We work is a new environment for the workspace. So co-working was sort of where it started.

Today there's a movement in changing the way people work.

From the first day that we started, WeWork, it was about bringing people together.

There's an energy that you feel. That energy is something that's hard to explain.

It's something that either you feel it or you don't. We like to call it the We generation.

Community, being surrounded by a group

of like-minded individuals, being part of something bigger than yourself, inspires people to work

harder, spend more time at work, and just have fun doing it.

Welcome to current affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

I am here today with Maureen Farrell. She is a reporter for the New York Times, formerly with the Wall Street Journal, and the co-author of The Cult of Wee. WeWork Adam Newman and The Great Startup Delusion available from Crown.

Hello Maureen, nice to be with you.

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Well, this book, as I told you before, I got really sucked into this book, which I didn't think I would because it's a business book.

And it's, but the story is totally fascinating.

This is about we work.

I want to start by asking you how it came to be that you came to be so fascinated with what is an office rental company at its core, right?

That you devoted so much of your time and life to studying every aspect of this company, its founder, its story,

to produce this book, The Cult of Wee. What is it about Wework that hooked you?

Sure. So at the time, I was covering, we work over a couple of years, I was covering the IPO market and the capital markets more broadly.

And at the Wall Street Journal at the time, this was around like 2017, 2018, 2019, there's a small group of companies that were the most interesting.

I mean, there was the Airbnb, Uber, Lyft,

these companies that have become giant to sort of sizes we hadn't seen much before in the past.

...