To its thousands of employees, WeWork was much more than a job. Founder Adam Neumann leveraged his employees’ emotions to motivate them. In exclusive tapes obtained by Bloomberg, Adam lectured employees that working at WeWork was special: “You do not get a chance like this again.”

In this episode, a former employee describes the tumultuous experience of working inside WeWork’s headquarters, from their raucous parties to the late night meetings.

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WeWork sold office space, but also it sold something else: fun. Beer flowed freely, members partied at the office, and your work was your life. But getting these offices off the ground was utter chaos, especially for the burgeoning company’s young, inexperienced workers. In this episode, reporter Ellen Huet takes a look at WeWork’s early days, when the company was growing so fast that some buildings opened without doors or functioning bathrooms.

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The WeWork Story, Part 1:

When Adam Neumann dreamed up WeWork, he took inspiration from part of his childhood: his years on a kibbutz in Israel. On stage when discussing WeWork, he waxed poetic about the spirit of community he had found there, and how WeWork was similar, but different -- a “kibbutz 2.0.” So reporter Ellen Huet wanted to find out: Was the kibbutz anything like a WeWork? And how did it shape what Adam later built?

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Adam Neumann had a vision: to make his startup WeWork a wildly successful company that would change the world. He convinced thousands of other people -- customers, employees, investors -- that he could make that dream a reality. And for a while, he did. He was one of the most successful startup founders in the world. But then, in the span of just a few months, everything changed.

Foundering is a new serialized podcast from the journalists at Bloomberg Technology. This season, we’ll tell you the story of WeWork, a company that captured the startup boom of the 2010s and also may be remembered as a spectacular bust that marked the end of an era.

Foundering premieres June 25, 2020.

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Bloomberg Technology reporter Ellen Huet has some exciting news about what's coming in the Decrypted feed. We’re launching a new show, Foundering, and spending our entire first season looking at the story of WeWork.

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This week on Decrypted, hosts Aki and Brad get together one last time for an announcement: This will be the very last episode of Decrypted. They also look back at some of their favorite episodes from the show, with updates on where those stories are today. (But don't unsubscribe from this feed because we'll be announcing a new show next spring!)

For a list of episodes Aki and Brad will be discussing:

• Young Blood and the Pursuit of Eternal Youth
• He Sparked the Fake News Boom. Then Facebook Broke His Business
• A Hacker's Redemption, Part 1 and Part 2
• Inside a Multinational Cyber Weapons Deal That Went Bust
• Meet the Whistleblower Behind a Silicon Valley Meltdown
• Human vs Machine: Fitness Gadgets

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Computers can now drive cars, identify faces and transcribe speech, but many experts said that it would take much longer for AI to tackle creative endeavors. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Natalia Drozdiak meets three composers using artificial intelligence to make music, and she and host Aki Ito dissect their robo-generated songs.

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Under pressure from users, advertisers and government regulators, YouTube has implemented sweeping changes to its service over the last three years to minimize the spread of harmful and misleading content. But those changes have made it harder for many of its creators to make a living off of the platform. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Mark Bergen visits YouTube whisperer Tim Schmoyer, who advises other YouTube creators on how to adapt to the changing platform.

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The U.S.-China trade war has dragged on for more than a year now, harming the livelihoods of people around the world who depend on the two superpowers getting along. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology's Shelly Banjo profiles one such person: Michael Michelini, an American who moved to China a decade ago to build out his e-commerce business. At the time, Michelini believed that the internet was making the world a more open and interconnected place. Recent tensions between the world's two largest economies have put that faith in doubt. 

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Warehouse workers suffer from an unusually high rate of injury. Now, at some facilities, workers can wear a sensor on their chest, which buzzes when they’re at risk of getting hurt. But this tracking device also gathers detailed information about the employee’s movements – and sends this data to their employer. This week on Decrypted, Bloomberg Technology’s Joshua Brustein looks at a new technology, whose proponents say will make workplaces safer, but also inspires concern about workplace surveillance.

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