Diet TBPN: October 17th, 2025

Summary

TBPN – Diet TBPN: October 17th, 2025

Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Date: October 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

Diet TBPN delivers a fast-paced rundown of tech, media, and culture news with John Coogan and Jordi Hays’ signature banter. This episode digs into the recent Palantir and Anduril controversy, media dynamics between old and new platforms, viral rumors in tech, absurd stories about crypto and AI, and playful debates about future tech and pop culture crossovers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Palantir, Anduril, and Defense Tech Controversy

[00:14-01:32]

• The hosts address Bloomberg and Reuters reporting on the NGC2 system, implicating Palantir and Anduril.
• Criticism of the Reuters story for omitting on-the-record statements from Palantir and Andrew, fundamentally skewing the narrative.

  “Journalist who wrote that Reuters story would have been failed out of the class by any of my professors.” – Guest 1 [00:30]

• Discussion on how defense procurement moves too slowly compared to other tech sectors.
• Silicon Valley’s iterative approach vs. traditional government processes: new products often lack initial security features as speed is prioritized over polish.

  “Everyone in America knows that it shouldn’t take 50 years to build a new plane… and other countries aren’t smarter or more [hard-working],” – Host [00:43]

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2. Viral Slop, Fake News, and Media Literacy

[01:32-02:13]

• The hosts bust a viral clip claiming Palmer Luckey appeared on Joe Rogan, labeling it “slop.”

  “This is slop. But this is the purest slop possible.” – Host [01:57]

• Emphasize the need for fact-checking but with tongue-in-cheek humor about the prevalence of such content.

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3. Robot Fights, VR Experiments, and the Future of Sparring Partners

[02:13-03:16]

• Discussion of Robot Fight League in San Francisco and hypothetical scenarios (e.g., humans vs. 100 robots in combat).

  “You get 100 unitrees, you put them in guerrilla costumes, you turn Logan Paul loose. It's a $2 million production, but it's gonna get a billion views.” – Host [03:03]

• Speculate on robots as perfect sparring partners, able to precisely simulate legendary fighters.

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4. Tech Culture Commentary: Business, Media, and Influencers

[03:16-05:45]

• Remarks on Marc Benioff and Palmer Luckey’s media appearances.
• Crossover guest wishes (Jensen Huang on Huberman Lab).
• Jokes about Joe Rogan’s theory that modern car design is worse because designers stopped doing drugs.

  “Joe Rogan says car design is bad now because car designers stopped doing drugs.” – Co-host [04:10]

• Analysis of Joshua Kushner’s profile, Colossus media approach, and how modern media is not zero-sum.

  “Media is not zero sum. Like the New York Times can thrive and Colossus can thrive… they can have totally different ways covering people and that's healthy.” – Co-host [05:00]

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5. Bitcoin, Open Source, & Downside of Early Adoption

[05:45-07:09]

• Bitcoin and electronics purchases: regrets about spending bitcoin on depreciating goods when it was cheap.

  “I bought a TV with bitcoin. It was the worst financial decision in my life. Paid one bitcoin.” – Host [06:20]

• Discussion of recent donations in the open source Bitcoin space.

  “Jack says, why only 250k?... He goes over 21 million. You.” – Co-host [06:46]

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6. Viral AI Ads, Gold, and Quirky Tech Nostalgia

[07:09-08:23]

• Notable AI product placements (Heineken as "the official beer of AI Doomers").
• Boomer investments in gold finally paying off.

  “Congrats to all the boomers who have been holding gold for years and years and years and are now seeing it.” – Host [07:55]

• Chris Sawyer and Rollercoaster Tycoon as the epitome of ambitious solo programming.

  “This dude wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon by himself in assembly, earning 30 million in royalties.” – Co-host [08:00]

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7. Automation and AI Industry Updates

[08:23-09:55]

• DoorDash using Waymo Robo Taxis for delivery in Phoenix: commentary on customer experience and what it means about American consumer culture.

  “Private Robo taxi for my burrito and that is all you need to know about America.” – Co-host [08:32]

• Greg Brockman’s shoutout to Jensen Huang for delivering a DGX Spark.
• Joking about the narrative shift in AI hype, summarized in memes about the “AI bubble.”

  “AI bubble ended in the funniest way. 2022 AGI soon 2023 AGI soon 2024 AGI soon 25 Never mind. We give up. It's just erotica.” – Co-host [09:17]

• Observations on startups shifting cloud spend away from AWS and toward inference and AI dev tools.

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8. Human-AI Merging & Willingness to Adopt New Tech

[10:02-11:00]

• Playful conversation around head-of-the-curve tech adoption, using theoretical Mars colonization and Neuralink implementation as examples.

  “I wouldn’t be the first person to go on the rocket to the moon… but I’d be like number five or ten.” – Host [10:02] “I'm probably in the first 50,000.” – Guest 2 [10:24]

• Brief philosophical mention of “the merge” (human-AI hybridization) as a possible solution to AI dominance.

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9. F1 Rights, Apple Strategy, and Barnacle Economy

[11:09-12:07]

• Apple’s acquisition of Formula 1 broadcasting rights in the US.
• Debate over whether Apple is a barnacle hitching onto F1’s success or the whale setting the cultural narrative.

  “Apple started as a barnacle and they're becoming the whale.” – Co-host [11:42]

• Lighthearted roasting of Tim Cook’s lackluster checkered flag wave at the F1 race.

  “He's at the finish line of a Formula one race, and he looks like he's going. Going out for trying to catch some trout or something.” – Co-host [12:07]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Palantir reporting:

  “Journalist who wrote that Reuters story would have been failed out of the class by any of my professors.” – Guest 1 [00:30]

• On product iteration in Silicon Valley:

  “…when you build a new product, you focus on finding a problem, building the solution, and then you figure out how to optimize the database.” – Host [00:43]

• On viral fake news:

  “This is slop. But this is the purest slop possible.” – Host [01:57]

• On AI and consumer culture:

  “Private Robo taxi for my burrito and that is all you need to know about America.” – Co-host [08:32]

• On the AI hype collapse:

  “AI bubble ended in the funniest way... Never mind. We give up. It's just erotica.” – Co-host [09:17]

• On being a tech early adopter:

  “I wouldn’t be the first person to go on the rocket to the moon… but I’d be like number five or ten.” – Host [10:02]

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Important Timestamps

• 00:14: Palantir/Anduril controversy and media critique
• 01:57: Exposing viral fake news clips
• 02:24: Robot Fight League and future of human-robot sports
• 04:10: Joe Rogan on car design and the psychedelic era
• 06:20: Bitcoin purchase regret story
• 08:32: DoorDash x Waymo Robo Taxi and cultural commentary
• 09:17: AI bubble meme and market shift
• 10:02: Mars/Neuralink “early adopter” debate
• 11:09: Apple’s F1 deal and barnacle economy metaphor
• 12:03: Tim Cook’s F1 checkered flag moment

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Tone & Style

The episode is defined by fast, witty banter spiked with humor, irony, and the hosts’ strong opinions on tech, finance, and media. Their conversational style makes even esoteric news relatable and entertaining, with playful jabs and speculation throughout.

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Useful for anyone wanting a snapshot of the week’s tech absurdities, industry shifts, and cultural commentary—delivered with TBPN’s irreverent spin.

Transcript

[Host]

You're watching TVP and today is Friday, October 17, 2025. We are live from the TV at Ultradome, the temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Let's play the clip from Bloomberg.

[Co-host]

There was a report about the NGC2 system. It named both and or and Palantir. We've asked Palantir through Sean to comment on that. But the report in Palantir's case moved markets. Could you just respond to that reporting?

[Guest 1]

Journalist who wrote that Reuters story would have been failed out of the class by any of my professors. He refused statement. He refused to include the on the record statement because they fundamentally made the whole story not a story.

[Host]

There was an analysis. They didn't include what Palantir and Andrew had to say. The army was like, hey, we want you to prototype something for us. Like put a bunch of dots on a map, do something different, like create a new ui. Like, show us what you can do. And then clearly an enemy of Anduril and Palantir like leaked. Like, well, they didn't have Oauth set up yet. And it's like, well, yeah, like we know this in Silicon Valley. Like when you build a new product, you focus on finding a problem, building the solution, and then you figure out how to optimize the database. Everyone in America knows that it shouldn't take 50 years to build a new plane. Like, everyone knows that other countries can build stuff faster and build systems faster and it shouldn't take this long. And other countries aren't smarter or more.

[Co-host]

Hard worked hard data centers.

[Host]

Difference between the data center market and what's going on in defense and government procurement is that the data center market doesn't necessarily have a ton of entrenched interest in being like, let's not speed up. Our model works. Palmer also went on the Joe Rogan experience. We have some images from this. The European mind cannot comprehend what happened. Now, this is unfortunately a fake.

[Co-host]

Telling me this is slop.

[Host]

This is slop. But this is the. This is the purest slop possible.

[Co-host]

You didn't allow me to live for just.

[Host]

No, I'm sorry.

[Co-host]

30 seconds, John.

[Host]

It is unfortunately fake news. We need to put in the truth zone.

[Co-host]

They pulled up an Ashley Vance video of wrecked Wreck robot.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, play that. Just something that someone's working out with.

[Co-host]

This is Robot Fight League in San Francisco.

[Guest 1]

So actually, so actually this is, this is a buddy of mine who's been working in VR for a really, really long time. So it's again, what a tiny. What a tiny World of weird Wackos.

[Host]

They were having so much fun talking about, uh, like, it should be a human versus a robot. That's what Palmer and Logan Paul are apparently working on. And they go into this big, long discussion about, well, if you can train a robot to be, like, perfect with its punches, it could also pull its punches perfectly. And so it could be the ultimate sparring partner. It could train on you. You could say, like, I'm going to get in the ring with Evander Holyfield or Mike Tyson today. And it could mimic that perfectly. In theory.

[Co-host]

I'm more interested to see, like, 100 robots versus one human while they're not quite as dialed.

[Host]

That would be great. Yeah.

[Co-host]

Right now I'd be interested how much damage Logan Paul would do to a bunch of those unitrees.

[Host]

Today, I think you get 100 unitrees. The humanoid robots. You put them in guerrilla costumes, you turn Logan Paul loose. It's a $2 million production, but it's gonna get a billion views. And so you could also do 100.

[Guest 2]

Unitries versus one gorilla.

[Host]

Some photos of Marc Benioff on TVPN and Palmer on Joe Rogan. He's the final boss of salesman with a lot of other people. We've met beforehand, we've talked, we've gotten to know each other. That was not the case with Benioff. The first time I ever talked to him was on that call, and it just felt like we were old friends immediately. Before we move on, let me tell you about Privy wallet infrastructure for every bank. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rail, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions, and integrate on chain infrastructure all. All through one simple API. This is my opportunity to remind everyone that Andrew Huberman was a writer for Thrasher Mag before becoming a neuroscientist. You can just do things. Look at this photo of Andrew Huberman. He's looking fantastic in this leather bag.

[Co-host]

How did I never know this?

[Host]

Yeah, this is just a massive invitation for Jensen Huang from Nvidia to go on the Huberman Lab podcast. That would be a fantastic crossover.

[Co-host]

Cheers. Joe Rogan says car design is bad now because car designers stopped doing drugs. Ooh, hot take. Hot take from Joe.

[Host]

Joshua Kushner strolled billionaire ly across the room. His contrarian high concentration vibes engulfed Rick Rubin's bohemian monk retreat. Joshua's high conviction and mistress filled the room. It's the giga chad at the typewriter. Lmao. Here's the first sentence of this Kushner profile. The road to Rick Rubin's house was long and winding for Joshua Kushner, who traversed more than might be gleaned from the surface glint of his life. People were debating whether or not this is real journalism, whether or not this is real investors investigative journalism and the trade off that people make when they read these.

[Co-host]

Colossus is out there saying like we are trying. They're not trying to be anyone but Colossus.

[Host]

Exactly right.

[Co-host]

They're not trying to. And that's the thing about media is like media is not zero sum. Like the New York Times can thrive and Colossus can thrive and they can have some overlap and maybe the stories that they're interested in, but they can have totally different ways covering people and that's healthy. And consumers have the choice of whose kind of general point of view do I want to, you know, read.

[Host]

I'd like to imagine I fail though by inherent nature of being human to understand the arguments of the tech folks and the journalist folks. And here's what I believe they both say and where I agree slash disagree. I'm hesitant to call Colossus at all investigative journalism since there are more puff pieces or a farm for the gen zers than not. Yeah, it's a pretty good take.

[Co-host]

I always enjoy going to futurism.com yes. Which is a media company you would assume is excited about the future. Here's some of their latest stories. Divorced Tesla fan admits that his cybertruck is repulsive to women. Super proud to have been involved with this over the past few months. The lower cost of acceptance with BTC will make traditional card processing obsolete. We'll be announcing some really exciting sellers who've moved to square for bitcoin. They are so convinced that people want to pay for goods with bitcoin.

[Host]

Who? I bought a TV with bitcoin. It was the worst financial decision in my life. Paid one bitcoin.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Host]

Five thousand TV. Hundred thousand dollar TV and it's not even 4K and it's actually in the trash now. I gave it away.

[Guest 2]

When was this?

[Host]

It was in like 2013 or something. Bitcoin was like a thousand bucks.

[Co-host]

Yeah. Just before you were born. You should run it back and buy a car.

[Host]

I actually spent like 5 bitcoin on like consumer electronics that depreciated like crazy.

[Co-host]

Heather donates a quarter million dollars to open SAS to strengthen free and open source ecosystems supporting bitcoin and freedom tech. Jack says, why only 250k? Somebody asked how much did you donate? He goes over 21 million. You. This is like the Former owner of the dive bar coming back in and just talking smack.

[Host]

Yeah, he's like, I don't know anymore.

[Co-host]

But spiritually I own it.

[Host]

A lot of soft power Heineken, the beer company which has been around since 1873, is taking a shot at friend of the show, Friend founder Avi Schiffman, who has been putting friend billboards all over Los Angeles, all over New York. Heineken has people who get it and can sell it internally or have proper processes to turn this around quickly and ship incredible speed for a giant organization. I completely agree.

[Co-host]

It's the official beer of AI Doomers.

[Host]

What analysis do you want to run? Chat with your data and get expert level insights in seconds. Julius is the AI data analyst friend who works for you.

[Co-host]

My boomer dad looking at me after I've made fun of him for the past 10 years for buying gold off those stupid infomercials on TV.

[Host]

Well, congrats to all the boomers who have been holding gold for years and years and years and are now seeing it.

[Co-host]

Finally, Moon Aaron says, if you ever think you're a good programmer, just remember this dude wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon by himself in assembly, earning 30 million in royalties.

[Host]

That's awesome.

[Co-host]

Imagine when he woke up from his dream of assembly, he immediately jumped into more assembly. He woke up excited to get out of bed. Not for the money, but for the love of the game. Chris in the chat says, my favorite part was cleaning up the throw up in Roller Coaster Tycoon. Is that real?

[Host]

Yes there might be throw up if there's a mess, if there's a crazy ride. If your ride and there's food and it's like if you put the food next to the ride, the people will throw up.

[Co-host]

DoorDash will use Waymo's Robo Taxis for delivery in Phoenix. Customers will have to come down to the curb to retrieve their orders from the driverless car's trunk. Paula says private Robo taxi for my burrito and that is all you need to know about America.

[Host]

Pretty sick.

[Co-host]

Greg Brockman said. Thanks Jensen for the hand delivery of the DGX Spark. Best delivery service ever. Amazing to see so much compute based 16z says AI bubble ended in the funniest way. 2022 AGI soon 2023 AGI soon 2024 AGI soon 25 Never mind. We give up. It's just erotica.

[Host]

And it's not just erotica and ads.

[Co-host]

And cures for cancer and gambling.

[Host]

Amazon admits they're losing an AI says Buco Capital Bloke.

[Co-host]

Internal documents obtained by Business Insider. We got to check out Business Insider reveal that AWB has flagged a fundamental shift in how startups are allocating their cloud budgets. Increasingly, they're delaying AWS cloud adoption and diverting spending toward AI models, inference and AI developer tools. Startups are not flawed. Flocking to AWS for running, like, the whole ecosystem.

[Host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In years past, there was definitely a path, I think.

[Co-host]

Yeah. I just look at this as there's clearly a fundamental shift and they're not capitalizing on it in a big way.

[Host]

I agree. You know, I've often said that I would be. I wouldn't be the first person to go on the rocket to the moon or the or to Mars, but I'd be like number five or ten. As long as the first couple people make it back, I'm good. What about you? What number of person do you want to be? Do you want to be the first person with the millionth. You want to be the millionth neural link customer?

[Co-host]

Billion.

[Guest 2]

I'm probably in the first 50,000.

[Host]

I would say first 50,000.

[Guest 2]

I mean, there's an interesting thing.

[Co-host]

What?

[Guest 2]

One possible solution to the kind of doom scenario is that it's like the merge that would actually prevent the AIs.

[Host]

Taking over because we become the AI. They can't take us over if we're them.

[Guest 2]

Jordi, what number are you?

[Co-host]

Big. Big number. We're going to need a bigger gong for my number.

[Host]

All according to plan. He is highlighting the fact that all of his. Everyone with the same name as him.

[Co-host]

Is at the building cooking or at Thinking Machines or open AI.

[Host]

It's a good time to be Eric Zhang.

[Co-host]

Yeah. We got to get all of them on the show.

[Host]

We do Eric Zhang guy. They're all invited. Talk about OpenAI thinking machines, cooking and building.

[Co-host]

Tyler, can you. Can you work on this? This seems like.

[Host]

Invite them all. We have some breaking news. Apple has entered year deal to broadcast Formula one in the United States. And I love the Apple strategy.

[Co-host]

How much did they pay?

[Host]

We don't. I don't know. We should look it up.

[Co-host]

It's a barnacle economy, in my opinion. Really? Is they just like drive to survive. Is this whale that was making. Making F1 relevant in the US I feel like they just attached onto. It's a big barnacle.

[Host]

Wait, who's the barnacle and who's the whale? I feel like. I feel like F1.

[Co-host]

I'm saying Apple started as a barnacle and they're becoming the whale. Hmm.

[Host]

Okay, here he is Tim Cook. This is at F1. And they want him to wave the checkered flag. That looks fine.

[Co-host]

No, it doesn't.

[Host]

How does one wave a checkered flag?

[Co-host]

That is not how you would wave.

[Host]

How would I wave it? Would I just war gusto, you think?

[Co-host]

Look at how lackadaisical this wave.

[Host]

It does seem like he's kind of phoning in.

[Co-host]

Looks like he's going fishing.

[Host]

It does.

[Co-host]

He's at the finish line of a Formula one race, and he looks like he's going. Going out for trying to catch some trout or something. Wow.

[Host]

Have a fantastic weekend, everyone. We will see you on Monday. We love you. Leave us five stars on Apple podcasts and Spotify, and have a great, wonderful weekend.