Podcast Notes Weekly: Oct 19–Oct 25, 2026
The takeaways from 28 podcast notes I wrote this week (Acquired, Asianometry, Macro Musings with David Beckworth, Bloomberg Odd Lots, The Circuit, Invest Like the Best and more). Two to four sentences per episode, with a link to each full post.
Contents
- What I listened to this week
- Acquired — episode of 2026-10-18
- Asianometry — episode of 2026-10-18
- Macro Musings with David Beckworth — episode of 2026-10-19
- Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-19
- The Circuit — episode of 2026-10-19
- Invest Like the Best — episode of 2026-10-20
- Medsider — episode of 2026-10-19
- Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-20
- Cheeky Pint — episode of 2026-10-20
- Columbia Energy Exchange — episode of 2026-10-20
- The Compound and Friends — episode of 2026-10-20
- Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-21
- Supply Chained — episode of 2026-10-20
- Tech Wave (科技浪) — EP160
- Business Breakdowns — episode of 2026-10-22
- Gooaye (股癌) — EP707
- Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-22
- Caibaogou (財報狗) — EP571
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann — episode of 2026-10-22
- The Compound and Friends — episode of 2026-10-23
- Dwarkesh Podcast — episode of 2026-10-22
- MacroVoices — EP554
- The Meb Faber Show — episode of 2026-10-23
- Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-23
- War on the Rocks — episode of 2026-10-22
- Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-24
- Gooaye (股癌) — EP708
- MacroMicro (財經M平方) — EP219
She finished, drew the pick across the strings — one sound, like silk being torn. East boat, west boat, not a word from anyone; only the autumn moon, white on the river.
— Bai Juyi, “Song of the Pipa Player” (Tang dynasty, 816; my own translation)
What I listened to this week
This week (Oct 19–Oct 25) I wrote notes on 28 podcast episodes. Here are the takeaways from each one in one place. If an episode catches your eye, the link under it goes to the full post.
Acquired — episode of 2026-10-18
Notes after listening to Acquired’s October 18, 2026 episode on Seinfeld: how roughly $5 billion in syndication revenue flowed over thirty years, and how the now-repealed Fin-Syn rules created an ownership structure that can’t be rebuilt today.
Read the full post: Seinfeld’s Seven Billion Dollars: How a Sitcom Nobody Wanted Kept the Equity
Asianometry — episode of 2026-10-18
Notes on Asianometry’s 2026-10-18 episode: India’s software export business began with a rule requiring any company importing a computer to earn back double its price in software exports. This piece unpacks how a constraint built a capability, and the conditions under which that capability stops paying.
Macro Musings with David Beckworth — episode of 2026-10-19
Swap “do you support central bank independence” for “independent to do what” and an empty question turns into an answerable one. Listening notes on Macro Musings (2026-10-19): Christina Skinner, just back from the US Treasury, on FSOC’s new framing, how growth relates to financial stability, the supervisory posture toward AI, and the argument behind her forthcoming book.
Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-19
Notes from the 2026-10-19 Bloomberg Odd Lots live show in Chicago, where DRW founder Don Wilson discussed GPU futures, compute hedging and token spreads. The contracts discussed are not yet trading and the regulatory situation may change.
The Circuit — episode of 2026-10-19
Notes on the October 19, 2026 episode of The Circuit covering SEMICON West and OCP: TSMC’s larger reticle, N5 fabs converted to N3, TSMC staff doing site checks at data centers, and why liquid cooling, optics and 800VDC cannot all happen at once.
Invest Like the Best — episode of 2026-10-20
Vanta has 16,000 customers after eight years, with growth and margins better than five years ago, yet the market pays a third of the old multiple; the founder’s answer is to eat token costs to buy usage now and fix pricing later. Listening notes on Invest Like the Best EP.496. Vanta founder Christina Cacioppo on token pricing, eating inference costs to buy usage, an eight-year codebase turning into debt, the talent war, and the multiple compression.
Medsider — episode of 2026-10-19
In the 19 October 2026 episode of Medsider, Vital Signals CEO Tom Moss describes going from an emergency room reading of 250 systolic to shipping a calibration-free blood pressure ring, and the trade-offs behind a 792-subject validation study, component sourcing, and licensing versus building.
Read the full post: You Can’t Boil the Ocean: The Trade-Offs Behind a Blood Pressure Ring
Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-20
Bloomberg Odd Lots, live in Chicago, October 20, 2026: CME Group CEO Terry Duffy on loosening rules, perpetual futures, and the real bottleneck behind 24/7 markets.
Read the full post: 2,500 Filings, Zero Denials — Notes on Odd Lots with CME’s Terry Duffy
Cheeky Pint — episode of 2026-10-20
Notes from the 20 October 2026 episode of Cheeky Pint: Toto Wolff on the F1 cost cap, team valuation multiples, and how he liquidated nine dot-com holdings before the 2000 crash.
Columbia Energy Exchange — episode of 2026-10-20
Notes from the October 20, 2026 Columbia Energy Exchange with Julie Kozeracki of the DOE’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing: how a 30–50% investment tax credit caps overrun risk, why a $17.5 billion long-lead-item order buys back three years, and why the real obstacle to new build sits with equity investors rather than permitting.
The Compound and Friends — episode of 2026-10-20
Semiconductor equipment stocks fell nine days straight and the market never panicked — AI corporate credit spreads began separating good borrowers from bad ones, which is what discipline looks like. Notes after listening to The Compound and Friends from October 20, 2026: Netflix losing the attention war, SpaceX swapping out its own category, what widening AI credit spreads actually signal, and what market breadth can and cannot predict.
Read the full post: Doubt Without Fear: The AI Bond Market Starts Sorting Good Risk From Bad
Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-21
Robinson says the US is ‘not yet’ failing, but Americans without a college degree earn no more than they did 50 years ago — he calls that a failure of inclusion; he also expects China’s unreformed politics plus opened economy to go off the rails, while admitting he cannot say how or when. Listening notes on the Bloomberg Odd Lots live episode from Chicago (21 Oct 2026) with Nobel laureate James Robinson: extractive institutions, the failure of inclusion, and how industrial policy avoids capture.
Supply Chained — episode of 2026-10-20
The 20 October 2026 episode of Supply Chained covers the TSMC–Terafab talks. This post unpacks John’s argument that captive-only fabs lock their own yields: how it follows, who survived it historically, and the conditions under which it fails.
Tech Wave (科技浪) — EP160
Notes after listening to TechWave EP160. Anthropic now merges 30,000 code changes a day and built its own version control system, Scion; SpaceXAI engineer Lauren Tan ships 2,500 code updates a month. The bar has moved from model capability to how clean your environment is.
Business Breakdowns — episode of 2026-10-22
Affirm underwrites every single transaction at a fixed rate with a balance designed to reach zero, so a rate shock hits its growth rather than its credit losses — and that difference is the backbone of the American Express comparison. Notes from Business Breakdowns EP.249 on Affirm: why Fraser Christie files it alongside American Express, which path a rate shock travels through its P&L, and the conditions under which the whole argument breaks.
Read the full post: Affirm: The Numbers Make Sense Once You File It Under Payment Network
Gooaye (股癌) — EP707
Good fundamentals don’t make a stock move; where the money already sits decides who rises first. The same gap shows up in your body — feeling fine and reading fine are different things.
Read the full post: He Stopped at Kilometre Seven — Notes on Gooaye EP707
Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-22
Notes on the 22 October 2026 Odd Lots interview with Bhaskar Sunkara, co-author of The Blueprint: he takes the Mises–Hayek side of the calculation debate, keeps markets and consumer choice in his model, has new firms borrow from public banks at risk-priced rates, caps manager-to-worker pay ratios at four or six to one, and sets benchmark wages by occupation (a line cook at $15 an hour) — while calling the efficiency claim ‘a very soft claim’ himself.
Read the full post: Odd Lots Notes: A Socialist Who Says Markets Are Good
Caibaogou (財報狗) — EP571
Listening notes on Caibaogou episode 571 (22 October 2026): at the SpaceX earnings call the AI segment posted US$7.56bn in quarterly revenue, up 830% year on year, overtaking Starlink’s US$5.25bn for the first time; the same week at the TPCA show in Taipei, some PCB machines carried 30-month lead times.
Read the full post: Caibaogou Ep.571: A Six-Month Payback, and a Machine You Wait Thirty Months For
Catalyst with Shayle Kann — episode of 2026-10-22
Notes after listening to Catalyst with Shayle Kann (2026-10-22) — where the methane in a behind-the-meter gas data center actually leaks from, how the 380-million-tonne figure is built, why roughly half of it can be avoided for under 1% of project cost, and which link in that arithmetic is weakest.
Read the full post: The Methane Bill for Data Centers: Same Plant, Double the Emissions
The Compound and Friends — episode of 2026-10-23
Listening notes on The Compound and Friends, 23 Oct 2026. CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger on 194,000 initial jobless claims, falling consumer charge-offs, and an $8 bottle of water at the movies: why aggregate data and a household price list can both be right, how media negativity got built, and why the top half of the K has no price ceiling.
Dwarkesh Podcast — episode of 2026-10-22
Intel’s CTO says leading-edge wafer output can roughly double, not 10x; the binding constraint is equipment lead time, not money or buildings. Notes on the 22 October 2026 Dwarkesh Podcast tour of Intel’s fabs, working through why leading-edge wafer output is capped by equipment lead times rather than capital.
Read the full post: You Want Ten Times. Upstream Offers Two — Inside Intel’s Fabs with Dwarkesh
MacroVoices — EP554
It discusses frameworks and where the risks sit; it contains no stock recommendations, price targets, or buy/sell advice.
The Meb Faber Show — episode of 2026-10-23
Listening notes on The Meb Faber Show #655: StoneX global macro strategist Vincent Deluard uses the 200-day moving average, single-stock correlation, tax receipts and a shadow oil price to explain how an index at an all-time high can coexist with a bear market in most stocks.
Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-23
The version of a theory that travels is the version with the caveats stripped out. To learn when a principle fails, read the author’s letters, not just the masterwork.
Read the full post: She Outsold Jane Austen and Nobody Remembers Her: Odd Lots on Maria Edgeworth
War on the Rocks — episode of 2026-10-22
On 2026-10-22 War on the Rocks hosted Eric Juan and Jeff Linquist on EEG-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation for post-traumatic stress. These are listening notes: what holds up in the 52%, 68% and 170-morphine-equivalent figures, and where cross-trial comparison breaks down.
Bloomberg Odd Lots — episode of 2026-10-24
Independent fine dining has negative returns as an industry; North Pond lasted 29 years on a site nobody else bid for and a farmer network it built itself — while wine falling from 33% to 24% of sales removes its most profitable line. Notes after listening to Bloomberg Odd Lots, 24 Oct 2026: North Pond owner Richard Mott on why independent fine dining has negative returns as an industry, why wine held at 33–34% of sales for 28 years and then fell to 24%, and how a shared kitchen spreads capital and licensing across many small food businesses.
Gooaye (股癌) — EP708
Notes on Gooaye EP708 (24 October 2026): the Ken Griffin interview the host relays, which parks GPUs next to the airline business; a friend’s question about whether a gross margin at a record high can go any higher; why positioning only sets the depth of a fall; and the depreciation talk from a hotel room during a typhoon holiday.
Read the full post: Gooaye EP708: A Car Is a Depreciating Asset, and So Are You
MacroMicro (財經M平方) — EP219
Change the recovery-rate assumption on the same CDS quote from 40% to 20% and the five-year default probability drops from 60% to about 50%. A frightening number is three things stacked together — a market quote, an assumption, and an insurance premium — and you only learn which one scares you by pulling them apart.
This article is an educational discussion of investment method. It is not advice to buy or sell any individual security, offers no target prices, and does not analyze any current holding. Investing carries risk; make your own decisions or consult a qualified professional.
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