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On Monday morning thousands of travelers were locked out of their Sonder hotel rooms and told: Sorry! Our business isn't businessing anymore :) Executives at both Marriott and Sonder turned their phones on Do Not Disturb as frazzled front line employees tried to manage fuming customers.

At first glance, this just seems like a mismanaged PR crisis, but there's SO much more to the story: A bay area unicorn led by a Forbes 30 under 30 wunderkind, co-opted by VC maniacs speeding down the the 2021 SPAC super highway, bailing right before the crash and leaving unwitting investors holding the bag. INTO THE CORPORATE DUMPSTER!!!

Links:

Hospitality Startup Sonder Raises $170 Million At A $1.3 Billion Valuation During Covid-19 Travel Collapse

Gores SPAC's High Redemptions Signal Worsening Sector Sentiment

Sonder faces class action investigation after delaying financial results due to errors in past statements

Sonder Seeks Room in Post-Covid-19 Lodging

San Francisco property-tech company, once worth $1.9B, suddenly goes belly-up

Dear Sonder Guest, Your Hotel Is Closed

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Ty Haney is back at Outdoor voices, the cult athleisure brand she founded. Can she successfully suck us all into her time machine back to 2014? Or will this company's death rattle be loud enough to convince the brand's private equity investors to put OV out of its misery.

Today, Adam and Becca try to figure out how the once beloved brand got so weird and shitty and how Ty Haney fell off the top of the Abby Lee Miller girl boss pyramid.

All pics can be found on Substack

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Links:

Outdoor Voices Became A Staple For Millennial Cool Girls Thanks To Its Chill Aesthetic. Employees Say They Were Drowning.

Outdoor Voices Founder Ty Haney Has Moved On. Mostly. Three years after her dramatic exit as CEO, she still has some things she'd like to say.

How Outdoor Voices, a Start-Up Darling, Imploded

Ty Haney is Elon Musk's Reply Guy

Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney accused of defrauding investors in $3M energy drink deal

The demon living inside Les Wexner's head brings us into the Victoria's Secret gremlin lair! Adam and Becca go back to the early 2000s to tell the story of the rise and fall of this retail behemoth and the corporate crooks who drove it into the ground.

CW: Sexual Assault, Suicide

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Pics from this episode on Substack

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Visit the Pullman National Historical Park

Email our good news correspondant with tips: [email protected]

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro & Ed Razek's creep club

16:30 - The toxic culture inside Victoria's Secret

25:00 - Les Wexner's childhood & mommy issues

42:00 - Jack Fucking Welch shows up!!! The fall of Victoria's Secret

Links:

Selling Sexy: Victoria's Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon

'Angels' in Hell: The Culture of Misogyny Inside Victoria's Secret

The Mogul and the Monster: Inside Jeffrey Epstein's Decades-Long Relationship With His Biggest Client

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On a chilly October night, I like to cuddle up with a good ponzi scheme. It's my comfort fraud <3

Links:

'Do You Believe I'm a Scam? Haha' Tai Lopez became YouTube famous promising men they too could own a Lamborghini. Then came the alleged Ponzi scheme.

Tai Lopez's RadioShack Ponzi Scheme

Read the SEC complaint

This Clown Is Still Around

its always the guy you suspect the most

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CW: Suicide, Sexual Assault

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No game developer would even think to create a dungeon troll as sinister as Bobby Kotick. Bobby's life is a video game where gobbling up cash is the mission and when it comes to retribution there is no side quest too small!

When the WSJ drops a bombshell report about years of sexual harassment and toxic culture at Activsion Blizard, will Bobby Kotick finally run out of lives? Or will he respawn in the form of a trash goblin who gets bonus points for punching down?

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Time Stamps:

00:00 - Background on Activision Blizzard

09:30 - Bobby Kotick meets Daddy Wynnbucks and becomes an adopted nepo baby, starts game publisher Activision and develops expert level skill in suing people less rich than him

29:30 - Blizzard origin story, early reports of sexual harassment

51:00 - Activision Blizzard merger, Bobby Kotick turns the company into the Triangle Shirtwaist factory while board members look the other way

56:00 - Bobby Kotick completes the CEO right of passage - bending over for the CCP!

60:00 - The lights come on and everyone realizes Bobby Kotick is a little dungeon troll

Note:

Activision Blizzard denied any wrongdoing, and the settlement confirms California Civil Rights Department (CRD) could not substantiate those claims. As part of the settlement, the CRD withdrew the claims related to harassment from its complaint.

Links:

Play Nice (book)

'Scorched earth' and big profits: How embattled gaming titan Bobby Kotick outlasts his opponents

At Blizzard, groping, free-flowing booze and fear of retaliation tainted 'magical' workplace

Blizzard Sets Off Backlash for Penalizing Hearthstone Gamer in Hong Kong

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant

A group of Activision workers say their C.E.O. should step down.

Parents Say Sexual Harassment at Activision Blizzard Led to Their Daughter's Suicide

Listen to the full episode on Patreon. Join today at the Murdoch's Mates level and get FOUR bonus epiosdes every month plus the Corporate Gossip Book Club and group chat!

In this episode:

Brian Niccol TRIES HIS HARDEST to get us to like Starbucks again as he tries to escape the living ghost of Howard Shultz.

I also went to the Charlie Javice Sentencing yesterday - my report starts at 48:15. 7 YEARS!!! I was shocked - I was certain she'd be sentenced to no more than 5.

Links:

Starbucks is closing more stores and laying off 900 workers

Starbucks CEO's turnaround isn't happening fast enough for Wall Street

Howard Schultz says he is a big fan of Brian Niccol's 'brilliant' Starbucks revival strategy

Starbucks enters the protein wars with test of new drink option

Starbucks to use AI to track inventory, free up baristas to connect

Starbucks seeks to slash million-dollar store upgrade costs

Write to Starbucks Corporate: https://customerservice.starbucks.com/sbux

Starbucks Customer Contact Center: 1 (800) 782-7282

Charlie Javice Sentenced to 85 Months in Prison for Fraud

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It's the quintessential American company - gaslighting the public, twisting regulators by the balls, and killing consumers in the name of shareholder value! This story is a smorgasbord of deviance - lies, fraud, corruption, cults, and a very sweaty CEO. So put on your lab coats and take out your popcorn as we dive into the pharmaceutical trash heap known as Johnson & Johnson - and yes, we're going to talk about Tylenol.

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Pics from today's episode

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Twin Cities Comic Con

Studio Govan

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Timestamps:

00:00 - History of J&J

12:15 - Busting the myths of the 1982 Tylenol cyanide murders

24:00 - Tylenol, liver failure, and the cost of doing business

38:30 - FDA <3 J&J

46:00 - The J&J credo on opposite day (Risperdal kills nursing home patients and gives young boys breasts!)

01:08:00 - Oops! Extra Asbestos (J&J Talc based baby powder)

Links:

No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson

Dose of Confusion

How Independent is the FDA

Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

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Hear the rest of the episode on Patreon

TW: Sexual Assault

Wallstreets skankiest trash goblin, Jamie Dimon, has had the worst week EVER after a mind-blowing investigation was published by the NYT last week. Some truly flabbergasting revelations had us asking, can Dimon widdle baby his way out of this one?

Links (please DM me if you need a gift link!):

How Jeffrey Epstein Used the Billionaire Behind Victoria's Secret for Wealth and Women

How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein

THE TALENTED MR. EPSTEIN

Why Didn't Vanity Fair Break the Jeffrey Epstein Story?

"She Was Shaking Uncontrollably": Powerful Men, Disturbing New Details in Unsealed Jeffrey Epstein Documents

Senators Call for Hearings About JPMorgan's Ties to Jeffrey Epstein

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What ever happened to AOL?! We go all the way back to 1999 (home video included) and meet Steve Case, the CEO of, at the time, the largest technology company in America. High on his own supply, he wrangles Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin into a business noogie and manages to destroy a third of a TRILLION DOLLARS in shareholder value almost instantly.

TW: murder

Pictures

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Thank you to today's sponsors:

Aster + Lupine

RainBao Food Truck

Links:

Stealing Time (book)

Fools Rush In (book)

There Must be a Pony in here Somewhere (book)

Gerald M. Levin, Time Warner Chief in a Merger Debacle, Dies at 84

How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong

Listen to the full episode on Patreon

Have you ever been a young Italian man who just wants to make new guy friends and then you end up being tortured in a SOHO townhouse by wanna-be army guys for your crypo password?

Regardless, this episode has something for EVERYONE! NYC night clubs & Eric Adams, the former child star from First Kid, Caroline Biden, Bitcoin Jesus, and Air-fryer crack!!

The Crypto Maniacs and the Torture Townhouse How two men charged with an outrageous kidnapping scheme introduced a new kind of crime to the city.