Art by Clark Miller. Portraits courtesy of TBPN.How the ‘Technology Brothers’ Seized Silicon Valley
At a time when tech has been at loggerheads with the traditional media, the industry elite have gladly accepted a warm embrace from a pair of insidery talk show hosts, John Coogan and Jordi Hays.
In recent months, John Coogan and Jordi Hays, co-hosts of “TBPN,” a daily tech news talk show that has captured the attention of Silicon Valley’s investors and founders, have followed the same morning routine. The two men meet in downtown Los Angeles at the members-only Jonathan Club to work out, then sauna together while reading print copies of The Wall Street Journal.
The image of Coogan, 36, and Hays, 29, shvitzing away in such a manner is, well, a little ridiculous in this day and age, since it is hard to picture anyone under 40 reading a physical newspaper—let alone two terminally online talk show hosts doing so in a sauna. The pair love a gag, so I asked Coogan if they were pulling my leg. He insisted they weren’t.
“This was in the sauna,” he said, pointing to a bedraggled A-section of The Journal beside him on a table in the club’s dining room. “It has sweat all over it.”