Inside The Media Marvel That Is TBPN

**Ashlee Vance** (0:10)
Here we are, in the Ultradome, the Fortress of Finance. I am going on TBPN today, gonna be talking to John and Jordi. They have a sponsor, which we will not mention here, and so I am coming in, representing Brex. We're gonna do a little counter-programming. It's a bit of a FinTech, turf war situation, but John and Jordi and I have known each other for a while. We're gonna get along. There will be peace in the Fortress of Finance today.
Okay. So good. Do with me as you wish.
She's ready to talk finance. I've got my meta glasses. I'm gonna film you. I'm filming you, filming me. Filming them, filming us.

**John Coogan** (2:13)
It's tape.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:17)
Do you feel it? I've got to think big finance thoughts. I don't know much about finance.
I hope they don't really grill me.

**John Coogan** (2:29)
You look at BYD and companies like that, learning from Tesla, whether Tesla likes it or not.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:35)
I mean, sure, I think you should always know, you know, keep your competitors closed, be learning from them, but be learning from them in a way that you can like leapfrog. I mean, I think what we're good at in the US is...

**Ashlee Vance** (2:47)
We've managed to sneak Brax into the Ultra Tome.
This is power. It's counter-offensive.

**Jordi Hays** (3:04)
Thank you so much for coming by.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:05)
Thank you.

**Jordi Hays** (3:06)
We'll talk to you soon. And we have our last guest of the show. We got Ashlee Vance from Core Memory.
He's the founder, he's the CEO, he's the podcast host, he's the documentarian.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:19)
What's up, boys?

**Jordi Hays** (3:20)
He's an author.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:20)
How are you?

**Jordi Hays** (3:21)
He's a multi-hyphenate.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:22)
How are you?

**Jordi Hays** (3:23)
He is a friend of our show. We were excited to announce his launch of Core Memory. A little over a year ago, we made a SportsCenter-type hype reel.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:34)
It's amazing.

**Jordi Hays** (3:36)
You said a lot of crazy things about some legacy media companies that I probably wouldn't say now, but we all had a good laugh at the time.

**John Coogan** (3:42)
This was a death knell.

**Jordi Hays** (3:44)
Death knell for Bloomberg short the stocks. We were going crazy.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:48)
Time may tell you.

**Jordi Hays** (3:50)
We'll see.
How are things? What's most interesting to you? What are you tracking today? You've done so many different things, tours of Abilene. You've been tracking this AI talent war, I feel like, pretty well, with the Mark Chen interview and Jerry Turek as well.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:06)
Yeah. We had Jerry, Kylie Robinson join our team.

**Jordi Hays** (4:08)
She was killing it. Yeah, that was a huge pick up.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:10)
What do you call her? A scoop?

**Jordi Hays** (4:13)
She's scooping like a Baskin-Robbins employee.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:15)
Yeah.

**Jordi Hays** (4:16)
That's what we call her. But we have a whole list of scoop-related puns that we will be slowly trickling out as more scoops hit the time. So I don't want to leak them all, but I'll send them to you.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:26)
Hold on.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:27)
It's so cool to be here, man.

**Jordi Hays** (4:28)
Welcome to the show. This place is amazing.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:29)
Are you recording? We're recording. We're filming you.

**Jordi Hays** (4:31)
Are you recording on your face, too?

**Ashlee Vance** (4:33)
I'm filming you. I'm recording on my face, all the cameras. I think I'm the first person to do a meta walkout, I'm told. Yeah. So, well, what are we doing?

**Jordi Hays** (4:42)
Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:43)
Well, first of all, you're in a Quonset hut.

**Jordi Hays** (4:45)
Yes, we are.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:46)
Which is near and dear to my heart. You guys know Silicon Valley began in a Quonset hut.

**Jordi Hays** (4:50)
I didn't know that.

**John Coogan** (4:50)
No way.

**Jordi Hays** (4:51)
Tell me the story.

**John Coogan** (4:51)
Yeah, when we figured out-

**Jordi Hays** (4:52)
I'm going to plant the bomb. We're getting out of here. You can close the show out with us. I want to hit the gong. Two best-selling books. Go to corememory.com.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:59)
Do you want to hit the gong?

**Jordi Hays** (5:03)
The bomb has been planted.
Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Go to tbpn.com for our newsletter. Go to corememory.com for your newsletter, for your subs.

**Ashlee Vance** (5:14)
YouTube channel.

**Jordi Hays** (5:16)
Follow Ashlee on X, YouTube, a podcast everywhere. Go buy the books. Go buy the books.