GPT-5.4 Reviews, Oil Spikes, Anthropic's TGIF | Doug DeMuro, Vincenzo Landino, Max Hodak

Sign up for TBPN’s daily newsletter at TBPN.com (00:57) - GPT-5.4 Reviews (19:52) - February Jobs Report (23:17) - Iran Conflict Reshaping Global Capital Flows (29:49) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (34:14) - U. S. Nationalization: A Short History (52:30) - Dario Apologizes for Leaked Memo (58:45) - WSJ Mansion Section (01:23:32) - Vacheron: Culture Over Volume (01:31:10) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions (01:41:12) - Vincenzo Landino is an entrepreneur, speaker, and host of the Brand Boost Podcast, as well as the co-founder and Creative Director of Aftermarq, a video strategy consultancy specializing in brand storytelling through video and live streaming. He discusses Apple's strategic partnership with Formula 1, highlighting how Apple leverages its extensive ecosystem—including devices like iPhones, iPads, and services such as Apple TV—to enhance the F1 fan experience. Landino also explores the integration of F1 content across Apple's platforms, such as detailed circuit maps in Apple Maps and driver-curated playlists on Apple Music, emphasizing the company's innovative approach to engaging both existing fans and newcomers to the sport. (02:01:30) - Doug DeMuro, an American automotive YouTuber and entrepreneur, is renowned for his in-depth car reviews and as the founder of the online auction platform Cars & Bids. In the conversation, DeMuro discusses Ferrari's upcoming electric vehicle, expressing skepticism about its design and performance, and highlighting the challenges of electric sports cars in the current market. (02:40:21) - Max Hodak, a biomedical engineer and entrepreneur, co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk in 2016 and served as its president until his departure in 2021. He then founded Science Corp., focusing on developing brain-computer interfaces to restore vision. In the conversation, Hodak discusses the company's retinal prosthesis, a chip implanted in the eye that, in clinical trials, enabled patients with age-related macular degeneration to regain the ability to read and recognize faces after years of blindness. (02:57:23) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions TBPN.com 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 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 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?

  You're watching TVPN. Today is Friday, March 6th, 2026. We are live from the TVPN Old Tredome, the temple of technology. The fortress of finance. The capital of capital. Uh, we have a great show for you today, folks. We're talking about GPT 5.4. We're talking about the price of oil, taking you through the mansion section. We're also going to tell you about ramp.com, time is money, so both, easy corporate cards, bill pay, accounting, and a whole lot more, all in one place. A little bit lighter on the linear lineup today, a lighter linear lineup. Uh, but we got Doug Demuro, we got Dave Grutman, Max Hodak, and Vincenzo Landino coming in to give us the breakdown on the kickoff to the F1 season.

• 0:44John Coogan?

  So, uh, very, very fun show ahead for us. Uh, Tyler Cowen chimed in. Linear, of course, is the system for modern software development. 70% of enterprise work is based on linear using agents. Uh, Tyler Cowen chimed in. He said, yes, the new models are very, very good. He's satisfied with 5.4. Many people are. Uh, Justin says, uh, we've been testing 5.4 for a week. It feels like a great mix of Opus and Codex, fast conversational, great instruction following. However, it seems to lack a bit of the eagerness of Opus and precision of Codex. So I was in Codex Desktop today. Um, here's a blurb, uh, trying to get, you know, fun prompts and stuff going. Uh, 5.4 is available. You can run it at extra

• 1:29John Coogan?

  high. Uh, it's not, 5.4 dash Codex is not available. I still only have 5.3 Codex and then- Well, they just combined. They basically- They combined everything. And then, and then, uh, Spark is still on 5.3. So, uh, it'll be interesting to see how all those models, uh, uh, like, you know, map out. But, uh, we'll have to test these out and, uh, see what people actually build as well as talk to people. There's an interesting post in here we'll get to from, uh, Nate Silver about sort of like where we are in model evaluation broadly because it is a, uh, sort of a tricky, tricky scenario. So, uh, Bartosz says-

• 2:07John Coogan?

  It finally happened. My personal move 37 or more. I am deeply impressed. The solution is very nice, clean, and feels almost human while testing new models in the last few weeks.

• 2:16Jordi Hays?

  What's your personal move 37?

• 2:19John Coogan?

  Smell-O-Vision. I've talked about this. I'm waiting for Smell-O-Vision. No, what, so move 37, for those who aren't familiar, is Lee Sedol playing DeepMind in Go, and DeepMind dropped move 37. It was very uncharacteristic. It had never, that strategy was not something that many Go masters would have recommended. It seemed like a blunder, and it was so dramatic.

• 2:46Jordi Hays?

  Remember, we had move 37 integrated into the first Technology Brothers launch video.

• 2:50John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, little Easter.

• 2:51Jordi Hays?

  This is when Lee Sedol go to smoke.

• 2:53John Coogan?

  No, no.

• 2:54Jordi Hays?

  Oh, wait, no, that happened before.

• 2:56John Coogan?

  He was so stressed out that he couldn't bring himself to go smoke. He had stood up. So basically, what happened was throughout the Go matches, Lee Sedol would get up and go outside and have a smoke break. And in the documentary, it sort of looks like he's, it's sort of, the story gets apocryphally told as he was so stressed out by the craziness of this move, watching machine intelligence emerge, this incredible move 37, that he couldn't understand, that he had to step up, step away, go smoke a cigarette, reset, and then come back to the game. That's not actually what happened. He, he was processed, it was confused, it was kind of like, oh, that was weird, and then keeps playing. And then that move 37

• 3:37John Coogan?

  winds up being essential to the victory of the computer over the Go master, the human Go master. But, as we like to tell it, he was so shocked by move 37 that he couldn't even bring himself to smoke cigarettes.

• 3:51Jordi Hays?

  That's how you know.

• 3:52John Coogan?

  That's how you know. That's how you know. No, you know, we were corrected once by Ruin on this. But it's a funny story, no matter how you tell it. So Barto says, "I felt this coming, but it's an eerie feeling to see an algorithm solve a task one has curated for about 20 years. But at least I have gained a tool that understands my idea on par with the top experts in the field. I am now working on a completely new level. My singularity has just happened, and there's life on the other side. Off to infinity." Michael Podlowski, who is, runs FastTakeoff.com, clearly AGI-pelled, says, "This is huge."

• 4:30John Coogan?

  Bartosz is a top-tier mathematician. He just said his personal move thirty-seven happened. GPT five point four just solved a task he has curated for twenty years. When an expert of this caliber says the singularity has just happened, we are officially in a new era of science. Big. What is, what is my personal move thirty-seven? I was thinking about, I was thinking about the definition of this and, and, and, and sort of the level of abstraction. I, I feel like a lot of, a lot of individual contributors are having dramatic moments with, with AI. And a lot of managers aren't, or they're, or they're learning about it by proxy, or they're toying around with greenfield projects, but they're not actually communicating in

• 5:14John Coogan?

  the same managerial way. Because we're, we went from like, you know, reality, check this code, sort of like stack overflow replacement to like the tab model, the autocomplete model to the agentic prompt-based, like write some software to vibe code an entire greenfield project, or make a great pull request in an existing project. But from a business perspective, that's not really how most managers operate. And that's why I don't think we're seeing the level of diffusion that we'd expect. You talk to, you know, someone at a restaurant, they say, yeah, I'm still using Toast. I'm still using the POS system. Because like my, the way they communicate their desire for software is maybe they have someone on their

• 5:57John Coogan?

  team who does like IT, and they say like, hey, we need a, we need to reset the password to the email. We need a better system for sending emails to our clients. We need a better system for processing payments. Hey, what's this bill for ten thousand dollars? This, this payments company's taking three thousand dollars. Can we get a better, can we get a better price by bidding this out, finding someone else to do it? And, and that level of prompting. Doesn't really get you anywhere just yet. So I think that's, I think, I think a lot of the move thirty seven will come for the managers when they can actually just like have an idea, prompt it and like get the finished software. Not like, hey, here's a bunch of code. Now you got to figure out how to get into the app store, right?

• 6:38John Coogan?

  It's like we, when we say we want a soundboard app in the app store, we still like go through Tyler and Tyler acts as like an individual contributor. We don't just like.

• 6:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. And Bartos with this sort of mathematics problem.

• 6:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Jordi Hays?

  It's a very different kind of problem than when you're trying to solve problems in business. It's like, how do I unlock this market?

• 6:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 6:57Jordi Hays?

  And then you have ideas for how to do that, but then you have to execute a strategy over a long period of time. And it just takes time to be like, hey, did this work?

• 7:05John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 7:06Jordi Hays?

  A year, six months or two years, you know? Brendan over at Merco says G P D five point four is the best model we've ever tested on Apex agents. That's Merco's internal benchmark. It's also the first model to pass fifty percent mean score a year ago. Frontier models couldn't even edit an Excel sheet and scored less than five percent now. In less than three months, G P D five point four has improved by fifteen point seven percent. Chat G P T will imminently be better than the best consulting firm, better than the best investment bank and better than the best law firm.

• 7:41John Coogan?

  That's fire.

• 7:42Jordi Hays?

  Bold.

• 7:44Jordi Hays?

  Bold, bold, bold.

• 7:46John Coogan?

  This progression, no paper, no weights, benchmarks that don't compare to other companies' models. Next up, just a photo of the team.

• 7:50Jordi Hays?

  Durya says, I ran the same prompt on G P D five point four, high fast and Claude Opus four six for an eight phase coding project for a Mac O S app. G P D five point four, high fast, completed the first two phases in nine minutes and finished all eight phases after an hour coding while Claude code is just starting phase two. This is crazy. Yeah, the question, the question is.

• 8:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, does, does, is, is the, my expectation is the regardless if, if developers are kind of like flip flopping from model to model, I think the overall market is growing so quickly that we're still going to see growth from, we're going to see insane growth from Codex, insane growth from Claude Code, and still insane growth from, you know, the, the cursors of the world.

• 8:39John Coogan?

  I mean, I, I'm so excited for, for the DeepMind numbers to potentially break out at some point because, so, right now, Google has to break out YouTube's revenue numbers because it's an individual reporting line and like the, the, the head of YouTube, there's some SEC regulation where if the head of the division reports discreet financials to the CEO, and there's like a CEO of that unit that reports to the CEO of the entire company, you have to break that out. And this is what happened with the AWS IPO, when AWS was like finally, the, we, the SEC demands that we publish these numbers instead of just like baking them into the rest of the numbers. We had to split them out and tell everyone how profitable that business was. Everyone else woke up. YouTube's in a similar position.

• 9:24John Coogan?

  But currently, AI is a cross-functional division, even though Demis is like the second most known person. I mean, he has a book written about him. He's maybe the, the best known person at Google right now, up there with Sundar, clearly reports to Sundar. And DeepMind has like all of the different financials that you would expect to see from a lab, you know, they have inference, training costs, they, like, if, if the SEC pushed Google to push out the detailed financial breakdowns earlier, that would give us so much clarity. I mean, Dan Primack came on the show yesterday and was talking about, like, people will be shocked about, and they'll learn a lot about the structure of the financials of the foundation

• 10:06John Coogan?

  model companies. It'll be very interesting to see Google, like, what's their benchmark? And how fast are they growing? Because we saw these two revenue lines where OpenAI is just absolutely going vertical, so is Anthropic, just like one month behind, like they're, they're, they're both scaling incredibly quickly. What's Gemini doing? It's, it's a really interesting question. It's harder to measure because they're capturing value from Gemini all over the place. Like, when you go to YouTube, there's a feature there that lets you talk to Gemini, and it doesn't directly monetize by Paying for tokens, like the YouTube team doesn't pay DeepMind for those tokens, but that's clearly driving more engagement on YouTube.

• 10:49John Coogan?

  Same thing with search overviews, same thing with all the different places where they've vended in Gemini across the, across the different surfaces. But just to see the actual DeepMind financials, how much are they spending? How much are they making? How many subscriptions are there? How much inference demand is there? That would be fascinating. I have no idea of the timeline for that. It might be a very long time, but at some point you would expect to see it. So quickly, let me tell you about MongoDB. What's the only thing faster than the AI market? Your business on MongoDB. Don't just build AI, own the data platform that powers it. And let me also tell you about Eleven Labs. Build intelligent, real-time conversational agents. Reimagine human technology interaction with Eleven Labs.

• 11:28Jordi Hays?

  GPT 5.4 Pro, funniest joke in the world.

• 11:32John Coogan?

  Okay, what is it? This is, this is my personal movie 37. If I, if I laugh at this, I have not read.

• 11:37Jordi Hays?

  Thought for 3 minutes 25 seconds. Here's a classic contender for that title. Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed over. The other guy whips out his phone and calls emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead, what should I do?" The operator says, "Calm down first, make sure he's dead." There's a silence, then a loud gunshot. Back on the phone, the guy says, "Okay, now what?"

• 12:07John Coogan?

  I've heard this, I've heard this before. This is good knowledge retrieval. This is not unique thinking. What do you think?

• 12:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, also, so I just tried this on my own. It gave the same exact answer.

• 12:15John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  So which is, I think, usually when you ask like, tell me a joke, it actually gives you like, kind of random answers, right? Because it has like the memory and stuff.

• 12:22John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  But it's interesting that this, it gives the same joke every time. That's that exact prompt.

• 12:26John Coogan?

  For that exact prompt. I mean, there must be some sort of like SEO AIO well out there in the data, maybe on Reddit. Like maybe Reddit had a vote at some point and like this was voted most funny joke or something.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I also did the shrimp.

• 12:42John Coogan?

  You did shrimp bench? Okay, let's hear shrimp bench. What you got for me? Anything new come out this time?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  I think some of these are new.

• 12:50John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Okay, you're telling me these buffalo wings came from a buffalo?

• 12:55John Coogan?

  That's not the format.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  You're telling me this baby oil was made from babies?

• 13:01John Coogan?

  That's just weird.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 13:04John Coogan?

  No.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  You're telling me this devil's food cake was baked by the devil? I think it kind of.

• 13:10John Coogan?

  This is like misunderstanding.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:11John Coogan?

  Like what the actual prompt is.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  They're all kind of the same format.

• 13:15John Coogan?

  It's the same prompt.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, you're telling me the, the, the full prompt is can you come up with 10 jokes in the same format as the, you're telling me shrimp fried this rice.

• 13:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:24John Coogan?

  It's almost like they're, they're, they're doing RL to optimize for like more economically valuable tasks and not to just like make endless jokes that will satisfy me.

• 13:35John Coogan?

  Because, uh, it, it does seem like they're climbing the benchmarks, but, uh, uh, we need comedy bench, clearly. Comedy bench.

• 13:42Jordi Hays?

  Well, sometimes people that are the most functional in organizations don't have the greatest sense of humor.

• 13:49John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 13:50Jordi Hays?

  So it could be a factor.

• 13:51John Coogan?

  That could be a factor.

• 13:53Jordi Hays?

  We do need a model that's, that you can turn on instead of thinking mode, class clown mode. I guess Grok does that a little bit.

• 14:00John Coogan?

  But it's like the type of class clown that gets kicked out of school.

• 14:03Jordi Hays?

  Expelled.

• 14:04John Coogan?

  Expelled.

• 14:05Jordi Hays?

  Expelled.

• 14:06John Coogan?

  Uh, Grok has been on a wild run. Uh, Ben Hodak says he's been using GPT 5.4 for the past few weeks in a sea of endless model drops and benchmark maxing. This model is the first in a long time to be worth your time to try. Honestly, didn't expect OpenAI to pull this off. Who else has something going on? Poke AI Mon, Pokemon. Uh, experimenting with GPT 5.4 autonomously editing and rewriting Pokemon, the Pokemon Red ROM, replacing Pokemon with AIs. Details below. That's a fun hack project. I, uh, I saw someone, uh, pointed one of the models at, uh, Red Dead Redemption 2. Did you see that?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:47John Coogan?

  That was really cool. Uh, the actual result was very, was very minor. It was like a minor change to the game, but that feels more. Like, we might see a vibe coding style boom from mods, then...

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw a lot of like vibe coded games. Uh, Nick on the team was, he made some vibe coded games.

• 15:08John Coogan?

  I saw that. And then I also saw, you know, Levels IO had the, uh, the airplane game. Um, but it's just so much better when you start with a, like, these mashups are what AI is so good at. The Harry Potter Balenciaga moment. And so if you think about like, okay, well, there's a game out there that has really, really solid mechanics for running around and pointing a gun at each other and like, doing 5v5 deathmatch, right? And you could use the Quake engine, or the Source engine, or Unreal, or something. But like, 90% of the game is there, like Roblox, but you have a little bit, you get even more out of the box, and then you're just writing a mod on top of that. That feels a lot more tractable than what Schulto was getting at with like, "I'm gonna build an RTS from scratch." That seems like maybe a little bit far.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like reskinning it.

• 15:53John Coogan?

  Reskinning it?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  It seems very like...

• 15:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he loves, uh, uh, Age of Empires, and reskinning Age of Empire seems very doable. I don't know how compact the binary is for Age of Empires 2. I imagine that there are mods. I saw someone had some like insane setup for The Sims, where they were running like so many mods that their computer like wasn't even handling them, because they had like 75 mods, or like hundreds of mods. Uh, so the modding community is crazy. Uh, I wonder if it gets, uh, if it gets supercharged by this. Uh, we'll have to find some mods, but...

• 16:24Jordi Hays?

  Angel over on X, one-shotted Minecraft.

• 16:27John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 16:28Jordi Hays?

  Pulled this up. Took 24 minutes.

• 16:32John Coogan?

  What do you mean they one-shotted Minecraft? How is that possible?

• 16:35Jordi Hays?

  I think it generated this entire...

• 16:37John Coogan?

  This game in like...

• 16:37Jordi Hays?

  Game.

• 16:38John Coogan?

  In like HTML or something?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's always hard, because like, I mean, there are endless examples of like Minecraft remakes on GitHub and stuff.

• 16:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  But it is very cool.

• 16:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Fully running.

• 16:47John Coogan?

  And, and like truly like a very smart agent should be using as many tools as possible. And so if there's an open source implementation, it should just fork that and then be like, cool.

• 16:56Jordi Hays?

  Again, to comp it, to comp it, to... Like work that you would do at a company.

• 17:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Jordi Hays?

  If somebody comes to you and they're like, I actually reinvented math.

• 17:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Jordi Hays?

  In order to, in order to accomplish this task. What? It's like, no, you just want somebody to get the job done. It doesn't matter exactly how they do it.

• 17:18John Coogan?

  I talked about, there was a drone company that wasn't using Linux. They were like, yeah, like, let's, like, like, not, not just like, let's write our own software stack. Or like, now, obviously, you should be using like ImageNet and like whatever off the shelf tools are available for SLAM. Meta has a bunch of open source stuff. You should be compiling all that together, but to rewrite like the, the operating system. Because like you want, you know, full control. Typically, you know, if, if somebody says a website, wants a website, you're not going to like, you're going to be like, let's go. Maybe just set up a Shopify if you need that, set up a, a, you know, some sort of like, you know, hosted site. You're not going to rebuild EngineX or whatever else you need to actually use as a web server. But this is a cool demo.

• 18:02John Coogan?

  It looks pretty fully functional. I'm, I'm, I'm excited for the, for the gaming boom. I, I think, I'm, I'm still holding my breath to like, still some things like charting. We saw that with, with Spotify, like there is AI music that's charting now. And I, and I've listened to some of it and some of the ones where, again, mashups, where it's like a 50s or 60s rendition, barbershop quartet of a, of a 2000s rap song. That's really cool because it's like, there's some ground truth there that like keeps you grounded and relevant. A lot of the image mashups are really cool. And I imagine that a lot of the games are really cool, like a Sims skin that's Call of Duty themed or something.

• 18:43John Coogan?

  Like taking these two themes, like putting them together in an interesting way where it's like the game engine's familiar. The content's familiar, but they never, but they haven't crossed before and like they can in the world of, of AI.

• 18:56Jordi Hays?

  Theo has been using 5.4 for a week now, absurdly good model, don't really like using anything else anymore.

• 19:02John Coogan?

  He really likes, he really likes 5.4. He was doing a whole livestream about this. What did the prime agent, the other streamer?

• 19:07Jordi Hays?

  Somebody, somebody responded to Theo and said, every time a new model released, your statement changes. And he says, that's because newer models tend to be better than older ones.

• 19:20Jordi Hays?

  The always has great, great breakdowns of new models would go over to his account.

• 19:25John Coogan?

  And he's like, yeah, he's, he's an interesting position because he's streaming a lot and, and commentating, but he's also like building stuff, as is the prime agent who says, I hope everyone is ready for the upcoming 5.4 glaze wave. The hype cycle is going to be a big one. Well, we will.

• 19:41Jordi Hays?

  Let's give it up for hype cycles.

• 19:43John Coogan?

  Yes, and, and triple glazes.

• 19:47John Coogan?

  Triple glaze.

• 19:49Jordi Hays?

  Uh, heading over to Joe Weisenthal.

• 19:52John Coogan?

  In the economy.

• 19:53Jordi Hays?

  Uh, we got a big miss in jobs. U S loses 92,000 jobs in February. Unemployment rises to 4.4%. Economists had expected 55,000 jobs to be added and for the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.3. Not good at all. If I guess if you look back, the economy's just been shedding jobs since April of 2025. If you factor in the revisions down.

• 20:25John Coogan?

  Yeah. Apparently there's a strike in the healthcare industry. So healthcare employment decreased. And then healthcare in information and federal government continue to trend down, probably something related to the Trump administration, you know, reducing the size of the government. Last two months were revised down by 69,000. Not all the data was terrible. U6 fell as the number of people who said they had part-time jobs but wanted full-time ones actually declined. So, uh, stock futures are lower, but not a ton of reaction to the number itself. Porto says, I've noticed some of my tech friends have lost jobs. Some jobs are becoming super easy. Some jobs had parts that were a pain and now those parts are super

• 21:10John Coogan?

  easy. Some people leaned into AI to stay relevant. Still wonder if it will replace them entirely. Well, we will continue to track it. Brent is now close to $90. This prediction, the hundred dollar bottle, the hundred dollar barrel, uh, predicted, uh, on last Sunday, uh, as the Iran war broke out.

• 21:31John Coogan?

  Is closer and closer to coming true. There are now predictions.

• 21:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, crude is up eleven and a half percent today.

• 21:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Jordi Hays?

  Not good.

• 21:42John Coogan?

  It's, it's very interesting how, how it affects the economy or the various markets. So, I mean, the NASDAQ slid a lot less than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. So, the Dow Jones.

• 21:56Jordi Hays?

  Put it into startup terms.

• 21:58John Coogan?

  Hard tax.

• 21:59Jordi Hays?

  Imagine if your AWS or GCP bill, your Azure bill.

• 22:04John Coogan?

  Oh, sure.

• 22:05Jordi Hays?

  Went up a hundred percent in a week.

• 22:08John Coogan?

  So.

• 22:09Jordi Hays?

  But it's for the entire economy.

• 22:11John Coogan?

  The NASDAQ slid point three percent, but the industrials slipped one point six percent. Obviously, because industrials are more sensitive to oil because they make things, they build things. And so, anything that's sensitive to oil. The interesting question is, how will the American oil drillers react? They were, at least in the Journal earlier this week, sort of reflecting on the fact that if this is a short-lived engagement, then they might not want to spin up a bunch of new capacity. But if it's ongoing and, and the price of oil is continuing to rise, then obviously that creates an economic incentive to drill more. And so, we will, we will see where, like, the outputs go, where the reserves get tapped, all of that.

• 22:56John Coogan?

  There's a follow-up to a discussion you were having with Dan Primack yesterday. First, let me tell you about Consul. Consul builds AI agents that automate seventy percent of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. And let me also tell you about CrowdStrike. Your business is AI, their business is securing it. CrowdStrike secures AI and stops breaches. So, the question you had for Dan Primack was something along the lines of, will the Iran war affect investment from Gulf State, neighboring Gulf State investment groups, into American venture capital funds? We've seen as venture capitalists boomed and the fundraisers have gotten into the tens

• 23:39John Coogan?

  of billions, the high billions for many firms.

• 23:45John Coogan?

  The Middle East has been a source of strong LP demand for venture capital stakes. And so with instability in Iran, you might just see folks change focus with new demands for defense investing, military buildup investing, you might see less dollars flow out of the Gulf into American venture capital firms. Dan's point, it seemed like, was this should mostly be unaffected because the folks who actually work at the Gulf State Investment Funds, who write the checks into American venture capital firms, they don't live in the Middle East, they live in New York. And they meet with other venture capital investor relations folks in New York, and

• 24:30John Coogan?

  they say, hey, how's your fund performance? Okay, we're allocating this. And then Dan's second point was, well, a big part of why they're investing in American technology, in venture capital, in frontier technology in America specifically, is because they want to diversify away from the Gulf. They want to diversify away from the geopolitical risk, and they want to diversify away from oil.

• 24:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. That said, the reason I asked is, think about if you have a job, let's say you have a big tech job, you're doing quite well, you're doing some angel investing, and then you lose your job, and then you have to get a much worse job, are you going to keep angel investing at the same pace? You might be like, hey, I kind of have this kind of disconnect, less cash flow, I don't want to be outlaying as much cash now. And I think that that's like, ultimately, you know, if the source of the cash flow gets disrupted, in this case being oil production, then you're much less likely to continue to allocate at the same pace. So, The Financial Times has a story this late yesterday, Gulf States Could Review Overseas

• 25:35Jordi Hays?

  Investments to Ease Financial Strains Caused by Iran War.

• 25:40Jordi Hays?

  Three leading Middle East economies consider options as US Israeli campaign against Tehran continues. Pressure on the Gulf states' budget could cause them to review their overseas investments and future commitments as they consider options to ease the financial strain caused by the war. A Gulf official said it could have an impact on anything from investment pledges to foreign states or companies, sports, sponsorships, contracts with businesses and investors, or sales of holdings. The official said three of the four big Gulf economies Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar had jointly discussed the strains being put on their budget and economies, but they declined to name the states. A number of Gulf countries have begun an internal review to determine whether force

• 26:22Jordi Hays?

  majeure clauses can be invoked in current contracts while also reviewing current and future investment commitments in order to alleviate some of the anticipated economic strain from the current war, especially if the war and related expenses continue at the same pace. They added that the move was a precautionary measure that was the result of the budget strains these countries are facing due to reduced income from energy due to the slowdown in output or the inability to ship and from the tourism and aviation sectors in addition to the increase in defense spending. So, a bunch of different factors combining. An adviser to a Gulf government said the prospect of an investment review by the wealthy

• 27:05Jordi Hays?

  states had caught the White House's attention. They manage some of the world's largest and most active sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Last year pledged to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the US after President Donald Trump visited the region. They are also big backers of sporting events around the world and have all been investing heavily domestically to develop their nations and diversify their economies. Any move that affects investments in the US or other Western states may raise the pressure on Trump to seek a diplomatic strategy to bring the war to an end. I believe as of this morning Iran said we're not interested in a ceasefire and we're ready for a ground invasion, so basically calling.

• 27:48John Coogan?

  I hadn't considered the impact that this would have on tourism. Like, I mean, I also didn't understand how big of a deal tourism is in the Middle East. I just looked it up. Apparently, the UAE Dubai, you know, specifically, 11, 12% of their GDP is tourism. Saudi Arabia is 7 to 9%, Qatar is 8 to 10%. Of course, they had that big push during the World Cup. Kuwait's much lower at 2.2 to 3%, but this is still significant. You have to imagine that this, that tourism will fall off of a cliff. And then there also might be some expatriation, where if you have, you know, moved to Dubai because you are tax treatment.

• 28:33Jordi Hays?

  There's already reports of people moving money out of Dubai towards Singapore.

• 28:37John Coogan?

  Moving money out, yeah, Singapore, exactly. So, all of that could have knock-on effects. When I first saw this, this article, and you said this to me, I was like, ah, this might just be a way to, you know, put business pressure on the United States, saying like, hey, let's wrap this up, let's not have an economic impact here. This is, this is something that, you know, we're going to pull out of investments in the United States. And so, that creates an incentive for the United States to, to, to, you know, bring a clean close to the war as fast as possible and, and seek a, you know, peaceful resolution.

• 29:10Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, of course, all, all the Gulf states were, you know, encouraging the administration not to enter into a, into a conflict and pursue a diplomatic solution. Khalaf Al-Habthor, a prominent Emirati businessman, reflected Gulf frustrations. He went on X yesterday and said, "A direct question: Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with Iran? And on what basis did you make this dangerous decision? Did you calculate the collateral damage before pulling the trigger?" And, so anyways, obvious.

• 29:50Jordi Hays?

  Frustration in other news, Joe Weisenthal is studying Texas man camps with everything from catered food to golf simulators that are springing up in order to lure workers out to construct data centers.

• 30:07John Coogan?

  Oh yeah?

• 30:07Jordi Hays?

  They're building man camps. It is a bull market in man camps. AI man camps offer golf free stakes to lure workers in Texas. This Tyler could get on board with. We should build a man camp here.

• 30:21John Coogan?

  We should.

• 30:22Jordi Hays?

  We kind of, we kind of do. I mean, we talked about, we talked about getting racing simulators and then we ultimately backed off just because when you're at the office, you should probably be working.

• 30:32John Coogan?

  I, I, I've tried it before and like games in the office, it's always just weird because like there's all these little interactions where I'm like, I'm sort of waiting on you to do something, you're waiting on me to do something. If you just see me like racing there, you're going to be like, ah, can't you like, you know, fix this or there's always something else to do. And so it's much better just to do like proper offsites.

• 30:55Jordi Hays?

  That is making me extremely disappointed right now.

• 30:58John Coogan?

  I mean, I don't know. Also.

• 31:00Jordi Hays?

  How much does my vote count here?

• 31:02John Coogan?

  You're, you're in favor of, of racing simulators? I, I, I've just seen them get built and then seen them not get used because people either want to leave and go be at home in private or, or if they're, if they're there, it's just like, okay, like, you know, what, what are you doing here? Maybe it's like some sort of like shared thing, but the cost is usually much higher to own as opposed to just like rent for an offsite. I don't know. Uh, I, I haven't seen, I haven't seen enough like, uh, positive case studies to, to think that it's good. Let me tell you about Plaid. Plaid powers the apps you use to spend, save, borrow and invest. Securely connecting bank accounts to move money, fight fraud and improve lending now with AI. And let me also tell you about Figma.

• 31:45John Coogan?

  No matter where your idea starts, Figma made Claude Code, Codex, or a sketch, the Figma Canvas is where ideas connect and products take shape. Build in the right direction with Figma.

• 31:55Jordi Hays?

  OTP says, I agree, games in the office are a bad idea, but what about a petting zoo?

• 31:59John Coogan?

  Ooh, a petting zoo is good.

• 32:02Jordi Hays?

  I like where you're going with this.

• 32:03John Coogan?

  A petting zoo is dangerously close to frat dog, though, which never works out. You can't, you can't get a collective dog. Like, a dog is man's best friend, not men's best friend. Like, needs an individual owner, somewhat, a caretaker. The buck has to stop with someone, you know? And so, I think that's the way.

• 32:21Jordi Hays?

  Companies are competing for workers to build data centers. And are finding that a motel room with sluggish Wi-Fi isn't much of a draw. Try free steaks and golf simulators. As data center development has exploded with the rise of AI, competition for water and power supplies is pushing construction further into rural areas that often lack the housing and infrastructure to support the hundreds or thousands of temporary workers needed to build hulking warehouses of computer servers. That's forcing developers to increasingly lean on a stopgap solution that was popularized during the shale oil boom of the 2010s, sprawling temporary villages known as man camps. These temporary housing villages can vary from wood-framed, two-story apartment buildings

• 33:07Jordi Hays?

  to containerized modular homes or trailer parks supplied with electricity and water. But to lure in-demand electricians, welders, and pipe fitters, developers are going the extra mile and offering game rooms, ribeyes, and shuttle rides to work. That's fueling a lucrative niche for companies, including Target Hospitality and Civio, that specialize in mobile housing. It's effectively a backdoor play for a share of what Bloomberg Intelligence estimates is 700 billion of projects in the planning stage and another 160 billion already underway throughout the US. It's the largest, most actionable pipeline I've seen.

• 33:47Jordi Hays?

  The sites aren't the epitome of luxury, but they sure beat what Shrink calls Hotel F250, sleeping in a vehicle and spending a per diem allowance on food. Typically, the construction companies that work with Target Hospitality offer housing, meals, and amenities to their employees for free as long as they're working. It's an additional lure for tradespeople already enjoying significant pay hikes with some data center electricians making more than $150,000 a year. Not bad at all.

• 34:16John Coogan?

  Should we kick it over to Tyler's piece?

• 34:20Jordi Hays?

  Let's do it.

• 34:21John Coogan?

  The short history of nationalization in the United States. Tyler Cosgrove took the daily op-ed in the TBPN newsletter today. Thank you, Tyler. And he took us on a whirlwind tour of the history of nationalization. Of course, this is in the news as the showdown between Anthropic and the Department of War continues. We're, of course, hoping for a unified front moving forward and lots of back and forth, potentially some capitulation recently, but we will see as the story keeps evolving. But we want to know the history so that we can predict the future. So Tyler, take us through it.

• 35:02John Coogan?

  What did you learn about the history of nationalization in the United States?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's very interesting.

• 35:10John Coogan?

  Just immediately. There we go. Nailed it.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so I think, yeah, so whichever way like the Anthropic Pentagon stuff like evolves, like I think it's very clear that this is not like the last time government deals will be made, right? Like the OpenAI deal is not the last deal that OpenAI will make with the government.

• 35:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, and there was already a discussion of like the backstop. And when the backstop gate happened, there was a big question about like, okay, it seems like, you know, bearish, but also like, should there be a backstop? Like, maybe if it's an important technology, like we've done this before. So take us through some of this.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, like, all the lab leaders are also, they've been talking about this again and again, right? You've seen, I also say in this that, you know, they're always like extremely vague about it, right?

• 35:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  You know, we all got to figure out.

• 35:56John Coogan?

  We got to talk about it.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Figure out what we're going to do about this. We got to talk to the government and the government is like, we got to talk to the AI lab leaders. And no one really says anything meaningful.

• 36:03John Coogan?

  Everyone agrees that we should be talking, which is why bullish for TBPN, because all we do is talk.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, but but basically, like, if you think about like, future regulation, right? You have this this spectrum of like, we do literally nothing, which is like, closer to to kind of what we have now.

• 36:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Or you do like, full-scale nationalization.

• 36:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  So there's kind of this spectrum. So I was curious, like, okay, in the past, like, during different events, like, what happened?

• 36:28John Coogan?

  Is the nuclear weapon analogy like, the most extreme example, where it is, like, I can go build a railroad, railroads, as you'll tell us, have been nationalized before, but I legally cannot start a company that builds nuclear weapons at all, and so that's like, the most nationalized?

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think also over time-

• 36:46Jordi Hays?

  There's a bunch of different subcontractors that supply the components that ultimately-

• 36:50John Coogan?

  Yes, but what I'm saying is that, like, if we end up in the in the AI is nuclear weapons camp, like, you cannot train a foundation model, because that's like, the nuclear warhead development, essentially. That's like, the most extreme.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think broadly, that's that's the most extreme example. That's also what, you know, Leopold, in situational awareness, he has the project, right? It's kind of the the Manhattan project, you know, version of AI, right?

• 37:16John Coogan?

  Yeah. And AI 2027 also sort of predicted nationalization at some point, right?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they have the timeline, they have, I think it's Open Brain, and there's also the government. There's kind of these two competing, like, labs, right? So maybe they kind of stay separate, maybe they come become the same thing.

• 37:29John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  But yeah, I can just list out a few, like, interesting, you know, events in in US history that's like-

• 37:35John Coogan?

  Yeah, please, take it for-

• 37:36Speaker 02

  At least nationalization-adjacent.

• 37:39John Coogan?

  Why are you doing crickets?

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Okay, so the first one is is the, like, the the Nat, like, the Federal Bank, right? So first and second bank of the of the United States. I don't know if people really consider this nationalization, right? It's very much like, public policy, but it is like, a a public-private, you know, institution where the government owns, like, actual equity.

• 38:01John Coogan?

  Yeah. Okay, so, America founded 1776. Within 30 years, they're like, we got to nationalize some stuff. 1791, the first bank of the United States is is nationalized. So it was it was started as a private company, and then the government said, hey, we want a stake in this, is that right?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think for this, I I define nationalization as just like- Maybe they're not actually taking over a private company, but they're doing something that is usually regulated to private companies.

• 38:28John Coogan?

  Got it, okay. So even if the government is founding it as a project?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like Manhattan Project is like nationalization, I think most people describe it as that, but there wasn't an atomic bomb company that they took over.

• 38:39John Coogan?

  Oh, that's true, and same thing with NASA and the moon mission. Apollo program was not some, it wasn't a private entity that got nationalized. So that's sort of the most extreme, like de novo starts as a government project.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 38:54John Coogan?

  That makes sense.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yes, so then you see stuff like during war, you'll see this as a common occurrence. So during the Civil War, there was the railroads and the telegraphs. These were essentially nationalized, right?

• 39:06John Coogan?

  1862 Civil War Railroad and Telegraphed Act gave the president authority to take possession of any and all telegraph lines and railroads when public safety required it. Interesting.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then you see 1914, there's the Alaskan Railroad. So, big Alaska guy.

• 39:27John Coogan?

  Dream for me, yeah. What happened there?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Yes, so there basically was not any like real private investment going into Alaska, and then the government says like, okay, we're gonna step in, we're gonna fund it, but then we actually, they ran it until, I think, 1985.

• 39:43John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  And then it went back, I believe, to the state of Alaska.

• 39:46John Coogan?

  Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, so sort of like government funding to get something off the ground that then leaves. And that, I mean, that is another interesting scenario that I don't think people are considering is like some sort of like temporary nationalization.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean-

• 40:01John Coogan?

  Okay, yeah, it's safe and we're good and like, yeah, we're ready to like release this, so like, let's privatize it again. That happens all the time.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  There's like an interesting aspect where like, like grants, if you get a grant from the government, that's not nationalization, right?

• 40:13John Coogan?

  No, no, no.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  They're just giving you money.

• 40:15John Coogan?

  It's just funding.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  But if the government takes equity in return for that-

• 40:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Okay, maybe you're like getting a little bit closer, and then at some point if they own all of it, like that's very much nationalization, right? So it's this very kind of like, you know, blurry gray area spectrum. But then again, during World War I, you see the railroads and the telephone telegraphs get nationalized again.

• 40:35John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  This is just like, you know, just to clean everything up, to make sure like, okay, the railroads, they're very busy, there's a lot of like stuff going on, we need to basically just optimize just for like military, you know, construction and stuff like this.

• 40:49John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Okay, so then 1933, there's the Tennessee Valley Authority.

• 40:55John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  So this is basically one of the first, like, you know, federal utility companies.

• 40:59John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  The idea is like, we gotta electrify a lot of rural parts of the US.

• 41:04John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  They start in, you know, Tennessee Valley, right?

• 41:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  And then they expand over time. But it's still like, this is usually a private company doing this.

• 41:12John Coogan?

  I feel like the Tennessee Valley Authority is still in the news because of, like, did the data center build out? Like, I'm pretty sure that they operate one of the grids that is relevant to at least some of the data centers. I've seen them in the news.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  I mean, we can skip over this. See, 1942, you have Man Hand Project. This is kind of like the epitome of nationalization. This is the example everyone goes back to.

• 41:34John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  You see, I mean, a lot of stuff during World War II, right? There's the seizure of, like, meatpacking facilities, petroleum industry facilities. A lot of these were because of, basically, like, union disagreements with FDR.

• 41:49John Coogan?

  Huh.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  And then he basically said, like, okay, we're just gonna seize this.

• 41:52John Coogan?

  Yes, some of these were interesting, because they happened sort of after the war. Like, the seizure of meatpacking facilities happened in 1946, so that must have been post-war. There's still gyrations in demand. There's still anomalies as you're transitioning out from the government being the only buyer, or like, the major buyer. The labor unions are trying to, like, get more control and recapitalize the business and become more of like, a normal corporation. And so, the government stepping in to sort of like, massage that is sort of interesting. I would love to dig into that more.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, then 1970, you see Amtrak.

• 42:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  So a lot of these are also, like, I mean, you see rail come up over and over.

• 42:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  But this was, this and Conrail, which is, you know, same decade a little bit later.

• 42:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  A lot of the railroads, or like, rails, were basically just like, in some areas, they're not used as much.

• 42:46John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  So then, they kind of start, like, you know, becoming worse in quality. People aren't keeping them, they're not maintaining them. So then the government steps in and says, okay, we're gonna run this. 1979, you have the like kind of second oil shock, right? From the Iranian revolution, so Chrysler ends up being.

• 43:07John Coogan?

  Rescued via loan guarantees.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:10John Coogan?

  So not equity, but a backstop on the debt.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:15John Coogan?

  To allow them.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  And again, I mean, this is like, okay, is that really nationalization? But I think it is still like, okay, it's the government stepping into, you know, the private sphere. 2001 TSA, I think this is a good example of nationalization, right? You see, before this, you basically have private contractors doing like security screening. 2001, you know, 9/11 happens, TSA comes in, we're going to take all this over.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  You have, in 2008, there's much stuff, right? You have like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in conservatorship. You have GM, basically is close to going out of business.

• 43:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  They're like a massive supplier, obviously for cars and stuff, but also for a bunch of defense purposes.

• 43:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  So the government.

• 43:58John Coogan?

  TSA is a funny one. I, that one makes so much sense, but it was not on the top of my mind when I, when I thought about nationalization. But I mean, you never flew pre TSA, have you?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I mean, I was born like four years after.

• 44:15John Coogan?

  That's crazy.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 44:16John Coogan?

  This happened. I flew pre TSA and, yeah, I mean, I barely remember it, but it is interesting that, yeah, it was like a private, it was the purview of the contractors and the airlines.

• 44:26Jordi Hays?

  It's crazy that until you were 30, it was just amazing.

• 44:30John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Nailed it.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Yes, so then, most recently, we've seen the Trump administration take, you know, equity in certain companies.

• 44:38John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Right, so this is like Intel, this is MP Materials.

• 44:42John Coogan?

  Yeah. Still very, very little like control of Intel.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is very much like. You know, it's kind of just like a grant, but they're they're taking equity.

• 44:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  You know, for it.

• 44:55John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, it's much more driven by a desire to just not let a national champion fail.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I don't think they have any board seats.

• 45:05John Coogan?

  Stability.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  In Intel.

• 45:07John Coogan?

  Yeah. No one's really comparing the the Intel stake to the Manhattan Project, at least not yet.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. So basically, what you what you see from this list is that I think you can kind of say that there's two axes that you can kind of plot everything on to. So there's like basically the strength of the nationalization, right? So, you know, the Intel stuff, it's like very weak. It's not really nationalization. No one really calls it that, maybe directionally, but, you know. And then you have Manhattan Project, right? This is very strong. This is like, okay, the government is running not just like a specific organization, but the entire industrial process. And then you also see maybe on like a kind of vertical axis is like the the reason for the nationalization, right? So you have basically in the US, we've had either like economic distress, we have like military, right? So like, you know, systemic systemic risk to the economy.

• 45:58John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  We have to save this company, or you have, you know, this is so important that we're going to lose a war.

• 46:02John Coogan?

  National security.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:03John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I think you can you can plot a bunch of these events.

• 46:09Jordi Hays?

  Why do I feel like Uncle Sam is going to have some exposure to private credit soon?

• 46:15John Coogan?

  Well, that'd be that would be, what, weak economic, sort of like a financial backstop potentially? I don't know. It doesn't seem too close to that doom scenario. But what, yeah, what are the other examples?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yes, so you can you can plot kind of all this stuff onto this like quadrants, right? So if you have like, you know, weak and economic, maybe that's like the the Intel deal, the empty material stuff, where it's just like, these are very important.

• 46:42John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  That we we make sure these don't go out of business, but like, you know, it's not like we're we're stopping and we're running these companies.

• 46:49John Coogan?

  Or even like the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, uh, uh, maybe that's stronger, but it's, it feels pretty, feels pretty weak and it feels very much not tied to national security, whereas TSA feels like a national security question.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:04John Coogan?

  And so much more like militaristic in its thrust.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so another example of like weak military, um, I said was like during World War II, you had, um, kind of a takeover of, of the GM's production lines. So it's not like, um, you know, we kind of threw out GM and said, we're just seizing everything and we're going to run it ourselves.

• 47:25John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  It was still, you know, kind of like a contractor thing.

• 47:27John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Um, but I think that was still like, you know, directionally.

• 47:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Nationalization, right?

• 47:31John Coogan?

  But the Defense Production Act allows, uh, the government to jump to the front of the line.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:36John Coogan?

  And say, you have to produce for us first, you have to produce to our specs, you have to, you have to treat us as your most important client on day one, and then maybe if there's extra capacity, you can still make, you can still make your old products.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, but even then, it's not like, you know, they're, they're taking the, the profits or stuff like this.

• 47:51John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  So I think, uh, like strong economic.

• 47:54John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  You have, uh, it was kind of hard to think of a good example in the US.

• 47:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Because I think people are generally like very anti this.

• 48:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Um, but I, I said something like the payment system in China.

• 48:04John Coogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Where you basically have every single payment, uh, at some point goes through like the state institution. They can kind of see it, um, and they can, you know, do whatever with that information. But I thought that was kind of an example of like strong nationalization where I, I forget the exact year this happened, but it was like, I think, within the past decade.

• 48:23John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  You have all these, um, kind of like internet native payment companies, and then at some point they kind of step in and say, you have to pass this through us.

• 48:30John Coogan?

  And there were, there, there were, there were discussions around that, uh, CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency, Fed Coin, um, something along those lines was discussed, but never really got off the ground. And so the, the USDC, the, the United States Dollar-backed stable coins wound up, uh, being privately held by a number of public companies, actually. Uh, and so we certainly didn't go the nationalization route there, but it was discussed at one point, I guess.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  And then in the strong military, you have Manhattan Project.

• 49:00John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  This is pretty obvious.

• 49:02John Coogan?

  It's a canonical example.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  So if you map this back onto AI, um, I think we can say, you know, Leopold is, is kind of in this Manhattan Project camp, so, so we can say he's probably, you know, uh, strong military, right, in, in this quadrant.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  I think if you're plotting other people, you know, Dario, Dario's talked a lot about the, you know, economic impacts of AI, right? You know, fifty percent of, you know, white collar work, entry-level white collar work, you know, may go away.

• 49:30John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  You're gonna need some response to that.

• 49:32John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  If it's the government, like, okay, if you're gonna do some sort of UBI, like, where do you get the money from? You need some kind of involvement of the AI companies. So I think he can-

• 49:40John Coogan?

  Maybe, maybe.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:41John Coogan?

  You can just tax, right?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  I mean, this is all very much-

• 49:43John Coogan?

  You can just tax profits, potentially.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Sure, yes.

• 49:45John Coogan?

  But yes.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, this is all like very-

• 49:47John Coogan?

  Can go further.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Speculative, but like, I think maybe he can be, you know, for stuff like that, that's broadly, I would say, in kind of the weak economic kind of quadrant.

• 49:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, I wonder, I wonder, uh...

• 50:03John Coogan?

  Yeah, I mean, you put, you put Dario at one point, sort of in like the, the weak economic side, like, he's thinking like, more that, that the next likely step, or the one that he's talking about right now is, is something that's more akin to the 2025 Intel deal, less Manhattan Project, but it still feels like the fact that his, his favorite book is, the book that he gives out is The Making of the Atomic Bomb, like, he has Manhattan Project on the brain. He has this idea.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, so he's talked about like, working with, you know, the military and stuff, but when he talks about like, government intervention-

• 50:36John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  It's almost always in the context of, of the economy.

• 50:39John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  So I think for that reason, I kind of put him over there, obviously, like, this is very, you know, it's unclear, really.

• 50:45John Coogan?

  I mean, it is, it is in the context of the economy, but at the same time, when he discusses giving Nvidia GPUs to China, he says that's akin to giving nukes to North Korea. And so he, he doesn't shy away from the Manhattan Project analogy as much as people think.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I-

• 51:03John Coogan?

  He has, he has shied away from it recently, but yes, it, it, it feels like he, and, and that's why I was sort of against you trying to like, put him on this chart in some way, because I think he actually has considered all of these, and, and, and sort of, it's a much more of a matter of timelines, like, what he thinks will happen soon, what he is in favor of, what he is against, a lot of that aligns to- Who is in power, what the administration is doing, what the plan is, but I think he sees all of these different scenarios as potential outcomes. Some of them he'd be in favor of, some of them he'd be more resistant to.

• 51:43Jordi Hays?

  Well, I can't wait to watch his new interview with The Economist,

• 51:48John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 51:48Jordi Hays?

  which is sponsored and presented by Anthropic.

• 51:51John Coogan?

  That was a funny, that was a funny move. But do we have a video we want to pull up?

• 51:56Jordi Hays?

  Well, it just came out a couple hours ago.

• 51:59John Coogan?

  Okay. There is a clip in here, right? Anthropic CEO, "I apologize for leaked memo from The Economist." Dario Amodei says he's sorry. "In his first interview since the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk, the first American company to receive that designation, the firm's boss offered a mea culpa for the way he handled a crisis that he described as one of the most, quote, 'disorienting' in Anthropic's history." So, we can pull up this vertical clip from The Economist. "The Economist getting in the vertical video game was long overdue but welcomed. I am very excited. I've been a fan of The Economist for a very, very long time." And so, we can pull up this clip from The Economist in the timeline and play this for the audience.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  ...dictator-style praise on President Trump. Do you regret having said that?

• 52:48Speaker 04

  So, yeah, I want to completely apologize for this, for this memo. So, I want to make sure that people understand, right? Like, this was something written on Friday after the following three things that happened. The President tweeted, "Removing all Anthropic services from the federal government." The Secretary of War tweeted, "Designating us a supply chain risk," with a kind of broader version of the designation than the one that ultimately ended up actually being applied. And then there was this deal between, you know, between one of the other AI model providers and the Department of War that I think even that model provider later described as, I don't remember the exact words, but you know...

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Opportunistic.

• 53:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna say confusing, right? So, you know, so basically, all these three things said happened in within a few hours, you know, in kind of sequence, you know, in kind of sequence from each other. We didn't know ahead of time what was going to happen, when it was going to happen. So it was among the most disorienting times in kind of in kind of in kind of Anthropic's history. The other side of it is, you know, I think Anthropic has an internal culture where I post a lot, like, some people describe this as a memo. I wouldn't describe it as that, like, I post things in Slack, I post them a lot. And the culture within the company is that I'm very free and, you know, it's not like

• 54:15Speaker 04

  it's not like a considered, you know, it's not like a really considered or refined version of my thinking, right? It's not what I would say on reflection.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  You've been very clear now, you've apologized for the memo. Have you apologized to President Trump? Will you apologize to him?

• 54:28Speaker 04

  I've apologized to the people that I've talked to within the D O W. You know, I'm happy to speak to others within the administration as well. I kind of don't know what will happen in the future, but, you know, I'm, you know, I'm really happy to, you know, I'm really happy to speak to anyone.

• 54:47John Coogan?

  Is that capitulation? It certainly seems like retrenchment, moving backwards, trying to polish things up, trying to potentially heal the divide. The, my, my favorite analysis that I saw-

• 55:01Jordi Hays?

  One thing that's interesting is externally, he will never say OpenAI. And yet, in the internal comms, like, it's, there's clearly like an insane obsession with OpenAI.

• 55:14John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:14Jordi Hays?

  Right? Like, externally, he'll always say, like, another model, AI model provider, and then internally, it's just like heavily, you know, he'll never say Sam's name externally, and then internally, it's just entirely fixated on Sam.

• 55:29John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Jordi Hays?

  I want to hold comments until I watch the whole thing.

• 55:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, I agree. There was a lot of drama. It's been a very crazy week. It's got to be good to be ending the week and maybe get some well deserved rest going into the weekend. Gregory C. Allen went on Strategery and had a fantastic conversation with Ben Thompson. Allen is a senior advisor at the Wadani AI Center and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, a nonpartisan think tank that was founded in 1962. He also worked at the DOD for a while. And he closed the interview with a very interesting quote and a perspective

• 56:10John Coogan?

  that I hadn't thought of that was really calling for unity and just the desire for the government to like work through this in a positive way and get to like a good outcome, a good agreement. And I thought the way he phrased it was very good. So I'll just read this quote. He said, "But for me, the starting point has to be this. Dario used to work at Google. He is, I think it's pretty obvious to everyone involved, probably sympathetic to the political left. And this guy has converted this entire generation of folks who were skeptical about the national security establishment to enthusiastically

• 56:52John Coogan?

  supporting the military. What a gift he is in that regard. And so to demonize him is just so damaging to Silicon Valley national securities, to Silicon Valley's national security relations in a way that I just cringe at. Because if you can get somebody like Dario enthusiastic about national security, if Dario can get thousands of Anthropic employees who, you know, five years ago were probably like in an EA group home talking about pacifism and veganism, and get those guys excited about national security, what a gift, what a gift to the to the national security community. What a gift that he has brought that community on board with literally developing autonomous weapons, not using them, subject to no human

• 57:33John Coogan?

  oversight, but developing them, ready to go. This is so much progress. Don't take us backwards." And so he's, of course, referencing to Project Maven where Google was working with the Department of Defense. In a much more limited way, and there was this employee revolt and there was this big divide between the employees and the leadership. And Anthropic, Dario, has been able to get the Anthropic employees so far along that in Gregory Allen's perspective, this is something that is sort of a gift to the government and that they should be willing to deal with the rough edges, work through this to get to a good outcome.

• 58:14John Coogan?

  So, we're all hoping to a good outcome. Anyway, let's move on. Let's see.

• 58:26Jordi Hays?

  Is it that time?

• 58:28John Coogan?

  I think it's time for the mansion section. Let's move on to the mansion section. Let me tell you about Vanta first. Automatic compliance and security. Vanta is the leading AI trust management platform. And let me also tell you about VOD.co. We're DTC brands, B2B startups and AI companies, advertisers, streaming TV. Pick channels, target audiences, measure sales, just like on Meta.

• 58:48Jordi Hays?

  It's time for the mansion section.

• 58:53John Coogan?

  Don't we have special lights? Wait, we're going green today? I thought the mansion section was purple. Anyway. An ex Marvel CEO lists his home in a secretive California community. I know you got a soft spot for these secretive communities, Jordy. We're gonna pull this one up. So, homes in this enclave, the Smoke Tree Ranch in Palm Springs, they usually trade between family and friends. But Eric Ellenbogen is testing the open market. At Smoke Tree Ranch in Palm Springs, homes usually trade quietly between family members and friends, but for former Marvel Enterprises CEO Eric Ellenbogen. And I gotta know, is Marvel Enterprises, is that Marvel Entertainment?

• 59:39John Coogan?

  Or is that a different company? It seems like it's Marvel Entertainment. But anyway, Eric Allen Bogan clearly has done very well. He purchased the oldest.

• 59:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's now it's now called Marvel Entertainment. It used to be called Marvel Enterprises.

• 59:53John Coogan?

  Amazing, amazing. So he purchased this house at Smoke Tree in 2021 for 3.95 million. Now it's hitting the.

• 1:00:00Jordi Hays?

  They were giving it away.

• 1:00:01John Coogan?

  Million is bucking the trend by listing the house publicly. Quote, "We felt strongly that offering the property on the open market would provide the greatest opportunity to identify the right architectural steward." You gotta be an architectural steward to pick this one up. I love I love when people like go to sell their houses and then they have a bunch of strings attached, you know? We talked to the the guy or we read the story about the singer from Kiss, the rock band, and he was like, "I don't want to sell to anyone who drinks alcohol."

• 1:00:37Jordi Hays?

  Which is crazy. It wasn't the house like the most like.

• 1:00:40John Coogan?

  It was the most like crazy, over the top, bachelor pad. Yeah, yeah, it was total party house in the Hollywood Hills. And Kiss is a rock band. Like, they definitely had the wildest times, or I mean, at least that was like the aesthetic. I don't know if they were maybe they were straight edge the whole time. But this house at Smoke Tree Ranch sits at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. It has a near mythical status in Palm Springs. Derek, dating to the early 1900s, the ranch has long drawn some of America's wealthiest families, including Walt Disney and the Ford family of the Ford Motor Company. In case you weren't sure what the Ford family was. Known for its Wild West feel, the community has dirt roads and unassuming homes, many of which still belong to the families that built them.

• 1:01:22John Coogan?

  Allen Bogan's home, built in the 1930s, has been owned by the Gilmore Pharmaceutical family for more than 90 years before he bought it.

• 1:01:29Jordi Hays?

  Let's give it up to Big Pharma.

• 1:01:30John Coogan?

  Allen Bogan worked to have the home successfully designated as a historical landmark. It sits on 1.8 acres. It's roughly 5,500 square feet, surrounds a central courtyard with a large pool.

• 1:01:42Jordi Hays?

  Are you are you liking this house, John?

• 1:01:44John Coogan?

  I'm not a desert guy. I'm a forest guy. I know you're a beach guy. I like the forest.

• 1:01:49Jordi Hays?

  I'm, I consider myself a bit of a desert.

• 1:01:52John Coogan?

  You, you like the desert.

• 1:01:53Jordi Hays?

  But I'm not, I'm not feeling this house at all.

• 1:01:55John Coogan?

  You're not feeling this house?

• 1:01:56Jordi Hays?

  Not one bit.

• 1:01:57John Coogan?

  Not one bit?

• 1:01:58Jordi Hays?

  Not one bit.

• 1:02:00John Coogan?

  How much would you pay for it? What's the fair price?

• 1:02:02Jordi Hays?

  Uh.

• 1:02:03John Coogan?

  What price are you like a buyer?

• 1:02:05Jordi Hays?

  I don't think it's fair for me to price it because I really don't, I really don't like it.

• 1:02:08John Coogan?

  You really don't like it?

• 1:02:10Jordi Hays?

  I don't think I'm the kind of steward they're looking for.

• 1:02:12John Coogan?

  Oh, you would, you, you, you would change this into a, into a 20-story apartment complex immediately?

• 1:02:17Jordi Hays?

  In general, I like, I like, I like ranch-style houses, single-story. I like this layout around, around the pool, this courtyard. I like homes that, that kind of face in, right, towards, towards kind of like a shared communal space, but I'm not, I'm not loving it.

• 1:02:36John Coogan?

  Unpack it. Like, what don't you like about it?

• 1:02:37Jordi Hays?

  I mean, just, uh, the textures.

• 1:02:41John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:41Jordi Hays?

  The colors.

• 1:02:43John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:43Jordi Hays?

  It, it doesn't appear to be, like, again, again, I like, I like, I like a classic, I like, I like the classic kind of, I like a home that is classic structurally.

• 1:02:58John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:58Jordi Hays?

  But this looks like nothing has been, like, this feels like living in, uh, you know, like, you'd be living in like a, kind of like a, like a Hollywood, uh, set, right?

• 1:03:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Jordi Hays?

  Not like a home that's been.

• 1:03:12John Coogan?

  I feel like the materials are a little mixed in some of these cases, like the hardwood cabinets, combined with like, sort of the furry chairs, like, the, the materials aren't, aren't feeling pure west.

• 1:03:23Jordi Hays?

  What's going on in this kitchen? This kitchen is a disaster. Pull up this kitchen, this kitchen, what's going on here? Look at these, look at these, like.

• 1:03:28John Coogan?

  It's, it's coming up, it's coming up. So, so that's not too bad. The overstuffed chairs, those are comfy.

• 1:03:34Jordi Hays?

  Okay, this, this is absolutely brutal.

• 1:03:35John Coogan?

  This, this, this. Look at those furry chairs. In the hardwood with the, with the wooden ceiling.

• 1:03:40Jordi Hays?

  Those chairs, those chairs with the wood on wood on wood on wood is absolutely.

• 1:03:45John Coogan?

  Dan Ratliff says it looks like a grandparents' house.

• 1:03:47Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48John Coogan?

  The pictures make it look mid. Well.

• 1:03:50Jordi Hays?

  Like, they're, they're like, oh, we gotta find the right person to, to steward this house. It's like, okay, grandpa, let's, let's put you to bed.

• 1:03:58John Coogan?

  That tile is criminal. Yeah, the chat is not.

• 1:04:01Jordi Hays?

  Ryan says full gut at minimum.

• 1:04:04John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, they uh.

• 1:04:07Jordi Hays?

  I agree, I agree.

• 1:04:08John Coogan?

  Brutal, absolutely brutal. Okay, well, we, why don't we, why don't we leave Palm Springs? We'll head over to Manhattan first. We'll tell you about Gemini 3.1 Pro. With a more capable baseline, it's great for super complex tasks like visualizing difficult concepts, synthesizing data into a single view, or bringing creative projects to life. Uh, so.

• 1:04:27Jordi Hays?

  I just gotta say the audacity to be like, yeah, we need to put this on the open market to find the right steward. And it's like, oh, I don't know how, I don't know if you've been stewarding that well.

• 1:04:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. So is your read on it that like everyone from the community was like, yeah, we'll love to take this off your hands and like completely renovate it? And they're like, we gotta find a crazy person that likes this particular style? And so they gotta spread their, they gotta spread the aperture. They gotta open the aperture.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  I think you guys are being too hard. I think if you just add like two or three more floors.

• 1:04:55John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  You go vertically.

• 1:04:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  I think it could be pretty sick.

• 1:04:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. Uh, I'd also dig down. Uh, build basement, man cave, you know, uh, racing simulators. Race track potentially. There's a lot of options to turn that place around, but good luck to ever, to whoever picks it up.

• 1:05:14Jordi Hays?

  That's a real, that's a real project.

• 1:05:16John Coogan?

  That's a real.

• 1:05:17Jordi Hays?

  They're like, they're like, it's perfect.

• 1:05:19John Coogan?

  It's a teardown, in your opinion.

• 1:05:22Jordi Hays?

  I don't know about a teardown, but.

• 1:05:24John Coogan?

  Teraed down to the studs. Got it. Okay, well, let's head over to New York because Catherine Clark at the Wall Street Journal got a coveted invitation to see New York's most secretive condo project. This is A.D. Clarkson. The sales, they're over $1 billion now. With minimal marketing, little press until now, little coverage until we discuss it on TVPN. In a sun-filled room.

• 1:05:50Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, this is breaking news. This is breaking news, folks.

• 1:05:53John Coogan?

  This is breaking news with, uh, with stone flooring and a plush creamy white rug. My winter coat is whisked away and a sparkling water is thrust into my hand. For much of the past year, an invitation to come here has been one of the most coveted tickets in New York City. But I'm not at a hot new bar or restaurant. I'm on the far west side of Manhattan at the tucked away sales gallery for a new condominium. The developers of 80 Clarkson Street, a pair of under construction towers at the edge of the West Village have kept details about the project secret. The units aren't listed on sites like Zillow or Street Easy. Access to the sales office by the Hudson River is by appointment only and appointments were initially scarce. Many prospective buyers tried to call in favors to get a look.

• 1:06:35John Coogan?

  Quote, "There are a lot of people who've wanted to get in there who haven't been able to get in," said real estate agent Nick Gavin of Compass, who has multiple deals. He's done multiple deals there. Counterintuitive though it may seem, the secrecy surrounding 80 Clarkson appears to have been an extremely effective sales tool. In less than a year, more than $1 billion worth of condos have been, have gone into contract on the project, amounting to more than half of its 112 residences. A buyer recently signed a contract to pay $129 million for a residence at 80 Clarkson. If it closes, the transaction will set a record for downtown Manhattan, shattering the previous high watermark of 60 million. They're going twice as expensive as the previous high watermark. It's a 7,400 square foot apartment.

• 1:07:19John Coogan?

  That, a roughly 7,400 square foot apartment is asking 75 million and they also found a buyer. So, give me a little bit of a review on this style. Are you feeling this? Do you think you could settle into an apartment if it looked like this and had 7,000 square feet to walk around and was in New York City? They're asking more than 7,000.

• 1:07:41Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's not 7,000 square feet. It's.

• 1:07:43John Coogan?

  7,000, no, $7,000 a square foot, but also there's a unit there that's 7,000.

• 1:07:49Jordi Hays?

  Okay.

• 1:07:50John Coogan?

  So, you add those together, you get to 75 million dollars. But in terms of styling, in terms of aesthetics, in terms of vibes, what you got for us, Jordy? What do you think?

• 1:07:58Jordi Hays?

  I think it's, uh, it's not really my style, but in general, I think it's.

• 1:08:07Jordi Hays?

  I think it's in general, it's

• 1:08:09John Coogan?

  You can grit your teeth.

• 1:08:10Jordi Hays?

  It's some, some, some mixture of

• 1:08:14John Coogan?

  Gun to your head, you'd live there.

• 1:08:16Jordi Hays?

  Of classic

• 1:08:17John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:18Jordi Hays?

  New York.

• 1:08:19John Coogan?

  Well, let's get

• 1:08:20Jordi Hays?

  Interior styling brought into the modern era.

• 1:08:23John Coogan?

  The golden ticket.

• 1:08:24Jordi Hays?

  I think it's

• 1:08:25John Coogan?

  At Eddie Clarkson, the two under construction towers sit adjacent to the West Side Highway on the Hudson River. The project's neighbors are Google and Pier Forty, the former marine terminal that now serves as parking and sports facility with a trapeze school. So if you're into trapeze.

• 1:08:39Jordi Hays?

  I'm sold.

• 1:08:40John Coogan?

  You're sold?

• 1:08:40Jordi Hays?

  I'm sold.

• 1:08:41John Coogan?

  Walking distance to trapeze lessons.

• 1:08:45John Coogan?

  Maybe you gotta do trapeze, I don't know. Despite all the cloak and dagger, the gallery itself is subdued and staid. There's no dimming of lights, no ultra dramatic video, no stirring music. Instead, the space is classic and dignified, with the sales team pointing out details such as the motor court, which they say was inspired by a Roman piazza designed by Michelangelo. It is an experience that channels the Zuckendorf's reputation for a certain brand of Manhattan real estate discreet, restrained, and priced at the very top of the market. Scions of one of New York City's real estate's most storied dynasties, the brothers' track record includes fifteen Central Park West and the Upper West Side condo, the Upper West Side condo that set a new benchmark for the luxury market about twenty years ago.

• 1:09:28John Coogan?

  As we walked through the sales galleries, a series of showrooms are slowly revealed. The first accessed through doors emblazoned with detailed bronze panels is almost vacant, except for a scale model of the building. Around a corner is a movie theater style screen where the team can present renderings of the project. Another scale model shows the building's amenities with drawers that pull out to reveal aerial views of features such as a spa, gym, golf simulator. Where's the racing simulator, guys? We need that. Squash court. Are you, are you squash guy?

• 1:10:00Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 1:10:01John Coogan?

  You, do you put squash in the same category as, uh, padel? And, uh, what's that other one called?

• 1:10:08Jordi Hays?

  Pickle?

• 1:10:08John Coogan?

  Pickleball?

• 1:10:09Jordi Hays?

  No, pickle, pickle's out in its own world.

• 1:10:11John Coogan?

  Okay, pickles.

• 1:10:12Jordi Hays?

  Pickles out in its

• 1:10:13John Coogan?

  F tier. Pickle's F tier. Tennis is S tier.

• 1:10:17Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17John Coogan?

  Uh, give me a little tier list. Give me squash. Where's that? A, B, C, D?

• 1:10:22Jordi Hays?

  I don't know. I've never lived somewhere that, that, that people were big into squash.

• 1:10:26John Coogan?

  Have you ever worked anywhere that had a bunch of squash courts?

• 1:10:30Jordi Hays?

  I have.

• 1:10:31John Coogan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:10:31Jordi Hays?

  Got me.

• 1:10:32John Coogan?

  So where are you putting?

• 1:10:33Jordi Hays?

  We never played.

• 1:10:33John Coogan?

  B tier? We didn't ever play.

• 1:10:35Jordi Hays?

  You never played?

• 1:10:36John Coogan?

  B tier?

• 1:10:36Jordi Hays?

  Really? Badminton is the only S tier.

• 1:10:39John Coogan?

  Badminton above tennis?

• 1:10:41Jordi Hays?

  I hate to say it.

• 1:10:42John Coogan?

  Wow, hot take. What about, uh, what about golf?

• 1:10:48Jordi Hays?

  Man, I've really tried to get into golf, but I can't, I can't get past nine holes.

• 1:10:53John Coogan?

  B tier?

• 1:10:54Jordi Hays?

  I don't know if I can put it into B tier.

• 1:10:56John Coogan?

  A tier?

• 1:10:57Jordi Hays?

  But do you like playing eighteen holes of golf?

• 1:10:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, I like golf.

• 1:11:01Jordi Hays?

  Do you like the last nine?

• 1:11:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Jordi Hays?

  You don't ever?

• 1:11:04John Coogan?

  Sometimes I dip out at thirteen.

• 1:11:06Jordi Hays?

  What if, what if, what if nobody that, that you're playing with enjoys talking about technology or business?

• 1:11:12John Coogan?

  It's a nightmare. It's a waking nightmare.

• 1:11:14Jordi Hays?

  It actually is. It actually is.

• 1:11:17John Coogan?

  Yeah. No. Uh, what about, um?

• 1:11:22Jordi Hays?

  We should do, we should do a Friday episode sometime.

• 1:11:25John Coogan?

  So?

• 1:11:25Jordi Hays?

  Where we're just golfing and we have the entire show printed out. And we just have the team following with a camera. We're mic'd up.

• 1:11:33John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Jordi Hays?

  We're just shanking balls left and right.

• 1:11:36John Coogan?

  Uh, my, my swing is not very good. So if, uh, if.

• 1:11:41Jordi Hays?

  Trey says, what about sporting clays?

• 1:11:43John Coogan?

  Sporting clays?

• 1:11:44Jordi Hays?

  S tier.

• 1:11:45John Coogan?

  We were debating this earlier today. Brandon was putting that in like C tier. Sporting clays? You put that, you, you said it gets boring after forty-five minutes. Is that right? Sporting clays? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Very repetitive. I, I like.

• 1:11:58Jordi Hays?

  Say you're bad.

• 1:11:58John Coogan?

  Oh, cause.

• 1:11:59Jordi Hays?

  No, I think he's saying he's just so good. He just never misses. Many people have said Brandon never misses.

• 1:12:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true. Uh, racing simulator. Where's that go on the tier list of amenities?

• 1:12:12Jordi Hays?

  I think, uh, fantastic. I don't know. I don't know any, anywhere that actually has that as an amenity though.

• 1:12:18John Coogan?

  Yet.

• 1:12:18Jordi Hays?

  Yet.

• 1:12:19John Coogan?

  What about spa?

• 1:12:22John Coogan?

  Indoor lap pool?

• 1:12:25Jordi Hays?

  The odds, the odds that your apartment spa is actually going to be elite are, are low.

• 1:12:30John Coogan?

  Okay, listen to this. They got a music room with a sound engineering booth and there's also a content creation studio. You can make podcasts if you buy this 75 million dollar house or apartment in Manhattan. Content creation studio is hilarious that there's such demand for, oh, maybe I'll start a podcast that like they're building it into luxury apartments at this point, like.

• 1:12:54Jordi Hays?

  That just sounds like they had an empty room.

• 1:12:56John Coogan?

  If you have, if you have 75 million dollars to buy an apartment and that's your podcasting strategy, you're cooked. Like, you're just like, yeah, I really need to go downstairs and, and use the communal content creation studio. Rough. I, I did hear that there are some, uh, there are some influencers that do like unboxings. Basically they get a whole bunch of stuff like sent to them. Like they'll just review products all day long, like on Instagram and they will actually rent a different place because their house is often messy because they have like families and kids and all this stuff. So their, their office will just be like another apartment that's like perfectly white, perfectly clean.

• 1:13:31Jordi Hays?

  Well, when we were looking for this, uh, this studio, we did look at some other places, if you remember where we just walked in and in, in every single studio, it was, they were just doing unboxings. They just have like a ring light, remember?

• 1:13:44John Coogan?

  That's right. Yeah. It was like some Timu TikTok.

• 1:13:47Jordi Hays?

  It's like a TikTok shop, that whole world.

• 1:13:50John Coogan?

  It was crazy.

• 1:13:51Jordi Hays?

  People that are big into that world.

• 1:13:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. That was, that was wild. Uh, the, the path not traveled by us, I suppose.

• 1:13:58Jordi Hays?

  Uh, somebody took a ride down a four story slide.

• 1:14:02John Coogan?

  I love this. Before we move on to the next one, let me tell you about Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that lets you grow your business and lets you sell in seconds, online, in store, on mobile, on social, on marketplaces, and now with AI agents. And let me also tell you about Finn. The number one AI agent, customer service. If you want AI to handle your customer support, go to fin.ai. So this is a feature that I think is S tier. I would put four-story slide inside of a $20 million Tribeca penthouse. First off, you're getting the, you're getting a location, you're getting an apartment, a penthouse. At that other place, it was 75 million, 120 million. This is only 20 million. By comparison, incredible value. And then instead of some slop podcast room that you have to share with every other resident, you get a private four-story slide.

• 1:14:47John Coogan?

  This is a buy. This is incredible. It's called the Sophisticated Fun House, and it's in Tribeca in Manhattan. It has a rope swing, a rock climbing column, and secret ladders and entryways. This is speaking to me. I love this. Catherine Clark reports in the Wall Street Journal mansion section. "From the top floor of a Manhattan penthouse, I clamber ungracefully into a stainless steel spiral slide that sends me down four stories, spitting me out in a dramatic all-white foyer. As apartment tours go, this one is unusual. This penthouse at 150 Nassau Street in Lower Manhattan has been the subject of lower,

• 1:15:26John Coogan?

  of local lore for almost two decades, largely thanks to the presence of this snaking silvery slide. Now, the four-bedroom home known as Sky House is coming on the market for just $20 million. What a steal. We gotta browbeat some of our guests who live in New York into picking this up. I want to go down this slide. "When owners Craig and Kristen Neville Manning first toured the apartment in 2006, it looked nothing like it does now. A nearly raw space. It had no interior walls, electrical, or plumbing. First order of business, four-story slide. Boom. Measuring 6,400 square feet, the penthouse is built into the copper and terracotta pinnacle of a circa 1895 building, one of New York's earliest steel skeleton frame skyscrapers.

• 1:16:11John Coogan?

  The building was converted to condos in the early 2000s."

• 1:16:14Jordi Hays?

  Tyler, do you think it's possible that they built a skyscraper over 110 years before you were born?

• 1:16:22John Coogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:16:23Jordi Hays?

  Cut like, come on.

• 1:16:23John Coogan?

  I don't think they had.

• 1:16:24Jordi Hays?

  Make it make sense.

• 1:16:26John Coogan?

  Make it make sense.

• 1:16:26Jordi Hays?

  Make it make sense.

• 1:16:27John Coogan?

  This might be alien technology. It's entirely possible. Craig founded Google's first remote engineering center in New York and was later the chief technology officer of the urban innovation company Sidewalk Labs, which is now part of Google. So he was at Google, was like, let's set up shop in New York.

• 1:16:46Jordi Hays?

  Tristan is a former Facebook and Google executive.

• 1:16:49John Coogan?

  This is amazing.

• 1:16:51Jordi Hays?

  Let's give it up for Big Tech.

• 1:16:52John Coogan?

  Let's give it up for Big Tech. And honestly, very, very, you know, Google has a very wonderful, quirky culture, and this is a very wonderful quirky house. I love that a four-story slide is something that I bet I could find on the Google Plugs campus if I really looked around and found it. They put it in their house. So, respect to them. After buying the unit, they tapped Hudson and an interior design, the interior designer Ghislaine Binas to turn what Binas describes as a sophisticated fun house. They wanted that built. In addition to the slide, there's a rope swing, a column for rock climbing, and a series of secret ladders and entryways.

• 1:17:30Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, a lot of people say you can't put rope swings and a series of secret ladders in your house.

• 1:17:35John Coogan?

  You absolutely can.

• 1:17:36Jordi Hays?

  And they didn't listen.

• 1:17:38John Coogan?

  While the space looks like it was designed to entertain children, they don't have any children. The design reflects the couple's own joyful.

• 1:17:45Jordi Hays?

  Stolen valor.

• 1:17:46John Coogan?

  Stolen valor.

• 1:17:47Jordi Hays?

  Insane stolen valor. Imagine building a four-story slide.

• 1:17:52John Coogan?

  Yeah. Yeah, you gotta, you, you, you gotta get a bunch of kids in here. But fortunately, you can. Be the change you want to be. Have a bunch of kids. Buy this house that's on the market.

• 1:18:02Jordi Hays?

  Be the change. Be the change you want to be. John Coogan's.

• 1:18:06John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:18:07Jordi Hays?

  That's a great, that's a great line.

• 1:18:09John Coogan?

  Yes. They have fluorescent orange chairs. The home has structural glass, bridges, and walkways, angular entryways and skylights, white walls and ceilings juxtaposed with vibrant furniture and art. Give it the feel of a modern art museum, a sculpture in the foyer.

• 1:18:24Jordi Hays?

  This whole time I'm thinking, okay, they've got this climbing wall column thing.

• 1:18:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Jordi Hays?

  They certainly have like.

• 1:18:30John Coogan?

  Twenty-five children.

• 1:18:31Jordi Hays?

  Twenty-five children.

• 1:18:32John Coogan?

  For sure.

• 1:18:32Jordi Hays?

  It's like, no, that was for me, actually. After I got off.

• 1:18:37John Coogan?

  Child at heart.

• 1:18:37Jordi Hays?

  After I got done.

• 1:18:39John Coogan?

  Stacking paper at a hyperscaler, uh, two hyperscalers.

• 1:18:42Jordi Hays?

  The swing, the swing.

• 1:18:44John Coogan?

  I don't know. To each their own. Well, uh, it's a beautiful house and, uh, it can be yours for twenty million dollars. And then you can.

• 1:18:52Jordi Hays?

  Kind of strange, uh, strange art.

• 1:18:55John Coogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:55Jordi Hays?

  In this, uh, this one section, this, this bedroom.

• 1:18:57John Coogan?

  It's wacky, it's quirky. There's all sorts of stuff.

• 1:18:59Jordi Hays?

  Certainly quirky.

• 1:19:02John Coogan?

  Anyway, we have an, we're, we're going back to Los Angeles next, but first let me tell you about Graphite. Code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. And let me also tell you about cognition. They're the makers of Devon, the AI software engineer. Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. So David Lynch's quirky Los Angeles compound sells for thirteen million.

• 1:19:25Jordi Hays?

  Okay, explain David Lynch.

• 1:19:28John Coogan?

  Who wants to, who wants to explain David Lynch? Any of you guys know?

• 1:19:30Jordi Hays?

  He's a goat.

• 1:19:31John Coogan?

  He's the goat. He's the goat. Uh, he created Twin Peaks and the film Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive is fantastic.

• 1:19:38Jordi Hays?

  Eraserhead?

• 1:19:39John Coogan?

  I see that.

• 1:19:39Jordi Hays?

  Eraserhead is probably my favorite movie, yeah.

• 1:19:41John Coogan?

  Really? I haven't seen Eraserhead.

• 1:19:42Jordi Hays?

  It's like, yeah, it's, it's a, Jordy, it's like, he's like, I don't know, very, I actually have no idea how to describe, like, kind of surreal.

• 1:19:48John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Jordi Hays?

  Like, very. Explain him as like a, a big tech CEO. He's like all the CEO's favorite CEO. That's how I'd explain it. All the big directors.

• 1:19:56John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 1:19:57Jordi Hays?

  It's his favorite director.

• 1:19:58John Coogan?

  Okay, okay, okay. Your favorite director's favorite director.

• 1:20:00Jordi Hays?

  But what if you have no favorite director?

• 1:20:03John Coogan?

  How many, how many jumps to get from Sachar Baron Cohen to David Lynch? Probably not that many. He probably has respect for him. Uh, anyway, uh, a quirky Los Angeles compound that was the longtime home of the late filmmaker David Lynch has sold for thirteen million dollars. About six months after hitting the market, Lynch died in twenty twenty-five. He was known for the surreal films and television shows, including the TV series Twin Peaks and the two thousand and one film Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive is a Tom Cruise movie, I believe. Is that right? Is he in there? Justin Theroux? Did I get that wrong? Am I thinking of a different movie? I think Magnolia.

• 1:20:37Jordi Hays?

  This is such a fascinating home. From the outside, from the street, it's like somewhat brutalist.

• 1:20:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Jordi Hays?

  And then on the inside, it's like.

• 1:20:47John Coogan?

  So he has a private screening room and then he has a workshop on the estate designed for some of the property's metalwork himself. Um, this is a fascinating building. So the compound has seven buildings spanning eleven thousand square feet in total with ten bedrooms. The centerpiece of the estate is a pink nineteen sixties house that was designed by the architect Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. Lynch purchased it for five hundred and sixty thousand dollars in nineteen eighty-seven and he just kept working, working, working on it. Uh, he later hired Lloyd Wright's son, the grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright, this is Eric Lloyd Wright, to design a pool and a pool house for the property.

• 1:21:28John Coogan?

  Uh, in nineteen eighty-nine Lynch bought two, an adjacent two-bedroom brutalist house for five hundred and forty-two thousand dollars and added a studio to the building for three hundred and forty-six thousand dollars in nineteen ninety-five. So he just kept landing and expanding. Uh, in a statement, two of Lynch's children said the property was a place of deep meaning in their father's life and the lives of those who lived and worked there. It holds a lot of history for our family and we're grateful to see it pass to someone who's interested in caring for it and preserving what made it special. Lynch viewed his living space as an extension of his creative life. The Lloyd Wright House affects my whole life to live inside it, he said in a nineteen ninety-seven interview. What would you, what do you think about this house? Would you live here? Do you like this house? Do you like this style?

• 1:22:13Jordi Hays?

  I do like it, I just think, I, I think that needs about, I don't know, an architectural purist might hate me for this, but it needs, needs a lot of investment.

• 1:22:27John Coogan?

  You have to tear it down.

• 1:22:28Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  This is also, I like, I don't think it's mentioned in the article, but this is the location of Lost Highway, which is another of his movies.

• 1:22:36John Coogan?

  Wow, ball knower over there. I had no idea. I don't know Lost Highway at all.

• 1:22:41Jordi Hays?

  Tyler's another Lynch movie.

• 1:22:42John Coogan?

  You really did. Uh, it's amazing. Um, oh, uh, the, the high-end Manhattan building that has the content creation studio actually, actually broke through and hit the timeline. Somebody saw that and screenshotted it. Uh, it was as notable to them as it was to us.

• 1:22:59John Coogan?

  Sergey Brin is the second billionaire to buy in Miami this week. This has happened like a few times. I feel like the Google founders have been on a Miami buying spree, bought multiple properties. We already talked a little bit about that. We should move over to the Financial Times and talk about Vashron, the watchmaker, because there is an interesting piece in the Financial Times all about that. But first, let me tell you about TurboPuffer. Serverless vector and full text search built from first principles on object storage, fast, 10x cheaper, and extremely scalable. Let me also tell you about Restream. One livestream, 30-plus destinations. If you want to multi-stream, go to Restream.com. So, there's an interview with the CEO of Vashron Constanton. It says, "Vashron Constanton bets on culture and complications instead of volume.

• 1:23:44John Coogan?

  In an industry that often equates growth with volume, Laurent Pervet is attempting something more delicate to expand the oldest continuously operating watchmaker without diluting its own scarcity. Vashron holds the title of longest in the business continuously. No breaks, no days off, the ultimate lock-in."

• 1:24:08Jordi Hays?

  Right, before we jump in there, the team is sharing how many jumps to get me from the host Tyler at TBPN to David Lynch. And so Tyler Cosgrove works with John Coogan at TBPN. John Coogan has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in Social Network. Jesse Eisenberg co-starred with Laura Dern in Resistance, and Laura Dern starred in Wild at Heart, directed by David Lynch.

• 1:24:37John Coogan?

  Five degrees of separation. There we go. Let's make some phone calls, except he has sadly passed away. But what an interesting...

• 1:24:45Jordi Hays?

  Five jumps to...

• 1:24:47John Coogan?

  This is a cool use case for LLMs. This is very fun. I like this. Did you just want to hear this sound effect?

• 1:24:56John Coogan?

  Tyler texted me a while back, like 20 minutes ago, saying I should play that. Fifteen months into his tenure as Vacheron's chief executive, Laurent runs a brand that, according to industry analysts, generated more than one billion pounds in revenues in 2023. They're around a $1 billion revenue company. Annual production is estimated at over 25,000 watches, up from roughly 3,000 in the 1980s. So, pretty significant increase. And that's before the watchmaker was acquired in the 1990s by what is now the Richemont Luxury conglomerate. Although revenues have since dipped slightly, the numbers place

• 1:25:39John Coogan?

  Vacheron firmly among the upper ranks of Swiss watchmaking. Yet Laurent, in his first interview since taking the reins, is clear that acceleration is not the goal. They're not trying to make more watches that quickly. "We must evolve with the market," he says, "but without chasing volume for its own sake, the timing is delicate. A very volatile context outside and inside the watch industry. Secondary prices have softened, hype has receded, and growth across the sector has become less predictable." Laurent describes the brand's positioning as almost as a balance sheet of capabilities: classic watches, jewelry watches, sport-integrated

• 1:26:23John Coogan?

  bracelet watches, very high complications, and the revived Historique's line. The last, as its name suggests, is a family of retro and shaped watches. You might be familiar with the Vacheron 222, which is very popular right now. That's in the Historique's collection. The objective is to occupy the whole field of high watchmaking, ensuring that when one segment slows, another can carry momentum. He half-accepts the analogy when pressed. Vacheron is kind of a horological hedge fund.

• 1:26:57John Coogan?

  Diversifying risk not across asset classes, but across aesthetics and price tiers. The slowing has been most visible in the steel sports watch category. Laurent concedes that the phenomenon of speculation and hype has abated, even if the integrated bracelet segment itself is not going to go away. That's the overseas with the integrated bracelet. But while others worry about the fading of an asset class, he simply says that over the past years, he has seen a bit more demand for classic watches, high complications for shaped watches, for smaller diameters, prompting, among other things, a 36.5 millimeter traditional perpetual calendar.

• 1:27:39John Coogan?

  Since taking the top job, he's moved decisively towards culture, leveraging the contents of two of the world's largest and most prestigious museums, the Met and the Louvre. The Tribute to Great Civilizations collection saw the creation of a quartet of five-piece, limited edition watches, each featuring a miniature enameled version of a Louvre masterpiece, such as the winged victory of Semethris. Beyond this series lies an even more bespoke partnership with the museums, where a collector can choose any masterpiece, painting, sculpture, or ornamental item for Vacheron to reproduce on the dial. Each project is unique, so there's no fixed scale of charges,

• 1:28:21John Coogan?

  but Laurent cites the minimum being 150,000 euros pre-tax. Techniques range from miniature enamel painting, which he says is the most popular, to engraving or powder-packed into engraving. Numerically, production is almost risible. We don't do more than 10 or 12 pieces a year, so these are custom. You walk through the museum, you see something you're like, you like, and you're like, I want that on a watch, and they'll make it for you. Very, very cool. Maybe I'll get one.

• 1:28:48Jordi Hays?

  Do they put logos? Will they put a Ramp logo?

• 1:28:52John Coogan?

  If it's in the... See, now you're thinking. So you have to work backwards. So the question is, how do you get a painting of the Ramp logo into the Louvre? As long as, you know, people were sneaking stuff out of the Louvre. Maybe we sneak Ramp logo painting in. It's like, wasn't the Mona Lisa there? Like, not anymore, baby. It's a painting of the Ramp credit card. I love it.

• 1:29:15Jordi Hays?

  I like it. The overseas perpetual calendar Ultra Thin is one of my... I think one of the most stunning

• 1:29:22John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 1:29:22Jordi Hays?

  modern watches.

• 1:29:23John Coogan?

  Yes. I like the Overseas Dual Time a little bit more. Um, but they're both great. And I think that the 222, we were sort of hyped on the 222.

• 1:29:34John Coogan?

  Overseas might be making a comeback.

• 1:29:37Jordi Hays?

  The Ultra Thin.

• 1:29:38John Coogan?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:29:39Jordi Hays?

  Is just insane.

• 1:29:41John Coogan?

  There are some really cool historiques out there. There's a Square Vacheron that's pretty popular. I'm not exactly sure what the, what the model number is, but uh, they are doing fantastically well. And most importantly, I think have just carved out a very interesting brand positioning, uh, you know, by choosing to partner with the Louvre, the Met, it maintains this very high aura inaccessibility, very like old and stuffy and stodgy. It's not, you know, cause, it's not a bunch of like younger, more

• 1:30:15Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, when you look at what AP, when you look at what AP is doing, like very much, you know, on the hype train,

• 1:30:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Jordi Hays?

  partnering with DJs and Travis Scott and cause and doing all this stuff and Vacheron is like, okay.

• 1:30:27John Coogan?

  Yeah. And you, and you just have to wonder, like, what is the more long-term strategy? You know, uh, the AP strategy can certainly

• 1:30:37Jordi Hays?

  Certainly is not helping the resale market right now.

• 1:30:39John Coogan?

  Very quickly, but then it probably crashes, I would, I would assume. And, and the, uh, and the, and the, and the true horology heads head back to Vacheron. We'll see. Well, let me tell you about Gusto, the unified platform for payroll benefits and HR built to evolve with modern small and medium-sized businesses. And let me also tell you about Phantom Cash, cha-ching again. Fund your wallet without exchanges or middlemen and spend with the Phantom Card. Um, moving on. Uh, people are having fun with Leopold Ochenbrenner and his, uh, wife-to-be, I believe they're engaged. Um, uh, Jir Tiki says, when you ask some high elves at Rivendell if they want to join you in your quest to Erebor, they hit you with the Light of Valinor stare.

• 1:31:26John Coogan?

  2.8 thousand likes, people like the photo. Very silly.

• 1:31:31Jordi Hays?

  Zeke says mildly surprised to learn that director level staff at Anthropic have human EAs.

• 1:31:36John Coogan?

  Hmm. How did they learn that? How did he learn that? Was that in like the most recent Dario news? This is from March 6th today.

• 1:31:43Jordi Hays?

  I mean, he runs a AI finance tool.

• 1:31:46John Coogan?

  Oh, so maybe he's interacting with them?

• 1:31:48Jordi Hays?

  He's interacting with them.

• 1:31:51Jordi Hays?

  All right, we got a new Xbox. What's going on here?

• 1:31:53John Coogan?

  We have breaking news as of three days ago. We didn't really get to it. Uh, Project Helix is the next generation of the Xbox console. What do we know about it?

• 1:32:04Jordi Hays?

  Nothing.

• 1:32:04John Coogan?

  Nothing. Za nada. Uh, we, we see a logo reveal. Um, is this just a working title? I don't know. Will this be delayed? The PS6 is supposedly delayed. The Switch 2 is, is, uh, maybe going up in price. Very unclear what Microsoft's strategy is with Xbox. The, the new head of Xbox does not seem to be super focused on the traditional path of like box software, you know, own titles. Sony really went on a tear and acquired a lot of the great IP, bought a bunch of game studios, brought them in-house, created sort of like this IP roll-up that they could get exclusives over.

• 1:32:48John Coogan?

  There was always a fear that when Microsoft bought Activision, that they would do the same thing with Call of Duty. Call of Duty would become a Microsoft exclusive, an Xbox exclusive. That never made financial sense. It never made sense from a, like a, a regulation perspective. It would be seen as anti-competitive. Hasn't played out. So even though Activision is now under, and they own Blizzard, World of Warcraft, all that IP. Even though that is, uh, now within Microsoft, it doesn't, it hasn't seemed to be like the cornerstone of like revitalizing the Xbox as like the number one killer, uh, console that everyone has to have. Uh, and they've always been doing this dance between Windows PC sales, Windows gaming,

• 1:33:30John Coogan?

  and then Xbox gaming, and then now cloud streaming where you can stream Xbox on anything, even on an iPhone, iPad. There's that company Backbone that sort of clicks a, a gaming controller onto your phone. And so you can stream. Both PlayStation games from a PlayStation that you have in your house, or you can stream from Xbox Cloud. Tyler, when you played the Oculus, you used Xbox game streaming, correct?

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition. I think that's the full title.

• 1:33:59John Coogan?

  Was there anything that was Xbox specific about that? Or was it just the packaging? And then it just like sort of recommended that you use that software?

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, it came with an Xbox controller.

• 1:34:08John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, I don't know exactly what the deal was. I don't think there was no like

• 1:34:14John Coogan?

  Did it feel like, did it feel like when you, when you fired it up, any Xbox apps were like preloaded?

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I, I, I mean, but it's not like you have to download them, right? So it doesn't matter that much that they're already installed.

• 1:34:29John Coogan?

  Well, I'm thinking more about it just from like the user retention and activation funnel. I feel like that's where the Oculus is falling flat the most for me. That's why I framed the challenge the way I did, where I was like, you need to beat one level of Halo that takes you 10 minutes in 45 minutes. This is ridiculous challenge. Why is it so easy? It should be so easy, but it took you 25 minutes to get set up, right? Something like that. Cause you had to like go update the software, create accounts, download stuff. And, and it'd be interesting to see more, you know, more of a deeper partnership there, but we'll see. I mean, it's entirely possible that Meta is just like pulling back on VR entirely, which would be very disappointing for, for me, but we shall see. Uh, let me tell you

• 1:35:10John Coogan?

  about Cisco. Critical infrastructure for the AI era. Unlock seamless real-time experiences and new value with Cisco.

• 1:35:18Jordi Hays?

  Tech layoff tracker.

• 1:35:19John Coogan?

  What's going on?

• 1:35:20Jordi Hays?

  Hearing from multiple sources inside Oracle that the company is planning thousands of job cuts, potentially 20 to 30,000 roles across the board. Uh, this was surprising to me because I didn't realize that Oracle had a headcount around 170,000 people.

• 1:35:38John Coogan?

  There's a lot going on at Oracle. It's a very like old company, a lot of sales reps. I had a friend who worked as an Oracle sales rep. Loved the job. Great lifestyle. Um, you know, going around selling software, selling data centers, selling all sorts of stuff.

• 1:35:52Jordi Hays?

  Uh, this is to free up eight to 10 billion in cash flow. All the fun massive AI data center expansion. US banks are pulling back from financing, borrowing costs are rising fast.

• 1:36:00John Coogan?

  CDS spreads.

• 1:36:01Jordi Hays?

  The cuts would be the largest in years, bigger than the 10,000 they did in late 2025. They are also eyeing asset sales like the Cerner healthcare unit. Insiders say non-core units and data center-linked staff are most at risk. It's tied to AI commitments. Anyways, so still rumors at this point, but

• 1:36:26Jordi Hays?

  wouldn't be, wouldn't be super surprising. They

• 1:36:31John Coogan?

  I just like the comfortably smug is watching the show and publicly tweeting badminton S tier. Outstanding take. Squashes A tier. That we're starting a conversation. Well, speaking of watches, Paul Graham clearly got into watches recently, which I love to see because he posted a lengthy essay called "The Brand Age", paulgram.com/brandage.html. And he tells a very detailed story of the switch watch industry, the quartz crisis. And he goes into the strategies of every single house.

• 1:37:10John Coogan?

  It's an amazing telling of what Omega did, what Vacheron did, what Patek did. And it's, it's, it's very, very long. There was a, there was an interesting segment in here.

• 1:37:25John Coogan?

  "The next move was made by AP, who in 1970 commissioned the renowned designer Gerald Genta to design their own iconic watch, this one daringly in steel." The result launched in 1972 was?

• 1:37:44Jordi Hays?

  Uh, Nautilus?

• 1:37:46John Coogan?

  No, this is AP.

• 1:37:47Jordi Hays?

  Oh, oh, the Royal Oak.

• 1:37:49John Coogan?

  The Royal Oak, of course. And AP's ads for they too now started doing brand advertising emphasized its high cost even more dramatically. Introducing steel at the price of gold was one of the ads. Like, we're gonna charge you gold prices for something that's steel and they're just flexing on it. I love it. You're looking at the costliest stainless steel watch in the world, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. What makes it even more precious than gold is the time that went into building it by a vanishing breed of master watchmakers. At the bottom of the ad, they turn the traditional formula on its head and describe their watches as being priced from $35,000 and down.

• 1:38:37John Coogan?

  Instead of up, because they want to let you know that what the high end is, what's the top of the range, because price has become part of their brand. The Royal Oak was also a step forward in surface area devoted to brand. The golden ellipse had turned the watch face into an expression of brand, but it used ordinary straps and bracelets. In the Royal Oak, the watch face was integrated with a metal bracelet that continued its design all the way around the wrist. When it said, "You're looking at the costliest stainless steel watch in the world," it said with every square millimeter of surface area. It said it with every square millimeter of surface area. Would customers buy this new approach? The initial results were moderately encouraging. The Holy Trinity sales didn't take off, but they didn't go down to zero either.

• 1:39:22John Coogan?

  There were at least some people out there responding to the new message. Perhaps if they kept it at the number, perhaps if they kept at it, the number would grow. So they did. Encouraged by the success of the Royal Oak, Patek Philippe commissioned Gerald Genta in 1974 to design a similar watch for them. The design of the Royal Oak had been inspired by a ship's porthole. So the design of this new watch would be inspired by a ship's porthole. It was called the Nautilus, and it launched at the Basel Watch Fair in 1976. In the Nautilus, we see the incompatibility of branding and design, and this is where it gets a little controversial.

• 1:40:04John Coogan?

  Some people don't like the way PG is talking about the difference between branding and design. Here, he says, "It was huge. The most expensive men's watches at the peak of the golden age were typically 32 or 33 millimeters in diameter. The Nautilus was 42 millimeters." As well as it being huge, it had gratuitous knobs on either side of the face like a pair of ears, but you could recognize one from across the room. In the Nautilus, of all the watches Patek makes now, the Nautilus is the most sought after. It's perfectly aligned with what present day buyers want. Basically, the loudest possible expression of brand. But in 1976, it was ahead of its time.

• 1:40:48John Coogan?

  And in 1976, it was still a little too much. And this is something that happens all the time in luxury goods. Somebody comes out, they take a bold stance, they

• 1:40:56Jordi Hays?

  The F40.

• 1:40:57John Coogan?

  They make an aggressive move and, and then over time, it is revealed to, to be underrated. Anyway, we have our next guest.

• 1:41:10Jordi Hays?

  We do.

• 1:41:11John Coogan?

  Is it Doug DeMuro?

• 1:41:12Jordi Hays?

  No.

• 1:41:12John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 1:41:13Jordi Hays?

  Vincenzo.

• 1:41:13John Coogan?

  Oh, Vincenzo's hopping on. Fantastic. Amazing. Good to see you, Vincenzo. How you doing?

• 1:41:19Vincenzo Landino?

  What's happening? Sorry to disappoint you. I'm Matt Doug.

• 1:41:22John Coogan?

  Doug's coming on a little bit, but I'm glad. We, we, we, we had some, we had some guests step out. What's going on? Did you press it twice?

• 1:41:29Vincenzo Landino?

  They made it.

• 1:41:30John Coogan?

  Oh, they made it play again and again and again. Okay. Well, we're just going, we're gonna keep going on this. Can you fade this to, okay, there we go.

• 1:41:37Vincenzo Landino?

  It goes on and on and on and on.

• 1:41:39John Coogan?

  Yeah. And, and typically, if you push the button again, you turn it off. But we changed it so that if you push the button twice, it actually plays it twice. So you can do like But it gets to be a little much, so we're not gonna do that.

• 1:41:53Vincenzo Landino?

  Overkill, right?

• 1:41:54John Coogan?

  Overkill. Anyway, take us through your, your, I'd love to start with like the preview of the F1 season, but also just Apple's strategy, because I think you unpacked it way, at a way deeper level than what I'd seen folks understanding about Apple's F1 strategy before.

• 1:42:14Vincenzo Landino?

  Yeah, I, I'll start with the Apple stuff then.

• 1:42:16John Coogan?

  Cool.

• 1:42:17Vincenzo Landino?

  Really, I think, you know, what Apple's done is they've said, we may not have the distribution that ESPN, others have

• 1:42:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Vincenzo Landino?

  traditionally. And, but we're gonna use our might, which is

• 1:42:34Vincenzo Landino?

  These.

• 1:42:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Vincenzo Landino?

  They've got, they've got these devices in everybody's hands. We're all using MacBooks. We're all, we've all got iPads and we've got AirPods and Apple Watches and so. And John's got his Vision Pro.

• 1:42:46John Coogan?

  I do have a Vision Pro.

• 1:42:48Vincenzo Landino?

  There you go. Yeah, I wish.

• 1:42:50John Coogan?

  Last man standing.

• 1:42:51Vincenzo Landino?

  I think, I think something will be coming with that. I, I do.

• 1:42:53John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Vincenzo Landino?

  They are, they're, they're rolling all this stuff out and now we're seeing, like, when did you ever think that Apple and Netflix would ever find a way to work together on a streaming cross collab? I don't know if you guys saw that news, but.

• 1:43:08John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Vincenzo Landino?

  You're gonna, we're gonna get to see, actually, Drive or Survive is already streaming on, uh, Apple TV.

• 1:43:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:15Vincenzo Landino?

  And in return, Netflix is gonna be streaming one of the races.

• 1:43:18John Coogan?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:43:20Vincenzo Landino?

  And ironically, ironically, it is the Canadian Grand Prix.

• 1:43:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25Vincenzo Landino?

  Why the Canadian Grand Prix, you might ask? Well, the Canadian Grand Prix takes place the same weekend that the Indy 500 takes place, which is the most watched motorsport event.

• 1:43:33John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:43:33Vincenzo Landino?

  In America.

• 1:43:34John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 1:43:35Vincenzo Landino?

  Maybe even, well, not the world, but in America, it will have the best numbers of the year.

• 1:43:40John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:41Vincenzo Landino?

  So, Apple knows this. What do they do? They go and partner with Netflix. Everybody has Netflix, right?

• 1:43:49Vincenzo Landino?

  I, the IMAX theaters, they're trying to change the experience. How do you watch? Race. Five races are gonna be shown in IMAX theaters.

• 1:43:57John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:57Vincenzo Landino?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:43:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Vincenzo Landino?

  Um, they also partnered up with Event Pass, so bars, restaurants. It'll, it's, that, that's where they buy a lot of their, um, their sports packages from through Event Pass. They're rolled into there. They've also, they've also unleashed MLS on that. They finally are realizing that the MLS thing wasn't working, right? Uh, so yeah, so now they're doing that with Formula One. So now Formula One's gonna be able to be in bars and restaurants. You're gonna see Formula One in IMAX theaters. Again, only five races. Bar at like 7 a.m.

• 1:44:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:32Vincenzo Landino?

  I mean, that's, that, that might be the issue with some of the races, so we'll see what happens there, but. I think the fact that they're open to these different types of distribution channels and platforms is exciting. It really is exciting. Have you guys had a chance to play around with?

• 1:44:48John Coogan?

  Uh, yeah, yeah. React to my thesis that like, the way Apple sees onboarding a fan to an actual live watching sport experience starts with the F1 movie, which when you watch that movie, you don't need to know anything about F1. And you'll hear the voiceover of the narrator, basically, explain all the rules to you. And then they show Brad Pitt doing all these like tricky moves that illustrate why pit stops matter and why tires matter, damage, all these things. And so you can watch the F1 movie just because you like Brad Pitt and it's a fun movie.

• 1:45:23Vincenzo Landino?

  Sure.

• 1:45:23John Coogan?

  Then you can go into Drive to Survive. It's the reality TV version. You don't really have to follow a full race. You get all the drama and the personality and it's a travel show too. And it's a lifestyle show. And then, once you've gone down that funnel, then you're ready to watch the race and they have that for you too.

• 1:45:43Vincenzo Landino?

  And even the way they're laying it out, if you guys haven't had a chance to look through the, you know, the Apple TV app.

• 1:45:50John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:50Vincenzo Landino?

  They're putting everything there. So now you have their local, their guides, like their city guides. They've put together guides for the cities that you're in. So you can explore Melbourne now. That's where they are.

• 1:46:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:01Vincenzo Landino?

  In Apple Maps, you can explore the track turn by turn. You can, which again, some people might not care about that, but it's a way to pull you in. If you are there in Melbourne.

• 1:46:11John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Vincenzo Landino?

  And you're using Apple.

• 1:46:13John Coogan?

  No, I think, I think I actually noticed that, that map feature.

• 1:46:17Vincenzo Landino?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17John Coogan?

  I use Apple Maps like a psycho, apparently. Uh, but I was in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. And I just happened to open Apple Maps just to get out of the stadium and figure out where we were going. And I was like, wow, this is a really detailed rendering of the track. This is amazing. This is would actually be useful for a bunch of other things. And if you're just driving by and then you just see this really high fidelity 3D rendering of the, of the map, it's just another touch point. It's basically just an ad.

• 1:46:43Jordi Hays?

  What do you think they'll do with Vision Pro? Like, what are your theories? Do you think you'll be able to ride along with Verstappen? And like actually get to experience? Cause if you could experience a full race, like in.

• 1:46:53John Coogan?

  The cameras are, I think, too heavy for that, but I want to hear it.

• 1:46:55Jordi Hays?

  I know, but not if you add them to every single car. And everybody

• 1:47:00John Coogan?

  So lap times go away.

• 1:47:01Vincenzo Landino?

  I don't know if, I don't know if Ben can pull it up, or if one of the guys can pull this up. But I posted something recently about an app called LAPS, L A P Z. Now, they got kinda, they were in test flight, they ended up getting pulled. Like, they, they can't keep pushing out, and it has to do with licensing rights from F1. But this is what I think can happen and what they can do with Apple Vision Pro. In fact, I really think Apple, I should, I thought they should have bought LAPS, the, the company that built it, the developer that built it. But if they didn't, I, I could foresee them just kinda building this on their own. I mean, you've got, you can have all the cameras up, you have a three dimensional track with like live timing.

• 1:47:46Vincenzo Landino?

  Cause all, we have all the data, right? All the data's there. So being able to put your Vision Pro on and be in camera with any of the drivers that you want, plus seeing a live circuit map. And then I believe they were also able to change the, like, the angle from where you were watching it from. So you were able to understand really, uh, like if I'm sitting in, I don't know, turn one, I'm watching it from that angle, right, through the Vision Pro as opposed to, you know, when you kinda put it on the TV, you don't really, you may not know, if you're not familiar with the track, uh, you know, you don't know which angle you're really watching it from. This was a, this, uh, the app was really, really cool. Um, and I know one of the developers that was working on it, that was, like, to me, that showed the true power of it.

• 1:48:28Vincenzo Landino?

  Every time I posted, people are like, that, I would buy a Vision Pro if I could get that app.

• 1:48:32John Coogan?

  Yeah. About a year ago, we had, uh, a sort of motion designer on the show at Figma, uh, conference, uh, named John Lepore. He works at Black Box Infinite.

• 1:48:43Vincenzo Landino?

  That's him. John's the guy who built LAPS.

• 1:48:45John Coogan?

  Oh, okay, it's LAPS now, because I remember seeing the demo, I pulled, I put the demo in the, uh, in the chat. Hopefully the team can pull it up. But, uh, they did this, uh, they did this case study back in 2024. And I was like, oh, this is like a killer app. I wonder when Apple will like actually adopt this. Here it goes. And so this just makes so much sense that you could like put this on. And now that Apple actually has all the rights to this stuff, it seems like such an interesting experience. I wonder if this is one of those situations where you, it looks really good in a teaser trailer, but then actually sitting there is maybe a little bit much, but.

• 1:49:23Vincenzo Landino?

  Everyone that actually used laps said it was fantastic.

• 1:49:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Vincenzo Landino?

  Everyone I've talked to that used it said this was like incredible.

• 1:49:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:32Vincenzo Landino?

  And again, I don't have a Vision Pro, so I never really, I didn't test it. I saw some demo stuff. John has sent me some things.

• 1:49:38Jordi Hays?

  You gotta try it this weekend, John.

• 1:49:40John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:41Vincenzo Landino?

  If you can get, if you can somehow get a hold of it.

• 1:49:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Vincenzo Landino?

  If you have it, I would.

• 1:49:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, I have a Vision Pro. I think I have Apple TV Plus and all the, all the tiers there. I probably just have to download the laptop.

• 1:49:53Jordi Hays?

  All right, let's get into the season overall. What's, what's happening with the new regulations? How, who's cooked, who's chopped, who's goaded?

• 1:50:02Vincenzo Landino?

  Well, so I think on the last time I was on the show and I was thinking about this too, I was like, oh man, I'm gonna really eat a lot of crow now. I said Aston Martin was to look out, was someone to pay attention to. And it was for all the wrong reasons. They seem to have completely botched the project. I don't even know what's going on with Honda. I mean, it, it seems like one of those things that I thought was unfathomable in 2026. Like, this was not something that was supposed to really be possible. The engineers have, you know, figured out reliability. We have cars that are so reliable. Everyone's finishing races. Now, this wasn't the case 30, 40 years ago, right? You'd have a lot of reliability issues. And now it like they've literally built a car that is quite literally crap.

• 1:50:44Vincenzo Landino?

  I mean, it's, it's, it is not good. Fernando Alonso still hasn't run any practice laps, although maybe in practice too, he ended up getting out there, I think. But they're not turning any laps. They're actually talking about like potential nerve damage, these guys in the Aston Martin because of whatever's going on with the battery. It's, it's wild.

• 1:51:01Jordi Hays?

  What do you, what do you mean going on with the battery?

• 1:51:05Vincenzo Landino?

  They're so, so because of the new, the new chassis, like the new regulations, the car is smaller, it's narrower. And because of the way Adrian Newey designs his cars, it required, there's a lot of aerodynamics. So he kind of almost built a smaller.

• 1:51:23Vincenzo Landino?

  There's less room in his car to build, you know, for power unit and battery and all that stuff. Well, now with this like 50 50 split, you have 50 50 or 50% battery power and essentially 50% from the internal combustion engine. All of that power or all of that takes up a lot of room. And apparently there's not enough room in the Honda for all of that to properly like they're not even running the battery or they're not running everything at full bore right now. It's like they couldn't even turn the battery up. It's it's pretty wild. I'm reading all this stuff. All of this information is coming at me and I'm like, how does this even happen? The greatest designer of probably our generation, if not ever. And then there

• 1:52:05Vincenzo Landino?

  was other talk that Aston Martin hadn't even really ever audited the Honda engineers. So they signed the deal back in 22 or 23 that they were going to switch from Mercedes to Honda, but never audited the actual engineering and come to find out most of like the good engineers ended up at Red Bull, which a lot of people speculated was the case because Red Bull was with Honda. So it's a whole mess right there with that Aston Martin project right now. And of course Aston Martin just signed over a naming deal for, I forgot how much money it was, 60 plus million dollars for the F1 team. So I'm like, oh, that's not a good, that's not great. But aside from that, you've got Mercedes looking really

• 1:52:49Jordi Hays?

  So what's your, what's your prediction for Sunday? Do you, do you think they, do you think they actually finish the race? Or is it looking so bad that they might?

• 1:52:59Vincenzo Landino?

  I don't know that they start the race. I mean, they may start the race, turn a couple laps just to do it. But I don't, I can't foresee them in qualifying tonight. Like I, I can't even see them getting anywhere near, like remotely close to the times we're going to see on the board. I think they were something like 12 seconds back at one point during practice, which it's only practice, but I don't even think, I don't think they will finish the race. If they do start it, it'll be like a couple laps and then they're going to purposely pull it, you know, pit it and pull it from the race.

• 1:53:33Jordi Hays?

  What is Mr. Stroll doing about it?

• 1:53:36Vincenzo Landino?

  I have no clue. I really don't. There, it's a lot. There's a lot of PR notices that there's a lot of PR that they're, you know, pulling right now. And they're apologizing like, which again, I don't know what apologies are going to do at this point, but. If I'm sponsors, I'm really pissed, to be quite frank with you. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what Lawrence is doing.

• 1:53:59Jordi Hays?

  Who who is benefiting from the new regulations or is kind of figured it out the best so far?

• 1:54:07Vincenzo Landino?

  It's so it seems uh it seems like Ferrari is doing again, I can't jinx them. So I have to like I got a little jinx thing going here, but the Ferrari looks really good. Um, the Mercedes as well. So they both have come out looking solid. Uh Ferrari has been really reliable. They haven't seemed to have had any of the issues that others have had with the turbo spool, which was um something they were concerned about. Uh as early as last season or maybe even two seasons ago, they had talked about uh the turbo lag. And they don't seem to have that problem. They've gone with a smaller turbo charger, uh which spools up faster. So like they seem to be good with that. The Mercedes looks really, really quick.

• 1:54:53Vincenzo Landino?

  Um, fast on the straights. I don't think that they were detuned after their everyone was complaining about their engines. Those those seem to be good. So anyone with a Mercedes power unit seems to be in good shape, but the Mercedes Patronus AMG F1 team, they also just look great. George Russell, personally, I think George Russell, this might be his year. Um, and the package looks really, really good. The car looks great. Like they're not having any issues. Um, McLaren.

• 1:55:26Vincenzo Landino?

  They're McLaren, so they they, you know, they won the championship last year. They also have Mercedes power unit. They seem to be okay in an okay spot. We'll see what happens when they start. They ended up, I think, in the second practice, they ended up topping the time. Uh, but again, it's practice. So we'll see what happens when they turn up the engines for qualifying. I think pretty much and then Red Bull, Red Bull, let's talk about Red Bull with the Ford power, uh the Red Bull Ford power unit. Those are impressive. We a lot of people thought like they may not be that good, especially during the testing in in Bahrain. They were like eh, they don't look or sound that great. Now they came to Melbourne.

• 1:56:05Vincenzo Landino?

  Seem to be working pretty well. Max looks hooked up. They have a second driver now, Hajar, young kid. His second season Formula One, just brought him up from the junior team racing bowls. He is looking really good. So I would say we're gonna, for me, it's a Mercedes Ferrari, Red Bull trio at the top and McLaren. I think they're gonna be maybe looking out of the top three. But yeah, to me, it's a George Russell, Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen. Those are the three guys that I am putting my, maybe not money into, but those are the guys I'm putting, I'm putting my bets on if I'm anyone else out there.

• 1:56:45John Coogan?

  Are there any brands that you're tracking that could make a major move into sort of a premier sponsorship position of an F1 team? We were sort of joking about the idea of like an all white F1 car sponsored by Apple. Obviously, Apple's taking the-

• 1:57:04Jordi Hays?

  The Apple Formula One team.

• 1:57:05John Coogan?

  Yeah, Apple Formula One team would be very cool.

• 1:57:06Vincenzo Landino?

  That would be so cool.

• 1:57:07John Coogan?

  But they sort of are broadcasting the whole league. They're indexing it. It doesn't really make sense. But a lot of tech companies have moved in. Oracle, Google with Chrome and Gemini. There's, you know, all sorts of deals that are happening. There's a lot of money flowing around. I'm wondering if there's anyone that you think might like really go all in.

• 1:57:26Vincenzo Landino?

  Really, it's not something I've been thinking about. You know, fintech seems to be pretty popular right now.

• 1:57:32John Coogan?

  Yeah. Let's get a ramp yellow car out there. That'd be good.

• 1:57:37Vincenzo Landino?

  They'd be really cool to see that.

• 1:57:38John Coogan?

  Yeah, Ram Cadillac.

• 1:57:40Vincenzo Landino?

  Cadillac could use it. Cadillac could definitely use.

• 1:57:43Jordi Hays?

  Have they filled out their, like, they've filled out their sponsorships or they're still putting it together?

• 1:57:48Vincenzo Landino?

  No, I think they're still putting it together. They may actually be, this might be part of the strategy. I haven't talked to anybody over there. I think TWG has put a lot of money in, so they have their name all over it. They, the TDWG AI is their AI partner and TWG is also part of the, is ownership group. So they're on the car in like kind of two different ways. But this is also what TWG does across of all of their motorsport assets. Like, their brand is- You know, front and center. Um, I haven't seen them fill out much yet, but I also was speculating that Nike and Apple would partner with them at some point. So those were two that I had thought might, we might

• 1:58:30Vincenzo Landino?

  see something with. And I, I've heard not rumors of those two brands, but I've heard that there is other things coming for Cadillac. I think for them, it's going to be a matter of can they perform on track and how is that going to look? Uh, you obviously don't want to be absolutely last.

• 1:58:45Jordi Hays?

  Doesn't Cadillac, Cadillac has a Honda power unit?

• 1:58:48Vincenzo Landino?

  Ferrari.

• 1:58:49Jordi Hays?

  Oh.

• 1:58:50John Coogan?

  Are you East Coast?

• 1:58:52Vincenzo Landino?

  Yes.

• 1:58:53John Coogan?

  11:00 PM Saturday.

• 1:58:55Vincenzo Landino?

  11:00 PM.

• 1:58:56John Coogan?

  11:00 PM. Pretty convenient for the West Coast folks. 8:00 PM is like sort of a great time to hang out, have dinner, watch the race. Uh, works out for us.

• 1:59:06Vincenzo Landino?

  I've been doing this since I was a kid though. So it was like, these races have always been weird times. I'm, I, you just kind of get used to it.

• 1:59:13John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:14Vincenzo Landino?

  That's why when I hear people complain, I'm like.

• 1:59:15John Coogan?

  Pageantry.

• 1:59:17Vincenzo Landino?

  It's part of the pageantry.

• 1:59:18John Coogan?

  Exactly. Well, thank you so much.

• 1:59:19Vincenzo Landino?

  Yeah. I, I want to think about the brands though, John, and maybe I'll come back when I can come up with some.

• 1:59:24John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:25Vincenzo Landino?

  Something that could, could join in. It's, yeah, I'm focused elsewhere now at the beginning of the year, but.

• 1:59:29John Coogan?

  Yeah, of course. Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

• 1:59:32Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Excited to see your coverage.

• 1:59:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Jordi Hays?

  On the event and, uh, yeah, we'll talk soon. Great to see you.

• 1:59:38Vincenzo Landino?

  Thanks for having me again, guys.

• 1:59:39John Coogan?

  Have a good one.

• 1:59:39Jordi Hays?

  See you.

• 1:59:40John Coogan?

  Goodbye. Let me tell you about public.com. Investing for those tickets seriously. Stocks, options, bonds, crypto, treasuries and more with great customer service. And you know who needs an F1 team? The New York Stock Exchange. Want to change the world? Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it. Um.

• 2:00:01Jordi Hays?

  Nate Silver says, honestly, a Consumer Reports style panel of power users might be better than meter, et cetera, for measuring AI progress, much more robust to spikiness. Not meant to sound skeptical. As a power user, I think there's been extremely noticeable progress over the past few months for what it's worth.

• 2:00:19John Coogan?

  Yeah. This is diffusion max. We were asking semi-analysis to put something like this together. It's very tricky. There are so many people that have ties or sponsorships or favorite models, or they've worked somewhere, or they have a bone to pick with someone, or they're politically aligned one way or the other. There's a lot that should maybe disqualify someone from giving sort of a qualitative review, but I love the idea of going to a group of folks that are independent users of these models and putting something together that's Consumer Reports style because we are truly past benchmarks being noticeable

• 2:00:59John Coogan?

  to the average user, and we're much more in to, okay, how does the model feel? What are you actually using it for? Is it actually collaborating with you in a valuable way such that you get a deliverable? We talk to a lot of folks about, you know, like, okay, like, agents are here. What are you using them for? What are your customers using them for? And it can be tricky. Sometimes people don't really know what they're using them for. Well, let me tell you about Lambda. Lambda is the superintelligence cloud, AI supercomputers training and inference that scale from one GPU to hundreds of thousands. And without further ado, we have Doug DeMuro in the Rooster waiting room. Welcome to the TBP and Alternum. How are you doing, Doug? I'm good. How are you guys doing?

• 2:01:42John Coogan?

  We're doing fantastically. Great to see you.

• 2:01:45Doug DeMuro?

  Thank you for being back here.

• 2:01:46John Coogan?

  I'm so glad to have you back here. I absolutely love this car pod. Congratulations on all the progress there. I mean, it's the number one car podcast in the world, and it deserves to be so because... The number one in our hearts. I'm going to be listening to it on my drive home today. It drops every Friday, correct?

• 2:02:04Doug DeMuro?

  Friday morning. That is true. Yes, yes, yeah.

• 2:02:06John Coogan?

  So go subscribe to that. But we wanted to have you on to discuss so many other things in the car world. I think we should start with the interesting crossover from the tech world to the world of Ferrari with the Johnny Ive, the Johnny Drive, the new... Luce. The new Luce. So take us through your reactions to the actual design... You already ordered five of them, right?

• 2:02:30John Coogan?

  As soon as electric, you were like, I'm in.

• 2:02:32Doug DeMuro?

  I am as skeptical as, as, as basically every car enthusiast that I know is.

• 2:02:37John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:37Doug DeMuro?

  Uh, take you through my thoughts. I mean, well, first off, they haven't shown the, the vehicle, right? They've shown the interior, which in itself is kind of interesting and makes me a little anxious. Who shows the interior before showing the vehicle, right? Only if you're really kind of nervous about.

• 2:02:52John Coogan?

  It was such a weird layout too, seeing like the floating stuff and it wasn't even in like a shape of a car.

• 2:02:58Jordi Hays?

  And there's people, there's people in Italy that, you know, sit outside the Ferrari factory.

• 2:03:02John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:02Jordi Hays?

  Take videos on their phones and I've seen some of those, you know, kind of scouting videos. And it looks like incredibly rough.

• 2:03:09John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:09Jordi Hays?

  It looks like a Subaru or a Hyundai.

• 2:03:13Doug DeMuro?

  Although Ferrari, more than any other brand, goes to great lengths to disguise their, uh, production cars when they're, when they're still doing testing. For that exact reason. Yes, there are people who post up at the factory, waiting for them to slip up or whatever. And so Ferrari has historically made some really bizarre, uh, pre-production cars to try to actually fake out those people. So I'm not entirely convinced that the, the really rough looking look of the, you know, the, the spy photo car that we've all seen is real.

• 2:03:43John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:44Doug DeMuro?

  It looks like a station wagon.

• 2:03:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:45Doug DeMuro?

  Um, but obviously I'm skeptical just in general of this, like an electric sports car. The ones that have come out have not been well received. They have not sold well. In some cases, automakers who were about to release an electric sports car dialed it back and canceled the whole project. Uh, you know, sometimes months before they were, it was supposed to be on sale. So we'll see how it goes.

• 2:04:08John Coogan?

  So strategically, how deep are they?

• 2:04:10Jordi Hays?

  Talk about the, talk about the interior though, because, because to me, to me, it looks like, uh, in general, I'm a fan of coming in, having some fresh eyes on the interior of a car. There's a bunch of kind of like individual ideas from what we've seen that look cool, like little things you can pull to start the engine or whatever, or an engine. Um, there's a lot of elements that are nice, but at the same time, it looks like somewhat like it's like, oh, you did like a resto mod. On, but it's an EV, like it just, it feels, it feels, um, I didn't come away.

• 2:04:50Jordi Hays?

  Feeling like it was...

• 2:04:52Doug DeMuro?

  It's an interesting thing, though. Like, it's a totally new world for Ferrari. And so, I'm willing to give them a lot of latitude here because I think they're probably going after new buyers and different buyers. And I also think they're really trying to... They're not trying to appeal to the people like us who are like into cars and are probably have some experience with Ferrari before. I think that this is a big play on China, this is a big play on young people. They're really trying to make this make sense to a kind of a different audience. So, I'm actually... I didn't mind the interior from that perspective. It certainly is not very Ferrari-like, but I think that was the point. I think they could have kept their in-house design team, you know, designing it if they had wanted it to stay like their cars look.

• 2:05:33Doug DeMuro?

  And I think this was kind of intentionally a left-field kind of thing. And so, I'm willing to give them latitude there. What I'm more anxious about is how the car looks, how it performs, and especially how it feels. Because I think a lot of the reason people buy Ferraris is because of the way that they feel. And that's where I think this car could have problems.

• 2:05:52Jordi Hays?

  Do you think it could actually sell well in China even with this fresh take on design when every foreign manufacturer's been getting slaughtered?

• 2:06:03Doug DeMuro?

  Foreign manufacturers are getting slaughtered in China, but you have to assume that even in China, which doesn't have the brand belovedness for some of the Western brands that we have, you just have to assume, though, that the Ferrari brand is still nonetheless both popular and, you know, makes people excited even in China. It's not like any Chinese companies have emerged as a replacement for Ferrari, even though there have been many Chinese companies that have emerged as replacements for Tesla and Mercedes-Benz and all that. Ferrari is still this globally-known beloved brand. And so, I do think that they have possibility there. Porsche sells relatively well in China despite how hard it has been for other automakers to get in there.

• 2:06:41John Coogan?

  Yeah. How how far do you think or how deep do you think the Ferrari team is into the development of this electric vehicle? Because didn't Lamborghini just pull out of their EV project? It feels like there's a different world where the the electrification of the powertrain is much more like choosing between a V12 and a V8. And it's just like, it's just an option almost. And maybe they'd be afraid of doing that because it would reveal 5% of the buyer selecting that. But they make all this big, like, oh, it's a it's its own car instead of just being like, yeah, the Roma now you can get it electric if you want that.

• 2:07:18Doug DeMuro?

  Right.

• 2:07:19John Coogan?

  We'll make 10 of them.

• 2:07:19Doug DeMuro?

  Well, it's an interesting thing. I other automakers have tried to do that. Maserati has an electric version of the Gran Turismo that has been a horrible failure.

• 2:07:29Doug DeMuro?

  I think that I was surprised to see Lamborghini cancel theirs at this stage. Kudos to them. They realize their buyers don't want it. And in in some ways, you have to wonder if Lamborghini is kind of emerging as more the enthusiast brand and for which which historically has not been true, right? Lamborghini is the brand for people who want to show off and Ferrari is the enthusiast brand. Well, maybe that's changing a little bit. Ferrari, I think, also would make the argument that they have always been the leader. They have always been the one to push to the next step, the design leader. People say their stuff is ugly. They say there's, you know, the cars are too powerful, etc. And and they have always kind of been the first to take some steps.

• 2:08:05Jordi Hays?

  And they're like, oh, we're too powerful. We'll put a V6 in our halo car.

• 2:08:11Doug DeMuro?

  I think that they're I so I think that they're sitting here thinking, you know what? We're Lambo might cancel it and Pinnin Farina isn't selling theirs very well and all this stuff. But we are Ferrari and we if if anybody's going to be able to do this, it's going to be us and we are going to lead this thing and we're going to kill it. I bet that's the mindset in in Italy. I bet you they're nervous, though. No, no electric sports car has succeeded yet and said many have tried.

• 2:08:34John Coogan?

  Taycan doesn't really count as a sports car, more sedan?

• 2:08:38Doug DeMuro?

  No, I think because it's a sedan, it is certainly a sporty car, but because it's adding that level of practicality, it's not really the same thing, especially because Porsche tried to go electric with their sports car. And over the last few months has repeatedly been walking back the actual desire to do that, to the point where it's now kind of starting to become clear, there may not even be an electric version of the next Boxster.

• 2:08:59John Coogan?

  Yeah, is the Mission X, Mission E, the F80 competitor, the W1 competitor, just completely canceled at this point?

• 2:09:07Doug DeMuro?

  Yeah, that's gone. I don't know if they've officially said that, but yes, that is gone. They're not going to do an electric.

• 2:09:12John Coogan?

  Are they going to do a new Halo car? It feels like we're so far. I had the 918 on a poster as a kid, and I've been waiting for the next version for my entire adult life.

• 2:09:23Doug DeMuro?

  I was, I got Carrera GT sitting right up here.

• 2:09:28Doug DeMuro?

  They are going to do one, but I think that they had committed significant resources to going electric with Mission X. And it didn't happen, and they had to scramble back to the drawing board. And developing a hypercar, it takes real effort. You've got to get a lot of things right because you're only selling a few hundred of them. And so I, I think it's coming, but it's still yours.

• 2:09:46John Coogan?

  So if Porsche goes back to the drawing board and they're saying, okay, there's no longer the pressure to go electric with the hypercar.

• 2:09:54John Coogan?

  How, how enthusiasts can they go at that tier? Can they do manual? Can they do a V12? Like, can they learn from the SP3? Like, what can they, like, what do they have the freedom to actually pull off the shelf?

• 2:10:07Doug DeMuro?

  I think that Porsche is a much more conservative company than I wish they were. I would be very surprised if it has a manual. I would be very surprised. I'm certain that it will be a hybrid in some capacity. I'd be very surprised if it was a larger engine than a V8. The fact that Carrera GT ever existed, analog V10, like, that was an unbelievable thing that was a moment in time. Like Porsche, I think it's still worried. They have never really. In the modern eras, hypercars are automatic hybrids. And I think Porsche is afraid of deviating from that because they know that that works and it worked with 918. I actually had a call with some Porsche people yesterday and I was pleading my case for a manual Carrera GT type successor. And I just think it's just a tough, it's a tough sell. It's a tough, it's a tough sell.

• 2:10:52Jordi Hays?

  Is it, is it though, is it a tough sell for the people that are actually?

• 2:10:57John Coogan?

  Well, they have a, they have a halo car in the GT3 RS in some ways that sells the 911s. And also the Boxer looks like, the Cayman looks like somewhat similar to the GT3 RS. So it's not the RA pulling down to the A4.

• 2:11:12Jordi Hays?

  I just, I just, the, the, the people, we, we have a friend that gets every, orders every halo car from every brand. And if you, and if you asked him like, hey, would you rather have like a hybrid?

• 2:11:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:28Jordi Hays?

  Or, or something that's like more, more a successor to the Carrera CGT? Like what, he would, he would obviously want the CGT.

• 2:11:39John Coogan?

  The more engaging.

• 2:11:40Doug DeMuro?

  The automakers, I think, are also really aware of the fact that like hybrid is the future. And they really need to make sure that the super, the hypercar, which gets all the press, brings technology to the lineup that then trickles down. Like I think in a way, even to this day, the 918 Spyder kind of opened the door for the 911 to go hybrid and for the Taycan to exist. Because it was like, if the hypercar can do it, then I promise you and your 911 can do it. And I think going back, doing a full, I, yes, I think it would sell if they did another V10 manual hypercar, it'd be amazing. But it's, it's kind of an anachronism. I also think Porsche was a little bit anxious about the number of people who have 2 million bucks that are actually willing to buy those cars. My argument is they're doing it right now at auctions, like

• 2:12:24Doug DeMuro?

  Carrera GTs are selling for 8 million. It's not like you're getting a bunch of cheap used car buyers who are like, I want manuals back and I only buy used cars. Like these are people with real money who would buy them. But I think it's just easier to find buyers for automatic hybrids. They would have crazy, you know, numbers, horsepower and acceleration.

• 2:12:43Jordi Hays?

  Uh, what's, what's, talk about the overall auction market and what's going on there? I was, uh, Spent the weekend in Montana with a few guys that have Porsche dealerships and they were speculating themselves, but I'm curious what your take is.

• 2:13:00Doug DeMuro?

  It's been, it's been a bit of a ride the last few months. I've been shocked at watching some of the cars increases they have. Cars that were, there are cars that have gone up sixty, seventy percent in what appears to be three, four months.

• 2:13:15Jordi Hays?

  Wow.

• 2:13:15Doug DeMuro?

  And you look at auction results and it was one result and now it's four results and it's like, wow, so this is where the market is. Like, are some of these cars gone forever? I had to bump my insurance up on my Carrera GT, I'm gonna bump it up again. I'm like getting anxious to drive it. Like, you start to think that like, some of these cars that you lusted after as a child might be gone forever. And it doesn't feel like a bubble either. I just get the sense that we've all been hoping the other shoe would drop and these cars would fall. And that's not what happened after COVID, right? They went up, they stopped climbing, but nothing ever came back down. F40s never got cheap again. F50s never got cheap again. Carrera GTs never got cheap again. And I just don't get the sense that that's gonna happen again. I think that there is a real interest in collectors

• 2:13:58Doug DeMuro?

  and enthusiasts in keeping these cars. And it's just gonna keep driving values up.

• 2:14:02Jordi Hays?

  And isn't, isn't some of this like generational, right? Because you're seeing maybe some more softness in the, in classics and then some of these more like, you know, somebody that grew up with Carrera GT on a poster, like they're not reaching for

• 2:14:19Doug DeMuro?

  Yep.

• 2:14:20Jordi Hays?

  classic cars anymore. And so this entire, there was an entire window of cars that were in hindsight like pretty reasonably priced because the people that were kids when they were being released didn't have the money. And then as soon as you, they had the wealth, then all of them would just immediately go.

• 2:14:37Doug DeMuro?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a FOMO effect among those people. Once they see values of a car go from one to two million, they think to themselves, oh crap, I gotta buy it now before it goes to four million. And that helps push values up too. But yes, I mean, you saw that big, that big auction in Florida where they had all those bizarre colored cars came out. You know, you saw David Lee, who's this content creator in South, Southern California, he bought a Ferrari 250 GTO for like thirty-eight million. Meanwhile, an Enzo at that same auction sold for like eleven. The Enzo 250 GTO spread at three X is unbelievable considering that it used to be A hundred X.

• 2:15:10John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:10Doug DeMuro?

  And you're starting to see a 250 GTO as a 60s car and Enzo is a poster car for millennials. It was a car that was on our walls. I mean, that car came out when I was 15 and I'm, you know, it's literally like a millennial dream. And that's, that's where the money is shifting. I don't, I don't have any interest in a 250 GTO. I don't have any interest in split window Corvette or a Hemi Cuda. You know, I'm looking at Enzos and Carrera GTs. Those are the cars that I want.

• 2:15:33John Coogan?

  What about a Gullwing? How did Hoovy wind up with such an eclectic taste?

• 2:15:38Doug DeMuro?

  You know, the, there are a few historic cars that I think will always be successful.

• 2:15:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:44Doug DeMuro?

  And that is one of them. That is a car that I think even the next generation and the generation after that will appreciate. And, and I got to admit, if Gullwing's came down to a reason, much more reasonable number, even I would be interested, even though it's a 50s car and it's old and all that, it is just so damn cool. And so I don't think that is that eclectic for a young person.

• 2:16:03John Coogan?

  Yeah. I also heard it's like, it's like one of the first cars from that era that actually feels fast, whereas a lot of other cars, it's like, it's, it's fancy, but it just feels very slow.

• 2:16:13Doug DeMuro?

  And modern. That's, that's the really crazy thing about the Gullwing. I drove one and I, it, it wasn't until the moment that I drove one that I realized why you see them on so many vintage rallies. And it's because they're unbelievably drivable. They are very comfortable. They are fuel injected. They are easy to drive. They are easy cars to operate, manual transmission. The, the, the steering is all very easy. It feels like a modern car, even though it is approaching 80 years old, 75 years old.

• 2:16:37John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 2:16:37Doug DeMuro?

  Um, and so it, that's, that's a pretty usable, you know, performance car.

• 2:16:41John Coogan?

  Love it. Jordan?

• 2:16:42Jordi Hays?

  Uh, what other, what other words or advice were you sharing with the Porsche team? On like, what, what would you be, if you were magically the CEO of Porsche, what, what do you do right now? Cause like, there's certainly some, some frustration in terms of accessibility for cars that people really like enthusiast cars.

• 2:17:04Doug DeMuro?

  Yeah, and is that real or is that created? You know, like, I think the enthusiast cars, they're doing things generally right. It is a tough business right now, the auto business. They are dealing with changing governmental situations globally that have really affected their strategy. And Porsche, who is relatively small and relies a lot on the success of a single model, is sitting here saying, "We had shifted electric because that's what everybody told us they wanted." Suddenly, they're saying that they don't necessarily want that. Meanwhile, European regulations are significantly stricter than now North American and even Chinese regulations. And is there a possibility that Porsche makes a special car just for the American and Chinese market?

• 2:17:47Doug DeMuro?

  That's a hard sell to Germany, which is the whole market. I mean, it's an interesting flux kind of world right now in the auto world. And I don't know. I honestly don't know what Porsche's future ought to be, but they have put a lot of money into pro. I have, right now, at my house, the electric Macan GTS. It is a fantastic car. It is not going to sell under any circumstances.

• 2:18:09John Coogan?

  One last question on Porsche before we move on to China. Why do Targas hold their value so well?

• 2:18:16Doug DeMuro?

  They're just not made in large numbers, and they are really damn cool. The real question is, why don't they make a Turbo Targa yet? That is, would be, or a GT3 Targa. That is the market to go after, but I think they're probably supply constrained.

• 2:18:30John Coogan?

  Yeah. China, BYD is in the, they're in the Wall Street Journal today. "BYD launches new fast-charging battery amid slowing demand in China." I was surprised to see that they're losing market share there because it's so competitive. But they have this new tech. They can charge the battery to 97% of capacity from 10% in just nine minutes. Have, like, what BYD models have you driven? What do you like? What do you think will be cloned or adopted, even if it can't be imported?

• 2:19:01Doug DeMuro?

  I drove some BYD Sedan a long time ago. I don't remember which one it was. Very competent car. Yeah, I think it was a Han. This was three, four years ago, and it seems like the cars have gotten more competent since then because I'm sitting here in San Diego. We actually see BYD cars almost every day on the streets coming over from Mexico where they're pretty popular. Wait.

• 2:19:21John Coogan?

  Because you can buy them.

• 2:19:21Doug DeMuro?

  You can buy them.

• 2:19:22John Coogan?

  Register them in Mexico and you can drive them into the United States. You just can't.

• 2:19:26Doug DeMuro?

  I don't think it's Americans who are doing this. It's just Mexicans who are coming over to shop or go to SeaWorld or whatever. But we see, I mean, live in San Diego, see Mexican cars on the road more than any US state.

• 2:19:35John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:35Doug DeMuro?

  And a lot of them are electric because they're selling a lot of them there. And they're, they look pretty damn compelling. I actually think that one of BYD's big success stories is forgetting the China market for a second, just their global conquest. I mean, you see them all over Europe now. You see them all over Latin America now. They are really making it as, as America gets scared of the Chinese and is trying to make all these rules against them. Boy, the other countries are really embracing it. Ultimately, these countries like cheap, good cars. And it, a lot of those cars are cheap and good.

• 2:20:05John Coogan?

  And Tata never really had that success coming out of India. Maybe just too.

• 2:20:11Doug DeMuro?

  I don't know what happened with Tata. They had that crazy tiny car. I think that, I have a suspicion that if Tata had been in different market conditions, things would be different. But I think a lot of the success of BYD and the other Chinese companies is probably fueled by the Chinese government providing really favorable benefits, incentives, et cetera, to them. And maybe in India, you know, when Tata was really trying to blow up 20 years ago, it was pre-EVs and, you know, that's a competitive advantage that the Chinese clearly have right now is their EV technology.

• 2:20:41John Coogan?

  Okay. Killer feature I saw out of China. I want to know whether or not you want this in your next car. If the battery catches on fire, it ejects it concussively out the side. You've seen this video, I'm sure. Is that a good feature or not?

• 2:20:57Doug DeMuro?

  Oh God, you could imagine some real liabilities. That, that hasn't gone in front of, in front of attorneys in the United States, I'll tell you.

• 2:21:06John Coogan?

  I don't think so.

• 2:21:09Doug DeMuro?

  The technology that they are developing is interesting. Charging a battery in nine minutes, that is a huge deal, right? Because I think that still to this day, the primary reason people don't want to adopt EVs is charge time and the fear of charge time and all that stuff. And I think the more you can, if you could ever really solve that problem, whether it's battery swaps or crazy fast charging, that would probably be the last excuse, you know?

• 2:21:34John Coogan?

  Have you seen the show, HBO show Silicon Valley? Have you seen any of this? So there's this character who's loosely based on Mark Cuban, Russ Haneman, and in the show, he brags about how he has a car with doors that go up and it's become, you know, iconic in Silicon Valley. And I had this thesis, if you want to be the, the, the, the most impressive person in Silicon Valley, the best buy is the, is the BMW i8. Because the doors go up.

• 2:22:00Doug DeMuro?

  They do, and it looks cool.

• 2:22:02John Coogan?

  And you can get one for like $40,000 now.

• 2:22:05Doug DeMuro?

  They're cheap.

• 2:22:05John Coogan?

  They're cheap.

• 2:22:06Jordi Hays?

  You'll be able to get one for $20,000 in just, in just a few years, too.

• 2:22:10John Coogan?

  We, uh, we have an intern on our team who's looking at a new car. Uh, talk him out of getting one. Uh, what, what, what, why should he not pull the trigger on a BMW i8?

• 2:22:21Doug DeMuro?

  I will dizzy.

• 2:22:22John Coogan?

  He's 21.

• 2:22:23Doug DeMuro?

  And where does he live?

• 2:22:24John Coogan?

  He lives in Los Angeles.

• 2:22:26Doug DeMuro?

  He should definitely get one.

• 2:22:27John Coogan?

  He should definitely get one.

• 2:22:29Doug DeMuro?

  21 and he's in LA. He should obviously get an i8. He's gonna go around flexing. He's gonna, he's gonna put those doors up at every stoplight.

• 2:22:37John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:22:38Jordi Hays?

  Every stoplight.

• 2:22:38John Coogan?

  Every stoplight. Do it. Uh, should he, should he buy one that's already been wrapped and crashed in crypto? In crypto.

• 2:22:47Doug DeMuro?

  His resolution is that he will wrap and crash it if he doesn't buy one that's good.

• 2:22:51John Coogan?

  I just assume, uh, the, the, the other, the other broader question is that, uh, is that, uh, he, he often winds up at a valet and, and I want to know, what is the best bargain car to make sure that you get valet? You know how they park the nice cars in the front? What's the car that's the best bargain to get the awesome valet spot?

• 2:23:13Doug DeMuro?

  I mean, that is up there.

• 2:23:14John Coogan?

  That's up there, right?

• 2:23:15Doug DeMuro?

  In the 30s and, and car enthusiasts laugh at that car and do not have any respect for that car. But LA valets and driving it around LA and like, you know, that, I remember when those were new, I, I lived in Philly and I remember seeing them on the streets thinking, this looks like a concept car. And I know it's not that fast. I know it doesn't drive great. It's got a three cylinder engine, but holy crap, this thing looks so cool.

• 2:23:37Jordi Hays?

  It looks insane.

• 2:23:38Doug DeMuro?

  It's been 10 years and it still looks just as

• 2:23:41John Coogan?

  It looks cool. He was asking me, he was like, three cylinders. So are they in a V shape? And I was like, no, it's not a V3.

• 2:23:47Doug DeMuro?

  But also, but also if you're, if you're thinking about an i8, you shouldn't concern yourself with any of that stuff. You're obviously not a car enthusiast. So just don't worry about the cylinders.

• 2:23:58John Coogan?

  Just to defend him, I was pitching him this. I was pitching him this, but I still think it's a great, it's a great buy.

• 2:24:04Doug DeMuro?

  Flex car, but it is a hell of a flex.

• 2:24:07John Coogan?

  Yes. What, what else is in that category? If you, if you maybe double the budget, triple the budget, but you still want just ridiculousness for the price.

• 2:24:16Doug DeMuro?

  I am surprised to see how cheap McLarens are getting and the early McLarens, the MP412Cs have a reputation for being unreliable. However, the 570S, which was sort of the next generation car, that was the entry model. They are starting to come down. We sold one on Cars and Viz not that long ago for like 80 some. That's a pretty appealing car because that is like real fast. That is not like, oh, the i8 is pretty fast, fast. That is like modern car, three second or less zero to 60 type of fast. Those are pretty impressive cars for that money. You're still always worried every day, you know, though, when you're driving a 40,000 mile McLaren that was probably on Turo for three and a half years. It's still always a little bit worried, right?

• 2:24:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:58Jordi Hays?

  On Turo for that long is rough. What, what are you looking, what are you most excited for release wise this year?

• 2:25:08Doug DeMuro?

  You know, there's not that much stuff that's coming out this year that I'm really pumped for. I think the Rivian R2 is definitely the car that I'm most excited for. I've already driven it, but I am excited to see how it does. EVs are obviously have fallen off, but that car is so damn good. And I just hope that like it has the success it deserves because it is just such a great car. Um, I'm excited to see the, the electric Ferrari for sure. I don't think it'll be out yet this year. Um, definitely excited to drive the new hypercars, the, the F80 McLarens, which is called the W1. But it seems like this year is a little bit less of a crazy year of cool stuff than I've been excited for. And I think R2 to me is the, especially from a consumer retail car. Industry perspective, to me, probably the most interesting car coming out.

• 2:25:49Jordi Hays?

  What's going on with Scout Motors? Is that, is that taking some of Rivian's IP? Do I, I'm just kind of speculating here, but VW Group is a big investor in Rivian, and I think they got IP rights through that investment to try to bring it over to the rest of the fleet. Then Scout is kind of like expanding off of what Rivian's done. What's the relationship there?

• 2:26:17Doug DeMuro?

  It'll be an interesting thing to see because, yeah, Volkswagen is an investor in Rivian, but also basically owns Scout. And it's like, wait a minute, you know, these cars are really similar. Like, they're both these kind of boxy off-road electric vehicles. One interesting distinction is that Scout is going to do a plug-in hybrid, so they're going to have gas motors in those cars. And I think that that is one excuse people use for not buying Rivian's. They're worried if they go overlanding, they're going to run out of charge, which is a legitimate worry if you're actually out in the middle of the desert or the mountains or whatever. But Scout, they recently announced they're pushing Scout a year to 28 now. This is one of those things where I'm like a believe it when I see it guy. You know, they showed those cars, which were so cool. What has that been, two years ago? Another saying it'll be another two years.

• 2:26:59Doug DeMuro?

  It's like, let's, let's, let's see what happens. Let's see what the climate is like politically before these cars actually come out. But it is interesting that, yeah, Volkswagen Group is basically pitting these two brands sort of against each other. And I am curious how that will end up shaking down.

• 2:27:15John Coogan?

  Yeah. Is there a word for those like reverse hybrids, where it's mostly an electric car, but it has a gas engine that you can fill up to charge the battery? I saw a demo from a Chinese car, but that feels like something that for the overlander, for the camper, for somebody who wants to go off-grid and not have the range anxiety, but still have all the benefits of the electric powertrain?

• 2:27:36Doug DeMuro?

  Yeah, that, that is. I think that would, almost like a generator, essentially.

• 2:27:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, basically.

• 2:27:40Doug DeMuro?

  I think that would be great. I think, and I think people would probably, they would certainly be more willing to adopt that than like a full electric for like the overlanding crowd. However, I would argue that like, I walk around my neighborhood and like eight of my neighbors have Rivian R1S's. Like, these people aren't actually overlanding, right? These are, these are cars, the three-row SUVs they're going to take their kids around. And I think that you can't, you can't, you can't do too much development for the overlanding crowd, which isn't real. There's not a lot of people in the overlanding world willing to spend 120 grand on a brand-new vehicle anyway. Mostly, you got to think about who's actually going to buy these, which is, you know, parents.

• 2:28:14John Coogan?

  Do you have, do you have expectations around self-driving capabilities? Just going to normal consumer cars over the next few years like I don't know if you've been in a Waymo, but

• 2:28:24Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I was talking to these Porsche dealers last weekend and I was like, how much of a threat do you think the Like at what point do consumers say like, I love Porsche, but I don't wanna, I want, I want the best possible autonomous driving.

• 2:28:42Doug DeMuro?

  Right.

• 2:28:43Jordi Hays?

  And so I'm just gonna, for my daily, I couldn't possibly go with Porsche because I don't want to drive.

• 2:28:49Doug DeMuro?

  Yeah, I think about that a lot. I have been surprised at autonomous, autonomous technology. There was a lot of talk about it for a long time and then it, the last two years I haven't heard that much. It's almost like they haven't been able to kind of, Whatever the next hump is like they're doing well and the Tesla FSD is great and a lot of other cars have really great systems too, but None of these are like Waymo type, like they're not, you know, that doesn't seem like it's ready to go into Cars that you or me would be able to buy and that doesn't seem like it's changed much over the last couple of years. It seems like the world has moved on to like AI and And kind of forgotten about like autonomous cars and I do wonder how long that's gonna be. I do think that

• 2:29:31Doug DeMuro?

  Porsche will have to develop, like there will have to be autonomous Porsches, like other automakers will do it too. If they want to sell Kons and Panameras, those are not necessarily being sold to people who like love to drive. And so those cars also will, they'll have to do that. That's just gonna have to be what they do.

• 2:29:47John Coogan?

  Yeah, Mercedes seemed really close with a level three system that you could actually watch of YouTube video on the center console.

• 2:29:55Doug DeMuro?

  And they even said at some point they would be willing to take liability, but like where is that?

• 2:29:59John Coogan?

  It just never really shifted or anything and you would think there would be like a rat race, arms race and you'd be like, okay, well now BMW fires back and they're You know, level three plus, right? But it just never really played out.

• 2:30:10Doug DeMuro?

  They all went, all went all in on EV and spent a lot of money and time developing that and It turned out that's kind of been a little bit of a done, at least here in North America. And it's like, we would rather have it. I think most people would rather have it.

• 2:30:21John Coogan?

  Most people, yeah, definitely.

• 2:30:23Jordi Hays?

  How do I get a, one of these new Unimogs from Mercedes?

• 2:30:28Doug DeMuro?

  The the story I read was that they're building precisely one. Did you read that?

• 2:30:32John Coogan?

  No.

• 2:30:32Doug DeMuro?

  They're building one.

• 2:30:33Jordi Hays?

  That's what I was afraid of because you look at this thing and it's like it looks like a concept car. When I first saw it, I was like, okay, this is cool, but it's obviously AI. And then Mercedes was posting it from their actual account. I'm like, okay, it's real, but it's a partnership with this uh other kind of like commercial truck company. I forget the name. So I'm not going to get one, you're saying, and you're not going to review one?

• 2:30:56Doug DeMuro?

  No, I mean, even if they did make them, the Unimogs, especially modern Unimogs, have almost completely been restricted to not the US. There's all sorts of regulations and trucks. Importing trucks to the US is hard. Um, but it'd be cool as hell. It looks incredibly cool.

• 2:31:10John Coogan?

  Oh, no.

• 2:31:12Jordi Hays?

  What uh, what is, what's the most elite? What's the most elite, big family SUV? Hmm. To buy this year? I'm in the market.

• 2:31:22Doug DeMuro?

  The answer for me, if I was the answer answering this question, it would be the Lexus LX because I think that that is a serious car that is seriously capable. It is the 300 series Land Cruiser globally, which is a very serious car that Toyota doesn't bring here anymore as a Toyota. And I think if you know, you know, that car isn't if you know, you know, car. I think a lot of people would say that it's the Cadillac Escalade IQ, but I think that car is certainly uh, there's a group of people who are buying that car, you know? It's not really uh, I think they think they are elite and I think that it's it's uh, it's not really that, but I think I like the if you know, you know, cars better. The LX, specifically the Overtrail LX, like the off-road version

• 2:32:03Doug DeMuro?

  is like a very, it's a three-row, but it's like a very capable off-roader. And it's expensive and not that many people are buying it. Those are special cars.

• 2:32:12John Coogan?

  The last, last car recommendation, uh, there's a, there's a group of folks on our team, all young, single individuals. They go on date nights. They were thinking about going in and buying one car that they would share. They were considering a Lamborghini Urus that they would each have a few nights a month with which to go on.

• 2:32:31Jordi Hays?

  And some more backstory, I think it was the two of us.

• 2:32:35John Coogan?

  This is our idea. Again, this is our idea. But is there, is there a better car for a group of young men in Los Angeles to share for first dates? Than a Lamborghini Urus?

• 2:32:48Doug DeMuro?

  Do we have a budget here or are we, is it?

• 2:32:50Jordi Hays?

  Well, I mean, we're talking about eight or so guys.

• 2:32:52John Coogan?

  There's eight or so guys. So they're going to all be paying a normal car payment of a couple hundred dollars. But you add that up, you get into like three grand. You get into like three grand a month.

• 2:33:00Jordi Hays?

  Potentially lease like a, like a Rolls Royce.

• 2:33:03John Coogan?

  Rolls Royce, but that's not maybe the right date car. So yeah, the team's right there if you want to take a look.

• 2:33:07Doug DeMuro?

  If it was me, I would get a Benteke for that same money. But it depends on the type of lady that you're, or man that you're trying to attract.

• 2:33:14John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:15Doug DeMuro?

  There's a certain type of, of lady or man that is interested in an Urus driver.

• 2:33:19John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:19Doug DeMuro?

  And there is a certain type of decision to take it. And you kind of got to just figure out what you're looking for. You know what I mean?

• 2:33:24John Coogan?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:33:25Jordi Hays?

  Your wife is not going to be attracted to the Urus. But the Benteke, she might appreciate.

• 2:33:31John Coogan?

  Yeah. Well, that's why Turo exists. We will, we will, we will need a Turo each and run the proper A B test for the.

• 2:33:36Doug DeMuro?

  That may actually be the easier way to do this for.

• 2:33:40John Coogan?

  It truly is.

• 2:33:40Doug DeMuro?

  Because at some point in either situation, you have to come clean.

• 2:33:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:46Doug DeMuro?

  Why don't you start with the Urus tonight? Oh.

• 2:33:49Jordi Hays?

  Well, the best thing, a 24 hour Turo rental, you potentially can squeeze in two dinners, a breakfast and a lunch, and then maybe even a late lunch before you got to return the car.

• 2:33:59Doug DeMuro?

  10 years ago, I did ads for Turo and in YouTube videos. And for some reason I agreed to be paid in Turo credit instead of dollars. And it got to a point at one point where I had like $22,000 in Turo credit. And so whenever I would travel anywhere, I would just sort by most expensive. And I would rent whatever G Wagon or Audi R8 or McLaren was available and whatever.

• 2:34:23Jordi Hays?

  The brutal thing for me is I was watching, I was watching your videos and I became a Turo client, but I was, you know, in my early twenties, I couldn't get any of the good stuff. I'd just be like, okay, like, uh, I can get a boxer.

• 2:34:38John Coogan?

  Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.

• 2:34:41Doug DeMuro?

  Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it.

• 2:34:43John Coogan?

  Everyone, go, uh, follow Cars and Bids, go to carsandbids.com, listen to this car. Buy, yeah, sort by most expensive, buy that car. That's what you want to do.

• 2:34:54Doug DeMuro?

  Exactly right. Exactly right. Thank you, guys.

• 2:34:57John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye. Let me tell you about AppLovin'. Profitable advertising made it easy with axon.ai. Get access to over 1 billion daily active users and grow your business today. And let me tell you about Okta. Okta helps you assign every AI agent a trusted identity. So you get the power of AI without the risk. Secure every agent, secure any agent with Okta. And without further ado, Max Hodak is back on the show. Max, good to see you. How are you doing?

• 2:35:24Jordi Hays?

  We do not have audio, but you look fantastic.

• 2:35:27John Coogan?

  You look fantastic. The video looks great. Uh, Max Hodak is of course the founder and CEO of Science Corporation. He's co-founder of Neuralink and there are some exciting news developments coming through today.

• 2:35:42Jordi Hays?

  I think I heard something.

• 2:35:43John Coogan?

  I think I hear. Max, can you hear us?

• 2:35:45Speaker 07

  I can hear you.

• 2:35:46John Coogan?

  Yeah, I can hear a little bit.

• 2:35:48Jordi Hays?

  Great.

• 2:35:48John Coogan?

  So, uh, give us the, maybe reintroduce the company and then give us the news today.

• 2:35:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, it's been a crazy, crazy couple of months.

• 2:35:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:58Speaker 07

  So we're, uh, I mean, we're a medical technology company really focused on the brain. It's just when you engage directly with the brain, you go into the exercise, you don't really see elsewhere in medicine. Our, our lead product is the, is a retinal processing chip that plants it in the back of the eye that, uh, we finished a major clinical trial last year on age-related macular degeneration. It's one of the main reasons people go blind. Um, that's not inherited. And in that clinical trial, you're able to take people that haven't been able to recognize faces for over a decade to reading. I found out the other week that one of our patients finished a 300 patient novel. There's a sketch on the wall of our office. It's someone who sent us a sketch of the Sydney Opera House that she drew through it.

• 2:36:34John Coogan?

  Wow. We're still having some audio airs. Let's, uh, let's take a little break. We'll come back to you in a few minutes. Is that okay? Let's sort that out and Jordy and I will go back to a bit of the news and give you an update on ChatGPT is pulling back potentially from the direct, direct response advertising, the agentic commerce is going to be a little bit more brand focused potentially. I saw some news.

• 2:37:02Jordi Hays?

  Well, agentic commerce, uh, agentic commerce is different than the ads product.

• 2:37:08John Coogan?

  Yes, yes. So.

• 2:37:09Jordi Hays?

  Like, uh, agentic commerce is like you search for a product.

• 2:37:12John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 2:37:13Jordi Hays?

  A Shopify retailer.

• 2:37:15John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:15Jordi Hays?

  Like has opted into this.

• 2:37:16John Coogan?

  There was a question about.

• 2:37:17Jordi Hays?

  So I think, I think, I think a big part of it is just like focus, right? Like it seems like over the last, uh, couple of months, like my, my interpretation of OpenAI strategy is like, hey, let's focus on our core business, consumer. Let's focus on enterprise, code gen, and let's just like get back to basics.

• 2:37:36John Coogan?

  My big question is, is I wonder if there will be an opportunity to, uh, to run more targeted ads on those more considered purchases like a car. Like I have hit ChatGPT with a number of questions about very expensive purchases like a car. I'm not getting targeted on Instagram with car ads because typically the car brands have, uh, sort of just like brand advertising broadly for, okay, yeah, here's a brand. You see it at the Super Bowl, but, uh, direct response has never really worked on Meta for these highly considered purchases like houses and cars. But people go to LLMs asking questions about those. What will it be like to live in this neighborhood?

• 2:38:17John Coogan?

  Is this like, here's my budget. What, what should I be, uh, you know, what should I be looking for in a family car? Like the questions that you asked Doug DeMuro, we're not, we're fortunate that we get to ask him directly about R8s and.

• 2:38:28Jordi Hays?

  Organic intelligence.

• 2:38:30John Coogan?

  I8s and all sorts of, uh, Bentagas versus Urises. But a lot of people will have that question and go to an LLM for a debate. And you can even go to ChatGPT right now and just ask, you know, what's the best car? What car do you think I want? And it will just tell you, and there's an opportunity there to drive conversion to a very high ticket purchase, but it's unclear. You know how quickly that will that will roll out. We do have a piece of advice for everyone.

• 2:38:57Jordi Hays?

  By the way, I just asked.

• 2:38:59John Coogan?

  What?

• 2:38:59Jordi Hays?

  Chat GPT 5.4 thinking, what car do you think I want? And it only had to think for a couple of seconds. Probably a Porsche 992 GT3 RS with the Y stock package.

• 2:39:11John Coogan?

  See, nailed it. And so the thing is, is that it could be asking that question in the background. It could it could go in the background and just say, for every single person, ask what's the what's the highest ticket item that you think that they might buy? And then they could go to Porsche and say, hey, we think we got a fish on the line here. Like, just pay us a couple bucks. If we get them across the finish line, pay us a thousand bucks or a couple thousand bucks. And that could be a very different shape of advertiser, I think.

• 2:39:36Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, it's hard to hard to handle the attribution, but.

• 2:39:40John Coogan?

  Yes, but I think it's actually easier in an LLM context because if you if you are actually going to buy that GT3 RS with a Y stock package, you'll probably ask ChatGPT about where can you find one? And then when you're in the dealership, when you're reviewing a contract, you might potentially actually have the the LLM review the contract, right? Like you might have, you might upload it, upload the the the the sales contract and you might ask it, hey, update my insurance and it might go do that. So it might actually have a lot more attribution. And then down the line, it might actually say, you might be asking a question, hey, my check engine light's on.

• 2:40:20John Coogan?

  Or how do I put this in track mode? And then it knows that you actually got the GT3 RS with the Y stock package. So who knows? Anyway, I think we have resolved our issues. We will return to our discussion with Max Hodak. How are you doing, Max?

• 2:40:35John Coogan?

  Yes, I think so.

• 2:40:37Jordi Hays?

  Much better.

• 2:40:38John Coogan?

  Let's uh, let's, let's, let's restart with.

• 2:40:42Jordi Hays?

  Start over from the beginning because I was, I could hardly hear you, but what I was hearing, I was quite excited about.

• 2:40:48John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 2:40:49Speaker 07

  So we make brain implants. Our main, our main one is a retinal prosthesis. So it's a chip implanted in the back of the eye, finished a major clinical trial last, last summer in age-related macular degeneration, which is one of the leading causes of blindness. And in the trial, we were able to take patients that, like, there's one patient that hasn't been able to recognize faces in over a decade. I found out that she finished a 300-page novel recently.

• 2:41:11John Coogan?

  Oh, that's insane. Wait, so, so, uh, couldn't recognize faces, that means that, like, if I'm trying to imagine what that looks like, it's effectively, take a picture of what I'm seeing and then just blur, blur, blur, until I can't even recognize a face. Is that, is that basically what the person's experiencing?

• 2:41:27Speaker 07

  So in this disease, yeah, they lose their high-resolution central vision. So there's like, like, you, when you look online, you might see an image of like a big black splotch in the center of your vision. And the patients don't experience the black slot, splotch. So it's like a little bit weird than that. They, they describe it as missing. So it's kind of like, like a big extended blind spot. But, um, yeah, I mean, all of your high-resolution, high-acuity central vision gets destroyed in this disease geographic attribute. And so we have a chip that, uh, we implant under where the dead retina is, it can stimulate this retina directly, um, bypassing the dead cells to get the signal back into the brain. So like, if you, I mean, humanity is empirically not that good at drug discovery, but the

• 2:42:09Speaker 07

  brain is a computer and there's a cable that carries the visual signal into the brain. And if we can get the signal into the cable, then you can get vision into the brain.

• 2:42:15John Coogan?

  Wow, that's remarkable. Uh, how much is the device that you implant like a camera sensor that I would see in an iPhone?

• 2:42:24Speaker 07

  That, so there's a wearable. So the patients wear glasses. On the glasses, there's two parts.

• 2:42:29John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 2:42:29Speaker 07

  The implant, but then there's the glasses, and the glasses have a camera.

• 2:42:31John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:32Speaker 07

  That is just like an iPhone camera.

• 2:42:33John Coogan?

  Got it.

• 2:42:34Speaker 07

  And there's a laser projector that projects the image onto the implant.

• 2:42:37John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 2:42:37Speaker 07

  But the, the cool trick here is the implant is, it's kind of all these tiny little solar panels. And so it is powered by the image that's projected onto it. And so it means that there's no battery, there's no cable coming out of the eye, it's just a little chip. Because it is, like, when you project the infrared image onto the implant, that powers it at the same time to stimulate the retina.

• 2:42:55John Coogan?

  Wow. Um, I, this feels like an invasive process. How invasive is it? Is this an expert surgeon doing the work? Are you thinking about robotics? Uh, what's involved in actually, obviously, the reward is so high that it's worth it, but, uh, what does that look like now? What will it look like in a decade?

• 2:43:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, this is done by by human surgeons. It's done by vitroretinal surgeon.

• 2:43:20John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:20Speaker 07

  Um, and it's it, but it's a simple operation procedure. So you can do this under local anesthesia. So you make an injection next to the eye. It goes dark in them for a couple of hours. They can pick it up front of the eye. I mean, it looks, I mean, like watching a video, it's kind of like, um, I don't know that you would do this selectively, but the uh, it's, it's really not a big deal. It's about an hour and a half and the patient goes home and a day later there, they can take a bandage off.

• 2:43:43John Coogan?

  That's remarkable. Um, and so, so uh, walk me through like, post implant, post-surgery monitoring. Do you have benchmarks? I mean, you mentioned like a 300-page book. That seems like, okay, it works, but uh, are you giving them the normal like eye test? What's the, what, what, what, what are all the different batteries that you use to understand the effect of the, of the device?

• 2:44:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch. There's, we're looking at both efficacies or things like how many letters of, uh, can they read on the eye chart?

• 2:44:16John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:16Speaker 07

  And improvement in that, that was one of the main trial endpoints. We wanted at least two lines of improvement. We got on average much better than that. And the uh, and then you're also looking at measures of safety. So for when, is there anything worse off for having this? Like in there, they have the chip in, but the, the laser's not on. Is there residual vision? Cause many of these patients have residual peripheral vision that they can use to walk around. It's just that they can't, they can't read. They can't, definitely can't drive. The um, and you don't want that to get worse. And so this is, there's various ways you can measure that. You can measure the, the range of the visual field. Uh, but yeah, I mean, the eye chart is a standard test. We, we use that as an efficacy endpoint.

• 2:44:59John Coogan?

  Um, surgery.

• 2:45:01Jordi Hays?

  Uh, what, uh, you've raised a bunch of new money. Like what, what is this going to go towards? Is it, you know, continuing to focus on, on the, the core products? Like, walk us through.

• 2:45:13Speaker 07

  Yeah. So the, so we, we announced yesterday that we raised 230 million dollars this year. Bring the little capital to a little under a trillion. It's like, you know, it's like a lot of money.

• 2:45:23Jordi Hays?

  A lot of money. A lot of money.

• 2:45:30John Coogan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:45:33Speaker 07

  We thought ourselves the privilege of working really hard.

• 2:45:36John Coogan?

  Yeah. So I, can you take me back a little bit to how you discovered this particular problem to solve? Because it feels like you've, throughout your career, you've taken like a sort of general approach. But then there's always a question of like, what's the most impactful, quickest way to market? Most, you know, capital efficient? There's a whole bunch of different trade offs that I imagine you wrestled with before you landed on this particular product.

• 2:46:05Speaker 07

  So we have, we have three programs outside. There's our work in the retina. There's our bio hybrid neural interface technology, which is a general purpose, kind of what people think of as like a neural interface. But a little bit different than what most of the people do. And then we have improvements in critical care life support technologies. All three, I mean, I think one way to conceive of what we're doing is like if Netronic was started in 2021, what are the projects they would be taking on that like the next 20 years? And when you think about from a brain computer interface perspective, I mean, I, beyond like, like what is a BCI? It's become kind of synonymous for many people with paralyzed people controlling computers. That is what many AI companies are doing. But I, we think that cochlear implants are BCI's.

• 2:46:49John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:49Speaker 07

  And those have been around for decades. And the, and it's, so the retinal prosthesis is really in the tradition of cochlear implants. There's a billion people plus with those out there. And just until recently, the technology hasn't really worked. And so when you think about what is the most valuable BCI product that is an unmet need? Restoring vision to the blind is really out there. And so the need is, is one of those things that is kind of obvious. Restoring vision to the blind is a quest humanity has been on for thousands of years. And then if you were to do that, when I looked at, when me and my co founders looked around at the state of the world in early 2021. We, it was pretty easy for us to build a conviction that, that, that one way or another,

• 2:47:31Speaker 07

  by stimulating either the optic nerve directly or the, the layer of cells in the retina just before that, using either a gene therapy or an electrical stimulator, one way or another, you kind of have these like four boxes, it's really like three boxes of those trade-offs. One of those would work, and we went out and did an exhaustive survey of the state of the art in, uh, in kind of each of those three options, and zeroed in on, on what we're doing now. And there's, I think, really like a first principles engineering approach to how you tackle the problem. And, uh, that has so far paid off. We're not off the market yet, but I think we're getting pretty close. And the next step, this capital is to, um,

• 2:48:13Speaker 07

  we've submitted for marketing approval in Europe, hope to be, uh, commercially approved there in the, in the near future, not, not quite there yet, um, and then start to be able to commercialize it.

• 2:48:23John Coogan?

  Talk about resolution. I imagine that the camera on the glasses is something like 1080p, something along those lines, but I imagine that the, uh, the actual implant needs to serve something that's maybe lower resolution or translated. Uh, you, you're not, you're not like running a, yeah, you're not running like an image to text pipeline and then piping that into the brain. Uh, but what, what, what is the input and then what goes actually into the brain?

• 2:48:53Speaker 07

  So it's important to understand that only the central couple degrees of your visual field is high acuity color.

• 2:49:01John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 2:49:02Speaker 07

  You're constantly looking around to try to like reduce the uncertainty of the brain. You, you don't see the image on the retina directly. What you experience is a world model constructed by the brain. It's highly semantic, like you can look at something and kind of know, well, that's hard or soft if I touch it. That isn't, we're experiencing this world model. And so as the eye is moving around, it's filling in areas of uncertainty. And so the implant, you're right, it's not, we're not restoring high resolution color vision today. But it is, what we are getting is this intuitive form image that patients can look at. They can, it strings together shapes into letters and letters into words and they bring and apprehend that intuitively. And that had never really been done before.

• 2:49:45Speaker 07

  And so that is like a really clear statement that we're on the right track. But the next step is to make the implant larger so that this, the device that's now is two millimeters by two millimeters, which covers, it's like looking through a straw. And the electrodes are point one millimeters, which means that you stimulate a bunch of cells at a time. And so what that means is it's not that it is pixelated, they don't see it as pixelated, they see it as sharp. But they only get a small amount of detail at once. Now, it does better than you would expect for the, for the number of electrodes because as the eye moves around, it gets in this information and so it really, it's a little bit. It's fascinating. Yeah, you can't really think of it like a camera in that way. But we actually have the next version of the chips already in hand.

• 2:50:27Speaker 07

  The electrodes are much smaller, we're going to go from four hundred to a couple thousand. And those are, we're working on the clinical study for those over the next year. And hopefully every like two years or so, we'll have versions coming out. And we actually think that it could be upgradable, although we'll have to prove that, of course. Yeah.

• 2:50:46Jordi Hays?

  Based on, based on the kind of early, early patients, like how do you expect this market to evolve? And how quickly, how quickly people that suffer from blindness will adopt something like this? Once you continue to prove out the product? My assumption is that there's like an extreme eagerness to find a solution, again, for something that, a solution that has never existed. But, you know, what do you think the adoption curve will look like?

• 2:51:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean. Blind patients are pretty motivated for the most part. So age-related macular degeneration as a whole is big. Not that many people have a form that is late-stage and serious enough that this makes sense right now. For the current, so that AMD globally is 200 million people, but that's not really that many number. For very late-stage, both eyes, large area of atrophy, that's the population that's really relevant for the product as it is right now. That's, we think that's like 6,500 people a year in the US. Backlog of a couple, of maybe 150, 200,000 people across the US and Europe. And with the next version of the device, with a larger field of US, our electrode, that

• 2:52:06Speaker 07

  expands to probably 5 million people. And these are, these are, we're not going to, we're, if the next several years we're doing thousands a year, that would be, those would be big numbers. And I, so right now, it, like I said, it's not high-resolution color vision, but is this powerful distance proof that this technology is on the right track? But I, I do think that the next couple of device generations will hopefully be able to get color in perceps, will be able to at least get red and green, and they'll be able to get native acuity. You're not going to go, sometimes people ask like, okay, well, I got this as an augmentation. Like, you're not going to do better than the photoreceptors. If you have photoreceptors, you should use those. But I think that we can get pretty close to what those are for you.

• 2:52:48John Coogan?

  Last question from me. Smell-a-vision. When are we getting it? How will we solve the problem of teaching AI to smell? Do we need to capture the olfactory system from my brain and decode that into tokens? What if I lose my sense of smell? Will you be able to help me restore my sense of smell in the future?

• 2:53:10Speaker 07

  I mean, this gets to a fairly deep question of just like, how do you capture the structure of any phenomenal? Like, different in hearing are different, smell is different, somatic is different. So how do you capture? Like, we have, we can write down images and audio files to here, and so we have this format that captures them, but that doesn't really tell you about. Like the like a wave file is different than an image file. And so like, what is a smell file like? And there's actually really interesting research on like you can, there's like, it's, it's a chemical sensor, expands the space of molecules, you can get this decomposition of the space of molecules. But this is, yeah, smell been very, there's a lot of companies that have worked on growing up neurons, expressing olfactory receptors to try to do like chemicals

• 2:53:53Speaker 07

  that, because like dog noses are, like, there is like some of those chemical, most sensitive chemical detectors in the universe.

• 2:54:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:02Speaker 07

  And I actually just talked to a company the other day that is training dogs to detect cancer.

• 2:54:06John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:07Speaker 07

  And I went into the pitch, like, I don't believe you. And I came out, oh, like, I get, like, that actually is like, I could see it.

• 2:54:12John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:13Speaker 07

  And the trick was, the really interesting thing, just really shortly, wasn't not, it's not that they're picking up some chemical that is present if you have cancer, it's that there's thousands of chemicals that are constantly just like being emitted that are like in your blood that are being used out. And if you can train a dog under reinforcement, what it does is it kind of up-regulates some receptors, down-regulates some other receptors, the brain wires together to pick out that part of chemical space. And so it can pick out this exquisite balance of hundreds or thousands of chemicals, to say, when these are present in these proportions.

• 2:54:44John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:45Speaker 07

  You should get.

• 2:54:46John Coogan?

  That's fascinating. So it's not like there's a cancer chemical, it's the irregularities, the pattern. I mean, this seems perfectly tailored for artificial intelligence, but yeah, we don't, we don't even have a smell file yet. So dogs still employed in the singularity, for sure.

• 2:55:02Speaker 07

  Yeah. So it's like, if it's not one chemical, you can't just mass back it, you only detect thousands of them, which is why they're not used on dogs.

• 2:55:07John Coogan?

  I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much. And congratulations on the progress. Thank you for everything you do. What?

• 2:55:13Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, how, last question from my side, how, like, talk about the significance of this milestone. You obviously raised a lot of money out the gates, but is this like, like, hey, we actually, like, is like, becoming a real company now and moving, moving beyond? Because everybody talks about big, you know, there's a lot of big numbers that get thrown around in our industry. If you have, you know, some AI database company with 10 million of ARR, you can raise $230 million, but this is a very different kind of type of business where you had to raise a lot of money out the gates, but you maybe wouldn't have gotten a bunch more money if you weren't really on to something.

• 2:55:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, our focus, like, I really strongly believe that there needs to be businesses in this industry. I mean, you can spend an infinite amount of money just on our research. I mean, it's an infinite well of research. I mean, this is like, there's so much grant money that goes into neuroscience and neural engineering. But we, um, I don't know, I mean, I, I, I just like strongly feel that it's like we're suffering from this like money cancer that every now and then you kind of goes into remission when you raise your habit and then it comes back and like it, the feeling won't go away until you have a sustainable business where there's revenue again. And I think that we're hopefully pretty, like, we're not, we're close to it. That's like the thing we're focused on is getting to a real business that reaches many patients and improves their lives. And there's things

• 2:56:36Speaker 07

  that you can point to that are clearly valuable to, to lots of people that allowed us to become sustainable. And then it's a question of how fast do you grow rather than like, is, is BCI going to have a winner?

• 2:56:48Jordi Hays?

  Yeah. Excellent. Very cool. Well, thank you for coming on and sharing and for the work that you're doing.

• 2:56:54John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:55Jordi Hays?

  It's incredibly inspiring.

• 2:56:56John Coogan?

  Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you soon, Max.

• 2:56:58Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure Max has very relaxing weekends.

• 2:57:01John Coogan?

  Yeah. Nothing going on at the office. No. Uh, good luck with all the hard work ahead of you. Thank you for everything you do.

• 2:57:08Jordi Hays?

  Great to catch up.

• 2:57:08John Coogan?

  We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

• 2:57:10Jordi Hays?

  Cheers.

• 2:57:11John Coogan?

  Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web apps, servers, databases and more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling monitoring and security. And let me tell you about Labelbox. RL environments, voice, robotics, evals and expert human data. Labelbox is the data factory behind the world's leading AI teams.

• 2:57:34Jordi Hays?

  Uh, Scook says, imagine trying to explain this to a software engineer 18 months ago. And it's a Forbes article on January 5th, employees at Cursor return from the holiday weekend to an all hands meeting with a slide deck titled wartime.

• 2:57:47John Coogan?

  War time.

• 2:57:48Jordi Hays?

  After becoming the hottest, fastest growing AI coding company, Cursor is confronting a new reality. Developers may no longer need a code editor at all.

• 2:57:57John Coogan?

  Yeah, what a wild ride over the last two weeks with Cursor. I mean, the company's still growing and ARR is at 2 billion, potentially raising at 50 billion. But at the same time, a lot of, you know, we've seen a lot of viral posts saying like, I don't need my Cursor seats anymore. I've moved on to just coding agents. And so definitely a, you know, maybe there's a shift in the business. Do they go more into training models? Do they go deeper into certain enterprises that are maybe stickier or harder to get to? Do they become more forward deployed, helping with transformation, doing actual projects, they can become a consulting firm? Like, where is the next act two for that company will be an interesting question.

• 2:58:37John Coogan?

  Well, hopefully, they're not reliant on building Cursor using Mac Studios with 512 gigs of RAM, because those apparently are no longer available due to the DRAM shortage. This is from Mac rumors. The Mac Studio with the maximum amount of RAM that you can use to inference large models locally. Well, it's going to be harder to get in the DRAM shortage. So pour one out for the good old

• 2:59:03Jordi Hays?

  It's over.

• 2:59:03John Coogan?

  Maxed out Mac Studio. It could be, or they could just be preparing for the next revision. I think there'll be a new Mac Studio out in a couple months and maybe they're ready to start building those because the, I imagine that the, the purchase rate of those sort of like falls off slowly towards the end. You know, no one really buys an iPhone right before they release the new iPhone. There's a big surge. And so maybe you want to allocate that DRAM to the next generation.

• 2:59:29Jordi Hays?

  Gabe had shared this on X. He said they're rolling out CEOs for fast food brands you've never heard of.

• 2:59:35John Coogan?

  That's true.

• 2:59:35Jordi Hays?

  And we got a post here

• 2:59:38John Coogan?

  Is there a new one?

• 2:59:39Jordi Hays?

  From Freddie's CEO. I sent you the chat from Freddie's, John. You know about Freddie's?

• 2:59:43John Coogan?

  I've never heard of Freddie's. Has Volta done one of these?

• 2:59:46Jordi Hays?

  Can we get some audio here?

• 2:59:47John Coogan?

  Has Volta done one? We need, we need one from John.

• 2:59:50Doug DeMuro?

  I want to see what I eat for lunch on the reel. Here we go. On the reel. Original double. I'd like to make that a triple, please. I'll do fries and a large Diet Dr. Pepper.

• 2:59:59John Coogan?

  This guy, definitely.

• 3:00:00Doug DeMuro?

  I eat on the go because I'm on the go all the time. In the car it is. Go folks. CEO eating his burger like he does all the time.

• 3:00:09John Coogan?

  This is such a funny little trend for the CEOs of

• 3:00:13Jordi Hays?

  I would like, I would like to see SaaS, SaaS CEOs do this.

• 3:00:18John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:19Jordi Hays?

  Here I am, I'm using, alright, how do I, how do I poke around here?

• 3:00:24John Coogan?

  Eating burgers.

• 3:00:27John Coogan?

  Is this a different company now? There are so many of these.

• 3:00:32Jordi Hays?

  Tacos, Freddy's has tacos too.

• 3:00:34John Coogan?

  You gotta go with the hot honey, cheeseburger, hot honey, little savory sweet action. You wanna see David Chang chowing down? I wanna see Jiro eating his own sushi. Give me that. Uh, there's a lot more. Uh, there's a chart from Anthropic on the impact of AI labor markets. Blue shows the theoretical capability of AI. Red shows where the observed usage is happening. Computer and math is huge, office and admin is pretty big, sales is actually creeping up too. Uh, but if you're in production, transportation, protect ice service, there's a typo on this for some reason.

• 3:01:16John Coogan?

  Uh, protect ice service, protective services probably, uh, maybe a hallucination there. Uh, personal care, grounds maintenance, completely unaffected. So, head over to transportation and ground service. I was, I was confused by the transportation thing because like, like the self-driving cars, like that's, that's happening, that's coming. Like, like, uh, in terms of AI's capability, yeah, maybe it's not, you know, an Anthropic model that's driving you around. But certainly automation will come for transportation. Now, ground maintenance, that feels much further off with, uh, you know, robots. Nat Freeman's working on that one with the other ones. But, uh, Kevin Roos has a, has a mnemonic to know about, to learn about the, uh, the, uh, labor market. He says, "Jobs in the red is dead, jobs in the blue, join a construction crew."

• 3:02:02John Coogan?

  And someone else was saying that this could have just been a bar chart, but, uh, you know, here we are. Anyway, anything else we should talk about? Why don't you find another post and I'll tell everyone about Sentry? Sentry shows developers what's broken and helps them fix it fast. That's why 150,000 organizations use it to keep their apps working. Uh, Tyler, you have a final?

• 3:02:22Speaker 02

  I have a post, yeah. Uh, Scott Sumner, you know, uh, from, from GMU, I think he's retired, but, you know, Macro Goat.

• 3:02:28John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:29Speaker 02

  He has a new SubSec post.

• 3:02:30John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  It's called Freak Out.

• 3:02:31John Coogan?

  Freak Out?

• 3:02:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:32John Coogan?

  No way.

• 3:02:33Speaker 02

  So he's blackpilling.

• 3:02:34John Coogan?

  Really?

• 3:02:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:02:35John Coogan?

  Wasn't he just on, uh, Macro Measings?

• 3:02:37Speaker 02

  Uh, pretty recently, yeah. Great episode.

• 3:02:40John Coogan?

  Okay, we gotta, we gotta-

• 3:02:41Speaker 02

  Nominal GDP level targeting.

• 3:02:42John Coogan?

  We gotta read through this. Uh, Sumner, okay.

• 3:02:45Speaker 02

  When is it time to panic?

• 3:02:47John Coogan?

  He's, he's, apparently he's saying, he's saying freak out. Isn't his blog called The Pursuit of Happiness? What an odd freak out. When it's time to panic. Okay, he's saying when it's time to panic. He, he doesn't necessarily say that it's time to panic right now. Um, we should read through this, but we can cover this on Monday, since this is a longer post. We need to digest this. Maybe we should get him on the show. I'm a big fan of Scott Sumner and his appearances on Macro Musings from Mercator Institute. Is that Mercatus Institute?

• 3:03:14Speaker 02

  Mercatus Center.

• 3:03:15John Coogan?

  Mercatus Center. Anyway, thank you for tuning in to TBPN on Friday. Thanks for coming and hanging out with us. Have a wonderful weekend. Have a wonderful weekend. Also, early happy birthday to Trey. He's turning something in, he's having a birthday on Monday, so he's probably having a fun weekend.

• 3:03:28Speaker 02

  I can't wait.

• 3:03:29John Coogan?

  Anyway, leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribe to our newsletter, tbpn.com, and we will see you on Monday-

• 3:03:36Speaker 02

  Weekend of your life.

• 3:03:38John Coogan?

  And-

• 3:03:38Speaker 02

  Love you.

• 3:03:40John Coogan?

  Good.