Hyperloop: Elon Musk's Fast Lane to Flopdom with Aparna Nancherla and Greta Titelman | 58

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Speaker 1 On November 8th, 2020, Josh Geigel, Chief Technology Officer at Virgin Hyperloop, and his colleague Sarah Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience, strapped themselves into a sleek, futuristic pod inside a tube, ready to embark on a groundbreaking journey.

Speaker 1 This is no ordinary test run. It's a trial of Hyperloop, a revolutionary transport transport system dreamed up by Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 It promises to travel at the speed of sound and potentially transform the future of human transportation.

Speaker 1 The sleek capsule, the very expensive result of years of meticulous development, rests on a test track in the Nevada desert, which is adorned with cyberpunk purple light, exuding a distinctly sci-fi vibe and an air of danger it probably deserves.

Speaker 1 In a worst-case scenario, the passengers inside the tube could boil alive in seconds. But Josh and Sarah have a job to do.

Speaker 1 With their fighter pilot seat belts fastened and cute little headsets on, they can't help but smile as the engineers count down three, two, one, and off they go. Destination, the future.

Speaker 1 The pod accelerates, shaking its giddy passengers.

Speaker 1 Yes!

Speaker 1 Josh keeps repeating. That was awesome.
That was awesome. But in just 20 seconds, the ride is over.
The capsule comes to a full stop. They've gone all of 500 meters.
And you can forget hyperspeed.

Speaker 1 This thing barely broke 100 miles per hour. Any lead-footed driver could have done that without spending millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, the Hyperloop team will be slow to grasp that their precious project is quickly going nowhere. The money will soon run out.
But hey, being broke beats boiling to death in a tube.

Speaker 1 Hyperloop.

Speaker 2 Magnetic pods levitating inside a tube at more than a thousand kilometers per hour.

Speaker 1 Theoretically, you could go even faster than the speed of sound. Hyperloop has already gotten a huge boost out of Elon Musk's initial idea.

Speaker 2 What is the path for bringing this idea to reality?

Speaker 1 How realistic is this? Is this really going to work? Yes, it's going to work.

Speaker 4 The long-planned Hyperloop project appears to be canceled for good.

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Speaker 1 From Wondery and At Will Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time.

Speaker 1 I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar whose blood is always boiling at Don't Cross a Gay Man.

Speaker 1 And today, we're talking about Hyperloop, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson's vision of supersonic subterranean transport that turned into a half-billion-dollar pipe dream.

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Speaker 1 on our show today, we have two amazing comedians, actors, writers, podcasters. Wow, they really do it all.
It's Greta Teitelman and Aparna Nancherla. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Wow, insane. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I actually don't have a podcast, but I've done several.

Speaker 1 So I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 6 Does that count as being a podcaster?

Speaker 1 I think it counts.

Speaker 3 Yes, Aparna has been on my podcast. Yes.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I think that being an iconic podcast guest, as Aparna is, does make you a podcaster.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 Oh, my gosh. Thank you guys for the affirmation.

Speaker 1 So I guess before we get into Hyperloop, here's a question. If you could travel 760 miles per hour, where would you go for lunch?

Speaker 3 Oh, God, like I feel like just because it's on the top of my mind, I would go to Tokyo.

Speaker 1 Ooh,

Speaker 1 that is perfect.

Speaker 6 You know, Tokyo's on my list of places I've never been and I would absolutely love to go, but for some reason, New Zealand popped in my mind.

Speaker 1 Sure, okay.

Speaker 3 Yeah, famous for lunch, famous for lunch.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 you know what they say.

Speaker 6 Known for sheep and lunch.

Speaker 1 Well, we'll make a date of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So today we're covering Hyperloop, a transport system that promised to take us into the future at warp speed, but stalled out from the get-go.

Speaker 1 At the center, are three tech egoists who figured they could do the impossible, including Zaddy, Richard Branson, and of course, naughty billionaire who ruined Twitter, one of the world's worst dads, Tech bad boy, Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 Now, honestly, he is a treasure trove of flops, and we are going to mine that sucker till the end of time.

Speaker 1 But this flop owes its existence mostly to Shervin Pichavar, a venture capitalist with a flair for the dramatic. I can't.

Speaker 1 Shervin? Yeah.

Speaker 6 I know, Shervin. What a name.
What a name. Why do we not know his name more?

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 6 And also his name sounds like Sher Wynn, which seems like for a venture capitalist, what better name?

Speaker 1 He should have changed it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He should legally change it.
Well, let's rewind. Back to the year 2012.
Elon Musk and Silicon Valley investor Shervin P. Shavar are flying around in Musk's private jet, as you do.

Speaker 1 And now, there is a lot to unpack in that statement, but you get the sense that P. Shavar likes throwing money and weight around, right? Yeah.
Sure.

Speaker 1 So when he was a child in Iran, Pishavar and his family were targeted by Ayatollah Khomeini's government, so they fled.

Speaker 1 And since then, Pishavar has become extremely wealthy and has dedicated himself mainly to two things.

Speaker 1 First, flying to places like Benghazi to meet Libyan rebels with do-gooders like Sean Penn.

Speaker 1 And two,

Speaker 1 partying like there's no tomorrow with high-rolling tech bros, and sometimes both at the same time.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 3 That perfectly tracks. That tracks to me.
I'm like, that is what that person does.

Speaker 3 Like, I feel like if you were to write him down in like a treatment or something for a television show, some exec would be like, well, that just seems a little unrealistic.

Speaker 3 And it's like, no, that is what these people do.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I also feel like if he hangs out with those type of people, like they're probably always hobnobbing with fancy people and they're like, you got to hear Sherwin's Ayatollah story.

Speaker 6 Yeah. He's always dropping that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, also as a venture capitalist, he's actually a super angel investor with a diverse portfolio, including stakes in Airbnb, Uber, Slack, Robinhood, and Postmates.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's very like Ashton Kutcher adjacent. I feel like that's a lot of what makes up his kind of VC portfolio.
But I love that he's like, I'm not just an angel investor. I'm a super angel.

Speaker 1 Super angel.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 6 That seems like Victoria's secret level angel. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 3 He's the Giselle of angel investors.

Speaker 1 So in this jet to Cuba, like usual, Musk is going on and on about some genius idea that's going to change the world.

Speaker 1 This one is a theoretical way of transporting people at hyper-fast speeds through vacuum tubes. Pinchavar, immediately obsessed.
He wants to, no, he needs to make the Hyperloop a reality.

Speaker 3 I keep on thinking of when you go to the drive-thru at the bank and you put the

Speaker 3 tube and remember when you were a little kid and then like you'd be with like someone like an adult that was going to the bank and then you get the lollipop. Does anybody remember that?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 I want to be the lollipop in the tube.

Speaker 6 I do feel like that technology at that age, you were like, wow, anything is possible.

Speaker 1 True. It is possible.

Speaker 3 And me thinking, scratch and sniff stickers

Speaker 3 and the tube at the bank. Like that is future.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We are there. We've arrived.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, if Hyperloop works, it could connect cities like LA to San Francisco in just 35 minutes. Not to mention all the other cities it could connect.

Speaker 1 For instance, if you think about Las Vegas, one of the world's biggest tourist attractions, it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Solve the transportation issue and you've hit the jackpot.

Speaker 1 I mean, Hyperloop would be a literal money train. Yes.
What are some other cities you'd like to connect if you could?

Speaker 3 I'm going to have to say Los Angeles and Tokyo, okay?

Speaker 1 So for the next year and a half, Pisavar keeps pestering Musk and Musk keeps brushing him off

Speaker 1 until they both find themselves at a tech conference in May of 2013. And while on stage, Pisavar puts Musk on the spot and gets him to publicly explain the Hyperloop idea.

Speaker 1 In classic Musk form, he rushes through the pitch and sort of promises to release a report on the idea by late summer.

Speaker 1 A year later, Musk finally puts his thoughts into what he calls the Hyperloop Alpha Paper. Of course, it has the word alpha in it.

Speaker 1 The alpha paper outlines a theoretical system that transports passengers in aerodynamic aluminum capsules sent through airless, frictionless tubes powered by motors running on clean solar energy and reaching speeds of 760 miles per hour.

Speaker 1 As PBS says, that's a whisker shy of breaking the sound barrier.

Speaker 1 So that's really fast.

Speaker 3 Just a whisker.

Speaker 1 Just a whisker.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just a whisker.

Speaker 1 The tubes, Musk claims, must be raised up like oil pipelines or buried underground in tunnels, eliminating the need to buy or lease land.

Speaker 6 Oh, I see, like in the air or

Speaker 6 underground. Okay.
I was like, aren't those the only two options?

Speaker 6 But he means like not on the ground, like above.

Speaker 1 Okay. Above or below.
Actually, Musk makes a lot of claims in the alpha paper. And to find out a few more, let's play a game.

Speaker 1 Yay.

Speaker 1 It's time to get into the mind of Musk. I'm going to tell you about some of Elon's wild statements in his alpha paper, and you're going to have to fill in the blanks.

Speaker 1 In the alpha paper, Musk coins Hyperloop as the fifth mode of transportation. He's referring to auto, plane, train, and ship.

Speaker 1 For fun, name any other modes of transportation that might be more reasonable than a hyperloop.

Speaker 3 Helicopter?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bicycle? Yes.

Speaker 6 Light rail?

Speaker 3 Motorcycle?

Speaker 6 On air balloon?

Speaker 1 There you go. Gondolas?

Speaker 1 The list goes on and on, Elon. All right, next question.

Speaker 1 Since the capsules or pods will be moving quickly and windows are not part of the design, how does Musk suggest they distract passengers during the trip? Hint, there's more than one answer.

Speaker 1 Is it A, live entertainment? B, fake landscapes, C, a hibachi lunch, or D, personal entertainment systems.

Speaker 3 I'm hoping it's hibachi lunch. I'm hoping because if you were like, Greta, let's take the hyperloop from here to San Francisco.
I'd be like, ah, I don't know. It sounds kind of weird.

Speaker 3 And you're like, but it's a Benny Hana hyperloop. I would be like, okay, let's go.

Speaker 6 I think I would be a little afraid of eating at that speed, but

Speaker 6 maybe personal entertainment system.

Speaker 3 I'm going to go live performance because this man's crazy. And I feel like he would be like, we could have a singer-songwriter and like break their career on on the Hyperloop, you know?

Speaker 1 Your buddy is a wonderland.

Speaker 1 Literally.

Speaker 1 So the answer is fake landscapes and personal entertainment systems.

Speaker 1 Because nobody's going to be able to look at their phone for 30 minutes, I guess. All right, this next question is a two-pronged fill-in-the-blank question.

Speaker 1 Mad Libs, if you will. Okay.
Hypothetically, Musk says the pods would depart every blank number of minutes from each terminal carrying a blank amount of people.

Speaker 3 I feel like he's a very, like, obviously lofty man.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 I think he's on some, the pods are departing every five minutes. Yeah.
And are going to carry 100 passengers a pod.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 6 I was going to also say in that range, I was going to say seven minutes. I was like, maybe around subway wait times and then,

Speaker 6 yeah, 100 per pot. I don't even know how many people are in a subway car.

Speaker 6 I'm going to go

Speaker 6 75.

Speaker 1 Well, I feel like we're highly underestimating Musk's delusion because he thinks they're going to leave every two minutes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's very close together traveling that fast, but only carrying 28 people.

Speaker 6 Oh, so this is like the train at the Denver airport.

Speaker 3 You're like, Elon Sweetie, the Hyperloop exists. Have you not ridden the train at the Denver airport?

Speaker 3 That train only carries 16 people.

Speaker 6 It goes less than a mile.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He also says, though, that during rush hour, the pods would leave every 30 seconds.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 3 What is this man talking about? I do want a hit of whatever he is smoking for like

Speaker 3 one day just to see.

Speaker 1 All right. Final question.
Considering it's 28 people shooting off in a pod every 30 to 180 seconds, how many passengers could theoretically use the Hyperloop per year? Math away.

Speaker 3 You should know that my math teacher, my junior year of high school, did ask me if I was cognitively okay.

Speaker 3 So I'm just going to shoot for the moon here and I'm just going to say 10 million.

Speaker 6 Yeah, because I can't even get to how many that would be in a day.

Speaker 6 Because I'm like, how many 30 seconds are there in a day? And then my brain gave up.

Speaker 1 All right. Not too far off.
The answer is 7.4 million. Whoa, you were close.
No, I was close.

Speaker 1 Take that, Mrs. Middleton.

Speaker 1 I was just saying.

Speaker 6 Say that you're cognitively

Speaker 1 sharp.

Speaker 1 Well, P. Shavar can't wait to get started.

Speaker 1 If successful, Hyperloop would not only change the way we travel, it would free up where we can work, and it would make Pichavar a much richer, seemingly cooler man.

Speaker 1 Now, he's no scientist, so he doesn't realize Hyperloop is basically impossible, but he's a consummate networker and a major donor to the Democratic Party. So, same thing.

Speaker 1 So, he scores a meeting with President Barack Obama and pitches him on the Hyperloop project for 30 minutes straight.

Speaker 6 Whoa, imagine how many Hyperloop rides that is.

Speaker 3 That math you could do? It's it's six 60, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 That's 60. Well, he convinces Obama to have the Office of Science and Technology Policy review the idea.

Speaker 1 He also pitches the scheme to Google founder Larry Page on Paige's yacht while they're watching an America's Cup race in San Francisco.

Speaker 3 Like, I actually do believe that once you are of billionaire status, you lose the ability to do anything normally.

Speaker 1 Like, can you just go to a park?

Speaker 3 You could even go to like the Ritz-Carlton and have like a fancy cocktail and do something expensive and high-end, but like, it's always like, and we were on the helicopter to Zurich and like, you know,

Speaker 3 and I was taking caviar bumps and then like, it's just like, it can't just be chill.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, P. Shavar, he sets up Hyperloop Technologies and stacks it with influential board members.

Speaker 1 Although Musk is Pisavar's number one pick to be number one, he has to settle for venture capitalist David Sachs, who was formerly the COO of PayPal.

Speaker 1 Pisovar actually gets Musk's blessing to hire Sachs at Pishavar's 40th birthday party, which takes place on a private island in the Virgin Islands.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 I mean, that honestly seems more low-key than what I was thinking.

Speaker 1 It does. That sounds like a terrible birthday party.
Are you that poor? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 He's like, I want to keep it chill this year.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, P. Shavar keeps building his perfect company.
He nabs former White House staffer Jim Messina for his board of directors. Messina also happens to be an outside partner at Sherpa, P.

Speaker 1 Shavar's investment firm. Since he can't get Musk on board to be the chief technology officer, P.
Shavar recruits the next best thing, co-founder of SpaceX, Brogan Bambrogan. What are these names?

Speaker 1 What are these names?

Speaker 3 Like, that's like a name that would be in Futurama or something like that.

Speaker 6 Like, I'm just like, I don't know if you guys read that article that was like about the libertarians who can't stop having kids.

Speaker 6 And it's this one couple, and all of their kids are named like duty, obedience.

Speaker 3 Imagine your name is Duty.

Speaker 6 It's not even good for you.

Speaker 1 Bambrogan's name was originally Kevin Brogan, but when he married his wife, Bambi Lou,

Speaker 1 they decided to mash their names together to make a new last name, and he took his old last name as his new first name. And she kept her first name, so she's Bambi Bambrogan.

Speaker 3 Bambi Bam Brogan?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And he's Brogan Bambrogan.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 6 Also, they didn't mash mash their last names together if he gets to keep his full one and hers is halved.

Speaker 1 You know, it's not the sentiment that I'm against, it's the result.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 So the crew, along with a gaggle of engineers, start scheming in Bambrogan's garage in LA. Don't worry, it's a very fancy garage in Las Velas.
But they do quickly outgrow it.

Speaker 1 They move to a former ice factory in downtown LA's art district next to a topless bar. Pretty cool.

Speaker 1 Their first big opportunity comes in a 2014 meeting with then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reed represents Nevada, so his blessing is key if they're going to connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Speaker 2 Of course.

Speaker 1 In 2014, there are no direct trains from LA to Vegas. You can take a bus or a shuttle.
Most people drive. The truly impatient partiers take a plane or helicopter if they're bougie.

Speaker 1 So the hype team thinks they have a great shot with Reid.

Speaker 1 But first, they have to explain the idea of Burning Man to him because Reed notices a lock screen photo on Bambroken's iPad with a bunch of strung-out hipsters in the desert and needs to know what's happening there.

Speaker 6 How would you explain Burning Man

Speaker 1 to a senator?

Speaker 3 I know how I would explain Burning Man to a senator, and I heard that it was late night rules on this show, so I'm going to abstain.

Speaker 1 So, after all that, they wow Reed with a presentation about the Hyperloop's visionary possibilities and convince him to help Hyperloop get a hold of land in the Nevada desert where they can build a test track.

Speaker 1 Not everyone is hyped on the loop, unfortunate.

Speaker 1 Critics promptly weigh in. Now, most of Musk's detractors point out that Hyperloop would be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 Like the Alpha paper mentions, we already have trains, cars, boats, and airplanes, and buggies, and all the things that we noted earlier.

Speaker 1 We don't need a super expensive fifth mode of transportation with a huge risk of catastrophic failure because it puts passengers in what is very close to a vacuum. And I don't mean a Hoover.

Speaker 1 Do you know what happens to humans in a vacuum?

Speaker 3 I mean, it has to be total combustion, like explosion, right?

Speaker 6 I keep thinking of the, have you guys ever seen those pictures of the dogs in the wind tunnels?

Speaker 3 Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Their faces are like nightmares.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, your blood boils.

Speaker 1 Actually, all of the fluids in your body boil.

Speaker 1 It's like when scuba divers get the bends, the pressure change causes tiny gas bubbles to form in your arteries.

Speaker 1 So, studies have shown that animals and humans in vacuums lose consciousness within 10 seconds. They lose bladder and bowel control.
Their muscles swell.

Speaker 1 The hearts and brains are cut off from blood flow, and they die in under five minutes. Psych, it's under two minutes.

Speaker 1 Oh, my

Speaker 1 gosh.

Speaker 6 But does it help if there's a fake landscape?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Does it help if there's a hibachi chef putting shrimp tails in his hat and cracking an egg to look like a heart?

Speaker 1 But let's just say there isn't a catastrophic failure and the pods stay securely in the tubes as intended.

Speaker 1 You still have to deal with the queasiness that comes with rapid acceleration and deceleration, aka G force.

Speaker 1 So when you're already traveling fast, like on a plane mid-flight, you're fine. It's only when the plane takes off or touches down that you really need the barf bag ready.

Speaker 3 When Top Gun came out, you know, I went on like a bender of watching all of the actors, like the YouTube videos of them being like, yeah, we had to go through g-force tests.

Speaker 1 And it's like,

Speaker 3 and they would barf or like shit themselves or immediately pass out.

Speaker 1 And it's just crazy. It's literally like only trained humans can handle this level of g-force without passing out.

Speaker 1 And they usually are wearing like special suits that like prevent them from passing out and having strokes my gosh like it's not just like a little problem it's a big problem

Speaker 1 so now imagine going through that every time you just want to like dash off to vegas for like a quick poker tournament You're like, sorry, Brogan can't make the tournament.

Speaker 6 His blood boiled.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not again.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Can't handle barfing and blood boiling. Like, I don't know what to tell you, sweetie.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, so we're all buying tickets, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Perhaps it should be telling that instead of pursuing the Hyperloop idea, Musk starts his very own unexciting company called The Boring Company to work on tunneling.

Speaker 1 And these tunnels aren't even for Hyperloop. How boring? At first, the Boring Company mostly just sells $500 branded flamethrowers and a perfume called Burnt Hair.

Speaker 3 This, like, you can't make this stuff up, people. You really cannot.

Speaker 1 Now, despite Musk's disinterest, the Hyperloop idea is obviously appealing to innovation-obsessed tech reporters and entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 And Forbes even puts Pichavar on the cover of their 2015 March issue. By 2016, the hype team has raised more than $160 million.

Speaker 1 They've changed their name to Hyperloop One and they are ready for their first test.

Speaker 1 Their propulsion test in Nevada doesn't involve a tube, but they demonstrate that at the very least, they've made a fast thing.

Speaker 1 Their test sled accelerates from zero to 116 miles per hour in 1.1 seconds before crashing into a pile of sand. Hmm.

Speaker 1 That's nothing if not a great metaphor for what's about to happen to their company.

Speaker 6 No one's in it, right?

Speaker 1 No. Okay, okay.
Publicly, Pichavar claims they'll have a full-scale Hyperloop by March of 2017. Sometimes he says 2020, but whatever.

Speaker 3 And I'm sorry, we're still in 2014.

Speaker 1 2016.

Speaker 3 Oh, we're in 2016 now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's like, in one year, we're going to have going from little sled, not in a vacuum, to a full thing. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 Optimistic.

Speaker 1 But behind the scenes, the hype team has to abandon the LA to San Francisco connection pretty early on. They can't get closer than an hour outside each city due to rights-of-way issues.

Speaker 1 You know, all those pesky existing buildings and pipes and wires and stuff. Geez.

Speaker 1 Can either of you guess why they didn't think of that before? Because they're always on yachts and helicopters.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was like because they're like not living amongst us.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're kind of right. Musk's alpha paper claimed they wouldn't need land rights because they could suspend the loops on pylons, avoiding the need to buy land.

Speaker 1 Basically, we'll just go over everything.

Speaker 3 Okay, but to build a pylon, you need to be on land.

Speaker 1 Correct? Correct.

Speaker 3 Also, like when I'm thinking of like drilling and like building a tunnel, it's like if he's using a reference to like a pipeline, famously, you are digging on land to build.

Speaker 1 Kind of how it works.

Speaker 6 Who knows? Yeah, I do feel like if you, it is an argument for why there, one of the arguments for why there should be no billionaires, because these are their ideas.

Speaker 1 This is what they come up with. So Pichavar assumed his CTO Bambrogan would play ball, but he's actually not very keen on how Pisavar runs his operation.

Speaker 1 For starters, Bambrogan finds all the nepotism at Hyperloop icky because Pichavar has hired his brother, Afshin, to be the chief legal officer.

Speaker 1 Additionally, another board member has forced the company to hire his younger brother's investment firm, and Van Brogan thinks that's unfair and counterproductive.

Speaker 1 So he starts openly complaining about Pisavar and the board wasting company money on enhancing their own personal brands, and he accuses them of padding their bank accounts, which they deny, while they have yet to put serious money toward developing the actual technology, which a competitor prices out at $45.3 million

Speaker 1 per mile. Whoa.

Speaker 1 Bambrogan, he continues being outspoken about what he perceives as corruption. at Hyperloop One, done, done, done.

Speaker 1 And one day, he goes too far. After running his mouth to a couple of Russian investors, Bambrogan finds a noose left on his office chair.

Speaker 3 Tail as old as time.

Speaker 1 Tail as old as time.

Speaker 1 So, no, the investors don't leave it there. Allegedly, it's Pisavar's brother, Afshin, but nobody admits to doing this or faces any criminal charges for this.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Have you ever encountered any ridiculous HR violations like that?

Speaker 6 Not a noose.

Speaker 1 Not a noose. Not a noose.

Speaker 6 Not in a subpar secret Santa gift, but

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 So Pischavar then fires Bambrogan, who turns around and sues, not only for wrongful termination, but for the threats to his life that were given.

Speaker 1 Pichavar sues him right back, and he calls the original lawsuit unfortunate and delusional, accusing Bambrogan of trying to stage a coup.

Speaker 1 So both suits are eventually settled, with nobody admitting any wrongdoing, of course. But the damage is done.

Speaker 1 Bambrogan starts his own Hyperloop company called Arevo and takes a bunch of Hyperloop/slash SpaceX employees with him.

Speaker 6 Okay, I thought you were going to say pens.

Speaker 6 I know.

Speaker 3 He scoops up a bunch of merch,

Speaker 3 sells it on Grails, and then opens up his dream coffee shop.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 after the fallout with the burning man bambrogan pichavar now needs some good pr for hyperloop one to raise money again they've already raised 160 million dollars which seems like a lot but how much do you think it would cost to build a hyperloop between la and san francisco

Speaker 6 i was gonna say like hundreds of millions minimal. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was gonna

Speaker 3 say that.

Speaker 1 Say that as well.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, hold on to your headphones.
It's $100 billion.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 6 just between LA and SF?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 How many people want to go between LA and SF so fast, so bad? It's like,

Speaker 3 who is this for?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So not only does Pishavar need the money, he also needs government backing because he needs some cities willing to be guinea pigs.

Speaker 1 Now, luckily, since local governments think big tech is going to save them, how about a bidding war?

Speaker 1 A bunch of municipalities worldwide submit thought-out proposals for what they think will be a transportation transformation.

Speaker 1 Instead, they discover the winners get nothing more than the privilege of conducting viability studies alongside Hyperloop One.

Speaker 1 And also, demonstrations like this. Let's watch a clip of Pichavar in the Hyperloop lab.

Speaker 7 This is really cool. So he's going to demonstrate the levitation.

Speaker 8 This is how we actually levitate the pod. So we have a bunch of magnets that sit underneath the vehicle.

Speaker 7 And then you'll see it

Speaker 7 begin to float once it gets it on.

Speaker 7 So when you have no friction and you're levitating,

Speaker 7 you're going to be able to move things extremely fast.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 3 I also love that little legend just walking around with his little mug.

Speaker 1 A little mug. You know, he's like, I'm walking out with my T.

Speaker 6 So was the part that was impressive just that they lifted off the ground?

Speaker 1 That it lifted that half an inch off of

Speaker 1 the little wooden sled? Yes, apparently. It reminds me when you're little and you have like a magnet

Speaker 1 and you make them like, you know, resist each other. Like that's how cool that was.
Yes. Yes.
You know?

Speaker 3 And I love that it got this high off the ground, like an inch off the ground. And then we're supposed to put people in something like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 By 2017, no tests have been done with living passengers, although they have built that snazzy test track in Nevada thanks to Senator Reed. Pishavar's goal is to eventually reach 760 miles per hour.

Speaker 1 How fast do you think this test is able to go?

Speaker 3 I want it to go like 98 miles an hour.

Speaker 3 I want it to be like you're in someone's car and they're driving crazy.

Speaker 3 Like I've accidentally hit like a speed like that. You know, when you're like driving your car and all of a sudden you're like, I am making amazing time.

Speaker 3 And you're on the freeway and then you look down and you're like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm going to get arrested. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, because I feel like it can't be too crazy because they haven't figured out all the health stuff yet.

Speaker 1 Well, it reaches 70 miles per hour in five seconds. Oh

Speaker 3 my god, that is so lame.

Speaker 6 So basically, everyone on the LA freeway would be passing you.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I live in Texas. We literally have speed limits of 85.
Right. Yeah.
Right. You know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 those annoying critics start to suggest that scientifically speaking, Hyperloop might not be possible.

Speaker 1 In November, just as Hyperloop One seems to have moved past the Bambrogan drama and is ready to send people through a shaky tube, Pischavar faces some personal turbulence.

Speaker 1 Multiple women come forward and accuse him of sexual misconduct.

Speaker 1 Can you imagine?

Speaker 3 Not my guy, P. Shavar.

Speaker 1 No. One accuser is Uber's head of global expansion, Austin Geet, who claims P.
Shavar tried to feel her up at a holiday party.

Speaker 3 Not at the holiday party.

Speaker 1 Fun fact, P. Shavar brings a pony to this party.
What? Bonus fact, it's wearing a Santa hat.

Speaker 3 Thank God. I was going to say, it doesn't count if it's not in a costume.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Unfun fact, a defender of Pishabar actually said that it would be impossible for Pishabar to touch Geet since, you know, he was holding a drink in one hand and the pony's leash in the other.

Speaker 1 Oh my god.

Speaker 3 We are, I do want to say we are living in hell. I do believe that this is real and I do believe we are in purgatory.
So yeah.

Speaker 6 There is that. He doesn't seem like a super angel at all.

Speaker 1 Not a super angel in the slightest.

Speaker 1 So backed into a corner, Pishavar announces he'll be taking a leave of absence from Hyperloop One and resigning from Sherpa Capital.

Speaker 1 But he vehemently denies all the allegations, swearing to sue the people who orchestrated the smear campaign against him. He's not charged or convicted.

Speaker 1 For Hyperloop to continue, it needs somebody willing to snatch up the impossible business plan.

Speaker 1 Enter Richard Branson, former owner of Virgin Records, current owner of Virgin Atlantic, and future owner of Virgin Breathable Oxygen, the company that sells you air to breathe.

Speaker 1 Branson rebrands Hyperloop One to be Virgin Hyperloop One, because of course he does.

Speaker 1 Branson juices $50 million out of two previous investors, then raises another $172 million,

Speaker 1 more than half of which comes from a Dubai port operator who's more interested in carting cargo than human beings, which is a better idea.

Speaker 6 Much better idea.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I actually support that. I think that person actually is onto something there.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The problem is cargo isn't sexy, and Branson's all about the sexy. In Dubai, Branson unveils the design of Virgin Hyperloop's potential passenger capsules, tiny little mod pods.

Speaker 1 Let's take a look at a photo. Oh,

Speaker 6 it looks like the Virgin Airplane.

Speaker 1 It's right on brand, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 He's like, let's just take an old cabin and just retrofit it.

Speaker 1 Now, don't worry, these hypothetical windowless tubes would be fitted with fake skylights to make you feel less like you're in a multi-person coffin. So a little upgrade for you.
Whoa.

Speaker 1 Branson only chairs the company for a year and then he gets bored. Hyperloop is cool and all, but honestly, he'd rather go to space.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And in 2018, he hires an experienced transportation CEO named Jay Walder to replace himself while he focuses on Virgin Galactic.

Speaker 1 Now, here is Walder trying to keep a straight face while a reporter asks him if a CGI rendering of a non-existent Hyperloop pod would be as comfortable as it looks. Let's watch.

Speaker 9 At one point in the video, there's a coffee that's barely moving and the speed above it was above 500 miles per hour.

Speaker 9 Talk to us about just the experience of being in there and what it will feel like because this is critical as it's as critical as cost and accessibility, I think, for those who might use this.

Speaker 10 You're literally floating on a bed of air and it will be super smooth. We are able to achieve these speeds in a way that we've never seen before.
The tube is completely serene in the way that it is.

Speaker 10 So if we think about air travel and turbulence, we don't have any of that that is taking place here

Speaker 1 right now.

Speaker 6 What?

Speaker 1 You know what struck me about the ending of that video was watching these CGI people look like they're in a fighter jet, like strapped down with these huge harness like seat belts also the last thing i want to be doing traveling at 670 miles per hour which is i think the speed it showed on the like little screen is drinking a piping hot tea oh my gosh

Speaker 1 that's so true Greta's like, no, shoot sake into my mouth. Yeah, I am

Speaker 1 truly, I am.

Speaker 3 Yeah, cold sake.

Speaker 1 Well, while Branson's head is in the clouds, Walder tries his best to stay grounded and make Hyperloop a reality.

Speaker 1 In 2020, after hundreds of unmanned tests and at least $450 million down the tube hole, Virgin Hyperloop conducts its first ever test with human passengers.

Speaker 1 Virgin Hyperloop's CTO, a man named Josh Geigel, and his wishfully titled director of passenger experience, Sarah Lucian, strapped themselves into a bullet train-shaped pod.

Speaker 1 This is it. This will make or break Hyperloop.
From this point on, humanity might be altered forever. Off they go.
You guys, they travel 760 miles per hour, enter a new dimension where they meet God.

Speaker 1 And that is why today we have Star Trek in real life.

Speaker 1 Just kidding. They go about 100 miles per hour for 20 seconds and travel a fourth of a mile.
Oh, God.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 6 What a ride. What a ride you took us on.

Speaker 3 What happened when they were going that fast in such a short

Speaker 3 window of time?

Speaker 1 Nothing. We already have modes of transportation that go much faster than this.
100 miles per hour, we do it in cars. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm hitting 100 going to Gelson's, honey.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
A Bugatti can go 300 miles per hour. There's the Japanese bullet train, which already exists, that can go 200 miles per hour

Speaker 1 without the need of blood-boiling vacuum tubes. So this was truly a flop.
Yes. Yes.

Speaker 3 An expensive flop.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Very expensive.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, the same year, Branson actually reaches the edge of space. And what does that have to do with Hyperloop? Nothing, except that his pet project doesn't seem to be delivering results.

Speaker 1 Hyperloop's CEO, Jay Walder, resigns out of frustration. Josh Geigel takes over as CEO, but only for a mere eight months.

Speaker 1 And these departures trigger a massive talent flight and low morale among the remaining 200 employees, morale that certainly isn't helped when Branson fires half of them just a couple of months later.

Speaker 1 He also strips Virgin from its name and announces that they are indeed pivoting to cargo transportation after all.

Speaker 1 So guess, or should I say, what do you think they blame Hyperloop's failure on?

Speaker 3 I think they blame it on our guy, on our naughty, oh, patron, terrible man.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, they go with what everybody blamed everything on for the last few years, global supply chains thanks to COVID. Oh, Sure.

Speaker 1 That's why this didn't work. Sure, sure, sure.
But in reality, investors had started balking at the high costs of developing the Faux Futuristic Transport

Speaker 1 already. The fact that Branson hadn't been able to secure any real contracts to build a single Hyperloop system didn't help any.
And in December of 2023, Branson closes the Hyperloop company.

Speaker 1 He transfers all of its intellectual property to the Dubai port slash mega investor, leaving Musk's boring project as the last vestige of Pisavar's original dream. Wow.

Speaker 1 Let's do a little where are they now.

Speaker 1 As of today, Musk's boring company hasn't done much more than produce one tunnel in Vegas that acts as a glorified conference shuttle system, which, I might add, faces piles of fines from OSHA for a bunch of alleged safety violations.

Speaker 1 Now, the boring company is actively contesting all of these claims, so we'll see where that one ends up, I guess.

Speaker 1 Ironically, one of the best chances Musk's tunnel has of becoming a useful network is if it can expand to another hotel in Las Vegas, the Virgin Hotel. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 By the way, Richard Branson's newest venture is a luxury super yacht cruise line featuring no kids, Korean barbecue, yoga at sea, and the happiest crew in the world. Wow.

Speaker 1 Looks all right, honestly. Virgin Cruises looks cool.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I love ensuring happiness. I love ensuring like we have sourced the happiest people planet Earth has to offer.
It's like, okay.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Shervin Pichavar is all in on crypto and once a big Democratic Party contributor is now on the Trump JD Vance ticket. No surprises there.
Oh, good.

Speaker 1 Hyperloop competitor Arrivo went out of business in 2018 after only one year.

Speaker 1 So Brogan Bambrogan is now working for Ethospace, a company that is working on making round trips to the moon more affordable by mining moon rocks for liquid oxygen.

Speaker 3 And that, honestly, I thought of that, actually.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 6 You've mentioned that around town.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was kind of shopping the idea and people were like, you know, yeah, there's something there. So that's a bummer.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So here on the Big Flop, we try to be positive people and kind of end on a high. So are there any silver linings that you can think of that came from Hyperloop?

Speaker 3 You know, silver lining.

Speaker 3 No one died in a vacuum.

Speaker 1 Nobody died with their blood boiling. There you go.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yep.
I think that pretty much sums it up.

Speaker 6 I think that's a huge win.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think because they weren't really inching toward it and like two people did volunteer to potentially die that way.

Speaker 6 For me, it was heading towards the, what was that, underwater submersible direction where I was like, uh-oh.

Speaker 1 Well, now that you both know about these Hyperloop one billionaires spending a bunch of money on what turns out to be nothing, would you consider this a baby flop, a big flop, or a mega flop?

Speaker 3 Unfortunately, I really feel like the billionaires are out here flopping every single day.

Speaker 3 I feel like to us, I'm like, well, that's a mega flop because it's so embarrassing on so many levels and it's also so expensive. And the amount of money is just staggering and upsetting.

Speaker 3 But I feel like in their sicko minds, they're just like, oh, yeah, I tried tried this like awesome thing I thought about and didn't work.

Speaker 3 But you know, like, I'm just too, I'm just too forward-thinking. You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 Yeah, like for them, it's probably a baby flop.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like another year, another tube pet project.

Speaker 1 Well, thank you so much to our quick-witted guests, Aparna Nancherla and Greta Teitelman, for joining us here on The Big Flop. And of course, thanks to all of you for listening.

Speaker 1 Please remember, if you're enjoying the the show, to leave us a rating and review.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week with the story of a woman whose lies came crashing down with one fatal question: Your parents, are they white? It's Rachel Dolezal. Bye.

Speaker 1 Bye. Bye.

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Speaker 1 The Big Flop is a production of Wondery, an at-will Media, hosted by Misha Brown, produced by Sequoia Thomas, Harry Huggins, and Tina Turner. Written by Anna Ruvanova and Luke Burns.

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