah.
I just have one last thing to say to you both, and it's that you make love and fun.
Oh, there we go.
There we go.
Yeah.
Come back for the next part of this series when we'll be talking about another album.
I don't know which other album.
I don't know.
How do you guys feel about the dire straits?
I only know one song that they wrote.
I only know a couple songs.
I only know money for nothing.
Limited references available.
Well, we'll work this out.
We just do rumors again.
We just do rumors again.
There we go.
The white album.
The white album.
And you know what's not an album but doesn't have ads?
Our Cooler Zone Media Apple Premium subscription channel that you can subscribe to now.
Robert, say something.
Yeah, I am not secondhand news, but you know what's firsthand news is if you get a subscription to Cooler Zone Media on Apple's whatever, their thing, then you don't get ads.
And then the news isn't secondhand.
It's just coming straight to you, unfiltered.
You know, every time I accidentally say something offensive, we leave it in for you guys.
You're welcome.
Cancel.
Cancelable, Robert.
That's right.
It's a lot of piss.
A lot of piss talks.
A lot of piss.
Yeah, that's my new cut piss out of a podcast.
When we say it the way we do, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really not okay.
Yeah.
Definitely not okay.
Anyway, that's been an episode.
Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that.
Trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know the famous author Roll Dahl.
He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
But did you know he was a spy?
Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
All episodes are out now.
Was this before he wrote his stories?
It must have been.
What?
Okay, I don't think that's true.
I'm telling you, I was a spy.
Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists.
We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
They put on Lizzie McGuire 2 a.m. video on Demand This Guy's Player.
2 a.m.
2 a.m., whatever time it is.
Lizzie McGuire and I'm like, wild bats you were with me.
It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, you're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
I was like, she's beautiful.
I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
I'm not like.
Listen to Las Culturalistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.