An AI company's $1.5 billion secret unravels, and the scam is exposed. Plus, we're spilling the beans on some massive podcasting upgrades that'll change how you listen.
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- AI company files for bankruptcy after being exposed as 700 Indian engineers
- Builder.AI Co-Founder On Bloomberg a Year ago
- There are no 'red lines' for intellectual property in AI, Builder.ai founder says - YouTube
- More on Fountain Podcast Hosting: Podcasting 2.0 Episode 221: Two Guys One Mic
- The Dangers of a Parasite Found Inside Your Cat - YouTube
- This Cat Poop Parasite Can Decapitate Sperm—and It Might Be Fueling Infertility
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Unknown:
This is The Launch, episode 23 for June 3rd, 2025. All streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, We greet you all a good morning, a good evening, whenever your timeline may fall. Time-appropriate greetings, indeed, to one and all. This is The Launch, and my name is Chris. And I'm Angela. And my name is Brent. Well, hello to you both. We've got a good launch coming up. A few things everyone should know about before we get into it. We'd love it if you called us live when we get to the song of the week. The lines will be open. Give us a ring.
774-462-5667. That is 774-462-5667. You can also leave us a voicemail. We'll play it on next week's episode. This show is live on Tuesdays and releases for download on Wednesdays. We invite you to join us for either, whatever fits your schedule. We've got the mumble room going as well. You can join us in there. We always love it. If you join us in the chat room, help us title it, topic suggestions, react in real time. And then we package it all up in a real nice version for our Jupiter Party members as well. There's a little bit for everybody. And links for what we talk about today will be at weeklylaunch.rocks.
Well, Andrews You have quite the adventure going on at home Sounds like you've got yourself a dog again A new puppy after many years Yes. After a lot of years Many years Because, yeah, we had, you and I, two cats In the, what, 2000? Yeah Year 2000-ish, 2001? Yeah, kind of shortly after for a while I guess 2000. Yeah Two cats, and then we had two dogs Yeah, great dogs And then after Abby was born we well we didn't have any animals and then Dylan ended up allergic to cats and dogs crazy allergic and then two years ago, I adopted my neighbor's cat I think that was two years ago anyway regardless we have two cats right now and then yes my boyfriend and Moved in and brought his dog, Moose.
That dog named Moose. With a name like that. Like him already. You're picking a big dog. Yeah, for sure. Big dog. Big shoulders. Yeah. Let me get a picture. Maybe like a Bernice mountain dog kind of a thing, you know? Big dog. It's actually M-O-U-S-S-E. Oh. Yeah. Like chocolate moose. It sounds like a. So he's a culinary delight. Yeah. She. Oh. Lovely. Oh, I just saw a photo. Very cute. I'm going to put it in the chat. Yeah. So it is really interesting. It reminds me why it was so nice to not have dogs anymore. Oh. Ouch.
Oh, I thought you were going to say they're so loving and loyal and kind. I'm not a hater. It's just so, it's like a step toward having another kid. Yeah, they are. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. They just don't ever grow up. Yeah. Cats are like self. Independent creatures. Yes. And I'm just. So, yeah, it has been an adjustment. You know, I knew that, I know that dogs get into things. Oh, my cats get into things, so I don't... Well, yeah. I mean, we've established a pretty good routine of the cats not getting into things, right? But now there's a whole new layer with a dog. So let me... I'm trying to send this to the chat, but I don't want it to delay the show.
But who's a better snuggle buddy, right? The dog was a good snuggle buddy. Oh, yeah. No, she's super sweet. Levi's pretty good at snuggly. Yeah. So I estimated that Dylan would benefit the most from this dog. And he does love having a dog around to pet. I thought Bella also. I thought Bella the most, actually. But Bella is holding tight to her warrior cats. That only, yeah. So I think she secretly does like having the dog, but she's putting up a front at the moment. But it's actually Abby. Abby is really enjoying Moose. Which is nice.
So anyway, we were going to bring Moose to the studio today. I said, where's Moose? Yeah. What is that? Is that meat? No. It's a rock? Big bar of chocolate that Abby had in her room that Moose... Got into. Got into. Took some bites off of. And so we were unsure what, what's, you know, stomach type of issues would happen in the car on the way here or here. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I am curious. Remember when one of our dogs ate one of those orange chocolate balls? Like the whole thing? Yeah. The foil and all. I mean, they are delicious. They are. But yeah, chocolate's no good for dogs. No. So, yeah.
Did you use a chocolate calculator? There's a bunch of chocolate calculators online to see if like the severity of things. Like the way that you put the dog weight in and how much chocolate they've eaten. Well, and the type of chocolate too matters. It's dark chocolate, the worst, right? Yeah, I know. Why does she even have a bar? She doesn't like dark chocolate. Sophisticated. Yeah. So I just messaged her with girl with a period, you know, at school. It took her like an hour and 15 minutes, but then she messaged me back. And so she said that Moose probably didn't eat much at all.
Like just scrapes. So that's good. But like what the heck? Why do you have a giant? She stashes candy all the time. She's a candy stasher. I know. It's like a baking chocolate. And at first I thought it was like my peanut butter ball chocolate. But it's not. It's dark chocolate. It's not. This is not my chocolate. She smuggled it from the RV. I think she did because Dia, when she makes treats, she uses dark chocolate. Well, she does sometimes use dark chocolate. Although I try to talk her out of it. But then this Brent guy comes around and the dark chocolate comes back out again. I can't eat the soup and milky stuff.
Yeah. Well, anyway, so, yeah, I would be curious from the audience, just tips and tricks for this integration. Yeah. It is. How's the cat dog situation going? So I thought, okay, so Rocky was raised with dogs. Sure. And puppies. And then Gypsy was raised with a dog. They slept together, but Gypsy doesn't want anything to do with this dog. And Rocky, well, he's staying out all the time, or for the most part. He is an outdoor cat, especially during this season. But he is more accepting for some reason. Well, that's good, I suppose. Better than both of them having a hard time. Peepee has taken a... Sorry, Gypsy. I got so casual there. We call Gypsy Peepee.
Anyway, Gypsy has taken swipes at Moose. Which is funny because we call Levi Poops because it's, you know, a puppy. You call him a great number of things. Yeah, he has like 30 nicknames. But Poopanoops or just Poops for short. So Levi's Poops and the cat's peepee. Yeah. Oh, gosh. So I would like to know from the audience, what's your ridiculous nickname for your pet? Because I think we all do this, unfortunately. I've got another one. I've got another one. Levi. Also, I sometimes call him Bovarian. Yeah, Bovie. Or Bovie. Or the Bavarian window.
Oh, my gosh. Like the Overton window, but it's the Bavarian. These are all just a couple of his nicknames. Yeah. And he responds to all of them. If you're going to give me food, I'll respond to anything you say. I sometimes call Rocky broccoli. Oh, that's cute. So Moose's real name is Daisy. Oh. Yeah. So the nicknames continue. Yes. That's hilarious. Moose is such a great name. Yeah, it is. I mean, also because, you know, Moose looks like a brown chocolate treat, which is probably why Moose was drawn to chocolate treats. They love that chocolate, those stupid dogs. Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, tips for integrating dogs, especially into a household with cats. And if you yourself have ever had an animal, then went a long time and got that animal, you know, like a dog again, let us know. Boost it in. Fountain.fm is probably the easiest way to do it. You can get some sats real easy and then send them in. And we got a big update on that, too, later on in the show. That's not all. You also have a car update for us because we know you were getting your car ready for a road trip, had to do some tire work and stuff like that. And then the road trip didn't happen. And ultimately, this is just a good segue into your vehicle news, too.
But I noticed just two weeks after I got new tires that my driver's side tire was not holding air. Yeah. Couldn't hold wind. And I've been driving Bella out to Sultan for trumpet lessons, which is minimum hour, hour, 15 minute drive. You don't need a tire for that. I finally put air in it because these are brand new tires. I don't want the wear to be bad. They shouldn't be losing tire. No. It makes me think you've got like a stem leak or something. Right? That's defective. Yeah. For sure. So I did put air in it and then it was still losing pretty slowly, like at least.
But, you know, my car had notified me, hey, the air. So I went to the Subaru dealership that's literally just a half a mile away. And they took it back and they soaped it and they sent me a video. good that's nice yeah uh showing where the bubbles were coming out okay the stem okay yeah stem leak right yeah and so i'm like well why and and i didn't understand that when i got new tires yeah that they they use that's not part of it yeah yeah so yeah. Yeah that is ridiculous yeah. Is it i mean because it's. So easy to change that when you're in there like.
Well here's the thing my previous tires had no leaks, So this dude tried to tell me that I must have hit a curb or bent the stem somehow. And I looked, there is no crazy woman driver damage near this stem. Yeah, there'd be marks on the tire. Yeah, no. And I didn't have that issue before. So like, oh yeah, well, you should talk to the guy that you work with over there. So I left after spending an hour there. Last week after we recorded, that's straight where I went because I need this resolved. And so I talked to the gal that had worked with me through all the other stuff. And she's like, wait a second, they didn't fix it?
And I was like, well, no. I mean, I assume it must be like a big expense or something, which is kind of sucky because these are brand new tires and I didn't have this issue before. Like, they can look. I never had to put air in my tires. She's like, they should have fixed it. It's only like $30. And I'm like, well, okay. So that's where my car is right now, getting the stem fixed or whatever. And if you've ever seen a tire get put on a rim or like a valve change like that, it's like a five-minute job. It's so easy. I can understand. Like probably one out of a thousand, there might be damage to the stem.
Like I'm not even mad that it happened. It's just a casualty of, you know, it just happens. Wear and tear on a tire. But don't blame it on me. Yeah, well, also. When there's nothing to support that. Why not get new stems? Oh, yeah. And it's the driver's side. I'm not parallel parking on that side. You know, like how? How? I mean, we have a lot of roundabouts, so maybe, but there's no damage. I've got to say, roundabouts in Idaho, very fancy. Is her name Rihanna? Who? The gal that helped you at the Subaru dealership? Zero to 50 and 8.5?
No, like... Or zero to 60? Rihanna Romanek? No, it's Shelly. Oh, okay, because I got an email yesterday, 23 hours ago. Dear Angela, thank you for choosing Kendall Subaru. We appreciate your business and value your feedback. We're always striving to improve our services. Dude. So how did they get my email address? I don't know. I've never bought a Subaru. I know. I know. So last week when I brought it there, I was looking at the receipt and I saw your email address there. And I was like, how do they have that? They must have bought another dealership maybe I bought from and they merged the dealerships maybe. Kendall Subaru though? No. I mean, you have bought a lot of cars.
I don't want to say that. I mean, maybe there's like a bigger company that owns Kendall. Acura? Does Acura own it? Because. I bought a few Acuras. Where did you get that Acura? TL. No, no, no, not TL. Not the green one, the black one. From the Acura dealership in the Linwood area. I know, I need to get that fixed. It's funny, I don't even know how it happens. It's the kind of thing that just occasionally happens from time to time. No, because I have my car registered on Subaru.com or whatever with my email address. So I don't know why.
It's so weird. It is so weird. The other one that was weird that happened not too long ago was somehow adding Ange as an authorized user to the AT&T account. AT&T flipped it so Ange owned the account. Even though I pay for it, they flipped it so she owns it. And then I couldn't make any changes because I was no longer an authorized user. And it must have been like that for years. Yeah, yeah. Because, yeah. I just never make changes. Yeah, we never had to make any modifications. But it's like these things just happen. Except you added your mom.
Yeah, I did. I did since I know. So you had it then. I know. And we haven't been in an AT&T store together. No. All right. So I asked Perplexity who owns the dealership. And it says that the Kendall Subaru of Maryville is owned by the Kendall Auto Group, a family of owned and operated group of automobile dealerships that have been serving the Pacific Northwest since 1937. So it's the largest privately owned auto dealership group in our region, it says. Wow. Okay. Well, I'm going to ask them how that was added. They just like merged all their documents together or something?
That's what I'm thinking. How, though? Well, some IT guy had a brilliant idea one day. They do operate some accurate dealerships, it says. Oh. Okay, all right. So then it might make sense for like the, for my, no, not my MDX, but the lease, the TL. Oh, yeah. I like how this has become like the modern tech Sherlock and Watson show. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Oh, and have some strange tech issue with your, you know, everyday technology. Call into the show. This could be it too. This would explain the current situation. It looks like they own the Volkswagen dealership that I bought my car from.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's not funny. Yay. Big corporations. We've been divorced since 2015. This stuff still happens. It's so wild. Wow. Yeah. I'm sure people out there, if you have a crazy story about this, call in and leave us a voicemail. I want to hear it. 774-462-5667. This has got to happen to some of you out there. I got a crazy AI story for you, but before we get there, we have a little good news. We have a van, a quick van update because we have a boost about too. So we could probably save some of this, but the van is road legal. That's so incredible.
Big milestone. It is legally on the road in Washington and Brent's back visiting. We're going to get some van projects done and some other car work done, hopefully, too, if energy allows. So basically all the cars need work. Don't buy cars. Yeah. Right. Oh, man. It's just like a maintenance burden that never goes away, right? It seems so. Yeah. The whole van licensing thing, I'm so deeply pleased about that because this whole crazy adventure like hinged on the fact that we could actually get the thing licensed for a reasonable cost. And that completely happened. Best case scenario yesterday. I came to Washington on Chris's invite because we were both starting to freak out about the fact that this thing wasn't licensed and like.
There's a 30-day deadline once the once the vehicle and unlines vehicles in the state you have 30 days to get it registered with the state or it's a 550 fine and then there's a fine continues i don't know what they didn't tell me what the timeline was but then there's additional fines dude. The fine is more than we paid for the thing. Yeah so it's like all right and we got down to like day 25 i think yeah yeah we had to go to boston and travel a bunch and we we walked the line so chris i. Think we were going into the office thinking okay how do we possibly at least start the process so this like ticking time delay kind of goes away.
Yeah we went in there thinking we'll start the process and then we'll have to go through all these hoops of uh according to perplexity we needed to do a vin inspection and we had to bring it to a location to do that so if you got to bring a van to a location without location is the state patrol so you're bringing the van to the state patrol illegally driving it there yeah so then i'm like okay well how do i get this van to the state patrol inspection oh you You'd get a temporary. You got to get a temporary, which will last three days. And you need this documentation with insurance proof and all this.
So we thought, yeah, this is step one of a three-day process. I also 100% expected a mechanical safety check because most provinces where I'm from, it's like if you're moving between borders and trying to register from one to the other, you definitely need to have it mechanically safety looked at. Or emissions, right? Some places do have emissions for sure. I think we stopped doing emissions, not just the farm cities, but all cities. Thank goodness. No, I think King County still does it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I think so. But Snohomish County, Snohomish, the snobs down in King County, but it's the farm folk up here in Snohomish and in Skagit, I think have been petitioning to walk that back. So you got lucky.
I think we got lucky and somehow it's under your name. I don't know how I feel about this anymore, but certainly to get the thing registered in Canada, it needed also to be read like actively registered. So this is a huge milestone. Because now all of the unknowns, I think, especially from a bureaucratic perspective, have just been solved. Assuming, I guess there is still some kind of VIN inspection that they're going to do on it. We'll see. So assuming all that goes well, I think this is a huge, huge, huge good thing for us. Yeah. And that means we can start planning for road trips and working on it.
Very excited. We'll have more details on that. That's the story really is just now beginning. You know? Oh, man. Just getting it here and getting it legal was just the very beginning. All right. Well, this week on the show, we're going to tell you the story of a company called Builder.ai, once valued at $1.5 billion and backed by Microsoft with $455 million infusion of cash. Well, they just filed for bankruptcy this week, and it revealed that their so-called technology was actually humans on the back end just doing outsourced work with human engineers. The deception lasted for eight years before falling apart at the end of May.
And now the builder AI is entering insolvency proceedings. We're getting all of the juicy goss. But I thought, wouldn't it be fun to go back in time a little bit and listen to some of the outlandish claims of their co-founders and CEOs to remind us that we can't believe a thing these people tell us? I bring you to two years ago where the co-founder is being interviewed by Bloomberg and the pie in the sky journalist asked him about their incredible partnership and cooperation with Microsoft Azure. People might have gotten the wrong end of the stick a few weeks ago when they saw that you took money from Microsoft and you're building within their platform, offering your services on Microsoft.
Why did you do that? If you're looking, I'm trying to insinuate between the lines that you're building to be a big public company, individual and scale great heights. Look, it might sound brazen. We're looking to build a trillion dollar business. Oh, we're not looking to sell for a few billion. Not our MO. So they're looking to build a trillion dollar. They don't want to sell for a few bill. And then listen to the way he tries to spin the relationship with Microsoft, because this was a key moment. What this revealed is they had outsourced all of their infrastructure to Microsoft, and that meant they probably didn't actually have any technological secret sauce if you really thought about it.
So he has to spin it away from that line of thinking into a much more generous way of thinking about it. Because it's never about the money as much as money is important. And so when you're looking to build that big and you're looking to be that grassroots in how stuff is used, offices used everywhere, windows is used everywhere. There's a lot of patterns you learn from someone that's already solved the problem. I think the second is always, again, it's balance. And so we have two corporates that have worked with us. One we haven't disclosed yet for obvious reasons. Totally. But with Microsoft, the key was alignment around mission.
Yeah. They want to digitally transform the world. Alignment around values. You can kind of get an idea of the way there's generic speak. And, you know, claiming that partnering with Microsoft is about being grassroots. Like, I don't know what kind of backwards world this guy lives in. But these types of people who were gaslighting the entire time, they had no technology stack. They were using Azure for essentially a web front end and then outsourcing the AI work jobs to Indian workers on contract. That's what their actual technology stack was. It was people behind the AI.
That's crazy. So here he is because these guys, they're thought leaders, they're innovators, they're disruptors. So they constantly get asked to pontificate on the most important questions of our time. And one of them is AI's use of intellectual property. And this guy, like all of these guys, tries to take a hard line to sound like a, you know, a big thinker that's trying to shake things up. And he was asked if there are any red lines for intellectual property in AI use or if it can just use anything it wants. What are the red lines here as we talk about AI? I think the problem is there aren't red lines right today.
And so, you know, let's redefine the problem. We all went to university. Right here, you get a sense of the hubris. Did we? Right here. You know, like, oh, let's redefine the problem. And so, you know, let's redefine the problem. We all went to university. So we read books. You were inspired by what you read to do the career that you're doing. Well, at what point does inspiration become copying? And at what point does inspiration become pleasure? Now, the argument here is this is industrialized inspiration. And so I think there is a really fine line between copying. So I think on the Scarlett Johansson one, it's it's clear you can't take someone's voice.
But at the same time, at what shade of change of voice is it no longer that person's voice? I always like that you can definitely not steal a thing. But, you know, those kinds of statements like that's this guy to a T. Let's redefine the problem. You know, we don't want to tamp down on industrial scale innovation here. We want industrial scale innovation. Right. So that's that's who has been leading this company. He was one of the co-founders and they falsely inflated revenue by billing each other for services that they never rendered between 2021 and 2024. They worked with a company called Versay.
So these two collabed behind the scenes. Now, Versay is denying these accusations, saying they're baseless and false at this time. But according to the bankruptcy proceedings, Versay and Builder AI just billed and sold and bought and sold a bunch of services from each other, but never actually invoiced for it. But made the revenue like, look at all this revenue we have coming in. We have millions of dollars coming in on the paperwork, but then on the back end, they never invoiced for it on both sides. And Versace says that's not true. Pretty wild. So a faking the AI technology by outsourcing to 700 different humans and then faking revenue, too, to make it look like you're making a bunch of money and then going on Bloomberg and CNBC, which are the two sources I just played, and pontificating like you're this big disruptor.
You know, we're not trying to build and sell for a few bill. We're going to build trillions of dollars by grassroots building on top of Azure. Right. It's just the spin, I think, is really educational. Like this Builder AI moment is an opportunity for all of us to see how these tech CEOs play the game. And the game has just been exposed for all of us right here with Builder AI. The thing that is the most interesting to me, I think, is the 700 people. Because you could potentially have generated a legitimate business doing this. Like get some engineering very quickly with like a huge massive team of actual engineers.
but also the fact that they lasted eight years and nobody really even noticed. What does that say about current technology or also of like this list? This was the best AI around. Right. Well, or is this the best engineering that we have that we could do it really quickly? But also, like, is this where all engineers end up? This is how they pitch themselves. Builder AI. We make building an app so easy. Anyone can do it. Your vision, your software. We just build it. AI means we can build more cost-effectively and at speed. Does AI mean all Indians?
Yes, I think it does. Oh, my gosh. I think it does. It's all Indians. Oh, man. Yeah, so here's how it works. You chat with their AI, Natasha. I love it when they name it after a woman. Love that, right? We can't just call it something generic. You could call it the Omniputer or something like that. No, it's got to be Natasha. Then you get a fixed price and accurate timings. then you get your own dedicated expert ai assembles your app like a lego set that's what it says right here ai assembles your app like a lego set and then features are customized by human specialists and then your app's ready to go start building software now no tech knowledge needed i mean you're right it's actually not a bad business idea if you just drop the ai bullshit yeah.
Like don't lie about it and then it's actually a great product especially if you say like well well, we have real humans working on your project instead of AI. I know that's not what they wanted to build. But you could totally do that. Don't vibe code a crappy app. Hire real humans at scale at a decent price. I also have to say, what an incredible feat to generate, I don't know, code fast enough that it feels like it's AI generated because that's impressive. It's probably super high quality. Well. What's great is if the contractors you're hiring produce crap code, you can always just say, oh, yeah, it's AI. Sorry.
You know, you get away with more. Ha! Maybe we should try this. Got a business idea now. All right, so there's a couple of big things in the works for the podcasting space, which is really nice to see after YouTube has been clobbering the market for the last couple of years. And one of them is Fountain FM, the podcast app creators, have soft launched a new podcast hosting platform. So in the style of like Fireside or Podhome or RSS Blue, they've soft launched it because you really won't see any details on their website, but they have talked about it on their podcasting 2.0 podcast.
And for about the last year, almost on a weekly basis, I've been doing a video call with them to help consult on the development of the platform's features. So it's really starting with a baseline of what would Chris need to use a podcast hosting platform? And then they built out the features from there. And so it is feature rich. And they got a lot more in the pipeline, too. And the beautiful thing is the Fountain FM podcast, and this is not a paid advertisement. I'm just very excited. Finally, somebody's implementing all the things in the right order. And then you combine it with the app. It really is a nice package.
They're truly simplifying the podcasting 2.0 features. So they're going to automatically handle transcripts when you upload your podcast. They'll automatically do chapters and add it to the RSS feed if you want with all the correct feed tags in the podcasting 2.0 standard spec. So you just do a regular old podcast like you've always done and you upload it and then you opt in to the automatic stuff as much as you want, which is chef's kiss because podcasts sort of suffer from an seo dead man's land where the google search engines and the bings of the world they don't generally index the inside of a podcast.
They do youtube videos because youtube as a platform generates transcripts and so they can ingest the transcript we need that in podcasting yep and podcasters that start embracing things like chapters and transcripts and live streams, the lit tag and boosts and all the things that you could do with podcasting, they stand out from the podcasts that don't have those features. And as a listener, and you start enjoying these features, you start looking for podcasts that have these things. Once you get used to chapters and transcripts, it's really sucks going back. And it feels like the podcaster is being lazy.
So what they're doing to just kind of automatically generate all that stuff so everybody can have it really nice and they're also doing they're the they are the first platform to integrate download performance with boost performance in the dashboard cool very cool yeah it is really slick it was my idea uh it was sort of the genesis of my involvement with with the consulting um so it's really nice and low-key there are folks out I won't say who, who are also making it possible to do the entire boost process from a listener side using Fiat. Integration with Stripe, it just uses your bank card, you don't have to worry about sats at all.
And then on the back end for us, and this is key, and I'll explain why in a moment, on the back end for us, it still comes in as a boost using all of that technology. The reason why that matters is if you look at the arc of Jupyter Broadcasting, dealing with listener feedback has been a constant challenge. It's a good problem to have, but we've thrown everything at it. Like Linux Unplugged started as a feedback program to Linux Action Show because we had so much email coming to the Linux Action Show. I was spending hours sorting it and organizing it, and I thought, well, this is as much time as I spend prepping a show, so I'm going to start.
And I called it like Linux Action Show Unplugged or something. Like if you look in my Dropbox, the actual original folder names are like Linux Action Show Feedback Show, Linux Action Show Unplugged. And then it became clear that that was a stupid idea for a podcast and that it needed to be its own show and it grew on its own. But like years and years of trying to solve this problem the right way, including creating podcasts around it. And so what is really been a game changer with the boosts, besides the value attached to them, which has been absolutely great, is the technology.
It's a huge win behind the scenes for us because, first of all, it's an open messaging system built on top of the Lightning Network. So there's no company that owns it. It's not a Google protocol. It's not a Microsoft protocol. It's not an Apple protocol. It's not a Spotify protocol. The entire system is open source. It's an open standard. There's no company we're building this technology on top of. But every boost message comes in with show metadata, the episode, the name, sometimes where you are at in the position for some podcast apps. All of these things combine to make unique identifiers for each message and for which show they go to.
So we, on the back end, now get messages coming in in a structured data format, generally JSON, that sit in a database. So with email, yeah, you can build some scripts and some automation on top of your email inbox, and, you know, you can do layers of turtles as much as you want. But this is like internet native messaging. It goes into a database, and it has structured data in there, so we can build an ecosystem of applications on top of that, and Wes has. And so when things come in, they're automatically getting tagged and pre-sorted before we even bother with them.
And then we have a report we can go to that sorts them automatically for each. Show for that episode and then formats them all and mark down in the correct order and then spits them out and goes directly into our show notes. And it takes something that used to be the work of an entire show and makes it a 30 second process for us to collect the feedback. It has been a huge game changer. So in a show where maybe we could have read two emails, we could now read 20, 25 boosts. I mean, it really increases the scale. And so Fountain building on top of this system is going to be fantastic in terms of analytics. But then other players coming into the space to also enable fiat payment boost is going to open this up to even more people to participate.
People that are maybe worried about access to sats in their country or something like that. So, I mean, massively huge when you combine all of these things together, UI improvements to the Fountain app that are coming, fiat ability for boosts, and a podcast hosting platform. the next the remainder of this year is going to be massive for podcasting 2.0 and the podverse app is currently being rebuilt from the ground up to be even better and it's gpl and it's. Going to be great i am excited because the the only kind of like limiting factor to participating in the boost has really been you have to have a way to buy sats and strikes available in like 115 countries right there's the bitcoin well in canada river here in the u.s there's lots of good safe places to buy your sats from, but you still have to know the good from the bad.
It's asking for a lift before you can send your message. So it's always been a barrier to the boost. So to be able to just connect anything that supports Stripe, any payment card you have with Stripe, that's coming down the road. It'll be in the future. These things take time to work out, but there'll be players out there that have Stripe support at the boost level soon combined with like Fountain's new podcasting platform that supports all these podcasting 2.0 features right out of the box where the podcaster doesn't have to do extra work, It's going to be a good year.
There's a question here from Westbot wondering if there's an API that's going to be available for this. They know that is a top feature. Okay. All right. I tried to get it at launch, but I had to, I had to, you know. I hadn't get all your nuggets. No, no. I know this kind of topic makes you uncomfortable, but I also want to say kudos to you, Chris. For me? Well, I think you've been advocating for Podcast 2.0 features for a long time now. I mean, Office Hours, I think, made a real big difference in spreading some of the word of new Podcast 2.0 features and the developers behind it and just trying to make a difference there.
But the fact that you've been allowed and able and invited to do a little consulting means that some of the crazy systems that we've built here at JB just to try to sort boosts out and stuff have made it to the wider world and are going to make Podcasting 2.0 even better. I'll tell you, one of the features they've built in that obviously people like us need is multi-show support. Yes, please. Most of these platforms, just assume you have one podcast. And if you want to have more, you've got to create another account and another account, right? So they have built in the concept of a podcast network, if you want it, from the beginning.
Oh, you know how long I've wanted that? Right. So it's really, you know, for the people that are coming up after us, instead of kicking the ladder, we're making it even easier. And they don't have lit support yet, which is what we do for this show, where in the RSS feed, we actually mark the podcast as live. And if your podcast app supports that, it can just stream the show live when it is live. Cool feature. And it brings you to the top of the podcast list. And podcast apps are working on featuring live podcasts more in the app. So a lot of the podcast apps like Fountain, eventually when you open them, right there on the main page, they're going to make it more clear.
Hey, these podcasts you subscribe to are live. Think about what that means for us. If we're one of those podcasts that is live, then when somebody's opening up their app and they're trying to pick what to listen to that day, we're right there at the top of the list and we're read and live and you can tap it and you're getting the thing just as it's happening. I mean, that's exciting. And so Fountain's going to be building that support into the platform very soon too. I have a question for you. So we've been dreaming up a bunch of features that we want to see these platforms come out with, especially in podcasting 2.0 space.
Yeah, we built a few in-house that are really good, too. Do you have any in your queue currently that you're like, oh, I really wish we had this one thing that we haven't really started advocating for starting on yet? You know, spec-wise, not really. No, they are working on authorship and things like that, which will be in it. So right now, there's no way at the RSS level, they're solving this, but there's no way at the RSS level to say all these shows are associated with Jupyter Broadcaster. Like if you look at each individual show RSS feed, there's nothing that connects all the shows together. And maybe if you like one show, you might like another show.
That's sweet. And so they're working on the concept. And this will also apply for audio books and music. So, you know, music artists that upload multiple albums, you could then go to that one artist and see all of their albums, right? Or that one author and see all their audio books or that one podcaster and you can see all their podcasts. But you don't want individual platforms like Apple and Fountain and everybody implementing their own version of this because it's going to be crap and they're going to do it. They're going to miss podcasts. Like people do this all the time.
Like some of these sites like True Fans and others, they'll create a Jupyter Broadcasting group, but they'll miss a show because they don't know. So if we can just define it at the RSS feed level. Yeah, that's going to be really cool. It'd be neat if you take that a little further and you can have it for hosts, too. So if you have a host who, I don't know, spreads across different networks or is a guest on various networks, then you can just... That will be a thing, too. So you build it, like, say, yeah, exactly. Delicious.
Yeah, it'll work for guests and all that kind of stuff. Basically credits for the episode. You can have Drew in there, too. It's like, oh, man, the future is fun. There is editor credits in there, too, yeah. So that I'm really excited to see get more support and rolled out. Nice. It's early, but the apps just have to implement the support. so this week we have i feel i'm feeling like it's kind of a summer song i don't know you listen and be the decider but if you boost the song while it's playing 95 of your sats will go to the artist and it's She's On Video by Graffiti. Oh, we do have some boosts, and we have ourselves a caller. And I say the caller goes to the front of the line. What do you say, Angie?
Yeah, I think so, too. All right. Let's do it. Let's see if our caller is there. Caller, hello. Welcome to the launch. Are you there? I am there. It's Wes with a beach report. Nailed it. Hello, Wes. Welcome to the show. Hello. Wes is at the beach. Tell us about it. How's it going, Wes? Oh, it's going great. I'm outside staring at the Pacific Ocean, And I wanted to report that just down the street, there is a location called Winters by the Sea. I think it's open all year round because here's the review. We enjoyed a nice midweek stay in our RV at Winters by the Sea. The site is a quiet neighborhood, part of the Ocean Beach waterfront with no traffic noise. There was a...
Beach reception. You know, it's funny. It's also the name of... This is my little attempt. Wes, did you know? You know, coax you all down here. I mean, we got a spot. Wes, did you know it's also the name of a historical romance novel? Oh, even better. I mean, given the sort of weird three-way with you two in the van. Hey. So I have a question for you, Wes. You've seen two oceans in the last week or so. What do you think? Which one is better? It's got to be the Pacific. It's got to be. You know, come on. Yeah, I think we saw bigger waves at the Atlantic, which makes sense because it's the angry ocean. Yeah.
But in terms of beach rocks and just sheer scale, I got to give it to the Pacific. And I think it's winning on the ocean noise roar sound, too. Oh, yeah. As a podcast, we care the most about. Yeah, it's a powerful ocean with powerful fish in it. And the Atlantic's a dirty, angry ocean. So, you know, it's obvious. Really. Wes and I are, like, you know, culinary buddies. So which one tastes better, Wes? Oh, you know that? But I'll have to let you know when I get back from the trip. I have more homework to do. Yeah. Do some studying. All right, Wes. It was great to hear from you. Thanks for calling.
Have a great show. Yeah. Have a great trip at the beach. We'll talk soon. Bye. How about that, Wes Payne? Bye, Wes. Bye. All right. Thank you, Wes. That's fun. A beach report. I was hoping he would call. Now, we do have some great boosts that we want to get to. And our baller boost this week is from the always handsome and fantastic supporter, Adversaries 17. and this came in last week adversaries writes live boost thank you 64 000 sats hex drop came in with 17 444 sats hmm, They say the first boost goes to the lunch. I'll take the daily special, please. You got it. Mac and cheese coming your way.
Getting hungry. Also, they continue. Fellow hashtag van lifer here. What is the post-Boston plan for the van? Any trips planned? What gets fixed next? So you heard about the licensing part. That was the immediate next thing. That is solved. Check. But then immediately, Chris, you and I were like, well, what do we do next? There's like a giant list of need-to-dos and would-be-nice-to-dos and then a range of, I think, ambitions. Yep. Various trips we want to do. I think probably the first big trip coming up is you're headed to my place.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, for our summer road trip. Wait, are you driving the van there? Well, I think he's going to carpool. You know, we're going to caravan. This might be a thing. Oh, are you here for a couple weeks? Well, I did bring my cats. Oh, yeah, right. So I could stay a couple weeks. Yes, of course. And then caravan a bet. Wow. Have the cats been in it yet? No. No. Not yet. I wonder, are they road cats? They are quite road cats. Great. I realized that now we're up to something like 1,800 kilometers together, which is, I don't know, 1,200 miles, something like that.
They had to car camp on the way over here, and it got cold. I was telling our dear producer Jeff the fact that I'm here with the cats because we sent him photos of us working on the van. He's like, how are you back in the States already? and it turns out my cats are more they've been to more countries than Jeff has so. Jeff get on that passport we gotta change that yeah he is working on it and I think as far as like long term road trips go I know like a big rock as they say would be the Texas Linux Fest in October yeah. That is really one of the goals we set early on.
Yeah if we could do that on a budget and it's not too hot I think that would be a fantastic trip and it gives us time to get a working electrical system in there for the interior and all that. I think in the members portion of the show, you had mentioned the odometer is kind of high on the list. Too. Yeah, there's a little problem with trying to judge what speed you're driving at. There's all that. Oh, and the speedometer. The longer you drive it, the more accurate. It starts to get in within a 5 to 10 mile per hour range if you drive it for a while. It does bounce constantly, so you have to do the averaging live.
When you first start it up and first start driving, it's bouncing from 0 miles per hour to like 100 or whatever the max is. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Oh my gosh, like a windshield wiper. Let's clean the speed. It also clicks too. It goes like click, click, click, click, click. So it's like a hilarious. That's probably a cool sound. You could use Google Maps to tell you how fast you are going. That's what we were doing. That's so cool. We had the phones. So it was fine. Practically speaking, we knew what speeds we were going. But I don't think a cop would take that answer.
No. Chris, since you and I had to do that in the van when we drove it up here, I kind of got used to doing that. So in my car on the way just yesterday, on the way here, I did like, what, an eight-hour drive, something like that with the cats? Yeah. I put the map up to, like, judge my speed because, I don't know, I kind of like glancing over at the real speed. It turns out my speedometer is totally wrong on my actual vehicle. It's off by, like, something like three, four kilometers per hour. Good to know. So I've been driving slower than I thought. Oh, so that's the reason. I actually trained myself with the RV because from the moment I started driving, I think, or pretty close to it, I put a little Garmin nav on the dash because the thing didn't have any built-in nav.
And that has a speedometer on it. And since I basically put that in there from the moment I started driving, I never trained myself to look at the speedometer. I always just look at the navigator. That's what I'm starting to do, you bastard. But then what happens is like I need Hedir or the co-pilot to update the route. So then they have to take the navigation. I'm like, you have my speedometer. Literally one time I'm like, I don't know what speed I'm going. And Hedir's like, look at the speedometer. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah, right.
Yeah, I noticed Google Maps is one mile per hour less than mine. Oh, okay. One is, I think, in the acceptable range. Yeah, I think so. Too. There is some float in the phone's accuracy. Right. That's what I'm figuring is just a, yeah. Chris, you have this amazing app that you use for this. Do you remember what it's called? Oh, yeah. I love this app. It's called Where Am I, which is great because I'll often stop somewhere. I'm like, where am I? And so I type that in there. He loses himself often. But what it does is it gives you the address that you're currently at, the longitude and latitude, the altitude, the county, the state.
Wow. And that's when you're traveling. Yeah. Kind of handy. Oh, my gosh. But then the other thing it does, which is sort of neat, is it then shows you any Wikipedia article related around you. Which, again, is kind of nice when you're traveling because you can find famous places. Right. I was going to say, like, to geographical. Yeah. So my location. And then it shows them on a map. And then the other thing it does, which Brent's always teasing me, is it has a speedometer. And right now. It's one mile per hour. It says I'm going one mile per hour here in the studio. You're going places, Chris.
It's kind of funny. It's a good app, but sometimes it thinks I'm going one mile per hour when I'm not. Oh, Mr. West Payne boosted in with 3,333 sats. He said, so whose name is on the Vamoose registration? Did Sneaky Chris get a new van? And does Hedeea know? So there is a recent song of Chris falling in love with another man's van. You're saying I love another man's van? It is complicated, Chris. I mean, the van might be legally in my name right now, but that doesn't mean anything. I don't know how I feel about this now. I thought it was a good idea from a logistical point of view, but now I'm starting to feel a little betrayed here.
You're in a van triad now. You realize that? You appreciate that? Like, you brought another man into your van relationship. I mean, you did sleep in it recently. The funny thing was is, I mean, I think Adia knew it was on the table of options, but she didn't technically find out until dinner that night. That's true. After it was all done, that's true. I'm having flashbacks of not finding out about things until way after the fact. I move quick sometimes. Okay? I move quick. I love how the registration lady was like, oh, are you going to be on the title too? And you're like, no, no, he's just an observer.
I said you were my observer mechanic. Oh, yeah. No, it's true. You know, for now at least. at least for now, until we get everything sorted out. But I felt like this was probably the cleanest trajectory when it goes time to import it. Oh, you seem to think that. Yeah, you seem perfectly fine with how this trajectory's going. You know, well, it came on quick. I thought we'd have like a couple of days of like debating our options and whatnot, but it just went so smooth. It was like, don't stop it now. Of course, I got suckered with the $360 licensing bill too. Amen. Sounds like that's how much you're selling it to Brett for.
Ooh. There you go. Also, just shout out to Odyssey Westray. He boosted him below the 2,000 sat cutoff, but he was supporting our track that week. And he said, I always love the music on the JB podcast. And that also went to Nostra. So all of Odyssey's followers on Nostra also saw him linking to that song. Nice. So that's really cool. Thank you. Nice. Thank you to everybody who supported this here gosh darn show. We had eight of you stream sats. I'd love to see that tick up a little bit, but we had eight of you stream sats as you listened. And we stacked 7,147 sats.
Do you remember our dramatic sound effect? Mm-hmm. And then when you combine that with our boosters, we stacked a humble but appreciative 92,924 sats. So I think a lot of us are probably familiar with the cat poop parasite that can get in your brain and make you susceptible to mind control by cats. Like we're all pretty. What? All right. Here's a little clip. I love cats, so don't write. But our lovable felines may be carrying a parasite. And Elise Coulter found it can affect your brain. Elise? Yeah, Jack. Well, the parasite actually lives inside of your cat and they can shed it at any time. But is this tiny organism you see here, is it actually something to worry about?
It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. There's something in the air. That's invading your body. There's someone in your bed, and it looks like you. But the truth is, it's real. It's a parasite that can infect humans. This single-celled parasite is called Toxoplasma gondii. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 60 million people in the U.S. are already infected. Typically, they don't have symptoms and they don't know they've been infected. Ike Northern is the director of infectious disease testing at Compunet. Northern says the culprits are... Cats tend to be one of the main reservoirs.
The parasite... All right, so I think this is, a lot of us know about this, right? Yeah, we still love these cats. Mm-hmm. That might explain a lot about me, you know. But a microbiologist by the name of Bill Sullivan has been exploring a new dimension to this parasite. And it appears the parasite can decapitate sperm. So, cat poop. Yep. Parasites. Yep. Are the new birth control. Right? Just load up on cats. No wonder why crazy cat ladies never get pregnant. Right. Better than surgery. Did you say never get pummeled? Pregnant.
Oh, pregnant. They now say that toxoplasma is affecting up to 50% of the world's population. Whoa. Right. Yeah, we have way more parasites. Yeah, we swim in them. But there are other countries that do regular cleanses. And in America, we're like, let's eat more crappy food that makes them worse and feeds them all these pets. So, Chris, you didn't quite finish that sentence. Uh-huh. It says, infecting up to 50% of the world's population through contaminated food, water, and undercooked meat. So you're blaming all this on my cats. Oh, no, no. No, only about some of it. Only some of it.
I feel cheated. Here in the West, it commonly comes from the cats. But in other parts of the world, it's bad food. Um, but a 2021 study in Prague found that over 86% of infected men have had semen anomalies. So they looked at some past studies from China around toxoplasma. They looked at a couple of other studies. And then in 2025, another study took it further by exposing human sperm directly to the parasite, observing significant damage within just five minutes, including decapitation and cell invasion attempts. All right. So these are single cells, so they're not visible.
So you can't collect them and just have them around post shenanigans. There's a paste for that. Anyways, I just thought, wouldn't it be funny if, well, not funny, but wouldn't it be ironic if like society begins to depopulate and then we discover it's because of our love for cats? I mean, I'm just saying maybe. I mean, they did have to try to find other reasons for infertility, right? Right. Yeah, I don't want to blame it on everything. There's my bacon. So I have a question here. Okay. That's exciting. So on show days, Chris, you come in nice and early into the studio and you like start putting together a show and you got some ideas, you know, of conversations we've had and things.
You're wondering what influenced this going into the show? How did you predict that question? Well, I noticed you brought two cats with you. Oh, so you're like now feeling like I'm endangering your little gents? Is that the problem? I need a muse, Brent. I need a muse. I can't lie. Well, and then to make it even more perfect, he asked me, what are you thinking about for catching up with Ange? I'm like, how about having a dog again? Yeah, well, that's perfect. And I'm like, okay. So perfect. So this is just an animal-centric episode. All right, Ange.
Yes. Now, before we get out of here, you know every now and then I like to pitch a good investment. I've been watching for investments. I've got – so I figured the best way to make a smart, life-changing investment is to just randomly pick from a wheel of possible investments. So on the wheel this week, I have a hidden in Seattle property. Okay. A Wyoming private castle. a getaway cave a vintage zombie ranch and Pope Leo's childhood home. Who's Pope Leo? The new Pope. The new Pope. Oh, okay. I thought you were calling Leo Laporte Pope Leo now. So I thought I missed something.
That would be so good. Only Leo in my life is Leo. Okay, so Hidden in Seattle sounds like it should stay hidden. I would be down with that. It's for people who like to mess with religion, Chris. I sent Leo Laporte our stickers and he showed them live on his stream. So I've put them all on a roulette style wheel for you. I was just going through them. I mean, you can do that, but let me just tell you my initial. Yeah, yeah, sure. Real quick thought. Hidden in Seattle should stay hidden. Wyoming private castle? Probably not quite the castle that I'm thinking. A getaway cave sounds like it is literally a hole in the side of a hill.
I like that. Vintage zombie ranch. Oh, my God. I mean, spread out a little bit, right? Halloween time, maybe? Yeah. Pope Leo's childhood home? I mean, I don't know. I don't even know on that one. That's a great investment if you think about it. As long as he's a good pope. If he's a bad pope, it could be a bad investment. So I feel like since these are too hard, they're all good, they're all clear winners, we'll just leave it to random chance, which is how everybody should invest. Let's see it. All right, here we go. No, it's rigged.
It's rigged. It's rigged. All right, so you got Pope Leo's childhood home. All right, so this one is fascinating. So a flipper bought this house in the Chicago suburbs for $60,000, $66,000. Can I click on it? Yeah. Okay. Which is probably all this house is worth. Then they gutted the interior, not appreciating the fact that it had historical significance because it didn't yet at the time. Well, yeah, it clearly wasn't. Yeah. They gutted the interior, but they're still trying to now flip it. And they've gone from selling it for $200,000 to now unlisting it and putting it up on auction and it's expected to go for millions of dollars.
Oh, well, okay, so it's not even affordable. Well, I mean, you know, maybe you could get it at a cheap price. I don't know. It was built in 1949. It's 1,050 square feet. It's tiny. It is tiny. Yeah, it's a small 1,000 square feet. It's like weirdly modernized. The primary bedroom is 90 square feet, so they're pretty small rooms. Laundry is 64 square feet. Yeah, aw. No? All right. We'll do. Okay, then. Okay, well, you can pass on one. That's fair. We'll do another one. Last chance. It likes red. It favors red. All right. So this one is the Seattle Hidden Home.
All right. It's going to hit home. So the Seattle Hidden Home, I couldn't believe when I found this one. So really appreciate it. First, you got to look at the picture. It is about the size of a shed. It looks like a doghouse. Yeah. Or a doghouse. A big doghouse. A big, yeah. Yeah. One bath, one bed. Oh, my gosh. 460 square feet, $220,000. This is insane. This is, do you see the location? You got to look at the location. It's even better. I mean, I see the barbed wire fence like a prison and next to a commercial building. Yeah. So the kitchen window's got a barbed wire fence, which is, you know, for safety. The interior is a little rough because it's been used for industrial purposes.
But the real magic comes when you look at the Google Maps of where this thing's at. They have wedged it between a bunch of freight, like where a freight drops off a bunch of containers and an industrial warehouse building. and it's on the actual harbor in Seattle where they load and unload from the harbor all the time. Oh, it'd be so loud. And you know what's interesting is they don't show a picture of the harbor at all. No, they don't. They're not like, this is a view. You could throw a rock to the water. It's so close to the water, but it is just not the waterfront view you want at all.
That's horrible. I know. But what's so weird about it and truly bizarre, and I'll put the link in the show notes, is it's this teeny tiny house just wedged between factory buildings and shipping stuff. Yeah. It doesn't even look leveled. It looks like somebody refused to sell and so industry just built around them. Yeah. Yeah, there's a house like that by my house. It's black too. And they're going to build this whole community around a black house. I know. I thought about this for Wes though. You know, it is waterfront property. It's, you know, for three bedroom, three bath in downtown Seattle.
Well, we don't really know, I suppose, the ultimate. Oh, it's one bad. One bedroom, one bath. My bad. Yeah, I was going to say. It's 460 square feet. There's not much there. Yeah. All right. There you go. Vintage zombie ranch and getaway cave we can look at another time. Oh, my gosh. This castle is not affordable. What? $14 million? You finance that. You don't worry about it. You finance it, Angel. But taxes. It is a legit castle amongst the trees. 9,470 square feet. Oh my goodness, I love the glass. Oh my gosh, did you see that stairwell?
Yeah, it's amazing. I think we found the one she likes. I do, oh my gosh. She's got expensive taste over there. This looks like a castle you'd see in the old world, not in Wyoming. I mean, it's immaculate, it's beautiful, marble everywhere. This can't be real. It's real. Right? As long as you got $13.4 million. Yeah. That seems cheap for this thing. Yeah. Built in 92, so it actually works out to be $1,400 a square foot. There's a spiral staircase. Yeah, I know. I want to know who built this. This is so cool. Modeled after the iconic North Weston castle. Let's all chip in. A JB castle.
It's based on one that is nestled in the Alps. It captures German architecture and grammar. Oh my gosh, it really is a cave. There's a moose head in it. Six million dollars for a cave? Well, come on though, Ange. This is a great investment. It's a getaway cave. It looks like it's going to collapse. I know, but you could sell it to like Zuckerberg or somebody for like, you know. End of days? 12 million, yeah, for their bunker. It's a huge cave. I mean, honestly, you could fit like a fleet of vehicles in here. 174,000 square feet.
Six million dollar cave. In Kansas. What the heck? I mean, these are some opportunities, right? And if you think about it, it's actually a great deal because it works out to just be $34 a square foot. I think you have too much time on your hands. I have questions about the cave because i thought i don't know how it works here in the you know states of united america or whatever you call it um but i thought when you bought a plot of land like you owned the surface rights or something no that's just your crazy country that's. Your crazy country.
Okay if. You discover something precious on your land here you get you get to own it yeah 108,900 square feet of usable space 31 acres of potential commercial space located in the heart of america 10 minutes from interstate 44 it's um also it could be they say here an executive home there's three separate wells on site. Only need one but that's cool. So okay would you like the cave out of all of these or do you think no no okay. There's nothing even built it's just literally holes. Yeah but six million bucks seems like a lot but when you break it down to square feet it's only 34 bucks hard.
To heat though i gotta say. Yeah yeah maybe you just have to have a bunch of fires. Probably out of all these, the Seattle home is the most practical, assuming that Pope Leo's childhood home probably ends up going for a million bucks. That's crazy. I thought so. I thought you'd like those. Is it weird that I kind of like a lot of these? Yeah, I took a look at the ranch. Oh, you did? I couldn't leave that out. Yeah. I looked at all of them now. But the zombie ranch, why do you call it a zombie ranch? It's called Lonesome Ranch. Because it just looks like the kind of place you end up. Where you're going to die?
Yeah. No, like during a zombie apocalypse, you're like, for some reason, Airbnb in this place. And then a zombie, and you're like, it could be a movie set. Sure. It is 12 bedrooms, five bathrooms. but it is also unaffordable at 3.5. Million dollars well but it comes with a really cool work truck. Does it come with a helicopter right. Yeah it does have a helicopter pad it does have a helicopter pad this is more like owning a whole town yeah. This is like yeah if we want to get away from civilization. Or create a podcast compound yeah exactly yeah they they break down the individual properties here at the bottom of the description there's a lot of individual properties in there, 45 minute flight to Los Angeles so there you go alright wait.
There's a door here it says Sweetwater Mine 1927 so does it have a. Mine on it too? It does so it's like the best of the cave we all go in 3.5. Mil everybody gets a house everybody gets a spot and we got a podcast compound that's all. I'm in boomsies. Alright that's it for us Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to the launch this week. Links to what we talked about are at weeklylaunch.rocks. Love it if you joined us live next Tuesday. Catch it in your podcast app at around 1130 a.m. Pacific. And that's converted at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. Of course, the show releases on Wednesdays for your convenience after it's been given a little love from Editor Drew.
Thank you so much for being here from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
This is The Launch, episode 23 for June 3rd, 2025. All streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, We greet you all a good morning, a good evening, whenever your timeline may fall. Time-appropriate greetings, indeed, to one and all. This is The Launch, and my name is Chris. And I'm Angela. And my name is Brent. Well, hello to you both. We've got a good launch coming up. A few things everyone should know about before we get into it. We'd love it if you called us live when we get to the song of the week. The lines will be open. Give us a ring.
774-462-5667. That is 774-462-5667. You can also leave us a voicemail. We'll play it on next week's episode. This show is live on Tuesdays and releases for download on Wednesdays. We invite you to join us for either, whatever fits your schedule. We've got the mumble room going as well. You can join us in there. We always love it. If you join us in the chat room, help us title it, topic suggestions, react in real time. And then we package it all up in a real nice version for our Jupiter Party members as well. There's a little bit for everybody. And links for what we talk about today will be at weeklylaunch.rocks.
Well, Andrews You have quite the adventure going on at home Sounds like you've got yourself a dog again A new puppy after many years Yes. After a lot of years Many years Because, yeah, we had, you and I, two cats In the, what, 2000? Yeah Year 2000-ish, 2001? Yeah, kind of shortly after for a while I guess 2000. Yeah Two cats, and then we had two dogs Yeah, great dogs And then after Abby was born we well we didn't have any animals and then Dylan ended up allergic to cats and dogs crazy allergic and then two years ago, I adopted my neighbor's cat I think that was two years ago anyway regardless we have two cats right now and then yes my boyfriend and Moved in and brought his dog, Moose.
That dog named Moose. With a name like that. Like him already. You're picking a big dog. Yeah, for sure. Big dog. Big shoulders. Yeah. Let me get a picture. Maybe like a Bernice mountain dog kind of a thing, you know? Big dog. It's actually M-O-U-S-S-E. Oh. Yeah. Like chocolate moose. It sounds like a. So he's a culinary delight. Yeah. She. Oh. Lovely. Oh, I just saw a photo. Very cute. I'm going to put it in the chat. Yeah. So it is really interesting. It reminds me why it was so nice to not have dogs anymore. Oh. Ouch.
Oh, I thought you were going to say they're so loving and loyal and kind. I'm not a hater. It's just so, it's like a step toward having another kid. Yeah, they are. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. They just don't ever grow up. Yeah. Cats are like self. Independent creatures. Yes. And I'm just. So, yeah, it has been an adjustment. You know, I knew that, I know that dogs get into things. Oh, my cats get into things, so I don't... Well, yeah. I mean, we've established a pretty good routine of the cats not getting into things, right? But now there's a whole new layer with a dog. So let me... I'm trying to send this to the chat, but I don't want it to delay the show.
But who's a better snuggle buddy, right? The dog was a good snuggle buddy. Oh, yeah. No, she's super sweet. Levi's pretty good at snuggly. Yeah. So I estimated that Dylan would benefit the most from this dog. And he does love having a dog around to pet. I thought Bella also. I thought Bella the most, actually. But Bella is holding tight to her warrior cats. That only, yeah. So I think she secretly does like having the dog, but she's putting up a front at the moment. But it's actually Abby. Abby is really enjoying Moose. Which is nice.
So anyway, we were going to bring Moose to the studio today. I said, where's Moose? Yeah. What is that? Is that meat? No. It's a rock? Big bar of chocolate that Abby had in her room that Moose... Got into. Got into. Took some bites off of. And so we were unsure what, what's, you know, stomach type of issues would happen in the car on the way here or here. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I am curious. Remember when one of our dogs ate one of those orange chocolate balls? Like the whole thing? Yeah. The foil and all. I mean, they are delicious. They are. But yeah, chocolate's no good for dogs. No. So, yeah.
Did you use a chocolate calculator? There's a bunch of chocolate calculators online to see if like the severity of things. Like the way that you put the dog weight in and how much chocolate they've eaten. Well, and the type of chocolate too matters. It's dark chocolate, the worst, right? Yeah, I know. Why does she even have a bar? She doesn't like dark chocolate. Sophisticated. Yeah. So I just messaged her with girl with a period, you know, at school. It took her like an hour and 15 minutes, but then she messaged me back. And so she said that Moose probably didn't eat much at all.
Like just scrapes. So that's good. But like what the heck? Why do you have a giant? She stashes candy all the time. She's a candy stasher. I know. It's like a baking chocolate. And at first I thought it was like my peanut butter ball chocolate. But it's not. It's dark chocolate. It's not. This is not my chocolate. She smuggled it from the RV. I think she did because Dia, when she makes treats, she uses dark chocolate. Well, she does sometimes use dark chocolate. Although I try to talk her out of it. But then this Brent guy comes around and the dark chocolate comes back out again. I can't eat the soup and milky stuff.
Yeah. Well, anyway, so, yeah, I would be curious from the audience, just tips and tricks for this integration. Yeah. It is. How's the cat dog situation going? So I thought, okay, so Rocky was raised with dogs. Sure. And puppies. And then Gypsy was raised with a dog. They slept together, but Gypsy doesn't want anything to do with this dog. And Rocky, well, he's staying out all the time, or for the most part. He is an outdoor cat, especially during this season. But he is more accepting for some reason. Well, that's good, I suppose. Better than both of them having a hard time. Peepee has taken a... Sorry, Gypsy. I got so casual there. We call Gypsy Peepee.
Anyway, Gypsy has taken swipes at Moose. Which is funny because we call Levi Poops because it's, you know, a puppy. You call him a great number of things. Yeah, he has like 30 nicknames. But Poopanoops or just Poops for short. So Levi's Poops and the cat's peepee. Yeah. Oh, gosh. So I would like to know from the audience, what's your ridiculous nickname for your pet? Because I think we all do this, unfortunately. I've got another one. I've got another one. Levi. Also, I sometimes call him Bovarian. Yeah, Bovie. Or Bovie. Or the Bavarian window.
Oh, my gosh. Like the Overton window, but it's the Bavarian. These are all just a couple of his nicknames. Yeah. And he responds to all of them. If you're going to give me food, I'll respond to anything you say. I sometimes call Rocky broccoli. Oh, that's cute. So Moose's real name is Daisy. Oh. Yeah. So the nicknames continue. Yes. That's hilarious. Moose is such a great name. Yeah, it is. I mean, also because, you know, Moose looks like a brown chocolate treat, which is probably why Moose was drawn to chocolate treats. They love that chocolate, those stupid dogs. Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, tips for integrating dogs, especially into a household with cats. And if you yourself have ever had an animal, then went a long time and got that animal, you know, like a dog again, let us know. Boost it in. Fountain.fm is probably the easiest way to do it. You can get some sats real easy and then send them in. And we got a big update on that, too, later on in the show. That's not all. You also have a car update for us because we know you were getting your car ready for a road trip, had to do some tire work and stuff like that. And then the road trip didn't happen. And ultimately, this is just a good segue into your vehicle news, too.
But I noticed just two weeks after I got new tires that my driver's side tire was not holding air. Yeah. Couldn't hold wind. And I've been driving Bella out to Sultan for trumpet lessons, which is minimum hour, hour, 15 minute drive. You don't need a tire for that. I finally put air in it because these are brand new tires. I don't want the wear to be bad. They shouldn't be losing tire. No. It makes me think you've got like a stem leak or something. Right? That's defective. Yeah. For sure. So I did put air in it and then it was still losing pretty slowly, like at least.
But, you know, my car had notified me, hey, the air. So I went to the Subaru dealership that's literally just a half a mile away. And they took it back and they soaped it and they sent me a video. good that's nice yeah uh showing where the bubbles were coming out okay the stem okay yeah stem leak right yeah and so i'm like well why and and i didn't understand that when i got new tires yeah that they they use that's not part of it yeah yeah so yeah. Yeah that is ridiculous yeah. Is it i mean because it's. So easy to change that when you're in there like.
Well here's the thing my previous tires had no leaks, So this dude tried to tell me that I must have hit a curb or bent the stem somehow. And I looked, there is no crazy woman driver damage near this stem. Yeah, there'd be marks on the tire. Yeah, no. And I didn't have that issue before. So like, oh yeah, well, you should talk to the guy that you work with over there. So I left after spending an hour there. Last week after we recorded, that's straight where I went because I need this resolved. And so I talked to the gal that had worked with me through all the other stuff. And she's like, wait a second, they didn't fix it?
And I was like, well, no. I mean, I assume it must be like a big expense or something, which is kind of sucky because these are brand new tires and I didn't have this issue before. Like, they can look. I never had to put air in my tires. She's like, they should have fixed it. It's only like $30. And I'm like, well, okay. So that's where my car is right now, getting the stem fixed or whatever. And if you've ever seen a tire get put on a rim or like a valve change like that, it's like a five-minute job. It's so easy. I can understand. Like probably one out of a thousand, there might be damage to the stem.
Like I'm not even mad that it happened. It's just a casualty of, you know, it just happens. Wear and tear on a tire. But don't blame it on me. Yeah, well, also. When there's nothing to support that. Why not get new stems? Oh, yeah. And it's the driver's side. I'm not parallel parking on that side. You know, like how? How? I mean, we have a lot of roundabouts, so maybe, but there's no damage. I've got to say, roundabouts in Idaho, very fancy. Is her name Rihanna? Who? The gal that helped you at the Subaru dealership? Zero to 50 and 8.5?
No, like... Or zero to 60? Rihanna Romanek? No, it's Shelly. Oh, okay, because I got an email yesterday, 23 hours ago. Dear Angela, thank you for choosing Kendall Subaru. We appreciate your business and value your feedback. We're always striving to improve our services. Dude. So how did they get my email address? I don't know. I've never bought a Subaru. I know. I know. So last week when I brought it there, I was looking at the receipt and I saw your email address there. And I was like, how do they have that? They must have bought another dealership maybe I bought from and they merged the dealerships maybe. Kendall Subaru though? No. I mean, you have bought a lot of cars.
I don't want to say that. I mean, maybe there's like a bigger company that owns Kendall. Acura? Does Acura own it? Because. I bought a few Acuras. Where did you get that Acura? TL. No, no, no, not TL. Not the green one, the black one. From the Acura dealership in the Linwood area. I know, I need to get that fixed. It's funny, I don't even know how it happens. It's the kind of thing that just occasionally happens from time to time. No, because I have my car registered on Subaru.com or whatever with my email address. So I don't know why.
It's so weird. It is so weird. The other one that was weird that happened not too long ago was somehow adding Ange as an authorized user to the AT&T account. AT&T flipped it so Ange owned the account. Even though I pay for it, they flipped it so she owns it. And then I couldn't make any changes because I was no longer an authorized user. And it must have been like that for years. Yeah, yeah. Because, yeah. I just never make changes. Yeah, we never had to make any modifications. But it's like these things just happen. Except you added your mom.
Yeah, I did. I did since I know. So you had it then. I know. And we haven't been in an AT&T store together. No. All right. So I asked Perplexity who owns the dealership. And it says that the Kendall Subaru of Maryville is owned by the Kendall Auto Group, a family of owned and operated group of automobile dealerships that have been serving the Pacific Northwest since 1937. So it's the largest privately owned auto dealership group in our region, it says. Wow. Okay. Well, I'm going to ask them how that was added. They just like merged all their documents together or something?
That's what I'm thinking. How, though? Well, some IT guy had a brilliant idea one day. They do operate some accurate dealerships, it says. Oh. Okay, all right. So then it might make sense for like the, for my, no, not my MDX, but the lease, the TL. Oh, yeah. I like how this has become like the modern tech Sherlock and Watson show. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Oh, and have some strange tech issue with your, you know, everyday technology. Call into the show. This could be it too. This would explain the current situation. It looks like they own the Volkswagen dealership that I bought my car from.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's not funny. Yay. Big corporations. We've been divorced since 2015. This stuff still happens. It's so wild. Wow. Yeah. I'm sure people out there, if you have a crazy story about this, call in and leave us a voicemail. I want to hear it. 774-462-5667. This has got to happen to some of you out there. I got a crazy AI story for you, but before we get there, we have a little good news. We have a van, a quick van update because we have a boost about too. So we could probably save some of this, but the van is road legal. That's so incredible.
Big milestone. It is legally on the road in Washington and Brent's back visiting. We're going to get some van projects done and some other car work done, hopefully, too, if energy allows. So basically all the cars need work. Don't buy cars. Yeah. Right. Oh, man. It's just like a maintenance burden that never goes away, right? It seems so. Yeah. The whole van licensing thing, I'm so deeply pleased about that because this whole crazy adventure like hinged on the fact that we could actually get the thing licensed for a reasonable cost. And that completely happened. Best case scenario yesterday. I came to Washington on Chris's invite because we were both starting to freak out about the fact that this thing wasn't licensed and like.
There's a 30-day deadline once the once the vehicle and unlines vehicles in the state you have 30 days to get it registered with the state or it's a 550 fine and then there's a fine continues i don't know what they didn't tell me what the timeline was but then there's additional fines dude. The fine is more than we paid for the thing. Yeah so it's like all right and we got down to like day 25 i think yeah yeah we had to go to boston and travel a bunch and we we walked the line so chris i. Think we were going into the office thinking okay how do we possibly at least start the process so this like ticking time delay kind of goes away.
Yeah we went in there thinking we'll start the process and then we'll have to go through all these hoops of uh according to perplexity we needed to do a vin inspection and we had to bring it to a location to do that so if you got to bring a van to a location without location is the state patrol so you're bringing the van to the state patrol illegally driving it there yeah so then i'm like okay well how do i get this van to the state patrol inspection oh you You'd get a temporary. You got to get a temporary, which will last three days. And you need this documentation with insurance proof and all this.
So we thought, yeah, this is step one of a three-day process. I also 100% expected a mechanical safety check because most provinces where I'm from, it's like if you're moving between borders and trying to register from one to the other, you definitely need to have it mechanically safety looked at. Or emissions, right? Some places do have emissions for sure. I think we stopped doing emissions, not just the farm cities, but all cities. Thank goodness. No, I think King County still does it. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I think so. But Snohomish County, Snohomish, the snobs down in King County, but it's the farm folk up here in Snohomish and in Skagit, I think have been petitioning to walk that back. So you got lucky.
I think we got lucky and somehow it's under your name. I don't know how I feel about this anymore, but certainly to get the thing registered in Canada, it needed also to be read like actively registered. So this is a huge milestone. Because now all of the unknowns, I think, especially from a bureaucratic perspective, have just been solved. Assuming, I guess there is still some kind of VIN inspection that they're going to do on it. We'll see. So assuming all that goes well, I think this is a huge, huge, huge good thing for us. Yeah. And that means we can start planning for road trips and working on it.
Very excited. We'll have more details on that. That's the story really is just now beginning. You know? Oh, man. Just getting it here and getting it legal was just the very beginning. All right. Well, this week on the show, we're going to tell you the story of a company called Builder.ai, once valued at $1.5 billion and backed by Microsoft with $455 million infusion of cash. Well, they just filed for bankruptcy this week, and it revealed that their so-called technology was actually humans on the back end just doing outsourced work with human engineers. The deception lasted for eight years before falling apart at the end of May.
And now the builder AI is entering insolvency proceedings. We're getting all of the juicy goss. But I thought, wouldn't it be fun to go back in time a little bit and listen to some of the outlandish claims of their co-founders and CEOs to remind us that we can't believe a thing these people tell us? I bring you to two years ago where the co-founder is being interviewed by Bloomberg and the pie in the sky journalist asked him about their incredible partnership and cooperation with Microsoft Azure. People might have gotten the wrong end of the stick a few weeks ago when they saw that you took money from Microsoft and you're building within their platform, offering your services on Microsoft.
Why did you do that? If you're looking, I'm trying to insinuate between the lines that you're building to be a big public company, individual and scale great heights. Look, it might sound brazen. We're looking to build a trillion dollar business. Oh, we're not looking to sell for a few billion. Not our MO. So they're looking to build a trillion dollar. They don't want to sell for a few bill. And then listen to the way he tries to spin the relationship with Microsoft, because this was a key moment. What this revealed is they had outsourced all of their infrastructure to Microsoft, and that meant they probably didn't actually have any technological secret sauce if you really thought about it.
So he has to spin it away from that line of thinking into a much more generous way of thinking about it. Because it's never about the money as much as money is important. And so when you're looking to build that big and you're looking to be that grassroots in how stuff is used, offices used everywhere, windows is used everywhere. There's a lot of patterns you learn from someone that's already solved the problem. I think the second is always, again, it's balance. And so we have two corporates that have worked with us. One we haven't disclosed yet for obvious reasons. Totally. But with Microsoft, the key was alignment around mission.
Yeah. They want to digitally transform the world. Alignment around values. You can kind of get an idea of the way there's generic speak. And, you know, claiming that partnering with Microsoft is about being grassroots. Like, I don't know what kind of backwards world this guy lives in. But these types of people who were gaslighting the entire time, they had no technology stack. They were using Azure for essentially a web front end and then outsourcing the AI work jobs to Indian workers on contract. That's what their actual technology stack was. It was people behind the AI.
That's crazy. So here he is because these guys, they're thought leaders, they're innovators, they're disruptors. So they constantly get asked to pontificate on the most important questions of our time. And one of them is AI's use of intellectual property. And this guy, like all of these guys, tries to take a hard line to sound like a, you know, a big thinker that's trying to shake things up. And he was asked if there are any red lines for intellectual property in AI use or if it can just use anything it wants. What are the red lines here as we talk about AI? I think the problem is there aren't red lines right today.
And so, you know, let's redefine the problem. We all went to university. Right here, you get a sense of the hubris. Did we? Right here. You know, like, oh, let's redefine the problem. And so, you know, let's redefine the problem. We all went to university. So we read books. You were inspired by what you read to do the career that you're doing. Well, at what point does inspiration become copying? And at what point does inspiration become pleasure? Now, the argument here is this is industrialized inspiration. And so I think there is a really fine line between copying. So I think on the Scarlett Johansson one, it's it's clear you can't take someone's voice.
But at the same time, at what shade of change of voice is it no longer that person's voice? I always like that you can definitely not steal a thing. But, you know, those kinds of statements like that's this guy to a T. Let's redefine the problem. You know, we don't want to tamp down on industrial scale innovation here. We want industrial scale innovation. Right. So that's that's who has been leading this company. He was one of the co-founders and they falsely inflated revenue by billing each other for services that they never rendered between 2021 and 2024. They worked with a company called Versay.
So these two collabed behind the scenes. Now, Versay is denying these accusations, saying they're baseless and false at this time. But according to the bankruptcy proceedings, Versay and Builder AI just billed and sold and bought and sold a bunch of services from each other, but never actually invoiced for it. But made the revenue like, look at all this revenue we have coming in. We have millions of dollars coming in on the paperwork, but then on the back end, they never invoiced for it on both sides. And Versace says that's not true. Pretty wild. So a faking the AI technology by outsourcing to 700 different humans and then faking revenue, too, to make it look like you're making a bunch of money and then going on Bloomberg and CNBC, which are the two sources I just played, and pontificating like you're this big disruptor.
You know, we're not trying to build and sell for a few bill. We're going to build trillions of dollars by grassroots building on top of Azure. Right. It's just the spin, I think, is really educational. Like this Builder AI moment is an opportunity for all of us to see how these tech CEOs play the game. And the game has just been exposed for all of us right here with Builder AI. The thing that is the most interesting to me, I think, is the 700 people. Because you could potentially have generated a legitimate business doing this. Like get some engineering very quickly with like a huge massive team of actual engineers.
but also the fact that they lasted eight years and nobody really even noticed. What does that say about current technology or also of like this list? This was the best AI around. Right. Well, or is this the best engineering that we have that we could do it really quickly? But also, like, is this where all engineers end up? This is how they pitch themselves. Builder AI. We make building an app so easy. Anyone can do it. Your vision, your software. We just build it. AI means we can build more cost-effectively and at speed. Does AI mean all Indians?
Yes, I think it does. Oh, my gosh. I think it does. It's all Indians. Oh, man. Yeah, so here's how it works. You chat with their AI, Natasha. I love it when they name it after a woman. Love that, right? We can't just call it something generic. You could call it the Omniputer or something like that. No, it's got to be Natasha. Then you get a fixed price and accurate timings. then you get your own dedicated expert ai assembles your app like a lego set that's what it says right here ai assembles your app like a lego set and then features are customized by human specialists and then your app's ready to go start building software now no tech knowledge needed i mean you're right it's actually not a bad business idea if you just drop the ai bullshit yeah.
Like don't lie about it and then it's actually a great product especially if you say like well well, we have real humans working on your project instead of AI. I know that's not what they wanted to build. But you could totally do that. Don't vibe code a crappy app. Hire real humans at scale at a decent price. I also have to say, what an incredible feat to generate, I don't know, code fast enough that it feels like it's AI generated because that's impressive. It's probably super high quality. Well. What's great is if the contractors you're hiring produce crap code, you can always just say, oh, yeah, it's AI. Sorry.
You know, you get away with more. Ha! Maybe we should try this. Got a business idea now. All right, so there's a couple of big things in the works for the podcasting space, which is really nice to see after YouTube has been clobbering the market for the last couple of years. And one of them is Fountain FM, the podcast app creators, have soft launched a new podcast hosting platform. So in the style of like Fireside or Podhome or RSS Blue, they've soft launched it because you really won't see any details on their website, but they have talked about it on their podcasting 2.0 podcast.
And for about the last year, almost on a weekly basis, I've been doing a video call with them to help consult on the development of the platform's features. So it's really starting with a baseline of what would Chris need to use a podcast hosting platform? And then they built out the features from there. And so it is feature rich. And they got a lot more in the pipeline, too. And the beautiful thing is the Fountain FM podcast, and this is not a paid advertisement. I'm just very excited. Finally, somebody's implementing all the things in the right order. And then you combine it with the app. It really is a nice package.
They're truly simplifying the podcasting 2.0 features. So they're going to automatically handle transcripts when you upload your podcast. They'll automatically do chapters and add it to the RSS feed if you want with all the correct feed tags in the podcasting 2.0 standard spec. So you just do a regular old podcast like you've always done and you upload it and then you opt in to the automatic stuff as much as you want, which is chef's kiss because podcasts sort of suffer from an seo dead man's land where the google search engines and the bings of the world they don't generally index the inside of a podcast.
They do youtube videos because youtube as a platform generates transcripts and so they can ingest the transcript we need that in podcasting yep and podcasters that start embracing things like chapters and transcripts and live streams, the lit tag and boosts and all the things that you could do with podcasting, they stand out from the podcasts that don't have those features. And as a listener, and you start enjoying these features, you start looking for podcasts that have these things. Once you get used to chapters and transcripts, it's really sucks going back. And it feels like the podcaster is being lazy.
So what they're doing to just kind of automatically generate all that stuff so everybody can have it really nice and they're also doing they're the they are the first platform to integrate download performance with boost performance in the dashboard cool very cool yeah it is really slick it was my idea uh it was sort of the genesis of my involvement with with the consulting um so it's really nice and low-key there are folks out I won't say who, who are also making it possible to do the entire boost process from a listener side using Fiat. Integration with Stripe, it just uses your bank card, you don't have to worry about sats at all.
And then on the back end for us, and this is key, and I'll explain why in a moment, on the back end for us, it still comes in as a boost using all of that technology. The reason why that matters is if you look at the arc of Jupyter Broadcasting, dealing with listener feedback has been a constant challenge. It's a good problem to have, but we've thrown everything at it. Like Linux Unplugged started as a feedback program to Linux Action Show because we had so much email coming to the Linux Action Show. I was spending hours sorting it and organizing it, and I thought, well, this is as much time as I spend prepping a show, so I'm going to start.
And I called it like Linux Action Show Unplugged or something. Like if you look in my Dropbox, the actual original folder names are like Linux Action Show Feedback Show, Linux Action Show Unplugged. And then it became clear that that was a stupid idea for a podcast and that it needed to be its own show and it grew on its own. But like years and years of trying to solve this problem the right way, including creating podcasts around it. And so what is really been a game changer with the boosts, besides the value attached to them, which has been absolutely great, is the technology.
It's a huge win behind the scenes for us because, first of all, it's an open messaging system built on top of the Lightning Network. So there's no company that owns it. It's not a Google protocol. It's not a Microsoft protocol. It's not an Apple protocol. It's not a Spotify protocol. The entire system is open source. It's an open standard. There's no company we're building this technology on top of. But every boost message comes in with show metadata, the episode, the name, sometimes where you are at in the position for some podcast apps. All of these things combine to make unique identifiers for each message and for which show they go to.
So we, on the back end, now get messages coming in in a structured data format, generally JSON, that sit in a database. So with email, yeah, you can build some scripts and some automation on top of your email inbox, and, you know, you can do layers of turtles as much as you want. But this is like internet native messaging. It goes into a database, and it has structured data in there, so we can build an ecosystem of applications on top of that, and Wes has. And so when things come in, they're automatically getting tagged and pre-sorted before we even bother with them.
And then we have a report we can go to that sorts them automatically for each. Show for that episode and then formats them all and mark down in the correct order and then spits them out and goes directly into our show notes. And it takes something that used to be the work of an entire show and makes it a 30 second process for us to collect the feedback. It has been a huge game changer. So in a show where maybe we could have read two emails, we could now read 20, 25 boosts. I mean, it really increases the scale. And so Fountain building on top of this system is going to be fantastic in terms of analytics. But then other players coming into the space to also enable fiat payment boost is going to open this up to even more people to participate.
People that are maybe worried about access to sats in their country or something like that. So, I mean, massively huge when you combine all of these things together, UI improvements to the Fountain app that are coming, fiat ability for boosts, and a podcast hosting platform. the next the remainder of this year is going to be massive for podcasting 2.0 and the podverse app is currently being rebuilt from the ground up to be even better and it's gpl and it's. Going to be great i am excited because the the only kind of like limiting factor to participating in the boost has really been you have to have a way to buy sats and strikes available in like 115 countries right there's the bitcoin well in canada river here in the u.s there's lots of good safe places to buy your sats from, but you still have to know the good from the bad.
It's asking for a lift before you can send your message. So it's always been a barrier to the boost. So to be able to just connect anything that supports Stripe, any payment card you have with Stripe, that's coming down the road. It'll be in the future. These things take time to work out, but there'll be players out there that have Stripe support at the boost level soon combined with like Fountain's new podcasting platform that supports all these podcasting 2.0 features right out of the box where the podcaster doesn't have to do extra work, It's going to be a good year.
There's a question here from Westbot wondering if there's an API that's going to be available for this. They know that is a top feature. Okay. All right. I tried to get it at launch, but I had to, I had to, you know. I hadn't get all your nuggets. No, no. I know this kind of topic makes you uncomfortable, but I also want to say kudos to you, Chris. For me? Well, I think you've been advocating for Podcast 2.0 features for a long time now. I mean, Office Hours, I think, made a real big difference in spreading some of the word of new Podcast 2.0 features and the developers behind it and just trying to make a difference there.
But the fact that you've been allowed and able and invited to do a little consulting means that some of the crazy systems that we've built here at JB just to try to sort boosts out and stuff have made it to the wider world and are going to make Podcasting 2.0 even better. I'll tell you, one of the features they've built in that obviously people like us need is multi-show support. Yes, please. Most of these platforms, just assume you have one podcast. And if you want to have more, you've got to create another account and another account, right? So they have built in the concept of a podcast network, if you want it, from the beginning.
Oh, you know how long I've wanted that? Right. So it's really, you know, for the people that are coming up after us, instead of kicking the ladder, we're making it even easier. And they don't have lit support yet, which is what we do for this show, where in the RSS feed, we actually mark the podcast as live. And if your podcast app supports that, it can just stream the show live when it is live. Cool feature. And it brings you to the top of the podcast list. And podcast apps are working on featuring live podcasts more in the app. So a lot of the podcast apps like Fountain, eventually when you open them, right there on the main page, they're going to make it more clear.
Hey, these podcasts you subscribe to are live. Think about what that means for us. If we're one of those podcasts that is live, then when somebody's opening up their app and they're trying to pick what to listen to that day, we're right there at the top of the list and we're read and live and you can tap it and you're getting the thing just as it's happening. I mean, that's exciting. And so Fountain's going to be building that support into the platform very soon too. I have a question for you. So we've been dreaming up a bunch of features that we want to see these platforms come out with, especially in podcasting 2.0 space.
Yeah, we built a few in-house that are really good, too. Do you have any in your queue currently that you're like, oh, I really wish we had this one thing that we haven't really started advocating for starting on yet? You know, spec-wise, not really. No, they are working on authorship and things like that, which will be in it. So right now, there's no way at the RSS level, they're solving this, but there's no way at the RSS level to say all these shows are associated with Jupyter Broadcaster. Like if you look at each individual show RSS feed, there's nothing that connects all the shows together. And maybe if you like one show, you might like another show.
That's sweet. And so they're working on the concept. And this will also apply for audio books and music. So, you know, music artists that upload multiple albums, you could then go to that one artist and see all of their albums, right? Or that one author and see all their audio books or that one podcaster and you can see all their podcasts. But you don't want individual platforms like Apple and Fountain and everybody implementing their own version of this because it's going to be crap and they're going to do it. They're going to miss podcasts. Like people do this all the time.
Like some of these sites like True Fans and others, they'll create a Jupyter Broadcasting group, but they'll miss a show because they don't know. So if we can just define it at the RSS feed level. Yeah, that's going to be really cool. It'd be neat if you take that a little further and you can have it for hosts, too. So if you have a host who, I don't know, spreads across different networks or is a guest on various networks, then you can just... That will be a thing, too. So you build it, like, say, yeah, exactly. Delicious.
Yeah, it'll work for guests and all that kind of stuff. Basically credits for the episode. You can have Drew in there, too. It's like, oh, man, the future is fun. There is editor credits in there, too, yeah. So that I'm really excited to see get more support and rolled out. Nice. It's early, but the apps just have to implement the support. so this week we have i feel i'm feeling like it's kind of a summer song i don't know you listen and be the decider but if you boost the song while it's playing 95 of your sats will go to the artist and it's She's On Video by Graffiti. Oh, we do have some boosts, and we have ourselves a caller. And I say the caller goes to the front of the line. What do you say, Angie?
Yeah, I think so, too. All right. Let's do it. Let's see if our caller is there. Caller, hello. Welcome to the launch. Are you there? I am there. It's Wes with a beach report. Nailed it. Hello, Wes. Welcome to the show. Hello. Wes is at the beach. Tell us about it. How's it going, Wes? Oh, it's going great. I'm outside staring at the Pacific Ocean, And I wanted to report that just down the street, there is a location called Winters by the Sea. I think it's open all year round because here's the review. We enjoyed a nice midweek stay in our RV at Winters by the Sea. The site is a quiet neighborhood, part of the Ocean Beach waterfront with no traffic noise. There was a...
Beach reception. You know, it's funny. It's also the name of... This is my little attempt. Wes, did you know? You know, coax you all down here. I mean, we got a spot. Wes, did you know it's also the name of a historical romance novel? Oh, even better. I mean, given the sort of weird three-way with you two in the van. Hey. So I have a question for you, Wes. You've seen two oceans in the last week or so. What do you think? Which one is better? It's got to be the Pacific. It's got to be. You know, come on. Yeah, I think we saw bigger waves at the Atlantic, which makes sense because it's the angry ocean. Yeah.
But in terms of beach rocks and just sheer scale, I got to give it to the Pacific. And I think it's winning on the ocean noise roar sound, too. Oh, yeah. As a podcast, we care the most about. Yeah, it's a powerful ocean with powerful fish in it. And the Atlantic's a dirty, angry ocean. So, you know, it's obvious. Really. Wes and I are, like, you know, culinary buddies. So which one tastes better, Wes? Oh, you know that? But I'll have to let you know when I get back from the trip. I have more homework to do. Yeah. Do some studying. All right, Wes. It was great to hear from you. Thanks for calling.
Have a great show. Yeah. Have a great trip at the beach. We'll talk soon. Bye. How about that, Wes Payne? Bye, Wes. Bye. All right. Thank you, Wes. That's fun. A beach report. I was hoping he would call. Now, we do have some great boosts that we want to get to. And our baller boost this week is from the always handsome and fantastic supporter, Adversaries 17. and this came in last week adversaries writes live boost thank you 64 000 sats hex drop came in with 17 444 sats hmm, They say the first boost goes to the lunch. I'll take the daily special, please. You got it. Mac and cheese coming your way.
Getting hungry. Also, they continue. Fellow hashtag van lifer here. What is the post-Boston plan for the van? Any trips planned? What gets fixed next? So you heard about the licensing part. That was the immediate next thing. That is solved. Check. But then immediately, Chris, you and I were like, well, what do we do next? There's like a giant list of need-to-dos and would-be-nice-to-dos and then a range of, I think, ambitions. Yep. Various trips we want to do. I think probably the first big trip coming up is you're headed to my place.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, for our summer road trip. Wait, are you driving the van there? Well, I think he's going to carpool. You know, we're going to caravan. This might be a thing. Oh, are you here for a couple weeks? Well, I did bring my cats. Oh, yeah, right. So I could stay a couple weeks. Yes, of course. And then caravan a bet. Wow. Have the cats been in it yet? No. No. Not yet. I wonder, are they road cats? They are quite road cats. Great. I realized that now we're up to something like 1,800 kilometers together, which is, I don't know, 1,200 miles, something like that.
They had to car camp on the way over here, and it got cold. I was telling our dear producer Jeff the fact that I'm here with the cats because we sent him photos of us working on the van. He's like, how are you back in the States already? and it turns out my cats are more they've been to more countries than Jeff has so. Jeff get on that passport we gotta change that yeah he is working on it and I think as far as like long term road trips go I know like a big rock as they say would be the Texas Linux Fest in October yeah. That is really one of the goals we set early on.
Yeah if we could do that on a budget and it's not too hot I think that would be a fantastic trip and it gives us time to get a working electrical system in there for the interior and all that. I think in the members portion of the show, you had mentioned the odometer is kind of high on the list. Too. Yeah, there's a little problem with trying to judge what speed you're driving at. There's all that. Oh, and the speedometer. The longer you drive it, the more accurate. It starts to get in within a 5 to 10 mile per hour range if you drive it for a while. It does bounce constantly, so you have to do the averaging live.
When you first start it up and first start driving, it's bouncing from 0 miles per hour to like 100 or whatever the max is. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Oh my gosh, like a windshield wiper. Let's clean the speed. It also clicks too. It goes like click, click, click, click, click. So it's like a hilarious. That's probably a cool sound. You could use Google Maps to tell you how fast you are going. That's what we were doing. That's so cool. We had the phones. So it was fine. Practically speaking, we knew what speeds we were going. But I don't think a cop would take that answer.
No. Chris, since you and I had to do that in the van when we drove it up here, I kind of got used to doing that. So in my car on the way just yesterday, on the way here, I did like, what, an eight-hour drive, something like that with the cats? Yeah. I put the map up to, like, judge my speed because, I don't know, I kind of like glancing over at the real speed. It turns out my speedometer is totally wrong on my actual vehicle. It's off by, like, something like three, four kilometers per hour. Good to know. So I've been driving slower than I thought. Oh, so that's the reason. I actually trained myself with the RV because from the moment I started driving, I think, or pretty close to it, I put a little Garmin nav on the dash because the thing didn't have any built-in nav.
And that has a speedometer on it. And since I basically put that in there from the moment I started driving, I never trained myself to look at the speedometer. I always just look at the navigator. That's what I'm starting to do, you bastard. But then what happens is like I need Hedir or the co-pilot to update the route. So then they have to take the navigation. I'm like, you have my speedometer. Literally one time I'm like, I don't know what speed I'm going. And Hedir's like, look at the speedometer. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah, right.
Yeah, I noticed Google Maps is one mile per hour less than mine. Oh, okay. One is, I think, in the acceptable range. Yeah, I think so. Too. There is some float in the phone's accuracy. Right. That's what I'm figuring is just a, yeah. Chris, you have this amazing app that you use for this. Do you remember what it's called? Oh, yeah. I love this app. It's called Where Am I, which is great because I'll often stop somewhere. I'm like, where am I? And so I type that in there. He loses himself often. But what it does is it gives you the address that you're currently at, the longitude and latitude, the altitude, the county, the state.
Wow. And that's when you're traveling. Yeah. Kind of handy. Oh, my gosh. But then the other thing it does, which is sort of neat, is it then shows you any Wikipedia article related around you. Which, again, is kind of nice when you're traveling because you can find famous places. Right. I was going to say, like, to geographical. Yeah. So my location. And then it shows them on a map. And then the other thing it does, which Brent's always teasing me, is it has a speedometer. And right now. It's one mile per hour. It says I'm going one mile per hour here in the studio. You're going places, Chris.
It's kind of funny. It's a good app, but sometimes it thinks I'm going one mile per hour when I'm not. Oh, Mr. West Payne boosted in with 3,333 sats. He said, so whose name is on the Vamoose registration? Did Sneaky Chris get a new van? And does Hedeea know? So there is a recent song of Chris falling in love with another man's van. You're saying I love another man's van? It is complicated, Chris. I mean, the van might be legally in my name right now, but that doesn't mean anything. I don't know how I feel about this now. I thought it was a good idea from a logistical point of view, but now I'm starting to feel a little betrayed here.
You're in a van triad now. You realize that? You appreciate that? Like, you brought another man into your van relationship. I mean, you did sleep in it recently. The funny thing was is, I mean, I think Adia knew it was on the table of options, but she didn't technically find out until dinner that night. That's true. After it was all done, that's true. I'm having flashbacks of not finding out about things until way after the fact. I move quick sometimes. Okay? I move quick. I love how the registration lady was like, oh, are you going to be on the title too? And you're like, no, no, he's just an observer.
I said you were my observer mechanic. Oh, yeah. No, it's true. You know, for now at least. at least for now, until we get everything sorted out. But I felt like this was probably the cleanest trajectory when it goes time to import it. Oh, you seem to think that. Yeah, you seem perfectly fine with how this trajectory's going. You know, well, it came on quick. I thought we'd have like a couple of days of like debating our options and whatnot, but it just went so smooth. It was like, don't stop it now. Of course, I got suckered with the $360 licensing bill too. Amen. Sounds like that's how much you're selling it to Brett for.
Ooh. There you go. Also, just shout out to Odyssey Westray. He boosted him below the 2,000 sat cutoff, but he was supporting our track that week. And he said, I always love the music on the JB podcast. And that also went to Nostra. So all of Odyssey's followers on Nostra also saw him linking to that song. Nice. So that's really cool. Thank you. Nice. Thank you to everybody who supported this here gosh darn show. We had eight of you stream sats. I'd love to see that tick up a little bit, but we had eight of you stream sats as you listened. And we stacked 7,147 sats.
Do you remember our dramatic sound effect? Mm-hmm. And then when you combine that with our boosters, we stacked a humble but appreciative 92,924 sats. So I think a lot of us are probably familiar with the cat poop parasite that can get in your brain and make you susceptible to mind control by cats. Like we're all pretty. What? All right. Here's a little clip. I love cats, so don't write. But our lovable felines may be carrying a parasite. And Elise Coulter found it can affect your brain. Elise? Yeah, Jack. Well, the parasite actually lives inside of your cat and they can shed it at any time. But is this tiny organism you see here, is it actually something to worry about?
It sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. There's something in the air. That's invading your body. There's someone in your bed, and it looks like you. But the truth is, it's real. It's a parasite that can infect humans. This single-celled parasite is called Toxoplasma gondii. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 60 million people in the U.S. are already infected. Typically, they don't have symptoms and they don't know they've been infected. Ike Northern is the director of infectious disease testing at Compunet. Northern says the culprits are... Cats tend to be one of the main reservoirs.
The parasite... All right, so I think this is, a lot of us know about this, right? Yeah, we still love these cats. Mm-hmm. That might explain a lot about me, you know. But a microbiologist by the name of Bill Sullivan has been exploring a new dimension to this parasite. And it appears the parasite can decapitate sperm. So, cat poop. Yep. Parasites. Yep. Are the new birth control. Right? Just load up on cats. No wonder why crazy cat ladies never get pregnant. Right. Better than surgery. Did you say never get pummeled? Pregnant.
Oh, pregnant. They now say that toxoplasma is affecting up to 50% of the world's population. Whoa. Right. Yeah, we have way more parasites. Yeah, we swim in them. But there are other countries that do regular cleanses. And in America, we're like, let's eat more crappy food that makes them worse and feeds them all these pets. So, Chris, you didn't quite finish that sentence. Uh-huh. It says, infecting up to 50% of the world's population through contaminated food, water, and undercooked meat. So you're blaming all this on my cats. Oh, no, no. No, only about some of it. Only some of it.
I feel cheated. Here in the West, it commonly comes from the cats. But in other parts of the world, it's bad food. Um, but a 2021 study in Prague found that over 86% of infected men have had semen anomalies. So they looked at some past studies from China around toxoplasma. They looked at a couple of other studies. And then in 2025, another study took it further by exposing human sperm directly to the parasite, observing significant damage within just five minutes, including decapitation and cell invasion attempts. All right. So these are single cells, so they're not visible.
So you can't collect them and just have them around post shenanigans. There's a paste for that. Anyways, I just thought, wouldn't it be funny if, well, not funny, but wouldn't it be ironic if like society begins to depopulate and then we discover it's because of our love for cats? I mean, I'm just saying maybe. I mean, they did have to try to find other reasons for infertility, right? Right. Yeah, I don't want to blame it on everything. There's my bacon. So I have a question here. Okay. That's exciting. So on show days, Chris, you come in nice and early into the studio and you like start putting together a show and you got some ideas, you know, of conversations we've had and things.
You're wondering what influenced this going into the show? How did you predict that question? Well, I noticed you brought two cats with you. Oh, so you're like now feeling like I'm endangering your little gents? Is that the problem? I need a muse, Brent. I need a muse. I can't lie. Well, and then to make it even more perfect, he asked me, what are you thinking about for catching up with Ange? I'm like, how about having a dog again? Yeah, well, that's perfect. And I'm like, okay. So perfect. So this is just an animal-centric episode. All right, Ange.
Yes. Now, before we get out of here, you know every now and then I like to pitch a good investment. I've been watching for investments. I've got – so I figured the best way to make a smart, life-changing investment is to just randomly pick from a wheel of possible investments. So on the wheel this week, I have a hidden in Seattle property. Okay. A Wyoming private castle. a getaway cave a vintage zombie ranch and Pope Leo's childhood home. Who's Pope Leo? The new Pope. The new Pope. Oh, okay. I thought you were calling Leo Laporte Pope Leo now. So I thought I missed something.
That would be so good. Only Leo in my life is Leo. Okay, so Hidden in Seattle sounds like it should stay hidden. I would be down with that. It's for people who like to mess with religion, Chris. I sent Leo Laporte our stickers and he showed them live on his stream. So I've put them all on a roulette style wheel for you. I was just going through them. I mean, you can do that, but let me just tell you my initial. Yeah, yeah, sure. Real quick thought. Hidden in Seattle should stay hidden. Wyoming private castle? Probably not quite the castle that I'm thinking. A getaway cave sounds like it is literally a hole in the side of a hill.
I like that. Vintage zombie ranch. Oh, my God. I mean, spread out a little bit, right? Halloween time, maybe? Yeah. Pope Leo's childhood home? I mean, I don't know. I don't even know on that one. That's a great investment if you think about it. As long as he's a good pope. If he's a bad pope, it could be a bad investment. So I feel like since these are too hard, they're all good, they're all clear winners, we'll just leave it to random chance, which is how everybody should invest. Let's see it. All right, here we go. No, it's rigged.
It's rigged. It's rigged. All right, so you got Pope Leo's childhood home. All right, so this one is fascinating. So a flipper bought this house in the Chicago suburbs for $60,000, $66,000. Can I click on it? Yeah. Okay. Which is probably all this house is worth. Then they gutted the interior, not appreciating the fact that it had historical significance because it didn't yet at the time. Well, yeah, it clearly wasn't. Yeah. They gutted the interior, but they're still trying to now flip it. And they've gone from selling it for $200,000 to now unlisting it and putting it up on auction and it's expected to go for millions of dollars.
Oh, well, okay, so it's not even affordable. Well, I mean, you know, maybe you could get it at a cheap price. I don't know. It was built in 1949. It's 1,050 square feet. It's tiny. It is tiny. Yeah, it's a small 1,000 square feet. It's like weirdly modernized. The primary bedroom is 90 square feet, so they're pretty small rooms. Laundry is 64 square feet. Yeah, aw. No? All right. We'll do. Okay, then. Okay, well, you can pass on one. That's fair. We'll do another one. Last chance. It likes red. It favors red. All right. So this one is the Seattle Hidden Home.
All right. It's going to hit home. So the Seattle Hidden Home, I couldn't believe when I found this one. So really appreciate it. First, you got to look at the picture. It is about the size of a shed. It looks like a doghouse. Yeah. Or a doghouse. A big doghouse. A big, yeah. Yeah. One bath, one bed. Oh, my gosh. 460 square feet, $220,000. This is insane. This is, do you see the location? You got to look at the location. It's even better. I mean, I see the barbed wire fence like a prison and next to a commercial building. Yeah. So the kitchen window's got a barbed wire fence, which is, you know, for safety. The interior is a little rough because it's been used for industrial purposes.
But the real magic comes when you look at the Google Maps of where this thing's at. They have wedged it between a bunch of freight, like where a freight drops off a bunch of containers and an industrial warehouse building. and it's on the actual harbor in Seattle where they load and unload from the harbor all the time. Oh, it'd be so loud. And you know what's interesting is they don't show a picture of the harbor at all. No, they don't. They're not like, this is a view. You could throw a rock to the water. It's so close to the water, but it is just not the waterfront view you want at all.
That's horrible. I know. But what's so weird about it and truly bizarre, and I'll put the link in the show notes, is it's this teeny tiny house just wedged between factory buildings and shipping stuff. Yeah. It doesn't even look leveled. It looks like somebody refused to sell and so industry just built around them. Yeah. Yeah, there's a house like that by my house. It's black too. And they're going to build this whole community around a black house. I know. I thought about this for Wes though. You know, it is waterfront property. It's, you know, for three bedroom, three bath in downtown Seattle.
Well, we don't really know, I suppose, the ultimate. Oh, it's one bad. One bedroom, one bath. My bad. Yeah, I was going to say. It's 460 square feet. There's not much there. Yeah. All right. There you go. Vintage zombie ranch and getaway cave we can look at another time. Oh, my gosh. This castle is not affordable. What? $14 million? You finance that. You don't worry about it. You finance it, Angel. But taxes. It is a legit castle amongst the trees. 9,470 square feet. Oh my goodness, I love the glass. Oh my gosh, did you see that stairwell?
Yeah, it's amazing. I think we found the one she likes. I do, oh my gosh. She's got expensive taste over there. This looks like a castle you'd see in the old world, not in Wyoming. I mean, it's immaculate, it's beautiful, marble everywhere. This can't be real. It's real. Right? As long as you got $13.4 million. Yeah. That seems cheap for this thing. Yeah. Built in 92, so it actually works out to be $1,400 a square foot. There's a spiral staircase. Yeah, I know. I want to know who built this. This is so cool. Modeled after the iconic North Weston castle. Let's all chip in. A JB castle.
It's based on one that is nestled in the Alps. It captures German architecture and grammar. Oh my gosh, it really is a cave. There's a moose head in it. Six million dollars for a cave? Well, come on though, Ange. This is a great investment. It's a getaway cave. It looks like it's going to collapse. I know, but you could sell it to like Zuckerberg or somebody for like, you know. End of days? 12 million, yeah, for their bunker. It's a huge cave. I mean, honestly, you could fit like a fleet of vehicles in here. 174,000 square feet.
Six million dollar cave. In Kansas. What the heck? I mean, these are some opportunities, right? And if you think about it, it's actually a great deal because it works out to just be $34 a square foot. I think you have too much time on your hands. I have questions about the cave because i thought i don't know how it works here in the you know states of united america or whatever you call it um but i thought when you bought a plot of land like you owned the surface rights or something no that's just your crazy country that's. Your crazy country.
Okay if. You discover something precious on your land here you get you get to own it yeah 108,900 square feet of usable space 31 acres of potential commercial space located in the heart of america 10 minutes from interstate 44 it's um also it could be they say here an executive home there's three separate wells on site. Only need one but that's cool. So okay would you like the cave out of all of these or do you think no no okay. There's nothing even built it's just literally holes. Yeah but six million bucks seems like a lot but when you break it down to square feet it's only 34 bucks hard.
To heat though i gotta say. Yeah yeah maybe you just have to have a bunch of fires. Probably out of all these, the Seattle home is the most practical, assuming that Pope Leo's childhood home probably ends up going for a million bucks. That's crazy. I thought so. I thought you'd like those. Is it weird that I kind of like a lot of these? Yeah, I took a look at the ranch. Oh, you did? I couldn't leave that out. Yeah. I looked at all of them now. But the zombie ranch, why do you call it a zombie ranch? It's called Lonesome Ranch. Because it just looks like the kind of place you end up. Where you're going to die?
Yeah. No, like during a zombie apocalypse, you're like, for some reason, Airbnb in this place. And then a zombie, and you're like, it could be a movie set. Sure. It is 12 bedrooms, five bathrooms. but it is also unaffordable at 3.5. Million dollars well but it comes with a really cool work truck. Does it come with a helicopter right. Yeah it does have a helicopter pad it does have a helicopter pad this is more like owning a whole town yeah. This is like yeah if we want to get away from civilization. Or create a podcast compound yeah exactly yeah they they break down the individual properties here at the bottom of the description there's a lot of individual properties in there, 45 minute flight to Los Angeles so there you go alright wait.
There's a door here it says Sweetwater Mine 1927 so does it have a. Mine on it too? It does so it's like the best of the cave we all go in 3.5. Mil everybody gets a house everybody gets a spot and we got a podcast compound that's all. I'm in boomsies. Alright that's it for us Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to the launch this week. Links to what we talked about are at weeklylaunch.rocks. Love it if you joined us live next Tuesday. Catch it in your podcast app at around 1130 a.m. Pacific. And that's converted at jupiterbroadcasting.com slash calendar. Of course, the show releases on Wednesdays for your convenience after it's been given a little love from Editor Drew.
Thank you so much for being here from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
