TBPN has never let anyone film behind the scenes of its studio until now. John Coogan and Jordi Hays built the Ultradome, a converted Quonset hut on an LA soundstage lot, into the home of tech's favorite live show, and they gave Ashlee Vance the first full tour. Along the way we go on air as the show's final guest of the day, hit the gong, and get the origin story of how two entrepreneurs looking for their next thing accidentally built a daily, three hour live broadcast about technology, business, and markets.
The tour covers all the objects that TBPN fans know and love. There is the horse statue that Jordi had to have after spotting one in a store window, the $15,000 gong that closes out every lightning round, the soundboard John plays like a musical instrument, and the goalposts that physically move every time an AI lab claims it has reached AGI. You also meet Tyler the intern, who went from reply guy to on air character by reassembling a disassembled iPhone in an hour, creating what the guys call the first American assembled iPhone.
Underneath the bits is a real business story. John and Jordi explain why they run a tech show from Los Angeles instead of San Francisco, how being physically removed helps them call balls and strikes, why they ran fake ads for Gulfstream before they had a single advertiser, and what it takes to prep and perform six hours a day, five days a week. They also reveal the chat's favorite weapon: the flashbang, which has gone off on everyone from Marc Benioff to Cathie Wood.
LINKS
TBPN: https://www.tbpn.com
Core Memory: https://www.corememory.com
SPONSORS
Brex: https://www.brex.com/?partnerId=corememory
Send Cut Send: https://sendcutsend.com/corememory/
ABOUT THE HOST
Core Memory is hosted by Ashlee Vance, a two time New York Times best selling author and filmmaker who has spent two decades covering technology and science for The Economist, The New York Times, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the author of the best selling biography of Elon Musk, created the Emmy nominated series Hello World, and produced HBO's Wild Wild Space and Netflix's Don't Die. With Core Memory, he drops into the labs, garages, factories, hangars, and occasional questionable warehouses where scientists, inventors, oddballs, and startups are building the future.
Subscribe to watch more Core Memory videos https://www.youtube.com/@CoreMemoryVideos/videos
Check out our podcasts https://www.youtube.com/@CoreMemoryPodcast
https://www.corememory.com/podcast
Find Ashlee Vance at
www.corememory.com
https://www.instagram.com/ashlee.vance/
https://x.com/ashleevance
Find Kylie Robison at
https://x.com/kyliebytes
https://www.instagram.com/kylie.robison
CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
03:04 Crashing the Live Show
06:21 Who Are John and Jordi, Really?
12:09 Why Build a Tech Show in LA?
17:45 The Tour Starts With a Horse
21:59 How Much Does a Gong Cost?
25:58 The Grind Nobody Sees
33:47 Meet Tyler the Intern
37:40 Who Got Flashbanged?
