We got to kick it off with this video from NASA administrator and more importantly former TVN guest Jared Isaacman He says tomorrow we launch at sunset tonight Artemis 2 waits on the pad ready to carry astronauts Potentially farther than any humans have traveled in more than half a century the next era of exploration We have the countdown here right next to John So it is about four hours and 20 something minutes until the launch Starts you know they might delay by a few minutes who knows they might scratch entirely But if things go to plan the official NASA stream, it's up now But stay with us and then once we wrap in about three hours head over there and watch NASA Take you through the the final stage of the Artemis 2 launch, but let's play NASA administrator Jared Isaacman's video Because it's very exciting This is what I live for as a young child and what I live for today 50 years very you know a lot of people have been going back and forth SpaceX versus SLS I think it's more rockets the better more space launch capacity the better I want ten of these companies and with them all to be successful Apo structure us says you can hate SLS for being obsolete massively late and over budget I certainly do but you gotta concede it looks incredible and I couldn't agree more Importantly some people are joking around saying the space shuttle is launching today They're not using the space shuttle because they're going farther than they normally go with the space shuttle and the special was decommissioned So then the astronauts will be in a hot on top capsule mode exactly Blake Scholl shares. I'm genuinely excited to see America headed back to the moon back around the moon But Artemis is a moon dog. That's a good one. That's a really good. Wamba wambos or the new meta We'll be breaking it down soon. You don't even need to Lorraine it. You know, it's just plainly Yeah, I mean is lower or explain. Yeah, yeah Remember that Apollo did not result in durable progress in space it marked a literal high point from one half a century The cost of space access remained prohibitively high until we had a rebirth of space entrepreneurship Thank you for showing the way space acts Apollo was history's greatest tech demo at the moon landing This is inspiring it shows the triumph of ingenuity science and reason But also Apollo led to half a century of stasis and regression Yeah complacent it was fundamentally uneconomic contributed to creation of cost insensitive of a cost insensitive space agency and supply base all more concerned with perpetuating their own existence more concerned with make work jobs Then accelerating human progress now we're going back to the mood essentially the same way we did in 1969 again uneconomically again with central planning a disposable rocket no answer to how we create a self-sustaining lunar economy again We're taking communists approaches in competition with the communists Communism didn't work for the Russians and it won't work for America either the sooner we can get done with this moon doggle the better There's also reason to be optimistic this time around there's a nascent commercially led vision for the moon Lunar hotels mass drivers data centers in space helium 3 the commercial programs that gave SpaceX an early assist show a different and better Path forward this is where the better future lies and this is where America should be focused America should take the moon and we should take it the same way we took the American West Let's encourage and protect lunar value creation How about a homestead act for the moon most important? Let's stop dumping money and more importantly the time of our engineers and scientists on glory project that will never lead to a better future It is indeed time for another space race last time we fought communism with communism this time Let's remember what made America great this time. Let's fight communism with capitalism. There's some good points in here I think the the flip side of this is that we are in a wildly different position than 1969 in terms of the Maturity of this lunar economy the space ecosystem. We have SpaceX filed for IPO today You're looking at a trillion dollar company It will instantly be one of the largest companies in the world it already is but in the public markets when it goes out And so you have a lot of companies and startups and venture capitalists that are fully ready to commercialize any findings that come out of this and see this as an inspirational moment and Overall it just feels like 1969 the capital markets the entrepreneurship the capitalism was not quite ready for Okay, let's take this to the next step. Let's privatize this. Let's build businesses around this It was much more of a science experiment that went off into, you know, it's it's corner and then Was you know not immediately capitalized on but I think this time could be different at the same time I do understand what you're saying. Yeah, Ryan Ryan and Hunter over pirate wires shared this mission In pirate wires today, and they shared a quote from Jared last week saying this time He said the goal is not flags and footprints this time the goal is to stay America will never again Give up the moon. So generally aligned with what Blake is saying. Uh, Tyler. What's your take on this? Yeah, I was gonna say I think Blake is kind of underestimating the value of just like vibes Yeah, people have been like pretty blackpilled on on the moon. I think basically yeah sense that like everything kind of stopped So if you can just have like a white pill and it's like sure like maybe it's not a good idea to Continually launch these to the moon. They're not economical. Yeah, but if you can just get one and say like, yeah, we actually we can't still do this Yeah, it's also. I mean it's it's over budget But as a percentage of GDP it has to be a fraction of what we spent in 1969 So on a relative basis, it's a it's a maybe a better investment Yeah, I do think that there's something that's just inspiring about being able to do something like this and prove that we still got it I also like from hunter and ryan's post. Um, you know, they're dropping the article. It's just moon, right? It's not the moon Yes, yes, yes. Yes. We only got one so we can just say moon. It has its own name You know, you don't say the california the texas the florida. You just say moon. You say, can texas florida Let's watch this video of neil armstrong injecting just seconds before his lunar trailing training vehicle crashed Space cowboy space cowboy true heroism here. This is such a crazy video. I had no idea this happened Good music too. What is this interstellar? Yeah. Oh, yeah Like how did he know It's not gonna go. Oh, it's tipping. Okay. I would definitely know that would be very obvious That you would want to get out of there at that point Wow And he gets out in the parachute I wonder I wonder how much of that was like Planned to be okay. We're testing the ejector seat or he just knew okay. I got a it was called nicknamed flying Bedstead for good reason. It looked like a bed frame and it flew like one too. Yeah flying that on earth. It's not exactly the most aerodynamic aerodynamic vehicle but uh, call she has a market on when will artemis 2 launch It is soaring. We are now at 89 percent before april 2nd So 89 chance it launches today basically 92 chance that it launches Before april 4th. So jaymie diamonds been on an absolute error. He is hiring people. He's restating his Vision for america. There's an article in the wall street journal here. He has a plan for jp morgan to rescue the american dream That's a very exciting Idea. Let's run through jaymie diamonds plan for america. He's running I think he should jaymie diamond thinks the american dream is on life support And he is planning jp from jp morgan chase to step in the nation's largest bank announced the american dream initiative on tuesday A commitment from jp morgan to support small businesses home ownership access to health care and other economic priorities that diamond believes are crucial For the well-being of americans the bank already finances all of the above and says it's ready to put more resources into the effort diamond 70 years old and ceo of jp morgan since 2006 whatever has long worried about the future of the american economy and wealth inequality More recently he has warned that the country is sleepwalking into economic stasis Thanks to bad policies and rules that make it hard to invest in new ventures and run companies I am deeply frustrated by our own policies in america. He said last week at the hillan valley forum We've become like europe. We're unable to move and change That's strong words jp morgan hasn't been slowed bringing in more profit than any bank in the us history in us history But it reaches across main street and wall street and does better when the whole economy is chugging along diamond has a habit of making Big commitments It's a big commitment having that on Diamond has a habit of making big commitments in tune with the zeitgeist jp morgan announced a 1.5 trillion dollar investment platform focused on national security and supply chains last year Just as the federal government started to invest in critical suppliers It made a 30 billion dollar racial equity commitment after the murder of george floyd and a 2.5 trillion dollar climate change plan in 2021 now the bank is committing to adding 3 million new small business customers on top of 7 million today They want to get to 10 and it wants to lend them up to 80 billion over the next 10 years through loans and support for community oriented banks and Investment funds the bank reported 33 billion of loans to small businesses and other customers at the end of 2025 So they want to expand significantly It's just a 30 bump in total number of small businesses But they want to basically triple the amount of the loan book broadly the american dream means you can buy a home start a business You can build wealth and you can afford health care for your family jp morgan's head of corporate responsibility tim berry said in an interview We want to bring our capabilities and make that more real to families and customers They're helming the new american dream initiative and acknowledge that a lot of it isn't really new jp morgan has been looking to grow deeper Roots in the cities and towns where it does business rolling out specialty branches focused on community education for years It has invested big in cities where it has found business friendly leadership including detroit and san francisco The initiative and ambitious goals are supposed to jumpstart jp morgan bankers and employees to do more When we think about the impact that we've had locally in a place like detroit We know that success can be replicated in other places. So they are opening up the pocket book to Spur small business very exciting in other jb jami diamond news He just hired a recently hired warren buffett's protege. There's a profile in barons by andy sir were jb morgan chase CEO jami diamond doesn't usually make high profile outside hires for his senior executive team Preferring instead the homegrown variety that makes todd combs formerly a top investment manager poach Hathaway poached and brought in to head up jb morgan chase new 10 billion strategic investment group An exception except that homes is hardly a bolt from the blue. I like that. That's a good turn of phrase having served on jb morgan's boards 2016 okay, so he's a board board member. So he clearly knows everyone already He says I know the company well combs tells barons in his first interview as a bank employee I know everyone from jami to the operating community and the next layer of management I'm well aware of the balance sheet the excess capital and how jami and the team think and operate Like the bank's other top executives combs who's been ceo of berkshire Geico insurance unit is still settling into his new office on the 47th floor of jp morgan's new Manhattan headquarters I hope you don't mind the warm office says combs a tennis playing florida native I don't like the cold he says combs mapped out his new gig which began in january on a two-column chart He sketched on a notepad Interesting he's old school old school powerful. He's not he's not creating a second brain He's just ripping it on a notepad on the left are five rows of industries such as defense supply chain reindustrialization on the right are their future manifestations such as defense tech us semiconductors respectively the plan is to invest in everything our country has outsourced and Abdicated over recent decades. We want to invest in places where the puck is going so that america can control its own future That means deploying the group's 10 billion into middle market and large companies in u.s. Defense Aerospace health care and energy sectors to help them grow recent investments include mining company perpetual resources and defense tech startup shield ai combs who reports the diamond will also act as a special advisor to the ceo Combs endeavor is part of the security and resiliency initiative jp morgan announced in october in which the bank will commit to Facilitating 1.5 trillion in investments for companies deemed critical to the national economic security and resiliency We want to be a good partner to the government regardless of who's in charge It's the g.o.p. Now it can be someone else in the future. We're trying to let capitalism send the right signal We'll look at every opportunity on its own merit. We want an impact and a return highly regarded as an investor Combs is a boyish looking 55. He helped return gaico Which was burdened with outdated technology and bloated cost to profitability Berkshire watchers thought he might play a role in the company's post-war and buffett era Either overseeing its multi-billion dollar investment portfolio or its massive insurance operations Or he could have been up for other high-profile jobs But why this one it's a unique opportunity with both jayme and the institution and the mission of the job Combs says this is critical to the future of the country You want to find things in life that are big and important that are worth doing and doable Combs has an anti bucket list for his new role I had about 10 or 12 things that I didn't want the anti bucket list is sort of sort of underrated Your anti bucket list is just never go skydiving. I don't want that to happen Never buy never buy a super car never visit 30 countries become super carless Is no one talking about snapchat explain. What's going on capital came out see snap now With a well executed activist campaign It does feel like there's a big opportunity with ai better targeting like I'm I'm receptive to this pitch But I want to hear it from erenic. I know that this is an activist An activist shareholder. This could be very Very confrontational. Yes, they come out with a website save snap now.com You land on the website they hit you with a snap back to reality. Yep So uh taking a fun approach here They say snap has the potential to be a great company and a double ai winner through meaningfully improved operating efficiency and monetization iRenic has outlined six steps to 7x snap share price to 26 dollars per share They put together a presentation as well as a letter all kind of read through some of the highlights They say it snaps crucible moment ai creates a dual pronged opportunity for significant cost cuts and accelerated product development So they go into cost improvements monetization governance on the cost side They want to spin or shut down specs. I'm sure evan is not happening, right? There was a spin that was happening The spin is Seemingly in the works. There were some leaks over the last six months around that so I would expect that to happen They want to rationalize cost ai cannon should replace many existing roles Now remember the the constant criticism of snap has been the stock based comp if you actually look at it They from from the kind of rough math we were doing like every 10 years. They're basically giving the entire company To to the team. Yeah, and so investors long-term investors have been very frustrated by that And it always has been weird because I understand that like back in the day when they were competing directly with twitter and meta and instagram and reddit and all these different upstart high growth social networking companies I believe the talent war thesis it makes sense that they would have to probably pay top dollar But you have to imagine that as the business has stabilized there are people that would come into The organization that would be happy to just have a salary and just do the work because it's better than working at another company It's not necessarily like the ai talent war Or that that you know the social media talent war that i'm sure happened You know back 10 years ago. It's a different time. So maybe different structure save snap now Is recommending a thousand person rift to get fit and competitive and to empower your highest performers Yeah, um, if you're evan reading empower your highest performers, you're probably thinking like oh, jeez. I never I never thought of it But uh again, they do have 5261 employees as of late 2025 So this would represent roughly a 20 rift not block level cuts, but uh more in line with what we're seeing at oracle Meta some other tech companies that are going through a transformation on monetization The recommendation is to improve monetization Which I think is a good idea for any business But they say ai will massively accelerate product development and enhance advertising monetization tools Again, uh, you know everyone by this point should be well aware that meta has done a fantastic job In leveraging ai ml to just make a better and better and better ads product And they say product led improvements across users advertisers and subscriptions to break out of snaps monetization ceiling Then they say deploy ai pro properly monetize snaps proprietary ai data sets And then concentrate ai partnerships on clear winners like gemini open ai and anthropic again snap partnered with uh perplexity It seemed like snap got a fantastic deal out of that It was something like a 400 million dollar deal if I remember correctly some of it was stock in perplexity Yeah, but there was a huge cash component. Yeah, and uh unclear if the other Companies mentioned gemini open ai or anthropic would have been able to match that how aggressive perplexity was getting And so it's possible snap's logic was hey we can we can do this deal with perplexity And then it's it's native in our app. It's easy enough to swap it out at a later date Let's like basically take the cash while we can get it. Yeah, I saw this post from shan frank that someone what relates he He's talking about one of our sponsors app loving which I will tell you about in a second But he said in less than 12 months. I've spent 2,800,000 872,000 of my own money profitably on app loving. I don't own the stock. I don't trade the stock This is the net amount Good left my bank account and and he shares a couple other points and he says he's spending 17,000 So 2.8 million on app loving clearly like a scalable large platform spent 17,000 on pinterest 266,000 on reddit You have to imagine that meta ads are up there But the question is like for a lot of advertisers snap has not become this like oh Sure, maybe you don't get maybe it's not going to be your number one platform But it's like in the marketing mix very regularly and I think a lot of that should Start working. Yeah, even if the pool isn't super deep Even if you don't have 99 percent of your customers there, maybe only 20 percent of your customers are there But even if they're there you should be able to find them and I can help that and so I would expect that if this works You'd see like really solid data from ridge saying like oh, yeah, we're spending on snap Yeah, and they've been experimenting with snap as far back as 2018 I'm sure I was hanging out with with shawna connor back then they were getting results on snap But there was a ceiling. Yeah So then finally they want to on the governance side commit to investing in safety and capital return use newfound cash And profitability to further invest in privacy safety and parental controls And allocate new cash flow generation to capital return and demonstrate conviction in snaps creation Yeah, it's interesting on the on the parental control and safety side I think snap has been able to stay out of the at least Linears they set up. Oh, they ended up. Yeah, they settled before it went to trial Metta and google fought it And so yeah, I'm not exactly sure what that what that means But I think that they've been trying to sort of like step back from all of that Yeah, and then on the corporate governance side giving shareholders a vote can unlock a multiple re-rate through broader index Oh, interesting. Lusion. Yeah, and enabling one vote per class. They share still preserve snap as a founder controlled Company, so they're not probably like 10x voting power or something like that. Well, the market's reacting really popper Really positively to this and I think Evan spiegel has shared some statements that sort of mirror this actually it seems like there's maybe a little bit more reception Then you might expect The stock's up 14 1 day after publishing this piece Says bo's Weinstein Adam is a rock star in the making so smart definitely worth a follow and that's erenic cap Is carried no interest gave some feedback on I renek he said Few critiques feedback daily opens are not equal to time spent on app app Love and a meta clearly have higher time spent on app it therefore parody on monetization is flawed Arguing that snapchat can hit targeting levels of meta is farceful The amount of data that meta has on me versus snapchat is astronomically different I guess I'm open to being proven wrong since you compare it to app love and who iMO has always used other targeting sources Three proprietary data slide is a one-time flash in a pan moment sure some companies are selling deranged amount of data But it's that's not lasting mr Are monetization although it is fair to call them out on it. I like the monetization per user slide I think my feedback around snaps ability to monetize relative to those peers stands Literally screen time is much lower and you don't have data for targeting the way peers do calling out the founders net worth growth Was either god tier petty or brilliant or some combination Fun presentation. I think I think a tbpn slide Or quote made it into one of these presentations. It was on the slide a i should be an accelerant for snaps core ads business So zack had said he said we're also working on merging llms with the recommendation systems that power facebook instagram threads in our ad system Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon Evan said our smart campaign solution suite including smart targeting and smart budget uses ai to identify Incremental high-value audiences and dynamically allocate spend across objectives reducing the need for manual setup and ongoing Optimization in our interview they highlighted evan saying as you look at glasses in the near term I wouldn't expect ai to be a major Accelerant closing this out. Yeah, i rena. He clearly thinks that he says specifically snap as a special asset He thinks it's it has a ton of potential. He's overall positive He just thinks like you know, he really wants them to get in the game And I think that honestly a lot of people have felt the same way over the years But have just ultimately been frustrated because some of these things that seem somewhat straightforward just haven't been done Okay, I gotta go back to the moon. We're going back to the moon I'm going back to the moon because ardemis 2 is launching in three hours and 52 minutes and four three two one seconds Brandy garell wrote the op-ed today in the tbp newsletter About some of the technology that they're using to document the trip and it's a very different take very Livestreamer coded of us. We only care about the camera equipment that's on board Obviously, there's a lot more that goes into it, but it's a fascinating deep dive So today the nasa ardemis 2 mission will launch sending the iran spacecraft carrying a four astronaut crew on a high energy free return Trajectory to get the to the moon and back in about 10 days It's longer than the ardemis 1 mission which I would six days Can you imagine the stress when you're just like being sent straight out into space and you know, there's a big turn coming up And it's pretty important that you don't miss the off Yeah, you can't be like texting and like miss the off the off ramp if you miss the off ramp you're going to Saturn So it's over for you. Orion will enter a 24 hour highly elliptical orbit with an apogee 44,000 miles above the surface of the earth for context the iss orbits at 200 200 280 miles in altitude so way way higher 100 times higher 200 times higher during the first day the crew will test critical life support and communication systems After reaching its apogee aryan will essentially fall backward towards our planet This will cause the craft to start picking up massive speed You'll see that the path is a little fishy And I think a lot of the tinfoil hat crowd are going to be Suspicious about the path that the rocket will be taking because it's fishy. It's fishy if you scroll down Don't you think that's fishy? That's a fishy orbit. That's just a fishy orbit. I don't know I don't want to be too conspiratorial about this stuff, but like it does look like a fish It's it's a fishy orbit as it approaches its parogy for those who are just listening on audio. It literally looks like a fish As it approaches its parogy or the lowest point in its earth orbit the crew will conduct a systems review wake up the main engine system Organize the cabin to make sure radiation shielding bags and water supplies are positioned to access shelter in case of a solar flare Put on their survival suits and strap in they're locking in After the burn the crew will take more than four days to reach the moon the craft Just coast there a loon the lunar flyby where it will orbit the moon at a maximum altitude of 6 000 miles a minimum altitude of 60 to 70 miles from the surface of the moon is expected to happen monday april 6th It will probably end up being the farthest humans have ever traveled from earth due to the high altitude at which they'll orbit the moon And remember we still don't know if this is like apple another elaborate april fools joke We could get to the countdown here and jared isekman could say april fools nasa is essentially aiming for a netflix quality live stream on the flyby and this is what The video creators the content creators live streamers. This is what we care about it will feature 4k uhd video streams that beam back to earth with a three second latency and some additional latency from encoding and terrestrial distribution Using a frontier laser communication terminal that can transmit data at 260 megs a second the stream will probably be compressed to 1080p for live video But it will be saved in 4k the craft has 28 dedicated cameras on board externally mounted an astronaut handheld externally mounted cameras will be on the tip of each of iran's four x-shaped solar arrays and they can rotate which will allow them to take selfies of iran With the earth or the moon in the background. We got selfie sticks in space space Selfie sticks in space. This is sci-fi now. It's still almost unfathomable Unfathomable the amount of risk that these astronauts are taking on yeah And uh, we're with them for sure for sure the kitkat heist This is the story you all have been waiting for KitKats the candy bars were stolen and in massive quantity The welter journal has a story of how the company reacted how they turned a massive kitkat heist Into crisis pr gold. We've seen this before people were talking about tucker carlson having his nicotine pouch shipment Stolen and how it sounded like the plot of a new fourth fast and furious or zoomer fast and furious movie Well something similar happened to kitkat and they took advantage of it and made the best out of it So kitkat of course is owned by nestly, but let's dig into what the welter journal had to say just how much are 12 metric tons of stolen kitkat bars worth a lot of promotional gold it turns out says the welter journal It was the brazen chocolate heist heard around the social media world Oddly this is the first time hearing this. I don't know why I don't know how I missed this. Had you heard of this before? Yes, you had. Okay. Yeah, I've seen this. I literally found out about this in the welter journal I don't know why over the weekend nestly confirmed that thieves had swiped 413 thousand units of kitkats Somewhere along their way from a factory in central italy to poland Both chocolate bars and the truck carrying them remained missing though. No one was hurt in the theft it said What the swiss company lost in chocolate though? It gained back in a public relations coup as did multiple other companies quick to hop on the meme bagwa bandwagon We've always encouraged people to have a break with kitkat But it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 metric tons of our chocolate The company said in a statement I don't get it. You you have to they would have had to steal the truck for it too. Yeah, they stole the truck I mean it sounds like fast in the fairies. It sounds like they they stuck stuck it up And you said get out of the truck yours. You gotta call a cab. The truck is missing the truck is missing The truck they took the truck. Wow. They took everything taking their cue from nestly other companies soon joined in with some social Media spoofing we would like to share our thoughts and condolences with kitkat following their sad news The account for dominos pizza in the uk posted monday morning Then it added on a completely unrelated unrelated note. We're pleased to announce that we'll be selling a new kitkat pizza It's very silly charlotte fc the major league soccer club in north carolina jumped on the same rift a couple of hours later on an unrelated note We are happy to share that we will be offering roughly I don't know about you john, but I love when large corporations can just jump in on the fun It's extremely millennial. This is like this is my culture is not your costume If you're not a millennial and you're the one posting this like Stop this is only a millennial has the right to Post jokingly as a corporate account the discount airline ryan air Meanwhile simply posted a cartoon of photo of one of its planes with a face in the jet's mouth are five bitten off kitkat bars Not long ago most companies would have said little leaving it to law enforcement authorities to disclose such a potentially embarrassing Revelation now any bad news is good news as long as a corporate brand can turn it into a viral meme What do you think about this this take? It's a master class in public relations. Like I I agree with your Uh, your intuition that like oh, this is not that funny. Like this is sort of just a corporate cringe It's a little rough. I'm not getting belly laughs out of this But just in terms of corporate calm strategy, this feels like the best of all possible worlds Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's like a reasonable thing. Am I entertained? No Do I think that it was worth doing? Yes, does it make me want to kitkat? No Also, no Yeah, but like I was not thinking about kitkats and now I'm thinking about kitkat And and I'm thinking about the now I'm thinking I just think I think I've never really I've never really had a kitkat and thought oh that that was that was so good And so now I'm just remembering why I don't care. I think Elon filed for an IPO on april fools day Uh, and apparently they they filed last night. So off by just a little bit according to the law But yeah on the news did go on on pace for the kind of june listing june listing Okay, leave us five stars on apple podcast and spotify sign up for a newsletter tbp on.com and we will see you tomorrow Can't wait. Let's hit that. Goodbye
