OpenAI drops GPT-5.4, Iran War fallout, The Mansion Section | Diet TBPN

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

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

• 0:01John Coogan?

  We're talking about GPT 5.4. We're talking about the price of oil. Tyler Cowen chimed in. He said, yes, the new models are very, very good. He's satisfied with 5.4. Many people are. Justin says, 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. Here's a blurb. Trying to get, you know, fun prompts and stuff going. 5.4 is available. You can run it at extra high. It's not, 5.4 dash Codex is not available. I still only have 5.3 Codex and then...

• 0:45Jordi Hays?

  Well, they just combined. They basically combined.

• 0:47John Coogan?

  They combined everything. And then, and then Spark is still on 5.3. 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.

• 1:00Jordi Hays?

  What's your personal Move 37?

• 1:03John 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.

• 1:29Jordi Hays?

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

• 1:33John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, little Easter.

• 1:34Jordi Hays?

  This is when Lee Sedol go to smoke, right?

• 1:37John Coogan?

  No, no.

• 1:38Jordi Hays?

  Oh, wait, no, that happened before.

• 1:39John Coogan?

  He was so stressed out that he couldn't bring himself to go smoke. 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, 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 winds up being essential to the victory of the computer over

• 2:22John Coogan?

  the Go master, the human Go master. But we, as we like to tell it, he was so shocked. By move thirty seven that he couldn't even bring himself to smoke cigarettes.

• 2:31Jordi Hays?

  That's how you know.

• 2:32John Coogan?

  Bartosz says, I felt this coming, but it's an eerie feeling to see an algorithm solve a task one has curated for about twenty 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. 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. What is my personal move thirty seven? I was thinking about, I was thinking about the definition of this and, and sort of the level of abstraction.

• 3:13John Coogan?

  I feel like a lot of, a lot of individual contributors are having dramatic moments with, with AI.

• 3:18Jordi Hays?

  Bartosz with this sort of mathematics problem.

• 3:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:21Jordi 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?

• 3:29John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Jordi 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?

• 3:37John Coogan?

  Sure, sure.

• 3:38Jordi Hays?

  A year, six months, or two years, you know. Brendan over at Mercur says GPT five point four is the best model we've ever tested on Apex Agents. That's Mercur'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, GPT five point four has improved by fifteen point seven percent. Chat GPT will imminently be better than the best consulting firm, better than the best investment bank, and better than the best law firm. Bold.

• 4:14Jordi Hays?

  Bold, bold, bold. Durya says, I ran the same prompt on GPT five point four, high fast and Claude Opus four six for an eight phase coding project for a Mac OS app. GPT 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. 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 cursors of the world.

• 4:55John Coogan?

  I mean, I'm so excited 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 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 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

• 5:37John Coogan?

  business was. Everyone else woke up. YouTube's in a similar position. 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 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 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

• 6:20John 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. Same thing with search overviews, same thing with all the

• 7:04John Coogan?

  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? Uh, that would be fascinating.

• 7:18Jordi Hays?

  GPT five point four pro funniest joke in the world.

• 7:23John Coogan?

  Okay, what is it?

• 7:24Jordi Hays?

  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?

• 7:47John Coogan?

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

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, also, so I just tried this.

• 7:54John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  On my own, it gave the same exact answer.

• 7:55John Coogan?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 7:56Speaker 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?

• 8:01John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Because it has like the memory and stuff.

• 8:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 8:03Speaker 02

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

• 8:05John Coogan?

  Interesting.

• 8:06Jordi Hays?

  We got a big miss in jobs. U S loses ninety two thousand jobs in February. Unemployment rises to four point four percent. Economists had expected fifty five thousand jobs to be added. And for the unemployment rate to hold steady at four point three. Uh, not good at all. If, I guess, i- if you look back, uh, the economy's just been shedding jobs since April of twenty twenty five. If you factor in.

• 8:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Jordi Hays?

  The revisions down.

• 8:36John Coogan?

  Yeah, uh, 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.

• 8:55John Coogan?

  Last two months were revised down by sixty nine thousand. Not all the data was terrible. U six 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 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 up close to $90. This prediction, the $100 barrel predicted on last Sunday as the Iran war broke out

• 9:39John Coogan?

  is closer and closer to coming true.

• 9:42Jordi Hays?

  Crude is up 11 and a half percent today.

• 9:45John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Jordi Hays?

  Not good.

• 9:47John Coogan?

  It's very interesting how it affects the economy or the various markets. So 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 price of oil is continuing to rise, then obviously that creates an economic incentive to drill more. And so we will see where the outputs go, where the reserves get tapped, all of that. Will the Iran war affect investment from Gulf state, neighboring Gulf state investment

• 10:32John Coogan?

  groups into American venture capital funds? We've seen as venture capital has boomed and the fundraisers have gotten into the tens of billions, the high billions for many firms. 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. 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.

• 11:17John Coogan?

  And they meet with other venture capital investor relations folks in New York and they say, hey, how's your fund performance? Okay, we're allocating this. A big part of why they're investing in American technology and venture capital and 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. Exactly.

• 11:38Jordi Hays?

  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'm kind of have this kind of disconnect, less cash flow.

• 11:57John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 11:57Jordi Hays?

  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.

• 12:07John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Jordi Hays?

  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 investments to ease financial strains caused by Iran war. 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 impact, 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,

• 12:52Jordi Hays?

  Kuwait and Qatar, had jointly discussed the strains being put on their budget. A number of Gulf countries have begun an internal review to determine whether force 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.

• 13:36Jordi Hays?

  An adviser to a Gulf government said the prospect of an investment review by the wealthy 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. 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.

• 14:21John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah?

• 14:21Jordi 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.

• 14:33John Coogan?

  We should.

• 14:33Jordi 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.

• 14:43John 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.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  That is making me extremely disappointed right now.

• 15:10Jordi Hays?

  Companies are competing for workers to build data centers and are finding that a motel room with sluggish wifi isn't much of a draw. Try free stakes 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 frame, two-story apartment buildings to containerized modular homes or trailer

• 15:54Jordi Hays?

  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. 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. 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.

• 16:30John Coogan?

  Anyway, let's move on.

• 16:33Jordi Hays?

  Is it that time?

• 16:34John Coogan?

  I think it's time for the mansion section. 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 going to pull this one up. So Holmes 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? Or is that a different company? It seems like it's Marvel Entertainment.

• 17:18John Coogan?

  Anyway, Eric Ellenbogen clearly has done very well. He purchased the oldest home.

• 17:23Jordi Hays?

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

• 17:27John Coogan?

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

• 17:33Jordi Hays?

  They were giving it away.

• 17:34John Coogan?

  9 million. It's 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." 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, 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."

• 18:03Jordi Hays?

  Which is crazy. Wasn't the house like the most like?

• 18:06John 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 up 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. 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. Ellen Bogans home built in the

• 18:49John Coogan?

  1930s has been owned by the Gilmore Pharmaceutical family for more than 90 years before he bought it.

• 18:55Jordi Hays?

  Let's give it up for Big Pharma.

• 18:56John Coogan?

  Ellen Bogans 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.

• 19:07Jordi Hays?

  Are you, are you liking this house, John?

• 19:09John Coogan?

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

• 19:15Jordi Hays?

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

• 19:17John Coogan?

  You, you like the desert.

• 19:18Jordi Hays?

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

• 19:21John Coogan?

  You're not feeling this house?

• 19:22Jordi Hays?

  Not one bit.

• 19:23John Coogan?

  Not one bit?

• 19:24Jordi Hays?

  Not one bit.

• 19:25John Coogan?

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

• 19:27Jordi Hays?

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

• 19:34John Coogan?

  You really don't like it?

• 19:35Jordi Hays?

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

• 19:38John Coogan?

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

• 19:43Jordi 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.

• 20:01John Coogan?

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

• 20:03Jordi Hays?

  I mean, the textures, the colors.

• 20:07John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 20:08Jordi Hays?

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

• 20:16John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:17Jordi Hays?

  But this looks like nothing has been, like this feels like living in a kind of like a. Like a Hollywood set, right?

• 20:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Jordi Hays?

  Not like a home that's been.

• 20:28John 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 materials aren't, aren't feeling pure west.

• 20:39Jordi 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.

• 20:45John Coogan?

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

• 20:50Jordi Hays?

  Okay, this, this is absolutely brutal.

• 20:51John Coogan?

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

• 20:56Jordi Hays?

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

• 21:01John Coogan?

  Dan Ratliff says it looks like a grandparents' house.

• 21:03Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 21:04John Coogan?

  The pictures make it look mid.

• 21:05Jordi 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.

• 21:14John Coogan?

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

• 21:17Jordi Hays?

  Ryan says full gut at minimum.

• 21:19John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, they, uh, full gut.

• 21:22Jordi Hays?

  I agree, I agree.

• 21:24John Coogan?

  Absolutely brutal. Okay, well, we, why don't we, why don't we leave Palm Springs? We'll head over to Manhattan.

• 21:29Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I just gotta say the, 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.

• 21:39John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, so is your read on it that like everyone from the community was like, yeah, we'll allow you 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.

• 21:52Speaker 02

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

• 21:55John Coogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  You go vertically.

• 21:56John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  I think it could be pretty sick.

• 21:58John Coogan?

  Yeah. Uh, I'd also dig down, uh, build basement, man cave, you know, uh, racing simulators. 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 with stone flooring.

• 22:33Jordi Hays?

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

• 22:34John 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.

• 23:16John Coogan?

  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. 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. 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

• 24:01John Coogan?

  feet to walk around and was in New York City? In terms of styling, in terms of aesthetics, in terms of vibes, what you got for us, Jordy? What do you think?

• 24:09Jordi Hays?

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

• 24:13John Coogan?

  In late 20s?

• 24:16Jordi Hays?

  I think it's, in general, it's...

• 24:18John Coogan?

  You could grit your teeth.

• 24:19Jordi Hays?

  It's some, some, some mixture of...

• 24:23John Coogan?

  Gun to your head, you'd live there.

• 24:24Jordi Hays?

  Of classic New York...

• 24:27John Coogan?

  Well, let's get into it.

• 24:29Jordi Hays?

  Interior styling brought into the modern era.

• 24:32John Coogan?

  The golden ticket. At 80 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 40, the former marine terminal that now serves as parking and sports facility with a trapeze school. You're into trapeze.

• 24:47Jordi Hays?

  I'm sold.

• 24:48John Coogan?

  You're sold?

• 24:49Jordi Hays?

  I'm sold.

• 24:50John Coogan?

  Walking distance to trapeze lessons.

• 24:51Jordi Hays?

  Walking distance.

• 24:53John 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. 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. David Lynch's quirky Los Angeles compound sells for 13 million.

• 25:29Jordi Hays?

  Okay, explain David Lynch.

• 25:31John Coogan?

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

• 25:34Speaker 02

  He's a goat.

• 25:35John Coogan?

  He's the goat.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Goat.

• 25:36John Coogan?

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

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Eraserhead.

• 25:42John Coogan?

  You see that?

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Eraserhead is probably my favorite movie, yeah.

• 25:44John Coogan?

  Really? I haven't seen Eraserhead.

• 25:45Speaker 02

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

• 25:51John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Like, very.

• 25:52Jordi Hays?

  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, it's his favorite director.

• 26:01John Coogan?

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

• 26:04Jordi Hays?

  But what if you have no favorite director?

• 26:07John 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. A quirky Los Angeles compound that was the longtime home of the late filmmaker David Lynch has sold for 13 million dollars about six months after hitting the market. Lynch died in 2025. He was known for the surreal films and television shows, including the TV series Twin Peaks and the 2001 film Mulholland Drive.

• 26:28Jordi Hays?

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

• 26:34John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Jordi Hays?

  And then inside, it's like very mid-century?

• 26:38John Coogan?

  And then he has a, a workshop on the estate designed for some of the property's metalwork himself. This is a fascinating building. So the compound has seven buildings spanning 11,000 square feet in total, with 10 bedrooms. The centerpiece of the estate is a pink 1960s house that was designed by the architect Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright. 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.

• 27:20John Coogan?

  The Lloyd Wright House affects my whole life to live inside it, he said in a 1997 interview. What do you think about this house? Would you live here? Do you like this house? Do you like this style?

• 27:31Jordi Hays?

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

• 27:40John Coogan?

  To be torn down. You have to tear it down.

• 27:42Jordi Hays?

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

• 27:44Speaker 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.

• 27:50John Coogan?

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

• 27:55Jordi 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.

• 28:04John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 28:05Jordi Hays?

  Works with John Coogan at TBPN.

• 28:07John Coogan?

  Okay.

• 28:08Jordi Hays?

  John Coogan has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in the film Social Network. Jesse Eisenberg co-starred with Laura Dern in Resistance and Laura Dern starred in Wild at Heart, directed by David Lynch.

• 28:24John Coogan?

  Five degrees of separation. There we go. Let's make some phone calls. Jeretek 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.

• 28:38John Coogan?

  2.8 thousand likes. People like the photo. Very silly.

• 28:43Jordi Hays?

  See, he says mildly surprised to learn that director level staff at Anthropic have human EAs.

• 28:48John 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.

• 28:55Jordi Hays?

  I mean, he runs an AI finance tool.

• 28:58John Coogan?

  Oh, so maybe he's interacting with them?

• 29:00Jordi Hays?

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

• 29:03John Coogan?

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

• 29:14Jordi Hays?

  Nothing.

• 29:14John Coogan?

  Nothing. Za nada. We see a logo reveal. Is this just a working title? I don't know. Will this be delayed? The PS6 is supposedly delayed. The Switch 2 is maybe going up in price.

• 29:31Jordi Hays?

  Tech layoff tracker.

• 29:33John Coogan?

  What's going on?

• 29:33Jordi Hays?

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

• 29:51John 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. You know, going around selling software, selling data centers, selling all sorts of stuff.

• 30:06Jordi Hays?

  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.

• 30:14John Coogan?

  CDS spreads.

• 30:14Jordi 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. It's tied to AI commitments. Anyways, so still rumors at this point, but wouldn't be super surprising.

• 30:32John Coogan?

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

• 30:39Jordi Hays?

  Weekend of your life.

• 30:41John Coogan?

  And.

• 30:41Jordi Hays?

  Love you.

• 30:42John Coogan?

  Good.