TBPN Live - IPO Giga Boom, World’s Fairs of the Past | Diet TBPN

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with ea...ch episode posted to podcast platforms right after.Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella.Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.comhttps://x.com/tbpnhttps://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

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Starting point is 00:00:03 Good show for you today, folks. It's Friday, Friday, May 22nd. We had our Wall Street Journal stolen from us. We only have the Financial Times today. But we're making due because we have a digital subscription as well. And we're going to take you through America's IPO, boom. So three key stories that broke since we last spoke a mere 21 hours ago since we podcast for three hours. And then we come back 21 hours later. We do it again. We do it again. Yesterday, Politico reported that. that David Sacks made an 11th hour appeal to President Trump to spike an executive order that would have created a voluntary program, voluntary program, for frontier AI companies to submit their models to the government for review 90 days before new model releases. I wonder what the benefit of that is. Obviously, it's good to have red teaming going on, good to have benchmarking, good to have other eyes on the project.
Starting point is 00:01:01 There's some sort of, you know, liability that happens. What's the round thing on the table? No one in the TVPN audience has ever seen this. Can you describe what this is, this round-shaped argument? I'm still not exactly sure what we're looking at. Yeah. I saw them talking about this on ESPN. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:16 And people are always saying you guys are like sports center for business. You should pick one of these up, this object. So I had to check it out. Yeah. This artifact. Brown oval object. Yes. Cool.
Starting point is 00:01:27 Well, it looks fun. Anyways. I was having a little bit of fun earlier. throwing this at the gong. Drill in the gong. The production team didn't like it. No. Because there's this, you know, $70,000 massive flat screen TV next to the gong as well as multiple cameras. Yes. And lights over there. But no accidents. Wow. Mandate of heaven over there. Right. Yeah. So for his part, Trump explained the last minute cancellation by telling reporters, quote, I didn't like certain aspects of it.
Starting point is 00:02:02 I think it gets in the way of, dash, we're leading China. We're leading everybody. And I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that. The presumed text of the EO was leaked today. You can read it through this link. Tyler, have you checked in with less wrong? Yeah, how are they feeling about this? Yeah, I mean, I assume they're not happy with this.
Starting point is 00:02:23 This seems to be like anti-safety. Do they want more review from independent, independent nonprofits, for-profit companies that are run by people with good intentions or the government like democratically elected. I mean, I assume at some level it's got to be the government, right? Because if you're super H.I. Pilled, these things are nuclear weapons. Yeah. It needs to be the government.
Starting point is 00:02:46 But I think on the way there, people are definitely like, is there anyone who says like, no, no, no, actually like nuclear weapons are super important, but they shouldn't be regulated by the government because I don't like the government. I would rather my favorite megacorp owns them, controls them. If you look at the approval rates for different organizations, there are plenty of companies that are polling above the U.S. government. Like, people love Disney, Disney adults. They say, give Disney a nuclear weapon. They already have the rights to build a nuclear power plant.
Starting point is 00:03:14 You know this? I did not. Disney World has, like, you know, legacy rights because when they set up Epcot, which is an acronym, which I should look up because what does it stand for? It stands for something really cool. This also bridges into one of our future segments. stands for, what does Epcot stand for? Experimental prototype community of tomorrow. The idea was to build an entire city. It was the praxis of the 50s. Yeah. And so in 1966, Walt Disney conceived it in 1966 is a utopian, fully functioning city. And I believe this might just be viral clickbait,
Starting point is 00:03:50 but they have the permission to build a nuclear reactor to power the prototype community of tomorrow. Epcot. Yeah. And so, I don't know. Maybe, maybe there's some folks out there that say, we can't trust the government. We can't trust the Democrats. We can't trust the Republicans with the nuclear weapons. Give them to Disney. I don't know. I trust Bob. The new guy, we got to meet him. We got to get to know him. That's right. Bob, he can, he can. I shook his hand. Yeah. I trust him. I trust his hand on the button. Second story highlighted by Brandon Grell in the TBPN newsletter. The Grellinator. The Grellinator in the TBPN newsletter and 80.
Starting point is 00:04:24 On a non-account posted yesterday. He's sitting here with noise-canceling headphones. He doesn't know that we're talking about him. He's going to find this out later when he watches these clubs. Anyway, on a non-account posted yesterday that Microsoft had canceled its internal Claude code licenses after token-based billing made the cost untenable. This catalyzed a ton of commentary and discourse around X. Box CEO Aaron Levy, for example, used this post to argue that
Starting point is 00:04:54 token price optimization is set to become a prevailing trend inside companies reliant on LMs. Worth noting, though, that there's a proposed community note on the post right now that denies Microsoft made the move because of a cost issue. They have the money to spend billions on tokens if they want. But instead, they are trying to shift the developers to use their own co-pilot CLI, which I imagine they're going to build their own harness, their fork of Codco. I heard someone referred to it as they want to make. the engineers eat dog food. Yes.
Starting point is 00:05:27 But what's the dog food made of? They're dog fooding. GPD 5.45 tokens. It could be made of Opus 47 tokens. I do think it, uh, I guess they will be using. Yeah, I mean, I think the reason that that Kodak's and Claudecote and cursor and these other tools have gotten so good is because the engineers building them are using them all day long. And it's one thing to use those tools to build your coding tool.
Starting point is 00:05:50 But being forced to constantly use the product that you're shipping is, uh, tried and true way to build a great product. Yeah. The third story from Branding Bro in the TVPN newsletter. The American semiconductor manufacturer, Micron, announced that they've begun manufacturing 1-Alpha DRAM, the most advanced memory every produced in the United States
Starting point is 00:06:09 at its Manassas, Virginia headquarters, or manufacturing plant. This move comes in the middle of the agent boom in AI, which requires longer context windows, and thus memory than back-and-forth LLMs, which has led to an industry-wide memory shortage Micron has been on a tear. Let's see what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:06:29 800, almost $850 billion market cap. Remarkable. It's up 2% today, 3% over the last five days, and 246% over the last six months. What an absolute run for Micron. It's up almost 1,000% over the past year. Wow. Wow.
Starting point is 00:06:48 Wow. Anyway, America's going through a mini, this was such a funny article by the Wall Street Journal. America's IPO mini boom. How is this a mini boom? You got three of the... Is this not a gigabom? This is a gigabom.
Starting point is 00:07:02 So, I don't know if we have the truth's on this, but it also made it to the front page of the Walls, of the Financial Times. They said, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic IPOs set to ignite Wall Street trading frenzy. NASDAQ loosens rules. Pass investors could dump rival stocks. Trillionaire prospect for Musk,
Starting point is 00:07:22 the blockbuster listings of Space. SpaceX Anthropic and Open AI are set to prompt an unprecedented wave of buying and selling as new fast entry rules thrust the tech stocks straight into Wall Street indices. The rules implemented this month by NASDAQ mean billions of dollars of passive money will automatically flow to the three companies when they go public, driving their share prices higher and forcing investors to sell rival stocks. Elon Musk, SpaceX, initial public offering next month is expected to be the largest on record, firing the starting gun on what U.S. bankers will hope will be a blockbuster year.
Starting point is 00:07:56 With Open AI filing its IPO paperwork as soon as this week, an Anthropic planning to float its shares, too, as well. The trio is set to raise tens of billions of dollars at a time of relentless investor appetite for companies linked to AI. The SpaceX listing will cement Musk's control of two of America's most valuable companies, SpaceX and Tesla. It is crazy. We're going to need a new term for the Mag 7 because Tesla has been in the Mag 7. It's been north of a trillion dollars for a long time, but SpaceX is going to go out at a higher valuation almost certainly.
Starting point is 00:08:25 Where is Tesla trading at today in terms of market cap? It's at 1.34. Hard to imagine SpaceX trading below that. So you're going to have his Mag 7 company will be lagging his non-Mag 7 company. We're going to need new terms. We're going to need a bigger boat. But why did the Wall Street Journal call this a mini boom? I think it's just because it's so concentrated on these three.
Starting point is 00:08:50 companies, but we will dig in and see where it goes. So too bad, SpaceX and others didn't go public sooner. I agree. But they are a tribute to the U.S. capitalist system, says the Wall Street Journal. Today's AI investor euphoria recalls the heady.com days of the 1990s, and it's hard to tell how these bets will shake out. SpaceX, Open AI, and Anthropic are rushing to go public to take advantage of the favorable market conditions. But amid the eulogies written about American capitalism, The latest mini IPO boom is a welcome tribute to the dynamism of U.S. markets that no other country can match. Space Exfired, the starting gun. They're using the same language as the Financial Times over there. The starting gun has been fired. It's unanimous across the mainstream media.
Starting point is 00:09:36 The rocket company, found in 2002, is a global leader in space explorers. Overnight, success. It is also spread into broadband, mobile satellite internet and data center development. Anthropic recently agreed to pay SpaceX, $1.25 billion a month to use its data centers to train models. That shows how competitors can enjoy symbiotic relationships. SpaceX says the company as a whole reported a $4.9 billion net loss last year, some of which stemmed from its x.com social media platform. Can that be that much? I'd have to imagine that the losses were not, I mean, I don't know how much Twitter was losing before they, before the take private. I know that
Starting point is 00:10:15 the revenues cratered a bit, but there were also big layoffs and an 80% reduction in cost. The sum word there is maybe doing some of the lifting. I imagine that the losses were sort of spread over all sorts of investments here. You're building a new Starship rocket, which is set to launch today. 530, central time. Tune in. The last one was scrub. What a critical launch. Is it? No, just because of the timing with the S-1 and the IPO. I don't know. All eyes on I think the market is valuing the launch capabilities in SpaceX and Starship in particular is like one small piece of the puzzle. You know, it's important, but you know, people are going to be paying way more attention
Starting point is 00:11:00 to this. Yeah, yeah. Obviously people will be excited about it. But I think even just the, you know, and spamming Falcon 9s can get Starlink to what, $20 billion run rate or something, $10 billion run rate. You can clearly build a business off of the existing capability. lots of excitement around. Starship, there was a little bit of, like, spice in the timeline from, you know, everyday astronaut
Starting point is 00:11:22 because he was sort of like rooting for a scrub, and everyone was like, oh, he's like against SpaceX. But he was like, no, I was like, I'm such a fan that I wanted to be there in person. I couldn't be there in person, so I was like, I hope that they scrub because I want to be there for this historic moment. So a little bit of like a misconception there. SpaceX said in its filing that it foresees 28. 28.5 trillion, yes, trillion in market opportunities, including data centers in space, is anything more bullish than the future just being enterprise software?
Starting point is 00:11:55 Like, you paint this massive picture, we're going to Mars, how are we going to make money? Enterprise Software, 22 trillion of enterprise software. We're going to be automating workflows for the enterprise. I guess forever. Mr. Musk in January was awarded one billion performance-based restricted shares that will vast if his company, quote, establishes a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants. Do robots count as inhabitants? Do agents count? Isn't that one of the potential? You got to get a million. This is why he's worried about the... So wasn't there a list of like five or
Starting point is 00:12:30 six things and he just has to do like four? I don't know. I haven't dug into that particular one. I know for Tesla there were a whole bunch of different milestones. The humanoid robots was was one of stretch goals. But permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants, that's excited. That's a good goal. Like that feels, I don't know, that, like a whole lot of enterprise software and a million people living on Mars, that's a vision I can get behind. I'm into that. I like it. What was the market cap of Tesla at IPO? With sub 10 billion, right? Was it? Tesla's, Tesla, 1.7. Whoa, 1.7 billion? Yeah. Are you sure? Is that a market cap for ants?
Starting point is 00:13:13 You got a thousand X if you just were a day one IPO believer. I mean, that's how you build a retail army. So, SpaceX. I mean, million people on Mars, we could be looking at 1.7 quad, potentially. Anything's possible. I don't know. You get a thousand X from here. If we get to Mars, that's a big, big opportunity.
Starting point is 00:13:31 That is so crazy that you could buy an Elon company in the public markets at less than a $2 billion market cap. and many people did not. I owned a little bit of Tesla at some point, but there were so many moments when it was like so wildly disconnected from other car companies or other, like it was never a like a Warren Buffett buy. You know, there were always good reasons not to buy it.
Starting point is 00:13:55 Instead of going to high school, I just bought the Tesla IPO using the money I made from mowing lawn. Yeah, you should have just been a lawnmower who DCA'd into Tesla the whole time. Probably be pretty retired right now. I mean, there's a lot of people that did that. There's also a lot of people that put money down to buy cars and then they didn't
Starting point is 00:14:13 buy the stock and they're like, ah, the car depreciated and I should have bought the stock. Anyway, let's check in with the Starship launch because SpaceX postponed the launch of the newly redesigned Starship, but hardly a headline if it's just a one day postponing because these things happen all the time. But it's completely redesigned. It's 400 feet tall and it stood on the launch pad at the company Starbase Complex outside Brownville, Texas. But, and engineers had to troubleshoot problems that kept cropping up to the end of the countdown for the flight, according to a SpaceX LiveStraint. SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk later said in a social media post that a hydraulic pin on part of the launch tower didn't function correctly.
Starting point is 00:14:57 The company could try the flight Friday if the problem is fixed overnight. So they worked all night and they fixed the hydraulic pin on the launch tower. Wow. Talk about complex. The test mission was set to be the first flight for Starship V3. This is the third version, redesigned SpaceX vehicle, intended to deploy bigger satellites, and one day help the company potentially settle Mars
Starting point is 00:15:22 and mine asteroid Starship is bigger and more powerful than any rocket ever built. The company has sketched out a future in which Starship flies thousands of times per year. Of course, the Mechazilla tower that grabs it, the chopsticks. That's very key to being able to stack. these quickly. You can't rebuild all the infrastructure. The reusability is key to flying regularly. The rocket has yet to fly any customer satellites after three years of intense tests that we know of. The real conspiracy theorists, there's conspiracy theories that think space is fake, nothing's happening, they're not actually going, the satellites
Starting point is 00:15:59 don't exist, and then there's other conspiracy theories that think, oh yeah, when they crash, they're actually deploying secret satellites and there's more stuff in space than we think. So pick your tinfoil hat theory. We'll let you be the judge of what's really going on. Space Sixth's growth plans depend on Starship. According to its IPO prospectus, the document filed Wednesday, listed Starship first among the risk factors facing the company. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:16:23 Okay, so a little bit more credit for you because I was like, ah, it's not that big a deal. I care more about the data centers. Yeah, I just mean the optic. Think about like the optics and some investors are super, you know, a little bit. Yeah. It is interesting. Like clearly if SpaceX,
Starting point is 00:16:38 is listing Starship as the first risk factor. It means like, oh, yeah, like, Colossus, like, we're going to be able to do that. Like, that's not that hard. Like, we can build a big data center. They have. They have. And there's less of a risk factor of, like,
Starting point is 00:16:51 we're not going to be able to monetize that. Or we're not going to, you know, because there is, there are a group of investors out there that are saying, like, oh, token prices will collapse, GPU depreciation, it'll get blocked. There'll be a data center ban. Like, they won't be able to ramp up there. The main thing is, God forbid,
Starting point is 00:17:05 there's like a, you know, catastrophic. you know, explosion. It'd be, that would be, you know, potentially an omen that certain people would be looking into. But maybe. I have full faith. They estimated in its IPO filing Wednesday that it has spent $15 billion developing Starship. Well, that makes a lot of sense why there's losses if you've been investing this.
Starting point is 00:17:27 DJ D. Saul. Yeah, what's going on with? Slid into Elon's DM. Oh, yeah. In the bid to land lead left, the IPO with banks. jockeying to get their name first on the deal for SpaceX's IPO. Solomon worked with staffers to message must directly. He's like, all right, guys, help me out here.
Starting point is 00:17:46 How do I send a message on X, according to people familiar with the matter? So he's putting in the work. He also has a lot. He says, wow, this is how you work for the bag at Goldman Sachs. David Solomon also had a piece in the New York Times saying that the AI apocalypse, NYT, was overrated. AI is a job creator. David Solomon says, he says,
Starting point is 00:18:12 I'm the CEO of Goldman Sachs. The AI job apocalypse is overblown. We'll see what he's saying in a couple months. Ken Griffin sort of flipped, although Ken Griffin hasn't gone as far to say that there's a job apocalypse. He was just saying that the models went from like slop to usable, but he hasn't actually opined on whether or not that will change
Starting point is 00:18:33 Citadel's hiring plans or his view of the American economy. He also specifically said, he was very excited that all of his software engineers were more efficient because he said there's no like cap on how much software. I was there. I was writing visual basic. It was brutal. I would have loved codex and clock code.
Starting point is 00:18:50 I would have been working for one minute a day instead of an hour a day. You could have had codex back then, just like a private, private instance of it. Yes. You would be currently. Time traveling back in time just to become the most productive intern of all time is elite. That's something you would actually do. It would be so much fun. Maybe that's what the future will hold intern simulator.
Starting point is 00:19:14 You get to go into VR and simulate being the most elite intern with time travel technology. Can we talk about the world's fair? Yes, we need to talk about the world's fair. Tyler, you gave this a read. World's fairs. Has someone tried to bring these back? This feels like a tech, new media. We need a world's fair thing.
Starting point is 00:19:35 I could see this being something that someone tries to revive, although it'd probably be a lot of screens these days. But at the World's Fair of old, there were a lot of cool technologies, a lot of hardware, a lot of interesting exhibits, and we'll go through. I don't know how much you've studied the World Fair in the past, but the Wall Street Journal has been reflecting on the United States of America at 250 years with a whole bunch of articles that look back and contextualize American history. and we'll go through this one on the World's Fair right now. So among the groundbreaking innovations unveiled at U.S. hosted exhibitions were the telephone, the Ferris wheel, and the electric and electric lighting. Ferris really crushed it on the naming thing. You know, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
Starting point is 00:20:23 Thomas Edison invented lighting mostly. Those guys did not bake their name into the product nearly as well as Ferris, because it's capital F, and I believe Ferris is the one who invented the Ferris wheel. Anyway, before splashy Silicon Valley product launches in the annual consumer electronics show, the world's showcased its latest in innovations at high-profiled world's fairs. These exhibits held every few years, beginning in London, in 1851, gave countries a public platform to showcase new technologies, products, and ideas that were going to reshape daily life. For host countries and cities, the world's fairs or expositions, we're an opportunity to own the world stage and project.
Starting point is 00:21:04 person that invented the Ferris Wheels. Full name was George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. That's pretty elite. That's an elite name. There's nothing stopping you from naming your child George Washington and then just slapping your own last name
Starting point is 00:21:20 at the end. Yes, yes. George Washington Cosgrove. John Tyler was the 10th president. Oh, true. Yeah, there you go. There we go. There we go. Okay, so many of the big expos were commemorative, says Paul Greenhall,
Starting point is 00:21:33 Green Hall, a British historian and author of two books on World's Fairs and Expositions, but all of them ended up doing something else. They changed the shape of cities, much like the Olympics today. World's Fairs were large-scale planning efforts and economic investments as much as cultural events. Cities competed for the right to host them. Chicago was able to redefine its image from a gritty second city to a cultural and architectural hub after defeating New York in the bid for the 1893 exposition.
Starting point is 00:22:01 Here's a look at the U.S. hosted World's. world's fairs that left the deepest marks. So Philadelphia. Starting in Philly, 1876, you're not going to believe what was shown, what was celebrated. We had two key technologies, telephones and catch up. One was disrupted much faster than the other. I would say that the telephone has basically disappeared, the smartphone, text messaging. Telephone's not doing well.
Starting point is 00:22:28 It's on its last night. The iPhone might big. The barbecue sauce has not really made, gained ground. Inroads. No. Catchup is still. Even ranch kind of went on a run. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:38 But really came up short. Ultimately, it's a compliment, not a substitute. There are very few people that say, oh, I don't need the ketchup at all. Just the mustard. Just the mustard. Please, most people, it'll be both. I don't know. I do think mustard is better than ketchup.
Starting point is 00:22:52 Interesting. Yeah. You can believe that. America's first officially sanctioned World's Fair, the centennial international exhibition arrived when the country was still defining its place among industrial nations. Unlike earlier European fairs built around single monumental halls, the Philadelphia events spread across a vast park with hundreds of structures. It was sort of like the Coachella of its time. Among the most notable exhibits were the telephone.
Starting point is 00:23:18 It was initially greeted with skepticism, but the potential of the cool contraption quickly drew attention. Once people realized what had been invented, it became clear how important it was. The fair also showcased Thomas Edison's automatic telegraph as well as machinery. such as the typewriter, imagine you just create the automatic telegraph, and then you go to launch it and demo it, and somebody invents the telephone. Really? Really, dude? And consumer package goods such as Heinz tomato ketchup. It normalized the idea that private companies, innovators, and even governments could present
Starting point is 00:23:52 their work side by side, model that amplified the country's entrepreneurial culture. I love that. Chicago, 1893. You're not going to believe it. You're not going to believe the two technologies that are... We got to call balls and strikes here. A little bit more underwhelming. Yeah, but I don't know.
Starting point is 00:24:09 Tell people what was... Two key inventions. Last time, remember, we created telephones and catch up, right? And so fast following this with the next fair, we create the... No, no, no. It's not fast following. 1876, the telephone. Almost 20 years later.
Starting point is 00:24:25 Almost 20 years later, they're like fast takeoff. We're so early. Telephones cooking. what do we got? The Ferris wheel and popcorn. Popcorn is pretty good. Catch up before popcorn. Pretty good.
Starting point is 00:24:39 Pretty good. But yeah, Ferris wheel. Ferris wheel? Imagine the hundreds of people that came there to demo their inventions. If you're in telephones, pivot to Ferris wheels. There's a whole industry. Oh, yeah, Ferris wheel, that will destroy the telephone. You got to get out on the Ferris wheel.
Starting point is 00:24:53 It's the new thing. Well, it is sort of funny. It is sort of funny that if you were to look back, if we had a world's Fair, you'd have like creatine gummies and like AGI. Exactly. So in 1893, they had the Ferris wheel and popcorn. And then you fast forward to today. It's like, we found a way to put one of the micronutrients in steak into a candy-shaped
Starting point is 00:25:22 supplement. And we need you to eat four or five of these a day forever. 2020, World's Fair. We have rockets that land. And we also have... Allbirds. Allbirds. What else came out?
Starting point is 00:25:37 That was very silly. Board apes. We have... Skims, shapeware. Shapware and GLP ones. It's somewhat related. I don't know. Buffalo, New York, 1901.
Starting point is 00:25:50 An electric city. This seems pretty elite. This is pretty huge. 1901. Though remembered mostly is the location where President William McKinley was shot. He died a week later. Buffalo's Pan American.
Starting point is 00:26:01 Exposition was meant to showcase... He was shot at the World's Fair? That's crazy. Fact-checked that. Buffalo's Pan American Exposition was meant to showcase America's dominance and innovation, electrical power and infrastructure. The fair featured electric lighting and electric streetcars powered by hydroelectricity, generated by Niagara Falls, reflecting a moment when electricity was beginning to move from
Starting point is 00:26:24 novelty towards widespread utility. Okay, so this is 1901. And remember, in 1876, we created... the telephone. And you fast forward to the next event in St. Louis in 1904. You're not going to believe what we remember the 1904 World's Fair. Three years. We created electricity. And they're like, we got something better. We now know this, this World's Fair as a snack food extravaganza. It's really just age-dying. It was sort of a Cambrian explosion of snacking. Yeah. I mean, this is the nature of our show. It's like cerebrus and grooms. Like, this is
Starting point is 00:27:01 This is actually what happens in America brought. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was among the largest ever stage and nearly obliterated the city's finances. Oh, no. Still, its pop culture influence endures. The exposition popularized a host of snack foods that would become staples of American life, including ice cream cones, peanut butter. Oh, my, they went on an insane run right here. Ice cream cones, peanut butter, hot dogs, hamburgers, and kios. Cotton candy. Elite. While the foods weren't all invented for the fair, their widespread availability there.
Starting point is 00:27:35 Like, it's so funny. So people are coming there again to share their actual innovations. And then, like, snacks had just come online. And so you can imagine, like, it just turns into a snack conference. Yep. Everyone's just snacking like crazy. They're like, wait, we have hot. You can go to a hot dog stand. And then you can go get cotton candy in one place. You got to be kidding me. Fast forward. 1962. Seattle. Space race. It's a space race. That's exciting. The World's Fair, by the mid-20th century, the World's Fairs had become games of one-upsmanship. I like that. In geopolitical rivalry, feels like where we're at today. Seattle's century 21 exposition took place in the shadow of the Cold War following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik and the world's first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviets turned down an invitation. They turned down. Turn it down. Turn it down.
Starting point is 00:28:31 The federal government became deeply involved. There was a sense that America needed to demonstrate technological leadership. The Space Needle was constructed for the fair. I recently saw the inside of the Space Needle because, wait, no, that's not the Space Needle. It's the Toronto version of the Space Needle because didn't Drake film a music video inside of it? He iced it out. Oh, he did? He made it Ice Blue.
Starting point is 00:28:55 Because he's Ice Man or something? That's the name of the album. And inside you can see all of the broadcasting equipment, and there's these huge radio dishes inside. It's very cool. Anyway. Fast forward, just a few years, a couple years. You're not going to believe what they created,
Starting point is 00:29:15 what they announced at this World's Fair. 64. They invents 1964, more than just under 100 years since the telephone was invented. we invented punch cards. Punch cards. Which feel like a kind of early version of enterprise software in some way. True.
Starting point is 00:29:39 World's favorite flushing meadow in New York City. Systems of records. Visitors were dazzled by color television demonstration and the picture phone, an early video calling system. They had FaceTime. Yeah, this is crazy. This is crazy. I can't believe.
Starting point is 00:29:55 When I told Jordy 64. They invented FaceTime. He was like, did it use mirrors? And he thought it was just a periscope. Just a mirror that you look at. No, no, no. It's like a series of mirrors that bounce my image across, like, so you can be in the other room and you can see me and talk.
Starting point is 00:30:12 No. No, they had full video calling, I guess. AT&T's picture phone, which added video to telephone calls. Yeah, so it cost $16 for a three-minute call. That's $121 today's in today's money. That's expensive. Yeah, $40. token maxing. I wonder if, I wonder if there were CEOs at the time who were like, we need to be, if you're not, if you're making $10 a year and you're not spending $20 a year on your picture phone, you're not going to have a job.
Starting point is 00:30:39 I wonder if they were talking about Jevin's Paradox. Yes, probably. I don't know. The last officially sanctioned World's Fair in the U.S. was hosted in New Orleans in 1984, and it produced no truly defining technological debut. Wow. Stagnation theory undefeated. Brutal. By that point, the function of World's Fairs had largely migrated elsewhere to museums, television, theme parks, and technology conference. As a result, the World's Fair concept gradually faded. Putting on an expo is a lost art, the author says, but when America needed it, no one did it better. Yeah, it's hard to, you could bring something like this back, but I feel like it would end up being like a tech conference, you know. I wanted to talk about the robotic legs, the exoskeletons.
Starting point is 00:31:24 Would you rock these or would you be sitting it out? The HyperShell X Ultra S is an exoskeleton that the Wall Street Journal demoed. Thousand-watt hips. Thousand-watt hips. You wear these and they help you hike and run up hills. I listen to too many shows with Palmer Lockie where he talks about the capability of an Iron Man suit potentially just ripping you apart. And so I would be a little afraid. But I might give it a try.
Starting point is 00:31:55 Also imagine, you know, bad actor. Remember all the DGI drones had like a backdoor. Oh, yeah. Bad actor takes over your suit. Start dancing. And then it makes you do Michael Jackson and badly in front of your peers. Potentially. Potentially.
Starting point is 00:32:10 It could be wildly embarrassing. Also, CATL, the Chinese EV battery giant is investing in Deep Seek. Some big rounds going on. Also, B-Y-D. I was waking up. Remember? Remember? Oh, yeah. This is what AI 2020s. They predicted that BYD would get an F1 team. That's right. Which is what happening, which is what's happening. At least they're in talks.
Starting point is 00:32:30 BYD is in talks with Christian Horner over entering F1. That would be pretty crazy. Does BYD have any gas powered ice engines? I don't know. They're about to. They're about. Who knows? Well. Go have fun. We'll see you Tuesday. Have a good rest of your day. Have a great weekend. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify. sign up for our newsletter at tbp.com. It's been an honor. And we will see you tomorrow. Slash Tuesday.
Starting point is 00:32:56 We love you. Goodbye.

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