Shadowing Practice: Does Wall Street do drugs anymore? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Wall Street.
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The Wolf of Wall Street.
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Billions. Industry.
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This is a list of names I'm considering for my firstborn son.
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But they’re also the names of famous films and television programs who depict the high flying world of finance as one filled with flake-snuffing sleazebags who absolutely love they drugs.
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But is the culture of Wall Street really this awesome and nose-forward?
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Let's find out.
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To begin my investigation, I got word that for the right price, you can purchase the private journals of the very people working on Wall Street.
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And while I was surprised how easy it was to gain access to such a trove of information, I was at a loss for where to start.
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But sometimes the best path forward is the one right in front of you.
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Now I had a name with plenty of vowels.
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All I had to do was butter em’ up with charm.
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I'm Alex Saeedy.
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I'm a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, and I cover finance, banking and Wall Street.
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Those are my- Those are my three favorite words.
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They’re three pretty sexy topics, I would say.
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The man was clearly comfortable enough with me to proposition s*x this early in the conversation.
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They’re three pretty sexy topics, I would say.
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I have that effect on people, but we couldn’t move onto something so unprofessional so soon.
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We needed to talk about drugs.
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Dan: Let's talk about drugs. Alex: Let's talk about drugs.
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Do people in finance actually do drugs anymore?
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Absolutely.
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They're just maybe not the drugs you think they might be doing.
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You think I'm wrong?
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I think you could be wrong.
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If I watch an old finance movie right? Right.
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I'm seeing, a guy in a pinstripe suit doing blow off of a fine woman. Right.
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Is that what's happening nowadays? No, not these days.
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You know, there's there's definitely been a cultural shift in the types of drugs used at the office.
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I think outside of work, people are still partying just like they are in any industry.
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And I think Wall Street in particular does attract risk takers and also clout chasers.
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I think bolivian scream powder lends itself well to of those types of people.
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In terms of, performance enhancing drugs used to help people do their jobs better adrall, z*rall.
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You know, addrall is an amptamine.
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It's a very serious drug that people get super addicted to.
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The trading floors of the 80s was a really social business.
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You know, you were on the phone all the time.
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Trading floors were like, raucous, playgrounds essentially.
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Now trading floors are really quiet.
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It's mostly guys like typing on their like, laptops like major monitor setups.
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Admittedly, the picture Alex painted was a bleak one.
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If you saw that painting in a museum, you'd say that painting sucks.
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But I did have my concerns about Alex.
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After all, he's merely reporting on Wall Street.
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I can only trust him as far as I'd pay him to throw me.
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So I got in touch with a few fine folks who work in finance today, and I asked them to confirm whether Alex's bleak picture of the industry's current drug culture was correct to protect the longevity of their careers In this episode about doing drugs at work.
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I conducted the interviews whilst I was inside the Good Work Anonymous Reporting Portal.
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Now, a quick point of clarification here for anybody feeling lost in this context, European tens refers to high dose variations of zs people from Europe, and by that I mean the following.
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I'm talking about seven foot Dutch Elvish baddies, weathered day laborers from Minsk, all of Dua Lipa's Albanian cousins.
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My Airbnb host Milo from Brussels, who I am still very much in love with.
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Genderless, heavily pierced East Berliners, the coastal French, the urban French, the rural French, Copenhagen baristas, Ronaldo, jaded Norwegian professors, and when the light is right and I've had a few stiff drinks, the toads they got croaking over in Cardiff, Wales.
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Oh, and also my Portuguese au pair from when I was little growing up.
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Guys, this will be on the test.
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Okay. Okay, great.
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Folks.
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You've been putting it off for too long.
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Don't act cute with me. You know what I'm talking about.
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Your doctor's appointments.
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You don't want to deal with the logistics.
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You just don't feel like it.
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Or you're like me and you're absolutely terrified of calling another adult on the telephone.
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Especially if they're a doctor.
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Do you think I want to know what that glowing orb I have growing out of my tailbone is?
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Yes, but do I want to get on the telephone about it?
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No. Look, it's scary out there, but your body is a temple.
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I mean, just look at you. Which is why it should get the care it deserves when it deserves it.
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Which is why we have Zocdoc.
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So no more crying next to your landline trying to work up the courage to call the doctor's office.
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Nope. You can see actual appointment openings and click to instantly book a visit.
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Best of all, Zocdoc is free to use.
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That's the best price they got out there.
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That's right, everybody taking care of your health just got easier.
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So head on over to Zocdoc.com/goodwork Linked down in the description to get started.
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I know may seem itsy bitsy teeny weeny, but just clicking on the link in the description is a huge step towards prioritizing your health.
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Thanks so much to Zocdoc for sponsoring this video and helping us all take better care of our health.
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buh buh buh duh dubba buda duh clink Now where were we?
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bleeeeeeeeeeep Through all my conversations with the folks in and around the world of finance, people were constantly referencing these stories of the glory days of previous generations.
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But it was clear that in order to get an accurate depiction of the relationship between drnance, back in the day, I needed to speak to an old timer in the hardened flesh, someone who partied hardy and lived to tell the tale.
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Someone who...I dunno- I got flown down in a helicopter to Atlantic City.
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I got my key to my suite.
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So I, like, check in and I go into my room on the coffee table is my name in cursive written with c*ne.
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So “Turney Duff” is written and I'm just like, goddamnit, why did my parents name me Alexander Hamilton?
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Turney Duff was a hedge fund trader in the 90s and 2000s.
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In 2013, he wrote a spectacular memoir of his time in finance called The Buy Side after which he served as a consultant on Billions.
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We used to call it playing through.
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So you basically don't go home or you just change your suit and and you never go to bed.
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My longest streak was three days, which, like three, three days.
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Three, three days no sleep?
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Yeah I woke up Wednesday morning and didn't go to bed until Saturday.
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Turney told me that his partying on Wall Street began because his hedge fund job on the buy side lent itself to having a lot of brokers looking to entertain him, hoping to entice him to invest through their desk.
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And entertaining turned out to be something that Turney was totally baller at.
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During the day, you know, sitting next to a guy from Harvard, a woman from Duke, and I had no shot.
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And what I figured out was at happy hour, I could crush the guy from Harvard.
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I could crush the woman from Duke and so when the office lights went out and the city lights came on, like, that was my time to shine.
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I'm thinking of the people that you worked with that were the Harvards and Dukes, but they didn't socialize. Was them not doing drugs almost an impediment on their career at all or-? Partly, yeah.
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You know, I would be on a private jet with, you know, 15 to 20 people, doing lines and, you know, partying our asses off.
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And, you know, when I got back that weekend, any trades that I had were given to the people who were on that plane.
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You develop these sort of, like, drug fueled relationships that grow together.
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So in that sense, it helped my career, but it didn't make me like a better trader or more focused or anything like that.
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Think about it like this.
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So I'm 32 years old, founded a hedge fund called Argus Partners, we get it up to about a billion four trading about $50 million a year in commissions.
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Okay. So there's 15, 20, 30 brokers on Wall Street Who all want a piece of that $50 million.
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Let's say you're covering me, right?
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What are you going to do to get 2 or $3 million from my business?
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Pretty much anything I want.
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At the time I was like 31, 32 years old, but I would get paired up with single guys who knew how to party between like 25 and 30 years old who would, like, get after it.
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So they knew exactly who to cover my account because they knew who I was.
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Right? Did you find that the socializing element of Wall Street was starting to go down by the time that you left it, or is it still just as much of a part of the job?
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Going into the financial collapse, it definitely felt like was going in the wrong direction.
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And look, people have been doing drs with each other to facilitate business deals since the dawn of man.
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How else do you explain this cave painting of clients rolling face at an Usher concert?
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But unfortunately, a few spoil sports in 2008 came around and ruined that for everyone.
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After the global financial crisis, financiers faced a lot more scrutiny over how they were handling their business.
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Now you have an industry where, like risk taking has been pushed a little bit to the margins, then in the center, the banks, these are highly regulated institutions.
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Compliance and risk are like up everyone's asses all the time.
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Pre financial collapse compliance would come out to the trading desk And they'd be like “Turney” “Excuse me?” I'd be like, “beat it, I'm making money.” “Get out of here.” Right?
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Right. After the financial collapse, complete shift compliance now has more power than than anyone else.
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And I remember I was out in the Hamptons.
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This is after I left the business, I was talking to a guy.
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He was at a huge asset manager.
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I don't want to name the name, but was talking to him.
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He's the head of the desk.
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And we were talking kind of like entertainment and whatnot, and, he was like, oh, well, I have to pay my own way if I go to dinner with a broker.
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I was like, what?
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And he's like, yeah.
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And I was like, really?
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And he was like, yeah.
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I'm like, really? And he was like, yeah.
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He's like, it's not worth it, like- There are a lot of brokers now who just like put an end to the whole entertainment business.
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If you read stories of like traders in the 80s, most of these guys didn't go to college.
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They were just really social animals that knew how to buy and sell and capture a spread in between.
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Today, that's unthinkable.
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The computers are almost doing like half of the analysis that goes into like a big trading operation these days.
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I think what you see as a consequence of that is much more nerdy, introverted people are attracted to the industry.
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Now granted, as a financial journalist, I’ll admit that hearing about the greater scrutiny being placed on large investment institutions simply warms the cockles of my heart and the heartles of my co- However, as a guy who also loves him some hot drama, I got to admit that this new era of Wall Street sounds a lot less sexy and maybe even more intense with this new era of drs.
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A generation that's traded, snorting snow while listening to Whitesnake for taking aall while listening to a two hour productivity playlist.
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It's so obvious that there has become a culture of, you can just go to a doctor who will write you a script.
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He doesn't take insurance, so kind of like a cottage industry where you just like, get a script for a check. Individual bosses will know when there are problems on their teams.
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I've spoken to some of them and they will tell their employees, like, you don't need to take drugs do this job.
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If you feel like you have come and talk to me.
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I don't think at an institutional level though the banks in particular have done anything coordinated to stop it.
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They know it's happening.
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what they've tried to do is really like make the work situation better, you know, cap the hours that they work at 80 a week, with exceptions which are often employed.
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Well, I was going to say, do people end up following those?
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No. No they don’t.
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I'm sure it's a good PR move to say, hey, we're we're capping work at 80 hours a week, but with a huge asterisks being like, except when there's like live deals or things that we deem to be critical to the business, which is everything at all times.
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But I'm happy to use this, show as a way to tell the world these caps that the banks have announced in our pages, aren't enforced aren't and aren’t taken seriously by the people who actually run the banks.
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You know, it's been over two years now since some of these new caps were announced in the wake of an actual tragedy, at Bank of America.
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The tragedy that Alex refers to is that of Leo Lukenas, an Army veteran and former investment banker at Bank of America who clocked in multiple 100 hour workweeks finalizing an acquisition before dying of a blood clot that formed in his coronary artery, spurring a call out for the largest investment banks to reevaluate the schedules of their most tasked employees.
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in the wake of that, many banks came forward and we're like, we're going to focus on work life balance and restructure things and not have people work so much.
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But you talk to people on the ground and they're like, yeah, nobody takes it seriously because that's what human resources are saying.
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But human resources is not the one assigning me work.
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And people who are at the top now of the pyramid of the banks came up in a culture where, you know, you were just worked hard and there were no questions asked.
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And it's arguably even worse now because working from home is possible.
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So at least in the past, okay, I'm at the office until 1 or 2 I go home and like, I don't start til I go back.
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Now, you can like go home at 8 or 9, but be working till 5. And again, these are the environments where addall abuse, you know, heavy z*n usage, energy drink consumption it can just cause that to really, really fester in a bad way.
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Couldn't agree more. Alex.
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And might I add that I've never seen anything fester in a good way either.
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Indeed, we live in an age where the reality of finance is in some ways much more mature than the image we get from those movies where you see a guy destroy a mountain of pow while spitting on a stri*r he paid to mud wrestle a pygmy rhino.
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Yet some constants remain.
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While the stimulants have certainly changed, the degree of necessity for them hasn't brought about by a new era of strict, analytical, performance driven work culture that doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.
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Despite what the companies themselves may say.
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Because the most prevalent addiction in finance might not be any drug at all.
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It might be the work itself Or the money.
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Probably the money.
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And for good work_ I’m Dan Toomey.
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Is there anything we have in guys?
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Anything else?
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Well, I think I mean, I think we should at least mention, you know, I went to rehab twice and I'm now 16.5 years sober, right?
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There was a huge price that I paid for my behavior.
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And, you know, it's a slippery slope.
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But, through 12 step programs, therapy, a strong network.
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And just like doing the work, you know, I was able to kind of string some time together. You know, again, just to reiterate the point.
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Like, you know, when you take a*rall you don't have ADHD, you're just doing it to like, have more energy work a little bit harder.
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Those types of people will wind up with worse impacts on their psychology because you're taking a heavy upper when your brain doesn't actually need to go up that much.
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for people who are thinking about, you know, should I maybe just get an -derall prescription so I can, like, do a little bit better at work?
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they're real serious impacts to it.
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you know, you should consult with a legitimate doctor And if you need a doctor's number, I know a great one who will give you anything on the Upper West Side.
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Who Will Benefit from This Video?
This video is perfect for intermediate to advanced English learners aiming to boost their conversational skills, especially for IELTS speaking practice or real-world discussions. It’s great for those who want to understand casual, modern dialogue—think office culture, slang, and how people talk about sensitive topics. The mix of interviews and humor makes it engaging, so you’ll stay focused while picking up natural speech patterns.
Words & Idioms Worth Stealing
Here are standout phrases from the conversation that will make your English sound more native:
- "Clout chasers": People who seek attention or status. Example: "The party was full of clout chasers trying to take selfies with the CEO."
- "Raucous": Noisy and energetic. Example: "The wedding reception was so raucous, the neighbors called the police."
- "Bleak picture": A negative or depressing view. Example: "The news painted a bleak picture of the economy."
- "Butter them up": To flatter someone to get what you want. Example: "I buttered up my boss before asking for a raise."
- "Lends itself well to": Is suitable for. Example: "This quiet café lends itself well to studying."
How to Master the Accent & Flow
The speakers in the video use casual, conversational English with a mix of humor and sarcasm. To practice, try the shadowing technique: play a short clip, pause, and repeat it immediately, mimicking the tone, speed, and stress. Focus on words like "adrall" (pronounced uh-DRAL) and "raucous" (RAW-kus) to get the sounds right. Notice how the speaker emphasizes phrases like "performance enhancing drugs" to highlight key points—this is crucial for natural shadow speech.
For extra practice, use a shadowing site to slow down the audio or repeat tricky sections. Pay attention to the rhythm: the dialogue shifts from playful ("that painting sucks") to serious ("super addicted"), so match your tone to the context. This will help you sound more natural in both casual chats and formal discussions, making it a great resource for learn english with youtube sessions.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | You've been putting · have been doing |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to help · used to call |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who partied · people who were · guys who knew |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has been pushed · has become · I've spoken |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.