And Sunday, April 8th, 2018, this is your award-winning Gipo Nation Media Assassination, Episode 1023.
This is no agenda.
Work in the double D for my OTG to share with the NA family.
And broadcasting live from the capital of the Drone Star State, downtown Austin, Tejas, in the Clunio, in the morning, everybody.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley, where it's P-U-K-E, I'm John C. Devorak.
Okay, snappy.
Not bad.
You may not have had your tea yet, but the brain is functioning.
The B12 is disseminating.
Yeah, the B12. The B12. The B12 to you.
Oh man, late night last night.
We had the big Ronald McDonald House bandana ball.
The bandana ball?
The bandana ball!
Yeah, it was almost 900 people.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
Although, strangely...
Did they all wear bandanas?
Bandanas, cowboy hats, boots.
The problem was that it went down to 42 degrees yesterday in Austin.
All of a sudden.
Just bang?
Yeah, there's a big storm hitting Texas.
Yeah, and we got the wind, and it's a tent.
Just outside?
Yeah, it's a big outside tent.
I was actually, you know, because they had the sides down, but there were still two openings where they had a projector with a screen, you know, back projection.
And so the wind was going through this entire tent where people are eating, and everyone's like, you know, like...
The J.P. Morgan people are freaking out!
They weren't freaking out.
They were freezing.
So I find myself driving a 30-foot truck in front of the entrance.
Okay, I'll take care of this.
It was interesting last night.
You drove a big rig?
Well, not an 18-wheeler, obviously.
But I just went like, it's one you need a license for, I think.
I can do this.
No problem.
They're pretty liberal there in Texas when it comes to that sort of thing.
Yeah.
Oops, hold on a second.
Uh-oh.
What's up?
Do you want to restart now?
Remind me tomorrow.
Oh, no.
It's the Windows trick question of the day.
Oh.
Yeah.
Well, John, looks like you and me, the Lennon and McCartney of podcasting, are going to be on the list, finally.
Okay, good.
This is...
No, that is this...
To meet the president?
That is this coming week, but I'm going to the Netherlands tomorrow.
Yes, hi-ho.
To hi-ho.
Hi-ho to the lowlands.
To meet the queen.
And when you see them, you know what you're supposed to say when you see the queen?
Yeah, I know what I'm supposed to say.
Diddly diddly.
What is diddly diddly?
Or something.
I don't know.
It's not the right phrase.
I was going to say...
Dilly dilly.
That's what the phrase is.
Dilly dilly.
You have to explain.
I don't understand.
Well, dilly dilly is part of a Bud Light commercial or a Miller Light commercial.
It works so well, I can't remember which light beer it is.
Yeah, exactly.
And...
It's just a stupid series of commercials.
I think it's the Bud people because they put out – they're the Belgians.
They put out some funny stuff.
So what?
So on the – yeah.
And so on the – on the tweets and somebody says – sends this to me too and apparently – Things you can't say at the Masters tournament.
And Dilly Dilly is one of them?
Yeah.
And somebody sends this to me and says, Can you believe this?
And I said, No.
I can't believe it because it's not true.
Why would they even...
It's ridiculous.
Yeah.
Back in the day, commercials used to work better.
They had virality to them.
And I don't think Dilly Dilly worked very well.
Well, if you didn't know about it, obviously.
Because this bit, I'll say it instead of a commercial, this bit has been in play for at least nine months.
No, I've not seen it.
The list I'm talking about, though, is the Homeland Security database of journalists and media influencers, which was uncovered this week on the social nets.
What was uncovered was a Department of Homeland Security statement of work, which I think in regular businesses like a RFQ or an RFI or RFP. A request for proposal?
Yeah.
Media monitoring services.
And this is kind of...
Wait a minute.
It's kind of chilling.
Yeah.
Wait a minute, we're going to be monitored?
Yes.
Yay!
One more listener!
Finally!
Hey, value for value, guys!
I'm reading from the actual document, the statement of work, the tasks, online and social media monitoring.
So this database must have the ability to track global online sources for coverage relevant to Washington and the six media hubs.
The ability to track more than 290,000 global news sources, ability to track online print broadcast, cable radio trade and industry publications, local sources, national, international outlets, traditional news sources and social media.
The ability to track media coverage in over 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, ability to create up to 20 searches with each unlimited keywords, unlimited coverage per search, ability to change the searches of keywords at any given time, ability to create unlimited data tracks.
So they want to create a database of stuff so you can search it later.
So whoever picks up this contract, I don't want you to read the whole thing, but whoever picks up this contract has to do all this stuff?
Yes.
Where's Burrell's when we need him?
A little inside joke there.
Yeah.
And what are we categorized as?
Media influencers, I think.
Here it is.
The media engagement 24-7 access to password-protected media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers, etc., which is obviously where we are.
Bloggers, yeah.
We're under etc.
We're under etc.
Just below bloggers.
Yeah.
Ability to browse the database based on location and type of influencer.
Ad hoc searches with Boolean terms.
That's kind of standard.
Let's see.
For each influencer found, present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for, an overview of the previous coverage published by the media influencer.
I mean, this is kind of a Stasi-like database that they're putting together here.
Sounds like it, yeah.
It can't be good.
No.
But you're lucky, because you're going OTG. I wanted to save the OTG segment for...
I don't care if you save it or not.
I'm just saying, it sounds to me as though you've jumped ahead of the game.
Absolutely.
Yes, a take on a popular classic.
Yeah, you know me.
There you go.
Adam's OTG. I am OTG, baby.
That's right.
It's Chris Wilson with Melissa Tallon.
They're working together now, the Aussies.
We've created a monster.
Yes, great.
It's a troop now, I think.
If you have two people, aren't you a troop?
Aren't you a troop?
T-R-O-U-P-E. T-R-O-U-P-E. Yeah, Adam's O-T-G. You know me.
I'm moving that to the...
You know me.
O-T-G. You're only semi...
I have discovered so much in my quest, which we'll talk about in the C-block.
And you are in danger too, my friend.
Yeah, if I don't get out of the window.
More so than you know, actually.
Let's see.
What can we kick this show off with, besides the fact that we're on a list somewhere?
Well, we're on the list.
That's a good thing, and a bad thing, and a mediocre thing, and we're going to be taking off the list eventually when they try to...
Well, I'm going to be able to take that contract, by the way.
That contract.
Well, what are they going to pay, I wonder?
Maybe I should just bid it.
Yeah, the Curry-Dvorak Consulting Group should bid it.
Sure, we can do that work.
Yeah, I guess.
Hey, we're already spying on the media.
Yeah, this is true.
Yeah, so just one more step.
We've got to do a little more work, a little more writing stuff down.
Yeah.
Let's play a teaser.
Here's a teaser.
This is a classic, just for getting used to being in the Bay Area.
This is a teaser.
A teaser for the news.
Yeah.
Great teaser.
Oh.
You see, what happens is I immediately start looking at the tease for teaser.
Plus, a Bart passenger says this guy is smoking crack.
She's fed up with seeing open drug use.
We ask Bart, what are you doing to stop it?
On KPI X5 News.
Crack!
They're smoking crack on the Bart trains.
No way!
Shoot, man.
I saw an article.
Yes, it was a big conference.
There's always big conferences.
Oh, it's the International Gamers Conference.
There you go.
Let me see what this is from.
This is from SFGate.
International Gamers in SF for convention, quote, shell-shocked by Dangerous City.
More than 28,000 international gaming professionals converge, of course, at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center, where they nerded around.
But everyone, the feedback coming back was, stop hosting this in San Francisco.
We hate it here.
The city hates us being here.
It's aggressive.
People are being attacked on the street, being followed, being continuously harassed.
People have no idea.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
We're going to San Francisco.
And they're like, what is this?
Yeah.
How's that area?
What is the Moscone area like?
Well, actually, it's not that bad.
That's where the Intercontinental is.
Maybe you need to go there and check it out.
Maybe it's changed.
I know what they did.
No, that's what they did.
They started to head to the Apple store.
Ah.
Come on, let's face it.
What are they going to do when you're in San Francisco and you're just a nerd?
First thing you're going to do is, where's the Apple Store?
Let's go to the Apple Store and hang out.
Maybe somebody can demo the watch.
And so to get to the Apple Store, you've got to go toward Market Street and then take a left.
And now you're right in it.
You're in the middle.
Poop.
Needles.
Yes?
I'm sorry, go on.
I'm just saying this is going to be what happens.
When asked by fellow Twitter users to elaborate on his game developer conference experience, this particular guy was interviewed, claimed he intervened in mugging, he experienced racial abuse, Toxic dudes in events had his credit card skimmed,
and Airbnb hosts canceled last minute on heaps of people, and scores of devs had their rejected visas, had the visas rejected, and were hassled by TSA. Welcome to America, bitches!
Were you brown?
Well, I don't know if you can blame San Francisco for the visa hassle, but okay.
No, no, no, no.
Might as well.
It just doesn't matter.
I have another San Francisco story.
We had a big rainstorm over the weekend that came and went, and that's nice and sunny.
But the kind of coverage we had was, I thought this was kind of wrapped up the coverage.
Because, you know, the way, you know, a man on the street is what you want to do when you just ask anybody casually what they think.
But let's just start asking kids stuff.
We're trying to find puddles.
Why are you trying to find puddles?
We like splashing and...
That's the story in San Francisco.
That's the problem.
That's your San Francisco story.
Puddles.
Puddles.
Hey, what's your stammering clip?
Because I've got a stammering clip, too.
And I think that's interesting that we both have stammers.
This is a woman from the New York Times and other, you know, we've noticed this before that none of them should be on the media or on TV or being recorded or anything because they're terrible.
And this is a woman stammering, but this is actually a story about the, this is like, we can play it because she's kind of isolated.
But this woman presents it very poorly, but she's one of the women at the Times who dug up or found that apparently there's a race between the New York Times and other newspapers and the CIA to find all the papers they could find from abandoned offices that ISIS was occupying to find out how ISIS was running things.
And it turns out That ISIS was a pretty good bunch of bureaucrats.
They got a lot of stuff done.
And this report, I thought, was just fascinating because there was nothing that anyone wants to talk about.
What ISIS did is, soon after taking the city of Mosul, they announced on the loudspeakers of mosques that civil servants needed to go back to work.
And as a result, basically the entire public servant corps went back to work.
And so they kept the city going as they would have if they were working for the Iraqi government.
ISIS used the know-how of the Iraqi government to build its own state.
It built its state on the back of the one that came before.
Khamenei, from the people you spoke with there, is there any concern that after now the city has been leveled and all the fighting, the seeds of discontent have been sown?
Are they concerned that ISIS could come back?
Absolutely.
And you are seeing this even in the very first days of the liberation.
ISIS cells remain in this area.
You hear of suicide bombings routinely or people being kidnapped or altercations and deadly clashes with police.
The same grievances that allowed this group to take hold in the first place are still very much present.
People complain of the corruption of the Iraqi state, of not being given a fair shake unless they have what's called wasta or connections to people in power.
So all of that remains.
And the thing that was actually the most frightening, I think, to read in these documents and to see through interviews that I did with people is how good ISIS was at governing.
We don't often talk about this, but The streets were cleaner under ISIS than under the Iraqi government.
The sewers were less likely to overflow.
This is what people told us.
And the fact that the Iraqi state cannot take care of those basic things is the kind of thing that festers and causes people to show sympathy for this group.
Rukmini Kalamachi, thank you for your time.
You know, it's an interesting way, because most of these stammers or other things, a lot of them is, specifically if people are being interviewed, it's just to catch up in their brain and to figure out what they're going to say next.
And, you know, I do um, you do so um.
You know, there's lots of ways that people do that.
Yeah, there's a lot of ways you stall.
But this is an interesting one, just by repeating two words twice...
Yeah, she does that all the time, and somehow she incorporates up-talking in it.
Well, that's talent.
I mean, that's just...
Yeah, it's like walking and chewing gum.
That's not that easy.
One of our producers caught a fun little stammer on...
Stammering can also involve lying.
And this topic was actually about lying, about the president lying.
And I just thought that, wow, you think a New York Times reporter shouldn't be on television.
How about the television host?
Yeah.
Take on all the falsehoods, all the lies.
I mean, I've tried to do some real-time fact-checking.
This is the first time I've heard that.
But the conspiracy theory about voter fraud, which didn't even hold enough water.
Millions and millions of people.
I think that was an original explanation for losing the popular vote, re-upping the rapists in Mexico.
Take on some of just the lies.
Well, first of all, there is no...
That's a stutter.
That's different than a stammer.
The lies.
No.
Dynamite.
That's a beauty.
That's a beauty.
That's a gem.
Now, of course, this is the typical no agenda thing.
We kind of ignore what they're talking about and just ridicule the person, which is like going after the messenger.
I just wanted to go back to that ISIS thing.
I found it fascinating that people thought these guys...
You know why the streets were clean and the sewers ran perfectly?
Because if you didn't do your job, they'd shoot you.
You'd chop your head off.
You'd get a lot done that way.
Yeah.
Hmm.
We are here, hashtag America, near our hashtag target.
Soon.
Ow!
ISIS. America.
We will follow them to the gates of hell.
ISIS. America.
Yeah, we're ready for them.
Texas is ready.
Yeah, well, bring them.
Bring them on.
Bring them on, if you say.
I got a couple of, let's see, some good NPR clips.
Actually, following up on a very under-reported topic is the Awan brothers.
This is the Pakistanis who were running the IT department for the Democrats, had access to over 40 computers, servers, email, everything.
And downloaded terabytes.
Yes.
And they were hired by Debbie Washman Schultz, who was very pissed off at the Capitol Police that they had confiscated a laptop, which they actually had left in a phone booth.
It was her laptop.
They left it in a phone booth by accident, or by accident, who knows?
She was pissed off that she couldn't get her laptop back, and now it turns out there's no background checks.
And for some odd reason, the money hunting is all over this story.
It's Fox Business News, which, does anyone watch that?
I mean, it's on the way for me, on the way to MSNBC. It's on the way from one channel to the other.
It's on the way from One America News or whatever to MSNBC. So I usually, I stop.
If she's on, I'll stop.
Here's her follow-up reporting on this.
You say background checks are typically recommended for this position.
Why did they push back on the background checks and decide not to have any of these IT workers use background checks?
The House policy actually says that background checks are required.
But if you delve into the fine print, there's technically a loophole that these members may have been able to invoke that essentially allowed another member just to vouch for them.
So as casual as that, before you turn over the passwords that give these guys access to all the emails of these members of Congress and every file on their hard drives and all their staffers' hard drives, they just kind of ask casually, ask a friend, ask a fellow member of Congress and fill out this form.
And it turns out that all 44 members who employed Imran Awan, they never ran a background check.
And if they would have run this background check, it would have found out not only multiple criminal convictions, but $1 million bankruptcy, a dozen lawsuits, a lot of them about fraud, a dozen LLCs that they had with cryptic names like New Dawn 2001 and CIA.
It would have found a whole host of major red flags.
And the Democrats didn't do any of those checks.
As a result, they gave these guys access to everything.
And the IG determined that they were funneling data off the House network in really specific ways.
I love that.
Yeah, well, heaven forbid we discuss this story.
No, this would be no good.
Yeah, particularly with just everything that's going on with cyber, and, you know, is this truly being suppressed, maybe?
I mean, why else?
There's got to be some notice out there that says, all right, everybody, Ixnay on the Ebi Washman Ulche story, eh?
There's got to be something out there.
Why else would no one report on this except for Maria, who I guess can write her own ticket.
It's because no one cares.
That's why she can...
Hey, are you on that channel?
Report all you want, Maria.
Go for it.
And she is flanked now, nowadays, by Jason Chaffetz, a former Republican congressman?
Yeah.
Congressman.
Congressman, yeah.
Who's actually not that bad.
I kind of like him as a host.
I see him, he's filling in here and there.
He's not that...
He's always a good talker.
He is a good talker.
I think he did the Ingraham show once.
I didn't like that at all.
Here's the problem.
He's a very functional host.
He has the personality of a dishrag.
It's just...
I'm just talking purely from a television production standpoint.
Executive mode, yeah.
We need a jingle or something that goes, entering executive mode.
Now entering executive mode for when we talk about how hot chicks are on TV. Is that what you mean?
Yeah, because we don't really normally talk that way except when we're in executive mode and what we're doing in reality is ridiculing the people that talk that way.
Yes.
At the same time, being very frightening at showing how good we are at it.
We are executives of our own show.
This is true.
Here is a follow-on question.
This is about how it really came down, or it went down, what happened first, and the inventory of lost items.
I cut most of Chaffetz out.
Well, there's a couple different things going on.
I mean, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment suspected to have been stolen.
And that's basically what the IG started investigating.
And then it found that data was coming off the network, too.
And we don't know exactly what that data was.
We know that it had, quote, sensitive file names, according to the IG. And the reason we don't know more is because the House actually blocked...
Investigators from looking at some of this stuff.
So this is a cover-up, Jason.
I mean, this is coming in part from the House, House leadership, including on the Republican side.
And that's, from my experience, that's code for classified.
If they were able to type into classified information, they're going to put a big stiff arm to that and say, no, you can't look at it anymore.
But the inventory of here and what was stolen and accessed and what vulnerabilities that creates, that is a huge mess.
Okay.
We needed this jingle.
Classified!
Okay.
It's classified.
So let's wrap this up with, and again, Chaffetz, I think, is still in the hosting desk.
Final conclusion.
What show did they give him?
Is it on Fox Business?
Yes.
Well, no, I don't think he has a show.
I think he just fills in and he was sitting in with Maria.
I didn't see the whole thing.
They're testing him out.
They're testing him out.
That's right.
He's in the farm team.
They're going to bring him up for a couple of shows and put him back to the...
It's harmless.
Nothing's going to happen there on Fox Business.
He can't mess it up.
The only reason people are watching Maria's show is Maria.
Which is why we put her here, right?
I guess.
Right.
Come on.
All right, wrapping it up.
Yeah, and it's turning out that they were running the House of Representatives' IT policy like it was some rinky-dink mom-and-pop business.
There was basically no protection.
It is.
Hold on a second.
Hey!
Rinky-dink!
Where does that come from?
Rinky-dink.
That's got to go back to the 30s.
I don't know where it goes back to.
I'll tell you what, you can play in that clip and I will see if I can find it.
Yeah, and it's turning out that they were running the House of Representatives' IT policy like it was some rinky-dink mom-and-pop business.
There was basically no protections.
And the fact that the Democrats were even able to invoke this loophole is bad enough, but...
The idea that 44 of them would have independently decided to not run background checks on these guys who were Pakistani citizens, something's going on here.
And it seems like the members were looking the other way at these guys for long before Wasserman Schultz kept them on the payroll, even though the cops banned them from the network, and even before she threatened the Capitol Police officer because after Imran took her laptop and left it in a phone booth.
Yeah.
So the question is, why are the members ignoring this?
I mean, this is the biggest story that you never hear about.
It's a hack on the Congress by foreigners.
And the Democrats didn't care about it.
They didn't stop it.
These are the same people who are talking constantly about cyber breaches in Russia.
And if you care about one, you've got to care about the other.
So why haven't they addressed it?
I mean, there's a couple different reasons.
It could be as simple as this is deeply, deeply embarrassing to them.
The second one is that it basically destroys that Russian narrative just because it shows that they didn't actually care about cybersecurity and they haven't responded to this.
And then, thirdly, it could just be a question of, do these guys have something on members of Congress?
I mean, these guys, if you look into their background in the lawsuits, they've been accused of...
I've talked to a lot of people that know them.
They've done extortion-like behavior in the past.
Obviously, they could read Debbie Wasserman Schultz's emails around the time of that DNC hack.
They could read the emails of 44 other members.
Are members concerned?
Are they being blackmailed?
Are members concerned that if they speak out about this hack...
If they testify against these guys and they lock them up, that these guys have something on them.
I like that theory.
I like the idea that they might have something on them.
All right.
Rinky-dink.
Phrase from the shapes.
Well, it means shoddy or amateurish.
Rinky-dink.
But it says all I can get so far, I'm going to have to now do some work.
Is Origins in the 1800s Unknown.
Oh, that's no good.
So it came up.
Somebody used it.
It's probably one of those nickel novelists or somebody at that level or newspaper guy in the 1800s invented it.
It got caught.
Everyone thought it sounded good.
I don't know.
But now we have to find out.
And we will.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, I think this story is just interesting beyond...
I mean, really beyond what happened.
Why is it not a story?
That's very baffling.
It'll have to rise to the level of quote-unquote story eventually.
There's no way...
Because the thing is, they won't catch these guys.
It's just...
It's going to fester.
It will pop.
Good image there, but that's...
I'm not so sure.
I put money on it.
Well, it may be.
I mean, it's possible that the mainstream media is so corrupted by just Democrat protectionist thinking that maybe they'll never bring it up.
But I just can't believe that there's not somebody out to itch and to do this story.
You got a trip to Pakistan.
Yeah.
That's right.
There you go.
Interview the guys.
Exclusive interview.
Now you're thinking like a Lib Joe.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, no.
We screwed the Democrats.
Get these guys on tape.
It'd be fantastic.
Your Lib Joe friends are thinking that way right now.
How do I get a free trip to Pakistan?
No.
Let me think.
Let me think.
Oh, yes.
I know.
Perfect.
Yeah.
My Lib Joe friends.
Yep.
Alright, what do we got?
I saw this because I'm going to use it in the future.
I almost bought one clip from you.
Okay.
I almost bought one.
That's all it is.
That's not good.
It's good.
It didn't even cut it right.
Well, you cut it off or something.
No, I did not.
Here it is.
Your clip.
You know, I almost bought one.
You know, I almost bought one.
And I say, bleh.
You need to cut that off.
I didn't hear the bleh.
You know, I almost bought one.
Oh, oh, oh.
Bad.
I do.
You're right.
Well.
It's not an epic fail.
It's epic.
It's epic.
When you're changing a topic and you throw in an ISO and it's no good, it's a fail.
All right, let's do...
I've got a lot of lone clips here that really don't attach to it.
Why don't you get into a story?
Entertain me.
Okay, so the Russian oligarchs, there's a new Russian sanctions deal.
Ah.
And they decided that they went back to the old-fashioned way, even though nobody mentioned this was what happened originally.
Remember when Obama first sanctioned Russia?
It wasn't Russia.
It was these guys.
Yeah, a couple of dudes.
Some dudes.
They said, you guys, yeah, we're freezing your accounts.
If you see a dollar from you, you can't spend it anywhere.
We're going to lock you out.
Right.
And so then they went to different sectors and they started sanctioning this and that.
Well, they've gone back to the original idea.
And everybody, all the networks were playing it very poorly.
Andrea Mitchell had a report going on, and this guy's associated with Robert Manafort.
Paul Manafort.
Paul Manafort.
But I like Robert.
Bob.
Robert's good.
Bob Manafort.
So all these guys, anyway, all these reports on all the networks really stunk.
When you compare them to what PBS did, they dug up some guy who's kind of a minor expert, and he's in the UK. And he actually explained this quite nicely, I thought.
And he kind of nails it.
This is the Russian oligarchs targeted, and he's got some background on each of the guys.
Then he has a conclusion and then he makes some other commentary.
I just thought this was really interesting.
We turn to special correspondent Ryan Chilcote reporting tonight from London.
Ryan, thanks for joining us.
What makes these sanctions different from the sanctions that are already in place?
Well, these sanctions are very hard-hitting, and in contrast to the sanctions we've seen before, these go after some Russian billionaires specifically and exclusively for their ties, or at least they appear to, exclusively for their ties to President Vladimir Putin.
So in the past, the Trump administration, the Obama administration, has sought to have a link Between a specific event, whether it's the annexation of Crimea, whether it was fighting in eastern Ukraine, and the individual they were sanctioning.
But in this case, it's proximity to the Kremlin.
Another change is that very early on, we saw what they called sectoral sanctions.
Sectors of the Russian economy were sort of sanctioned.
To try and put pressure on those sectors, the oil industry.
In this case, very targeted, going after people that, at least in Washington, D.C., they think are close to President Putin.
Some of these people are close to President Putin.
Tell us about them.
What are some of the names that jump off the list at you?
Well, Oleg Deripaska is definitely top of the list, the most interesting of the individuals that has been sanctioned.
He's worth about seven billion dollars.
He has global business interests.
He's well known in the United States as having a business relationship with Paul Manafort.
Many people in the U.S. suspect that he may have acted as some kind of intermediary between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.
He has denied that.
So he's definitely interesting.
Big-time businessman.
Victor Vexelberg, another worth about $16 billion.
Former oil man, also in the metals industry.
Interesting choice because, in some ways, he's been behind the drive more recently to diversify the Russian economy away from oil and gas.
He's a huge fan of the United States.
He's a big investor in Silicon Valley.
And he's been trying to kind of So, I think this guy, the second guy they named.
Yeah.
Silicon Valley connection?
Interesting.
Yeah, and he's got all these billions.
He's the angel investor, and he's one of these guys who gets involved in certain deals, and now that money's dried up.
I think this is another Trump trick.
A California smack in Silicon Valley.
Good catch.
Good catch, yeah.
I like that.
Let's add this guy to the list.
Even though, like he said, he's a pro-American.
He wants to turn the Russian economy around away from the petrodollars, which is what you would...
I think it would be a good idea because we're trying to beat him on oil and gas.
So you maybe want to get him involved in some other stuff.
But no, no, let's stop that.
Because of this guy's connection to Silicon Valley, I'm absolutely convinced of it.
I think you're right.
None of the other networks even mention that guy.
I wonder what he's invested in.
What's his name again?
Some convoluted name I couldn't pronounce.
Maybe the troll room can look that up.
I'll bet you he's invested in Facebag or something like that.
He's probably in Facebag for sure.
Everyone's in Facebag.
So let's listen to the second clip, which is, he's got a little rap here that's kind of interesting.
How likely are these sanctions to succeed to actually change Putin's behavior?
I don't think they're very likely to succeed in changing Vladimir Putin's behavior at all.
There was a very interesting comment from the Russian president's spokesman the other day where he said, oligarch sanctions?
What oligarch sanctions?
We don't have oligarchs in Russia.
You know, in one sense, that sounds laughable that he's making light of this.
But in fact, there is some truth in what he's saying.
There are no real oligarchs in Russia in the sense that there are people that can exercise power or influence on Vladimir Putin.
Russian billionaires, Russian oligarchs if you want to call them that, they may enjoy their wealth at the pleasure of President Putin, if you will, but they can't force him to change his behavior.
And so the idea of putting sanctions on them and they get upset and then go to President Putin to say, you know, don't do X, I don't think that's going to work.
Another thing that none of the networks picked up on, which is Yeah, we call them oligarchs, but in the true sense, an oligarch is a guy that all work together and they can put pressure on each other.
Right.
But nobody's putting pressure on Putin.
These guys are lucky to even have their billions if it wasn't for Putin.
Well, that doesn't fit the way I think about them.
Yes, there you go.
That's a problem.
And then there's a little background here I thought was kind of interesting, which is the third clip.
Talking about inviting him to the White House for a summit, what message is this sending the Russians?
In the Kremlin, they decided a long time ago that President Trump is politically imputed, as the Russian Prime Minister put it once.
They believe that all of these actions he's taking against Russia are because he has to, because of political pressure that's being exerted on him.
And they see that despite their hopes and their confidence in President Trump, they see that the relationship is on a downward spiral, and that definitely is not something that they're very happy about.
That said, they are hopeful that at some point, you know, politics is a crazy thing, maybe he will have more power, and he will be able to, if not improve the relationship, stop its deterioration.
This guy's pretty interesting.
I like him.
He was on for a while and everything he said was poignant and well thought out.
Russian tech investors set up shop in Silicon Valley.
Hmm.
Looks like they're doing VC stuff.
Yeah, BC stuff.
Which is pretty much screwing inventors out of all their profits and their money.
Hey, here's an idea.
That's great.
Here's an idea.
It's ours now.
This suit fits perfectly.
Take a couple of fives and get out of here.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Well, okay.
Yeah, I think I can't find any flaw in your assertion.
This is done just to mess with Silicon Valley.
I like that.
That's good.
I do have one Russian clip.
I don't know about this Novichok stuff that's supposed to be the deadliest poison on Earth.
Crazy.
The Russians, what the hell did they invent?
I mean, it was just nutso when we heard about this decades ago, and they used it on their spies, and The spies live!
A month ago, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped on a park bench in the city of Salisbury, where Sergei lives.
Britain says the Skripals had been exposed to Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.
Both were in critical condition until last week, when Yulia awoke.
She said in a statement released today that she's recovering after, quote, a disorienting experience.
Oh.
Russian TV has released audio of a phone call purported to be between Yulia and her relative Victoria Skripal.
In the call, a woman identified as Victoria asks about Sergei Skripal.
The voice identified as Yulia responds that Sergei is resting, has no irreversible damage, and will be discharged soon.
But chemical weapons expert Hamish de Breton Gordon is skeptical.
And knowing how deadly these nerve agents are, you know, the assertion in that telephone conversation he's fine really goes against everything else we know.
He's also not convinced that the voice Russian media identify as Yulia Skripal is really her.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says it's Britain that's twisting the facts.
This case has been used as an orchestrated pretext for the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats not only from the U.S. and Britain, but also from other countries who had their arms twisted.
The Kremlin had its opening to pounce when British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told a German broadcaster that the U.K.'s defense laboratory, Porton Down, had confirmed that the Novichok came from Russia.
They were absolutely categorical.
And I asked the guy, myself, I said, are you sure?
And he said, there's no doubt.
But Porton Down's chief executive said it's not the lab's job to confirm where the nerve agent came from.
Russia's ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, then suggested that it's Britain that should be scrutinized.
We have a lot of suspicions about Britain, you know.
So many Russian citizens died here in the UK under very strange circumstances.
He's referring to the suspicious deaths of at least 14 critics of the Kremlin.
Meanwhile in New York, Britain's new ambassador to the UN, Karen Pierce, said Russia's statements appear to be aimed at undermining an investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
And all I'd say on that is we as UK have nothing to hide.
We look forward to the report.
We ask what have the Russians got to fear?
The Chemical Weapons Watchdog is expected to release its report next week.
Yeah, and we know that they have a gag order, so we'll never know.
Yes, we have a guy working there.
And we'll never know.
And they have a gag order, and they can't talk about anything.
So we never know.
This has got scam written all over it.
It does.
I like the Russian angle, though.
Hey, hold on a second.
What's wrong with Britain?
There's all these guys who hate us who are being poisoned.
What's wrong with you guys?
That angle's pretty funny, because it implies that if you criticize the Kremlin...
And you're Russian and you're in the UK. You die.
The UK is going to kill you.
Who knows?
Well, stranger things have happened.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility.
You and I have seen a lot in our combined 110 years.
If you remember the poor bastard who brought out the fact that the yellow cake was bogus, and he was found dead in a ditch, and people suggest MI6 killed him, and there's a lot of suspicious killings that go on.
Didn't he kill himself with a butter knife?
Yeah, with a butter knife.
Yeah, stab yourself with a butter knife.
I hate myself.
The poorly done MI6 or MI5, whichever one did it, poorly done.
Butter knife.
Yeah, that was very poorly done.
And, yeah, there's many, many suspicious things going on.
Of which we really have no more information.
No.
Other than what we have.
We got nothing.
We don't.
We have speculation.
I think we're good at speculation.
Eric Prince is in the news.
Ah!
Our Blackwater friend.
Yeah, I guess he was brought in to testify and a grand jury was after him.
Oh, this is about the so-called back channel that he had put together on the Seychelles?
Yeah, the Seychelles.
Yeah.
And so now it's apparently heating up again because they got this stooge from Lebanon who apparently will say anything.
Let's play Prince Nader Muller.
Next, an ABC News exclusive from the Russia investigation.
New questions tonight about the testimony of Eric Prince, a major Trump campaign supporter, about a meeting he had with a Russian banker just before the inauguration at an exotic resort in the Seychelles.
Prince told Congress it was a coincidence, but sources say the special counsel has evidence that suggests it was planned.
Here's ABC's chief justice correspondent, Pierre Thomas.
Before we get into that, I'll just remind us of the clips we have of Eric Prince, which I think you also brought to the show.
Where he says, how stupid is this?
If Trump is being controlled by the Kremlin, and apparently they have maybe an implanted chip, then why do they need a back channel?
Why do they need me to create a back channel if Trump is already being controlled by the Kremlin?
That was one of his assertions.
He's a...
They did throw in a little piece of gratuitous factoid into this report, see if you can spot it, which I thought was like a cheap shot, but they did it anyway, ABC. And the other thing about this particular situation was this was after the election.
Yes.
And it had nothing to do with the election.
It had to do with the transition or getting some...
Something going with Russia.
If anything, it could have been just the coincidence that Prince said it was.
But it still didn't go anywhere.
It just seems like a complete waste of time.
But play on.
This is Eric Prince, the founder of the security company Blackwater and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Interesting they don't say Academy and Z. They can't pronounce it.
Sources allege he was also a liaison between the Trump transition and the Russian government, something he emphatically denies.
Here's Prince leaving a closed session with congressional investigators, clearly annoyed.
I've already wasted...
Four hours of my life on that.
Tonight, sources tell ABC News, the special counsel has obtained evidence that may conflict with Prince's sworn testimony.
An issue of meeting Prince attended at this exotic face sales resort just two weeks before the inauguration.
Also there, a Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin.
Prince has said his meeting with the Russian banker was unplanned, a chance encounter while on a business trip.
I happened to be there and I met a Russian, some fund manager, I can't even remember his name.
We didn't exchange cards.
He remembered the Russian's name when speaking to those congressional investigators several months later.
Prince said he traveled to meet with some potential customers and they quote, mentioned a guy I should meet who was also in town to see them.
A Kirill Dimitri from Russia, who ran some sort of hedge fund.
So I met him in the bar, we talked for 30 minutes over a beer, and that was it.
But there's another version of this story, and it involves George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman whose sources say is cooperating with the special counsel.
Interviewed four times by Mueller's grand jury.
Those sources say Nader set up the Seychelles meeting between Prince and the Russian banker specifically to launch conversations between the Trump transition and Russian government officials.
When people talk about whether there was a possible back channel or anybody, all of that, you're saying, no, off the table.
Complete hogwash.
But sources familiar with the special counsel's investigation tell ABC News his team has obtained evidence from Nader to suggest he met with Prince at the Pierre Hotel in New York City a week before the Seychelles meeting.
Sources say that evidence, documents that reveal within hours of the New York City meeting, Nader started sending messages to Prince with the bio of the Russian banker, showing he was a powerful Putin ally.
Ugh.
Just a week later, Prince was in the Seychelles having a beer with that Russian banker.
A meeting he said was unplanned.
Prince has said he was not representing the Trump transition.
And his spokesman told us he stands by his testimony before Congress.
Tom?
Oh, man.
This Russia stuff.
Meanwhile, China is pouring troops into Djibouti in Africa.
They're putting in advisors, military advisors.
That's our trick.
And we're bitching about this?
And not only that, there's all these illogical things that take place.
If Prince had a meeting with this guy at the Pierre Hotel, why would he shoot all the way to Seychelles to have another meeting with him when he could have just had one down the street at the Royalton or some other hotel in New York?
Or at a disco.
It's noisy enough that you can't be really recorded.
A disco?
Well, a disco.
I'm just saying some place is noisy.
Oh, you mean a club?
A club, that's it.
A club.
He goes to a club that's noisy.
He has to do late at night when it's noisy.
I mean, it makes no sense.
So now he's sneaking off to the Seychelles, which is probably completely bugged by everything, by everyone, every agency.
This is...
Yeah, you're right.
Why aren't they looking at China and what they're up to?
Yeah.
This is really a waste of time.
I know why.
It's because all media in the United States of Gitmo Nation are in bed with the Chinese.
Everybody's doing business with the Chiners.
That's why.
Especially entertainment.
Who's the guy who...
Setting up studios.
Everyone's over there blowing them.
There's billion dollar studios going up.
Spielberg is one of the big promoters of this.
I think Lucas has got some action over there.
Everybody has action there.
Clooney.
Because they have...
The Chinese decided that they wanted to clone Hollywood because it seems to be such a money maker.
And they're good at cloning our successes.
Exactly.
And so they're setting up the old studio system from the 30s.
And in fact, the number of the top movies that just came out, I can't remember which one's offhand, but I remember seeing the opening credits where it talks about a Chinese connection.
It's got some Chinese thing on there.
China characters?
Well, it's no Chinese names.
Characters?
Wandong Studios.
I mean, this is obviously not something in San Francisco.
Did you say Long or Wong?
Wong Dong Studios.
I mean, yeah, you're right.
Because Trump's second thing, he said, I think, by the way, this is again like Trump and Silicon Valley and that Russian guy.
Trump says, well, we haven't employed anything yet.
There's nothing really happening.
We're just making threats.
But we're going to take a look at intellectual property theft, which the Chinese are very guilty of.
I mean, they stole the F-35, they think, and there's a lot of other things that they steal.
I think they're going to go after the stolen Hollywood movies thing to screw up these deals.
Ooh, that would be fun, wouldn't it?
Yeah, thanks for the support, Hollywood.
Oh, by the way, we're going to screw up your deals in China.
Yeah, how about this?
Sanctions only on entertainment products.
Outgoing sanctions.
Tariffs.
Actually, because the Chinese, like I said, are investing in a lot of these big tentpole movies.
Sanction them!
Well, yeah, that's exactly the point.
Yeah, I mean, but it'd be a movie coming out.
Anything that's associated with China.
Anything that's produced in China.
So all these American productions that are produced in China should be...
Yeah, they have to stay in China.
And they have to be...
And by the way, do they pay...
I mean, is there an import-export tax on this type of product?
I don't know.
No, it's worth thinking about.
I would say if you produce this thing and you shoot it in China at the multi-billion dollar studios, it's a product of China.
I would say yes to that assertion.
And so you probably should be banned.
I think that's a fine idea.
Meanwhile, there was some global cyber attack on Cisco switches, which is kind of being blamed on the U.S., even though the majority of them, of course, are in the U.S. But 14,000 Cisco switches...
That have not yet received patches for exploits were, I guess, compromised in China.
So really?
Yeah, this is where you want to be.
You want to be in the routers and the switches.
That's what the Chinese do.
We learned it from them, okay?
Yeah, you want to be there.
You're in the guts.
Yeah, that's where you want to be.
That's where you want to be.
So, there's actual stuff to be reported on.
And I wouldn't mind a free trip to China to go do some investigative journoism.
Yeah.
With your escort?
Yes.
My attache.
Your attache?
Yeah, my attache.
Should we get into the face bag for just a moment and I would kind of set up the C block?
If you want to do that, I will play a preliminary clip.
Okay, as in backgrounder or a prequel?
No, just to show you the weird arrogance and Yes.
Yes.
interview with Judy, which was very it was Judy asking very aggressive questions.
And Cheryl and it seemed like she was on drugs.
She couldn't answer anything.
She didn't answer anything.
And she looks...
I have to say this, because I'm not...
I don't like to criticize people's appearance.
Oh, come on.
This is television.
Hold on.
Now entering executive mode.
Well, it's not even that.
She is a...
She looks...
I'm talking about gestalt, if anyone understands that.
It's kind of a feeling about the way somebody presents themselves.
She's almost a dead ringer for Bill Gates.
She has this little squint.
She's got pretty much the same kind of nose.
She's got this little squint that gates...
Stop there, because this is the thing I noticed, and I watched her also on the Today Show, which I have some clips from.
Her nose is a pinched Michael Jackson bad nose job.
Yeah, well, Bill Gates has a nose job, too.
Oh, okay.
Well, that makes sense, then.
It's a bad job.
Well, she has...
Well, yeah.
Well, it doesn't fit her facial right.
But she has this look and this sneery eyes that she doesn't even know she's doing.
She's kind of squinting just a little bit in irritation.
Yes.
It's a condescending irritation of, look, I'm listening to your question, but you're an idiot because I'm much more intelligent than you.
I'm just going to wait until you ask your rinkity.
That's what's going on in her head, I think.
I think so, too, because you can see it.
And Bill used to do that.
Exactly.
When he was running Microsoft, he'd have that look, and then he'd have a snide remark.
Bill smiled more, but this woman does the same thing.
And when Bill smiled, it's kind of disarming.
Well, it's always inappropriate.
It's always just out in the middle of nowhere.
He learned that from somebody.
to just flash a smile for no good reason right in the middle of a sentence.
But she doesn't quite have that down, but she's got something similar.
But she's got this soft kind of voice that just doesn't really want to say anything, and she uses a lot of buzzwords from Silicon Valley.
So I clipped that 15 minutes that she spoke, 13 and a half minutes, actually, that she spoke with Judy.
I clipped it down to 45 seconds just to give you a feeling for her.
Well, let's be clear what happened here.
In this case, we had a feature that enabled you to find your friends.
You could find your friends by their name or their email or their phone number.
Well, this plays into the overall situation we're in.
I'm really sorry for that, and Mark's really sorry.
I'm really sorry for that, and Mark's really sorry.
When we saw specific problems, we shut those specific problems down.
The questions on this election, they are big and they are deep.
Trust is a really important thing.
You're asking a really important question, and You know, for me personally, the fact that people would not trust us, I take responsibility for that, and that hits hard.
We're taking a proactive approach.
It's a critical question, and I'm glad you asked.
Well, we made big mistakes, and we know that.
And I think it really is that we were very focused on social experiences.
Yeah, you're right.
She has a very Gates-esque.
Even her speech and her dead tone.
Yeah, dead tone.
Yeah, I caught her on...
Well, she was doing a lot of interviews and the NBC News department was sending out clips left and right to MSNBC, CNBC. Everybody had clips of Sandberg.
And the interview was done by your girl.
What's her name?
Savannah.
Savannah.
Savannah Guthrie.
Can I just throw one thing in me before I start playing these clips?
Of course.
Because I'm still contemplating that little 45 second thing.
I remember her when she was out with her book, Lean In.
Yes.
Lean In?
Forward?
Lean Forward?
Lean In.
Lean Forward, I thought.
Maybe it's Lean In.
I don't know.
I think it was Lean In.
But...
She was a little livelier.
She had a little more personality.
She was a little more excitable.
I think she's on Prozac or something.
I was just about to say that.
Because she'd be the type that would take it because you're a good doctor.
They know what they're doing.
And she could be strung out on that because it's...
Also, her husband just died a couple years ago.
I think he was killed.
Yeah, he was killed.
In that resort.
No, he fell off the treadmill backwards and split his head open and died.
Yeah.
Backwards.
Yeah, well, you'd face plant usually when you fell off.
That's typically what I see on YouTube, yes.
I don't see it backwards.
But she does sound like she's drugged up because she's got that kind of, I'm talking like, oh no, everything's fine.
And I feel sorry for people.
And I take full responsibility for everything.
Just thinking of her, I would actually say Xanax.
Okay.
Yeah, she's a Xanax girl.
That's what I'm thinking.
Yeah, she's a bar a day.
A bar a day.
All right, go.
All right, so Savannah Guthrie interviews Sheryl Sandberg, which is an interesting choice, as is witnessed by, and you can hear many of them, they had to hack this thing together.
There was a 15-minute interview.
I don't understand why, you know, and it's just kind of where it got interesting, so I don't know if it was...
A question of, well, shoot, let's take that out.
I don't want that in there, what I said.
Or if it was just to get through mumbling and bumbling from Savannah Guthrie.
There was really only one...
Just scanning all the channels, the way the news media is picking this up is pure hatred for Facebook, Facebook, stealing their money.
That's obvious.
They stole their money from the elections.
There was a lot of money that went into the Facebook.
I think you'd have to be right on that analysis because the media does not like people stealing their money.
It's one of their least favorite things.
So there's a lot of examples about how horrible and dangerous and just crazy it is to even be a part of Facebag.
So I have a couple of those clips.
We'll start first with under a minute.
The most important question, which, and you heard this phrase everywhere, like we haven't been saying it since the inception of the show and before that, if something's free, you are the product.
Well, Savannah heard this too.
People say that we're the product.
Our data.
That's the product you're selling.
And that's not true.
So here's how our business works.
We don't sell data ever.
We do not give personal data to advertisers.
People come onto Facebook.
They want to do targeted ads.
And that's really important for small business.
Okay.
First of all, we don't sell data ever.
Although it was a very small little bit of news that we caught.
Where, I think it was Zuckerberg who said, we've affected a spokeshole, said we have stopped doing business with, not Equifax, what's the other one?
It was the other one, Equis something or other.
Oh, that's, yeah, anyway.
One of the FICO companies.
So, it seems unlikely to me that they weren't actually giving data.
Maybe some type of roll-up.
They were totally...
Giving data.
She's looking at it from the advertising perspective.
That's what she's talking about.
But she's also looking at it from a legal standpoint, which is kind of wishy-washy.
We never sell your data.
No, you gave it away.
Prior to 2014, the data was just up for grabs.
Anyone could get it.
The Obama administration had their...
The campaign in 2012 had the entire database.
Had everything.
Now, I want to go back to Savannah's original question about we're the product.
Yeah.
This is a talking point because...
Of course.
Because her answer to the question, it really is not the answer to the question if you understand the question.
And Savannah doesn't.
So she just asked the question and accepted the answer.
The real point about you're the product is not...
It's not your data.
It's not like, oh, here's my data, and you're going to sell it.
No, no, the point is that you being the product, and I'll explain it, I've explained it before, but Savannah doesn't understand this because if she did, she'd realize that she's in the same business.
She might get a brain freeze if she realizes that.
Yeah, and when they say you're the product, it means the following.
As a publisher or a broadcaster or a web service, you gather up a pile of users that all have a similar style, a similar background, a similar taste, a similar psychographic.
You package them, and it's a virtual thing.
You package them as a virtual thing and show the advertisers and say, look, this is who we have.
We can sell you these people.
Yeah.
That's how you're the product.
You're not the product because they're stealing your data.
You're the product because you're a piece of a giant package that is presented virtually to an advertiser as something that they can buy, meaning they can advertise specifically to you.
That is not understood by Savannah, I can assure you, and I don't think it's even explained...
Explain in any way on any of these shows that are using You're the Product as a talking point, which somehow crept into the conversation.
Well, I'm glad you rolled that out that way, because what's going on here is you ask this question, and both sides win the question.
We don't really want to expose the fact that we're packaging you like bad debt in the Great Recession.
Right.
And we're selling you off in age groups.
It's exactly the same.
It's a good analogy.
Yeah.
So we don't really want you to know that, but Facebag is really bad because they're selling your privacy, your data, and Sandberg then gets to come in and say, oh, we didn't ever sell data ever.
So everybody looks good in this case.
They both win, really.
It's a chick collusion.
Chick illusion.
Chick illusion.
People say that we're the product.
Our data, that's the product you're selling.
And that's not true.
So here's how our business works.
We don't sell data ever.
We do not give personal data.
By the way, it was Experian.
That's who they were doing business with.
They're definitely one of those companies.
And you just explained how their business works.
Now I'll hear Sheryl Sandberg explain it.
We don't sell data, ever.
We do not give personal data to advertisers.
People come onto Facebook, they want to do targeted ads, and that's really important for small business, but people want to show ads.
We take those ads, we show them, and then we don't pass any individual information back to the advertiser.
You don't have to pass it because you collect all the information and then you target the ads for the advertisers.
That's the service that you charge the advertisers for.
That's right, and that's a very good service.
That's a privacy-protective good service.
Could you come up with a tool that said, I do not want Facebook to use my personal profile data to target me for advertising?
Would you have an opt-out button?
Please don't use my profile data for advertising.
We have different forms of opt-out.
We don't have an opt-out at the highest level.
That would be a paid product.
I love the way, I love that, you know, that's her talking point everywhere.
That's not, if you want to opt out and don't give us your data, that's a paid product.
Which really explains exactly what they do.
And I've heard that the APRU, the average, or the ARPU, the ARPU, the average revenue per user, I think is 25 bucks a quarter.
Ooh.
So $100 face bag is making off of me every year.
That's real money.
That's a lot of money.
It's actually quite high, even by our first standards.
But I think their targeting mechanism is the best.
Yeah.
There's no doubt about it.
But the way they've done this with this, you're the product thing, and they switched it to not making any sense.
In the way that what it really means, which is what NBC does too, I thought it might even be subversive.
It might be to get people off of the you're the product concept because they'll never fully understand it because, no, I'm not the product because they're not selling my data.
And it kind of comes around beautifully by saying, hey, look.
We give you ads, or else you have to pay.
And I think people go, oh, okay, well, that's an easy one.
And them giving me ads has nothing to do with me being the product, because the real meta of me being the product is never explained.
Mm-hmm.
It's just corruption talking to corruption.
Yeah, we can't have the viewer actually understand what's going on here.
That would be wrong.
This is the former head of Google's G+. And he is, I think it was NPR, and he was talking about the data and the access to user data, etc.
And I think being the former head of Google Plus may make him a little bit biased.
It's not announced in this interview.
It's just former Google guy executive, but he was their direct competitor.
Here's what he had to say about the data access or sale.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be facing tough questions when he appears before Congress in the coming days.
At the top of the list, the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica.
That's the company that's been accused of improperly obtaining data from millions of Facebook users, then using that information for its work on political campaigns, reportedly including the Trump campaign.
Let's hear now from someone with a long history in Silicon Valley, Yonatan Zunger.
The former Google engineer recently wrote in the Boston Globe that this scandal is just more evidence that the entire tech industry faces an ethical crisis.
The method by which Cambridge Analytica got the data from Facebook was a system Facebook built almost specifically for the purpose of making it easy for companies to harvest information about networks of individuals.
Right.
Right.
And you write that over and over again throughout history and also in recent years in the tech field, companies work on something with a specific intention.
And then the product is used with only a slightly degree off from that intention in a way that nobody thought about and causes a lot of harm.
Absolutely.
Something I always tell people is that any idiot can build a system.
Any amateur can make it perform.
Professionals think about how a system will fail.
It's very common for people to think about how a system will work if it's used the way they imagine it.
But they don't think about how that system might work if it were used by a bad actor or it could be used by just a perfectly ordinary person who's just a little different from what the person designing it is like.
Conclusion?
Those face bag guys are no good.
We Googlers.
We're smart.
We're much smarter.
We think about both sides of the equation.
And I'm sure he did that, just that, with Google Plus.
And that's why it failed.
That's exactly what happened.
Here is Representative Ro Khanna.
Who was very upset about what FaceBag is doing.
So what do you want to hear from Mark Zuckerberg this week?
What questions do you think he needs to answer?
Am I the product?
That would be the question I'd have.
Hey, Zuck, am I the product?
Well, I'm glad he's testifying.
I'm glad he's doing media interviews.
And I hope he will come out for...
Well-crafted regulations.
I personally have advocated that we need an Internet Bill of Rights.
It's time that tech leaders like Zuckerberg embrace that, including a right to know what your data is, a right to be able to transfer your data, a right to be able to delete your data.
There are a number of common sense provisions that we need enshrined into law.
And when you say common sense, you know, he means, yeah, we're never going to do anything.
But it does kind of dovetail into the GDPR, which kicks off this month, the Global Data Protection Rules, which pertain to the EU mainly, but they have the G word in there, meaning global, and this is harmonization of the universe.
Oh yeah, this is harmonization.
This is the trilateral commission, John.
Do you think there's room, especially in an election year, to get something passed that deals with this?
I absolutely think there is.
The reason is that even Republicans and Libertarians will support, I believe, an individual's right to privacy, to their own data.
This is a case where technology has moved lightning fast and the laws haven't caught up.
There should be some common sense principles that will assure the American public that their rights are going to be protected online.
You know, both political parties have long embraced Silicon Valley, and you yourself got a lot of key endorsements from tech figures, including Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg.
But from the beginning, the whole point of social media was to monetize people's personal data.
And in recent years, campaigns have done a lot of bragging about how efficiently they can micro-target voters.
So what's changed here?
I'm still very proud of representing Silicon Valley, proud of having Cheryl's support.
And I think she can play a very constructive role now in articulating the right type of regulation that we need.
I guess what I'd say is...
I still believe in the power of social media.
The Parkland kids are using Facebook Live to get their message out and mobilize and Twitter to help mobilize.
What he means to say is, I'm so happy with the power of the face bag is where our stooges, who have all these crazy non-profits, can hypnotize children, turn them into zombies, and mobilize them through social media.
That's what he's really saying.
This is a fantastic tool!
...the right type of regulation that we need.
I guess what I'd say is I still believe in the power of social media.
The Parkland kids are using Facebook Live to get their message out and mobilize and Twitter to help mobilize a new generation.
It would be wrong to say let's not have social media when the next generation is being inspired politically by it.
But what 2016 showed us Very dangerous.
I love the arrogance of this prick by saying, well, you know, we shouldn't just outlaw it, you know, because that's what we can do, because that's, you know, I'm a representative here, and so it's very, very dangerous if done the wrong way.
You're full of crap.
This guy's a douche.
He is.
But now, you know, we've been following this, and I have the act in front of me.
Regulation will be required.
Facebook will require authorization for the purchase of any issue-related ads and authentication of pages with tens of thousands of followers.
Facebook is still working out the details of how it will authenticate and authorize.
Mark Zuckerberg writing, quote, these steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system, but they will make it a lot harder for anyone...
To do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and to use fake accounts and pages to run ads.
Consumers can expect a lot more disclosures identifying political and issue ads, as well as information about who paid for them.
This, of course, as Facebook rushes out a range of changes ahead of Zuckerberg's testimony next week, its latest attempt to show policymakers that it has the platform under control.
Yeah, so they're ahead of the game.
They know exactly what's coming down, so they're trying to look good and have everything all set because what is coming up now is the Honest Ads Act.
Yeah, this is the one.
And this is Warner and McCain and Klobuchar.
So this is bipartisan.
Well, Warner's an asshole.
Klobuchar's an asshole.
Yeah.
And McCain, well, hey, it's a trisection.
It's a trasshole.
This is the Honest Ads Act, and the purpose of this act is to enhance the integrity of American democracy and national security by improving disclosure requirements for online political advertisements.
The actual law is not that interesting, but the findings of Congress are quite interesting.
They also define some things for us.
In the preamble of findings, Moscow's influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations, such as cyber activity, with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users, or trolls.
Oh.
They've redefined troll.
Next time somebody calls me a troll, I want to know where my check is.
Yeah, I mean, they've redefined troll right there.
They redefined it.
You have to be paid.
Well, actually, the media redefined it for us.
Then they go into the...
They had some research done by...
Let's see.
The Computational Propaganda Research Project at Oxford Internet Institute.
Jeez.
Who found that the Kremlin is using pro-Russian bots.
Pro-Russian bots.
Like, oh, look at that bot.
I am a bot.
I love Russia.
I am a bot.
I love Russia.
That's a pro-Russian bot.
Is there such a thing as a bot with some sort of political preference?
Yeah, he's pro-Russian.
I am a bot and I think for myself.
That's the fear.
That's the fear is that the bots will eventually start thinking for themselves.
But yeah, you can't write this.
If we were to write something funny about...
I have a bot.
What do you want me to think?
So they found that the Kremlin is using pro-Russian bots to manipulate public disclosure to a highly targeted audience.
Listen to this marketing jargon.
With a sample of nearly 1,300,000 tweets, researchers found that in the 2016 election's three decisive states...
Propaganda constituted, in the 26 elections, three decisive states.
Propaganda constituted 40% of the sampled election-related tweets that went to Pennsylvanians, 34% to Michigan voters, and 30% to those in Wisconsin.
This is pretty well-defined numbers here.
I'm not quite sure how they did that.
But anyway...
I don't know how you do that either.
How do you know if somebody's in Wisconsin?
You've got to be at the Oxford Internet Institute to know this stuff.
I mean, I see just Sam Adams, at Sam Adams, and he says, I'm a teacher and a professor, and I like to plant weeds.
And then it doesn't usually say where you're from.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it doesn't.
I mean, I've got West Coast as my location.
But also, isn't it interesting that...
Facebag is under attack, yet this document here is about Twitter.
Twitter, yeah.
Now, just these numbers are very interesting.
On September 6, 2017, the nation's largest social media platform disclosed that between June, Russian entities purchased $100,000 in political advertisements.
Holy mackerel!
Publishing roughly 3,000 ads linked to fake accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, a pro-Kremlin organization, which according to the company, the ads purchased focused on, quote, amplifying divisive social and political messages.
But what's interesting, just a little bit further down, is according to a study from Burrell Associates, in 2016, that is this most recent election, Well, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask John, how much money was spent in online advertising across the entire spectrum, all parties, all candidates?
$250 million?
That's low, man.
$500?
$1.4 billion.
$1.4 billion online?
Yep.
But the Russians, with their $100,000 worth of cheesy ads that were more laughable than they were advertising, they swung the election.
People were wasting their money.
Well, okay.
So what they're changing now in this law, I'll just give you that little piece here, is they strike out in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971.
Hold on a second.
Stop.
Let's go back and contemplate this a little more.
$1.4 billion online.
Yes.
So this has got to really call Les Moonves, ABC and NBC, all the radio stations, and probably some of the big newspapers, although they have an online presence and they could probably benefit from some of that.
But I don't think CBS really...
I don't believe that number, but anyway.
I mean, we have reason to believe the 34% propaganda in Wisconsin.
I mean, come on.
It's the Internet Research Agency of Oxford, Cambridge, something British.
It's British.
It's British.
It's authoritarian.
I am sorry.
Continue.
No, I'll just finish it up.
The law is amended this act by striking or satellite communication and inserting satellite, paid internet, or paid digital communication.
And then a little further on, they're going to strike on broadcast stations or a newspaper, blah, blah, blah, and change it to in any public communication.
And then finally, they will be inserting the clause...
Any news story, commentary, editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station or any print online or digital newspaper, magazine, blog, publication, periodical unless broadcasting, print, online, digital facilities are owned or controlled by any political party, political candidate, committee, etc.
So really you're going to have to disclose if you have anything to do with political money, you're going to have to disclose it.
And they also want commentary and editorials to disclose.
Well, that's probably a plus.
For us it is, yes.
But I think a lot of people may be like, hmm, hold on a second.
But here's the funny thing.
This is a guy from the Daily Standard.
Is that a right-wing job, the Daily Standard?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, he draws some obvious conclusions.
Yeah.
Here we go.
Is this the beginning of a watershed moment for big tech?
I think so, and I don't think necessarily for the obvious reasons.
I think there's two big threats to Facebook right now.
One is that people will stop using the social media company.
We're beginning to see that a little bit.
Oh, shit!
Before any of this all happened.
The other threat, I think, for Facebook in particular, is that the data, which is their currency, Facebook is basically an ad company, so what they sell is ads, and how they sell it is because people voluntarily use that company.
So I think the other threat is that these ads basically don't work, and that I think...
The Cambridge Analytica leak, I think it's obviously detrimental to the company, but I think it's mostly detrimental because I think it shows that those ads didn't actually work as effectively as perhaps promised.
And that, I think, poses a huge existential threat to the company as it stands currently.
You say the words Cambridge Analytica, and that is closely and understandably linked to the Trump campaign and President Trump's victory in the 2016 election.
How much of this outrage you think stems from the political consequences versus the goodness of politicians who want to protect all of us from big tech?
I think most of this current outrage is for that reason exactly, is political expediency.
I think a lot of people, especially on the political left, have been searching desperately to try to explain the election of Donald Trump.
They don't know how Donald Trump got elected, and here they have apparently found another reason.
Well, it's Facebook.
Facebook was giving unfettered access to this Cambridge Analytica, which was then targeting people with ads, and that must be how Donald Trump won.
I'm suggesting something else, that the ads didn't really have any effect on anybody, maybe.
What evidence do you have for the theory that the ads didn't work and thus Facebook ad sales are going to plummet?
There's been great articles, particularly one in Mother Jones, showing that Cabernet Analytica basically didn't know what they were doing at all and they were basically selling bunk.
To all these campaigns.
They tried it with the Ted Cruz campaign.
They tried it to the Ben Carson campaign.
Incidentally, one of the people who didn't fall for it was Trump, at one point, campaign manager Paul Manafort, who, of course, we know for other reasons, and he thought the marketing was garbage.
It was pushed on them by donors, and so they felt like they had to use it.
The Trump campaign.
But there's no evidence at all that it actually did work.
And I think it's incumbent on people to make the argument that it did work rather than people to disprove a negative.
Well, that will be interesting to see how much that comes out in these hearings.
Mark Zuckerberg up on the Hill coming up next week.
And we also will hear from him probably in the coming days as well.
We heard from him a couple days ago, too.
Daniel Halper, appreciate it as always.
That's actually not...
Yes.
Well, a couple of things to this guy.
This is the worst...
Who's that guy who was interviewing this character who was offbeat?
The guy didn't have the right questions.
Big tech is not Facebook to me.
How's big tech?
Big tech is Intel.
Big tech is Apple.
Big tech is anything but Facebook.
Is Amazon big tech?
No, it's a big retailer.
No, I think Amazon is a big tech company.
They provide AWS. Okay, with AWS. Okay, you're right.
They became a big tech company.
Facebag is part of Fang.
Fang.
Fang?
Fang.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google.
Fang.
Yeah, it's categorized with them, but it's not to me.
It's a social media company.
It's a company that sells advertising to make a living.
It doesn't sell product.
A tech company, to me, has a product to sell.
AWS is a product that people can subscribe to.
You can go on there and you get your web space or your story space.
Your blog.
You get your blog up there.
But this is nonsense.
So he starts off with a bad premise.
Big tech, big tech.
Is big tech going to suffer?
And then he says the ads don't work.
When the ads do work, those ads do work.
But he says, how don't they work?
And he says his example is because Cambridge Analytica didn't know what they were doing.
How does not knowing what you're doing have anything to do with it not working?
If you don't know what you're doing, how can you make a judgment about whether the product works or not?
It makes no sense.
This was an idiotic interview with a moron.
Oh, I'm glad you liked it.
What were you supposed to get out of it?
Another meme.
Okay.
I think the meme is solid.
Where'd you get this from?
It might be Fox Business.
That host sounded like one of those people.
Okay.
I think the meme is solid.
This is the one thing Zuckerberg doesn't want to come out of this testimony.
So did Donald Trump get elected because of face bag or not?
Of course he wants everyone to think the answer is yes.
But he doesn't want to be...
Oh no, it's a dilemma.
Yes.
Yeah, dilemma is the correct word.
If he did get elected because of the $100,000 worth of ads, that means those ads were beyond effective.
Right.
So he has to try to get that message across without...
I don't know how he's going to do...
This is a tightrope walk for him.
Yeah.
And you got guys like this going on about big tech being a hurt.
Well, would you do me a favor and would you just keep an eye out on the broadcast networks, how they're discussing Facebook?
Well, after Tuesday, we're going to know a lot more.
No, this is true.
Most importantly is how will it be presented to the consumer?
The media can hammer this shit onto regular Joe's They're going to have to.
I think your initial theory, which I really forgot to even consider, the theory that the networks in particular don't like Facebook.
I mean, they like to use it and maybe they take some advantage of it, but then when they start thinking about it.
Especially not the $1.4 billion number.
Yes, they're saying this is money.
You're right.
This is money that is being stolen the way they see it.
Yep.
Stolen from us.
We're the rightful owners of this money.
Give it to us.
All your base belong to me.
This is our money you're taking.
And so they're not going to respond positively.
So they're going to keep slamming Facebook.
All right.
So that's what I want you to keep an eye on.
I'm sure I can find plenty of examples.
And with that, I'd like to thank you for your courage and say in the morning to you, John.
See you!
Odyssey stands for Cloning Our Success.
Dvorak!
In the morning to you, Mr.
Adam Curry.
In the morning to all ships and sea.
Feet on the ground, boots in the air, subs in the water, and all the dames and knights out there.
In the morning to the troll room.
Paid actors, clearly.
Over there at noagendastream.com.
Because now we know what a troll is.
You're all paid to be there and give us cool answers.
And one-liners.
Then be trolls!
And in the morning to Kyle sounds like phrase-froos.
I think it's Kyle Frey's.
He brought us the artwork for episode 1022.
The title of that episode was Libjo, spelled in the correct way, L-I-B-J-O-E, Libjo.
And he brought us the...
Well, this was kind of nice.
It was an appropriate piece that we could...
Well, we thought we only could use it once.
You never know.
It's the YouTube logo, the play button, no agenda in there, and then police tape.
Yeah.
Do not cross police line.
That was very good.
And we like it very much.
And thank you.
Kyle Fraze.
And thank all of our artists for all the work they do.
And selflessly put that up at noagendaartgenerator.com.
Thank you.
We have some people to thank.
Ah, but first, I forgot this.
Fletcher sent something in for your birthday.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday.
Yeah, it sounds good.
Not quite as melodic as the singer.
Andrew Wang, $1,000 InstaNight from San Jose, California.
Nice!
We should have an InstaNight jingle.
Forgive me, Pot Fathers, for I have sinned.
It's been a listener for a little over a year.
This is my first donation.
I'll need a de-douching.
Yeah, hold on a second.
It wasn't quite there yet.
I was looking for an InstaNight jingle.
I'm pretty sure we have one somewhere.
You've been de-douched.
I figure I'd start to have it off with a boom.
I'd like to be known as Sir Tin Death of the Sun-Bleached Night.
I would like to request some boobs and stinky tofu at the round table.
We'll write that one down.
Boobs and stinky tofu.
Thanks for all the work you put into the show.
As a realtor, I do a lot of driving around town, and your show helps me ignore the crazy Tesla drivers in the South Bay.
And the place is loaded with them.
Yes.
Keep up the great work.
Here's to another 10 years of the show.
I'd like to request an L Sharpton versus the teleprompter medley and some house-selling karma for my clients.
Okay, I'm going to choose one at random.
I think number three will do for today.
For you, Ed, is this Crown Hog Day 2?
We are watching that was Attorney General Eric Holder's ABD's about some Republicans at home are already beating the drums of war.
Today, the Pentagon refuted that claim.
And he said the American people do not want him to quote They do not want him dwindling his thumbs.
You can get a gig as a court contortionist.
Intravenous fluids and pills coated with galactic.
We don't leave our women or men in uniform behind.
It's a monument to the hubris of Dick Cheney.
Representative Raul Ara Labrador.
Of abuse.
I personally apologize to Mr.
Peavis.
Just ask to soon-to-be former congressman.
Democrats are outright jitty.
CIA's counter-terrorism center.
Veteran Affairs Secretary Shinsketti.
Why do I always mess up his name?
Shinseki.
You've got karma.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Grand Duke of the Pacific Northwest, Sir Dwayne Melanson.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
Prep, baby.
Sir Dwayne Melanson, Grand Duke to Pacific Northwest, $353 and no cents in Tigard, Oregon.
ITM and a belated Grand Duke's happy birthday to JCD. My birthday is this weekend.
Oh, but is he on the list?
Looks like he might be.
Yes, he is.
Is this weekend?
I'm spending it in Australia.
Your shows are on Mondays and Fridays here.
Feels strange.
Karma and a trigger warning to all producers.
A new brief for LGBTQQIAP25. LGIBS or LGIBS.
It's not 25.
It's 2S.
Oh, well, it looks like 25 too.
You have to exit pager mode.
Save time and more inclusive through wildcard syntax.
The L-Jeebs.
I like that.
The L-Jeebs.
I think that could work for me.
The L-Jeebs.
Yeah, it would be better than your other thing.
The L-G-B-B-2-T-Q-I-A-N-P-K. And by the way, it fits right in with this thesis of yours where you're going to keep doing this until I'm actually annoyed.
Yeah.
Which is not going to happen because I'm reckoning that you're going to end up incorporating it so much Into your lingo that when you go meet the queen again, you're going to say something crazy.
Something like, Michael Jackson was killed!
Michael Jackson was killed.
May cause anal leakage.
Use the description of his advice.
You've got karma.
Anonymous in the Peak District, UK. 2, 30, 23.
What is the Peak District?
Do you know?
I have no idea.
I'm an anonymous, broke producer who's been on a $5 a month subscription since 2013.
Check to make sure.
I've donated other amounts whenever I could afford to and have also contributed jingles and news stories I used to donate under the name of Pre-Night of the Living Dead.
Ah, yes.
I remember.
I do, too.
In a sly attempt to keep Knight of the Living Dead for myself when I finally made knighthood.
Unfortunately, however, a Kiwi beat me to that title.
You can still have it, by the way.
You can have multiple of the same title.
A lot of King Johns and Knight Johns.
Grand Knight of the Bogo Fing of 2017.
The Bogoff.
The Bogoff.
Right, the Bogoff.
No hard feelings, though, because the 23s in the show, Number, and this donation have aligned finally to bring me to knighthood now.
I can be proud to know that I've donated the full price for that honor of joining the illustrious round table.
That's right!
That ain't no cheap jack knighthood.
Although, exactly.
Although the value I can afford to give can never equal the value I get from the show, it knows how it's changed his way of talking.
Yes, it's very interesting.
It's felt better because he's a knight now.
It's felt better to be continuously contributing something each month rather than being a douchebag.
And I employ all non-donating listeners to support the show and value for value model and to set up a monthly subscription today.
Because it works.
There you go.
He's made it to knight her.
Please be knighted as Sir 23's Knight of the Electric Sea.
I imagine the round table serves only the meat exquisite, the most exquisite items, and I've been waiting a long time to experience the caliber of your bong hits and bourbons.
They are just as good as our hookers and blow.
Instead of jingles, can I please have some non-goat karma for myself and my kiwi knight of the living dead brother?
And the following excellent producer slaves, who I wouldn't have known without no agenda.
Morgan Bark, even though he's dangerously close to becoming a douchebag.
Sir Fudge Fountain, Baron of Ann Arbor.
Sir Miles Knight of the Wiki.
And the guys at the Grimerica show, Who Are These Podcasts?
That's the name of another show.
Who Are These Podcasts?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Who Are These Podcasts?
Grand America is not their podcast.
Apologize with a long note.
And please, thank you, John and Adam, for a truly outstanding product.
Yes.
Okay.
Anonymous in the UK. Looking forward to your ceremony.
Thank you very much.
You've got karma.
Aaron Moreno.
$210 in Covina, California.
I do have a note.
I'm getting into that voice now.
Aaron Marino.
Here it is.
It's a short note.
Requires glasses to read.
He sent a check in, obviously.
Encloses a check.
This is half of a 420 donation.
Oh, good one.
Although my wife and I have donated over the years, I've been riding the douchebag rocket for too long.
Please de-douche me.
You've been de-douched.
The douchebag rocket.
The douchebag rocket.
Woo!
I cannot thank you enough for the information you quick-witted and your quick-witted banter that you two youths Have provided over the years.
You are solely responsible for taking the sting out of the nasty commute and providing the soundtrack to my cycling adventures.
Please call out my cousin Francisco as a douchebag.
Douchebag!
He is doing well saving money for a wedding he cannot afford.
Oh gosh.
Oh gosh.
You gotta intervene.
Isn't the wife's dad supposed to spend the dough?
Yeah, that's the one thing somehow that hashtag MeToo did.
Yeah, it did.
Lost in the shuffle.
He can save this money, but he cannot spare some change for the best podcast in the universe.
No jingles, just a shot of health karma for my wife and septuagenarian parents.
And a shot of jobs karma for me.
Keep up the good work and fight on!
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
Yeah!
You've got Carmen.
Joel Blazek in Reno 20202.
I will send an email as well.
I hope this gets, in case this gets cut off, doesn't.
Forgive me, Podfathers, for I have douched.
It's been four months since my last donation, but as I'm a baron, a de-douching is in order.
You've been de-douched.
Please accept this donation on behalf of my fellow producers Illuminatia and Nick the Rat.
Splitting it down the middle, 101-01 and 101-01 for these two, the fine folks, and add a little more jobs karma for the lady.
I call on the other producers to listen to Nick the Rat and support his show as well, and maybe even sponsor his knighthood.
Also, I'll be taking a trip to Melbourne, Australia in October to visit my family and run the Melbourne Marathon.
Let's get social and meet up for a couple of pops, people!
Pops?
I'm not familiar with this phrase.
Where's the shot?
A shot of whiskey.
A pop?
Oh, nice.
All right, some jobs coming for the lady.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
Yeah!
You've got Carmen.
Outstanding.
An anonymous donation comes floating in, which is the check, $200, and had a note on top saying, anonymous, NJNK. That means things move along.
Thank you very much.
And last, our last donor, last associate executive producer, Sir10CFR50AppendixB, Baron of the Willamette Valley, and he sent a note that was done in a script font.
Nice.
And he says, don't feel obligated to read the whole note, but, you know, it's a good note, so I'll read most of it.
Can't think of anything creative or NJNK. No jingles.
This is karma.
Happy birthday, April 8th.
He needs to be on the birthday list.
Hold on a second.
Hold on.
Let me just get there.
Is it a note?
Yeah, it's a note.
Okay.
Yes.
What is the date?
April 8th.
Oh, today.
Okay.
And does he have an age associated with this?
It says nothing.
Okay.
Thank you.
Sorry for the long delay since my last donation that elevated me to Baronet.
This donation was made right after I purchased a house and property in Oregon.
This was followed by a few months later by annulling my divorce.
I remarried my ex-wife.
And then changed over from a highly paid independent consultant to a somewhat lower paid direct employee.
Needless to say, the financial situation took some time to stabilize to the point that I am now comfortable donating again.
Let me just say, hold on, hold on.
So he divorced, he annulled his current marriage and then remarried his ex-wife?
No, no, no.
He annulled the divorce.
Oh, he annulled the divorce.
Oh, well, congratulations are in order then.
Good work.
I guess you finally paid him back.
Needless to say, the financial industry...
Most of the wife desired remodeling and landscaping has been completed, so now he can afford to donate.
Okay.
Did he get half of his money back?
During that period, no agendas continued to be a fantastic source of information and real news.
I even built up some political credibility by predicting Trump's victory at the beginning of the primary season.
People thought I was nuts, but I had the last laugh.
The downside of being faithful No Agenda listener is my lack of patience with the bullshit native ads and propaganda being spoon-fed to the MSM viewers.
It has gotten so bad that my wife is unable to watch the news with me.
Well, hopefully she listens to the show with you.
Do they listen together?
Other than the weather.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know if she does.
He never says.
I don't think she does.
Even when he watches the weather, a scoff escapes when global warming statement is made.
Anyway, I mean, head it over to Germany.
He's got to get her listening to the show, man.
I mean, they've had a rocky go of it.
You know?
And so he's sitting there going, global warming, and she's rolling her eyes.
You're going to get divorced again if you're not careful.
Anyway, I'm headed over to Germany for a couple of weeks later this month, and then to the UK after a few weeks after that.
I'll do my best to get some boots on the ground information for you.
Good, good, good.
He does say one little PS, which I'll read.
Potential show topic.
I grew up in Southern California and went to school elementary grade high during the 60s and 70s when California still had one of the best educational systems in the country.
Yeah, those days are over.
Anyway, I was taught when speaking of another person and myself to mention the other person first, e.g.
Bill and I. Yeah, that's how I was taught too.
And that's the way you speak.
You just did it earlier in the show.
Yep.
Nowadays, all I hear is me and Bill.
Me and Bill.
This is on mainstream television.
Podcasts and on the street and in the office.
Good point.
Good observation.
I first noticed this around the turn of the century, but it has gotten worse and worse since then.
Did they change the way English grammar is taught?
Or maybe grammar is no longer taught?
Anyway, that's my rant.
That's not just a rant.
That's a great observation.
I thought so, too.
You've got to pay attention to that.
Are you actually sitting behind the drum kit?
Do you have a holder for your...
I can just see you now.
So you're in the chaise lounge.
You've got the drum kit angled just so...
You're still in the middle of it.
You got your crash cymbals.
You got your bongos.
You got a snare drum?
You got a snare drum?
Where's your snare?
I don't have a snare.
Somebody get John a snare.
I need a snare.
But I need a snare and a cymbals.
I'm using the gong.
If you hit it on the side, it sounds a little bit like a cymbal.
Yeah, but to do the rim shot, you also need the kick.
You need the...
It'd be nice, yeah.
But then I'm kind of, that's a little too much gear.
Oh, too much gear.
To the man who does the podcast with the plug-in USB mic.
Give me a break.
Too much gear.
A Yeti Blue.
I always use that.
All right, everybody.
Thank you very much to our executive and instantite as well and our associate executive producers.
This is highly appreciated.
You are what keeps the show going, as you will hear.
You are not the product.
In fact, we elevate you to being the producer because that's what you truly are.
That's how transparent and authentic we are.
Got to throw that authentic in there, John.
Gen Z loves it.
I love being authentic.
Very authentic.
We'll be thanking more people along with our ceremony for our brand new nights and our birthdays coming up in a little bit.
And remember, we do have another show coming up on Thursday where I will have a full report from my meeting with the king and the queen of the Netherlands.
Remember us at dvorak.org slash N.A.
And that's exactly what I should be doing when I meet the royal too.
I shall propagate the formula.
Our formula is this.
We go out.
We hit people in the mouth.
Shut up, Slay.
Oops.
Water.
Water.
Shut up, Slay.
Shut up, Slay.
The best thing I ever did was getting off the grid.
Ha ha.
Your request was granted in spades.
I like it.
That is a jingle.
Now, this is a great jingle.
The best thing I ever did was getting off the grid.
And of course it is.
That could actually lead into an entire song.
And you know what?
You know what?
It also has a Pepsi vibe to it, which is what I really like.
The best thing I ever did was get it off the grid.
Fold yours in your cup.
There it is.
It's Folgers.
I took a second, but I knew I didn't hear it.
The best thing I ever did is Folgers in your cup!
Nice.
As long as it sounds like something, it'll work.
Secret Agent Paul, yeah, Secret Agent Paul, man.
He's the guy who does all the cool ones.
But then, as you heard earlier, we had the collab, the joint between Melissa Tallon, a famous Australian musician, and Chris Wilson, a famous Australian musician.
Beer drinker?
What does he do?
He's a beer drinker.
He fosters.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
Adams OTG.
Every last homie.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
Adams OTG.
All of it.
I like that, but it's a jingle.
I mean, it's cool, but as a jingle, it's not quite as good as Secret Agent Paul's.
But more people had the same idea, including Tom Anonymous.
I think that has a little better lyrics.
You can't find me.
Yeah, OTG, you can't find me.
I like that a lot.
I like that too.
But I just also like Adam's OTG. Because it makes it sound like you're some sort of defective.
Well, truth in advertising, eh?
So I'm working on OTG. Being off the grid.
And there's a lot of confusion about what that means to me.
And what I'm actually trying to do.
Because, you know, and I just stopped responding to Twitter.
And, well, the reason why there was a lot of Twitter activity is because I got my pager in.
My two-way pager.
And it works.
Yeah, and before you even checked out whether it works, you put it in a holster and you started walking around it.
Austin.
That's the word.
The holster did clip on the belt quite quickly.
Yes.
Well, I was testing.
And, well, just briefly about the pager.
The way it's set up is I can send and receive email, and I can send and receive SMS-based text messages.
What's cool about this for text messaging is you are not connecting to the cell phone grid, to the cell phone network, to send the messages.
Which is part of my OTG mission is to not have my phone or the device that I... Triangulate it.
Triangulate me, exactly.
And apps are doing this.
Apps are doing it.
Lord knows...
The conclusion, I can give you the big giveaway, is the smartphones with the apps is evil, dangerous, and you've got to stay away from it.
All the shit that's happening underneath the covers, I mean, even an app that...
It looks at your accelerometer.
It's like, how are you holding the phone?
Oh, he must be lying down right now.
I mean, that kind of stuff is very accessible.
But the location stuff, when I noticed that Facebag had found out that I was in Bryan College Station, even though I hadn't used it on my phone, or at all as far as I know, all of a sudden it says, oh, you were over here.
It freaked.
I kicked you out, man!
No, I didn't.
A little.
It made me more aware.
And when you send a text message from this device, which is a business opportunity we'll talk about, you're going through, I think it's 900 megahertz.
It could even be a 400 megahertz device for all I know.
Let me see if it says it on there.
And so the first thing you notice is when I'm like, oh, cool, I'm going to send myself a text message.
And I send it, and it took like a minute and a half.
And you forget the instantaneous nature of today's communications.
And the reason why that happens is this, you know, there are these radio transceivers, and they're listening for a signal, and I send out a little ping.
Hey, I'm a little Adam's one-watt pager here.
I got a message.
And then it has to switch and says, okay, pings it back, all right, bring it on in, send your message, and then it's routed through.
So it takes a minute to a minute and a half.
As simple as it seems, when you actually witness that delay, it's jarring.
It's like, holy shit, I forgot all about it.
And the same goes for receiving, obviously.
But the triangulation from a douchebag Silicon Valley company point of view is really not possible for them.
I mean, technically, of course it's possible.
So that's really the genesis of where I started.
I am a little tired of being the product.
So my idea here of OTG is to eliminate or minimize at best the usage of the smartphone, social nets, and to really guard myself from any general profiling.
And at the same time, I'm now discovering a well-needed digital detox.
And I tried this out last night at the Big Bandana Ball.
I took the pager with me.
And Tina now pretty much exclusively texts me on the pager, which is kind of a business opportunity.
Because it becomes very personal if you only have a couple people who have the number.
And then it's like the love buzzer, you know.
Oh, it must be Tina.
Or John.
Either one.
I love them both.
And you know, you could buy them in two.
You know, you could have your own little private love buzz network.
You're overwhelmed with my idea, I can tell.
I think it's another good no agenda idea.
Yeah, perfect.
So when I checked in at this event, and I have a silent auction and everything, and that's all done on tablets these days.
It's all computerized.
So the idea is you walk up, you register, they say, oh, you're in the database, another database that I'm in, of course, which is run by another third company somewhere else.
Give us your credit card.
Thanks.
Now that's in there.
And then you can bid on stuff as you walk past it on your smartphone.
And I said to the ladies, the volunteers, I said, ah, I don't have my phone with me.
And they looked at me like, what?
What?
I said, yeah.
I said, I'm using this.
And I whip out the pager.
There were squeals of delight, John.
You sure it wasn't squeals of ridicule?
No, no.
Squeals.
There is not much of a difference.
No, no.
And I asked.
I followed up with follow-up questions.
But they were...
It's really only two kinds of squeals of delight.
One is the person who goes, Oh, I had one just like that!
You know, like guys in business suit idea.
You know, like 50-year-olds.
Oh, that's...
And then certainly some of the younger female subjects at the bandana ball.
Oh, that's so cute!
John, they were squealing in delight.
And then I said, Yes, this is...
I'm trying to...
Yeah.
They threw their panties at me.
They just love the pager.
And then I said, yeah, I'm doing a digital detox.
And immediately they went, oh yeah, right, good idea.
Immediately.
The market research is in.
This is something people want.
So, in the second part of my quest, I still need to do certain things.
I would still, you know, when I'm...
And I'm only starting this while I'm on the road.
At home, I'm working on that.
An actual device that connects to the cell phone network is just not where it's at when you're using apps, etc.
Even browsers.
It's just none of that.
So, you got...
Are you bored already?
Is that why you're blowing your recorder?
Because I'll stop.
No, no.
I just don't...
I'm getting this ready.
Well...
This is the whistle.
The cuckoo clock?
Is that what you're trying to do?
The cuckoo whistle.
So, at minimum, you need a VPN if you're going to use a Wi-Fi device.
And there are some actual, some pretty good proxies out there that instead of blocking ads, it actually installs a proxy on your phone and it just routes those to nothing.
So, you know, you can say anything from FaceBag, it just doesn't come through.
It's just blocked at the network level.
So that will eliminate some of the tracking, obviously.
And I would say only use a device with a browser.
Don't use an app.
The browser is bad enough.
And have you seen the Brave browser?
I've learned so much.
It has been around for a while, actually.
I'm very impressed with this.
They have some interesting ideas.
I've played with it.
It also has issues, but there's another one.
I wish I could remember the name of this.
I think it's more impressive.
It's like I don't know.
What I like about the Brave browser is, well, two things.
One, it's the guy who was ridiculed out of Silicon Valley.
It was the Firefox guy who donated some money to some group who don't like gays, and then he had to resign.
Oh, yes, that guy.
He was the head of Mozilla, I believe.
Yeah, he was the Mozilla Foundation.
He gave money to some group that doesn't like gays.
And then he was shamed out.
Yes, he was shamed out.
I agree he was shamed out, but I don't know if that group was an anti-gay group.
No, of course not.
But I'm just saying, what I recall, I think when we discussed it, we looked into it, I put a little flag in my mind, like, the guy probably got screwed.
I think that was our conclusion.
The guy got screwed.
Yes, he got screwed.
So he's back.
He brings a lot of knowledge with him.
And what he's doing is he's reversing the process.
He's saying the best place to track what you're doing is your browser.
Your browser knows everything.
So instead of just shooting all this information about you through your browser into the server that you're communicating with, why don't we come up with a system that is blockchain-based, but it actually is an interesting use of blockchain, so you can have a money flow ecosystem but it actually is an interesting use of blockchain, so you can have a That's for another day.
But what he has shown very clearly, and all of this is in the show notes, by the way, is the profiling of you as a user.
I mean, cookies, that's a red herring.
Cookies is the biggest joke and distraction in the world.
Have you ever heard of canvas fingerprinting?
No.
And apparently this issue was raised when HTML5 was coming en vogue, but no one gave a shit about it.
I guess maybe the hate of Flash was big, or I don't know what it was.
But with HTML5, you can actually draw something on what is called the canvas, the HTML5 canvas.
It's a multimedia type of layer in your browser, just to keep it simple.
And then say, okay, copy and send it back to the server, and based upon your specific computer, which measures your GPU speed, your CPU speed, your clock timing, it'll send back a hash, which is just a long number, that is a unique identifier and 99.10% accurate.
When you use that computer and that browser, you are now trackable.
No matter what else you block, even if you have no ads running.
And this was quite an eye-opener to me.
There's a number of things they can do, and this is because your browser, I mean, it sends all this information, including what fonts you have installed.
So, you know, if you have this fingerprint, and then you have 41 fonts installed, someone else has 43.
Oh, wait a minute, that's the Vorak, that's Curry.
So it's a lot more sophisticated than I ever realized.
So the idea that he has is have something running inside your browser so that it doesn't send all this information.
It's not just limited to what computer, what operating system, what browser you're using.
It's all this other stuff limiting that and only signaling intent.
Like, this person's interested in sports.
So that's kind of his idea.
It's still an advertising model, which I'm not crazy about.
But blocking it all off, and this is what the Brave browser does.
It blocks the canvas fingerprinting.
So there's a lot of things you can do with that.
And I think that I can get pretty close to at least not being abused by Silicon Valley companies who aren't paying me, in fact, have more data on me than the census will ever have.
Why the census doesn't just get it from FaceBag is beyond me.
And I think that as I go through it, starting now with the pager and how that's set up, and then right now using the iPod Touch, but looking at other devices, I think that we can all kind of protect ourselves from just being abused and having all these companies...
Being able to control us.
Forget the advertising.
I think my eye-opener was the sponsored posts on Facebag that I was happily reading, but they were all really ads.
So someone was clearly putting stuff in front of me that they decided was what I wanted to read, and it worked.
Because you wanted to read it.
Yeah, but who knows?
I think it's not beyond the realm of possibility.
Advertising is usually as shit.
But memes?
Memes work really well.
So you can start inserting this stuff.
And there's just way too much data about us, right down to the Roomba.
The Roomba was selling the layout of people's living rooms to data brokers.
I didn't know this.
Yeah, they just announced they're no longer doing it.
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, those guys are douchebags anyway.
Yeah, but they're all douchebags.
This is the thing.
Everything...
Apple, I think, is actually the best actor here.
I really think that they're kind of trying to, you know, just keep your stuff over here and not pass anything on.
They've got lots of problems and, you know, they have a centralized iCloud, which is...
None of that is good.
But I kind of trust them a little bit.
To not be selling stuff in that manner.
Every other company is doing it.
And Google with their Nest and all these integrated products, what am I listening to through my Sonos?
All of this stuff is being logged somewhere.
Every move you make, literally every move you make with your phone is being tracked and one or multiple apps are sending that information back somewhere.
Because that's the game.
Advertising isn't working.
Let's look at my way of doing things.
Please.
I'm not on Facebook, for starters.
I never carry my phone around me, except rarely.
Once in a while I do.
I don't have anything but Angry Birds as an app.
And those who overheat the phone, it's an old phone.
And I drive old cars that don't have GPS send-receive I use a VPN all the time on my computer.
I would now be more aware.
Maybe if I use Brave and a VPN, I'd probably be better off.
And I don't worry about most of this stuff because I don't really take part in that many things.
I think most technology is junk.
And I don't have a Sonos.
I have old-fashioned gear.
Big, giant, old-fashioned speakers.
I don't have a Nest.
I have a mechanical thermostat that you said has got a mercury in it.
All that sort of thing.
I'm not taking part in this scheme.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, John.
And you were very smart.
You were very smart.
Whether that's because you're smart or just lazy and didn't give a crap about the new technology is up in the air.
Well, it could be up in the air, but in fact, and I don't think it's because I'm smart.
I think it's because I'm sensible.
Yes, correct.
But most people are in my situation.
And probably a lot worse.
I also don't have an Echo or one of these devices.
I think you have one.
No, you don't.
So what I'm doing now, this is why I call it the digital detox, is it's actually very fun.
It's not bad because you don't have a phone to play with.
And you got to make it difficult.
So I don't carry my Wi-Fi device, you know, the hotspot.
It's got to be difficult to get on.
I'm going to have to go find a Wi-Fi, get a password, whatever it is.
So what the result is, you really, I can, you know, the people who can page me are you, Tina, her daughter's my daughter, and that's about it.
And then I have one or two trigger words of if I want a certain email to be copied to my page or so I know it came in.
That's about, that's all I need.
And what happens is you see that half the population around you are fucking zombies.
I know it's not a big revelation, but it really becomes fun when you don't have anything to play with.
What are you going to do?
Play with the pager?
You just have nothing.
So you're looking at other people.
Break out.
Snake.
Yeah.
You're looking at other people like, holy crap!
And then you see phone, phone, phone, headbent, headbent, headbent, just everywhere.
And you realize how fortunate you are that you're actually alive and breathing at this moment and these people are immersed.
This is, you know, AI? Yes, we're going to get to AI. But it's not going to be machine learning and smart machines.
It's going to be...
We're wetware.
We are the AI. All that...
The Silicon Valley is missing is the lowest IQ possible, which someone with a low IQ can still drive a truck better than the Tesla automated autonomous truck can drive.
Someone with a low IQ could do that better.
All we need is to be able to control them.
And that's now happening.
I'm looking at my device.
Turn left here.
Get into cab.
Okay, I will start engine.
I will go.
We are the AI that Silicon Valley is missing.
And they're not trying to build a brain.
They're trying to integrate their crap to control ours.
RoboCop!
Yes!
That's the big joke of all of this.
I'm sure of it.
Well, I think this is a good experiment for you.
I think you're maybe too enthusiastic, but in a kind of a concerned way, it kind of disturbs me, but I'll let it slide.
And maybe there is a business opportunity here for these, if you get squealing teens.
Well, that was the eye-opener on the business tip, is I think you can just call it the love buzz, because it's really intimate.
When only a few people have your pager, and you're typing out your message.
There's no emojis, by the way, which, guess what, turns you into a better writer.
Isn't that interesting?
Where you take time, thoughtfulness.
Well, there's all those old pager codes that are still in play.
Right, but this is alphanumeric.
Yeah, those pager codes were all alphanumeric.
Right.
You could look at pager codes and get a list of them.
But the idea of this is...
It's not like the smartphone with the pop-up keyboard.
So you become more thoughtful at what you're doing, and you're sending something to someone you really care about because they have your pager number.
So I think if you sell them in pairs, it's like the love buzz combo.
What do they cost each?
The pager costs $39.95.
Does that include anything?
Battery.
Service?
No, the service for unlimited messages is $29.95 a month.
So your initial outlays $39.99 and $29.99 forever.
Yeah.
What about limited number of messages?
Yeah, you can get a $10 plan, yeah.
And you sell two of them, you can probably sell two of them for $49.95.
Well, here's the thing.
So these are refurbished.
Because Motorola doesn't make them anymore, and the options are...
Oh, you can get them made in China.
Well, I'm thinking to crowdsource making a new version in China with snappy hip colors.
The ringtone situation could be adapted somewhat.
You remember those old ringtones that you had on the pager?
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
No, I'll show you my options.
This will trigger some people.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Here we go.
We have standard.
By the way, I never had a pager either.
No.
We have sound wave.
Oh, I hated that one.
We have the ring.
Oh, what happened?
Ring.
Here we go.
Arpeggio.
Huh.
That was very soft.
And astral.
Ring a bell, anybody?
Cell phones had those same sounds.
Yeah.
So that is the only other thing, is the cell phone part.
And what I'm doing right now is I have the iPod Touch, which, I guess, I didn't know this.
Apple allows you to use your main phone number and link it to other Apple devices so that you can use them to call as if you're calling from your phone with Wi-Fi calling.
So the iPod Touch, if I connect to Wi-Fi, I can call any phone number as if I was calling on my T-Mobile account when my phone is just at home and my phone is actually off.
My phone is forwarded to the pager number so that when someone calls, they get a voicemail.
I get a page.
I can respond.
When I have some Wi-Fi, I can call.
And I'm still not connected to the cell phone network.
So, you know, I'm working out a whole strategy here.
I'm glad you're keeping busy.
Yeah.
All my life, all I've done is pick the hits.
Whether it's been songs, whether it's been technology, whether it's been talent.
I hate to say it.
This one's with a bullet, baby.
That's your OTG report for today.
More as they come along.
And tons, tons of info in the show notes.
Back to the show.
It's a part of the show.
We'll be stuck with this little segment for the next...
Until you get sick of it.
You do this, by the way, every once in a while.
It's always the same process.
It's like the Tesla.
It was the same thing.
You're enthusiastic and you're working on it and then all of a sudden, this will be six months from now.
Oh yeah, I had to go back to the phone because...
And then you will have a long exposition, long by that I mean two minutes, a long exposition of why it didn't work the way you'd hoped.
And it all makes sense.
Does this mean that you don't care if we don't cut you in on the pager company?
No.
No, I expect to be cut in.
Yes, you are correct, and this is what I do.
I kick around stuff for months, sometimes years at a time, and most of it is nothing, and sometimes it's podcasting.
There you go.
At least that one worked out.
Yeah, a real moneymaker.
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Yeah, for sure.
And I like the fact that nobody gives you credit for it.
That's even funnier.
Yeah, oh yeah.
I just laugh all the time at that.
Oh, we're starting up a new thing.
Let's call some experts.
Nah.
Experts?
Who the hell needs that?
Experts from experts.
A little entremant?
Just...
To get us in the mood here, apologies for the quality.
This is a promo for the movie Chappaquiddick.
For some reason, we have to have all this JFK stuff everywhere.
That's Teddy Kennedy.
Well, Kennedy stuff.
Yeah, you're right.
But wasn't Chappaquiddick, didn't they also do a TV thing?
I don't remember.
I think there was.
That was years ago.
No, just recently there was something.
Oh, I thought that was what we're talking about.
No, we're talking about the upcoming movie.
Maybe it is the same thing.
I don't know.
But just listen to the tag at the end.
Actually, I'm going to forward this a little bit.
It was an accident.
Edge of your seat absorbing.
Moses had a temper, but he never left a girl at the bottom of the Red Sea.
Shappaquiddick.
Rated PG-13 for thematic material, disturbing images, some strong language, and historical smoking.
Now playing.
Could you hear that?
Historical smoking?
Yes!
That's a disclaimer now.
It has some historical smoking in it.
I guess you get fined if you...
I don't think you get fined, but...
Yes!
Oh, I think there are rules now.
You can't show...
It's like drinking on TV. There's all kinds of little gotchas.
You can't show the actual first sip and all this stuff.
So historical smoking, there must be some rule.
Well, we have to look into this.
Historical smoking is a disclaimer.
Yeah, isn't that good?
Yeah, I'm only smoking old cigarettes.
Old school, baby.
Historical smoking.
Just put that on your medical form.
Historical smoking only.
Okay, here we go.
So I've been, you know, as me, I have this thing about Brooks and Shields.
Yeah, about them being on the same side all the time.
They're on the same side.
What's the point of having two people just agreeing with each other constantly because they both hate Trump?
I mean, Brooks was embarrassed by saying right from the get-go, I mean, it'd be a great little compilation when he first said, oh, he's at peak 25%.
This guy's an idiot.
Oh, 30% of that, well, you don't know why he got that many.
And he's on and on.
They won't win the primaries.
Don't worry about it.
He wins.
No, he won't win any wins.
So the guy, and he says, I don't know, I guess I'm always wrong.
Yeah, well, if you're always wrong, what are you being on this show for?
So they got this guy, what was his name?
Salim Rahan Salam, who is a, it looks like an Indian, perhaps, who's one of the executive editors at the National Review, who they put on with Shields.
And it's like night and day.
Oh.
The guy actually, I mean, they won't bring him back because he actually explains.
He does what he's supposed to do.
He explains what's going on.
He's good, yeah.
Why is Trump doing it this way?
Well, here's a possible, I don't know why, but here's a possible reason.
And then he says it, and then Shields gets all bent out of shape.
He gets all nervous.
Shields hates this guy because the guy just was calm.
So it's finally the format that it was intended to be.
Yes, finally the format is intended to be.
They'll never invite the guy back.
I wish they would.
But let's listen to just a couple of examples, something you've never heard on the PBS NewsHour, actually explaining...
A situation that makes sense not as, oh, Trump's just a moron.
He's unhinged!
And the hordes of rapists descending upon us are quite contrary to fact and reality.
But I don't think, Judy, that this is helping Republicans who are increasingly discouraging situation and condition heading into November 2018.
Well, you mentioned the border, and I do want to ask about that, Rehan, because the president, around the same 24-hour period that he said we want to bring the U.S. troops home right away from Syria, he said we need to send U.S. troops to the border.
Now, that later turned out to be the National Guard.
The president is saying 2,000 to 4,000.
But we find out later when he's making these statements, the administration wasn't prepared, the Pentagon wasn't prepared to explain what was going on with the troops.
In Syria, they say there are no plans, as far as they know, to bring them home immediately.
So what is the president trying to accomplish with this?
One way to think about it is that every president has a set of ideas and commitments, and then they wind up being pretty frustrated.
By the time you get into your administration, you recognize the limits of your authority, and that can be very difficult.
If you look at Barack Obama, for example, he really ran as an anti-war candidate.
He came into office and found, gosh, the national security establishment has this very different position to me.
And I'm feeling this incredible pressure, this responsibility that's weighing on me, and then you wind up taking positions that are not necessarily the ones that are your first instinct.
Donald Trump, however, he's taking this different tack where he's actually negotiating in public.
So he may well get these arguments from folks who want to take a more restrained, cautious approach.
But then when he makes these statements in public, then it actually forces folks in his administration who might want to push against those tendencies to align with him to the extent possible.
And that is kind of a negotiating with his own administration happening in public.
So he's trying to move the bureaucracy, Mark?
What do you think?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what, because if he were, I think he'd invest some time in private meetings and try to persuade.
He's not a good journo.
So the guy says a very interesting explanation.
I've never heard before, but it makes nothing but sense.
And then Shields' response is, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
No, no, he should be having meetings, which is exactly what Obama did to get him off the anti-war thing.
I mean, it's...
In his meetings.
In his meetings.
I mean, it was just like what...
I thought the guy just nailed it and then Shields didn't even understand what he was talking about.
Shields just heard nutjob, alt-right nutjob.
Unhinged.
Yeah, unhinged.
The voice in his head went, he's unhinged.
He's alt-right.
So here's another example of a similar logical explanation that would...
That does present an interpretation of what's going on that actually makes sense to Trump supporters.
Republican or Democrat.
I mean, because what it basically means is that people are uncertain about their own position, their own longevity, and their relationship with each other.
And I think it's just pernicious over a period of time.
Pernicious?
Pernicious?
Yeah, pernicious.
It's like a corrupt in a way that's kind of slow eating away at things.
And I think it's just pernicious over a period of time.
Is there a danger of too much uncertainty?
Oh, I absolutely think there's a lot of danger of uncertainty.
There's another way to look at it, though, which is that with a lot of presidents, you eventually have that divorce with a base out of that sense that this person has gone native, let's say.
This person made a series of promises and commitments, and Donald Trump is particularly vulnerable to that because he is the candidate of authenticity.
He's the candidate who gained this enormous following because the sense that he was genuine and not like other conventional politicians.
But conventional politicians are conventional politicians because that kind of discipline and careful planning and not letting things blow up in your face works, right?
But he senses that vulnerability and he's speaking to it at a time when there isn't much of a Republican agenda in Congress.
So then the deck is cleared and he gets to fill that vacuum with his own instincts.
Nice.
So we actually have somebody that makes this interesting, although you can tell Shields was rattled.
Yeah.
Because he wasn't having somebody say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, like Brooks does.
And it'll be interesting to see if they bring this guy back on.
I personally don't think we'll ever see him again.
Do you think that that's still highly watched, that segment?
Do you think people watch that at all?
Yeah, I think it stopped being watched like a year ago because of Brooks.
I think he's ruined the segment.
Are you single-handedly keeping them afloat now?
Is that the idea?
I'm hoping to.
I'm going to show my support by donating to No Agenda.
Imagine all the people who could do that.
Oh yeah, that'd be fab.
Yeah, on your agenda in the morning.
And we do have some people to thank for show 20, what is it, 1023?
1023.
What is the 10 code?
What is the 10 code for that?
Look it up.
Yeah, you get going.
10 code.
David Cardenia.
We do have some people to thank, starting with David Cardenia in Evergreen, Colorado.
$180.08.
And this is going to be a knight.
We're going to bring him to knighthood.
Read his note.
My spoken hot wife just survived her first breast cancer scare with no bad results.
Can I get a boob fuck karma cancer jingle for her and all the ladies who get through the boob squish process just to stay safe?
And by the way, 73 is K-E... What is it?
K-E-0-I-N-X... I'm not looking at the spreadsheet.
I'll have to take your word for it.
A boob F cancer.
Let me just do that now for him.
Just so we can do that.
Okay.
Boob F cancer.
You've got karma.
I like it.
It works.
And that's Lauren Littlefield's next on the list with boob.
She actually donated 8008 from Manchester, New Hampshire.
She wishes me a happy birthday.
Thank you.
Sir Brian Green of Hams, 7373s, New York City, KC9YJM, 73s to you.
73s, Ketler 5, Alpha Charlie, Charlie.
Alan Hawes, 7171, Colin.
Sloman66, which is my birthday donation.
I've got a few more left.
Name a location.
Mark Mallon.
It's a good thing, too.
We had very little donations other than this.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Micah Miller in Bethel, Pennsylvania.
Daryl Arnett in Norman, Oklahoma.
Adriana Oporto.
66, 66.
Parts unknown.
Could be from Oporto, Portugal.
Christopher Charles, 66 even.
Danny Haynes in Greystains, Australia.
John Adams.
Courtney Vandenberg.
Amarjit Singh in Delhi.
Hey!
Hey!
It's the Indian guy!
Happy birthday!
Nice!
The Indian guy come checks in.
The Indian producer.
Yeah, thank you.
One of the Singhs.
The Jones of India.
Donald Winkler in Berlin, Deutschland.
Oh, Deutschland!
Sean Olson.
Oleson in Rancho Palo Verde.
Drake Biscardi.
Phil Dunn.
Armando Guerra, which is...
Is that Armando, our guy?
Yep.
Armando Guerra.
He is our mail carrier in Austin.
Jason Peterson.
And last on this list, Sir Chris James in Sturgis.
Onward with Anthony Rodriguez, 5510, Jeff Gibbs, 5510, and Joseph Van Velhoven, 5510.
Now the following people are $50 donors, name and location if doable.
Dame Old Dame.
I remember Dame Old Dame.
She came in just recently.
Dame Old Dame.
Vancouver, B.C. David Schlesinger in Rosemont, Illinois.
Jonathan Meyer in Xenia, Ohio.
Edward Mazurik in Memphis, Tennessee.
Joseph Pumphrey in Brandon, Mississippi.
Stephen Chipman in San Rafael.
Ken Yazinski in Jackson, Georgia.
Jeffrey Anderson, Phillip Mison, Larry Hay in Mooresville, North Carolina, and finally, Kirsten Gleb, and Jason Deluzio, who's in Chatsford, Pennsylvania.
I want to thank all these folks for contributing to show 1023.
1023.
1023 code is standby.
10-23.
10-23.
Well, thank you all for continuing the birthday week celebration for my partner here, as well as for all other donations that came in.
Also, those on subscriptions, under $50 for reasons of anonymity.
It is appreciated because in the Value for Value model, which we've pioneered and done so for a decade, and we're still here, you are the producer, and everyone does it in their own way.
The finances are a big part of it, so thank you very much.
Another show coming up on Thursday.
Dvorak.org slash NA. Just next to Jobs Karma for those who need it.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
You've got...
Karma.
Just a short listen.
Sir 10 CFR 50 Appendix B, Baron of the Willamette Valley, celebrating his birthday today, as is Sir Dwayne Melanson, Grand Duke of the Pacific Northwest.
And Jeff Gibbs says happy birthday to his brother Rick.
We all say happy birthday from all your pals here at the Best Podcast in the Universe.
It sounds like you're banging on buckets.
They're buckets.
Well, they're on the floor.
Okay.
I thought they were bongos, but no.
It sounds like bongos.
I can make it sound like bongos, but I have to pick them up.
No, that's okay.
What you could do is you could draw your sword there.
Got it.
Yeah, very good.
Kind of.
Andrew Wang, anonymous in the Peak District, and Dave Cardena.
Step on up here onto the podium next to the lectern, right next to the round table where we have our Noah John, the Knights and Dames.
Thank you very much for your support of the best podcasts in the universe.
The amount of $1,000 or more for that podcast.
You receive a seat at the table and I hereby pronounce to Kate the Sir Tin Death, the Sun Bleached Knight, Sir 23's Knight of the Electric Sea, and Sir Vito, the Mountain Whop.
Gentlemen, for you, hookers and blow, red boys and chardonnay, boobs and stinky tofu, cold brew coffee and cannabis, bourbon and bong rips, breast milk and pathom, ginger ale and gerbils, bong hits and bourbon, geishas and sake, and mutton and mead.
You'll find that over at noagendanation.com slash rings.
Eric Bishul will help you out.
He's also running a promotion, I saw.
Eric running the promotion.
On the social nets.
He's showing all kinds of super rings and fancy boxes.
It's like you win the Olympic medal and then you can get one in Lucite.
You can get a real medal.
Yeah, one in Lucite.
So, I'll be in Mississippi on the next Sunday show.
Oh!
Okay, what's going on?
And I have to go early and I have to do a show from Bloxy.
Oh, cool.
But I think after the show I may do a meetup in Bloxy.
Excellent.
In Mississippi for our Southeastern producers.
So keep an eye out for an email.
If you're not in the mailing list, you should be for that purpose.
Or send me a note and I'll make sure you find out any details.
Yeah, I'm...
I'm in the Netherlands for nine days, two shows.
Oh, I didn't know you were going to be there that long.
Yeah, it's really the time.
So we're doing a double remote on Sunday.
Double remote, baby.
What could possibly go wrong?
Yeah, this will be fun.
Maybe I should do a mini meet-up in the Lowlands.
You know, I think you're way overdue for doing that.
Yeah, I think so, too.
Okay, I've got to figure it out.
Yeah, we can do a joint meet-up on Sunday.
No, no, the timing doesn't work.
No, it won't, because right here we'll be doing the show at midnight.
Hey, everybody, it's Monday, 1 a.m.
Welcome to the No Agenda Show meet-up, all three of you.
Mm-hmm.
Couldn't move the show up.
No.
Okay.
Now, the show doesn't start until 6 p.m.
in the Netherlands.
And have they changed time yet?
I have no idea.
Are you asking me?
I realized that I think it's only, and I'd like to know this from our producers, here's a call out.
The chat room, the troll room could even get us started.
In America, we call it daylight saving time.
So we're saving daylight somehow.
We're saving daylight.
Yeah, but in our pocket.
But you know what they call it in the Netherlands?
Brilliant day.
Springtime and wintertime.
What time does springtime start?
This way we don't need all these...
So was that during the Second World War, was it called springtime for Hitler?
So I wonder if every country calls it springtime or daylight saving or whatever.
I had a separate thought as this came to me that that's kind of odd because I need to know if they're seven hours ahead now or six hours ahead of me.
Maybe.
Maybe the weather is really, and climate in general, is controlled by our collective conscience.
And the elites need us to kickstart into spring so we have to all think about it.
There I am.
I'm all over it.
It's not that bad an idea.
It could be.
Like, hey, we got to kickstart spring.
Let's have everyone do that clock thing, fools.
I know.
I guess I'm wrong.
Okay.
I have a couple of clips left.
This was during just some casual conversation, and it was a guy who wrote a Chinese guy who wrote a book on China's coming collapse, I think is the name of it.
And I think his name is Chang.
And he mentions this little ditty, China 2025.
Okay, Gordon, straighten this all out.
To Ron Perk's point, to the point that China really wants to dominate the world and be the number one economy.
Put that all together for us.
Yeah, well, first of all, China has this made in China 2025 program, which would basically mean the U.S. would have no economy left because they want to dominate 10 critical sectors, including aircraft, electric cars, semiconductors.
That's just completely unacceptable, not only to the United States, but to the rest of the world, because they're using industrial policy to do that.
You know, when you look at what President Trump is doing, I mean, he understands that this this current trend can't continue.
And I think that what we're going to see is that President Trump's going to use American power.
The Chinese are going to shrink back because they have no choice, because their economy is so dependent on ours.
Trump understands that President Obama unfortunately didn't, and neither did President Bush before him.
So I'm sort of optimistic that Larry Kudlow is actually right, that the Chinese will shrink back and that we will see the pot of gold.
Gordon, you know what this reminds me of?
It reminds me of Daniel Patrick Moynihan saying you didn't point out the weaknesses structurally going on in the Soviet Union when it came to the living age of the health problems of the people in the Soviet Union.
Watch out what's really happening in China when you tear that lid off.
That's coming.
Gordon, good to see you.
Thanks so much.
Thanks for coming on.
Yeah, we always forget.
We talked about China 2025 before.
And it just kind of gets lost in the shuffle.
But yeah, it's their end run.
They want to take over the whole world.
Yeah, and why is it that we don't hear anything about the Three Belts No Road project?
We never, in this country, we never hear about it.
Yeah, I have the...
It's almost as though we're working, it's like our media is working for the Chinese government.
To completely subvert the United States so we can just become part of just some stooges in a one-world government run by who knows who.
I found an old clip that was titled China 2025.
30 seconds.
Let's listen.
You're back with the world today.
China is to step up efforts to help the country transform its industrial sector.
That's the message from Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Miao Wei, who made the comments on the sidelines of Beijing's ongoing political sessions.
Along with Vice Minister Xinguo Bing and Ministry Spokesman Zhang Feng, Miao elaborated on pushing forward with and implementing the Mating China 2025 strategy designed to transform China into a world manufacturing powerhouse.
Huh.
Isn't it great, by the way, how with this little rinky-dink podcast, we do something that huge teams would not be able to do?
You mean bring out the simplest of things and point out that it's like crazy that we're going along with a program?
Not even that, but imagine we're sitting in the NPR studios, and of course we're not running the board.
We have an engineer, and he's on the other side of the glass.
You have a producer.
Yeah, I have a producer as well.
A producer is sitting there.
And then we say, hey, you know, we've talked about this before.
The producer goes, shit, do we have a clip?
Do we have a clip?
Then, yeah, we've got to have an intern go and search the database.
Oh, do we have a clip?
Do we have a clip?
And by this time, it's too late.
Yeah, the timing's gone.
Yeah, China 2025.
That's where lean and mean.
That's right.
Lean and mean.
China 2025.
Well, I mean, if we're going to do a deal...
Right now we're in Afghanistan.
This is a huge problem for the Chinese for their expansion of the new Silk Road, which is their one road, one belt strategy, which is really three roads we've counted and no belts, but they have the maritime shipping lanes.
They've got a lot of stuff.
It seems that we're blocking some of this progress.
Wherever they want to set up shop in a port, there's always some kind of issue.
We're doing our best to block.
We really are.
But Trump never mentions this.
Never.
Why?
I mean, he can't be stupid.
Part of his negotiating strategy.
Well, so what is he doing with it?
Is he keeping that in the back of his pocket?
Is he saying, okay, you know, is he really talking to the Chiners like that?
Saying, you know, look, we're going to keep messing with you in Afghanistan.
We're going to mess with you in Pakistan because, you know, we've chosen India.
We're going to mess with you there.
Unless?
Unless you straighten up?
Shape up?
I have no idea.
It's possible.
I just find it odd that Trump, who seems to know everything about China, never mentions this.
Maybe it's not even his policy to do that.
It might be one of the three-letter agencies.
It could be the military.
It could be the DI. I mean, who knows?
Yeah, we don't.
Just long-established policy to mess with the Chinese because they keep taking over the place.
Did you know that in the United States of Gitmo Nation, nearly a third of all students are homeless and hungry in college?
I don't believe that for a minute.
We're at the kangaroo pantry and we're currently working on filling orders.
This is a food bank at the university.
We have students, faculty and staff that arrive to the pantry and they submit their food request forms and then whenever they're done filling out that form our volunteers take it in the back and then we proceed to fill the order.
So there's a lot of misconceptions when it comes to food insecurity in college students.
A lot of folks believe that college students are able to secure their food needs relatively easily, when in reality we notice the opposite.
The majority of our clients here, even though we are also open to faculty and staff, are students.
And oftentimes they're making decisions where they have to decide whether or not to get groceries for the week or whether to pay utilities.
Even our students on financial aid.
Sometimes, you know, financial aid runs out.
Maybe it's not able to cover items like food and utilities.
So they're really having to make that tough call.
So the Kangaroo Pantry is open for students who need us.
As long as they identify as needing food, we're going to be able to help them.
Is that a gender now?
I identify as needing food?
Just identify.
Just identify?
Yeah.
So you think it's a ruse?
You think they're buying Adderall and getting free food?
I have no idea.
Where was this?
Kangaroo sounds like something in Australia.
No, it was, I think, Michigan maybe?
I think it was Michigan.
What school?
Do you have any idea?
I could dig for it.
Need more information?
I'll come back with more information.
I want you to...
This is now your new beat.
Yes.
Starving students.
Starving students.
Yes.
The starving students.
So there's one news story that got a lot of attention.
I got the biggest kick out of it.
Since we once in a while talk about cruise lines.
Ah, and puking.
Puking, Legionnaire's Disease, Noro.
Yeah, why would you go on a cruise?
Well, ask Horowitz.
He's a big cruise nut.
Believe me.
I said it exactly like that to him when he suggested all four of us go on a cruise to Thailand or whatever.
There's a bunch of people out there that are cruise nuts and they love going on them, but I don't know about this one.
Norwegian is supposed to be the absolute best of the best, supposedly, but I don't think so.
Of course, this could have been planted by Cunard or one of these other guys.
Yes, by a competitor, sure.
A luxury vacation, more like a splitting headache for some Norwegian cruisegoers.
Who paid thousands of dollars for what they call a nightmare.
They were sanding.
They were using hammer drills.
They were making tons of noise.
Norwegian Sun left Miami March 16th, a two-week trip ending in Los Angeles.
It was a full-blown construction zone.
That's not peaceful in any way, shape, or form.
Decks cornered off for improvement.
Construction dust everywhere.
Materials stockpiled.
Basically, we're hurting us around like cattle because we couldn't use sections of the ship.
Here it is, 1123.
Noise from power tools.
And this is what we've got to listen to.
The smell of chemicals making some feel ill.
The ship's captain tried to quiet a crowd of angry passengers.
The effort sunk.
Norwegian Cruise Lines responding, We do recognize that during a recent sailing, we did not meet the expectations of our guest, nor our own standards for which we truly apologize.
Offering passengers credit for a future cruise matching the fare they paid.
I'd like a full refund for this cruise.
It was two weeks of anguish.
Some not willing to take the chance after a rough time at sea.
Katie Beck, NBC News.
Yeah, I have a theory about this, and I think we're going to see this type of issue with consumers and services, increasingly so, in the M5M. You know, sometimes you'd hear about a cruise ship gone awry or something, you know, a problem.
Flip over.
Well, there was that.
But I think since the Internet became available on these cruise ships, because, God, I mean, we're on a cruise ship, but how can we not be connected?
I think that's when it really started because, you know, okay, so it's construction.
You take a picture, you tweet it, people go, or put it on Facebag.
It's outrageous!
It's crazy!
You're ruining your face!
And then your head goes...
And then you get all pissed off about it and you let it ruin your entire vacation.
Well, I will say there was a lot of movies, there was a lot of evidence that this was a disaster.
And that one guy says, here it's 11 o'clock at night and here they are banging away.
I don't think this was an exaggeration at all.
Oh, okay.
But still, I think...
But I know what you're saying, and I agree with you, that there's probably...
Because when Noro breaks out on one of these things, everyone's puking all over the place, that gets out really fast.
Yeah.
Well, I guess the point is, we probably wouldn't have heard a news story about it.
But because...
And I could even hear it.
There must have been some social net videos in there.
It sounded like Skype videos and other things.
There was a lot of social net videos.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the funniest one, of course, was this angry mob surrounding this fat captain.
Ha!
Demanding their money back.
Demanding their money back.
And he had to be hustled out of the area back to his bridge.
It was pretty funny.
That's great.
That's very good.
But it could have been orchestrated.
This coverage could have been orchestrated.
I have an update on the war against opioids.
The war on opioids.
The war on puppies.
As you know, we have a new Surgeon General.
It's the hip, cool guy, Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
He's the admiral who was also Trump's personal doctor and was also a White House doctor, as he was for Obama and maybe a little bit of Bush.
Just a little bit.
And so he's now the Surgeon General, and he did an interview on NPR about opioids and what they're going to do.
And I think the way it's working is we're going to give a whole bunch of Narcan to the States.
And if you've been listening to this show long enough, then you probably made some money on Adapt Pharmacy, pharmaceuticals.
Because we identified them as the makers very early on, and then the president came out a couple weeks ago, and he brought the CEO of the company up.
I mean, so that'll work with the stock.
Yeah, it'll boost it.
Right, but each state, I think, will also get $2 billion to spend on programs, so in very...
In perfect American healthcare tradition, we hand out Band-Aids as the first thing when it comes to this epidemic, which is people overdosing on prescription opioids as well as off-market stuff, shall we say.
What about paying for it?
I mean, this is a medication that costs around $40 a dose, I think.
The company...
It has doubled the price in recent years, one of the primary manufacturers.
Some devices that you use to administer naloxone cost as much as $600.
And, I mean, there is no limit, potentially, on what individual pharmaceutical companies can charge, right?
I've spoken to the president about this personally, and both he and I are determined that the cost of naloxone will not be a barrier to folks being able to have access to it.
Isn't it great that we have Mike Tyson as our Surgeon General?
It sounds perfect.
Not quite squeaky enough.
It's close, though.
It's Mike, you know, three fights ago.
Well, there are many different ways.
Number one, the President has asked for and Congress has approved $6 billion in funding to respond to the opioid epidemic, more than has ever been approved in history.
There's $50 million in funding that has been allocated specifically for naloxone.
Number two, we're working with insurers.
95% of people who have insurance coverage, including Medicare, Medicaid...
And Tricare and the VA are actually able to get naloxone at little or no copay, and we're working with them to make that copay as small as possible.
And then finally, work with Adapt Pharmaceuticals and Kaleo, the two makers of at-home naloxone, to make it easier for individuals to access naloxone at low or no cost.
What's their incentive to keeping the price low?
Will they just do it because you tell them it's the right thing to do?
Well, I hope that that's part of it.
I know that these companies have met with the presidents and they want to do the right thing, but also strictly from an economic point of view, unfortunately, there are so many people out there that need naloxone that they are going to make their money one way or the other.
And I think they want to do the right thing.
They just want to do it in a way that helps them sustain their bottom line.
And they can do that.
We can cut the price significantly and still make money for them and save lives.
And that's what we're trying to do.
I'm a ladies' man.
That's what he sounds like.
You know, that guy didn't have such a pronounced lisp.
No.
When he gave his presentation about the president's health, what happened?
I don't know.
Did he lose a tooth?
I don't know.
I really don't know.
Let's see, I have a second part to this.
Yeah, this is just continuing the update.
You described this measure making naloxone more readily available as a tourniquet, as a life-saving measure.
Tourniquet, I like that.
You acknowledge that the key, though, is figuring out what to do with that person after this emergency crisis.
Lock him up!
Yes, you can administer this and they can live another day, but how do you make sure that person doesn't overdose 24 hours later?
Well, folks want to say, unfortunately, in far too many cases, that the individual has failed.
But when a person is coming in for multiple overdoses, I see that as a system failure.
We know addiction is a chronic disease, much like diabetes or hypertension, and we need to treat it the same way.
So I'm focused as Surgeon General on making sure everyone sees addiction not as a moral failing but as a chronic disease and that we have good evidence-based treatment including medication-assisted treatment available for individuals with a warm handoff right from the overdose.
We can't have someone overdose and then send them out onto the streets at 2 a.m.
because they're going to run right back into the hands of the local drug dealer.
Explain that moment, the warm handoff moment.
That warm handoff means you come in at 3 a.m.
in the morning, having been resuscitated from an overdose, and we have either an immediate access to treatment available for you or what's working well in many places, including Rhode Island, where I just visited, is a peer recovery coach, someone who has been through this before and who can speak to you in a language that will resonate and will basically be with you until you can get into recovery.
Yeah, warm handoff.
That'll do it.
Tourniquet and then a warm handoff.
That's what everybody needs.
And a Kleenex.
Again, no strategy.
No strategy.
Just no strategy.
And if I were Narcan or AdaptPharma, and it's a generic, you know, I think the patent's off.
Well, then anyone can make it.
Yeah.
Theoretically.
Yes, well, so then why wouldn't you just, you know, spread some fentanyl around and make some generic naloxone?
Yeah, well, it sounds like a plan.
I think it's another no-agenda business idea.
Yeah, okay.
All right, one more to play us out?
I got the 23andMe Redux from CBS, which is kind of interesting.
Oh, is there new news about them?
It's just some more kvetching.
Well, the popularity of at-home to screen for diseases is growing.
We're looking at the benefits and drawbacks this morning in our series Grand Rounds.
That's the practice of medical professionals teaching other doctors about advancements.
This month, the FDA approved the first direct-to-consumer test in the U.S. that's designed to find three gene mutations leaked to breast cancer without a doctor's prescription.
This is just the latest in a growing number of cheaper and easier genetic tests that can reveal information about your ancestors, risks for certain diseases, or even why you're sensitive to bitter taste.
Some tests can be done for less than $100.
Our David Agus is here with Moore, and let's talk about 23andMe.
I've actually done it, and I want to ask you about that later.
Me too.
What can it predict exactly, and what are some of the concerns that doctors have about it?
Well, it can tell you your ancestry.
It could tell you how you metabolize caffeine, but it's not going to tell you some of the really serious health traits that you probably care about.
So they just got FDA approval for three of over 1,000 mutations that can cause breast and ovarian cancer.
That's only three of them.
So what worries me is if you take it, you go, I'm not at high risk, but you may have one of the other 900 plus.
There are other at-home tests that require a doctor to sign off on it, but you could do it at home.
You spit into a tube, you send it in.
That could look for all of the mutations in the BRC1 and BRCA2 gene, which is risk for breast and ovarian cancer.
Remember when Angelina Jolie, you know, heroically announced I have this gene five years ago, it was $4,000 for the test.
Now it's been democratized for less than $100.
Yeah, that is incredible.
Should everyone, including men, consider getting tested for the BRCA gene?
Men are just as likely as women to be carriers of the BRCA gene.
And so I'm a believer, yes, knowledge is power if you have it.
You want to intervene.
70 plus percent chance of breast cancer, 40 plus percent chance of ovarian cancer, both of which can dramatically change your life and your family's life.
So yes, I believe you should.
David, you just said you spit into it too, but let me tell you, when I did 23andMe, it's a whole lot of spitting.
I've seen you do it.
I think you can.
No, I can do it.
I can do it.
It was not a problem.
Thanks for the overt sexual overtones.
Okay, I get it.
Greg Cliff!
Good one.
Not even a borderline, but you got the chuckle.
You got the chuckle you deserve.
All right, everybody.
We will return on Thursday with another episode of the No Agenda Show.
It is your best podcast in the universe.
Fact.
And you never know what will happen until then.
Of course, today is a show day, so eyes and ears peeled and open.
And Thursday's program will come to you post-meeting with the King and Queen of the Netherlands.
And I will be in the Lowlands itself, in the Garden of Earth.
And a report.
Huh?
A report from the EU. Yes.
An update.
The German Empire.
An update from the German Empire.
Coming to you from downtown Austin, Texas.
We are the capital of the drone, Star State, FEMA Region 6 on the governmental maps.
In the 5x9 Cludio in the common law condo in the morning, everybody, my name is Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, which is in the California Empire, I'm John C. Dvorak.
We return on Thursday.
Until then, as always, adios, mofos.
I need a taxi.
Taxi!
Donate to a No Agenda.
They give us shows week after week.
Donate to a No Agenda.
It's a show that's really unique.
Donate to a No Agenda.
Listen to John and Adam speak.
Donate to a No Agenda.
Science is turning into a clique.
We can not surrender to those who want to weaken or invalidate the transatlantic bond, without which global order and peace cannot survive. without which global order and peace cannot survive.
Bye.
Bye.
Actually, what we're hearing is the true nature of the European project, which is genuine anti-Americanism.
Centralization makes it easier to integrate into a one-world government.
Moloch!
Moloch!
Just setting the record straight so you know who our closest and strongest ally is.
Moloch!
Chlamydia.
Clamacophobia.
Wappo.
Yeah, Wappo.
Wappo.
Wappo.
Gorka.
Wappo.
Gorsuch.
John.
Demodaran.
Demardaran.
Demodaran.
Demodaran.
Wappo.
Wappo.
Bimacophobia.
Canadians are helping us.
Canadians are good.
Victoria, BC is the prettiest town on the West Coast, period.
I'm going to move up there.
I'm done.
It's the prettiest place you've ever seen us.
It's got a little Chinatown.
It's unbelievable.
Poland, still no change for you.
We really don't care about you.
Moloch!
Chlamydia!
Chlamacophobia!
Wapo!
Wapo!
Yeah, Wapo!
Wapo!
Gorka!
Wapo!
Gorsuch!
John!
John Drew!
Demodaran!
Make a donation to the Scott M. Memorial Fund.
Make a donation to the Scott M. Memorial Fund.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG.
Yeah, you know me.
Adam's OTG.
Every last homie.
You're down with OTG. Yeah, you know me.
You're down with OTG. Yeah, you know me.
Adam's OGG.
It's not journalism. It's propaganda. Should we be concerned?
Propaganda. A little bit concerned. Concerned Britain.
Propaganda. Concerned. The concerns resurface. Ecolors concerned.
Fact journalism.
Propaganda. Should we be concerned?
Propaganda. Is a concern. The concern, I think.
Propaganda. Shocking propaganda down the Lakers' throats Consider it?
Propaganda Echo is concerned We're not journalism, it's propaganda Should we get concerned?
Propaganda Classify!
Classify!
At the end of the day What am I going to?
Classify!
At the end of the day What am I going to?
Clear glass spot What am I going to?
Classify!
At the end of the day What am I going to?
Go to the length of setting up a private server in a year At the end of the day So the attention of some I am going to?
Go classify!
She should have been the Aussie water fan Classify!
Person I am At the end of the day Classify!
Person Now they're class spot But ever been secretary I have now been class spot But ever Class spot But ever class spot But ever Classify!
Classify!
I am going to be the Aussie water fan Classify!
I am going to be the Aussie water fan Have you ever been secretary I am!