The Rise and Fall of AIRBNB | TMT 172

Summary

Too Many Tabs with Pearlmania500

Episode 172: The Rise and Fall of AIRBNB

Date: April 12, 2026
Hosts: Alex Perlman ("Pearlmania500") & Spouse/Co-host ("Mrs. Pearl Mania")

Episode Overview

In this lively and irreverent episode, the Too Many Tabs duo embark on a deep-dive into the "rise and fall" of Airbnb, tracing its journey from humble air-mattress beginnings to global tech juggernaut and, in the hosts' view, its current problematic legacy. With frequent detours, playful banter, and caustic commentary, Alex and Mrs. Pearl Mania unpack how Airbnb and its founders transformed short-term rentals—and, in the process, impacted housing markets, the gig economy, and even government. The episode is punctuated by personal stories, cultural criticism, and a unique (and visual) system of using villain action figures to represent the Airbnb founders.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of Airbnb & "The Villainy of Disruption"

[03:03 - 17:00]

• Founding: Airbnb traced back to 2007 when Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk (represented by Lex Luthor, Chris Benoit, and Ganondorf action figures, respectively) started renting out an air mattress in their San Francisco apartment to pay rent, offering guests Pop-Tarts and coffee for breakfast.
• Name Origin: The "air" in Airbnb refers to "air mattress", a revelation even to Mrs. Pearl Mania.
  “So wait, hold on. Airbnb. The air stands for air mattress? Yes, it's air mattress, bed and breakfast.” – [08:04]
• Early Tech/Spam Connection: Nathan’s early tech career involved providing services to spammers—directly linked to 90% of global spam—a fact the hosts roast mercilessly, linking early web disruption to future corporate practices.
• Startup Bootstrapping: Airbnb founders created novelty political cereal (Obama O’s, Captain McCain’s) to raise $30,000 in seed cash—already showing their knack for marketing and “selling ice to Eskimos” [31:00].

2. From Startup to Tech Behemoth

[17:00 - 44:27]

• Y Combinator Backing: The cereal stunt impressed backers like Y Combinator, earning them a place in the accelerator and $20,000 in seed funding for 6% equity.
• Rapid Growth: By 2009, Airbnb (renamed from AirBed and Breakfast) had 10,000 users and 2,500 listings.
• Pivot away from “breakfast”: The “breakfast” aspect quickly dropped—a typical tech trend toward “enshittification” (Cory Doctorow's term) where platforms offer less over time.
• Side-Hustle Economy: The hosts critique how services like Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft, originally touted as supplemental “side hustles,” became necessary economic crutches post-Great Recession, stalling pressure for wage increases and promoting instability.
• "Disruptors" & Local Economies: The hosts lament how Airbnb’s "disruptive" model siphoned revenue from local businesses (e.g., realtors) and concentrated wealth among big investors, rather than sustaining local economies.

3. Societal Consequences: Gentrification, Displacement, and Legal Problems

[54:02 - 71:16]

• Housing Market Impact:
  • Airbnb’s short-term rental model incentivized investors to buy up housing stock, decreasing supply for year-long rentals and pushing up rents in urban and vacation areas.
  • One quarter of hosts control two-thirds of all listings, contradicting Airbnb’s "side hustle" branding [62:32].
• Gentrification & Worker Displacement:
  • Workers (restaurant staff, janitors, etc.) are pushed farther out of cities and tourist areas, increasing commutes and degrading communities.
• Regulatory Battles:
  • City governments (esp. NYC) struggle to enforce licensing and tax law, making it hard to hold hosts accountable or ensure safety standards—a "bull in a china shop" approach.
• Tech & Social Issues:
  • Brought in Eric Holder to address host discrimination (e.g., refusing Black guests), but reforms like photo-blind bookings only go so far.

4. Scandals and Safety:

[93:30 - 99:21]

• Personal Safety Fiascos:
  • Insufficient safety measures led to major incidents—highlighted by a story in Bloomberg where an Australian tourist was sexually assaulted by someone who’d copied access keys. Airbnb spent $7 million to settle quietly and avoid damaging PR.
  • “If you're having so many of these issues that you have a task force to try to mitigate The PR fallout … PR isn't the issue. You need to stop this from happening.” – [95:29]
• Emphasis on Silencing Victims:
  • Airbnb regularly spends tens of millions yearly on settlements/arbitration to keep incidents from public scrutiny.

5. COVID-19 and Aftermath

[80:03 - 89:54]

• Pandemic Crash & Rural Boom:
  • Bookings plummeted up to 96% in cities, yet boomed in rural zones as remote workers fled.
  • Airbnb laid off 1,900 employees (25%) and handed out $250 million to hosts.
• PPP Loans:
  • Hosts and landlords accessed Paycheck Protection loans, often despite running their business as side ventures; government aid further enriched property owners.
• IPO and Elite Cash Out:
  • In December 2020, Airbnb’s IPO raised $3.5 billion. Co-founder Joe Gebbia bought a $10 million Austin mansion, emblematic of tech wealth flight to less-regulated states.

6. Political & Global Expansion; "Tech Fascism"

[69:00 - ~108:00]

• Global Expansion & Retrenchment:
  • Failed China expansion (2017–2022); faced discrimination complaints, government data-sharing demands, and COVID shutdowns.
  • Bounced from Russia/Belarus in 2022 as a symbolic gesture against the Ukraine invasion.
• Founders' Political Evolution:
  • By 2025, co-founder Joe involved in Tesla's board, supports right-wing figures (Greg Abbott, Cuomo PAC), and joins the Trump Administration’s “DOGE” National Design Studio, working with Elon Musk (jokingly represented by an action figure of Cobra Commander).
  • The co-hosts react:
    “It's giving fascist.” – [105:54]

7. Airbnb's Role in Systemic Failure & The Endgame

[118:29 - episode end]

• DOGE’s Governmental Damage:

  • Layoffs and program closures in agencies like Social Security, CDC (HIV, STD, farm safety), Meals on Wheels, and weather monitoring.
  • “You personally have lent your hand to the murder of millions of people. I just want you to know, Joe, like, that is—the world is a worse place because you were born.” – [125:32]

• Macro-level Blame:

  • Airbnb helped destroy affordable housing, compounded inflation, and fueled broader societal breakdown, ultimately undermining democracy by “disrupting” established systems.

    “The founders of Airbnb helped destroy housing... and this, also, pushed up rents, led to the inflation crisis that actually ended up putting Donald Trump back into fucking power.” – [127:40]

• Final Takeaway:

  • After all the villainy, tangents, and personal hot takes, the hosts return to their refrain: “Whenever somebody asks you how it got this bad, first say Ronald Reagan. If you open enough tabs, you will find Ronald Reagan.” – [128:52]
  • But beneath Reagan, it’s the “tech billionaires” and their centralized, extractive models that deserve the blame for making life harder for ordinary people.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the "Air" in Airbnb
  “So wait, hold on. Airbnb. The air stands for air mattress?” – Co-host [08:04]

• On the Cereal Stunt
  "If these guys can convince people to pay $40 for a three dollar box of cereal, they can probably figure this out." – Paul Graham, Y Combinator [30:35]

• On Shortcomings of Disruption
  “They had to make our homes into hotels, our cars into taxis, and our entire lives into thrift stores while always screaming...they are the ones with the greatest ideas. And you know what? They're not.” – Co-host [128:55]

• On Inequality & Rent Crisis
  “You can't get a rental. You can't live alone anymore. It's impossible. The minimum wage doesn't cover it. The lowest wage in many of these states, you can't get a one bedroom. You can't live with dignity.” – Co-host [128:19]

• On the Tech CEO Pipeline to Politics
  “We should take over the government. We would be so good at government…What part of government am I going to be in charge of? ...Looks.” – Alex & Co-host [104:41]

• On Government Harm After DOGE
  “The world is a worse place because you were born, Joe.” – Alex [125:32]

• On Ronald Reagan as the Root of All Evil
  “Whenever you're sitting around and somebody asks you how to get this bad, first say Ronald Reagan. If you open enough tabs, you will find Ronald Reagan.” – Alex & Co-host [128:47, 128:52]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro and opening riffing: [00:45 - 03:03]
• Founding Story, Villain Action Figures Assigned: [03:03 - 07:00]
• Air mattress revelation: [08:04]
• Cereal Box Fundraiser & Y Combinator: [22:20 - 31:30]
• Hotel vs. Airbnb banter (fees, chores, towels): [02:35 - 03:33, 78:40 - 80:13]
• Start of gentrification & housing disruption talk: [54:02 - 63:54]
• On discrimination & Eric Holder’s anti-bias policy: [50:16 - 52:24]
• COVID, layoffs, PPP loans (and government handouts to property owners): [80:03 - 85:18]
• Airbnb’s expansion to and retreat from China: [71:16 - 73:05]
• Safety scandal and Bloomberg investigation: [93:30 - 99:21]
• Founder Joe's descent into politics and fascism: [103:00 - 106:45]
• Long list of agency cuts by DOGE (devastating impact): [118:29 - 125:32]
• Final summary and blame assignment (Reagan & tech): [127:32 - end]

---

Tone, Style, & Listener Experience

• Language: Frank, irreverent, explicit at times; mix of political critique and pop culture riffs.
• Approach: Satirical, blending personal asides with detailed argumentation and colorful metaphors (e.g., using villain action figures as avatars for real-people billionaires).
• Listener Value: The episode is both illuminating and cathartic for those frustrated with tech’s promises and failures, blending punchy social analysis with energetic, relatable storytelling.

---

Conclusion

The too-many-tabs approach mirrors their argument: today's problems are tangled, complex, and traceable to overlapping social, economic, and political shifts. Airbnb’s story is a microcosm for tech’s extractive “move fast and break things” ethos—ultimately breaking far more than it ever fixed, and moving the world, in the hosts’ view, further from community and justice and closer to chaos, inequality, and—of course—Ronald Reagan’s doorstep. Remember to smile.

Transcript

[Alex Perlman]

It's about time you have an easier, more efficient way to get caught up on the news. The Newsworthy breaks down the day's top stories in less than 15 minutes and gives you some lighter conversation starters along the way.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Search the Newsworthy, wherever you're listening now,

[Alex Perlman]

and follow or subscribe to the Newsworthy today.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Alex Perlman]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty. Liberty.

[Alex Perlman]

Liberty.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Liberty. Are you trying to find a nice place at the beach? Oh, maybe you're going to a new city for the first time ever and you want to stay in the cool, hip neighborhood. Maybe you're just going out to the middle of nowhere and you just don't want to stay at a hotel. That's where Airbnb has come in. Push a button and. And there is a home that could have been rented by somebody else. And that rental is destroying not only the fabric of housing, but the fabric of America and even the world. That's right. We learn about all of this on Too Many Tabs. Remember to smile. Welcome to Too Many Tabs, a podcast where a husband and wife duo sit next to each other at. Yes, it's actually two tables. Oh, my God.

[Alex Perlman]

It's a table.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's two tables that are pushed together to be one. Okay. Anyway, but this is a fun show.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Where one of us, usually Mrs. Pearl Mania, goes and finds a thing, they get interested on the Internet, starts clicking around through hyperlinks and more things, and then comes back and tells us all about what she has learned.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. And today I wanted to talk about the rise and fall of Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Airbnb, yes. We all know Airbnb. Right. We don't need to describe what that is. We can just leave that for context clues for everybody. No, Airbnb is a short term term rental service.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Where people can rent out either a room or their home or an apartment or something. Right?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, it started out as a room. It started out as subletting a room for. For short term, for travelers. That's how the. That's what the idea is.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, it started out as a room. How did it end up like this?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. No. But literally, how did we end up like this?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes. How did we.

[Alex Perlman]

So here's what happened.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

I got fed a lot of content about people being like, airbnb is so, so over. And I was like, they've been over. In my mind. I don't Airbnb. I don't want to pay and then have to clean. That's the whole point of me getting out of this house is somebody else is going to make the bed.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We're hotel girlies.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. We're absolutely hotel girls.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This. If there's anything about this podcast that you need to understand is if we're leaving the house, we're staying in a hotel.

[Alex Perlman]

We're staying in a hotel.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We're going to stay in a hotel. Cuz this is what I want.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I want folded towels.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I want sheets that are on the bed. Too tight.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, too tight.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I want. I want to. I want to be greeted by somebody at a front desk. If your hotel has a kiosk and not a person. No, we don't stay at that hotel.

[Alex Perlman]

No, I need a person.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We need eye contact with a stranger who is in a uniform sometimes. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's what I want.

[Alex Perlman]

I love it. I want to be handed two keys.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

I want it to be a little too cold when I get in there. It's always a little too cold.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I want them to say, and by the way, we have a. You. You automatically get a credit. It's. It's less than the continental breakfast.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But it's just enough that you feel like you need to spend it.

[Alex Perlman]

Also a continental breakfast. Also get a continental breakfast.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Come on.

[Alex Perlman]

I'm leaving the house. If I have driven, if I have paid for parking.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I want a banana that's somehow stale.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, that. You know what? It's weird.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's weird.

[Alex Perlman]

Very brown, but yet green on the inside.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, but none of this is about hotels.

[Alex Perlman]

No, this is about Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Before we get started. Okay, here's what happened. I did all this research about airbnb and the three guys that are the founders.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. Because I wanted to go through how it started, what it did to the world as a whole and where we are now. Right.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. So this is the Airbnb triumvirate.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. That's a word I don't know.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, well, that means three men. It's like the three. That's like an ancient Rome there.

[Alex Perlman]

So what I did is I went up to the attic okay. In our attic, there is a lot of collectibles and action figures.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You could just say it's a boxes of boxes of toys and comic books and video games.

[Alex Perlman]

That's where all of his things are stored?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

They can't be just around the house.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, not anymore. We have a toddler. A lot of the things I have are chokable because they' action figures.

[Alex Perlman]

Or they're still in the box and you're like, no, it's still in the box.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He'll chew on the boxes.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. So I went up there and I grabbed three action figures, because the three main guys in this story that I'm going to tell you, yeah, they're Brian, Nathan and Joe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And I feel like the names are kind of interchangeable.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, those are just three guys names.

[Alex Perlman]

I. I need to be able to reference which guys I'm talking about. So I thought by bringing action figures into this, that way I could be like, no, I'm talking about Joe. No, I'm talking about Nathan or Brian, because they're three very different guys.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And so I brought you these three guys, Okay. I don't know who they are. Would you like to explain to me?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You brought me three? Okay. This is an insane collection. You brought me Lex Luthor.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. He's wearing green robot clothes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes. You brought me Ganondorf from Legends of Zelda. The Ocarina of Time.

[Alex Perlman]

Sure, that was a name.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And you brought me Chris Benoit.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. That's a wrestler. I can tell. He's got wrestling clothes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that's. We'll just remember him as a wrestler.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You brought me probably three of the greatest villains of history and fiction.

[Alex Perlman]

Well, that video, then. I nailed it, because that's what we're talking about here. Okay, who. But. So this is Lex Luthor. That's Superman.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. He's Superman's chief villain.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. And then what's this guy?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is Ganondorf.

[Alex Perlman]

But what's he doing?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He's. He's like. He's got, like, mystical powers. He's like a demon king sometimes.

[Alex Perlman]

He's a demon king?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Out of the three, okay, who's the worst guy up here?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, only one of the three up here murdered his family and dogs. And so that's Chris Benoit.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, in real life?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. In real life, it was not a story because I.

[Alex Perlman]

This is imagination.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. No, these two, these two are imaginary. I bought this before he killed his family.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, my God. Okay, so the. That guy, the worst guy, he's going to be Joe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

All right?

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, now, let's see. Brian. I'm gonna give Brian to the green guy.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Lex Luthor.

[Alex Perlman]

Lex Luthor. That's gonna be the businessman. Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. And then I think Nathan will be Ganondorf. That. Yeah, the guy with the big boots.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Ganondorf.

[Alex Perlman]

That's who these three guys are.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, so that's how. That's how I'm. What I'm getting confused is who you're talking about.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. Because I think when I'm going through this, I got confused because it was. I was like, Joe, Nathan, Brian.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, well, they're just three DW names. Yeah, these are. These are. I've already forgotten who they are, and I have their names written down in front of me. Also, I love that we have an audio podcast that also has visual elements, and we're now adding in probably the most visual element possible.

[Alex Perlman]

No, but this is going to help, even for the audio listeners, because now.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Now I'll be able to keep it.

[Alex Perlman]

You'll be able to keep it straight so that you can explain to them.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. It's October 2007. We're in San Francisco. A couple of guys, roommates.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Brian, who was born in New York but has citizenship in France and Poland.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And Joe, who's originally from Atlanta, Georgia, come up with the idea of hosting a bed and breakfast in their living room.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, so hold on, so you tell me, is Lex Luthor here and Chris Benoit.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Decide to hold a bed and breakfast in their living room.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Because they have this small apartment and they're barely making rent. They are not going to make rent this month. Like, they're running low in cash.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And there's this big conference coming to San Francisco called the Industrial Designer Society of America Conference. And. Okay, so they know there's this big conference coming in town, and they're like, listen, we got room in our living room. I don't even think they have a spare bedroom. I think it's like our living room.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, they're like, we have a futon.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, no, an air bed. They go and blow up an air mattress.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So wait, hold on. Yeah, hold on. Airbnb. The air stands for air mattress? Yes, it's air mattress, bed and breakfast.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes, absolutely.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's never dawned on me. I've just. The name has just always existed. By the time I heard of it, it was just Airbnb. And I was like, yeah, I guess it's because of, like, air dropping, like, on the iPhone. No, no, it's literally, it's an air

[Alex Perlman]

mattress on A living room floor. And they also wanted to offer breakfast because it's like the bed and breakfast style.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Which I love a bed and breakfast.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Where they have a great bed and breakfast. Maine.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Anyway, they also have them in, like, any place that is small. Okay, okay. Like, I've been a good bed and breakfast in North Carolina. All those other different things, too. And again, a bed and breakfast a little bit different than an Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because again, there's like, somebody there. There's like a setup. There's like a whole deal. There's like a paper. There's a sign in sheet.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. A sign in book. And you got to tell them how. What a great time.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And then you go into a room full of dolls.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Oh, there's always a room. Always a room full of wooden rocking chair.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And there's.

[Alex Perlman]

Everything smells like. Like a gardenia soap.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And it's always too quiet. Yeah, it's always too. Remember, we. We stay in that one in West Virginia.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, that one was haunted.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It was so haunted.

[Alex Perlman]

It was like you couldn't hear anything, but then you would hear footsteps and creaking wood, and you're like, there is no one else here.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, we were down the street from the. We were down the street from the courthouse where John Brown was executed.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because we were. We were just. We're in that area. I was.

[Alex Perlman]

We went to go visit all the sites.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, we saw all the sites down there. Harper's Fair, Brown. Yeah. But, okay, okay. So they create their own bed and breakfast with an air mattress.

[Alex Perlman]

They put. They blow up their mattress, put it on the living room floor, and they're like, we're all for also offering breakfast.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, what is the breakfast?

[Alex Perlman]

Pop Tarts.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's it.

[Alex Perlman]

And coffee.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Pop Tarts and coffee.

[Alex Perlman]

Pop Tarts and coffee.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I mean, it's 2007. Yeah, that is a 2007 Reddit joke. Yeah, that's very Reddit. That's very fedora, my lady. Come over to my house and we can have Pop Tarts. You know what I mean? Like, oh, we also have a functional lunch of Hot Pockets.

[Alex Perlman]

I don't know what we're talking about.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I'm just making fun of, like, a Reddit moderator.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that's what they sound like. That's the joke now.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The running joke is that they're all like, my lady, my kids.

[Alex Perlman]

That guy that talks fast that you show me the videos of the guy that talks fast. He's like.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He's got the Ben Shapiro.

[Alex Perlman]

No, the. The guy with the black fedora with the red. And he's like my lady. Like that guy.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, wait, no. You're talking about Onyx the Fortuitous. Yes, that is. No, that's a character. Oh, that's a character that he plays.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. Whoopsies.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Alex Perlman]

So, okay. This idea is very successful. They make rent, baby.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I don't know.

[Alex Perlman]

You don't know?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, that's his character. Honestly, Fortuitous. I couldn't remember what his catchphrase was. You're like, I don't know. He's trying to play it off as being cool. So they make rent.

[Alex Perlman]

They make rent.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They make rent. Okay. So they make rent and they blowing up an air master.

[Alex Perlman]

A really good business idea. Okay, okay. In February 2008, Nate. Okay, so they bring in this guy Nathan. I cannot say his last name. I'm not going to try.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is Nate. He's Ganondorf.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, so he's the third. What? Let me see. Where is it written?

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. Right here.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, yeah. I'm not even going to try to do that.

[Alex Perlman]

No.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That is. That is the most Polish last name I think I've ever seen in my entire life. Here's what we're going to do. I want to. Again, apologies to the audio listeners, but we can't even try that one. That is too many. That's too many consonants in a row.

[Alex Perlman]

You put czyk all next to each other.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It doesn't work. So what we're going to do is we're going to have Mr. Third put it on the screen. Ready? Three, two, one. All right, it's on the screen. You try to pronounce that, let me know, and then type down in the comments. How you would say that phonetically.

[Alex Perlman]

Phonetically, yeah. So Nate, this guy Nate shows up.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Who's being played now by Ganondorf, was Brian's former roommate.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, they're ex lovers?

[Alex Perlman]

No, they're ex roommates.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, they were roommates. Okay. Sure.

[Alex Perlman]

So.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So Lex Luthor and Ganondorf used to be roommates together.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And they hire Nathan for this new business they're going to start. He's going to be the third co founder of their new venture, and he will be the chief technology officer.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Got it.

[Alex Perlman]

Of the company, which is called Air Bed and Breakfast.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Air Bed and Breakfast.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah, I can see.

[Alex Perlman]

All right.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I hear that now.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So basically, he's coming in as, like, the webmaster. If the button you Know, we're going to figure out how to get the buttons to click, how do we set up the map where you can find stuff, all those different things. He's the technology guy.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

These two are kind of almost like ideas men.

[Alex Perlman]

They're ideas guys. They.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They have interest in tech.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, they're tech guys in San Francisco.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

But they're definitely like, of that whole San Francisco. We're coming up with ideas.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

What do they call it, the, like, when they mess everything up on purpose?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, they're disruptors.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. They're like, oh, we're disruptors.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We're disrupting.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

So the thing about Nathan, I looked him up, I was like, well, what did he do to like. Like, where does his background in this? He. Nathan's been working in software IT stuff since like high school.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

His web hosting business that he started provided services to spammers and was once listed on the Spam House Project registry, which is known as the registry of known spam operators, which listed the top spamming services. It was also considered a most wanted list of professional spammers to help customers with vetting and reducing spam traffic. So he was on his first business, was on that list.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So wait, hold on. You mean to tell me that one of the founders of Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It spammed everyone in the world.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Historically, the top 200 spammers on this list were reported to be responsible for 90% of all spam.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. So the guy who I have here as Ganondorf.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Was an evil email wizard.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Who would help scammers and spammers and other people just inundate email inboxes.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And destroy fun.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because people didn't have the right tools to be able to fight against this spam.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because he was so early into it. And that's one of the founders of that organization.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. You know what's crazy?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

If only we had a sponsor who could help people deal with spam. Oh, wait, we do. And we'll be right back after this. I was born private. You were born private. Kids today are basically born into an onboarding funnel, because that's how the Internet works. Now. We're not even being dramatic about it. This is just how everything gets processed. The second a child is born, the they are immediately being tracked and profiled across the Internet. That's why I partnered with today's sponsor, ProtonMail. A child can start accumulating a digital footprint before they're even born. Then it keeps growing email accounts, school platforms, Apps, phones, social media, every login, every signup, every. This will only take a second. Quietly adds to an online identity that those kids didn't even ask for and they don't control. And honestly, if you think that sounds exaggerated, look at your own inbox. Most of us made our first email when we were way too young to understand what we were signing up for. We just wanted to use the Internet. Now that same account is full of spam ads, tracking, and companies that still somehow think you need 20% off yoga mats. That was our version of digital childhood. The reality is most email services are built around collecting data, not protecting it. That's why ProtonMail takes a different approach. We with end to end encryption, no ads, no tracking, and no profiling of your activity. You can sign up for a free account and start using an inbox that's actually private from day one using our link. Proton me slashmania500. I'm going to say that to you again. Proton me Pearlmania 500. Hey, check those show notes for a direct link or type it in the URL yourself. Proton Me Pearl Mania 500. Thanks for sponsoring the show, ProtonMail. You know, Mrs. P, anybody who has joined us on our patreon and is listening to the show ad free will not understand the joke that just happened.

[Alex Perlman]

Nice.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They will not know how they can use ProtonMail to protect themselves from spammers like Nathan, who is being played by Ganondorf and is one of the co founders of Airbnb. Jesus Christ.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, so these three dudes put together a website that offers short term living quarters and breakfast for those who were unable to book a hotel in what was, quote, a saturated market.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The breakfast has already fallen away, by the way.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, the breakfast is not there.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I've never. We've stayed in Airbnb together a couple times. Yeah, I've never been offered a breakfast once. No, the breakfast died immediately. Yeah, I think that was the first thing to go.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And ification is real.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But insidification is when.

[Alex Perlman]

Not even a Pop Tart.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Not even a Pop Tart.

[Alex Perlman]

Guys, put a Pop Tart.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I can. I honestly, there's no, not a speck of food anywhere.

[Alex Perlman]

No.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because they're like, no, we can't trust you.

[Alex Perlman]

Sometimes you'll find like salt and pepper.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Sometimes, sometimes you'll find a ketchup pack up. Yeah, but no, the thing is real fast inside. Ification, for those you guys don't know, is a term that was brought up a few years ago, which is about how services, especially web services, get worse over time, where they start out with this big thing, oh, my God, we're gonna do this stuff. We're gonna help you with all these different things. We're gonna be cheaper than hotels. We're gonna give you free breakfast. Oh, our rides are cheaper than taxis. All these different things. And then slowly, over time, to make money after they finally get a user base, over time, they start cutting services. It gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And that is already. This has already happened with Arab Air Bed and Breakfast.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. So the site airbed and breakfast.com was launched right before the 2008 south by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Everything evil starts there. That's where Twitter south by Southwest is famous because Twitter came from that.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, really?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. That was like a big part of like, Twitter's like, big launch. Now when you go to south by Southwest, just people in Patagonia vest being like, maybe we should deport people using drones. And you're like, jesus Christ. Yeah. I keep getting offers to go. I don't want to go. I love. Listen, if you live in Austin, Texas. I'm sorry. That's what I want to say. I'm sorry. I went there years ago. It was cool. Years ago. I went back two years ago and you live in basically LinkedIn.

[Alex Perlman]

I went to Austin, Texas in 2003. It was pretty cool.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You don't want to go back?

[Alex Perlman]

No, I'm not going back.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, no, I know. But it's. It's like. It's like finding your old cool hippie friend who's going MAGA now. Oh. And they're now part of like a

[Alex Perlman]

weird, crunchy to mega pipeline.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. But it feel. Austin. You know what it is? Austin, Texas feels like when your weird hippie friend from 2003.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Who was like following fish around and selling pipes.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They now very specifically a person, very specific.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Now they go to a mega church that has a coffee shop in it.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Hillsong. We didn't know.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

So when they did this south by Southwest big launch.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They generated exactly two bookings to one of which was Brian.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh. Lex Luthor. Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

So.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

All right. So they. I mean. Okay. I mean, getting one booking, though, is still pretty good. It's pretty good.

[Alex Perlman]

It's good.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It is pretty good. I will say. That is amazing.

[Alex Perlman]

Really funny.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's very funny. I mean, they're entrepreneurs, though. They're trying.

[Alex Perlman]

They're working it out.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. I mean, to be fair, they were like, I'm guessing from 2007 to 2008, we're talking about maybe like in six months. To go from like a website launch to getting people to trust is very difficult.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. To getting people, at least one person to trust. Staying in a stranger's house.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes. Just a random location.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's wild.

[Alex Perlman]

In Texas.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

So, okay, here's the thing. Like you said, they got this business together, but they need more capital.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

Enough money.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And this. This was hard to like. You know how, like all these stories about founders, they're always like, it started in a garage. Like that whole thing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

So, like, do you know why it is? Why?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's because it's. Apple lied about it.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know Steve Jobs.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He was famous. Like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Their biggest thing actually was that while they did understand the tech, they were marketers.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And they were good at explaining and selling the tech. So they would have their weird nerd.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

To the side who actually did everything. And then they'd come forward and be like, let me explain this to you in plain terms.

[Alex Perlman]

Like the light bulb guy.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Like Thomas Edison. Very similar in that sort of way.

[Alex Perlman]

Because Edison stole from Tesla.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Tesla was. Was one of Edison's workers. Yeah. Yeah. So there's like, you know, he was one of many. He had a ton of guys, but, you know, part of it's a salesmanship job. And what a lot of them love to do is they go, oh, we don't. We're not like those big evil corporations like IBM. Because back by the 70s and 80s, IBM was this massive international conglomerate. Like, there were whole towns like Rochester, New York, I think it was. Was like propped up.

[Alex Perlman]

Kodak.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. These big, massive companies. And so when people would see them, like, oh, they can't innovate anymore. They're not like us scrappy nerds. In a garage.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Now here's what's crazy.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They never had the garage story. Fake.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, of course.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. You know who started in a garage?

[Alex Perlman]

Who?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

IBM.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The massive conglomerates always do start in a garage and then they grow and they gobble up all their competition.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's how this works. And so all of these companies, there was especially a thing in the 2000s and the early 2000s, all of these companies had to pretend, oh, we were just some scrappy guy. It was like, yeah, you were a scrappy guy, but also like, you went to Yale. You're. Your parents all have a lot of money. Hyperlinks on Wikipedia.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Everyone you're connected with around you is super rich. And is that Peter Thiel in the corner? It's like Elon Musk claiming his dad didn't own an emerald mine. You know what I mean? That's what all this is. These guys. Yeah. They. So they need money, but they were.

[Alex Perlman]

They need money.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They need money. So.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. I don't know. Some articles said that they were in debt. Some people were just saying they're trying to build capital. Whatever it is. Brian and Joe have this idea that how to make some quick cash.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Quick cash.

[Alex Perlman]

They get a printer in their apartment.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And they start.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They're able to get a printer to work, so they're, they're good.

[Alex Perlman]

There you go. I see right there.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They print out a thousand fake cereal boxes. So, like, they print out this cardboard and then they fold it up to make cereal boxes, and then they order bulk cheapo cereal to put in them. And they sell these fake cereal boxes. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, they were two different boxes. There was Obama O's and Captain McCain's. The cereals, it said Obama O's the breakfast of change, and Captain McCain's a maverick in every bite. They sold each box for $40.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

$40.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So they're taking knockoff cereal. Yeah, the, the bottom shelf.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The bag cereal that anyone who has ever been tight on money is upset about.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Even though it's fine.

[Alex Perlman]

It's pretty good. I like, used to like the Lucky Charms ones.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Knock off the knockout Lucky Charms.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. The giant bags, though. And which a lot of people around this time, a lot of people were starting to understand what those were about because we're, we're in. The 2008 recession is beginning.

[Alex Perlman]

Yep.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So they take all of these. They put the bags inside of boxes. They print.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

With a cartoon Barack Obama on.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And a cartoon John McCain.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And they sell them for $40.

[Alex Perlman]

$40 each.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Can I tell you what's insane about this? They didn't need the cereal.

[Alex Perlman]

You didn't have to put the cereal in there.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, you didn't. You could have just sold the fake box.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Because I know this because we have a fake box.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We do. I, I, it's upstairs somewhere. Yeah, you should have, you went up there, got this.

[Alex Perlman]

We have their booty O's.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know what? Hold on. I'm a get it. I'm getting.

[Alex Perlman]

Never going to find it.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I know exactly where it is. It was an empty, but it was. Here's the thing. When we got this.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This was the new day. There they Were WWE Tag Team Championship. Amazing.

[Alex Perlman]

My favorite.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They had a whole joke about Booty Os.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And they sold also.

[Alex Perlman]

They're gluteus free. It says it right there.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, it says it here on the side. They had so many. There's so many jokes all over this box.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They were our favorite tag team back in the day. And this is. This is just an empty box.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

When we bought this, it wasn't even in box shape. No, it was flat.

[Alex Perlman]

I had to fold it.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We had to fold it and do the punch cards ourselves. These fools did extra steps. They're like, no, we have to put the cereal in it later at Fye. The. The old CD store.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They would sell it, like, with the cereal in it. But by that point, like, the joke was already done.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

By the way, this is from, like, 2015. So wrestling is always seven years late because these guys are doing this in 2008. Yeah, but. Yeah, with the cartoon on there and everything. But we love you, Kofi Kingston.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We love you, Xavier Woods.

[Alex Perlman]

We love you, Biggie.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Biggie. Biggie.

[Alex Perlman]

I love you, Biggie.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Anyway, there we go.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, so.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So also, I found my Eric Bischoff action figure.

[Alex Perlman]

Eric. We'll save him for later. Maybe we'll need another character.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We might need another character because Eric Bischoff is also very evil.

[Alex Perlman]

He is. Is he a wrestler?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, he was a. He was like the. The runner of wcw, the showrunner.

[Alex Perlman]

So that's wrestling.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, he was a. He. He was wrestling aj. Yeah, he's in wrestling.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. I wouldn't call him l. Wrestler, though.

[Alex Perlman]

They made $30,000

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

selling fake cereal.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They made $30,000.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. Also, I do. They're selling fake cereal to Democrats and Republicans.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, okay. You said they were just at the dnc.

[Alex Perlman]

They were at the dnc, but they also, I think, found a way to sell the McCain's.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, you know what I mean? Yeah, I got you.

[Alex Perlman]

But they did sell more Obama O's.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Of course.

[Alex Perlman]

The record.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Just for the record, can I tell you, I had. I had so much Obama merch. I had so much knockoff Obama merch back in the day, because anytime I saw it, I was like, this is hilarious. I had one that was. It was a Washington football team shirt.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And it was Obama old name. And it was Obama in the Washington football team jersey. Yeah, Right. And it was McCain as a Cowboys player, and he was, like, laying, like, all, like, beat up on the ground. And, like, Obama was standing over him almost like that famous picture of Muhammad Ali boxing was like, ah. It was like that. And I bought it. It was like, on a street. I was like, on D.C. and a street guy was selling, and I was like, yeah, I have to own that. I have to own that. And it's so crazy. There was so much cool Obama stuff. And this is the thing. This is what Democrats always forget is like, you got to have a guy that people want to buy shit of his face.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You have to like, yeah. Is Trump evil? Yes, Trump's evil. But Trump got merch he loves. And once somebody buys a piece of merch, they got to vote for you at least once.

[Alex Perlman]

Wow.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

If you own the hat.

[Alex Perlman]

Yep.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

If you own the hat, you're like, well, now I'm an asshole. I bought the hat, but I don't vote for the guy.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Technically speaking, the vote's free. It only costs your soul.

[Alex Perlman]

Wow.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So they sold more Obama.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Then McCain's, which I think is one of better than those. Like. Like, when they do the surveys where they feel like, oh, we're getting. We're doing calls, and we found that, like, Obama's going to win and be 30%. I think the serial predicted this.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The Halloween mask is another one like that.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, really?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So whenever they do, like, the big presidential nominations and they're like Halloween masks, like, they'll be like the fake Hillary or fake Trump masks or all those different things. Usually the mask that sells more is the one. But the thing is, is that that data is skewed because typically, if the president is the incumbent, then they have five years of backstock of mask.

[Alex Perlman]

True.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Right. The other thing in this is that the Obama O's are knockoff Cheerios.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And Captain McCain's are knockoff Captain Crunch.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I believe Cheerios sell more than Captain Crunch.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, yeah. Because Captain Crunch hurts your mo.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that's the. That's the roof of your mouth. Yeah. I've never had.

[Alex Perlman]

What do you mean alleged?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I don't know. I've never had him.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, I know we've talked about this before. I know that I knew that information, but I'm shocked yet again.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

What?

[Alex Perlman]

I've never had Captain Crunch.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

There's. Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

With the berries in it.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

There's. Listen, how many cereals are there?

[Alex Perlman]

A billion.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, exactly. All right. It's being like, oh, my God. You've never. It's like. It's like. Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

It's not climbing a mountain. It's just getting a box of cereal. They used to be, like, $2.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know this about me.

[Alex Perlman]

I know you hate trying new things.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, but also, you know that if I already have a thing that I like, why would I risk? Because every bite is an investment.

[Alex Perlman]

I know.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, Because I already like Apple Jacks. I already like Cheerios. I already like Frosted Flakes. I like Corn Pops. I already like. I think Trix. I think I had Trix. I think I like tricks.

[Alex Perlman]

I love Trix.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, I'm saying, though, like, this is a list. Fruit Loops, Chex Mix. I like Chex Mix. I love a Fruit Loop. Love a Fruit Loop. I love Fruity Pebbles. I love Chocolate Pebbles. There's all these different cereals. I love. Of course I like a cocoa. I just said chocolate Pebbles. It's Cocoa Puffs.

[Alex Perlman]

It's just not the same.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I like Rice Krispies. Oh, I like, love Rice Krispies Treats. But now, listen, did you hear all those options I just had?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Why the fuck do I need to go try Cap' N Crunch?

[Alex Perlman]

I'm just. It's weird, okay? It's weird.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. It's weird that I've never had them. Yes, I've had smacks. Well, yeah, I've never done smack, but I've had smacks.

[Alex Perlman]

Sugar snacks. Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Shout out.

[Alex Perlman]

Mitch Hedberg, Paul Graham, co founder of the Y Combinator, which I cannot deal with this name. The Y Combinator is the name of a business that's a startup funder. It's an accelerator program.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So do you know. Okay, remember we used to watch the show Silicon Valley on hbo?

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The guy. The scummy guy who got like, me too. And tried to do a bomb threat on a train.

[Alex Perlman]

The curly hair guy. Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That guy who was in Deadpool. I can't remember his name. I know, anyway, that his house is a combinator.

[Alex Perlman]

Got it.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And so the whole thing with these type of places is like, they would set up this area.

[Alex Perlman]

They used to call them hype houses now.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, it basically is. It was. It was basically a nerd tech hype house.

[Alex Perlman]

Hype house.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Where you come together and you're supposed to throw ideas at each other. And maybe, like, in passing, you're like, I can't get this line of code to work. And someone come over and go, like, click, click.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And now that's how we ended up with a destroyed world.

[Alex Perlman]

So the Y Combinator, Paul Graham owned. And he is like, I'm gonna put you guys. The airbedandbreakfast.com in the. My accelerator program. Why did John Fetterman just show.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He's gonna be Paul Graham, okay?

[Alex Perlman]

Not be. And this is literally a quote from him. He did not believe in the ideas of strangers sleeping in people's homes. But he did say, quote, if these guys can convince people to pay $40 for a three dollar box of cereal, they can probably figure this out.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Here's what's crazy is it was not even a $3 box of cereal. It was like. It was even less. Is wild.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's insane. But he's also right.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

If you can, if you can get people.

[Alex Perlman]

If you can sell ice to Eskimos. Yeah, There you go.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, that's the whole thing of Wolf of Wall Street. Right. Sell me this pen. That was his whole thing. Sell me this pen.

[Alex Perlman]

It's, it's whatever one that's.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, that's a Sharpie.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, it's sharp.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, it's better than a pen.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know, it's great times.

[Alex Perlman]

You gotta write. You. I keep Sharpies all over the house.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You do?

[Alex Perlman]

I use them for everything.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And I always need to find them when I have to write the, the dog's name on the little bags before he goes into boarding.

[Alex Perlman]

You gotta put them in the back of all the clothes for the babes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that's how it goes. Sharpies really run our life.

[Alex Perlman]

They really do.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, so they. The Y Combinator gave them training. $20,000 in funding in exchange for 6% interest in the company. So this is Shark Tank.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. No, it is 100%. No, it is. That's. And that's just how it worked before the television cameras came in there.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And before the. What's the bald guy's name on Shark Tank?

[Alex Perlman]

Dunno.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know the one I'm talking about.

[Alex Perlman]

I know you're talking about.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that ball guy. Yeah. Before, before the incident with the boats. I would say more about the bald guy from Shark Tanks incident. Him and his wife and the incident of the boats. But anytime you bring it up, he threatens to sue your entire family and then you have to release statements about it. So I can just say that the bald guy and his wife from Shark Tank.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Had an incident with a boat.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And you can figure out the rest of it from there.

[Alex Perlman]

Wow. Okay. So after all this training and the stuff that they got from Y Combinator, they were able to really build up the business model.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And by March of 2009, the site had 10,000 users and 2500 listings.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Wow.

[Alex Perlman]

So.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And you know what, Mrs. P. Yeah. What I'm going to say to that is that is the beginning of a great story.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And we're going to learn more about that story right after this. When you start a business, there are a lot of what ifs. And Shopify is here to help. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses. They have easy to use tools to help your business grow all in one place. You can customize your brand in the Shopify design studio. You could reach customers quickly with the Shopify marketing tools. Shopify can even help manage inventory and international shipping. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial [e-mail] Too Many. Go to shopify.com Too Many. That's shopify.com Too Many. All right, Mrs. P. Let's continue with the rise of Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. So they're going to change the name in 2009 as well. The company changes the names Airbnb to eliminate confusion over air mattresses.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, it's just like in the social network, right. With Justin Timberlake where he's like, drop the the. From the Facebook dot com. Oh, it's also like a short. Well, okay. Well, it's a famous, like me from it though, which is like there's a certain thing, especially back in the day with websites where the dot coms got so confusing.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And like the names would be too long. Like, that's why we do Pearlmania500.net.net to join us for ad free listening. And the reason why, though, is, is, is it was just the more letters you also have in a website, the more chances you have to misspell things.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, absolutely. It's like an email 100. Like if you have a really long last name, your first, middle last name email. I'm getting it wrong every time.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, my God. My old court, my old, my old corp corporate email just kept going. And I just felt.

[Alex Perlman]

So I always use like in a corporate email, they'd be like first name, dot, last name. Something to do with the corporate itself. At the corporate itself.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And they wouldn't like shorten it to like abc.com. they do the full name. And you're like, guys, no one wants to do that.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, mine, what's. What I had was, mine was like a Perlman at, you know, company.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And I was like, why couldn't you just do Alex P. Company? Everyone knows how to spell Alex. And then slowly I learned over time that they don't.

[Alex Perlman]

They don't know how to.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, they don't. And so I would have to sit there and be like, It's P. That's

[Alex Perlman]

why we go by the nickname Xander.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, we don't. We don't go by the nickname anything.

[Alex Perlman]

That's why I'm calling you.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, don't do. No, cut that out. We're editing that out. Don't. Don't leave that in.

[Alex Perlman]

So Brian is also running a blog on Airbnb.com at this point.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

This is back when they're doing, like, the SEO blog stuff.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they have. At this point, you said they have 10,000. 10,000 users, 2500 listings. They're trying anything they can to break through.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. So Brian's writing a blog on the website, and they're. Apparently a host house was vandalized in 2011, and he was criticized publicly for his handling of the situation, specifically because the. The victim, the host, came out and publicly contradicted everything he said. So this led to Brian writing a public message on this blog acknowledging his failure and announcing an expansion of the Airbnb customer service team and the creation of a special fund for hosts should similar situations arise in the future.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So, you know what's funny about this is immediately I'm struck by the fact that they probably didn't have much customers. Customer service to begin with, because again, a lot of these websites, when they first rolled out and a lot. Eventually they became apps. Many of them just didn't have people. No, you just had. You just would be emailing somebody and hoping that it would get down to somewhere. The contacts were always hard to find.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. And it's crazy because, like, then in, like the. In after, like, 2010, we had, like, a couple years there, we could get to somebody because they realized that we hated not getting anybody, and we get somebody. But now it's. It's happened again where. Yeah, just AI bots.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Now it's just back to AI bots.

[Alex Perlman]

You just do your messaging, and they're like, the AI response, you're like, I don't want. The AI response is just what's in the FAQ of your website. I've already read that.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

I didn't email you without reading the faq.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The other thing, though, is, is it feels like almost every. Every website and company now I feel immediately like I have to do the operator. Operator.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Or just start. There's, like, certain keywords you can say that will trigger a human response. I can't say them on here or else I'll get demonetized. But, you know, threats help the. That. I do find this so funny, though. That his immediate intention was to lie about the victim.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Like, that's immediate intention.

[Alex Perlman]

Yep.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But also, them setting up a fund is something similar that Uber and Lyft have done.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I was a Lyft driver for a little bit, and they always reminded me pretty regularly. And other Lyft drivers would tell me all the time, is, like, there was a fund in case someone threw up in your car.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Like, they had. Like, they had to eventually get partnerships with car cleaning companies and others, like, in the area in Philadelphia and, like, in New York everywhere else. Because they had so often.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Someone who was blackout drunk that a taxi would not pick up.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But because you're on an app, you're like, well, I don't. I can't fucking. I can't. I can't dump them. If I dump too many of them, I'll get in trouble.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So you put this hammered person in your car, and then they just throw up all over your backseat.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And now you got to pay for the cleaning, you're out the money, all this other different stuff, and just a nightmare.

[Alex Perlman]

So one time I was blackout drunk and taking a cab, because this is before the Ubers and the lift in the world.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And we just had cab drivers. It was the 333 number.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

I had it saved to my phone. So you just call a cab. That's how it was back.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because you got sober before apps.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. It was like, Mrs. P got sober, and then they invented apps the next

[Alex Perlman]

day, and I was like, dang.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. It would have been really good.

[Alex Perlman]

I really could have messed around.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You could have just hit it. You could have hit two buttons, and

[Alex Perlman]

instead of being like, what was the number again? 3 3. 3. 3. 3, 3. 3. Got it, got it, got it. But I'll never forget one time I got schmammered, as one does in the early 20s when these guys were busy expanding, building a company. I was like, let's go party.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You're out partying and they're pouring bag cereal into a box. Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Having different life experiences.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Different life experience.

[Alex Perlman]

But I was in this cab, and I left my ID in the backseat because I didn't get sick. I didn't get sick ever. Okay. I probably. I don't know, but I know that I lost my id.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And I didn't know that. Right. I didn't know I lost my ID in this car. Whatever. Next morning, I get up, I go back to work at the bartending job I had, and one of my co workers who lives on the other side of the city. We do not live anywhere near each other. She comes into work and she goes, you'll never believe what I have. And I was like, what? She's like, your id. And I was like, what? Apparently that night, that cab driver, over the course of zip zapping around the city, had picked her up on the other side of town. Not at the same job. She wasn't working the night before, and picked her up and drove her somewhere else. And my ID was on his dashboard. And she was like, I know that girl. And he's like, can you prove it? And she went through her probably the slide phone and found a crazy picture that we would have had and was like, this is her. And he was like, got it. And just gave her my id.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, my God.

[Alex Perlman]

Not my problem. And then she brought it back to me the next day.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's amazing.

[Alex Perlman]

And that's why cab drivers will always be better in my heart.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And Lyft and Ubers.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I also missed the. I missed the vinyl leather. So seats.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, yeah. And the thing where you, like. It was like a car slammer.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And then put it in.

[Alex Perlman]

You slam it through.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, yeah. Because they had the. The little drawers.

[Alex Perlman]

Bulletproof glass.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Bulletproof glass. You don't get that in an Uber.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. You could smoke. Anyway, so they begin rapid expansion in Europe immediately. As soon as they can.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They also. At the same time, the US had started easing restrictions in Cuba. So Nate oversaw the expansion into Cuba, Ganondorf, making it one of the US's first companies to do so.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is so funny. Yeah, this is incredibly funny. And I think a lot of people forget. And what year is this around?

[Alex Perlman]

This has to be, like, 2011.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. Because this is right around. This is Obama years.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Everyone forgets that when Obama was president.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We tried to actually end the embargo of Cuba.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And by we, I mean Obama specifically.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And there was a big move to normalize relations with Cuba. Yeah. And a lot of people actually were able to go visit Cuba and all these things. Now we currently. And by we, I mean the United States government, specifically Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, are trying to kill almost everyone in Cuba.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They keep threatening to conquer it, and they've been putting it underneath a massive blockade. It's actually beyond the embargo that we've had for almost 75 years. And it's a horror story.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And it's one of those things that always, like, gets me really, really frustrated. People are like, both parties are saying blah, blah. Like, no, we had a president.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Who Barack Obama who was like, this is dumb. Like what we're doing down there is dumb. And also, I always will argue against the Cuban embargo on one, one thing. The reason why the Castro government was able to stay in power as long as they have has been because of the embargo.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because you've given them an outside force to always be able to rally people around, which is United States, American government. Because they're actively trying to harm people down there. I know people who went down there was a recent trip of like 150 content creators. My friend Christian Devine went, yeah. Hassan Piker was down there. A bunch of different people who went down. And every single one of them I know who went and saw just they were loose. They could just walk around, go talk to random people when they came back. Every single one of them. Now it's just like, we are monsters.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And so the fact that Airbnb, it opens a little bit and they're like, ah, opportunity. Oh my God, we can turn their homes into hotels.

[Alex Perlman]

I remember in 20 it had to be like 2011.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Because Obama was making headway on people traveling to Cuba. And I was in college at the time, in night school.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And the program I was in, they had a thing where you could go. Take a semester and go to Cuba as like a learning thing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And I was, I remember talking to you about it and being like, this would be so cool. I would love to go to Cuba as part of our education.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But you were working at a bowling alley.

[Alex Perlman]

But I was working at a bowling alley. And they were like, we can't give you a time off.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. I, I've always. My dad went to Cuba. My dad and my grandfather went to Cuba. And back in the 70s. Because that was back again before Reagan.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I think was when Carter was President Carter. Even President Carter was like, this is kind of stupid. Right. It's like, why are we doing this again? It was still over. Like the nuke thing from 1963.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's wild. Maybe we should move on. And it's, it's, it's been a, it's a fucking nightmare.

[Alex Perlman]

It's a nightmare.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's a nightmare.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. So all in 2015, Brian was included on the Forbes list of America's richest entrepreneurs.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Lex Luthor.

[Alex Perlman]

Lex Luthor. Brian was also named by President Barack Obama the presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurial ship.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I think a lot of people forget that during the Obama era. Right. There was beyond the hope of just everything getting better. There was a hope around tech, specifically technology like this. And there was so much, oh, this is going to get better, and we're going to figure out these things. But there's a famous story of Jon Stewart being at the Obama White House.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And he's talking to guys like Jeff Bezos and others, and they're all talking about, like, things like Airbnb, things like Uber. The big thing that happened with this technology wasn't that it was groundbreaking. They just figured out a logistics service to be able to get people to be able to list their homes.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

At the end of the day, an Airbnb is a tenement.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Right. This is still just like a one night. You can sleep in this random room in somebody's house. We got away from that over time as, like, our society progressed, as we moved out of having slums, as these different things happened, as people didn't need to have a random stranger sleep in their house because they had good money, they had a union job, they had health care. They had enough money that could pay for fucking food. The minimum wage was more than one pound of beef. Like, there was like a difference, right?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And these guys all sat around, these fucking lunatics all sat.

[Alex Perlman]

John Fetterman get here again.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Don't worry about it. I just. If we're going to show a bunch of evil people, you know, we're going to get wild together. But these fucking lunatics, they figured out a way to become the middlemen.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

In people. What they were listing then as side hustles.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And this side hustle culture of whether it be Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, any of these different things.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

These were supposed to be that extra little bit of money because your main job wasn't paying enough. Because we just went through the Great Recession.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And they were. The hope was that wages were going to finally catch back up. And because of this type of shit, it created a pressure release valve so the wages didn't have to keep up.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And guys like Obama, like, whatever needs. And he's near the end of his term, he's like, whatever, it's fine. But this is what these guys are doing. And this was around the time 2015, 2016 was around the time that tech thought that the Democrats were going to be in power for a lot longer.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They thought that it was definitely going to be Hillary. They thought it was definitely going to be guys like Obama. There was this type of California Liberalism that they thought was going to rule the world. And so they were like, no, we're good guys. We're just like you. We're giving money to your, like, to your campaigns. Yeah, we're giving, look, we care about gay people. All that different type of shit. Right. That's what they all really fucking played into. But in reality, what they were doing is they were destroying systems.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

By disruption. And that disruption, like some of these systems needed to be, you know, shaken up a little bit, but they didn't need to be fucking destroyed. When I look at Uber, Uber destroyed taxi unions.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And that destroyed the livelihoods of so many different people. And it moved them from being sole business owners who were taxi drivers, who moved them into being app slaves.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They are. Like I drove, when I drove for Lyft, it would be like, I'll take two more rides and you'll get a bonus. Do this thing and you'll get a bonus. And it always ended up fucking me every single time. I've never been more miserable than when I was a Lyft driver.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And like at first, the thing is too, is about that type of job and about all these different types of things. They always start out, when you first start out doing them, you go, oh, this is great. This is so different. I'm taking control. And then slowly over time, you're like, I've been gamified.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And it sucks shit. So, yeah. It doesn't surprise me that Obama is like in with these guys in that sort of way because they also was as part of their prison.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Was. They can show up and then Obama can call himself a job creator.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. Also the renting houses thing did exist. It was just on Craigslist. Yeah. Because when I was on tour in the early 2000.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

When I worked for the Lion King Broadway show.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And I went on to. I was on the American tour. We would just go to Craigslist and find rental houses because each city we lived in, we would be there for extended times, like months. And sometimes we live in hotels, sometimes we live in those, like extended Hilton's, you know, those things. And sometimes we would find a house, but it was just on Craigslist. And so that, like you were saying, is like they just created a way where they could be the middleman between us having to scroll through Craigslist and see, like, because it was Craigslist wasn't the best platform to try to find a rental.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No.

[Alex Perlman]

Because like, it was very odd. But like I did it all the time. Like, whenever I'd go to Puerto Rico, we'd rent a house on Craigslist. Like, and also it was. It was easier.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Beach real. Beach realtors.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, I mean, like, that's how you used to do it back in the day, is you would. If you wanted to go rent. Now you go on Airbnb if you want to rent a house down at the shore or even at the mountains, if you're not going through. Like, when we went to Dollywood, we ran it, like, through Dollywood. If you're not going through an organization like that before Airbnb, what you would do is you would call a realtor down there or you would talk to a friend who knew somebody.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And then you'd go down there, you'd rent a house. You'd say at a hotel, and then you go to a beach realtor who was down there, and you would speak to them and they'd pull out a big binder full of listings and they would ask you what type of house I'm looking for. A four bedroom with this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And you would use them and then.

[Alex Perlman]

Pool table.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes. And here's what would happen. That local Realtor would then get the commission, and that local realtor, that 10% or whatever it is, whatever the Airbnb fee would stay in the local community. Now that fee gets siphoned off and gets sent to these three fucking idiots in San Francisco. They go and invest it into crypto. They're not investing it into local property taxes. They're not investing it into a local school, another local business. They're not going in there and, like, giving money to a fucking bake sale to go help the Girl Scouts or whatever, because it's all going to these fucking three idiots and whoever else are their 6% investors and their angel investors. It is centralized all of the little bit of skimming that was happening throughout the entire system.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Under the idea of ease of access. Because now you're like, oh, I could just, oh, we get a four bedroom for us and our friends. Beep, boop. Found it. Okay, yeah, I'll pay this extra fee. Whatever. That's the listing. Like, that's how it goes. Versus before, it was like, yeah, you had to do a little bit of work. But it. It did keep things a little bit more locally. And this has just been, like, part of that disruption. What it's really disrupted has been our local economies.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

In July 2016, they hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to help craft an anti discrimination policy for Airbnb because so many reports had come in that hosts were refusing to accept lodging requests from guests whose names suggested they were African American.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

As part of the reform, photos of prospective guests are hidden from hosts until requests for lodging are accepted.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Hmm.

[Alex Perlman]

That says a fucking lot.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It says a ton. Yeah. No, this is one of those things. Eric Holder was Obama's Attorney General.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Also he's a black man. And they were dealing with a ton of this. Airbnb and Uber also, and Lyft also all sold themselves as not being anti racist, but being not racist.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Specifically a big thing I heard from friends of mine who are black when Uber came out, is what they liked about it was they didn't have to worry about the cab passing them.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because there's so many different things where cabbies would just pass. They would not pick up black passengers. Same thing issue that they felt that they were having at hotels. And so this idea of like, oh, I can go get a nice place, I can go stay in a neighborhood. I typically wouldn't like going all the way back to the green Book.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Like these ideas of like, there's certain. We've talked about this with redlining. In a very early episode of the podcast, there was these places where it, like just black people weren't allowed to go and there was nothing posted. But when you showed up, it was just. It was clearly there. And this disruption started putting black people into areas with maybe they didn't have knowledge of. Of where they're renting, where there was underlying racism. And the hosts themselves were like, they're like, I'm going to open up to anybody. And then they look up and they go, oh, their name. And they'd flip the fuck out.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And so you can already see the connections that are already begin to have the Obama administration and the connections there, but also of like, how these mega corporations that are spreading across regions who have no idea of the markets or the customer base or the host base that they're handling of. Like, how to handle this properly, immediately. Because I guarantee you, this had to happen so many times.

[Alex Perlman]

So many fucking.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So many fucking times. It had to trend so many times. It had to get. There's a famous thing with Reddit. Reddit used to refuse to ban any subreddit until like Anderson Cooper talked about it.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They had like issue issues back in the day, but this was a big thing with tech, which is like, oh, no, it's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's not a problem. Until it becomes a PR problem.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. And we will talk about that more.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, right after this. Stop throwing your money away on high phone bills. Switch to Mint Mobile. You get the same coverage, the same speed, unlimited talk, text and data, all on the nation's largest 5G network. Mint Mobile's plans start at just 15 bucks a month for three months. And I want to let you guys know, this is one of the best deals that we've ever had from a sponsor. We've used this promo code for friends and family and ourselves. It's helped us save money, it's helped us make sure that we still have those same connections with our phone. And we didn't notice any drop in service from switching over from a major carrier to Mint Mobile. It was just the perfect, easiest transition we've ever done. Bring your current phone and number over to Mint. No long term contracts, no hassle. Mint makes it Easy with a 7 day money back guarantee. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop [e-mail] tabs. That's mintmobile.com tabs. Upfront payment of $45 for three months. Five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only. Then full price plans, options available, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com for details. What we got next, Mrs. P. Okay,

[Alex Perlman]

so people, the general public starts a clock that Airbnb is becoming a problem that it's detrimental to the housing market.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Like alarm bells are starting to go off. People in the know, in certain like government agencies and people on the ground are like, wait a minute. This is becoming a problem because the homes or apartments that we used to be able to rent or buy are now being bought and then rented out short term. So they can't like get a lease to live there for a year because the landlord is like, no, I'm just going to rent it out in two weeks. Spurts.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

You know, so they're seeing a decline in the fact that like there's less rentals and housing available and the hosts are making more money off of the short term stays than they would renting the property out as a home for like a year or two year lease.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And also the cities are noticing that because they're doing these short term rentals, they don't have to get a license. Like in city of Philadelphia, you have to have a rental license, you have to pay. There's an inspection process. LNI is involved. License and inspection. They also, when you are formally in a lease agreement There are protections. There is landlord tenant law. There are protections through the city. And so because they're doing this short term rentals on an app, there's no oversight, there's no safety mechanism.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And so all of these things are starting to come to a head now. People are really, really noticing a problem. Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And this is like 20.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, like 2016, 2017.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

The, the lack of housing is causing soaring pricing. And people that want to become homeowners are in this like huge obstacle where they have to pay more for rent while trying to save for a home. And they're being forced out of the lower priced housing because the lower priced housing is being gobbled up.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And what's happening to it a lot of times is those lower priced housing. What I really want you guys to think about is again, we talked earlier about beach, beach rentals.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But if you think about any place that is near a vacation destination, they used to all have areas that were lower income for the workers.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So for people who are working like a line cook. Right. Let's take a line cook Or a dishwasher. You're down at the shore. A dishwasher has to sleep somewhere.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They have to be able to take a shower, take a shit and get some sleep. That's a rule they need to have. Where are you going to put them? Where do they get to sleep? And what you're finding is more and more, especially around these hot destinations because of things like Airbnb, they want to have the people closer and closer to them. So the landlords flipped. Instead of going and having cheap rent for people to live around the corner and have a short commute, those people are going farther and farther away. So now they're either taking longer bus rides, they're driving more dangerous vehicles, they're paying more in gas, there's more. They're spending more time on the road, which then increases. Increases the amount of traffic.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And this starts really badly in vacation destinations.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I'm thinking, I'm looking at you, Miami, I'm looking at the shore, I'm looking at these type of areas. When you get into cities like in Philadelphia, you're going to have that same sort of issue. And then what you see is the poor get pushed further and further and further out. When before you would have a split, it'd be like you'd be in an area like near Rittenhouse Square where it's like 70% of the. It's wealthy homes.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But you would have enough nearby.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. I Lived. I used to live in Rittenhouse Square. Yeah, rented. I lived at 17th and Walnut, which is like a high income area.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And we had like a two bedroom that we slept three people in.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

It was just like it was a restaurant workers area, like.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

We just stayed in this one apartment building and it was cheap. I think our rent was like $1,000 a month.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And now that's like in crazy price because of all of this.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And so one of the things that I've seen that happen, I personally saw happen. I used to work for a bank and my last job before the podcast took off.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Was I did analysis for investment properties and we had a guy come in and his whole entire thing was taking long term rentals and flipping them into short term rentals. Now here's what's crazy about it. He wasn't doing this at the beach. He was doing this in a neighborhood that was between a hospital and a courthouse. And what he was doing is he was flipping these long term rentals. So he was taking a single family home and he was carving it up into three apartments that he was then renting on Airbnb because he knew that at that time, especially post Covid travel nurses were becoming a very big thing. So travel nurses and research doctors were coming to this hospital. So he would go and make these high end, high end rentals. By the way, this was in a neighborhood where if this was 1994 or even the early 2000s, you wouldn't park your first fucking car. Okay. So he's gentrifying the neighborhood by kicking everybody out. And he's putting in three units that he is now renting for fifteen hundred dollars a month. These are one. This used to house one family for $700. So he is now, you start to see the amount of money that's starting to come in. And what he's doing is he's renting to travel nurses and doctors who are coming into the area. You know who's then paying for that. That heightened rent. The hospital. You know how the hospital pays for it? They up charges. You know how they. How that those charges get paid for. They raise money on insurance. So you end up paying for this in the long run. Now, the second part of it is the courthouse was also important because they would have out of state lawyers and specialists coming in for trials. So they need to stay someplace back in the day. You know where they'd stay? They'd stay at one of those fucking like Holiday Inn suites.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

One of those shitty places where it has a little fucking kitchenette in it. Well, now they have a whole apartment that's fully furnished. And, oh, my God, this is so nice. But this is in the heart of an American city where, again, there are restaurants there that these people, that the. The tenants are now staying in these places expect to go to. The people who are working in the restaurants are further away. The people working the convenience stores are further away. The people who are working in the courthouse are further away. The fucking janitor of the hospital is further away. All of this shit is further away. And you know what happened? Public transportation goes fucking down because the people who are staying there aren't paying local taxes. So it's just getting fucking worse because these are all consultants. So the consultants are being paid a consultancy fee. Nobody's paying a fucking payroll. And then the local thing has all been fucked up and the property taxes are all fucked. So the school's not getting better because there's less kids anyway. There's less kids. And the property taxes are still listing that in its mind as either a single family rental or keeping it at a price that's cash flowing much lower. And so these guys were coming in, especially post 2020, and where I saw a lot of this type of shit happen, all of these different guys were coming in and they were borrowing against the potentiality of what they were going to be able to make on Airbnb. They weren't borrowing. They weren't going, this is $100,000 home, because if I sell it, I'm going to sell it for 120. Therefore, you are going to give me a loan for, I don't know, $85,000. They were going, here's what I've done before. Here's how it. Cash flows, give me 250. And now they need to make 250, $250,000 to pay off that entire fucking loan. And they're going to just keep refinancing it. And a big part of all of this also happens because at that time, the Federal Reserve interest rates were at almost zero percent. This is again, post recession, a lot of these disrupting companies that Lex Luthor, Ganondorf, Chris Benoit, and probably John Fetterman loved, all of them were based on zero percent interest rates, which meant it wasn't a lot of risk if they couldn't pull it, pair it off.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Now the interest rates are in 5, 6%. People freak the fuck out about them. But back in the 80s, they're at 15%. So it's like, oh, if this doesn't go well, it doesn't matter. We can default on it a little bit easier. But also, everyone can get cheap money because there was a lot of money around to make risky bets like this. And that's what Airbnb at the end of the day is. It's a risky bet for communities because you're losing. You're actually losing the ability to have communities. You end up with basically high end tenements and nobody knows who's anybody is around because every day you're seeing different people go in and out of your next door neighbor's house.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Also, some data shows that about one quarter of the hosts on Airbnb own nearly two thirds of the listings.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Wait, one quarter of the hosts own two? Okay. With fractions, it always blows my brain.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And I know it's a hard thing to communicate with everybody. So what you're telling me though, is a small number of the hosts.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Own most of all of the options for people to rent from.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. Whether that's just one real estate guy mogul.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Who bought up a bunch of properties, let's say In Cape May, New Jersey.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Right. He might own 50% of Cape May, New Jersey, or big companies who've come in and gobbled up rentals to make

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

like a private equity.

[Alex Perlman]

A private equity style thing. So, yeah. A 1/4 of the hosts on Airbnb platform own nearly 2/3 of the listing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Because again, remember, Airbnb was sold much like Uber, much like Lyft, which is your side hustle. Rent out this room.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Right. And instead you have people who are buying homes and letting them stay empty.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because they can make as much money housing somebody for three days to a week.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

As they could housing a family for a full month.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. For a year.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

So in January 2017, along with Gary V. And founder of. Then the founder of Eater.com, airbnb invested 13 million into Resi, which is a restaurant reservation booking app.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I'm gonna make Eric Bischoff Gary V. Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

I really can. I don't really know who Gary Vee is. I only know him as the guy that made the NFTs of like his little childlike drawings.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. I.

[Alex Perlman]

That's all I know about him.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is what I know about Gary.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I know that I saw him pop up my algorithm once and I said, that man's trying to steal my money. And I hit not interested.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And then I blocked him on every single service because I just. Everything about him just read.

[Alex Perlman]

Like, algorithm is Rarely showed him to me, ever. I think I was like doing research about NFT things.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And he popped up and I was like. Because it was like everybody was doing all these like, art, like the, the Paul brothers, like they were doing all this silly stuff. But he saw these NFTs that were like the shittiest drawings like that. They're the drawings I do for our child.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Of like, this is a frog. And then he sold it for like a million dollars or something. I was like, I'm confused by this man.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I am scanning past everything about him. Like every video I ever saw about him had like Mr. Beast style subtitles. Like the weird little pop up things. And then everything about him just read Brain Rot Grifter to me.

[Alex Perlman]

Maybe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

In my opinion. In my opinion, our. Yeah. This is a comedy. Just a comedy show. We're telling silly little jokes. Look, it's Eric Bischoff.

[Alex Perlman]

One day I'll do research on him and we'll talk.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I don't want to.

[Alex Perlman]

Too late. So anyway, the. The thing that I was. The only reason I brought this up is because I didn't know that Resi was owned by Airbnb. Now, you don't make reservations for dining ever.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, I just go into a place

[Alex Perlman]

and say, yeah, I've already made them probably on resi.com. so I didn't know that I've been supporting the Airbnb founders at this point.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Or Gary V. Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

The founder of Eater.com. that's fine. I check that website once in a while.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. But I think Iter was owned by Vox at one point.

[Alex Perlman]

Maybe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, but here's the thing. Well, we'll tell everybody again, we've said this so many times.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Everybody knows that.

[Alex Perlman]

I know.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And as we found out from the private equity episode about Blackstone.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They own everything. They do say with BlackRock. But like, it's hard to find a place where you aren't supporting a man.

[Alex Perlman]

No, I'm not. Listen, the whole thing is.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Is that there used to be a website called OpenTable.com and that was the website where you would make reservations.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I remember using that.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Open.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And I had used it on the back end because when I was working restaurants, we would have open table.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. On our thing for your reservations.

[Alex Perlman]

And so. But the thing is, I have an open table became an enemy of mine because they used to have like a good, like, point system where if, like, you made enough reservations, you would get, like, credit back. So, like, if I If you made, like, 10 reservations in a month or so, let's say they would send you a check for, like, a hundred dollars in points that you could then use at restaurants that were on under the Open Table Network.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Got it.

[Alex Perlman]

And so, as people that used to go out a lot, I'd be like, bang, bang. But then they just stopped mailing the checks, and I was so mad. I was like, I had points galore and I would never cash them in. And I got so mad that when this Resi app started popping up on different restaurants, like, oh, make a reservation. You have to log into Resi. And I was like, fine, because fuck, Open Table forever. They owe me money.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, this is how. This is why VRBO exists.

[Alex Perlman]

Right.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is why Verbo exists against Airbnb, so. Or Lyft versus Uber. And, like, all these different things.

[Alex Perlman]

In August of 2017, Airbnb canceled numerous bookings and closed accounts belonging to attendees of the Unite the Right rally, which was a white supremacist rally organized by Jason Kessler in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Citing their terms of service, which members must accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation or age.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That sounds woke. And cancel culture.

[Alex Perlman]

It was woken. Cancel culture.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We used to live in a society, folks. Yeah. No, I think a lot of people forget that the Unite the right rally in 2017. Seventeen was, like, for a lot of people, like, a big moment.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And now I think we just forget about it.

[Alex Perlman]

It was the tiki torch.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes. That was. That was. Yeah, yeah. Where they were marching around yelling, the Jews will not replace us.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Everyone forgets that. That's what they're yelling. Yeah, yeah. The famous images of, like, the guys with the slicked hair. And then a woman. A woman died.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. She got over by a car. Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

She got hit by a car.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And today the President would have pardoned. That was the one where he famously said, the President, United States. The current President, United States, once and future. He was like, they were. They're good. Good and bad people on both sides.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But, yeah, it was just a. Is a lunacy.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, so around the same time, Nathan transitions from Chief Strategy Officer at Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I thought you said transitions. I got so excited.

[Alex Perlman]

No.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And I was like, this was. We were going to have a face turn here. But no, Ganondorf just went from being

[Alex Perlman]

CTO to chairman of the Airbnb China. So he's going to open Airbnb in China. Oh, wait, he's leaving.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Wait. Okay. Oh, that's going to go good.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. 20.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Famously 2017.

[Alex Perlman]

A lot of money.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

He's leaving chief strategy officer title and he's going to go be the chairman of Airbnb China.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But this is also one of those things again, with all these different types of companies, it's about expansion. How do we expand, how do we rapidly expand all these different places? And you know who famously doesn't have a lot of regulations? I'm being sarcastic.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Well, that's. The whole thing is, like, when I was doing all this research, I noticed is that there are people who are fighting them.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Like city councils, local governance. Like, people are fighting with them. But the thing is, they're moving so quickly that they. It's hard to catch up to them. It's very Trumpian. Like a bull in a China shop. Like, there's only so much you can do to get the breakables as the bull is running around and they're just running loose and being like, we'll figure it out later. Our lawyers. Lawyers will figure it out later.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And what you have to do in these situations is if you're a local organization or a lone city council person, because often it was like one city council person.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Or like one state rep. You have to grab that one thing and not let go of that one thing. Because they're. They're committing and breaking so many rules and they're causing so many violations and probably breaking laws. In these situations, though, the one I keep thinking about all the time is, as you're reading this is, I think it was Uber and Lyft. There was a time where, like, New York was fining them, like thousands of dollars a day. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Because they were operating without taxi licenses. They were fake taxi licenses. The Airbnb was operating as hotels. And they don't have a hotel. Like, you're supposed to have a license for these things.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And these individual homes are being turned into.

[Alex Perlman]

And at this time, New York is fighting with. New York was one of their biggest battlegrounds. And like New York City specifically, not the state. New York City was their biggest battle for these exact reasons. They wanted licensing, they wanted oversight, they wanted to make sure that. That each rental would be 30. Start at 30 days was the minimum. They wanted 30 day rentals. Again, because they're like, no, we need people to live here.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. But also we have a hotel industry.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, we have a hotel industry which also pays.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Which pays specific hotel taxes.

[Alex Perlman]

Exactly.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And all of this money goes into specific buckets and if they don't go into the right buckets, then the entire system fucking collapses.

[Alex Perlman]

Anyway, let's go back to China. Okay. So the certain hosts in China were, were a problem because they kept discriminating by refusing to rent to the Uyghurs. So that became a huge issue.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

Airbnb also had big issues with regulations because China had all these regulations that required detailed information on each guest that need to be sent to the government for review.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

So that was a problem.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. And then also 2020, there was a pandemic.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. It started in China and there was a lot of regulations around that.

[Alex Perlman]

So officially they went into China in 2017.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They ended up closing out all of the bookings and closing down basically Airbnb China in 2022. Now, I believe that Airbnb China exists, but it's more of an out facing company. So it's like if you are a Chinese citizen and you want to go stay in Italy, you can use Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Got it.

[Alex Perlman]

Outwardly, but you can't book an Airbnb inwardly.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is very funny because this is basically the story of almost like all tech dealing with China.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Especially from like the Obama years into the Trump years is like this almost exact story. Story. Mark Zuckerberg like tried desperately to get Facebook into China.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And President Xi Jinping.

[Alex Perlman]

No, we have read. No. And we've seen it. And yeah, it's cool.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But also, but also Xi Jinping was just like, yeah, bitch. No, I've seen you CIA ass, weirdo, alien. The. The fucking. In general with all this different stuff. It's. It's one, it's a different culture, but two, they have such high amounts of regulations around everything. And if you want to go to a communist country like China and be like, nah, we'll just pay the fine. And they're like, you'll pay with your life.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Whoopsie daisy. Take the next 12 seconds to unwind and enjoy relaxing music. This ad break was brought to you by Wix because we know running a business can be stressful. Creating a website shouldn't be. Learn [e-mail] Harmony Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile to today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Alex Perlman]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail]

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

My perfect day has sand, salt water and friends. But my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis can take me out of the moment. Now I'm all in with clearer skins thanks to Skyrizi. Rizankizumab RZA, a prescription only 150mg injection for adults who are candidates for systemic or phototherapy with Skyrizi. Most people saw 90% clearer skin and many were even 100% plaque free at four months. Skyrizi is just four doses a year after two starter doses.

[Alex Perlman]

Don't use if allergic to Skyrizi. Serious allergic reactions, increased infections or lower ability to fight that may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor about any flu like symptoms or vaccines.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

Thanks to Skyrizi, there's nothing on my skin. And that means everything is everything. Ask your doctor about Skyrizi, the number one dermatologist prescribed biologic in psoriasis. Visit skyrizi.com or call 1-866-Skyrizi to learn more.

[Alex Perlman]

I want to talk shit.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. Talk shit.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. So in 2017, Joe. Joe Geba.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

He decides to launch Neighborhood, a modular design office furniture business that's again, just a side. Just a side quest.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. I'm holding up the Chris Benoit figure, by the way.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, Joe. See, this is why this was important to me.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Because I kept forgetting who they are.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

So Joe is the Chris Benoit character.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. He decides he's gonna get into office furniture business. Okay, Listen, I don't know why, but I went and looked it up and it's so ugly. It reminds me of like hostile architecture in park benches to like homeless people.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Let me show you some pictures of it.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, God, I hate that.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Why does it have a high back

[Alex Perlman]

in the small, smallest little butt area?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And like who. You sit on a curved couch like this, like, how are you having a conversation? You're. These are different directions.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

These are some of the ugliest designs I've ever seen. It's somebody who is like, wanted to make something look modern and sleek.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And also like, this is. This is your thing.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is where your heart lies.

[Alex Perlman]

This is your creativity.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Office furniture.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I mean. Oh my God. Oh, that table with the plug sticking out of the. The column and they covered it. This is. He's. He Thought covering a column in carpet.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, he said, that's fashion.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's not fashion. That's a hotel.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Like, again, because these guys, they don't have anything in their life that they love.

[Alex Perlman]

Well, okay. I'm saying that Joe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Joe.

[Alex Perlman]

Joe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Joe.

[Alex Perlman]

He is. He doesn't have any, like, cool, interesting things, because, like, I think it's Brian. He's really into, like, bonsai and, like, ice hockey.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, that's right.

[Alex Perlman]

He has hobbies.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, that tracks. Okay, well, that makes sense then, why I picked Lex Luthor.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, he's really into, like, landscape architecture. Like, okay, has hobbies. And then the other guy, Nathan Ganondorf, other than, like, knowing how to, like, create spam, he also really is into paternal leave. So he, like, throws a lot of money behind paternal leave stuff and, okay, profits and that. So, like, he's really into parenthood. And, like, these guys have, like, real hobbies and interests, but Joe is just, like, the worst office furniture.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I'm gonna say one thing I don't know anything about Nate.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I will just say that any time I hear about any tech billionaire that's into families and, like, people having kids.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I immediately go, like, in that weird way. Yeah, like, in that Elon way.

[Alex Perlman]

In that, like, the. The. What's the. The people that are into the Arrow. What is it?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The Quiverful.

[Alex Perlman]

Quiverful.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

I knew it. Okay, good.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Quiverful.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. But also tech Quiver energy.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But there's also, like, tech eugenics energy.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So that's a bad one.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, so then I just wanted to talk shit on that furniture design, because that. Like, that.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It was horrific. That was terrible.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Okay. By 2019, 2 million people are staying in an Airbnb every night.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

2 million.

[Alex Perlman]

2 million people every night are staying in an Airbnb by 2019.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I want you guys to think about this, the listeners. That's. That's 2 million Airbnb fees per night.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

For. For revenue. That's before we're talking about servers. That's before any employees. Anything. Because Airbnb hosts were always complaining about the. The fees going up.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And they would always pass them on to the renters, too.

[Alex Perlman]

I need to tell you something. I think Airbnb hosts just as bad as landlords.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

In my mind, they are. They are landlords.

[Alex Perlman]

I. I don't like them. No, again, I don't want to. I don't want to hear your complaints.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No.

[Alex Perlman]

Because I've stayed in an Airbnb too, and I didn't like it. I'd rather be in A hotel. But sometimes when you have a large group of friends, you have to get a whole house because you have a harder group of friends. And maybe you want to have a Blackstone griddle in a pool. Maybe you do, because you're the good group of friends. But then they're going to send you that goddamn email that says, there's a 300 cleaning fee, but then I am required to clean the whole place before I go. Or there's another charge. Go yourself. You know what I mean? So I don't stay at Airbnbs anyway. 2020 hits. There's a COVID 19 pandemic.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Just so you guys know, this is because we were at an Airbnb years ago, and they sent a message saying that we needed to take the trash out and we had to pay a cleaning fee.

[Alex Perlman]

One or the other.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Either you pay. So if I'm paying a fee, somebody should be coming in and cleaning. Why am I washing my sheets? Why am I putting them back on the bed? Why am I doing all the dishes? And it's like, oh, you have to run the dishwasher, take out the trash all the way to the curb. Pull the trash cans down. I don't work here.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

What?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We walked into the house and there was a binder waiting for us.

[Alex Perlman]

Never.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They're so lucky. They're so lucky that I like to go with groups of my friends in the summer because otherwise I need a hotel.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We're Jay. We like a Marriott. A Marriott. Bonvoy.

[Alex Perlman]

I love a Marriott. Bonvoy.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We love a Marriott. Do not get in the comments and tell us there's evil. We don't care. We don't care. They don't care.

[Alex Perlman]

Nice, easy breakfast. It's easy to check in, check out.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

Quiet. They're clean. Oh, my God. Pandemic hits. Okay, 2020 bookings dropped by as much as 96% in some cities.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Especially New York.

[Alex Perlman]

However, bookings rose in many rural areas.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

Because a lot of people were like, oh, I can work remote. I'm heading out.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I had so many of my friends who were in Philadelphia.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Who either they or their roommates went and rented someplace in the mountains. Because they're like, if I have, I can work from home.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I can look out my window and I can either. See.

[Alex Perlman]

I was so mad. So many of our friends did it. I wasn't mad. I was jealous. Jealous because I had a job that went fully remote.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Well, no, it went pseudo remote because I still had to go to court. I Was working as a paralegal.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And I still had to go to court once in a while because certain courtrooms and judges were like, no, I

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

can't figure out zoom.

[Alex Perlman]

We can't figure out zoom when you need to come in person. And the whole thing is, I was working for a program for senior citizens, and we were like, we do not want the senior citizens coming to court because they are at the highest risk of passing away from COVID Why would you make us come to court?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

Anyway, I was mad all the time,

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

and I was an essential worker.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, you were an essential worker.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

My job, by the way, was counting cash working at a bank.

[Alex Perlman]

I was mad and jealous because I was like, I could theoretically do all this online if these judges weren't such jerks and making us come in. Because then I could have went and got rented a lake house.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

But I didn't want to use Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. No.

[Alex Perlman]

Anyway, the company pledges $250 million in payouts to hosts to compensate them for guest cancellations during the pandemic. At the same time, they are going to lay off approximately 1900 employees, aka 25% of the workforce in America, Europe, and Asia due to the pandemic.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. So Airbnb lays off a bunch of different people while giving. While opening up and giving money to the hosts. Because if the host. This is the thing, mind you. If the host dies, then the parasite. I mean, Airbnb. Airbnb will die.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because it needs hosts to live.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You see, landlords need a host. They need a host to live. The landlords need a host.

[Alex Perlman]

I need you to know that Airbnb hosts were also able to get PPP loans.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, I'm aware.

[Alex Perlman]

Including to cover rent, mortgages, and utilities pay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Just so you guys know, PPP loans are where. The payment protection program. During COVID there was a moment where they realized, and by they, I mean the United States federal government realized, that a lot of people were being furloughed and laid off. And they were very, very nervous that people would run out of money, start rioting in the streets, and, you know, start, like, robbing grocery stores and things like that. Looting would happen. So they came up with this idea. The initial idea was the Treasury Department was going to just give everyone money.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They were going to cut a check to basically every American citizen and say, keep on keeping on. It was going to be our version of universal basic income.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But the Trump administration and the Republicans said, that sounds crazy. If we give them free money, they'll turn into communists. So what they decided to do instead was give free money to business owners. That's right. If you had an LLC or if you were a consultant or a 1099 contractor, they had it the hardest because actually many of them couldn't get it. But for these big major companies, they were able to get free money as long as they were able to say, hey, we've had it. We've had a hit and we have a payroll and we need that money. So they would. The government cut all of these fucking checks. And then you were able as a loan, and then you were able to request loan forgiveness. And most of them got it. A ton of them got it. Especially Airbnb hosts and landlords. I can't tell you. A lot of them came in and were like, hey, my. I can barely make my payroll for my landlord company.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I am also the only employee.

[Alex Perlman]

And I've always. I'm always working at a loss.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I'm always working at a loss.

[Alex Perlman]

Always at a loss. And 0% income.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The other thing you would end up seeing when you're looking at a lot of these companies numbers, is some of them turned profit for the first time in their entire corporate history in 2020 and 2021 because of the PPP loans. Because they were have been removing so much money from their companies over the years.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And so you have a lot of guys like landlords or Airbnb hosts, where they would be writing off things like, hey, mileage. I got to drive past my property and check it every single day. Just so happens to be. I also drive right past there to my mistress's house. Hey, oh, got to count those miles. But all these different types of things were tied in there. They also had a thing called ETL loans where the economic injury disaster loan program is very similar to the ppp. There were so many different things like this that were set up, that were made to keep rich people rich. And it was a giant transfer of wealth from you, the working people, to some of the richest people on earth. And then they had the gall to tell us we couldn't do student loan debt forgiveness or get free health care or not bomb Iran.

[Alex Perlman]

Airbnb itself did not get a PPP loan, but they did raise $2 billion in private capital.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep. So, cuz, got to keep that going.

[Alex Perlman]

Gotta keep it going.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Gotta keep that going. Because you need those slaves to be living inside your app community.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. In December 10th of 2020, Airbnb went public on the NASDAQ.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And they raised $3.5 billion.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

On opening day, Joe. Joe Geba, who is Chris Benoit, moves to Austin, Texas in late 2020. He purchased a $10 million house property.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, yeah. He was able to purchase a $10 million house in Austin, Texas, using the money that he raised. Destroying. Destroying home ownership.

[Alex Perlman]

What?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, so I can see why you picked Chris Benoit moved to Austin, Texas in 2020 with Joe Rogan.

[Alex Perlman]

Now also at this time in. Well, no, a little bit before that. His buying house. I just wanted to let you know he's moving to Austin.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, I know. And this is.

[Alex Perlman]

I think it's important.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, this is also a big time with the Silicon Valley guys.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Are moving out to Austin because again, the same way you said with people renting.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Renting. Airbnb is to leave home. These are. This is that contingent of Silicon Valley guys who are like, we got to leave California. The. It's too woke. Also. Oh, my God. There's so much of the restrictions around Covid, and they don't have them in Texas.

[Alex Perlman]

Texas. Yeah. No rules.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

Then they're gonna. The Airbnb is about to make a rule. They temporarily banned parties in homes rented on the platform in August 2020 due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Because people kept having so many parties.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Because they would just rent out a house and then just have a big mask off party.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And the hosts were getting really mad because obviously, like, the police are getting called if it's like a really raucous party, but also, like, whether or not they're spreading the COVID like it was a whole thing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And the neighborhood isn't expecting to have 200 people show up one day out of nowhere.

[Alex Perlman]

And one of these specific parties and the reason for the ban, there was one condo building in Miami who sued Airbnb because of these frigging parties.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, really?

[Alex Perlman]

So here's what happened. There's this condo building called the Opera Tower building in Miami, and there are 665 units, condos in this building.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

200 of them are listed on Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's just short of 666. 665 units is crazy. They were like, we could.

[Alex Perlman]

One of these units, they just were like, it's a closet.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. That's for the water boiler.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, water boiler. Now, the issue is, is that the city of Miami Dade is suing the Opera Tower building.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Because during the 2020 pandemic timeline, like within this timeline, the city received more than 397 calls to 911 because so many crimes had been committed on the property, including alleged incidences of robbery, assault and sexual assault. And also parties. Yeah, just huge parties all the time.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Probably noise violations.

[Alex Perlman]

Noise violations. So the whole thing is, is the. The building is getting sued by the city. So then the building is suing Airbnb and saying you have to take us off of your listings because it's actually against the condo association, AKA HOA rules. It's in this documents that these people sign when they buy the condo that they're not allowed to do short term rentals.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

This is so.

[Alex Perlman]

So by letting them use your website, you're breaking your terms of service and our terms of service. And as I was reading this, I was like, do not make me side with condo associations. Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And. And the state of Florida don't, because

[Alex Perlman]

again, on their side, this is during,

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

remember the whole DeSantis Free State of Florida type of bullshit. Because there's also a lot of people were going down to Florida specifically because Ron DeSantis and the Republicans down there made being anti Covid regulations their entire fucking personality.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They were banning mass. They were screaming about vaccines, they were screaming about Anthony Foushee, all that different type of stuff. And so, yeah, the people who are going to the. And it's also Miami to begin with.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So you're. You're in a Miami party. It's probably a Diddy party. You're down there out of nowhere. And here's what's really funny.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The people in the condos are the ones calling the cops.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Because so the condo, the condo residents are calling the cops on the Airbnb and. Which is forcing the city to sue the condo association to force the condo association to sue the Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And the Airbnb to be like, please don't tell the stock market.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. And the other thing is, like, the condo association was like, we can't figure out who it is because like, I guess like, oh yeah, condo197 is clearly having a party.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

But then on the Airbnb listings, it doesn't say like full legal name. So then the condo association in their lawsuits go, couldn't so sue direct condo owners even though they know it's condo 197.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They don't have proof because it's not the full legal name. And so it's like this whole thing, they're like, you're breaking the rules. Everybody's breaking the rules.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. You're making it really easy for people to scam.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. And the city of Miami sues this building basically because they're an illegal hotel at this point.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And they don't have licensing to be a hotel. And so it became this huge lawsuit. And this is kind of one of the main reasons they made this. It's illegal to have parties in 2020 or Airbnb is because of, like, this Miami hotel. Well, condo. I'm sorry. Yeah, it was a condo.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Well, the other thing, too is there was a lot of rules and regulations around hotels at that time that they were only allowed to be, like. I think was like one third capacity.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because they didn't, again, they didn't want the hotels to become giant, you know, giant. Giant pools of COVID Yeah. Yeah. This is so wild.

[Alex Perlman]

In January of 2021, Airbnb allowed attendees of the January 6th United States Capitol attack to book units on the platform in Washington, D.C. yeah. Despite most hotels in the vicinity of Capitol Hill banning far right extremists after the possibility of further violence during the inauguration of Joe Biden, Airbnb announced on January 7 that they would be banning all bookings in the region prior to inauguration.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, wow. So that the nobody saw this coming guys were proven that everyone saw it fucking coming.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's incredible. That's incredible. Yeah. And there was a thing actually that came out during January 6th committee about them doing rentals, like, just over the border in Virginia and stuff like that, where some of the guys were. Some of the people at January 6th were storing rifles and things. Oh, I'm not saying that they were done in Airbnbs, but I'm saying it's like there was. There was weirdness around where they were staying and all that other different stuff.

[Alex Perlman]

Why would they need firearms? That was. It was just a tour, kind of. It was just a tour.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They were just taking tour. They're just a tour group.

[Alex Perlman]

That's what I remember hearing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They were all not acquitted.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Pardoned.

[Alex Perlman]

Pardoned.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, they're all pardoned.

[Alex Perlman]

You know, they got a new job,

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Their sins have been pardoned.

[Alex Perlman]

So I want to take a quick break, and when we come back, I do want to issue a content warning on the next section.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

My perfect day has sand, salt water and friends, but my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis can take me out of the moment. Now I'm all in with clearer skin, thanks to Skyrizi Rizankizumab RZA, a prescription only 150mg injection for adults who are candidates for systemic or phototherapy. With Skyrizi, Most people saw 90% clearer skin and many were even 100% plaque free at four months. Skyrizi is just four doses a year after two starter doses.

[Alex Perlman]

Don't use if allergic to Skyrizi. Serious allergic reactions, increased infections or lower ability to fight them may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor about any flu like symptoms or vaccines.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

Thanks to Skyrizi, there's nothing on my skin and that means everything.

[Alex Perlman]

Nothing is everything.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

Ask your doctor about Skyrizi, the number one dermatologist prescribed biologic in psoriasis. Visit skyrizi.com or call 1-866-Skyrizi to learn more.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

All right, we're back. And use, as you said, there's a content warning.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, okay. Airbnb has very limited protections in place for what they refer to as, quote, safety incidents. Okay, okay. And this came front and center recently because of a Bloomberg article that came out about a woman from Australia who booked an Airbnb in New York City. So she books this Airbnb, and you know how, like on the app, they'll be like, go pick up the keys here. There's a lock box. She was directed to go pick up a key at a bodega on the corner.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

When she went and got the key, nobody checked her id. She didn't check anybody else's idea. She, you know, goes and drops her bags off and then goes out with her girlfriends. Later that night, she returns the Airbnb, and there's a man with a knife hiding inside of her Airbnb. He sexually assaults her and flees the apartment.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. She calls the police immediately. They're there interviewing her. This scumbag comes back. Right. The cops immediately arrest him on site, and he has, like, a backpack, and in his backpack are her earrings and the keys to the Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

What?

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

How do you have the keys?

[Alex Perlman]

I believe he made copies of the keys from the bodega.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, wow.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. So.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So the keys weren't securely stored.

[Alex Perlman]

Exactly.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Got it.

[Alex Perlman]

So this incident sent Airbnb into crisis mode, because when this happens, they're saying, still in that legal battle with New York City. Right. Because New York City still wants more regulations around Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And so they're like, immediately like, oh, my God, we have to dedicate time. And they actually, at this point, have created a crisis management team or a task force to handle these issues. And the task force is ex military and, like, social workers.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Wait, if you're having so many of these issues that you have a task force to try to mitigate The PR fallout of these issues, then PR isn't the issue. You need to. You need to stop this from happening.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You are aware. That means you're aware. Oh, no. Our assault program is assaulting people.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

How do we make it stop? What the fuck are we talking about here?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. So the task force immediately puts this woman up in a hotel.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Airbnb, you admit. So then you admit. Okay, they fly her mother in from Australia. They pay for her mother to fly into from Australia, and then they pay for her to fly back to Australia with her mom, and then they tell her that they'll pay for any of her legal expenses from this incident.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Jesus.

[Alex Perlman]

When she's in Australia, obviously her lawyers reach out to Airbnb to be like, we're gonna sue you.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

You putting her at risk with your failures.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And your safety failures in the way that this app is set up.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They end up settling out of court for $7 million.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Wow.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. One of the clauses in this lawsuit, in my opinion, seems to read that she's not allowed to speak out about Airbnb negatively. Airbnb, however, says that she, of course, can share her opinion and that the. The wording and what she signed in these documents isn't trying to silence the victim. Right. There are many incidents of crimes in Airbnbs. However, in my opinion, Airbnb's focus is not stopping the crimes as much as it's keeping the stories of crime out of the news at all costs.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Like the. The detriment to the brand is. Seems to be their real focus. So according to Bloomberg, their journalist stated that Airbnb Routine routinely spends tens of millions of dollars each year legally to resolve with customers such incidents with potentially negative public relations consequences. The documents Bloomberg posted show that Airbnb pays about 50. $50 million annually out to hosts and guests. That includes damage to property and legal settlements.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. That's a lot.

[Alex Perlman]

A lot of money.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's a lot of money. 50 million.

[Alex Perlman]

That's a lot of incidents.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's a lot of incidents that maybe

[Alex Perlman]

we're not all hearing about because they have a task force.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. I mean, the one thing I will say is that major companies do a lot of settlements. Yeah, we will.

[Alex Perlman]

We'll.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We'll give them arbitration. Arbitration.

[Alex Perlman]

A lot of arbitration. I think arbitration is in the terms of. Of service.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

When you sign up, it's probably the. I agree that you click there at the beginning, but, like, when I worked at a mall years ago, we used to have a slip and fall policy.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Which Is basically like, if you slipped and you fell, they would immediately call an ambulance for. It didn't even matter if we knew if you faked it.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Immediately called an ambulance for you, and then you basically were immediately offered, like, I think it was like, $8,000.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It was like that because they were like, it's. It costs less for us to just

[Alex Perlman]

give you 8,000 sell at a mall recently. Why didn't we tell anybody?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

What?

[Alex Perlman]

Remember we went to the mall in Delaware and I fell. I should. I should have called some people.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, you could have.

[Alex Perlman]

You could. I could have made a scene.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, you could have made a scene.

[Alex Perlman]

Could have made a scene.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

That was my. I mean, it was their fault. There should have been a sign. There was a step there.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They should. They should caution tape on it.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

So anyway, that malt. It was me money. Okay. So when this story. There's this Bloomberg article, this journalist did this whole deep research into this task force and all of these incidents and how they're not really publicly discussed. Right.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

When this article from Bloomberg went live that. Well, the next day, the stock for Airbnb fell by 3%.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, wow.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. But don't worry, because our entire country is built on the exploitation of women, and seemingly all the men in power do not care about sexual assault. So stocks rose again by that same afternoon.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

March of 2022, Airbnb suspends business in Russia and Belarus due to international sanctions because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The bare minimum.

[Alex Perlman]

The bare minimum. Yay. In June of 2022, Airbnb announces that it would permanently ban parties and events in homes and rolled out technology to enforce this band.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Party's over, guys.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's how we got banned.

[Alex Perlman]

What?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know, because we went to a party. We had. I mean, I don't remember. I think.

[Alex Perlman]

I don't think we got. We didn't get banned. We just. That house wouldn't rent to us.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. That's what I mean. That's how we got banned from that house.

[Alex Perlman]

That one house.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. But it wasn't even a party.

[Alex Perlman]

Like we were playing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No. It's not like we had a DJ and then we had a keg or anything.

[Alex Perlman]

There wasn't even alcohol.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No. Everyone in the house was sober. And I was. I was dressed as a nun.

[Alex Perlman]

We were doing a murder murder mystery. A costume murder mystery.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. And I was dressed as a nun.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It was a good time.

[Alex Perlman]

It was fun.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It was a lot of fun.

[Alex Perlman]

Somebody Had a ring camera in there. And they said we're not letting them.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, it's Airbnb. There's cameras everywhere.

[Alex Perlman]

So they ban all the parties. Okay. So it's 2022, to be fair.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's because our one friend. It's definitely because our one friend had an octopus squid. What do I want, a marital aid?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Okay. As part of their costume.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's part of their costume. Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

The weapon.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Yeah, they did. That's what that was. The murder weapon. We had to figure out, like, too much.

[Alex Perlman]

Now people know.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

They figured out what the tentacle is.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

2022.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We live, we party. Not like these fucking idiots. Oh, look at me. I like making furniture. No, we go to costume murder mystery parties where dildos are weapons.

[Alex Perlman]

I feel like people are going to insinuate a lot from that. Okay, okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We didn't use it. It was the characters used it. All right. It wasn't one of those dragon ones either.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. In 2022, Joe acquired a minor.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We both have our arms.

[Alex Perlman]

Because I do not know, for the

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

audio listeners, our arms are crossed.

[Alex Perlman]

How I feel about you talking about that?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

About what? That party? Yeah, it was a fun party. We're not.

[Alex Perlman]

Listen, it makes it sound like we were part of, like, a sexy party. It wasn't a sexy party.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It wasn't a sexy party. It was fun. It was a funny thing. And our friend had their costume. They had a belt that had an octopus tentacle hanging off.

[Alex Perlman]

I. In 2022, Joe acquires a minority ownership in the San Antonio Spurs.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Boo.

[Alex Perlman]

Actually, this entire thing is about to become about Joe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, really?

[Alex Perlman]

So, what, Nathan and Brian, they're just off doing Airbnb? Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know we're gonna take Nathan and Brian away. Yeah, we don't need to worry about that.

[Alex Perlman]

We're just talking about Joe.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We're just talking about Joe here.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay. Which is being played by Chris Benoit.

[Alex Perlman]

Chris Benoit.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. Who's a wrestler?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Who was a wrestler? He is dead.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, he's dead.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yes.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Bowflex machine.

[Alex Perlman]

The thing that's like skiing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Don't worry about it.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You're thinking Nordic Track.

[Alex Perlman]

Nordic Track, Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

The Bowflex was a different one.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Don't worry about it. Just keep start telling us about the monster known as Joe.

[Alex Perlman]

Joe steps up, steps down from his full time operating role at Airbnb and joins the board of directors of Airbnb again. So this is just a shift in management. He's taking a lesser role.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

These guys do that all the time.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, they need a break because of. He's helping with the San Antonio spurs or something.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

At the same time, he is appointed to the Board of Directors of Tesla Incorporated.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, okay. So our Chris Benoit here is now working with Elon Musk and Tesla.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I don't have a. Let me see. Who do. I wanted to have to be that.

[Alex Perlman]

Who's.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, give me a second. I gotta. I gotta go get. I gotta get a Tesla. I gotta get an Elon guy. I got it.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. What do we have?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, I went with this. This Cobra Commander still in box that I bought a long time ago.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because Cobra Commander is like, a fascist loser.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He thinks he's really, really cool.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But everybody's like, you're a fascist loser.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. So, yeah, that's Elon for sure.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. This is Elon Musk.

[Alex Perlman]

So.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So, okay. So he is now working on the board of Tesla.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

With Elon Musk.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Also in this year, 2025.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Which we just survived.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

We just survived 2025.

[Alex Perlman]

Donated $1 million to the gubernatorial campaign of Greg Abbott.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh. Ironsides himself.

[Alex Perlman]

In 2025, Joe praised Donald Trump's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. To the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services roll.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You mean to tell me.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That Joe from Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Is a big fan of the Harvest.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay. None of that.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know, I'm gonna start a podcast myself. It's the RFK Junior Audio podcast.

[Alex Perlman]

No.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Where I'm gonna tell you how the government is lying to you while I work at the government.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Entire entire government completely controlled by podcasters. By the way, Joe, we should take over the government.

[Alex Perlman]

We would be so good at government.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I think we would be okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, I would. Okay. What part of government am I going to be in charge of?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Looks.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, vibes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, vibes. I mean, honestly, like, 90% of government is vibes at this point.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah. Bad vibes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Really bad vibes.

[Alex Perlman]

Vibes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You know what's crazy? As we're recording this, I have no idea for war anymore.

[Alex Perlman]

No, it's. Whatever.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. It is what it is.

[Alex Perlman]

We need to talk about how Joe also gave the same year, at least $2 million to the Andrew Cuomo PAC for the 2025 New York City mayoral election.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So he's a bad investor.

[Alex Perlman]

He's a bad investor.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh. You know what's funny is the whole time when you were talking about my boy.

[Alex Perlman]

Mom. Donnie.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I know. When you were talking about Airbnb fighting New York, I was like, yeah, he definitely hates it now.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

There's no way that Zoron mom Donnie is not letting Airbnb just get away with shit like the day Mandani got inaugurated.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He immediately, like, went into a place to be like, we're gonna fix this fucking. Look at this bullshit this landlord did. Oh, man.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay, so he's giving money to Andrew Cuomo. So he just flushed $2 million on the toilet.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Can I just say something? It's giving fascist.

[Alex Perlman]

It's giving fascist.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Giving fascist.

[Alex Perlman]

Joe also steps down from the board of airbnb.org so airbnb.org is different from the dot com. It's the company's nonprofit arm that provides temporary housing for refugees and people displaced by disasters.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Wait, hold on. Shut the fuck up.

[Alex Perlman]

No.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You're telling me a guy who is definitely hanging out with Elon is. Is. Is Maga Adjacent was on the board of a company that was of an organization that was supposed to help house refugees.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, he was on the board of directors of the nonprofit that was supposed to help refugees. Now, what happened was he had been outspoken in his criticisms of certain refugees and migration policies. And this, paired with his visible political affiliations, people were starting to, like, scream on the Internet that, like, we're going to boycott Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So he hurt the brand.

[Alex Perlman]

He hurt the brand.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He hurt the brand. Got it.

[Alex Perlman]

And this was clearly at odds with the humanitarian mission of Airbnb.org and a lot of people online pointed out that he was a fucking hypocrite because his wife is an immigrant from Brazil.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, you know what? You know what's crazy about that? Who else's wife is a. Is an immigrant and actually would have been deported under the current policies. Okay, John Fetterman.

[Alex Perlman]

Oh, John Fetterman's back on the table.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, John Fetterman's back on the table. Just want to remind everybody that John Fetterman stands transfer policies that would affect his own family directly because he has brain damage. He also loves Elon Musk because Elon Musk was nice to him on Twitter.

[Alex Perlman]

Okay.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

He probably. He's probably a good. He probably thinks everybody up here is really good.

[Alex Perlman]

It's pretty cool.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

John Fetterman is playing himself.

[Alex Perlman]

I was gonna say it's crazy that there is a John Betterman doll.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, well, you brought it into our house.

[Alex Perlman]

You made me.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, well, you texted me and said, I'm here. They got a John Fetterman bobblehead. I said, you bring it home.

[Alex Perlman]

I saw a comment on the last time we talked or last episode where Somebody was like, it's so funny that somebody, like, got mad that they had that and donated it instead of, like, setting on fire or crushing it.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

I was like, yeah, here it is. Okay, so 2025. We're still in 2025.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, God.

[Alex Perlman]

Joe joins the Department of Government Efficiency as head of its National Design Studio.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So he legitimately joined the Trump administration.

[Alex Perlman]

He joins the Trump administration Through Doge.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Through Doge. With Elon.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

Instacart understands that not all bananas are created equal. Some people want them green, some want them ripe, some want them ready. Right now with Instacart's Preference Picker, now available at most retailers, you can choose how you like certain items, like banana ripeness, deli thickness, even avocados before your shopper even starts. So instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, you get groceries picked the way you would pick them. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference. Download the app and get bananas just how you like. With Instacart. My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find out adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So I launched a GoFundMe to help

[Alex Perlman]

support them during this crisis, and we raised about $10,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like, really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with. GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this podcast is supported by GoFundMe.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

My perfect day has sand, salt water and friends. But my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis can take me out of the moment. Now I'm all in with clearer skin thanks to skyrizi risen Kizumab RZA, a prescription only 150mg injection for adults who are candidates for systemic or phototherapy. With Skyrizi. Most people saw 90% clearer skin and many were even 100% plaque free. At four months, Skyrizi is just four doses a year. After two starter doses.

[Alex Perlman]

Don't use if allergic to Skyrizi. Serious Allergic reactions, increased infections or lower ability to fight them may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor about any flu like symptoms or vaccines.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

Thanks to Skyrizi, there's nothing on my skin. And that means everything is everything. Ask your doctor about Skyrizi, the number one dermatologist prescribed biologic in psoriasis. Visit skyrizi.com or call 1-866-Guy-Rizzi to learn more.

[Alex Perlman]

The NDS, that's the national design studio where he's working. The studio's job is to improve the design of government websites. Joe said that the government websites, especially on mobile, are quote, horribly out of date and he wants to create, quote, an Apple Store like experience.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, so there, there is. I'll give the little bit of truth there, which is that government websites are out of date. And in fact we had it here in Pennsylvania. When Governor Shapiro got elected, one of the first things he did was go through all the different Pennsylvania websites and cut down. Because some many times when systems are created, they just keep adding things on and nobody ever streamlines in between. So that, that little bit, yeah, is true. That's why it, that's why the bullshit is so evil.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because yes, a website can be confusing. This one says submit, this one says enter. You know what I mean?

[Alex Perlman]

You have to print the PDF and then scan it back in.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, stuff like that. This doesn't have fillable fields. This one does. And like, again, because there's, there's so many different webmasters for everything. The thing you need to understand about DOGE is that DOGE was the US Digital Service. DOGE is just a rename. It was not a department. It's never been a department. It is a rename for the IT department of the United States Federal government. That's how those guys were able to go run around and get into all these little fucking areas. And that's how you had big balls. And all these other fucking psychos steal things like Social Security data and other different things. All of them were part of the. Because they were the IT guys. That's how they were able to get access.

[Alex Perlman]

Concerns that Joe's work at DOGE undermined US democracy, resulted in more calls to boycott Airbnb because again, his name is always associated with Airbnb.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, because he is one of the founders.

[Alex Perlman]

In January of 2025, alongside Lex Luthor and Ganondorf. Twitter, Joe wrote that Trump, quote, is not a fascist, determined to destroy democracy. That's what that was January of last year. How's that holding up?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. How that doing?

[Alex Perlman]

How's that holding up, Joe?

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

How's that going there, Joe?

[Alex Perlman]

He also said, quote, I love the whole DOGE initiative.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

I bet you do.

[Alex Perlman]

I got another quote from Twitter. This is right when he got brought on board for doge. He said, quote, excited to share. I'm bringing my designer brain and startup spirit into the government. My first project at DOGE is improving the slow and paper based retirement process. Since leaving my operating role at Airbnb in 2022, I've been looking for the next digital design challenge. And I can think of few more important ones than volunteering to improve the user experience within our government. If anyone else in good standing wants to help design beautiful, user friendly digital

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

products, reach out, number one, that's not how anything works. Are you sure that's not how it's supposed to work? Because the thing is about government and what we found in general through all these idiots running around unplugging things and looking for, quote, unquote, looking for fraud, is that most of it was working.

[Alex Perlman]

It was working.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It was working slowly and painfully. But the reason why it was slow was to watch for fraud.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Whenever we have massive fraud, it's because things get moved too quickly. It's literally one of the things they train you. If you work in the financial sector, they say anytime you get an email that's like this is urgent, needs to be done right now. No, it doesn't. Yeah, that's usually a scammer.

[Alex Perlman]

That's a phishing. Phishing from it. They're going to try to get you.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, that's phishing. But it's also like all these different things in there of like CEO scams where they pretend to CEO, oh my God, I'm caught in Belize right now. If you don't wire me $10 million, they'll kill me. Okay, well, did you try calling him? Because he's just at the golf course, like that's the type of thing. And what he just asked though is like there is, there is supposed to be a hiring process in the government.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Of like how these things go.

[Alex Perlman]

And it's like your resume and then you put it into the fillable field.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You don't just throw in a 19 year old kid named Big Balls and

[Alex Perlman]

then you have to go to three job interviews.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And then there's a 30 day onboarding process where you could get fired at any moment before your performance review and you don't get health insurance until 90 days. There's a whole thing, there's a whole Thing.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Anyway, all this said, he was like, tweet me.

[Alex Perlman]

All of this is crazy because DOGE actually cut so many Social Security Administration workers that there's already an insane backlog. So you. They can't even help seniors that are already trying to get assistance.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

And so what I did was I looked it up. The Social Security Administration had 7,000 employees laid off. That was for regular Social Security, SSDI and ssi. So that's disability. And SSI is like the middle ground. So when you need a little bit more assistance. Right. The recipients will have to do with fewer. They'll have issues because they're closing field offices, there's fewer staff to help answer questions and assist. It's actually going to double the disability backlog because in 2023, 71.6 million people receive benefits and there are 5.8 million more people that are going to get awarded benefits that this year. So, like, this backlog that's created by DOGE isn't going to be assisted by an on app user experience being easier.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Seniors already have an issue using apps on their phone.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Well, no. And this is a guy. This is. Joe is a guy who has come in before, famously, when they started Airbnb.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Ever having less customer service?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No. We'll automate things. It'll be easy. They'll just click in the app. But it's like. Yeah, but sometimes there's things that happen that you need to explain to a human being.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

People have a different understanding. This is what always drives me crazy about engineers. Engineers would be like, well, yeah, then hit submit. I'm like, again, on the last page, you said enter.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Like. Or you said finish or complete or any of these different things. Like, they. They. Engineers have a different setting in their brain.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Which is why you need people who are UI people, user interface people. But then you also need people who have access to experience working with seniors.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And like, seniors come from a completely different background. And then on top of that, the language and the wording that's used in the Northeast is going to be different for people that's used in the Southwest. And, like, all these different things are in there, like, mixed in. And instead, you're just surrounded by local

[Alex Perlman]

offices are so important because, yes, people in person. And like, yes, the documentation sucks. And yes, it takes forever, but at the same time is like sitting down with a person who can explain. Explain to you why, like, I'll never forget, I had a client years ago who he was a junior of a junior. So, like, let's say his name was Jim Smith Jr. But his dad was also Jim Smith Jr. And above that was Jim Smith. And so Social Security had like messed up stuff.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

And it was like all because they were juniors. And like it was trying to get through that paperwork was such a pain. But I had a person who was helping me help him to get the paperwork figured out. But now he's trying to create it so that an AI app who is not going to be able to explain to an 80 year old man that like the Social Security numbers lining up with the different juniors is the issue. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And like it's, it's, it's so going to create a hurdle anyway.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

What happened was I opened this tab because I was trying to figure out how can I see what the effects on Social Security were from Doge and I found out that there's this website called clasp.org which is a website that tracks all the harm that Doge has done. And so I thought in the spirit of Joe, Joe who says that Doge is doing great work, I want to talk to you about some of the great work Doge has done.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay.

[Alex Perlman]

And this that I found on the website. Clasp.org clasp.org the center for Disease Control and Prevention. The National center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and Tuberculosis Prevention. So under the CDC, this is another program. That program experienced 2,400 federal layoffs, which was about 18% of their entire workforce. The center for HIV and STD Prevention saw 27% of its staff eliminated. Their work ensures that we could have a future free of hiv, viral hepatitis, sexual transmitted diseases and tuberculosis. The center works to reduce the incidence of infection, morbidity and mortality and also reduces the health disparities in the U. S and abroad.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So Doge is pro AIDS.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, got it.

[Alex Perlman]

And other STDs.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yep.

[Alex Perlman]

And tuberculosis.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And tuberculosis.

[Alex Perlman]

Tuberculosis, get them. John Green, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Okay, so there was a complete elimination of this department. 1600 federal workers were laid off. What did they do? Let me tell you. The, the halter services stopped the critical work. That was work working in the agricultural workforce such as protecting thousands of workers from the H5N1N1 bird flu. Also, they supported over 900,000 farm youth workers who needed additional workplace safety protections.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So this was the CDC group whose job it was is to make sure that people working in like meat packing plants and, and also working directly with animals don't have a disease. Jump from that animal into the worker populations.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Which is how a lot of disease spreads.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes. And act. And also supporting young people that are working in farms and those factories and plants.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Because what we need, they need extra safety protocols.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Because again, Doge thought. Doge is anti osha.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because OSHA gets in the way of capitalist pigs like Chris Benoit. Here.

[Alex Perlman]

Here. Yeah. The Department of Homeland Security used to have a department called the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within the Department of Homeland Security.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, we don't need that.

[Alex Perlman]

They completely eliminated this department. They laid off everybody.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Well, Renee, good. Now it's pretty definitely, you know, what felt the need of that.

[Alex Perlman]

What did the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties do? They were the internal watchdog office of DHS that assessed the legality and effectiveness of and implement implementation of administration policies. So there is no longer any internal watchdog for the Trump administration and immigration enforcement.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. So that's why we end up having kids being served rotted meal ridden food at Dilly. The Dilly Detention center down in Texas. That's how we have women who are being moved, who are pregnant being moved from areas where they could get full access to care, to states that have abortion banned.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Uh, that's why we have so many different horrible things that are happening in there. But I'm not shocked that they wanted to remove that from dhs since the former director of DHS didn't know that her husband had big old fake bimbo titties.

[Alex Perlman]

Well, he. There, he puts them on. He doesn't have them.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

No, he has them. I mean, they're balloons, okay? They're balloons that he blew up that he shoved underneath his shirt. And then he went, look at my big old fake bimbo titties.

[Alex Perlman]

The center for Disease Control and Prevention's national center for Injury Prevention and Control, also known as the ncipc, they completely eliminated this department. The NCIPC studied how to prevent gun violence, child abuse and elder abuse.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Okay, so DOGE is pro gun violence, child abuse and elder abuse.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That checks for somebody in the Epstein files, right? Elon?

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Remember how many times you messaged Epstein saying, please let me into your party bought house, please.

[Alex Perlman]

And he said, nah, dork. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Community Living. This is the ACL, okay? At least 40% of the workers were laid off. And Doge has plans to shutter the ACL completely by the end of the year. This agency funds the work of over 2,500 community organizations nationwide, including senior centers, centers for independent living. It helps people with disabilities and more. In addition, the ACL runs programs like Meals on Wheels, which distributes 216 million meals a year to older and disabled people.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah. Because DOGE is pro having people starve to death. They're having pro having seniors be left in the streets there. They just hate everybody. Yeah, they hate everybody.

[Alex Perlman]

And the last one I pulled was. There's a lot of them. I didn't go through all of them. This is just a few that I pulled out.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, you don't. Do you have a USA ID in there?

[Alex Perlman]

I didn't.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, that's going to kill millions.

[Alex Perlman]

Explain.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Usaid, which is the US Aid, it was an aid organization that the United States had to help countries and people all around the world, whether it be to get life saving medication, making sure lifesaving food came in there, any of these different types of things. Elon specifically, specifically went out of his way to destroy that organization illegally. They were not allowed to do it, but they just did it anyway. And by doing that, he immediately shut down things like bags of rice.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

So rice that was being grown in Arkansas, Mississippi and other different places are no longer going to be sent to places like Pakistan or India after an earthquake. When you're in Southeast Asia, after a major typhoon hits, when you're looking at all these different places where they have drought and famine, we would send bags of American rice, American Flourish, that had USAID on there. And those bags made people happy and they made people like America. And. But most importantly, though, it kept people alive. And there have been studies that have said that millions of people will die by the end of this decade because that aid has been forever cut off and it's not being replaced by anybody else.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

There's an idea in diplomacy of a carrot and a stick. The carrot was usaid. The stick has been what Donald Trump has been doing for the last fucking month.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Including threatening to wipe a civilization out and threatening to kill so many people on Easter Sunday itself.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

And so that was one of the things just to let. Joe, just so you know, when you said you love Doge, you love Doge.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

You personally have lent your hand to the murder of millions of people. I just want you to know, Joe, like, that is the world is a worse place because you were born.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's my opinion. Alex Perlman, also known as Perlmania 500, right here on the comedy podcast Too Many Tabs or Nothing. We say is that serious comedy history podcast. We just do our own research.

[Alex Perlman]

You know, I don't know what I'M the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Noah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Oh, mother, I forgot about this.

[Alex Perlman]

I don't. I remember it every single fucking morning. Because there was 1300 federal layoffs. Noah oversees many institutions that collect and organize the data and tracking for weather and climate change. Now they're doing this because they're like, climate change isn't real, but how this is affecting your day to day as a person in the world is when you open your phone app for the weather, it's wrong.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

It's always wrong.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

They said it was going to rain and freeze this morning and it's 50 and sunny.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

Because they laid off so many people at NOAA and shut weather systems and shut down all the systems. It's like you cannot get the weather right. And like, for me, that's just about, like, what type of clothes I'm putting on myself or the child or what I'm doing in the garden. Like, there's minimal effect on my life. This has huge effects on agriculture, on our farmers, on scientists, on NASA. This is like, the impact is so big.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And yet at the same time as, like, it was the. The lightest one I could find out of all these Doge cuts, you know what I mean? Because, like, I'm talking about horrors of millions of people dying, suffering and starving. And I'm like, how do I close this episode on? Not that big of a deal, but, like, it is a big fucking deal.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah.

[Alex Perlman]

And I'm really mad about it every single morning because it personally affected me. But then I also remember that it affects our agriculture.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Everything, everything these idiots did had a knock on effect.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The founders of airbnb helped destroy housing.

[Alex Perlman]

Yes.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

That's the thing you guys need to understand. And the founders of airbnb, by destroying housing the way they did and actually put. Which also pushed up rents, led to the inflation crisis that actually ended up putting Donald Trump back into fucking power.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Because whenever everybody was complaining back in 2022 and 2023 about prices, the biggest squeeze there was was rent. We saw properties that were being rented for 6, 7, $800, go up to $2,400 across the country. You can't get a rental. You can't live alone anymore. It's impossible.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

The minimum wage doesn't cover it. The lowest wage in many of these states. You can't get a one bedroom. You can't live with dignity. And then on top of that, the places you could have lived with dignity, that at least you wouldn't have had to have owned a fucking car or have a long commute. These fuckers gobbled up and turned into short term rentals. And so this is where we are. This is where we're stuck. So whenever you're sitting around and somebody asks you how to get this bad, first say Ronald Reagan.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, always say Ronald Reagan. First and foremost first. It's all always his fault.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

It's always his fault.

[Alex Perlman]

If you open enough tabs, you will find Ronald Reagan.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

But the next layer is going to be your tech billionaires, many of which ran to Austin, Texas because they're big old pussies. That's why all these guys, they're fucking cowards who can't actually create anything of their own. They had to make our homes into hotels, our cars into taxis, and our entire lives into thrift stores while always screaming, always, always screaming that they are the ones with the greatest ideas. And you know what? They're not. Because even themselves, they're copying the guys and the, the fucking barons and the robber barons and the gilded age fuckers from the 1890s.

[Alex Perlman]

Yeah, but you know, they didn't invent Captain Crunch. They just, just bought off brand Captain Crunch.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Yeah, they bought, they bought bottom shelf. They bought bottom shelf Cheerios and then put it inside of an empty box.

[Alex Perlman]

They're called Honey O's Booty.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

O's Booty ohs though Booty Ohs never hurt anyone. Except for what Vince McMahon did with the money that he made from the. Okay, you know what? You know what? That's been too many tabs. This has been our episode. Thank you to everybody who supports [e-mail] thank you to everybody out there forever and ever. You're so great. We love you. We'll see you next week. Every Sunday at noon for a new episode. Check your subscription tab. Too many frauds and too many scammers that we wish weren't real. Too many cons and too many spammers and we're starting to feel like we've got too many tabs. Open it. Too many tabs. Remember to smile.

[Commercial Voice or Advertiser]

Start the spring season off right with a new pair of Tokovas Western boots.

[Co-host (Possibly spouse or close collaborator of Alex Perlman)]

Handcrafted in over 200 steps from genuine leather, they're built to last and feel broken in the moment you put them on. From cowhide to exotic leathers, Tecovas blends timeless style with all day comfort. Pair them with premium denim western shirts and accessories for an effortless, polished look. Shop quality western goods in store or [e-mail].