Le Chonk, Buffett Discovers YouTube, The Case Against AI Job Doom | Greg Fleming, TJ Parker, Joowon Kim, Rick Dungey, Dylan Field, Hardik Kabaria

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You're watching TBPN.

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Today is Tuesday, October 6th, 2026

We're live from the TBPN Amsterdam, the Temple of Technology, the Fortress of Finance, the Capital of Capital, limitary.rent.com, Time is Money, Save Both, Easy Use Corporate Cards, Bill Pay, Accounting and a whole lot more, all in one place. Also, Christmas, how many days until Christmas? That's the question you've been answered asking.

Jordi Hays (0:27)

That's the question on everyone's minds.

John Coogan (0:29)

We have the answer today on the show. I believe it's 79 days until Christmas.

Greg Fleming (0:35)

Merry Christmas.

John Coogan (0:36)

Is this new? 79 days until Christmas.

Jordi Hays (0:40)

There we go.

John Coogan (0:41)

Get ready.

Jordi Hays (0:41)

There we go.

John Coogan (0:43)

Thank you to the graphics team.

Jordi Hays (0:44)

The great thing about this whole bit is it will never get old for us.

John Coogan (0:49)

It really doesn't.

Jordi Hays (0:50)

It's probably getting old for some of you and we're sorry, but we just can't help but feel the Christmas spirit.

John Coogan (0:56)

Also, you asked for more Christmas content.

Jordi Hays (1:01)

We delivered.

John Coogan (1:02)

You asked for more Christmas content. We delivered. Today on the show, we have Rick Dungey from the National Christmas Tree Association. Let's give it up for Rick Dungey. He's the executive director.

He's going to break down the real Christmas tree industry, the official White House Christmas Tree and Trees for Troops, all the different things that they're doing over at the National Christmas Tree Association.

Jordi Hays (1:24)

And how he's thinking about the road to Christmas broadly.

John Coogan (1:26)

And we're also going to ask.

Jordi Hays (1:28)

Christmas really is his Super Bowl.

John Coogan (1:30)

Yeah, it is. No, great show. Great show for you folks.

I was leafing through GQ this morning. Tom Cruise is on the cover. It's a good edition. There's a funny anecdote in here that I wanted to share. I got to find it. But they got the Tom Cruise spread, lots of photos.

But they did a little back and forth interview with him and...

Jordi Hays (1:54)

We recognize that we are having some audio difficulties.

John Coogan (1:58)

Brutal.

Jordi Hays (1:59)

The team is working on fixing it.

John Coogan (2:01)

Let's test it with some soundboard. Did that work?

Jordi Hays (2:06)

Did that fix it?

John Coogan (2:06)

What about this?

Well, we'll talk through this and then we'll move on to other stories, and hopefully the audio catches up by then. He's a course, bro. He dropped a course, a private course, and we got to get access to this. The question from the GQ interviewer, you have mentored a lot of younger actors. Glenn Powell has talked about watching a six-hour instructional video about screen acting that you made, right? And Tom Cruise says, it was very basic. It was just something to have people understand, just to have a different concept of lenses and what the lens is and what the frame is, just the same way as an actor on stage.

Jordi Hays (2:48)

Being a global superstar for dummies.

John Coogan (2:51)

Yeah, basically, he made a six-hour, that's a course. He made a six-hour video, just the same way as an actor on stage or in the development of cinema, where it started and what that frame means and how to understand that frame. Thank you, T. There's just different layers of storytelling, of structure, but also to understand certain things so that you can forget about it. What else do you tell younger people, other people in your business? I listen first, what do they want? It's not me, I'm more interested in what are their goals. What do they want? It's not just younger people. This is me when I was a kid. I'm going, what are you interested in? They say, really? I said, yes, what is this movie about? What is this?

There's a bunch of other fun things in here. But I thought it was funny that there's a secret six hour training video on how to be an actor from Tom Cruise. We gotta get access to it. I feel like there's a lot of journalists that they get documents, they scoop things, they release things. But I've never seen anyone just be like, I'm putting down 10 racks for whoever can bring me the six hour Tom Cruise video. You know?

I'm putting it behind a paywall, I'm gonna monetize it, but there's a bounty out. Like Kevin Roos has the Dari Ahmade big blob of compute thesis from 2017, like this leaked BDF, sort of on the scaling law and the bitter lesson, basically. And I've never seen a journalist just be like, I know this document's out there. Like Eric Newcomer should just be like, bring me Founders Fund returns.