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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.
People were clamoring for a Rocket Lab story that never came yesterday. Rocket Lab enters the arena with SpaceX. Brandon Grail fired up the TBPN newsletter, which you can subscribe to at tbpn.com today because we were on the horn with Professor G. We did his podcast. Very excited for that to come out.
Speaker 1:Anyway, Rocket Lab, they're duking it out with SpaceX. Let's go through it. Yesterday, the launch services and space systems provider, Rocket Lab, agreed to purchase satellite manufacturer slash operator Iridium in a cash and and stock deal that values the company at 8,000,000,000 or 20% more than the share price at Friday's close. Iridium pioneered LEO's LEO satellites, launching its first one some thirty years ago. The Iridium network was the original sat phone, this huge block of a phone.
Speaker 1:You would take out the antenna out of the back and the antenna was big enough to kill you instantly if you let it get near your brain. No. Just kidding. It was very simple. But you it would be terrifying to anyone worried about microwave technology or or any sort of radiation.
Speaker 1:But it was wildly successful. The company grew and grew, and now it's part of Rocket Lab. Today, they operate a fleet of 66 satellites. That seems low. That's because these are bigger, older satellites, but this partnership is probably going up against Starlink.
Speaker 1:So it connects handsets and other devices used by ships, mining sites, US government agencies, enterprise connectivity play. The move represents yet more vertical integration at Rocket Lab. Over the years, the company has grown from small niche satellite launch provider to an integrated space powerhouse. It now designs satellites and and aerospace components, serves the defense primes, has the second most launched US rocket annually, the Electron rocket, and is currently developing a reusable medium lift launch vehicle. But Jeff Bezos was probably coming for that silver medal any day now.
Speaker 1:With the Iridium acquisition, Rocket Lab is positioning itself to compete directly with SpaceX, which already connects which already operates a 10,000 satellite fleet. Rocket Lab has its work cut out for it, says Brandon Guerrelle. On 08/25/2021, Rocket Lab SPAC'd at 4,100,000,000, the usual SPAC price, probably $10 a share, 4,000,000,000 valuation. It stayed at or below that price in the public markets for three whole years until September 2024 when it started to grow both revenue and get rerated. Now it's acquiring Iridium for 8,000,000,000, twice its original IPO price.
Speaker 1:And Dalian says Yeah. You could buy it
Speaker 2:for around $4 and 80 ish cents a share on July 2024. Yeah. It is now sitting at a $101.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What a run. And, yeah, the whole space economy has been booming. Very, very good. It's a $60,000,000,000 company, so they're picking up an $8,000,000,000 connectivity provider.
Speaker 1:And we can play a little bit of this from the founder of Rocket Lab, the CEO, Rocket Man himself. Rocket Lab is acquiring Iridium Communications. Last time
Speaker 3:I was wearing this blue jacket
Speaker 1:Look at this.
Speaker 3:I was announcing Neutron. Yeah. So I guess that means there's something important to announce Jack.
Speaker 2:Wait. Pause for a second. Do you ever put on a jacket like that?
Speaker 1:Is this really the important
Speaker 2:It seems to be one of
Speaker 3:the more neutron.
Speaker 2:Alright. Look at this. Wait. Wait. Woah.
Speaker 2:Woah. Something important to
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I I don't think I have, but now I wanna try.
Speaker 3:Announce today. This thing is
Speaker 1:fun too.
Speaker 3:Okay. We're gonna go back to school for a little bit. I want to introduce you to the space application equation. Mhmm. So you've heard me talk a lot in the past about applications.
Speaker 3:It's where all the value in space truly lies. But in order to exploit that value to the fullest, you need a few other things. First thing is unfettered access to space, so you need your own launch. And then, of course, you need your own ability to build spacecraft at scale. We've got that too.
Speaker 3:But there's some other really big barriers to building large successful constellations in orbit. And the first one Romantic companions. Spectrum. Spectrum is a finite, almost impossible to get, and, of course, not all spectrum is created the same. The next thing is it takes infrastructure, a long time to design and build your satellites, launch them, and even longer time to get your first $1 of revenue.
Speaker 3:And then finally, it's a long time to a sustained cash flow model, a long time to build your business model, a long time to build your customer base, and it takes just that long extended time until you've got proper reoccurring cash flow. So those of you who know me will know that I'm way too impatient for that, so we found a bit of a shortcut. Rocket Lab is acquiring Iridium Communications.
Speaker 1:Good music. Very clear video.
Speaker 3:This will be one of the most transformative deals in the space industry. It's the ultimate combination for growth. And if you think back to our little whiteboard session a moment ago, this is a deal where one plus one equals three, not just two. One being Rocket Lab, we have unfettered access to space and
Speaker 2:Unfettered. Unfettered and intelligent.
Speaker 3:And then we think of Iridium, they have an already operational constellation, Spectrum, not just any Spectrum, extremely valuable
Speaker 1:the spectrum customers and they're a profitable SpaceX just bought some stuff
Speaker 3:comes in is the result of these two things is a fully integrated self launching space superpower. One that will unlock more growth from Meridian's existing network and build new constellations to unlock new services up. And market opportunities. This is officially our entrance into the space applications market, a thing we've been talking about for a long time now. But to be clear, this is not the finish line.
Speaker 3:Now we won't just continue Iridium's network as is. We're gonna build upon it to unlock new markets and pioneer new space based services. Rocket Lab's future in space applications has just been unlocked and accelerated. And with that
Speaker 2:I like this guy.
Speaker 3:I'm off to buy a new jacket. This thing's too small.
Speaker 1:See? It it goes full circle. The reason that he had to put the jacket on sort of awkwardly was it's too small.
Speaker 2:It was a part of the story.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was good. That's a really good video. I like that. Anyway, Comcast split.
Speaker 1:In 2011, Comcast, which was primarily a cable TV, Internet and phone provider to something like 30,000,000 Americans bought a 51% stake in NBC Universal from General Electric. I love it. I love an industrial company that owns a media company. It's happened before, folks. It's not that crazy.
Speaker 1:Just might work. In 2013, it purchased the remaining 49% stake. Since then, Comcast has acquired the European media company Sky, the movie studio DreamWorks Animation, and through NBCUniversal spun up Peacock among other activity in the entertainment space. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Comcast's decade long into trying to be a content plus distribution company is coming to an end. It's planning to split the businesses into two.
Speaker 1:The Comcast entity will once again becoming a become a connectivity only business, and NBCUniversal will focus entirely on content. And there's been a number of spinouts that have been happening for a while, and this is the final, like, big one, I guess. There's a recent history of telecom connectivity companies rolling up entertainment businesses and then spinning them out or get rid of or getting rid of them. Over the past decade, Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo, reorganized the two into a entity called Verizon Media, and ultimately sold Verizon Media to Apollo in 2021. Over roughly the same period, AT and T bought DirecTV and Time Warner, but ended up fully exiting its position in DirecTV and spun off Time Warner as Warner Media into its own entity in 2022.
Speaker 1:So interesting deal to follow along. The other good news in the space world is that after that explosion at Blue Origin launch, that New Glenn launch that was so disheartening, there were rumors that it might be two years until they got that launch pad back online, but there is some updates here. There are some updates. To return to flight this year, we're not rebuilding the same pad. We're going straight to a horizontal vertical hybrid ConOps.
Speaker 1:We are we had already been developing for our nine x four New Glenn launch vehicle using existing infrastructure, skipping a new transporter erector and creating a common ConOps across two paths. So Dave Here we shares go.
Speaker 2:They just used the explosion as sort of like a demo. They demoed the old setup.
Speaker 1:A demolition?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But good news from Dave Limp, the CEO of Blue Origin that they're gonna get New Glenn flying again sooner than people thought. I have a pitch I for have a I have a business idea. I wanna Let's
Speaker 2:hear
Speaker 1:it. You feedback.
Speaker 2:So Let's hear
Speaker 3:it.
Speaker 1:What's the biggest problem with being a doctor? You make a lot of money as a doctor. Right? What's the biggest problem?
Speaker 2:The odd hours.
Speaker 1:No. Taxes. You make so much money, get taxed on on normal income, ordinary income. If you're a doctor, you're saving people's lives. You're doing the most important job in our economy.
Speaker 2:You have a doctor, buddy, that also runs a hedge fund,
Speaker 1:And and when he runs the hedge fund, he's making capital gains. Yeah. But when he when he does an operation, he makes ordinary Which
Speaker 2:to me, is personally very concerning. I don't know if I'd wanna go to see a doctor that does surgery that that also
Speaker 1:To to be fair, he's building a new clinic and he has time Well, he's not up and running yet.
Speaker 2:But when I heard that a surgeon was also running a hedge fund, got a little bit worried. If I was under the knife and the market was open, I'd I'd be a little nervous.
Speaker 1:But the the doctor makes a ton of money, saves people's lives, does all sorts of good things, gets taxed at ordinary income, not capital gains. So you're taxing doctors who are saving lives at a higher rate. So Mhmm. My business idea is with the power of AgenTic AI, we create thousands and thousands of Delaware c corps for every doctor. So every time that there's a doctor's appointment and you have to pay the doctor, you acquire one of their Delaware C Corps.
Speaker 1:And within that C Corps, there is, on the balance sheet of that company, basically an IOU for the services the doctor must render you.
Speaker 2:Sitting on the balance sheet.
Speaker 1:Sitting on the balance sheet. Yeah. It's an asset. It's an asset. And so you can you can then depreciate that asset since which since you've acquired it.
Speaker 1:The doctor reaps capital gains and then you cash in your
Speaker 2:Yeah. And they can have a sort of a farm of C So there's Yes. You know, they've had them Yes. The shares for over a year. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Long term capital gains. And then and then the the patient on their way out, they sign one form. AgenTik AI does its thing, winds down the c corp and and cashes in the asset. And then the doctor can reap capital gains. What do you think?
Speaker 1:You think we got a business there?
Speaker 2:I think you just created vertical AI agents for tax fraud.
Speaker 1:I asked JGBT and it said, this is almost certainly dead on arrival. Not clever tax optimization, more like abusive tax shelter with health care law side quests. The core problem is the economic substance is obvious. The patient is paying for medical care. The doctor is being paid for performing medical services.
Speaker 1:IRC 61 includes compensation for services and fees in gross income, And the I r and the IRS says, you generally include everything received in payment for personal services. Wrapping the bill in a newly minted c corp does not change the income character. Well, I think we'll have to take that one to the All the way.
Speaker 2:Take it
Speaker 1:all the way. Take it to the Supreme Court, there's a chance.
Speaker 4:I I think you you can wrap in a prediction market. Right? So every single time you go to the doctor, you say, okay. There's like 0% chance that the doctor's gonna do well, and then Yeah. He bets yes.
Speaker 4:And then we'll see what happens. Yes. You know, if it's a good doctor, then he'll be paid out in full.
Speaker 1:Insurance to it as well because you don't pay if the doctor doesn't do a good job.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's like insurance is built in. Built in. That's genius. This is actually
Speaker 1:But be better. Are winnings on on prediction markets capital gains?
Speaker 4:I think it's still mostly unclear. Mhmm. So for for the next few years, I think this would definitely be a good strategy.
Speaker 1:Okay. I like it. I like it. I You have to imagine because they say They don't use the word bet. They use the word trade.
Speaker 4:Trade. Yeah. Predict. So capital gains.
Speaker 1:Trading. Capital gains treatment maybe?
Speaker 2:I think it would that the post last year where someone was saying like, prediction markets will replace everything. If I want blueberries delivered to my house, I go to the market for blueberries being delivered to my house and I bet $15 and I bet no. Someone else, they bet yes. They deliver me blueberries. They get the $15.
Speaker 1:Works every time. Works every every single time. We we we keep debating this this meta question of will they launch a financially incentivized prediction market or will it purely be for social cloud? You're still in the camp of there's gonna be real dollars. It just feels like the first time Meta
Speaker 2:won't The the ever reason I I I believe that is because I believe they had Meta Yeah. Like was reaching out to the various prediction market providers to try to be potential like partners and or vendors.
Speaker 1:But I mean, partnership can mean so many different things. Right? Partnership with with prediction market can mean we'll give you ad reads or discounted ads or we'll vend your data so that if someone is on Instagram and hits the search box acting for something and Llama5 or MuseSpark wants to answer it and surface data from a prediction market, we have the rights to do that without infringing on your copyright or something like that. Like, it could be a data licensing partnership. It could be an acquisition funnel.
Speaker 1:It could be something where Meta's bundling people to the prediction markets or back. Like, that that whole I I I read the same article that you read, and it doesn't make any sense to say, oh, yeah. I want to create a competitor, so I'm gonna reach out to my direct competitors and see if I if they want to give me their customers. Like, why would they ever do that? That makes no sense.
Speaker 1:You see what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:The only thing is, like, the prediction markets have a history of partnering with with other applications Mhmm. And basically being the infrastructure providers. Yeah. To actually place real
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:Dollar. You go
Speaker 1:to any any partner, whether it's, you know, there there was that whole suite of like No.
Speaker 2:I I I agree with you.
Speaker 1:Like
Speaker 2:I I I generally agree that there is a possibility that there's no dollars
Speaker 1:and just CNBC
Speaker 2:But I just don't I I New York
Speaker 1:Stock Exchange. They all have partnerships with prediction markets. None of them have like, oh, go in the CNBC app and and upload your credit card information. Like Meta's been on this path of like, maybe we'd like a financial relationship with our customers for decades. And like, it's never really matured.
Speaker 1:There was always this idea that you would be able to like save your payment information, and then when you see a t shirt, you could just click and one click check out in the Instagram app or in the Facebook app. And that never really took off for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 4:So, John, in this case, it'd be like you you see an ad and then it's like, I place a bet that there won't be a t shirt delivered to my house.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 4:And then it'll get fulfilled.
Speaker 1:This is the final boss.
Speaker 2:Hopefully. Hopefully.
Speaker 1:The answer to your question on can doctors reap capital gains by using prediction markets instead. Prediction market profits are taxable, but the character is unsettled at the moment. CFTC regulated event contracts like Cauchy style contracts. There is a decent argument that they are financial derivatives rather than gambling. The CFTC describes event contracts as derivative contracts whose payoff depends on the specified event.
Speaker 1:It also granted call sheet status as a designated contract market. So best case, some contracts might be treated as twelve fifty six contracts. That means marked to market annually, and gains and losses split across 60% long term capital, 40% short term capital, regardless of holding period. So there's a chance that that's the that that's the solution. I think we might we might have solved it, but we'll have to use every tool in the modern financialization and technology box.
Speaker 1:The Wall Street Journal asked their readers what innovations they want to see in the next twenty years, and the answers are sort of all over the place and sort of will there.
Speaker 2:Will shock
Speaker 1:you. Number five might shock you. What innovation do you want to see in the next twenty years? Tyler, think of something. Jordy, think of something.
Speaker 1:I'll read some of what The Wall Street Journal readers wrote in. Mark Mary Gillespie from Irving, Texas said solar on wheels. She wants she says, why can't cars be manufactured with solar panels integrated into the top of the vehicle? Then it could recharge the car's battery as you travel and when you park. So this is not actually a new idea.
Speaker 1:There are cars that have solar panels on the roof, but solar panels are extremely weak, and so you'd have to leave the car outside for, five months to charge a full electric car. Now there have been DARPA grand challenge cars and specific, almost science experiments, vehicles where they have a huge surface area and it's this massive wing of solar panels. And I think there's a plane that's also potentially be able to ply indefinitely by having solar panels that recharge a motor and it spins. But for a normal car, a single solar panel on the roof doesn't get you much in the way of charging. She's basically asking for a stronger solar density, stronger energy density.
Speaker 1:And I'm in. I'm in. In twenty years, totally feasible. Mary from Irving, Texas. I think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1:I think it's possible in twenty years. Anyway, traffic jam plan. I would love to see an autopilot feature. I would love I would love to see autopilot features on cars talk to each other.
Speaker 2:They're saying nuclear cars. Just get a nuclear car.
Speaker 1:That's very very fallout. I I I like the what is that? Nuclear punk or something? What was that? What was that?
Speaker 1:There's like this alternate history of like the nineteen sixties if it was powered by nuclear. Not solar punk, atom punk. Atom punk is the term. And it has all these really cool things that could be powered by nuclear. Maybe we'll get there.
Speaker 1:Fusion is sort of promising that. We've talked to a couple companies that do smaller fusion reactors. And they tend avalanches one up in Seattle or maybe Washington, where it's basically the nuclear nuclear reactor, but it's fusion, not fission. And it's about the size of a large battery. And so you could potentially put it in a car, put it in a drone, put it
Speaker 2:in a
Speaker 1:space vehicle, keep it up there for a long time. Accordion traffic jams would be a thing of the past. What is an accordion traffic jam?
Speaker 2:I think that's when the traffic's like
Speaker 1:Oh, going in out.
Speaker 2:In and out. Yeah. People are stopping and going and there's that slight delay when Mhmm. Theoretically, if everyone was like moving at the perfect
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know. So, Morgan Clayton from Birmingham, Alabama wants autopilot features on all the cars to talk to each other, so they never do that. So they know, okay, I gotta speed up. I gotta slow down.
Speaker 1:And then they're all perfectly in sync. Probably doable. You'd need some standard or something. What are you thinking? Musical vision.
Speaker 1:Is a good one. These people are thinking outside the box. This is not like, oh, I want inference at one tenth of the cost. Silicon Valley is unimaginative unimaginative by comparison. But Mary Stichner Gifford from Alpine, Utah says she wants musical vision.
Speaker 1:I'd like to see the invention of a device to help musicians with eyesight limitations read music. There are many ways to help the sight impaired read the printed word, but pianists and others need to read music at the piano. My father's sight was so bad that he had to look at the music about two inches away, memorize one or two phrases, then practice what he memorized. He gave his last recital from memory at age 94. What a legend.
Speaker 1:Let's give it up for Mary Schickner Gifford's father, grand father. Powerful. Crazy idea. Can't you just print it bigger? If you're Woah.
Speaker 1:Having trouble seeing it.
Speaker 2:You just invented the semi truck size printer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, you could just print like a poster board and then you could see it at the piano. Also, glasses?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I wonder I mean, it might be a small it might be a small market of people whose vision is so impaired that even with glasses Okay. It needs to be
Speaker 1:Up close.
Speaker 2:Up close.
Speaker 1:I'm just confused by why this the invention of a device to help musicians with eyesight limitations read music. Why are we focused on reading music? Wouldn't this be wouldn't any technology that allows you to read music with your heart of sight allow you to read anything? General technology?
Speaker 2:I mean, couldn't you have couldn't you learn individual notes and then learn the order of them Yeah. Have it spoken to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I do think maybe
Speaker 2:buy it and
Speaker 1:app. IPads often sit at the at the piano and you could have an iPad app that shows like sort of like one note or two notes.
Speaker 2:What about a humanoid robot that grabs your hand and bends Cup of tears you like a marionette. And, you know, slams your hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Totally possible.
Speaker 2:Paul Blanco wants something else. He wants a smart spatula.
Speaker 1:This is so much more attainable. I'd love
Speaker 2:a cooking spatula. Human teleportation without penetration what temperature or how thoroughly cooked a hamburger or steak is. Rare. Do we not have we we we literally have things. You just
Speaker 1:No. No. No. Yeah. Without penetration.
Speaker 1:It has to you just rest the spatula on top of the steak and it tells you inside the steak what temperature it is, which is very difficult because if you're searing or doing a reverse sear or something, the outside could be a wildly different temperature than what's going on inside. So how do you detect the temperature without penetrating the steak with a thermometer?
Speaker 2:A powerful x-ray.
Speaker 1:Imagine it's as big as that brain scanner thing. It's just like yeah. Here's your smart special, load it up. It's like MRI ing the entire steak. That'd be a good time.
Speaker 1:Robot chefs. Oh, this is related. I want a robot that can work as an executive chef in my own kitchen, says Ray Lohr from Lacey, Washington. It could call a grocer, order ingredients, insist on insisting on it all being upscale and have those ingredients delivered, unpacked, load the fridge, and then use my appliances to make dinner. Twenty years?
Speaker 1:I think it's possible. I like that. That that's right on the right, like, you know, level of sci fi. Seems doable. Not it's worth something that we can whip up in a weekend with an Arduino, like the smart
Speaker 2:Some these ideas are silly, but Yes. I'm viewing it as a very literal request for start ups.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. No. I like it. Quiet inside.
Speaker 1:Cheryl Franklin from West Grove, Pennsylvania says, given the negative effects of excessive noise such as elevated blood pressure, cardiac stress, and lower real estate values, I'd love to see improvements in building materials. For example, drywall with built in soundproofing capabilities. Love that. Perhaps a lightweight sound
Speaker 2:It's called lead paint, Cheryl. Bring it back.
Speaker 1:Lead paint. That doesn't do anything to sound. Perhaps a lightweight sound blocking film could also be developed for use in existing buildings and home. I had a startup idea a while back. So, you know, when you have a young baby, a child, and they every time you go to change the diaper, very noisy.
Speaker 1:One of my friends put up sound panels like a podcast studio, full slat wall in the
Speaker 2:Oh, slat wall.
Speaker 1:In the nursery.
Speaker 4:Dual use technology.
Speaker 1:Dual use technology, for sure. And it and it dampens the cry so you can so you're not so echoey because sometimes if a kid's crying in a very echoey room, it really reverberates and it can be kinda crazy.
Speaker 2:Lead paint is dense. So in theory, any added mask can reduce sound transmission. Maybe add a little bit of lead paint to your nursery.
Speaker 1:Lead plates. Whole lead plates, maybe. Whole Faraday cage. But here was the idea. You don't no one wants a slat wall in their nursery, in their baby's
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe if you're trying to breed the super podcaster, but most people don't want that. They want animals. They want a pastoral nature vibe, some warm pastels, some nice warm tones, something welcoming for the new child who's just been brought into this world. And so the idea was a typical sound panel, square, flat, you might see the egg crate, the black material, but you paint on it an animal. You painted on it childlike you know, paintings that you would hang on the wall.
Speaker 1:It looks appropriate. It fits the decor of the room, but it also has the added effect of sound treating the room so that it's less noisy when everyone's yelling. Good business?
Speaker 2:Banger.
Speaker 1:Banger. There we go. Banger. Banger. Than c corps on demand for doctors?
Speaker 2:For doctors that do tax problems? Maybe. Certainly simpler. Jennifer Smith. We have made so many advancements in so many areas, but what I want most is a way to control outside noise.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:This is the superpower she wants. It would be so nice to be able to sit on my screened in porch and enjoy listening to the birds without having to hear nearby traffic, which sounds like drag racing these days. Well, that's because it is drag racing, Jennifer. We're drag racing in your neighborhood. If sounds are waves, can't we block some?
Speaker 2:How have we not invented an open air type of noise cancelling headphones to shield noise waves and give us some quiet spaces outdoors?
Speaker 1:Interesting. I mean, the the the simple solution here is just more electric vehicles. They're quieter. You don't sound like drag racing. Obviously, there's a whole bunch of emission standards that also reduce noise from internal combustion engines, at least until you chop the exhaust and straight pipe that thing.
Speaker 1:But if you're not doing that Or
Speaker 2:you engine swap Yeah. Your Model three.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Is this possible? Could you just put out a big speaker that selectively noise cancels car noise but not bird noise?
Speaker 1:That seems possible. Seems
Speaker 2:personally, I would, you know, take my home. I'd I'd get really thick windows, ideally lead paint in the whole home, you know.
Speaker 1:You're the lead paint. I just love the lead paint.
Speaker 2:And I bring the birds inside.
Speaker 1:No. I got an alternative theory. If you got drag racers racing down your your your quiet bird infested street, you gotta go Wile E. Coyote mode. You gotta put out a fake tunnel that out of bricks, paint it with some lead paint maybe.
Speaker 1:The fake tunnel, the drag racer smashes into the bricks. They'll never be racing down your street again.
Speaker 4:Dropping drop an anvil on
Speaker 1:their car. Dropping an anvil on the car, that works too.
Speaker 2:We have to talk about the Rivian team because they sent you this this demo unit to try.
Speaker 1:R one s.
Speaker 2:And they said Quadro. It's a demo unit, so drive it as fast as you want. You can roll You can roll it if you want. Like, it's no big deal. Just like really enjoy the car to the fullest.
Speaker 2:I was pretty surprised
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That they said that.
Speaker 1:That was great. It's actually an amazing car. I like it. The self driving feature deeply underrated. My latest hot take is that self driving technology is commoditizing as fast as LLM technology and that companies that take it seriously and actually prioritize it.
Speaker 1:It is not some insane tech breakthrough that cannot be implemented in other vehicles. It, in fact, can be implemented in other vehicles. Just like we've seen Chipotle get a chatbot, we will see every car be autonomous. It will not be the domain of a single company. Funniest thing about this.
Speaker 1:You got someone who's asking for just a dishwasher that's a little bit taller. You got somebody who's asking for a smart spatula. And then you have Nolan Williams, who says, I would like to see significant developments in cancer and longevity drugs. You're sitting there. You're going around with The Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1:And and you're like, oh, like what did you ask for? Like
Speaker 2:Smart specialize.
Speaker 1:Like did you ask for? Like longer
Speaker 2:life extension. Curing cancer.
Speaker 1:You're like, what? I didn't know. I didn't know it was that type of question. He says, longer lives mean longer runway for brilliant people to bring forth their own innovations and pass on their knowledge. Wow.
Speaker 1:Nolan Williams. Really, really great answer. Derek Thompson has a new newsletter out. He's breaking it down. He says, there's never been a better time to get rich working alone.
Speaker 2:Block in. Is he saying the goose is not valued?
Speaker 1:I think he's saying the goose is not valued.
Speaker 2:Is he saying the goose is not valued?
Speaker 1:He says, the debate about AI and jobs often breaks down into two extreme groups, both of which have an evidence problem. On the one hand are the doomers who say AI will take everyone's job even though unemployment remains low and the unemployment rate for prime age Americans is still very high. On the other hand are the deniers whose whose insistent that whose insistence that AI is a worthless scam prevents them from seeing the many ways it's changing work and the economy broadly. If you want a strong and evidence based take about AI and jobs, I have one for you. Quote from Derek Thompson.
Speaker 1:There's never been a better time for workers to get rich by going independent. This is the golden age for tiny startups with big revenue. The evidence, charts one and two, with the number of solo entrepreneurs and tiny startups is taking off. Great news. Chart three, there's rising evidence that these small firms are more likely to use AI and sell AI related products, whether it's software consulting or design.
Speaker 2:Chart He's four saying that the the matter is not the eggs, it's the goose itself. Is the true value is the power to keep laying eggs?
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes. Okay. Continue.
Speaker 2:I just wanna make sure I understood.
Speaker 1:Today's micro startups are becoming multimillion dollar firms faster and more frequently than any generation of firms that Stripe has measured. Today's article is about the rise of the Solo Act in The US labor force and its implications for the future of business. Social life, more solo entrepreneurs, even more aloneness. And the fisc in America's fiscal crisis, more pass through firms, even less tax revenue for a revenue starved government. Interesting.
Speaker 1:So if if you have a bunch of talented people that would be earning money as doctors, but then they go and and they wind up starting a business, then, yeah, maybe maybe that's lower tax. That feels like that's further off. Is this a bull case for co working spaces? The rise of solo entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:Nothing is bullish for co working spaces to me.
Speaker 1:It's rough. Why is it bad? Why has no one been able to make a good co working space?
Speaker 2:Because I think it's just nice to have your own space. It's the same I mean, the same logic would be like, why don't they make an, you know, why don't they make an apartment building where you get a tiny little, I mean, they do do this.
Speaker 1:I feel like, why don't they have a pod?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Why don't they have pod? Mean, it's basically like, imagine if you rented your apartment and it was actually like as big as like one
Speaker 1:Why don't they make like a smaller version of a house that you can rent that's like in a building with other other like of these mini houses?
Speaker 2:No. I'm just saying like a a 20 a 10 foot by 10 foot room that you rent and then all the amenities telling
Speaker 1:you that you would happily live in the Unabomber Shed. You were saying that it's the pinnacle of lifestyle.
Speaker 2:I I did think the picture of it in storage looked cool.
Speaker 1:But it needed a slight But
Speaker 2:the difference there the difference there is like that shed on the right property Yeah. Would be very cool.
Speaker 1:That's true. That's true.
Speaker 2:But but the property is a
Speaker 1:is sort of an amenity. Don't know. We'll figure it out. Thank you for watching TBPN. We'll be back tomorrow at 11AM Pacific.
Speaker 2:Hang out with us. We'll close it out.
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