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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
We got some debates on the timeline. I I identified four debates for you you you don't wanna call them debates, You wanna call them arguments, fights?
Speaker 2:I thought arguments.
Speaker 1:Okay. We're throwing down. We're throwing down.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't wouldn't someone rather side. Listen to an argument Okay. Than a debate? Okay.
Speaker 1:First one, Microsoft. Alright. Is Microsoft about to have their Muse moment? They've launched Copilot. Now they're launching a new product today.
Speaker 1:Is it gonna be a breakout success? Is it going to compete directly with Meta and Muse? Or will it be a different thing entirely because it lives in the enterprise, it lives in the Microsoft ecosystem? Let's go to Tae Kim. He says, shots fired.
Speaker 1:Microsoft will go after Meta's Muse. From Alex Heath's interview of Satya Nadella, he's doing the rounds. Quote from Alex Heath, he wants to bring autopilot's AI chief of staff to your personal life too. It's not staying in Excel. It's not staying in Outlook.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be
Speaker 2:cooking dinner. Big move going from a copilot to autopilot.
Speaker 1:Autopilot. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is It says a lot about their intentions with the product.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It is actually sort of the, like, is this AGI? Is this not AGI? Like, if you're in the copilot mode, you're sort of signaling we're not really in the AGI era.
Speaker 1:Autopilot feels more like, although it's a term, it's a vague definition, it is significant in the brand term. So it's a hardened version of OpenClaw. The agent gets its own computer, workspace, and memory to work continuously. Virtual machine for everybody. It'll have its own computer, workspace, and memory to work continuously.
Speaker 1:When I ask about Microsoft's consumer strategy, he points to its 100,000,000 plus consumer subscribers. Microsoft broadly, they're going all in with Autopilot. Autopilot should also go to the consumer side. He sees consumer agents potentially cutting out today's middlemen, making that market more zero sum. In the enterprise, he thinks agents will make the market bigger than cloud by orders of magnitude.
Speaker 1:We got room to run. Satya said it himself. He's going to a 300 t, $300,000,000,000,000 company. I like it. What do
Speaker 2:you think? So first thought is that, again, everyone is building the exact same thing. Yep. So we we went through this for the last few years where everyone
Speaker 1:chat app.
Speaker 2:Everyone's building
Speaker 1:that app. The funny thing is is is the lore on GPT four, that was first available in Bing. GPT four, the thing that like, GPT three three GPT 3.5 powered the original ChatGPT. G p t four was only available through Bing. And then everyone was like, oh, I guess, like, Microsoft's gonna make a play and Bing's gonna be doing AI and, like, this is gonna be a challenger to Google.
Speaker 1:And then they sort of, like, pulled back.
Speaker 2:But Well, and at that time when Microsoft was backing up the Brink's truck for OpenAI Yeah. They certainly I don't think it was it certainly was non obvious at that time that they would be creating a company that they would ultimately compete with Mhmm. As much as they are, you know, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Peter Steinberger, the founder of OpenClaw chimed in. He said Microsoft shipped a really compelling product on top of OpenClaw today. We worked with them since March to make the code base ready for large scale deployments. And of course, there might be some IP sharing agreement. Right?
Speaker 1:Because didn't Oh, no. Because OpenAI hired Peter, but they didn't acquire OpenClaw.
Speaker 2:Open Yeah. OpenClaw it.
Speaker 1:Open source.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No So anyone can build on top of it. Yeah. But what's odd is that I think Nat Friedman stated that they didn't fork OpenClaw. They built something from scratch. But there are just conventions and so you wind up having Yeah.
Speaker 2:They got a bunch of stuff. Right.
Speaker 1:Files. It's just like, if you're building an e commerce site, you're gonna have a product detail page. You might have a similar site map and and architecture. It doesn't mean that you forked Shopify to do that or whatever. So the the the debate point is how big will this be?
Speaker 1:How what is the actual impact to Microsoft? There is the cool macro tech story, which is just that the models have advanced to a point where there is a new use case. Like, they're useful in a new way, not just knowledge retrieval, not just go and write a bunch of code. They are useful, but that requires a new type of harness. Just like when the models got good at code, the harness became very important.
Speaker 1:We saw Cloud Code and Codex and Cursor and a bunch of other companies. Cognition really, like, defined that era. Now the models are pretty good with personal agent stuff, sending text messages, talking to people, integrating with Slack, etcetera. So the harness and the integrations and the partnerships matter. So we're talking about partners with Amazon.
Speaker 1:Who's part who's going to be Amazon's dance partner? Who's going to Walmart's dance partner, who's gonna partner with Shopify, how big is the open ecosystem. You need a different harness, you need different integrations, and you need a lot of new user education because I think there's a lot of people I mean, there's people that are still online being like, these things hallucinate. Like, they have a knowledge cut off.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The main thing with this launch is that I don't think there's anyone on X that's seeing Microsoft launch an Mhmm. An OpenClaw powered agent and thinking, I gotta use that. I'm so excited. I really want it.
Speaker 2:I I Okay. That's that's my view and I think it's correct and Mhmm. You're free to steel man it. Okay. That being said, they have such incredible distribution.
Speaker 2:They can still roll this out to a bunch of people who are gonna try it and be like, wow, that's really cool and useful and helpful Yeah. And be the first way that they experience this new paradigm of agents.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so as much as, like, I just think there's basically zero excitement from, like, the core insider agent maximalists Yeah. There's gonna be just natural excitement from everyday Windows and Microsoft users.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It is it is uncommon in tech, maybe it's uncommon in X to, like, run your entire organization, your enterprise on Microsoft. The default tech stack for most startups is Google Enterprise, Gmail. You set up the Gmail account for your for your employees, and then you add Slack, so then you're in the Salesforce ecosystem. And Microsoft is there, but usually with, like, one off Excel licenses here and there for the finance team.
Speaker 1:Does that resonate with you in terms of like how these products like fit together? There's usually some Microsoft, but you have to go to a financial company or like a real economy company to to see like, okay, these guys are all in on Microsoft as a tech stack, like Outlook down to Bing, down to, you know, the databases and like fully integrated Microsoft. It feels like it could be more successful than the old Copilot and a lot of that's driven just by capabilities. The models are better, The harnesses are better. The integrations are better.
Speaker 1:And so the big question is, like, when is Google gonna fire back? Because are are they gonna wait until the next IO? Like, that's a long way away, but they do love releasing on, you know, those annual schedules. So it's like we might get a Google like a crazy Google Open Claw agent, personal agent in mid twenty twenty seven, and then Apple's close behind in, like, 2035, something like that. Would they they would launch something?
Speaker 3:I mean, Google does have there is a Devanize Spark, which is like a twenty four seven always on agent. But like no one
Speaker 1:Does it have a VM? Does it have a real virtual machine?
Speaker 3:I mean, it says Virtual even if your phone and laptops are turned off,
Speaker 1:it'll cloud.
Speaker 3:But I I've I've seen like very little Yeah. Like, no one's really talking about this.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it'll be it'll be interesting to see if there's like, you know, a niche community of like, yeah, I'm a I'm a I'm a Microsoft autopilot guy. I mean, the cloud integration could change things. It just depends on how you're positioning it. Like, if the brand if you talk to somebody and they're like, oh, you know, you a are you a cloud guy? Are you a codex guy?
Speaker 1:Cursor guy? Like, those things say certain things about you aesthetically. You're a muse. Okay. We get it.
Speaker 1:You're like the the boo boo guy. But if you if you come out and you're like, yeah, I'm actually a Microsoft autopilot guy, that could say two things. It could say Excel jockey, king of the financial markets Yep. Apex predator predator of the economy. Or it could say, you know, dropping a nuke on God.
Speaker 1:Prestige Max. Prestige Max. Don't you think?
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:We tell you, we spent way too long on that. We we we got three more and our first guest is joining at noon.
Speaker 2:So We gotta figure out a way to to make the tensions go up and actually get an argument going here because that was We
Speaker 1:were fighting a little bit.
Speaker 2:That was too friendly. That was
Speaker 1:too friendly. Okay. Well
Speaker 2:You wanted to argue that everyone, all the tech insiders were couldn't wait to get their hands on autopilot. That was your stance. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough one. Tough to steal, man, that. Anyway, Doge Designer shared a photo from a dinner that happened at the White House featuring important tech people and none other than Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.
Speaker 1:So Elon Musk, president Trump, first lady Melania Trump for China's first lady, AMD CEO Lisa Su, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, and Apple's Tim Cook got the prime seating right in front of Donald Trump. And they were at the prime table together. No translator that I can see in this image. Although there is an empty chair, so it's possible that there was a translator at
Speaker 2:this point. The empty chair would almost certainly be for Donald? Oh, yeah. That would
Speaker 1:be Yeah. That's right. Okay. So
Speaker 2:We're gonna we're gonna put the translator just between Xi and Milani.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because because Xi Jinping is whenever he speaks, he he's he he gives his speeches even in America in Chinese. But he seems to be able to to hang with Tim Cook, Elon, Lisa Su, Jensen. Although, maybe those tech leaders at least know that one important phrase if you wanna really ingratiate yourself with a Chinese speaker. What do you say to them?
Speaker 2:Well, hunch you.
Speaker 1:Right? That's what you got
Speaker 2:worked for me.
Speaker 1:If you're ever seated with Xi Jinping at a dinner at the White House, just throw that down and he'll be like, one of us.
Speaker 2:One of us. We Now, it's time to do deal. Notable that Elon and and Tim Yeah. No plus one. They're locked in.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:No time for time for no time for guests for them.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is that is that Dario wasn't there. He's sparred with the administration before. We've seen this. He's also attended plenty of meetings in DC. And Tom Brown, the co founder of Anthropic, has been on a reset with the administration and even went as far to praise Trump's let data rain post on Truth Social.
Speaker 1:This was September 1. He said to Howard Lutnick at the G twenty Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, quote, I really loved President Trump's post from earlier this week. And so there's clearly olive branches going out, but they haven't been fully received because the the dinner invite was maybe didn't materialize or maybe he turned it down. We don't actually know. But I was offered 15 plus ones, maybe 10 plus ones, maybe five plus ones.
Speaker 1:And he decided to lock in and grind for the grind for the ASI.
Speaker 2:Well, you know who was there. Who was? Lynn Martin.
Speaker 1:Lynn Martin.
Speaker 2:From From the New York Stock friend. To see it.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, it was a stacked stacked list. There's a lot of folks. Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Anna Brockman, Sergey Brin, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Cristiano Aman from Qualcomm. Our guest this week made it to the dinner, came back from Hawaii. David Solomon from Goldman Sachs, tons of other folks, ExxonMobil.
Speaker 1:It was really a who's who of the global economy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Lot of people are saying Tai Lopez was snubbed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I would have liked to see a Jocko Willink. I would have liked to see a Joe Rogan on this list. Sort of disappointed that they didn't include podcasters except for David Sachs. He he did make it.
Speaker 1:And also Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's a podcaster and a venture.
Speaker 1:Secretary Kennedy is also has a podcast. There's actually a fair amount of podcast
Speaker 3:Brad Gerstner podcast.
Speaker 1:Sam Altman ran the podcast years ago, startup school, so former podcaster. The question is like, should should Dario have been invited? I I I think even though they're having beef with the administration, like, it's such an important company. It's important that he's in the conversation. He's also has, a very, very hard line on China.
Speaker 1:And I would feel better about his positions on China. If he's like, yeah, I've met Xi Jinping. I really do hate him or something like that. I don't know. You know, it's informed from like a 30,000 foot view.
Speaker 2:Wait. Dario?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Dario is
Speaker 2:like He worked at at Baidu.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But but since then, his positioning has been like, we got to win the race against China. We have to, you know, dismantle authoritarian regimes, etcetera. Maybe he looks Xi Jinping in the eyes and gets the stare and he's like, oh, wow. I had you all wrong.
Speaker 1:You never know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I I want to see the sit down happen. Has the AI slob gone too far this time? That's our third debate. The third debate that will shock you. So we can pull up this call sheet ad.
Speaker 1:It's their latest direct to consumer direct response
Speaker 2:For everyone at home, this is a karaoke moment. Yeah. You're sitting in the office.
Speaker 1:This is gonna be on the
Speaker 2:Open floor plan. Don't be afraid to start singing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Add it to this to the Spotify playlist. So Brian Pimpas says, this Calshy ad is among the most dystopian ones I've seen from any betting app. And you can sort of hear the AI song over the Pixar inspired AI generated video. The the lyrics are also odd, not to nitpick, but it says, like, he sends his girlfriend money, and then he's handing her money.
Speaker 1:Every month, I send her money from groceries. So there's a lot of, like it lacks the polish that removes something from swap. Every once in a while, you see a video that is AI generated, you're like, okay. There's enough attention to detail there. This was let's just rip it.
Speaker 1:This is actually a popular format of AI swap that's been going very viral. Starts with a really dramatic hook. In this case, the man thinks, his partner is having an affair.
Speaker 2:But actually, she's just hedging food prices
Speaker 1:Hedging food
Speaker 2:prices. On cow cheese. Yeah. Because she has inside knowledge on the market from working at a bakery in the morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that even though egg prices are going up, she's able to net out and remain even because she is profiting on trading the egg futures market on Kalshi. I don't know how deep the market is. I don't know how real those markets are. Do they really have egg futures markets on Kalshi now?
Speaker 1:That's kind of interesting. I don't know if you can actually hedge your groceries. I wanna see a version of this ad from the Chicago Board of Trade where she goes a lot further, gets a Bloomberg terminal, establishes a relationship with JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley. She's visiting the Chicago Board of Trade regularly, trading in size. She's talking to counterparties, Millennium, Citadel.
Speaker 1:You know, she's on the phone constantly moving huge volumes of commodity futures at scale, kind of elevating herself past just the prediction market small ball and getting into the big leagues. That's the future.
Speaker 2:Shane says, would you gather your girlfriend inside or trade egg egg futures or cheat on you?
Speaker 1:No. So this is not insider trading. Like, you can actually do this. You can be a baker and realize that prices are going up and and trade the the commodities markets. In fact, the commodities markets are designed specifically to give that signal and that and that that that is the purpose.
Speaker 1:The purpose is to is to understand, okay, the weather is bad. People can trade that. Fundamentally, there's there's no law against insider trading in commodity markets effectively. But there's a question of like, is this a consumer ready product? Like, is this something that someone who is maybe doesn't have, you know Yeah.
Speaker 1:Full desk and a research team and a Bloomberg
Speaker 2:thing is I I found egg prices up in September, the market. Right now, there's a 72% chance.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But there's only $417 of volume.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But if you're only buying $20 of eggs, that's enough depth. So it is a viable use case. It's not it's not fraudulent. I think most people are responding to just like the sloppiness and like the the the click baity ness of like the weird hook.
Speaker 2:My current concern Mhmm. About the state of the hyper casino that our world has turned into is that, like, as an adult, I feel, like, confident in my own decision making ability and the ability to see ads for gambling all the time everywhere and still make the call that it's not for me. I'm not interested.
Speaker 1:So you've never lost a dollar? There's I've tried weekend.
Speaker 2:John John got to witness me one weekend. Was like, look, I think I should I think I should try this gambling thing. It seems super popular. I gotta get to the bottom of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I try I try to I'm running in the running in the red.
Speaker 1:And this is this
Speaker 2:generally for inconvenience. But that being said, like You're you know
Speaker 1:You're stuck in your
Speaker 2:As as a 30 year old, I've been advertised gambling products for a decade now.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:My concern is that while adults have the ability to just make the decision like, hey, this isn't for me. And you have like more Yeah. If you start young Yep.
Speaker 1:You're more likely to stick with it for a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But but but young people today are gonna go through that from growing up on the Internet are gonna go through this just like, they will probably be served like a million gambling ads by the time they're 18.
Speaker 1:It's a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so No.
Speaker 1:I guess I didn't get served.
Speaker 2:It's so so normalized. It's so a part of society now. Yeah. It's instantly accessible. If you're getting advertised stuff like this that's basically saying like, you're sending this message that like this is your way out.
Speaker 1:The deep irony is like the way out is to not participate and be one of the people that makes it through without forming the addiction. Yeah. But we maybe we need to run a slop ad about that. We wanna do a a slop ad like this where it's the same same premise. Oh, I think my partner's having an affair and lo and behold, they're just watching TBPN for three hours every day getting informed about technology and business news.
Speaker 1:What do you think about dopamine sites though? Because dopamine sites, which is where
Speaker 2:Explain
Speaker 1:dopamine this. Sites are fake shopping experiences. It's an ecommerce site where you can buy luxury goods, but you don't actually have to pay them and they don't arrive. So this is from an article shared by Adonis on X. The final frontier of consumerism has arrived in South Korea.
Speaker 1:Quote, this week, I placed orders for a $44,860 Patek Philippe hand engraved watch, a two a $12,500 Hermes bag, a $9,800 Tiffany diamond ring. Cha ching. Oh, I like I I didn't realize that was the analog one. That's great. And a $7,350 Cartier Love bracelet in yellow gold.
Speaker 1:I don't need any of them. I certainly can't afford them. Thankfully, they'll never arrive. Instead of Amazon, this individual spent the past week browsing a new breed of website known as dopamine sites, a trend that emerged in South Korea. These websites, like dopamine shop and food never comes, recreate the entire ritual of online shopping.
Speaker 1:You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery. But it's all imaginary. Is this not as bad as sports betting? Is this not bad at all? What is this?
Speaker 2:It's sort of strange and sad and a reflection of our society that is so infatuated with pure consumption
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Instead of creation. Yeah. And it's dystopian.
Speaker 1:But We just don't think TBPN merch. Well, never sell it. He just didn't work on credit card. So our fourth debate, our fourth and final debate. To what degree is the AI build out driving interest rates upwards?
Speaker 1:People are going back and forth about this. Interest rates are spiking. Specifically, the ten year yield has jumped 12%. So it's actually what is that? 1,200 basis points or something?
Speaker 1:Because you're trying to you're you're trying to explain the move in the rates. So it's not that we're at 18%. We're at 5.18%, but we were, you know, down much lower in the fours earlier. And it's causing nervousness. Last time interest rates went up, the venture capital world collapsed, and nobody likes high mortgage rates.
Speaker 1:Can you afford a home? There's a lot of knock on effects. The vanilla explanation is just the Iran war was unexpected. It caused an energy crisis that caused inflation that caused interest rate hikes and expectations for future interest rate hikes and thus interest rates are higher. AI is important in driving the economy, but may mainly a sideshow in this in this story around interest rates specifically.
Speaker 1:But in tech, there's a view that the data center debt is simply too good to resist, and so the capital markets are flooding over there. But there's a lot of debate around this. So Roon said, Iran oil prices is short term driver, but broadly, this is due to demand pressure from extremely attractive AI CapEx opportunities that are borrowing at nation scale. They're certainly hoovering up trillions of dollars. I think the total data center CapEx hyperscaler debt is now almost 20% of what the US government is is is buying something like that.
Speaker 3:No. So it's actually higher. I like this So, basically, hyperscaler and NVIDIA, like, debt issuance as a percentage of, like, total treasury bond issuance through 2026 has been like 70%. Woah. So and I think 2025 it was like around 30.
Speaker 1:Yes. And so Astrid Wilde says, this is correct. Global yields will continue to go higher because why would you invest in literally anything other than data centers when they have such a short payback period and you can throw tens of billions at it? I mean, we saw ClusterMax one, I think, had a few dozen neo clouds. ClusterMax three, which we talked to Jordan Nanos about yesterday, had three twenty six neo clouds.
Speaker 1:And they reviewed, I think, or they rated 200 something of them. And then that's not to mention that there are also data center construction projects from the actual hyperscalers. The labs weren't on there. And then the chip companies, Jordan called out. He said like Cerebras will have a Neo Cloud and Positron and Etched will have Neo Clouds.
Speaker 1:And so, there's going to be a lot more of this. At the same time, there's the flip side of the argument. Deep dish and Dreyer says this is definitely currently not true. Those opportunities are not riskless. And importantly, you can't use private illiquid AI CapEx as collateral.
Speaker 1:So, if you're a bond investor and you're looking at two different markets, are you really shifting out of government treasuries that are historically the risk free rate that they have a monopoly on violence. They have the ability to tax their citizens to pay back the debt. A neo cloud that's doing a data center, they go bankrupt. You might actually suffer a capital impairment and and get back $0.70 on the dollar, maybe $0.90 on the dollar. So there it stands to reason that there is more risk associated with the AI build out.
Speaker 1:And so they're not completely apples to apples. But I still think that there's probably some sort of effect here. So it's true that as real GDP growth increases substantially, rates should rise though, but we aren't there yet.
Speaker 2:Roesch has lots of scary talking bonds these days, but it's mostly recency bias since 1960. The ten years averaged 5.8%. We're we're at 5% below average. If you'd fallen asleep twenty years ago and woke up today, you'd think nothing happened in the bond market the entire time. Ignore all the sovereign debt crisis expectations are adjusting as something more historically normalized.
Speaker 2:Carry on.
Speaker 1:Carry on. So Wall Street Journal is is sort of putting the higher bond yields in context saying the robust US economy powers through rate hikes and rising bond yields. The U. S. Economy keeps powering through inflation, tariffs and higher borrowing costs, defying a run up in treasury yields and a Fed rate increase that has the bond market spooked.
Speaker 1:The usual economic breaks aren't slowing growth, hiring or an AI investment boom that looks to be unstoppable. To some, AI's potential returns seem so bright that even steep interest rates won't slow down tech companies' investments. And it does seem like the the math on the AI build out is is is wildly different. I I was talking to somebody who was saying, like, he knows a lot of people that are falling in love with the spreadsheet, and so they wanna start neo clouds and data centers because the payback period is shorter. I also saw an Instagram sort of, like, course hustler talking about how he bought a bunch of GPUs and is renting them to a data center and and saw that as an attractive opportunity.
Speaker 1:Allah, like, oh, I bought a multi family apartment complex.
Speaker 3:You must have watched the the Dylan Patel interview, the recent one Dorkash one.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is this is all related to that for sure.
Speaker 1:And and also a lot of the AI build out, a lot of the AI companies were very much born in the era of higher interest rates. I do believe that if you're a software company trading at 100x revenue multiple and you weren't forecasting real earnings for ten years or something like that, like the traditional SaaS playbook, and interest rates go from zero to 4%, that's a lot more damaging than, okay, you were already born in the era of higher interest rates and interest rates go from 4% to 6% or something. It's just not going to move the needle in the DCF that much because, like, you were already discounting cash flows in the future 4%. And so as opposed to zero, you're basically counting future cash flows as today's dollars. Anyway, that's the take from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2:America's newest trophy asset is a country home in the Cotswolds. Cotswolds. I can never pronounce that properly. Harry and Meghan's return to The UK has put the region in the spotlight. A bevy of US buyers are looking for homes in the area.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Not very American to buy or invest out here. Strange to see that it's becoming a sort of an American investment trend.
Speaker 1:Well, everyone saw what Paul Graham did and they said, I wanna be like that, you know.
Speaker 2:I wanna That's right.
Speaker 1:I wanna putter.
Speaker 2:Are you
Speaker 1:interested? Absolutely not. Yeah. Next next story. Next Moving on.
Speaker 1:A modern home in Silicon Valley though. Yep. Lists for 44,000,000, sort of the Cotswolds Of America
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Silicon Valley, five bedroom house, which features four distinct courtyards, a pool, and is the most expensive listing in Palo Alto, California. Now, I wanna do a little tier list. As I read you the various features, I want you to put them in buckets from f tier to s tier. So I'll read through the article and I want you to quickly assign each feature of this $44,000,000 Palo Alto home a tier. So for years, tech entrepreneur Asher Waldfogle and his wife Helen McLean dreamed of building a modern house in Palo Alto.
Speaker 1:The couple, however, worried about clashing with the Mediterranean style architecture typically associated with their neighborhood of old Palo Alto. So they tapped an architect to design a home that paid homage to its surroundings with stucco, mahogany, and titanium zinc plating. Where does titanium zinc plating go for you? Kick it off. You like it?
Speaker 1:A tier? A tier. A tier. Okay. We're leaving some room for an even better feature.
Speaker 1:They spent 20,000,000 over several years building a house completed in 2005. So now looking to be closer to their adult daughter on the East Coast, they are putting the five bedroom home on the market for 44,000,000. The couple purchased the roughly 0.4 acre site. In terms of lot size, where are you putting 0.4 acres? Is that enough?
Speaker 1:Tier. F tier. Wow. Okay. You you need at least three acres to really make a make a splash and earn s tier.
Speaker 1:They demolished the circa nineteen thirties Spanish colonial home. The house they built pinwheels around a central staircase. What do you think about houses that pinwheel around central staircases?
Speaker 2:I like classic California one story ranch style homes.
Speaker 1:You don't want a staircase staircase at all? No. Then because the alternative is two staircases. You have a front staircase, a main entry way, and then a back staircase. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This is a central staircase but you're no staircase guys. So where is Once once
Speaker 2:once kids are
Speaker 1:are Older.
Speaker 2:Grown up
Speaker 1:Then you introduce the staircase.
Speaker 2:I could explore it.
Speaker 1:Okay. But
Speaker 2:for now, I'm putting it staircases in general going in d tier.
Speaker 1:D tier. Okay. Staircases are out. It has it has 7,900 square feet of livable space. Where does that go?
Speaker 2:Split across multiple floors. I'm going b tier.
Speaker 1:B tier. Okay. Four distinct courtyards. You a courtyard guy?
Speaker 2:Problem with courtyards is like they're they're very cool in theory Mhmm. But how often are you actually like Enjoying the like courtyard. A it's really just it's like a feature that goes unused. Sure. I feel like the average courtyard gets like five minutes of someone's time annually.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:I'm hearing like a c tier?
Speaker 2:D tier.
Speaker 1:D tier. Brutal for the four courtyards. What about the pool? It's got a pool. Where are pools for you?
Speaker 2:Pools are still underrated.
Speaker 1:Okay. So what's
Speaker 2:a lot of people would say pools properly rated. Everyone thinks they're great. I think they're better than than the average person thinks a pool is.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing s tier.
Speaker 2:S tier.
Speaker 1:Pool is s tier. Okay.
Speaker 2:We need to I wanna see what the pool looks
Speaker 1:Key feature of the home is a cast in place concrete wall or spine. What do you like? Do you like a spine in your house? Concrete wall? Two stories high, 80 feet long.
Speaker 1:There's a little bit
Speaker 2:of chaos. It. I Some sort of a continuous theme through
Speaker 1:the Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm into it.
Speaker 1:B tier?
Speaker 2:B tier.
Speaker 1:B tier. Okay. He says his wife and him are thinking of the next phase of life. They also have a home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Speaker 2:S tier.
Speaker 1:Second home in Sun Valley is S tier.
Speaker 2:Okay. S tier.
Speaker 1:Right now, they're trying to emotionally let go and decide what to do next. Palo Alto is the center of venture capital and tech startups in Silicon Valley, home to some of the country's biggest tech titans. Sales volumes and prices are rising with a median sale price of $3,500,000 for the three months ending in August, up 5.8% year
Speaker 2:tough to get excited about this home in LA. This is like a probably $12,000,000 home
Speaker 1:In LA.
Speaker 2:Depending on where it's located. But over there. It's But over there. Like apparently, it's s tier.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Apparently, it's s tier. Monday, folks.
Speaker 1:See you. Goodbye.