Inside the VICE bankruptcy files

0:00Hello, everyone. This is Emily from The Culture Journalist. We're interrupting our regular programming this week to bring you a taste of something different. And that something different is a new podcast that just launched in the wider culture journalist constellation of friends. The podcast is called Nerzy. It describes itself as technically a music podcast, but bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to the Vice Music Vertical by a similar name. However, its host, Trey Smith, Slava P. and boyfriend of the culture journalist Drew Millar did meet there in a kind of twisted meeting of the minds many years ago.

0:39Here's what they have to say about it on their sub stack. Two of us don't have jobs and one of us is an ex-con slash welder. Now we have a podcast. Trey, Slava, and Drew invited me on their show this week. We were supposed to talk about AI, but that didn't really end up happening until later in the episode. And that's because in the days before we recorded, the media reporter Max Taney tweeted a link to a court filing revealing that Vice, our former employer, had paid its executives out over a million dollars in bonuses just weeks before filing for bankruptcy. It was an upsetting, if not particularly surprising, reminder of how corporate America is so good at finding ways of prioritizing the well-being of executives over that of rank-and-file workers, especially given that a group of about 100 vice staffers recently had to do a fundraising campaign on BoFundMe because the company still hasn't paid out their severance after laying them off this spring.

1:36Naturally, like the reporters in the movie Spotlight, but with much less actual journalistic rigor, we couldn't wait to dive into the documents. We're sharing the entire emergency pod we recorded with you right here, right now, but you can sign up to get more episodes at NERZE at nersi.substack.com. As for the culture journalist, we'll be back with our regular programming starting next week. I checked Bumble because I was talking to somebody when I got to the airport, and then by the time I got from the airport to my hotel, I had like 14 new likes. Nice. It was like, what the hell is going on here?

2:12You get like 14 likes a year in Brooklyn. You get likes on Bumble? Yeah. How does that work? They tell you like, oh, there's a little category that says like, oh, this many people like you. and it'll be like, oh, two. None of them are nearby. They just came in from fucking Denver or whatever for the weekend, and then you just are not a Bumble user like they are. Does it match you with the people that liked you, or just like these people liked you, but you don't know who they are? It will match you, but it costs like fucking$10 a month or some shit. It costs$8 a month. $7,$8, yeah. It's weekly.

2:55that's extortion yeah this is oh man uh you could pay a lot more for sex so it really like it all evens out true yeah anyway welcome to nerdy yeah recover that one so am i the first girl who has ever been on this podcast or has there been one before unfortunately for you yes you have to hold us accountable yeah i will but you know i'm honored thanks for having me i am i mean you're also the third guest on this podcast so it's not like yeah i feel like we beat it's not the best representation but it's better than a lot of places yeah anyway this is nerzy i'm trey i'm drew i'm john and today we have drew you should do the introduction for this one okay today our guest is the honorable genius level beauty emily friedlander my partner in life and business and the business of life and podcasting and podcasting he sometimes helps me out with my podcast what's that what's that called it's called the culture journalist oh that's really interesting and where can people find that on substack culturejournalist at substack.com that's right we've officially done more promo for the culture journalist on nersey than we have for nersey yeah you guys have to think about ux like how do people sign up to hear more what is your sales funnel well we gotta start top of the funnel then it comes down and then it's more like a cyclone because then like you know it goes out so yeah yeah trey's actually working on it we're starting at the top of the funnel and we're really lighting it on fire right so then we're we're really just working the uh outside of the funnel and then we're working on kind of like uh intaking air from the bottom of the funnel to really suck through the smoke at the top of the funnel until we've turned our business strategy into a bong.

5:18Are we also putting a coin in the funnel, like in the mall, and letting it run down while making a fun noise? That's science. Yeah, how much money do you think they made off of those? I think the guy... It was a motherfucker to count. I know that. Yeah. I hear those are the people that are going to buy Vice, actually. The coin funnel people. Vice is supposed to be one of those... It's not even a machine, man. It's just a thing. They just put one in the middle of Bedford Ave and they're just praying.

5:58I'm imagining on Bedford Ave it would have a specific type of groove so that you could roll a Coke baggie down it. Not anymore. That's true. I was like... Sorry. I was like in... We were in Williamsburg recently after not being there for a long time. And I like didn't even know where I was. Like there were many streets that were just completely unrecognizable. Like I couldn't even... I didn't even know where I was on a map. Oh, yeah. Man, don't even get me started in the Moxie Hotel. but that thing is one of the best barbecue places we had in Brooklyn was in that location. They knocked it all down.

6:44What do they put there now? It's a hotel. It's the Moxie Hotel. I think it's like a Marriott subsidiary or whatever. So affordable housing. If that's what you even want to try to call it, sure. Unaffordable housing. Which barbecue place?

7:06do you all know what propaganda is no no exactly it's like the closest bar to her now it's propaganda Nikki's pretty close though shout out to Nikki because she's a good buddy like she opened a bar that you remember where South 4th street bar was yeah yeah so that closed down and then Nikki bought like the space out She used to be like a bartender at Lucky Dog and was always talking about opening her own bar. And then she opened up like the beginning of March 2020.

7:44And yeah. So it worked really well. But luckily, everybody involved was really cool. They were like, no, we believe in this. Yeah. We're going to make sure this place stays open. So, yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah, she's still around. Trey how long do you think you're gonna make it uh staying in New York or like what would be your breaking point for being like fuck this I'm out I'm moving to Philadelphia

8:16Philadelphia specifically well that's just where you go that's where hipsters retire on the east coast and branson or la or la or la or i don't know like maybe i just go to prague or copenhagen and some shit and y 'all never see me again that's a good vibe but i've been like i don't know why i've been like seeing like a lot of new yorkers recently be like new york is too expensive but i won't move anywhere else in america i'll only move to europe are you like that no i'm not but okay real quick slava please stop shaving your head

9:01i can't have hobbies like i have stuff to do i only have a few hours i've like work tomorrow morning and i have there's like a girl who works on site like i'm trying to be i've muted my microphone i don't see what okay no never mind i didn't i didn't mean to Interfuse with your, you know, getting your game strong and stuff. Like, go ahead, man. Do you want to narrate what you're seeing? Because I don't think that people know what you're referring to. For the record, Slava is in, like, a Walter White-looking-ass basement, shaving his head, I believe, with a Norelco Tri-Razor thingamajig. first of all series 3000 triple uh nozzle head my real baldies will know that you don't really want to use a straight uh razor you want to use the triple uh suction head here okay yeah no it really it hugs the curve like a dream get it down to a perfect zero and uh it lets me do it in about 15 minutes without interruptions so um yeah i mean well you're interrupting our podcast because we can't focus on our discussion because you're shaving your head that reminds me of a time in college uh i was riding around with my friend kevin in his car and he goes hold on i've got a shave and he just violently opens his glove compartment pulls out an electric razor and start shaving while driving damn he keeps an electric razor in his beer uh cabinet uh no and like his car yeah in his beer cabinet is that a canadian term for glove box what's a glove box it's an american term for beer cabinet oh like where you put your license and stuff in the car yeah yeah it's the perfect shape for a tall boy okay try it out you have a car yeah but i also want to keep it as well as my license that's why you put it in your beer cabinet fair enough um well anyways we have convened here today because uh the place that we used to work at which is now emergency pod um the place that we used to work at is going even more bankrupt than usual.

11:44And recently, Semaphore's Max Tanny reported, just weeks before Vice declared bankruptcy in May, the millennial media company paid performance bonuses to top level executives. The bonuses were part of the annual payouts executives that the company received based on performance in the previous year, according to two people with direct knowledge of the stipends. Obviously bullshit. But the checks were written as the company was gearing up for potential bankruptcy, which means many rank and file staffers and freelancers, including me, weren't paid for work done from April and May and were furious to learn of their boss's bonuses.

12:23The company has continued to cut costs in other areas, including eliminating the messaging app Slack. On Thursday, an HR rep sent an email to staff saying the company would not be able to pay severance this month um first off if you're listening you and you have the means uh i think we all recommend you donate to the gofundme page that vice staffers have set up uh in an attempt to god damn because yeah this is you guys remember being well we all are still like freelancers in a way you know yeah i'm chasing that money down especially like when you're working at a place and you're supposed to get paid every two weeks and that's just not happening.

13:06Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, you go to a place like that for stability. Yeah. Like, even just, like, the kind of faint semblance of stability and, like, that just gets ripped away from you immediately, that fucking sucks, man. And, yeah, the union was saying today that people had medical bills they couldn't pay because they just haven't been getting money. They just got no, I guess, I don't know if maybe they're able to go on unemployment but I'm sure that doesn't go very far in New York City right now and yeah so like Sarah David who was recently she worked with me at Vice and was recently actually on the Culture Journalist podcast she's like a union queen she set up a GoFundMe to raise some money I don't know how much they raised like do you know how much they raised I think 32k but it was amazing that people were pitching in but the amount that they raised probably not enough to cover most of the bonuses that are recorded in this document that the executives received which was released by Max Tanny as part of the tweet who knows more about what's going on advice than anybody including people who yeah no i mean i remember when i worked at the outline which was another publication a lot smaller that had sort of a similarly tenuous existence situation uh and i just remember anytime i saw max tweeting about the outline like a scoop i was like oh fuck this shit's getting shut down um but thankfully the outline i found out about the outline getting shut down before he did um but should we just go through real quick and like talk about the egregious part of all this which is the bonuses that were paid out in this annual the compensation that some people got for running a media company very badly yes and should we um yeah should we say names to or like i don't i don't know how much trouble we get in but yeah actually no this is reported news man fuck it air these motherfuckers out yeah no this is in the public record you don't think get you get in any trouble for saying like oh um i got all my severance i don't give a fuck not gavin who's the other guy there's gavin shane and sarush what's funny is like shane getting x hundred thousand you could definitely name that is it in the document does it say what he got i think that i didn't see that

16:01this is like nancy vice though right this is not the shane's vice this is like since 2000 whatever 17 when they brought up my lore who's the new executive group there well a lot of what's recorded it involves uh some people okay let me figure out a way to say things that aren't gonna have me like unemployable um the thing about israel well a lot of so this document the embarrassing thing about your company going bankrupt is that documents like this become public part of the public record and you have things like your salary or monies received published um and this statement seems to be it's a statement of financial affairs filed with the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York.

16:55I've seen a couple of documents related to this, but it seems like this one is like, it records monies that people with the power to make financial decisions that could have led to the company needing to file for bankruptcy, monies that they received in the year or so leading up to it. Yeah, because I'm looking at Katie Way's article right now, and also shout out other friend of the pod, Katie Way. Yeah, this was such an easy company not to run into the ground. So, like, does it say this Nancy Dubuk? It doesn't list Nancy's in this, I don't think, but some of them, like, for people who are still there, or yeah.

17:37And Nancy actually left three-ish months ago. Yeah, let's be real. Nancy got pushed out. Nancy allegedly got pushed out in case any vice lawyers are sort of like voyeuristically listening to this yeah money but it ain't worth it it looks like part one of the document is the gross revenue from the business from 1231 2021 to April of this year. So it lists things like how much revenue they got through the entire business. Another section is like certain payments or transfers made to creditors within 90 days before filing the case. So it's like we actually found a lot. They have a lot of people they pay to do stuff.

18:41Including one thing that

18:46actually no you you know okay drew and slaver weren't there anymore but at one point they took away all of our snacks under the guise of like initiative taking ubers everywhere wow i just need to uber to montauk on a saturday for vice business like fuck off like actually actually that's that's a lie i don't know if that's a true thing or not but i wouldn't be spots ever happened but no it's like it's like even like just like home like to and from and shit man it's just goddamn get on the train like the rest of us you're not famous nobody's gonna bother you i mean there was when i first started at vice i don't think you were there yet trey this is like when they were in the uh was the other building like was it north north six I think y 'all were on like North 11, sorry like they had an arrangement with Northside Taxi Cab and it was like a thing where if you needed to go somewhere you could just call them or something like you could just call the car service and they would come pick you up they had some kind of arrangement with Vice that maybe they were like vouchers or something but you could like just get a cab by virtue of working there yes i had in like 2016 that was you could still get the vouchers i had like a checkbook's worth of vouchers in my wallet at one point um i also just want to highlight that uh in part two of this document where it lists like who vice paid before like filing for bankruptcy they paid a company called cartel uh llc in santa monica california 406 230 again that is cartel llc spell the name of this company c-a-r-t-e-l okay just making sure yes how much 40 460 406 230 i can't believe slava went to prison for working with carto and god damn well did you look up what this company yeah that was a problem mine wasn't registered oh they weren't registered in delaware or whatever yeah so much could have been avoided did you look up what this company was oh that's lame it's just an editing and post-production facility in santa monica i just looked them up in their production company but it's sort of a problematic name well i'll tell you what the real problematic thing is uh is that they produce little dickies tv show oh there you go wow you'd almost rather they be the other cartel yep i think everyone except for you specifically would rather that slava i love the cartel you guys keep trying to spread this rumor but i i was gonna tell you that i've actually seen this play before 406 000 uh desperation play you buy a bunch of bricks and you say listen we're just gonna make this shit work come hell high water and um yeah vice is now what it always has kind of been on the low it's a drug dealing operation run with this cab company that you guys seem to love that would be actually like that would have been at least a sustainable business model if like we had all been a drug dealing company um because that's kind of like how back in the day like magazine companies sustain themselves is they would be like sort of subsidized by the mob because the mob owned all the magazine distribution businesses because when you just what's that like who uh like all of them um like like mad magazine was a gambino crime family front yes no like all the major corporate ones um they all did business with mafia owned trucking companies who distributed magazines and the reason mafia company mafia people liked magazine distribution is because you know them trucks they're pretty big and magazines are pretty small and you can sort of hide things in magazines um in order to make that work and the person who actually sort of like disrupted the mafia was larry flint the publisher of hustler um who was just like i'm gonna undercut the mafia like at one point larry flint was distributing the new york review of books and this is why larry flint also was like shot um i was about to ask like this is how he ended up in the wheelchair most likely i mean like i once wrote a profile of larry um like five or seven years ago and so i know all of the stuff um and like if you kind of read between the lines like the timeline of him setting up the truck the trucking company and uh him getting shot is like pretty pretty neat um let's see they also owe money to michael o'shea michael o'shea who are you what did you do oh let's google it for i feel like there's gonna be at least 27 michael o'shees and michael o'shea fuck i know michael what are you talking about the american and actor Michael Ocea.

24:53When was he born? He was born in 1906 and died in 1973. Maybe. Did he work on the Little Dicky show? He may have. Let's see if he has kids. That might be the key here. Oh my god, I'm seeing that his son is Little Dicky. That makes him Big Dicky. Yeah, there you go. um they also seeing they owe yeah i don't know if it's they owe or they paid it's money they paid right sorry yeah yeah um they paid money to facebook they paid this since february february through uh may um of this year they paid facebook eight hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars that's probably like paid so like right trey like that's probably like putting money to make the facebook spread the articles around yeah so um yeah they used to spend a lot of money on boosts and shit on facebook like a lot per month like how much like more than some people made i think wow so like two thousand dollars a month i mean this this is almost a million dollars this year no i see like it was more than some people made in a year that they would spend in a month to fucking get shit on facebook but we don't know if that's what that money's for maybe they're making a new vice sports show with Zuck and his MMA career, right?

26:39We just don't know. That's a good point. I mean, I think it does sort of lay bare... Maybe they'll have a premiere documentary on, like, naked sumo wrestling, and, you know, it'll do numbers in more ways than one. I think it does sort of lay bare the truth behind a lot of digital media, though, which is that it's, like, pay-to-play. Like, you have to pay in order for the social media platform to hit like to give you the mushroom that like makes you go faster they also paid a bunch of money to google we don't know what this is exactly for but it says like from february to may they paid google four hundred thousand dollars i think they also paid twitter a bunch of money um they paid 100 grand to revolt the p diddy owned yes diddy that doesn't surprise me people you know in the year of our lord 2022 people are still getting into business with diddy we talked about serac like an episode or two ago but like man come on come on i would watch a vice revolt show there would never be one did he would take like the fucking 500 million in development fees and just be like i'm gonna buy seven jets and that's gonna be the show and it's like we can't film any of this and it's like well this is going to be the show i mean diddy is a notoriously good business person uh assuming that good means diddy is making money like the thing where he would make the bad boy artists like rent his personal cars and his mansions from him to film their videos is a really he basically invented airbnb and touro or not touro and and inventing people walking across bridges to different boroughs to get you cheesecake and at obscene time yes joe does talk about uh he was like he auditioned for a pilot on a viceland show and he was working with revolt at the time so i think if we follow the money here we can get to some pretty good joe budden content but was this joe budden's release clause until he was just like no i don't like the contract and revolt was like okay well we're keeping the money probably yeah wow that's the second uh new york rap media mogul who is like screwed joe buttoned over financially

29:27you guys remember when jay-z rapped over uh the what's the big button song pump it up yeah give me that beat fool this is a full-time jack move um and then he did another one he did t-shirts and buttons no wait that was a little b that was a little b devastating district devastating just oh my god joe button more like joe booty

30:00yeah isn't that the one where little b is like damn joe you could have been my friend uh yeah yeah okay who's like the foremost little b scholar we should have them on um i see it might be kyle kramer yeah yeah we gotta talk yeah we gotta get front of the pod kyle kramer on the pod soon wrote about mull wayne for an entire year yeah yeah yeah the little b documentary under his belt yes yeah do you ever think about where rocks came from

30:43the the record store in carborough which is like the brooklyn of chapel hill um used to sell the lulby ambient album on vinyl and one of my greatest regrets is not buying it when i had the chance that's crazy that based means something completely different now yeah yeah that's the thing man yo you can contribute to the culture but you don't get to decide how the culture interprets what you're saying. Yeah. Okay, Slava did not...

31:29Slava's back. You still have not explained why you're wearing highway workman gear right now. Six-inch inseam shorts. Lululemon. Head top. Fade by Slava. And then we have the high visibility vest for, I think this was sourced in Costco. It's called force field. They make good high vis stuff. And it's really good if you want to avoid getting hit by cars, or if you're going to be walking underneath some kind of scaffolding, that's how they can fall on you. If the person doesn't see you, it's also good to like fend off against coyote attacks, which happens more often than you think on the job site.

32:15Really? Yeah, dude. Coyotes are huge. They're in the woods. They all go up here. Northern coyotes. That's the breed of them. They're huge, though. They're like fucking at least six feet tall, 300 pounds, and if they stand on their hind legs, they could dunk. Are you describing Teen Wolf? Yeah, no, that's definitely a lie. They're not that big. I thought the main point of coyotes was that they were in packs. but this also you're you're deflecting slava what were you doing today that required you to wear such a garment i i just i had blueprint reading class so i was actually in class all day i didn't have to be wearing this but i took a shower and i wanted to put something big on in case i got cold so i just grabbed the closest hoodie and this is like my uh this is like my everyday hoodie you know this is like blueprint reading class yeah you have to like do surface readings and then draw blueprints and it's like for um it's fucking boring though nobody wants to hear about the rabbits rush around the brush you know what they do want to hear about though is how much money it's how much money the uh executives at vice paid themselves before declaring bankruptcy and the answer is like a shitload uh bruce dixon the co-ceo got a 112 ,970 bonus it's important that we be precise here that's 70 on april yep on april 27th did you also say like how much the entire package was i think that according to a tweet by a guy who works at vice it was like seven to 900k in bonuses no no it says in it says in the document oh really i can someone else look this up because i'm looking at it on my phone so i got the uh i got the katie article open so it says chief operating officer Corey Hayek who, yeah, took home$726 ,068 between May 22 and May 15, 23.

34:41The date of Vice's bankruptcy filing. Folded into that sum was a$45 ,000 bonus on April 28th. A little more than two weeks before Vice declared bankruptcy. Chief Chief Officer Daisy Auger-Dominguez who wrote a book on workplace inclusion revolution, but refused to give workers indigenous people's day off after Juve Teeth made it onto the official company calendar for the first time. It was paid$748 ,583 over the same period, which included a$99 ,000 retention bonus she received the same day as Hike. Okay, in her defense, in her defense, the title never said, in her defense, the title never said who was revolting against whom.

35:30Okay. Can I put that one's advocate for a second? Real quick, real quick, real quick. The day before Vice's bankruptcy filed went public, she posted poolside while on a vacation in Playa del Carmen, quote, room service for one on Mother's Day is everything. She wrote in the caption for a photo of a pristine piece of avocado toast, a fruit salad and a green beverage. I mean, I love room service. So, you know. All of these people are like, I don't recognize any of these names. So I assume they're all hired after like 2016. Oh yeah, this was after the New York Times article and they had to do a shakeup.

36:12So this is like 2018, 2019, right? Like 18, about. And all these people came from like existing media companies or the tech world, right? it was like it was like late 18 early 19 yeah but um yeah i think it's like also partially they really wanted the tv station to pop off so they're like let's get somebody who's definitely already ran a media company to the ground sure and then let's also get somebody who works at a tv station but we're not gonna let her do ice road truckers type shit and then and then like oh so jesse angelo like if you want to just jump ahead to what he was making goddamn jesse d 'angelo no just jesse regular angelo um but yeah he was making 28 125 a month um

37:12in on january 31st he got reimbursed for five thousand nine hundred and seventy three dollars which is that is that more or less the minimum vice salary when you were working there trey uh so there was a union minimum and the union minimum was more than that i can't speak like permalancers and freelancers and stuff yeah well the good news is that as of march uh of this year jesse angelo has actually started a new media company called checker media so if you're listening to this and you need a job i would suggest hitting but it seems I'm sorry, go ahead, Emily. It seemed from the documents, though, that he's still getting paid by Vice.

38:05Playboy. I could be wrong. Let me see. Okay, Jesse Angelo. His last... He was paid... Sorry, he was paid... His last paycheck appears to have been May 9th, 2023, for$28 ,000. $28 ,125 He's like the Bobby Canola of Vice Media. They're just going to keep paying about every year. But he didn't I don't think he received a retention bonus because it seemed like the ones who were still working there maybe retained a retention bonus. Also, what is a retention bonus? Is this a known thing? pretty much yeah like if you stay somewhere for you because they gave us loyalty bonuses in the union contract um yeah it was it was one of like when we negotiated in the contract um basically if you stayed there for like a year we got like a thousand dollars that was taxed at like 50 something percent um yeah it's a 99 000 retention bonus is insane they all got different amounts they all got like different amounts of retention bonuses but they all had like slightly different salaries but somehow in every case for this cluster of like the real top people advice it ended up between 700 and 800 000 or like it all no matter what the specifics were it was like it all added up to the same well the bonuses were based on how much you saved how much money you saved vice by like laying people off or refusing to play to pay for slack or whatever i assume um and a lot of the stuff is pre-baked pre-baked in so like they would have been getting this money if the company had been going bankrupt or if they've been going forward for another year they just paid themselves and then were like oh we're out of money and and so it looks awful and it is awful so do you are you trying to say that it wasn't a thing where they're like oh it's about to go bankrupt we need to just pay ourselves out these bonuses oh it was naturally going to happen anyway at this time uh i'm pretty sure they uh because i remember when i got laid off back in November I was supposed to get my loyalty bonus like on uh January 1st and they're like we'll give you your loyalty bonus anyway so like I can't see why they wouldn't have done the same here they they were going to do this anyways it just so happened that the company was going bankrupt so they're like okay well here's our cash out and and see you everyone who's not an executive you know with like the contract that says I get a 100k for staying here for two years or whatever the retention right all these people came from other companies right these people were not like hipsters that they pulled off the streets of new york clearly they had someone like draw up their contracts in such a way that would ensure them windfalls of money for years to come yeah no respect for the craft is this like a really who have never done the craft no respect for the craft no is this a standard practice at all companies that go bankrupt like didn't they do something similar to this at Silicon Valley Bank?

41:44Yeah, it was definitely a thing. Sorry, you go ahead, Trey. No, you sound like you're about to be a lot more knowledgeable about this than I am. Oh, I mean, it was definitely a thing where the SVB executives paid themselves massive bonuses right before all of the bad things started to happen. and you know this is like a recurring thing across any company that fails basically and it's sort of like it does beg the question like damn are they giving themselves bonuses right before they announce that they're fucked or uh is it all just a crazy coincidence what would you rather though like in your ideal scenario wouldn't you rather it go down like this where it's like drama and juicy gossip instead of it just getting folded into like conde nast or whatever the fuck happened to complex i mean i my personal preference would be that these executives they would pay people the money that they owe them yes yeah i don't care what either one of those options entails as long as long as it's like getting people the money that they're owed like yeah but yeah yeah i mean i think it wait man it's no longer my pig it's no longer my farm but i do care about like people getting exploited by this place yeah like there's no reason that the executives couldn't have been like well i've already made 650 000 this year i I guess I will forego my$50 ,000 bonus.

43:32Yeah. So that like. So that like a couple, like one employee could be saved. For the cost. Save that. Just like, at least like, you know, six employees get this severance. They're old, but then you can't do room service brunch. Yeah. But then you can't go to the car room, you know, with avocado toast. Yeah. Yeah. So celebrating Mother's Day without your children or whatever. I think it's just, I think the reason why it's resonating so much is obviously the, you know, contrast between, you know, what the CEOs have going on at this moment, and then the laid off employees, you know, that's just extremely striking and disturbing contrast.

44:15but I think it's also this like really concrete window into a thing that like we all suspect, which is, you know, executive pay is so, so high. And there's always a suspicion when you work for a place, like, where is all, where's all the money going? Or like, why can't we pay for things? And you always suspect, oh, it's probably because people are paying themselves all this money and we do have like an issue systemically in america where executive pay has risen and become part of like a big part of the reason for inflation that doesn't get talked about right now and like here we have a concrete example of this that hits close to home where we see the amounts that are getting paid out um which you don't really get a window into most of the time with private companies yeah it's like they're the ones suffering from success so yeah i don't want to vilify the executives too much man you know like we all want to be a boss one day yeah like what if that's you one day what if you finally pull yourself up by your bootstrap calm down it's like succession or it's like you know it's like getting to see into the salaries of the people it's probably not as high as the people on succession succession but it's like you know oh these are the people who can kind of control the situation in their own favor or whatever or like it's like if it's like if you found out that right before the titanic sunk uh it was just or it's like if you found out that the standard operating procedure on the titanic was to just once they got into the center of the ocean move the lifeboats into first class i hear you but think about how much money jesse angelo left on the table by not working for the daily wire

46:28that's true um i never thought about it that way sometimes slab would be spinning man just to clarify Slava was not spitting right there yeah in case I get cancelled no I think it was fairly clear that Slava was spitting satirically yeah Slava why are you so bossist I'm thinking the ships were called doe cords for like a week okay like it's not always true it's not always true well I just okay listen do you guys know how much money you pay in taxes at that level like all jokes aside i'm pretty sure americans pay so much in taxes at like right like those people are stimulating the economy by getting paid all that money so that's true and some they're not paying taxes on their salary slava what they do is they get something called um equity incentive where you get a certain amount of your salary is tied to the stock so like say for instance disney right you get your stock options that are worth you know you get 100 000 stock stock options at 200 a share and then you take out loans that are at a lower rate of interest than what the respective tax rate would be secured against the stock that you own in the company so really they're not paying any tax or they're paying very very little tax well to me it sounds like you're probably paying more tax than that i don't like i don't that point one well maybe not yeah in america yeah when you make that much money you have people you pay to make you pay a lot less tax yeah like a certain point like if you make enough money like everything goes through a holding company that's based in whichever other nation it has the most favorable tax regime for you specifically there's a reason why every company is incorporated in delaware it's because they all love joe biden right they love uh sneakers with no socks hey man don't hate on sneakers with no socks it's a that's a cross class man no i know it smells crazy the other thing that's sort of astonishing is like how you lose 500 million dollars or whatever the fuck it was without like making any money back like if you like what would you guys do if you could just do whatever you had 500 million dollars to do whatever sort of business and like number one never go into business with any private equity person yep yeah like no yeah that's you know as soon as you're in a meeting with them they're already thinking about how they chop you off for parts and get the fuck out yes like that's yeah like do you you saw what happened with uh instapot no some private equity people got involved in instapot probably one of the most stable businesses for like just general housewares or whatever because everybody loves a fucking instapot man like you get some like you know beef shoulder you throw it in the instapot you come home it's ready you throw some beans in there they're ready when you get it home yeah instapots are so fucking easy and you're gonna sell them but private equity got in there tried to ramp shit up and then instapot went fucking bankrupt and you know what's crazy instapot also like owns pyrex or some shit like that what it's the same company so now like pyrex is like you know bankrupt by affiliate how the fuck is pyrex fucking man okay again let me not say it made me unemployable yeah yeah he's fucking up crack these crack dealers now right i mean it's also just like the proprietary pyrex technology it's great it doesn't fucking break you can do whatever there's better materials out there uh already like if pyrex was gonna be rappers talking about him no that's that's the thing is like pyrex has crazy brand recognition amongst uh that's that sphere but no one's even selling crack except for like hunter biden's people everybody's doing fending did you guys see the thing about how they found coke in the white house what no oh yeah yeah and they were running with joe biden it's like okay is he sleepy joe is he coked up joe he can't both like make a fucking decision did they find out who it was i saw something if it said it was quote-unquote linked to hunter biden but was that is there any teeth to that no i should just blame it on him man just blame it on him at this point man like he's the fall guy for everything in that family now and i think he's he's sturdy enough to stand up against the allegations so yeah yeah hunter's got to be the daniel house of uh of joe biden's james harden in the nba bubble uh when james harden definitely had sex with somebody snuck him in in the bubble allegedly and d house just fucking he took it yeah and in the same way hunter biden is like Daniel House because a lot of his Spotify music isn't available in America.

52:01That's also true.

52:13Now that we're all back, I just want to go back to Katie Way's article in Hellgate, New York because it has like, it has like a really fun, a bunch of really fun details. Like she says, I spent the last eight or so months that I worked at Vice heavily involved in the union's organizing committee, which meant I spent a lot of time talking to my coworkers about why we didn't have any fucking money. At various times, there was no money to pay cast and crew members on time or money to reimburse full-time employees for expenses they accrued while reporting or money to pay for subscriptions to other publications or for tools like transcription services or FOIA submissions or LexisNexis or working laptops.

53:00We stopped printing our magazine because we stopped paying the printers. Our video teams had to scramble to rent gear because overdue bills made the company name all but worthless at most of the equipment rental facilities in Brooklyn. We stopped using Slack because Vice stopped paying for it. Snacks disappeared from the mostly vacant office, except for coffee, and inexplicably, believe me they we asked and they did not explain it large amount of milk there was so much milk in the office and i never there was so much milk in the office dude was it several kinds of milk like did it have oak milk yeah it was like every fridge had a milk shelf or two and like yeah it was it was like they would have like almond milk and stuff and dine out but it was like a lot of two and like whole milk and skim milk and shit and it was like i've never once saw somebody just drinking a glass of milk yes it was like y 'all don't need this much milk for people's coffee or whatever like it was it was so much milk i would like to see a lot of yogurt before they took away our snacks too i don't know if y 'all remember how much yogurt they just like used to be in the office and cheese sticks like like off-brand string cheese yeah remember when we what was it like first couple episodes we talked about the goddamn cheese vault vice was like all savory cheese vault i think the most luxurious thing was they had like on tap seltzer oh the on i okay that's one of the few things i miss about that office one right yeah they had that seltzer from the can or seltzer from the bottle but seltzer from the tap is a completely different story it made it worth going into the office that's crazy i forgot about all that till just now that was like the one feature they had in the kitchen that i was like what is this damn yeah and like it always came out of the temperature it always came out of the perfect temperature too even when you got to the bottom of it it was still like okay it's not as cold as it used to be but they're still cool the trappings of low interest rate culture yeah but like man i've said this before but what a cool company and like we are so no but for real like they're never gonna do anything like that again ever yeah because they went bankrupt buying fucking gary right but when you like to work at enron yeah that's a good point i once knew a dude who worked at lehman brothers um because like once you work at like a historic failure of a company like you always have good party stories and or fodder for a podcast do you remember when vice used to hand out like christmas bonuses for a hot minute there would be like these my first year they gave everybody a backpack and then did a raffle so you could win a drone or some shit.

56:07I think I was there for one year before that where they gave out an envelope full of cash. Before the backpack. That was what, the 20th anniversary party from what I remember? That's what it was. The coolest night New York has ever seen. It was actually there, so if you want to say anything about it. i mean i will say just thinking about it now like yes being like i'm handing everyone a thousand dollars in cash is like a flex but also it seems like a really good way to avoid paying taxes on your christmas bonuses and and i believe the year after that at the la christmas party uh uh one of the executives who i will not name because this was off the record uh got up there and there was a raffle and he was like whoever wins the raffle i'm gonna buy you a car and then my friend won the raffle and then she was like oh my god this is gonna change my life i get to get rid of my you know uh mid-20s millennial la car which was probably a camry or whatever and uh then the next day said executive sobered up and decided instead that uh the winner of the raffle got just like a really nice tv yeah i was about to say this is my main shift um what's the coolest thing that you stole from vice the coolest thing i stole from vice i didn't really steal that much um there is i mean like yeah okay you say yours when i left the new york office to go to LA uh I did I was like saying bye to the IT guys because my computer broke so much that I was tight with them and I was like can you guys like give me something cool to take and he was like yeah sure whatever and he gave me like a USB to HDMI converter cable which I wish I still had because those things are like pretty useful was it like vice branded no no it was like generic like amazon that's pretty cool we didn't even get an it guy until we moved into the new office and then that guy like had all the coke at the company christmas party it was weird because everybody thought he was a square and then i feel like he overcompensated by being like hey you guys want some coke uh which we did but um there was a time when we had a big partnership with budweiser and there was like a wall of beer in the uh back room and i lived really close to the office and the security code to get into the office was one two three four so i would walk in on friday nights and walk out with like two cases of beer in each hand and go back to my apartment i did that all summer and i don't think they noticed and if they did they didn't say anything uh that's kind of one of the reasons I think they stopped having beer for free in the New York office too.