AUGUST 2021: Adam has World Bank headquarters’ 12-story atrium retrofitted into enormous bong.
SEPTEMBER 2021: Adam convinces his team to work pro bono because “struggle always leads to the greatest growth.”
OCTOBER 2021: Adam tells Rwandan woman living in hut, “Do what you love.”
DECEMBER 2021: The World Bank’s staid offices devolve into a swirling vortex of beer helmets, chest bumps.
JANUARY 2022: Adam says his legacy will far outlast that of the other hippie messiah from the Israeli desert.
FEBRUARY 2022: World Bank managers persuade Adam not to call their upcoming South Sudan public-toilets initiative “WeWee.”
MARCH 2022: Adam meets leaders of Malawi and Niger while in bare feet and wearing a $4,000 T-shirt.
APRIL 2022: The Washington Post figures out that the bank’s new Latin America specialist is the hotel concierge from Adam’s recent trip to Tulum.
MAY 2022: Adam says the World Bank will grow so powerful that the American economy will become its satellite.
JULY 2022: Adam says the way to guarantee universal primary education is to equip every classroom with yoga clowns and kombucha taps.
AUGUST 2022: Adam confuses presidents of Benin and Eritrea with lengthy monologue about “niche b2b verticals.”
OCTOBER 2022: Adam says all of Pakistan’s problems will dissolve once they subdivide all their office space and add couches and beer.
DECEMBER 2022: Adam says the key to ending world poverty is “changing the energy in the room.”
JANUARY 2023: Adam whispers to Venezuelan street cleaner, “The opposite of ‘we’ is ‘woe.’”
FEBRUARY 2023: Adam says that once he’s ended world poverty he’ll focus on the poverty on Mars.
MARCH 2023: Adam says that hiring a lot of young people and paying them nothing is the new M.B.A.
MAY 2023: Adam buys hotel near the Nobel Foundation: “I’m definitely gonna medal.”
JUNE 2023: Adam quits to become surf instructor, is replaced by Elizabeth Holmes.
Henry Alford is a New York–based writer and humorist and the author of And Then We Danced
