Artemis II, Jamie Dimon’s “American Dream,” Snap’s Crucible Moment | Diet TBPN

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. TBPN is made possible by: Ramp - https://Ramp.com https://ramp.com/ AppLovin - https://axon.ai https://axon.ai/ Cisco - https://www.cisco.com https://www.cisco.com/ Cognition - https://cognition.ai https://cognition.ai/ Console - https://console.com https://console.com/ CrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.com https://crowdstrike.com/ ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io https://elevenlabs.io/ Figma - https://figma.com https://figma.com/ Fin - https://fin.ai https://fin.ai/ Gemini - https://gemini.google.com https://gemini.google.com/ Graphite - https://graphite.com https://graphite.com/ Gusto - https://gusto.com/tbpn Kalshi - https://kalshi.com https://kalshi.com/ Labelbox - https://labelbox.com https://labelbox.com/ Lambda - https://lambda.ai https://lambda.ai/ Linear - https://linear.app https://linear.app/ MongoDB - https://mongodb.com https://mongodb.com/ NYSE - https://nyse.com https://nyse.com/ Okta - https://www.okta.com https://www.okta.com/ Phantom - https://phantom.com/cash Plaid - https://plaid.com https://plaid.com/ Public - https://public.com https://public.com/ Railway - https://railway.com https://railway.com/ Restream - https://restream.io https://restream.io/ Sentry - https://sentry.io https://sentry.io/ Shopify - https://shopify.com/tbpn Turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com https://turbopuffer.com/ Vanta - https://vanta.com https://vanta.com/ Vibe - https://vibe.co https://vibe.co/ Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John Coogan?

  We got to kick it off with this video from NASA Administrator and more importantly, former TVP and guest Jared Isaacman. He says, "Tomorrow, we launch at sunset. Tonight Artemis 2 waits on the pad, ready to carry astronauts potentially farther than any humans have traveled in more than half a century. The next era of exploration begins."

• 0:20Jordi Hays?

  And we have the countdown here right next to John.

• 0:23John Coogan?

  Yes, so it is about four hours and 20 something minutes until the launch starts. They might delay by a few minutes, who knows, they might crash entirely, but if things go to plan, the official NASA stream is up now, but stay with us and then once we wrap in about three hours, head over there and watch NASA take you through the final stage of the Artemis 2 launch. But let's play NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman's video because it's very exciting. This is what I lived for as a young child and what I live for to today.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Kennedy Space Station is on for the first human moon mission in more than 15 years.

• 1:04John Coogan?

  15 years. A lot of people have been going back and forth SpaceX versus SLS. I think it's more rockets, the better, more space launch capacity, the better. I want 10 of these companies and want them all to be successful. Apo Structura says, "You can hate SLS for being obsolete, massively late, and over budget. I certainly do, but you gotta concede, it looks incredible." And I couldn't agree more. Importantly, some people were joking around saying the Space Shuttle is launching today. They're not using the Space Shuttle because they're going farther than they normally go with the Space Shuttle, and the Space Shuttle was decommissioned. So then the astronauts will be in a pod on top, in capsule mode. Exactly.

• 1:47Jordi Hays?

  Blake Scholl shares, "I'm genuinely excited to see America headed back to the moon, back around the moon, but Artemis is a moon dog."

• 1:55John Coogan?

  That's a good wombo.

• 1:56Jordi Hays?

  Shows we have...

• 1:57John Coogan?

  That's a really good wombo.

• 1:58Jordi Hays?

  Really good wombo.

• 1:59John Coogan?

  Wombos are the new meta. We'll be breaking it down soon.

• 2:01Jordi Hays?

  You don't even need to Lorraine it.

• 2:03John Coogan?

  You don't.

• 2:04Jordi Hays?

  It's just plainly...

• 2:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06Jordi Hays?

  Lorraine is lore and explain.

• 2:07John Coogan?

  Lore plus explain.

• 2:08Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. "Remember that Apollo did not result in durable progress in space. It marked a literal high point for more than half a century. The cost of space access remained prohibitively high until we had a rebirth of space entrepreneurship." Thank you for showing the way SpaceX Apollo was history's greatest tech demo, the moon landing. This is inspiring. It shows the triumph of ingenuity, science, and reason. But also Apollo led to half a century of stasis and regression.

• 2:32John Coogan?

  Yeah, complacent.

• 2:33Jordi Hays?

  It was fundamentally uneconomic, contributed to creation of cost insensitive, of a cost insensitive space agency and supply base, all more concerned with perpetuating their own existence, more concerned with make, work, jobs than accelerating human progress. Now, we're going back to the moon essentially the same way we did in 1969, again uneconomically, again with central planning. A disposable rocket, no answer to how we create a self sustaining lunar economy. Again, we're taking communist approaches in competition with the communists. Communism didn't work for the Russians and it won't work for America either. The sooner we can get done with this moon doggle, the better. But there's also reason to be optimistic. This time around, there's a nascent commercially led vision for the moon. Lunar hotels, mass drivers, data centers in space, helium three, the commercial programs

• 3:18Jordi Hays?

  that gave SpaceX an early assist show a different and better path forward. This is where the better future lies and this is where America should be focused. America should take the moon and we should take it the same way we took the American West. Let's encourage and protect lunar value creation. How about a homestead act for the moon? Most important, let's stop dumping money and more importantly, the time of our engineers and scientists on glory project that will never lead to a better future. It is indeed time for another space race. Last time we fought communism with communism, this time, let's remember what made America great. This time, let's fight communism with capitalism.

• 3:50John Coogan?

  There's some good points in here. I think the flip side of this is that we are in a wildly different position than 1969 in terms of the maturity of this lunar economy, the space ecosystem. We have SpaceX filed for IPO today. You're looking at a trillion dollar company. It will instantly be one of the largest companies in the world. It already is, but in the public markets when it goes out. And so you have a lot of companies and startups and venture capitalists that are fully ready to commercialize any findings that come out of this and see this as an inspirational moment. And overall, it just feels like 1969, the Capital markets, the entrepreneurship, the capitalism was not quite ready for, okay,

• 4:35John Coogan?

  let's take this to the next step, let's privatize this, let's build businesses around this. It was much more of a science experiment that went off into, you know, its corner and then was, you know, not immediately capitalized on, but I think this time could be different. At the same time, I do understand what you're saying.

• 4:53Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, Ryan and Hunter over at Pirate Wires shared this mission in Pirate Wires today, and they shared a quote from Jared last week saying, this time, he said, "The goal is not flags and footprints. This time, the goal is to stay. America will never again give up the moon." So, generally aligned with what Blake is saying.

• 5:14John Coogan?

  Tyler, what's your take on this?

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think Blake is kind of underestimating the value of just like vibes.

• 5:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  People have been like pretty blackpilled on the moon.

• 5:23John Coogan?

  Totally.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  I think basically, since the, like, everything kind of stopped.

• 5:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  So if you can just have like a white pill, everyone's like, sure, like maybe it's not a good idea to continually launch these to the moon, they're not economical.

• 5:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  But if you can just get one and say like, yeah, we actually, we can still do this.

• 5:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  It's very much possible.

• 5:38John Coogan?

  Also, I mean, it's over budget, but as a percentage of GDP, it has to be a fraction of what we spent in 1969. So, on a relative basis, it's maybe a better investment. Yeah, I do think that there's something that's just inspiring about being able to do something like this and prove that we still got it.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  I also like from Hunter and Ryan's post, you know, they're dropping the article, it's just moon, right? It's not the moon.

• 5:59John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  I like this idea.

• 6:00John Coogan?

  Yes, we only got one, so we can just say moon. It has its own name, you know, you don't say "the California," "the Texas," "the Florida," you just say moon, you say Texas, Florida. Uh, let's watch this video of Neil Armstrong ejecting just seconds before his lunar training vehicle crashed.

• 6:16Jordi Hays?

  Space cowboy.

• 6:17John Coogan?

  Space cowboy, true heroism here. This is such a crazy video. I had no idea this happened. Good music, too. What is this, Interstellar? Yeah?

• 6:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:30John Coogan?

  Like, how did he know? It was not gonna go... Oh, it's tipping. Okay, I would definitely know. That would be very obvious that you would want to get out of there at that point. Wow. And he gets out on the parachute. I wonder, I wonder how much of that was like planned to be, okay, we're testing the ejector seat? Or he just knew, okay, I got a, it was called, nicknamed Flying Bedstead for good reason. It looked like a bed frame and it flew like one too. Yeah, flying that on Earth, it's not exactly the most aerodynamic, aerodynamic vehicle. But, call she has a market on when will Artemis 2 launch? It is soaring. We are now at 89% before April 2nd. So 89% chance it launches today, basically.

• 7:14John Coogan?

  92% chance that it launches before April 4th. So Jamie Dimon's been on an absolute tear. He is hiring people. He's restating his vision for America. There's an article in the Wall Street Journal here. He has a plan for JP Morgan to rescue the American dream. That's a very exciting, exciting idea. Let's run through Jamie Dimon's plan for America. He's running. I think he should. Jamie Dimon thinks the American dream is on life support and he is planning JP Morgan Chase to step in. The nation's largest bank announced the American Dream Initiative on Tuesday, a commitment from JP Morgan to support small businesses, homeownership, access to healthcare and other economic priorities that Dimon believes are crucial for the well-being of Americans.

• 7:58John Coogan?

  The bank already finances all of the above and says it's ready to put more resources into the effort. Dimon, 70 years old and CEO of JP Morgan since 2006, What a run. has long worried about the future of the American economy and wealth inequality. More recently, he has warned that the country is sleepwalking into economic stasis thanks to bad policies and rules that make it hard to invest in new ventures and run companies. "I am deeply frustrated by our own policies in America," he said last week at the Hill and Valley Forum. "We've become like Europe. We're unable to move and change." That's strong words. JP Morgan hasn't been slowed, bringing in more profit than any bank in the US history, in US history. But it reaches across Main Street and Wall Street and does better when the whole economy is chugging along. Dimon has a habit of making big commitments. I'll take this off there a little bit. It's a big commitment having that on.

• 8:44John Coogan?

  Diamond has a habit of making big commitments in tune with the zeitgeist. JPMorgan announced a $1.5 trillion investment platform focused on national security and supply chains last year, just as the federal government started to invest in critical suppliers. It made a $30 billion racial equity commitment after the murder of George Floyd and a $2.5 trillion climate change plan in 2021. Now, the bank is committing to adding 3 million new small business customers on top of 7 million today. They want to get to 10, and it wants to lend them up to 80 billion over the next 10 years through loans and support for community-oriented banks and investment funds. The bank reported 33 billion of loans to small businesses and other customers at the end of 2025, so they want to expand significantly.

• 9:29John Coogan?

  It's just a 30% bump in total number of small businesses, but they want to basically triple the amount of the loan book broadly. "The American dream means you can buy a home, start a business, you can build wealth, and you can afford healthcare for your family," JPMorgan's head of corporate responsibility, Tim Berry, said in an interview. "We want to bring our capabilities and make that more real to families and customers." They're helming the New American Dream Initiative and acknowledge that a lot of it isn't really new. JPMorgan has been looking to grow deeper roots in the cities and towns where it does business, rolling out specialty branches focused on community education for years. It has invested big in cities where it has found business-friendly leadership, including Detroit and San Francisco. The initiative and ambitious goals are supposed to jumpstart JPMorgan bankers and employees to do more.

• 10:14John Coogan?

  When we think about the impact that we've had locally in a place like Detroit, we know that success can be replicated in other places, so they are opening up the pocketbook to spur small business. Very exciting. In other Jamie Dimon news, he just hired or recently hired Warren Buffett's protege. There's a profile in Barron's by Andy Serwer. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon doesn't usually make high-profile outside hires for his senior executive team, preferring instead the homegrown variety. That makes Todd Combs, formerly a top investment manager of Berkshire Hathaway, poached and brought in to head up JPMorgan's Chase new 10 billion strategic investment group.

• 10:59John Coogan?

  An exception, except that Holmes is hardly a bolt from the blue. I like that. That's a good turn of phrase. Having served on JP Morgan's board since 2016. Okay, so he's a board member, so he clearly knows everyone already. He says, I know the company well, Combs tells Barron's in his first interview as a bank employee. I know everyone from Jamie to the operating committee and the next layer of management. I'm well aware of the balance sheet, the excess capital, and how Jamie and the team think and operate. Like the bank's other top executives, Combs, who's been CEO of Berkshire Geico Insurance Unit, is still settling into his new office on the 47th floor of JP Morgan's new Manhattan headquarters. I hope you don't mind the warm office, says Combs.

• 11:41John Coogan?

  A tennis-playing Florida native, I don't like the cold, he says. Combs mapped out his new gig, which began in January on a two-column chart he sketched on a notepad. Interesting. He's old school, old school. Powerful. He's not, he's not creating a second brain. He's just ripping it on a notepad. On the left are five rows of industries such as defense, supply chain, reindustrialization. On the right are their future manifestations, such as defense tech, U.S. semiconductors, respectively. The plan is to invest in everything our country has outsourced and abdicated over recent decades. We want to invest in places where the puck is going so that America can control its own future. That means deploying the group's $10 billion into middle-market and large companies

• 12:26John Coogan?

  in U.S. defense, aerospace, healthcare, and energy sectors to help them grow. Recent investments include mining company Perpetual Resources and defense tech startup Shield AI. Combs, who reports to Diamond, will also act as a special advisor to the CEO. Combs' endeavor is part of the Security and Resiliency Initiative JP Morgan announced in October, in which the bank will commit to facilitating $1.5 trillion in investments for companies deemed critical to the national economic security and resiliency. We want to be a good partner to the government regardless of who's in charge. It's the GOP now. It can be someone else in the future. We're trying to let capitalism send the right signal. We'll look at every opportunity on its own merit. We want an impact and a return. Highly regarded as an investor, Combs is a boyish-looking, 55.

• 13:08John Coogan?

  He helped return Geico, which was burdened with outdated technology and bloated costs to profitability. Berkshire watchers thought he might play a role in the company's post-Warren Buffett era, either overseeing its multibillion-dollar investment portfolio or its massive insurance operations, or he could have been up for other high-profile jobs. But why this one? It's a unique opportunity with both Jamie and the institution and the mission of the job. Combs says, "This is critical to the future of the country. You want to find things in life that are big and important, that are worth doing and doable." Combs has an anti-bucket list for his new role. "I had about 10 or 12 things that I didn't want." The anti-bucket list is sort of underrated. Your anti-bucket list is just,

• 13:50John Coogan?

  "Never go skydiving. I don't want that to happen. Never buy a supercar."

• 13:55Jordi Hays?

  Never visit 30 countries.

• 13:57John Coogan?

  Become supercar-less. It's the dumbest thing.

• 14:00Jordi Hays?

  Why is no one talking about Snapchat?

• 14:04John Coogan?

  Explain.

• 14:04Jordi Hays?

  Irenic Capital came out with

• 14:07John Coogan?

  Save Snap Now.

• 14:08Jordi Hays?

  With a well-executed activist campaign.

• 14:13John Coogan?

  It does feel like there's a big opportunity with AI, better targeting. Like, I'm receptive to this pitch, but I want to hear it from Irenic. I know that this is an activist shareholder. This could be very confrontational.

• 14:29Jordi Hays?

  Yes, they come out with a website, savesnapnow.com. You land on the website, they hit you with "Snap Back to Reality."

• 14:37John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 14:38Jordi Hays?

  So, taking a fun approach here. They say, "Snap has the potential to be a great company and a double AI winner through meaningfully improved operating efficiency and monetization." Irenic has outlined six steps to 7x Snap's share price to $26 per share. They put together a presentation as well as a letter. I'll kind of read through some of the highlights. They say, "It's Snap's crucible moment. AI creates a dual-pronged opportunity for significant cost cuts and accelerated product development." So, they go into cost improvements, monetization, governance. On the cost side, they want to spin or shut down specs. I'm sure Evan is not-

• 15:14John Coogan?

  It's sort of like already happening, right?

• 15:15Jordi Hays?

  The spin is seemingly in the works. There were some leaks over the last six months around that, so I would expect that to happen. They want to rationalize costs. AI can and should replace many existing roles. Now, remember, the constant criticism of Snap has been the stock-based comp. If you actually look at it- They, from, from the kind of rough math we were doing, like every 10 years, they're basically giving the entire company

• 15:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Jordi Hays?

  To, to the team.

• 15:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:45Jordi Hays?

  And so investors, long-term investors have been very frustrated by that.

• 15:49John Coogan?

  And it, it, it always has been weird because I understand that, like, back in the day when they were competing directly with Twitter and Meta and Instagram and Reddit and all these different upstart, high-growth, social networking companies, I believe the talent war thesis, it makes sense that they would have to probably pay top dollar, but you have to imagine that as the business has stabilized, there are people that would come into the organization that would be happy to just have a salary and just do the work because it's better than working at another company. It's not necessarily like the AI talent war, or that, that, you know, the social media talent war that I'm sure happened, you know, back 10 years ago. It's a different time, so maybe different structure.

• 16:34Jordi Hays?

  Safe Snap now is recommending a thousand-person riff to get fit and competitive and to empower your highest performers.

• 16:41John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Jordi Hays?

  If you're Evan reading "empower your highest performers," you're probably thinking like, "Oh geez, I never, I never thought of it."

• 16:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Jordi Hays?

  But, again.

• 16:50John Coogan?

  They do have 5,261 employees as of late 2025, so this would represent roughly a 20% riff, not block-level cuts, but more in line with what we're seeing at Oracle, Meta, some other tech companies that are going through a transformation.

• 17:06Jordi Hays?

  On monetization, the recommendation is to improve monetization,

• 17:10John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 17:10Jordi Hays?

  which I think is a good idea for any business.

• 17:12John Coogan?

  It's a hot take.

• 17:13Jordi Hays?

  But they say AI will massively accelerate product development and enhance advertising monetization tools.

• 17:18John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:18Jordi Hays?

  Again, you know, everyone by this point should be well aware that Meta has done a fantastic job in leveraging AI, ML, to just make a better and better and better ads product.

• 17:31John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 17:32Jordi Hays?

  And they say product-led improvements across users, advertisers, and subscriptions to break out of Snap's monetization ceiling. Then they say deploy AI properly, monetize Snap's proprietary AI data sets, and then concentrate AI partnerships on clear winners like Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Again, Snap. Partnered with Perplexity. It seemed like Snap got a fantastic deal out of that. It was something like a $400 million deal, if I remember correctly. Some of it was stock in Perplexity.

• 18:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Jordi Hays?

  But there was a huge cash component.

• 18:05John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Jordi Hays?

  And unclear if the other companies mentioned Gemini, OpenAI, or Anthropic would have been able to match that, how aggressive Perplexity was getting. And so it's possible Snap's logic was, hey, we can, we can do this deal with Perplexity. And then it's, it's native in our app. It's easy enough to swap it out at a later date. It's like basically take the cash while we can get it.

• 18:28John Coogan?

  Yeah. I saw this post from Sean Frank that somewhat relates. He, he was talking about one of our sponsors, AppLovin, which I will tell you about in a second. But he said, in less than 12 months, I've spent 2,872,000 of my own money profitably on AppLovin. I don't own the stock. I don't trade the stock. This is the net amount that left my bank account. And, and he shares a couple of other points and he says, he's spending 17,000, so 2.8 million on AppLovin, clearly like a scalable, large platform. Spent 17,000 on Pinterest, 266,000 on Reddit. You have to imagine that Meta Ads are up there. But the question is like, for a lot of advertisers, Snap has not become this like, oh, sure, maybe you don't get, maybe it's not going to be your number one platform,

• 19:11John Coogan?

  but it's like in the marketing mix very regularly. And I think a lot of that should start working.

• 19:18Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 19:18John Coogan?

  Even if the pool isn't super deep, even if you don't have 99% of your customers there, maybe only 20% of your customers are there. But even if they're there, you should be able to find them and AI can help that. And so I would expect that if this works, you'd see like really solid data from Ridge saying like, oh yeah, we're spending on Snap.

• 19:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And they've been experimenting with Snap as far back as 2018.

• 19:40John Coogan?

  I'm sure.

• 19:40Jordi Hays?

  When I was hanging out with, with Sean and Connor back then, they were getting results on Snap, but there was a ceiling.

• 19:47John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:48Jordi Hays?

  So then finally, they want to, on the governance side, commit to investing in safety and capital return, use newfound cash and profitability to further invest in privacy, safety, and parental controls. And allocate new cash flow, generation of capital return and demonstrate conviction in Snap's creation. Yeah, it's interesting on the parental control and safety side. I think Snap has been able to stay out of the, at least Lanier's.

• 20:12John Coogan?

  They settled.

• 20:13Jordi Hays?

  Oh, they ended up.

• 20:14John Coogan?

  Yeah, they settled before it went to trial. Meta and Google fought it.

• 20:17Jordi Hays?

  Interesting.

• 20:18John Coogan?

  And so, yeah, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I think that they've been trying to sort of like step back from all of that.

• 20:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And then on the corporate government side, giving shareholders a vote can unlock a multiple rerate through broader index.

• 20:30John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 20:31Jordi Hays?

  Illusion.

• 20:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Jordi Hays?

  And enabling one vote per Class A share still preserves Snap as a founder-controlled company.

• 20:37John Coogan?

  Yeah, I think it probably has like 10x voting power or something like that. The market's reacting really positively to this, and I think Evan Spiegel has shared some statements that sort of mirror this, actually. It seems like there's maybe a little bit more reception than you might expect. The stock's up 14% one day after publishing this piece, says Bose Weinstein. Adam is a rock star in the making, so smart, definitely worth a follow, and that's Irenic cap.

• 21:04Jordi Hays?

  Carrie No-Interess gave some feedback on Irenic. He said, "A few critiques feedback. Daily opens are not equal to time spent on app. AppLovin' and Meta clearly have higher time spent on app, and therefore parity on monetization is flawed. Arguing that Snapchat can hit targeting levels of Meta is farcical. The amount of data that Meta has on me versus Snapchat is astronomically different. I guess I'm open to being proven wrong since you compare it to AppLovin', who IMO has always used other targeting sources."

• 21:32John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 21:33Jordi Hays?

  "Three proprietary data slide is a one-time flash-in-a-pan moment. Sure, some companies are selling deranged amount of data, but that's not lasting MRR, ARR monetization, although it is fair to call them out on it. I like the monetization per user slide. I think my feedback around Snap's ability to monetize relative to those peers stands. Literally, screen time is much lower and you don't have data for targeting the way peers do. Calling out the founder's net worth growth was either god-tier petty or brilliant or some combination of both on presentation."

• 22:01John Coogan?

  I think a TBPN slide or quote made it into one of these presentations.

• 22:06Jordi Hays?

  It was on the slide, AI should be an accelerant for Snap's core ads business. So Zach had said, he said, we're also working on merging LLMs with the recommendation systems that power Facebook, Instagram threads in our ad system. Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business, but we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon. Evan said, our smart campaign solution suite, including smart targeting and smart budget, uses AI to identify incremental high-value audiences and dynamically allocate spend across objectives, reducing the need for manual setup and ongoing optimization. In our interview, they highlighted Evan saying, as you look at glasses in the near term, I wouldn't expect AI to be a major accelerant.

• 22:47Jordi Hays?

  Closing this out, Irenic is clearly thinks that he says specifically Snap is a special asset. He thinks it has a ton of potential. He's overall positive. He just thinks like, you know, he really wants them to get in the game. And I think that honestly, a lot of people have felt the same way over the years, but have just ultimately been frustrated because some of these things that seem somewhat straightforward just haven't been done.

• 23:10John Coogan?

  Okay, I gotta go back to the moon. We're going back to the moon. I'm going back to the moon because Artemis 2 is launching in 3 hours and 52 minutes and 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds. Brandy Gurrell wrote the op-ed today in the TBPN newsletter about some of the technology that they're using to document the trip, and it's a very different take, very live-streamer coded of us. We only care about the camera equipment that's on board. Obviously, there's a lot more that goes into it, but it's a fascinating deep dive. So today, the NASA Artemis 2 mission will launch, sending the Orion spacecraft, carrying a four astronaut crew on a high-energy free-return trajectory to get to the moon and back in about 10 days. It's longer than the Artemis 1 mission, which was 6 days.

• 23:52Jordi Hays?

  Can you imagine the stress when you're just like being sent straight out into space and you know there's a big turn coming up and it's pretty important that you actually make-

• 24:01John Coogan?

  Don't miss the off. Yeah, you can't be like texting and like miss the off-ramp. If you miss the off-ramp, you're going to Saturn.

• 24:07Jordi Hays?

  So-

• 24:07John Coogan?

  It's over for you. Orion will enter a 24-hour, highly elliptical orbit with an apogee 44,000 miles above the surface of Earth. For context, the ISS orbits at 280 miles in altitude, so way, way higher, 100 times higher, 200 times higher. During the first day, the crew will test critical life support and communication systems. After reaching its apogee, Orion will essentially fall backward towards our planet. This will cause the craft to start picking up massive speed. You'll see that the path is a little fishy. And I think a lot of the tinfoil hat crowd are going to be suspicious about the path that the rocket will be taking because it's fishy. It's fishy if you scroll down. Uh, don't you think that's fishy? That's a fishy orbit. That's just a fishy orbit. I don't know.

• 24:51John Coogan?

  I don't want to be too conspiratorial about this stuff, but like-

• 24:53Jordi Hays?

  It does look like a fish.

• 24:55John Coogan?

  It's a fishy orbit. As it approaches its perigee, for those who are just listening on audio, it literally looks like a fish. As it approaches its perigee, or the lowest point in its Earth orbit, the crew will conduct a systems review, wake up the main engine system, organize the cabin to make sure radiation shielding bags and water supplies are positioned to act as shelter in case of a solar flare. Put on their survival suits and strap in. They're locking in. Uh, after the burn, the crew will take more than four days to reach the moon. The craft just coasts there. The lunar flyby, where it will orbit the moon at a maximum altitude of 6,000 miles, a minimum altitude of 60 to 70 miles from the surface of the moon, is expected to happen Monday, April 6th. It will probably end up being the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth due to the high altitude at which they'll orbit the moon.

• 25:39Jordi Hays?

  And remember, we still don't know if this is like Apple, another elaborate April Fools joke. We could get to the countdown here and Jared Isaacman could say April Fools.

• 25:48John Coogan?

  Uh, NASA is essentially aiming for a Netflix quality livestream on the flyby. And this is what the video creators, the content creators, the live streamers, this is what we care about. It will feature 4K UHD video streams that beam back to Earth with a three-second latency and some additional latency from encoding and terrestrial distribution using a Frontier Laser Communication Terminal that can transmit data at 260 megs a second. The stream will probably be compressed to 1080p for live video, but it will be saved in 4K. The craft has 28 dedicated cameras onboard, externally mounted and astronaut handheld. Externally mounted cameras will be on the tip of each of Orion's four X-shaped solar arrays, and they can rotate, which will allow them to take selfies of Orion with the Earth or the moon in the background.

• 26:32Jordi Hays?

  We got selfie sticks in space.

• 26:34John Coogan?

  Selfie sticks in space. This is sci-fi now.

• 26:37Jordi Hays?

  It's still almost unfathomable, unfathomable the amount of risk that these astronauts are taking on.

• 26:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Jordi Hays?

  And uh, my thoughts are with them.

• 26:46John Coogan?

  For sure, for sure. The Kit Kat heist, this is the story you all have been waiting for. Kit Kats, the candy bars were stolen and in massive quantity. Uh, the Wall Street Journal has a story of how the company reacted, how they turned a massive Kit Kat heist into crisis PR gold. We've seen this uh, before, people were talking about Tucker Carlson having his uh, nicotine pouch shipment stolen and how it sounded like uh, the plot of a new Fast and Furious or zoomer Fast and Furious movie. Uh, well, something similar happened to Kit Kat and they took advantage of it and made the best out of it. So Kit Kat, of course, is owned by Nestle, but let's dig into what the Wall Street Journal had to say.

• 27:27John Coogan?

  Just how much are 12 metric tons of stolen Kit Kat bars worth? A lot of promotional gold, it turns out, says the Wall Street Journal. It was the brazen chocolate heist heard around the social media world. Oddly, this is the first time I've heard of it. I don't know why, I don't know how I missed this. Had you heard of this before?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:45John Coogan?

  You had?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I've seen this.

• 27:47John Coogan?

  I literally found out about this in the Wall Street Journal, I don't know why. Over the weekend, Nestle confirmed that thieves had swiped 413,000 units of Kit Kats somewhere along their way from a factory in central Italy to Poland. Both chocolate bars and the truck carrying them remain missing, though no one was hurt in the theft, it said. With the Swiss company lost in chocolate, though, it gained back in a public relations coup, as did multiple other companies, quick to hop on the meme bandwagon. We've always encouraged people to have a break with Kit Kat, but it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 metric tons of our chocolate, the company said in a statement.

• 28:28Jordi Hays?

  I don't get it, you, you have to, they would have had to steal the truck?

• 28:31John Coogan?

  Make a break for it.

• 28:32Jordi Hays?

  Two?

• 28:32John Coogan?

  Yeah, they stole the truck. They stole the truck. I mean, it sounds like Fast and Furious, it sounds like they, they stuck, stuck it up. And you said, get out of the truck, you gotta call a cab?

• 28:41Speaker 03

  The truck is missing.

• 28:42John Coogan?

  The truck is missing.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  They took the truck.

• 28:43Jordi Hays?

  They took the truck.

• 28:45John Coogan?

  Wow, they took everything. Taking their cue from Nestle, other companies soon joined in with some social media spoofing. We would like to share our thoughts and condolences with Kit Kat following their sad news. The account for Domino's Pizza in the UK posted Monday morning. Then it added on a completely unrelated note, we're pleased to announce that we'll be selling a new Kit Kat pizza. It's very silly. Charlotte FC, the major league soccer club in North Carolina, jumped on the same riff a couple of hours later. On an unrelated note, we are happy to share that we will be offering roughly $413,000.

• 29:15Jordi Hays?

  I don't know about you, John, but I love when large corporations can just jump in on the fun.

• 29:20John Coogan?

  It's extremely millennial. This is like, this is my culture is not your costume. If you're not a millennial and you're the one posting this, like, stop. This is only a millennial has the right to post jokingly as a corporate account. The discount airline Ryanair, meanwhile, simply posted a cartoon of, photo of one of its planes with a face in the jet's mouth or five bitten off Kit Kat bars. Not long ago, most companies would have said little, leaving it to law enforcement authorities to disclose such a potentially embarrassing revelation. Now, any bad news is good news, as long as a corporate brand can turn it into a viral meme. What do you think about this, this take? It's a masterclass in public relations. Like, I, I agree with your, your intuition that, oh, this is not

• 30:04John Coogan?

  that funny. Like, this is sort of just like corporate cringe. It's a little rough. I'm not getting belly laughs out of this, but just in terms of corporate com strategy, this feels like the best of all possible worlds.

• 30:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 30:16John Coogan?

  I think it's like a reasonable thing.

• 30:18Jordi Hays?

  Am I entertained? No. Do I think that it was worth doing? Yes. Does it make me want to Kit Kat? No.

• 30:26John Coogan?

  Also, no.

• 30:27Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, but like, like, I was not thinking about Kit Kats.

• 30:30John Coogan?

  Yes. And, and I'm thinking about the-

• 30:31Jordi Hays?

  Well, now I'm thinking, I just think, I think I've never really, I've never really had a Kit Kat and thought, oh, that, that was, that was so good.

• 30:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Jordi Hays?

  And so now I'm just remembering why I don't care.

• 30:43John Coogan?

  Okay, okay.

• 30:44Jordi Hays?

  Elon filed for an IPO on April Fool's Day. And apparently, they, they filed last night, so off by just a little bit, according to Budlow. But, but yeah, on pace for a June, on, on pace for the kind of June listing.

• 31:01John Coogan?

  June listing, okay. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, sign up for a newsletter, tbpn.com, and we will see you tomorrow at 11 a.m.

• 31:08Jordi Hays?

  Can't wait.

• 31:09John Coogan?

  Pacific. Goodbye.