This is your award-winning Gitmo Nation media assassination episode 1118.
This is No Agenda.
Tracking the new birther movement and broadcasting live from the hub of European travel in the Schiphol Runway Suite.
In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley, where we're shouting out to Canada, 33s, everybody.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
It's Crack Vaughn and Buzzkill.
Oh, what about Scandinavia and 33s?
What's going on?
Magic number time?
33 ministers left.
They had 33 this, 33.
That's a lot of threes, 33s.
It was like a week of it.
Huh.
And coincidence?
Coincidence?
Coincidence, Netflix has a new show on, which is...
Well, it's called Dark.
It's a German show, but they've dubbed it, so the voices are dubbed.
Here's a...
Actually, the whole show is themed around this.
You wrote about the lunar-solar cycle, in which everything repeats itself every 33 years.
Yes, from a cosmic point of view, right?
In our oscillatory universe, every 33 years, the moon's orbit becomes synchronized with the sun's.
Yeah.
But that number...
It reoccurs in our world everywhere.
Jesus performed a total of 33 miracles.
There were 33 litanies of the angels.
Dante's 33 cantos enveloped purgatory and 33 more in his paradise.
It's also the age at which the Antichrist's rule began.
Yeah, never doubt the magic number.
Hey, does anybody...
You know, I've run into...
I had a guest when I was doing Silicon Spin.
I had a guest who sounded great.
He was at the end of the table and he talked like that guy.
He talked like this so you could barely hear him.
In fact, you couldn't hear him.
The mic would pick him up and they'd jack up the mic.
So it sounded great when you listened to the show.
You had this guy with this voice like that.
Those people would talk like that.
You cannot hear them.
No, you can't.
So your question is?
Are we supposed to believe that this guy is sitting around talking like that when nobody can hear him?
Yeah, there's 33 of this.
Baskin Robbins is the first.
No, that was...
Wait, I thought they had 32 flavors.
I thought they were one short of the magic number.
So here I am in the hotel room, the runway suite at Schiphol Airport.
Sounds good.
Well, you know, it's soundproof, which is great because you can see the planes.
You can see them taking off.
You can't hear them.
But it's also, it's like dead in here.
It's like living in a coffin.
I mean, even the air doesn't make noise.
Does it turn on the heating?
No noise.
Huh.
Yeah, but it's good.
It's good to be here.
I've learned a lot of things.
What's the name of this hotel?
Well, how about I not give the name of the hotel?
How's that for an idea?
How about I not do that?
How many hotels are in the airport?
There's not many.
There's really only three, I think.
I thought you always stayed at B&B's or somebody's house.
Yeah, but it makes no sense to stay in Amsterdam anymore.
I mean, it's just too busy.
You can't get around anywhere.
So I would have to be somewhere where I'd want to be for some reason, which I don't have.
I was here only for two things.
Of course, one, to see Christina, who's in Rotterdam.
Easier to get there from somewhere in the middle of town.
From the airport.
But I was here for my buddy Lex's book release.
It is a book.
For some context for people who are new to the show.
The first guy who ever hired me when I was 19, right out of the pirate radio station in Amsterdam, was Lex Harding.
And he hired me and started my professional career.
But he dates back to the North Sea pirate ships.
If you haven't heard of them, then there's a pretty good movie called The Boat That Rocked, which gives you an idea of what it was like, but it's not really exactly true.
Someone wrote a book about him in a narrative style, like an interview style, and it's 50 years of what he has done for media ever since the pirate ships.
He really brought commercial media to the Netherlands.
I don't know if everyone should be happy about it, but He did bring that.
It's a political story, of course, fighting against the mainstream government-controlled airwaves.
And he wanted to promote his book on the number one hoity-toity elite talk show hosted by...
Actually, she's American, but she moved to Holland when she was 11.
Eva Ginek.
And they'd said, well, yeah, we'd love to promote your book, but you're not really that interesting.
If you can bring Adam Curry along, we'll have you on.
So he called.
It's kind of embarrassing.
He really wants to promote this book.
I think he's 72, 73, so this is one of his last projects.
He's going to do something else.
And he sent me a ticket.
I said, oh, sure, I'm there.
No problem.
But I learned a lot of things on this trip.
First of all, if I can start with Schiphol Airport.
I have not seen this anywhere in the States yet, but now on every door of the airport, it has a sign.
This terminal uses a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-based tracking system.
Your privacy is insured.
What is the...
Wasn't...
Didn't they used to have signage in hospitals warning people who had pacemakers or any sort of device in their bodies that...
That you couldn't have a cell phone on?
Yeah, you couldn't do that.
You couldn't do this.
But now it's just everywhere?
Is that what you're telling me?
No, what I'm telling you is...
That's what you're telling me.
When you're right on time.
When you walk through the airport, you are, as an individual, being tracked.
If you have a phone on your person or any device that has either or Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, they are tracking you.
So they're watching your movements.
Why?
For your security, of course.
Hello?
That's easy.
So next thing I learned, I hopped in a cab and you may, I don't know if you remember that so many, a lot of Teslas are taxis in Amsterdam and they've upgraded them so they went from the S90s to the X and if you go to the, yes?
It's a goofball looking one.
Yeah.
Well, and I waited for an X. I waited like one car because there's enough of them.
And I wanted to sit in this thing.
As the goofy door opened up, almost hit me in the face.
The driver opens the gull wing door.
Like, oh, stand back a little bit.
So I get in.
I'm talking to the guy.
It's an interesting vehicle on the inside.
But he says, now this car, we have, I think they had a fleet of 54, this particular cab company.
It says 10% of them, I think it was 4 or 5 of the 54, he says they creak.
And man, let me tell you, this thing creaked like crazy.
When he braked it creaked, when he moved the steering wheel, it's just like the whole car was creaking.
It was really odd.
They're using bad glues.
That's what I thought it would be, but I mean, if it was bad glue, does that mean the joints are at a breaking point if it's creaking?
I have no idea.
This story is brand new to me.
Well, I think we should pay attention to it because he says it's about 10% everywhere.
And these cab drivers know because they talk to each other.
So, something to look out for.
Now, new rules in the Netherlands.
They already have these spots on the highway where, you know, the speed zone where they hit you at the beginning and then they say you better drive 80 kilometers an hour here because we know how long it should take you to get to the other end.
Right.
That's an old-fashioned technique.
Speed zones.
Yeah, but now they've added something new.
All the overpasses have cameras that are specifically installed to catch drivers on their smartphone.
And this is all algorithmic.
It's automated.
So if you have a smartphone in your hand while the camera catches you, you get an automatic 240 euro fine sent home.
Wow.
Yeah, it's pretty efficient.
We should be doing that here.
I'm not against it, really.
I don't like the spying aspect, but man, there are so many people on their smartphones.
Yeah.
So we go to the studio and the show starts at 11 p.m.
It's live.
11 to midnight.
Oh, and they actually run it at those hours.
They don't run it on a delay.
No, no, it's live.
Most of our late-night talk shows are done about 5 or 6 in the afternoon.
Right.
And this is, you know, because they have politicians, you know, news of the day.
So, for instance, you know, well, Michael Jackson, you know, with the documentary.
Now it's, the documentary's been broadcast in the Netherlands.
And so, what do you think?
You know, radio stations are refusing to play Michael Jackson.
This is bullshit.
Total horse crap.
Radio stations have been pulling this stunt for decades.
Didn't we just have it with Baby It's Cold Outside?
Oh, let's stop playing that.
Rock and roll has got to go.
We're breaking all records.
Steamrolling ABBA, steamrolling disco.
This is the oldest radio promotion trick in the world to get your station call letters promoted.
Oh, we're not going to play any Michael Jackson.
Please.
Yeah.
There's even some VG, I saw an article by Cameron, some female, not VG, I'm sorry, but a DJ that does the big dances, the raves.
Uh-huh, also not playing Michael Jackson.
Yeah, she made a big fuss about it, and I'm thinking about it.
Wait a minute, I never heard of this person.
You're going to boycott Quincy Jones?
Way to go.
That's the guy I want to boycott.
Anyway, so as we're waiting for the show to start, the country is going nuts.
They're not on the street.
They're all inside and people are jumping up and down in the green room because massive upset.
Ajax beat Real Madrid in the, I think it's the UEFA Champions League, whatever round they're in, and this hasn't happened in 22 years, and the city, the country went nuts.
I mean, completely, completely crazy.
There were guys the next day on the same show, actually.
I think it was the same show that I was on the night before.
And these were, you know, like sports commentators were reading poetry.
Their poetry about this match.
I mean, it was bizarre.
They just side themselves with joy.
Yeah, that's kind of...
I've always been fascinated by this, which is...
Because it does something to the whole country that is psychological.
And I've always thought it was something sinister about it because of the nature of it, because of the insanity of it.
And I've always thought it would have...
soccer down the throats of the American public, which we've never really adapted to because we developed our own games and we don't really have room for another one.
But there are people European style, people Lib Joes, you know, are all into soccer.
Yeah.
Well, we know it'll never work in the U.S. because you can't stop for commercial.
Exactly.
It has no televised future.
The flaw in the ointment.
It has no televised future for now.
For now.
The flaw in the ointment.
I like it.
That's good.
Okay, other things happening here.
I'm almost done with this little rundown.
You know what's happening.
Big fracas as the Dutch...
Health care system, which I learned, by the way, really is completely communist.
I didn't realize that even if you wanted to, you cannot pay privately for services anymore with the new Dutch system, which went into effect, I don't know, 10 years ago, I think.
Why not?
It's not allowed.
It's basically Medicare for all.
You pay 150 euros or something.
It does go to an actual private insurance company.
But you cannot go to any hospital, any doctor and say, I want to skip the line because you're waiting in line for any kind of, you know, scheduled service.
I want to pay privately.
No, no.
If it's not through the insurer, you're not allowed to do it.
Why?
It's the law.
But why?
Why is the law implemented?
What's the rationale?
What the fuck have I known?
To bankrupt everybody?
I don't know.
I don't know.
To get everyone sick?
To determine when they can die?
I really don't understand why, but isn't that what some people are claiming with Medicare for All?
The same for the states?
The same idea?
I haven't seen any of the proposals.
Okay.
Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because there's a big to-do because apparently the system doesn't work too well, so they're cutting here and there, and one of the cuts they made is in vitro insemination for lesbians, which up till now used to be a paid service, and now it's like, no, no babies for you.
Oh, that's got to have a few people upset.
Yes, I would say.
But the most upsetting to people is the people in Groningen.
And we've talked about this on the show.
Before you go to the Groningen thing, let's talk about the thing you just mentioned, which is, can you pay to have that done?
No.
No, of course not.
In other words, if it's not on the schedule of things allowable, you cannot...
What if you went to England and paid to have it done?
In the UK, they gladly accept your money to go private.
Remember Christina?
She did an MRI? Yeah, exactly.
So if you leave the confines of the Netherlands...
Well, yes, of this system, then you can do it.
But, you know, I think the whole procedure takes, is like a thousand euros a shot.
And it doesn't always take, so, you know.
Back to Groningen.
Groningen.
Okay, so we've been talking about the earthquakes there for a couple of years.
And, of course, our own Void Zero, Mark, lives there, and he's been, you know, giving us firsthand information.
All shook up.
All shook up.
Now, why were these earthquakes happening?
Common knowledge, everyone knew that this is because of the fracking.
That the Dutch have been doing up there for natural gas.
And the earthquakes have caused buildings to, you know, some basically to collapse.
Others, you know, just ripping at the seams.
They're all dropping.
Yes, a lot of historic buildings have been destroyed by this process.
And so...
Finally, after years of this going on, there's going to be a parlementaire enquête, a parliamentary inquiry, which is kind of comparable to a special prosecutor, almost like a Mueller investigation, into what's been going on, how long people knew about it, why nothing was done.
And of course, they talk about Esso is the number one guy, Esso and Schell.
That they knew this.
They knew this was happening for years.
The politicians knew it.
They didn't do anything about it.
And so now we're going to turn every stone over and find the culprits.
It just happens to be two weeks before a very important election here that this is announced, obviously.
And the country is very divided.
It's almost like the states where you have politics and media, West Coast, East Coast.
Everyone in the middle is just fly over, shut up, slave state.
So Groningen, way up north, outside of the kernel of the media and politics, was kind of centered around Amsterdam, The Hague.
And so no one believes that.
It's just that it's ripping everyone apart.
The north hates the middle.
The middle hates the rest.
The south hates everybody.
It's just like the U.S. Fractal?
It is a fractal.
I wish I had the fractal jingle.
Well, this is a lot.
As you wrap this, we can transfer to what's going on in Canada.
Well, let me just give you one more thing.
No, actually, that's fine.
We'll wrap this.
Actually, they had an earthquake in Scandinavia, right?
Did I read that somewhere?
In the middle of nowhere, in the flat area.
4.6 quake, which was – and it was – and the Canadians don't even think twice about this.
They stopped all fracking in this – within the huge region, Alberta.
And it's not even an issue.
They know that fracking causes quakes in some areas.
And they just – It's not like there's a debate.
I don't understand why in Holland and elsewhere there's a debate about it.
And the Canadians, by the way, are very savvy about oil technologies.
They not only have real oil that they can drill for, they have fracking, and they have shale oil, they have tar sands.
I mean, if anybody knows about oil, the oil business are the people that are in Alberta.
Do you have a clip?
Do you have a clip?
I do have a clip.
4.6 Quake, Canada.
The regulator says Vesta Energy reported the activity early Monday morning and immediately shut down its operations.
The AER is now ordering that those operations remain stopped indefinitely.
The regulator's order reading in part, quote, it considers it necessary to suspend the well in order to protect the public and the environment in order that all operations at the site are suspended immediately unless otherwise directed.
Now no one was injured and no properties were damaged.
A fracking operation started back on January 29th at the Sydney Red Deer up until March 4th when that quake happened.
The Alberta Energy Regulator is now ordering Vesta to submit operational data for that time period and list any current or future operations for fracking in the Red Deer and Sylvan Lake areas.
Vesta is also ordered to submit a fracturing operating plan looking at how it can eliminate or reduce any future activity that could cause a quake like this.
All of those orders must be given to the AER by March 11th.
Vesta Energy responded with a statement as well, reading in part, the safety of the public, employees, and contractors is paramount, and Vesta takes this incident very seriously.
The company is cooperating with the Alberta Energy Regulator and is focused on meeting the conditions required to lift that order.
Now, Blake, once the regulator gets all of those documents that it needs from Vesta, it will look into if the proper regulations were followed in this case.
Then it can look into the next steps.
But there's no timeline at this point of when Vesta's operations could be back up and running.
Huh.
They just totally kick ass up there.
There's none of this dicking around having a special investigator.
They just shut it down.
Done.
Go over the documents and see what the hell's going on here.
This baffles me how these people in these other areas are so buffaloed and that the public or any member of the public would take the side of the frackers when all of a sudden you're having an earthquake.
It just never made any sense to me.
I have the Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
I didn't know that was an actual post.
Environment and Climate Change.
Her name is...
The Canadians aren't perfect.
Catherine McKenna.
She was at a Trudeau rally where he was ignoring anything said about what he's been doing.
And this is how the Minister of Climate Change sounds.
So let's talk about climate change for a second.
Who believes it's real?
Who believes in science?
We got a report last year that said we have 12 years to take serious climate action.
We are all in this together.
We need to act.
And just remember last year.
Who remembers last summer?
I do.
Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?
Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat?
It is for her.
How come weather's only climate when it's hot?
When it's cold, I said something on Twitter.
You make some joke about it's freezing cold and you bitch and moan and you say something about climate change.
Something like Trump.
Weather's not climate.
Weather's not climate.
These people do the same thing on the other side of the coin.
Of course.
It's unbelievable to me.
No.
You can believe it.
You know it by now.
I'm staggered.
Okay, that's...
Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?
Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat?
I've called people...
I've called mothers.
I called mothers.
Like she's calling mothers of soldiers who were killed overseas.
I called mothers...
In British Columbia, where there were forest fires.
Remember those forest fires?
Climate change!
And guess what?
They were scared for their kids to go outside because the air quality was so bad.
And who remembers a couple years ago just by the DVB, where there was a flash flood, rains, and it was actually flooded the DVB, and it trapped a whole bunch of commuters.
Now, all of this talk, which I think John and I really, you know, we don't believe we're going to be dead in 12 years.
We don't believe that if we don't change something significantly, it's all going to be over in 10 to 12 years.
We have backup.
We have plenty of backup.
Plenty of backup.
However, people are being affected by this to an extreme degree.
Children, certainly, of course, children are being abused and pushed in front of crowds and television cameras after they've been brainwashed with this.
It's just repetition.
You just keep repeating it.
You keep saying it.
You say stuff like this woman is saying.
You have fires.
Kids hear this.
This is a thing called the internet.
They're on it.
And when they grow up and when they're a little bit older and they're thinking about having kids, what do you think happens?
Well, enter the birth strikers.
Why are you on birth strike, Blythe?
Because I'm terrified, and that's putting it mildly.
So our planet is in a kind of collapse.
The natural world is collapsing around us, and that's actually happening right now.
Really?
Yes.
I'm looking out the window, not at the mudflash, but I see people going to work.
Oh no, you're wrong.
This is a movement.
It's the birth striker movement.
This is the BBC interview.
These women have mobilized, collectively, they are going on strike.
They are not going to give birth because they feel it will only be worse for the children they bring into the world.
And let's hear more of the propaganda and fear that has been pumped into them.
And I'm so disappointed by the response by authorities to this crisis.
Yeah, you can hear the talking points.
This is what they've been told.
So freaked out by it.
It's a matter of repetition.
Yes.
It's just going over and over again.
And I'm so disappointed by the response by our authorities to this crisis, and so freaked out by it, everything that I've read, that basically last year I came to the decision that I couldn't bring a child into that.
And I was asking around people that I know, put it a little bit out on Facebook, and realised actually quite a lot of other people are making this decision.
Yeah, and so we realised it was really, really important to tell the public that there are people out there that are so scared about this that they feel that they can't actually have a family.
And you have come to the same conclusion, Alice?
I mean, each day for me is a struggle.
I really do just, I'm so depressed.
I feel so hopeless over how, you know, I'm reading, just in the last couple of months even, that, you know, insect numbers are plummeting so fast, it now threatens the collapse of nature that we're losing biodiversity.
Oh, brother!
That way it gets better.
Oh, she has this from Richard Attenborough!
Destroying biodiversity so quickly that that threatens our food, and the UN have said that that could lead to the risk of our own extinction.
David Attenborough going on TV to say the collapse of civilization could come from this, and I know that is so hard to really sit with and take in, but I have done that, and that has led to just a fear that I've never felt before, and my decision for being on birth strike.
What?
Aye, aye, aye.
Yeah, almost done.
Mostly has come from not wanting to pass that fear on to someone else.
If we're in this situation now, you know, even since my parents had me, we've destroyed 60% of life on this planet.
What would that be like when my child's my age?
Will there be 10% left?
That's not just to do with being, you know, a nature of what a life enthusiast like I am.
That's actually, that's dangerous as well.
It's life and death.
Life and death.
That's right.
This is the result.
This is what happens.
I think it's done on purpose.
You want these people to.
There's a couple of aspects.
First of all, it thins the herd.
I was going to say, it does eliminate weakness from the gene pool, doesn't it?
Yeah, you got dummies that probably shouldn't reproduce, it sounds like.
They have no logical abilities to just think straight.
They're stupid.
And...
Okay, we got rid of them.
It's just, but it's sick.
Yeah.
It's just sick.
I mean, I don't know what to make of it, other than...
I mean, AOC came out and told people not to have kids.
Well, she said it's right that people question that.
But this is a dangerous message.
This is not very smart.
Unless it's all part of the plan, and that's why we need to bring in everyone from South America...
Maybe.
It's possible.
I mean, if you want to really be a conspiracy person, you could make all kinds of conclusions, but it's not good for the society.
It's not good for the culture to have all these people like this all freaked out.
It's not healthy.
It's not good for anything.
You can't get a good workforce if you have everyone thinking like this, but I mean, they kind of think like this is Silicon Valley and they're doing okay.
And the BBC, who no longer allow dissenting voices when it comes to climate change.
This is the BBC. People take that seriously.
The BBC is to be believed by most.
Yes.
So...
To be believed corporation.
Yes, exactly.
What else is going on in your neck of the woods today?
Well, since we were kind of touching on Trudeau, I want to get a couple things out of the way.
Okay.
Which was, they have this thing on CBC called the Red Chair.
Yeah.
And they go to various parts of the country and they drop a red chair.
This is a format I've seen in Europe.
Yeah, well, that's probably where they...
We have nothing like that so far that I've seen in the United States.
There's a couple of...
They have a lot of interesting ideas that could be employed, but we don't do it.
But they do.
And it's about Trudeau.
Okay.
Because, you know, we didn't really discuss this, but Trudeau is...
It's in a lot of trouble.
And yeah, it's good to talk about climate change to keep people from thinking about it.
Right.
Well, this is the SNC-Lavalin that we talked about on the last show with $30,000 worth of hookers.
And you get a lot of hookers.
Yeah.
So there's an election coming up.
And that's, as you pointed out, and so they put the red chair down on the CBC to let people talk about what they think is going on.
So let's play the red chair segment of the CBC, and this guy cut a lot of it out because it's mostly music and they're dramatizing it.
It's about what people are thinking on the street.
The Liberals have taken a hit in the polls since this all began, while the opposition parties have gained some ground.
And with an election now about seven months away, that matters.
Especially in ridings like Peterborough-Kawortha, just northeast of Toronto.
It's represented now by Liberal Cabinet Minister Mary Montseff.
But the area has flipped back and forth between Liberals and Conservatives for decades.
So, we took our red chair there today to see how voters are feeling now.
So when they show this, they have this guy with a red chair.
Is it a comfy chair?
Is it just a wooden chair?
No, it's not a big comfy chair.
It's like an office waiting room chair.
Okay.
A cheap one, you know, but it's very red.
So here we go.
It's just a few thoughts from Canada.
What do I think of my prime minister?
I would like to see him resign.
So I feel that if he can't get his own house in order, he doesn't have the confidence of the country.
And he certainly doesn't have my confidence that he can run the government of Canada.
I know what a lot of other people think of him.
They want him out.
I feel like he's in a tough spot, but he probably got himself in that mess.
I think Justin Trudeau is the man for me in office and I would vote for him again tomorrow if tomorrow were election day.
I actually don't think that it's that outrageous that the government of the day is going to want to see a company like SNC-Lavalin stay afloat and stay alive and employ people in Quebec.
In the last election, I voted for Trudeau.
In any upcoming elections, I will definitely be rethinking that decision.
It's going to be interesting this year since Bill C-76 was passed in December, which requires all online platforms, this is the Canadian bill, to keep a registry of all political and partisan advertisements they directly or indirectly publish.
And since they haven't been able to figure that out, they are going to ban all political ads before the Canadian election.
Good luck with that.
By the way, it's supposed to be directly or indirectly.
Does that mean a link from something as well?
So are they going to remove search results?
I don't see how this is going to work.
I don't see how the media can put up with it.
Why?
Well, you can't ban advertising.
No, no, no.
Just online.
Not on television.
Oh, just online.
And by the way, I don't know what they do on television.
I have no idea how it works in Canada with political ads.
But online is definitely important.
If there's an actual bill that requires platforms to do something, and so now they're going to ban all political ads, good luck, directly or indirectly.
I think this is going to be messy.
They can't do it.
The way you'd go about it, if you wanted to circumvent this, of course, is with some really high-quality native ads.
Right.
But then you'd have to give...
The money would have to change hands.
That's always problematic.
Damn money.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We'll see.
It doesn't sound right.
Well, the report is out.
They're banning it all.
It kind of brings me to...
Joe Rogan did a three and a half hour podcast with co-host Tim Poole.
Remember that guy?
The guy with the beanie hat?
Not really.
Yeah, we talked about him.
I played a clip.
I thought he was no good, but he's actually pretty damn good.
It's just kind of...
It's kind of a Shapiro way of speaking.
And so he brought on Jack Dorsey again.
So this is the second time Jack Dorsey's on.
And of course, you know, the first time people had a problem with the fact that Rogan hadn't really disclosed that, you know, the Cash App, which is a big as an advertiser on the show.
And of course, that's also Dorsey with Square Company.
So people had a little couple of issues about that, but really they felt that no justice had been done to the deplatforming issue.
And we played a couple of clips from it.
It's like, yeah, it's about...
You know, behaviors and that's the kind of stuff they're looking for.
And he was pretty clear that, you know, algos really can't do that much.
So now he came back and he brought along Vijaya Gaddy.
Gad?
Gaddy?
And that is his...
She's in charge of trust and safety.
She's the one they've had plenty of clips from on different online operations bitching about her.
Yes.
And she's incredibly smart.
She's very well-spoken, has an answer for almost everything.
And I listened to the whole show, and it's entertaining.
And, you know, everyone's really well-prepared.
But they all, without coming to the conclusion, they all kind of figure out that, well, there is no way to police speech based upon behavior within any context and make it scale.
I mean, at a certain point, I think Jack even says it's hard to scale.
And they only have 4,000 people working at Twitter.
None of those do this work.
So they have all these contractors who are trying to understand, you know, the difference between I'm going to take you out, as in I'm threatening to kill you, or some guy saying that because they play World of Warcraft together.
Or he's going to take her out to dinner.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm going to take you out.
So it's impossible to police this from a technological standpoint.
The AI doesn't work.
The ML doesn't work.
So it's all people.
Just to stop you for a second.
You know, all this talk about AI and all the rest of it.
When somebody can translate a French wine site and not keep saying castle...
Chateau.
There's your context.
If you haven't gotten that far with being able to do that little, this is all bullcrap.
Yes.
And what they kind of figure out without saying it, although the accusation goes and there's defense about it, is you're policing based upon bias, which of course is true.
Because your bias is how you read something, because that's all it is, Twitter, how you read something within context and actually what your feeling is about it.
And I have the best example.
So that's the only clip I need to play from this three and a half hours.
It was about the deplatforming of Alex Jones, because of course that was...
Is there something you need to ring the bell about?
Yeah, that was your forced lip smack.
Thank you.
It's also much later here, so I have more smackage available.
I'm just telling.
I didn't want it.
10 to 7.
After the third one, I said, well, then I said, okay.
Okay, thanks.
I appreciate it.
Sorry.
No, it's okay.
It's a good point.
But go on.
Go on with your thing.
You got one clip out of the three and a half hours.
Yeah, well, yes.
And it's about the deplatforming of Alex Jones.
And this is a perfect example of bias.
And to such a degree, Twitter had such a bias in this example as told by the chief muckety-muck of trust and safety herself that they don't even realize they were wrong.
In this particular instance.
And, of course, I can back that up.
So, again, it's all about behavior.
Remember, Periscope is also a Twitter property.
So when something happens there, that counts towards your platformability on Twitter.
And so here is...
Yeah, so here's the clip from the show where she explains exactly what happened, and I'm going to refute this.
We did not follow.
We resisted just being like a domino with our peers because it wasn't consistent with our rules and the contract we put in before our customers.
So what was it that made you ban them?
So there were three separate incidents that came to our attention after the fact that were reported to us by different users.
There was a video that was uploaded that showed a child being violently thrown to the ground and crying.
So that was the first one.
The second one was a video that we viewed as incitement of violence.
I can read it to you.
It's a little bit of a transcript, but...
But now it's time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag.
I know the Justice Department's crippled a bunch of followers and cowards, but there's groups, there's grand juries, there's you called for it.
It's time politically, economically, and judiciously, and legally and criminally to move against these people.
It's got to be done now.
Get together the people you know aren't traitors, aren't cowards, aren't helping their frickin' bets, hedging their frickin' bets like all these other assholes do, and let's go, let's do it.
So people need to have their, and then there's a bunch of other stuff, but at the end, so people need to have their battle rifles ready and everything ready at their bedsides, and you've got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception.
So this is...
Okay, before I continue that clip, let's just go back.
What did we hear?
We heard her read a transcript, and then she jumped to the end and said there's a whole bunch of other stuff.
And then he said this.
Let's just replay that.
And then there's a bunch of other stuff.
But at the end, so people need to have their battle rifles ready and everything ready at their bedsides.
And you've got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception.
Okay, so is that what Alex Jones actually said?
Did he say you've got to have your battle rifles ready because the media is coming?
Let's just double check.
Let's make sure I'm not mishearing this.
People need to have their battle rifles ready and everything ready at their bedsides.
And you've got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception.
Okay, so she acted like she read a quote, and she did say at a certain point, there's a whole bunch of stuff in the middle.
People, it's got to be dumb now.
Get together the people you know aren't traitors, aren't cowards, aren't helping their frickin' bets, hedging their frickin' bets like all these other assholes do, and let's go, let's do it.
So people need to have their, and then there's a bunch of other stuff, but at the end, so people need to have their battle rifles ready and everything ready at their bedsides, and you've got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception.
Let's listen to what Jones actually said.
This is the middle bit that she skipped over.
But America needs to know that they've got their little pathetic commie red teams ready.
And they've got their targets picked out.
The sheriffs, the judges, the police chiefs, the patriots, the veterans, the talk show host, everybody.
And everybody's going to be amazed when they come, when those cowards come, and it's going to hit in the middle of the night, and they're coming.
And they're coming.
And they're coming.
They think they can really take down America.
So people need to have their battle rifles and everything ready at their bedsides.
And you've got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception.
Antifa attacked all these people at the White House, beat up reporters, beat up women, children.
No coverage.
I mean, they've got discipline, folks.
They've got criminal discipline because they're a bunch of followers.
So she makes it sound like she cuts it off at the media, which he then subsequently goes on to say that, you know, they're deceptive.
But being ready is not about the media.
It's for the red teams who are coming in the middle of the night and they're going to come after everybody.
But this is not a call to violence.
No, it's a call for self-defense.
So this is, you're saying that this is a call to violence against the media?
That's what it sounded like to us at the time.
And there have been a number of incidents of violence against the media.
And again, I take my responsibility for what happens on the platform and how that translates off platform very seriously.
And that felt like it was an incitement to violence.
So I call bullshit.
That was not at all what that was about.
It's a misrepresentation.
She's a liar.
Yeah, she's a liar.
She misread the quote.
She skipped the whole preamble to the so-called offensive part, and she didn't read the end of it, which kind of takes it away from going after killing the media, which she says incitement of violence to go after the media.
There's been a number of attacks on the media.
Are you kidding me?
This is...
That's terrible.
And fuck Twitter.
I'm sorry.
I mean, if that's what...
You are dead in the water, Jack Dorsey.
I really like you.
I like Twitter.
But you can't police this.
If this is what you're going to do, you're going to go out of business.
And, you know, the dark web, as they said in the show...
Well, that woman is the problem.
And if you listen to her, I've heard this voice before.
This is that arrogant, know-it-all Berkeley type.
She's got a degree.
I have a woman like that in a clip coming up.
There's a little school called Hampshire College, which is having to close down.
Because women like this woman, you know, there's just this arrogant little twerpy woman.
Just to keep this, hopefully this doesn't go off the track by my doing this.
Just listen to, this is the Hampshire College shuttering, and now the students are protesting.
The school can't make any money, or it's just falling apart.
Whatever's happening there is a function of the students themselves.
This is kind of what happened at Evergreen, where the know-it-all students, instead of coming to learn, are coming to lecture.
And just listen to the woman's voice, and see if you can hear this kind of Disgusting twang.
I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I have to deal with this constantly.
And in Massachusetts, students at Hampshire College have been staging a weeks-long sit-in in the president's office, protesting what they fear may be the future shuttering of Hampshire College.
In January, the president of Hampshire College announced they would seek to merge the school with a strategic partner before laying off staff in the following weeks and announcing it would not be admitting a new class of freshmen in the fall.
This is a Hampshire College student with the group HAMP Rise Up, Which has been organizing the protests.
We're fighting for transparency, better representation, and an educational system that listens to us and actually serves our best interests.
It's really tragic, the fact that schools like this are closing down so rapidly.
And now that we're here in the midst of this movement, I realize how important education is and how essential it is for these places to exist.
Yeah, it's the same wood.
Yeah, cut from the same wood.
I agree.
I agree.
Yeah, she wants transparency and she wants a school that listens to them.
Yes.
You know, it seems to me that that's a moment in time where you want to do the listening.
But these students and these people and this woman at Twitter, they want to do all the talking.
The thing that – yes.
And the thing is, is that while they're talking about bias and, you know, Twitter saying, well, we're not.
This is, you know, it's all factual and it's about behavior.
She literally showed her bias there in what she heard without even listening to all the information.
And if you listen to the whole show at a certain point, it's like, well, Rogan and Poole are saying, it's very important that you let all these voices be heard, otherwise it goes to the dark web.
And I'm like, go dark web!
We need to win with the dark web!
In fact...
You know what is a very scary little thing that just came out and came out a couple weeks ago?
Dissenter.
Have you seen this?
Dissenter.com.
It's a part of Gab.
So, you know, Gab, which is basically the alt-right Twitter, because that's the only people, everyone who's been deplatformed from Twitter goes over there.
So now they have, it's a browser extension.
You get it at dissenter.com, and you just get it with your Gab credentials.
And what happens is you can create a thread, like a Twitter thread, or like a Gab thread, around any URL. Then it's really taking off.
So people are having entire conversations about one particular URL, and it comes in just like a social network, but it can be about anything.
And I think it's a genius idea, because that's what a lot of people do anyways, comment on links.
And now it's completely decentralized.
And I think, you know, this is the kind of thing that will blow Twitter out of the water.
It won't take much.
You know, I agree with your thesis that these social networks won't go away until there's something else to go to.
And I see something like Dissenter working.
Yeah, it could be.
I'll check it out.
But this interview, I think, was very important.
It is the death knell for Twitter.
They are so full of themselves.
And I don't know if Dorsey is insane or if that he really believes that somehow artificial intelligence and machine learning will be able...
When his own leader, president, vice president, whatever she is, CEO of Trust and Safety, can't even get this one right?
And he doesn't hear it either?
They're going to train some machine learning to do this?
No way.
All of it's dead in the wild.
It's ridiculous.
So it's not going to take much.
It's going to be one of these weird outfits.
Some people flock to.
Same thing that happened to Facebook, but there's nobody even going after them.
Well, but Facebook is in so much trouble right now.
People are abandoning it in droves.
It should be smaller.
Did you saw Zuckerberg's State of the Facebag Union?
No, I didn't.
All about privacy.
Yes, we're moving towards a privacy-centric model.
Yeah.
Sure.
It's all about your privacy.
We believe that your conversations with people should be private between yourself.
Sure.
You know what?
Facebook doesn't care what you're saying to someone.
They just care that they know who you're saying it to.
So they can target more people with stuff you like and they like.
That was the grand scheme from the beginning.
And the funny thing is, you know, it is somewhat ironic because...
Many technologists in the early days of the whole revolution, the late 70s and throughout the 80s, were advocating for this.
Oh, we want to only get stuff we're interested in.
That would be so great.
We only want to read about stuff we're interested in.
That would be so great.
Yeah, it turns out that's really bad because that's exactly what we got.
We only got stuff we're interested in.
It turns out to be crap.
Yeah, we got our own bubbles.
Who wants that?
It turns out that's not a really good idea.
Forget about ads, just the content you get.
Well, the advertising business, we should mention, the advertising business from day one has always been into targeting.
Yep.
And the better targeting they do, the more they like it because they can sell, you know, a targeted system, a targeted process for more money.
But what makes me so sad is that the actual workings of the Internet is not taught.
People have no idea.
Kids are growing up in school.
I remember evangelizing the Internet, you know, how it worked and how these networks connected to each other and that Internet protocol was really all you needed.
And now, you know, I heard three and a half hours of four people talking about if you're not on Twitter, you're dead.
You don't exist.
But this is not true.
NoagendaSocial.com, all of the Mastodon-type services, people are using them.
They are moving there.
There will be a critical mass.
I don't even think you need that.
The whole thing is bullcrap.
Yeah, just a website.
In the pre-dot-com era, in the late 90s, they were talking about to an excess...
You'd have these guys on there.
Oh, your business, you can't even run a business anymore unless you're on Facebook and you're doing all this stuff on the internet.
That's nonsense.
It was never true.
I still go to a dry cleaners that have zero footprint on the internet.
But there's one thing, here's the main issue.
And these are the gas stations I go to.
Fame is the problem.
This is Andy Warhol's 15 minutes.
It's not about whether you can have a conversation with your friends, because you can do that in many places.
IRC has been around since day one.
And kids know it.
They know how to use this.
No, it's about fame.
It's about your followers.
You know, I was deplatformed from YouTube advertising in 2008?
I think it was.
And so I can never use AdSense ever in my life.
What did you do?
Oh, do you remember the big book show?
I made an app.
Oh yeah, the big book show.
It was a big app show first.
It was a video that I shot in portrait mode.
And so I would show how the apps work.
You went through a lot of work to do that thing.
Yeah, and it was good for a while.
And I was making pretty good money.
A couple grand a month.
Because I'd say, hey.
Tap on the ad in the app and you'll learn about whatever great product there is and you'll help this show.
Well, that didn't fly.
And they deplatformed me.
And they actually took away my last month's earnings.
And, you know, I protested.
Goes in a big black box.
Never hear anything again.
But I still, to this day, get emails from YouTube.
And they address me like, Hey, creator.
Your fans love this video.
You know, it's the MTV blooper reel that I put up there.
You hit 10,000 views.
Your fans love this video.
It's all about fame.
It's all about having an audience.
How many followers?
How many likes?
It's fame, fame, fame.
Isn't fame one of the seven deadly sins somehow?
Isn't there something in there?
Vanity?
Vanity would be, yeah.
Vanity.
So let's just take vanity then.
And that's what it is.
Everyone loves to be famous.
You've been on this vanity analysis for years.
Yeah, I have.
It's your analysis of the selfie.
Yeah.
Of course.
Oh, let me take another picture of myself, and then another, another, another, and then you post a picture, and there are people, and it's always kind of fascinating to me, there are some people, men and women, who are...
If you go on any of their things that they do online, it's just pictures of them.
It's not pictures of them doing anything.
It's not like they're in front of Mount Rushmore.
They're just pictures of them.
Yes.
What is that?
That's what it is, man.
Kids have grown up with fame.
The ultimate job is fame.
That's what it is.
Be famous.
Kardashians, I think they pushed it over the edge.
Fame.
Just the ultimate.
That is not...
Yeah, but I think the Kardashians perfected the selfie bit.
I think they really did.
Certainly with fashion.
It's the end of society.
Well, I don't know about that, but it's the end of something.
Anyway, go dark web.
Yeah, I mean, we're dark.
I mean, would we be able to do the show?
Would we be able to have people listening and supporting the work without Twitter?
I think so.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Twitter doesn't really add much to the picture.
I mean, I send a newsletter out.
I put about every other one I'll post on Twitter.
I see no difference.
In fact, they did this one on Twitter, and we had a very poor turnout.
So Twitter's actually...
I don't see that it does any good.
Yeah, I do the bat signal before we start the show.
I mean, it's nice to get people on the stream.
You can get an extra 20, 30, 40 people on the stream, maybe.
But I don't think it's much more than that.
No.
I mean...
Let me tell...
Okay, then I'll take an aside here and tell my Twitter story.
So when I first started off on Twitter, I had, I don't know, 10,000 followers, and now I've got 100,000.
And during that early era, you could post something, say, oh, you should check this out.
And you would get the 10,000 followers because everyone's active, you know, they're really doing stuff.
You would get maybe 1,000 people to go click on a link.
Out of the 10, which sounds about right.
It's kind of a direct marketing number.
And one out of 10, because it's a straight one-on-one kind of thing, maybe even more than 1,000.
Then, as it got bigger and bigger, now I have 100,000 listeners, and if I do the same thing, say, click on a link with 10 times more people, the total number of people that click on the link, six, seven, 10 maybe?
That's pretty bad.
Your people are dead.
Well, I think the whole platform's dead.
I see no evidence that anybody is doing anything.
I think I've got those same original people that would have had a thousand people clicking.
They've lost interest.
They don't, you know, I don't know.
Maybe it's a scam.
John, let me ask you a question.
You don't think it has to do with the fact that people are tired of old car advertisements?
Those aren't links.
Oh, okay.
Just asking.
Those are just pictures.
I'm filling time with it.
Maybe you've been the platform, man.
Maybe you're shadow banned.
Who knows?
I could be shadow banned.
It's possible.
It's totally possible.
Whatever the case.
The machine learning is kicking in saying, this guy is posting ads.
We're not getting any money from it.
They don't know that it's an old ad.
It's like, hey, that's an ad.
You know, what kind of an ad is it?
They're going to sell 34 Studebakers out from under us.
The point is that the impact of Twitter has lessened to such a degree that you can't get anyone to click on anything anymore.
They don't care.
It's very low numbers, very low numbers.
I agree with you that the interface has become an issue.
People want to see the information there.
They don't want to click to find anything.
That is the extent of laziness that we've gotten to.
It's too much to actually put your thumb on the link and click it.
I think so.
But also, it's been very quiet about the advertising scam, which we've been talking about for 10 years.
And this is the fake traffic, all the bots looking like humans, clicking away.
There's been some lawsuits.
There's been people hauled off to court.
There's some advertisers who may have pulled back or aren't advertising on social media platforms at all, but you really don't see any stories about it.
No, you don't.
It's like the Nielsen ratings.
Before, we had true tracking, which tracking has gotten much better.
Thank you, cable boxes and Roku and all that.
We have the P plus one, plus three, plus five days to see who watched five days later.
I mean, that stuff is pretty scientific.
But before that, it's just a sample.
And yes, statistically that should be right, but it wasn't always.
Far from it.
But no one really...
Shh, don't talk about it.
Comscore.
The same thing with the attribution of traffic.
We talked about it a couple weeks ago.
Where you just buy a stupid cat video site.
You don't even buy it.
You do a deal with them and say, all their traffic belongs to me.
And then Comscore goes, okay, so we'll count that traffic for you.
And the advertiser goes, wow, wow, hoity-toity news site.
You've got some great content with some great numbers.
Let me advertise there.
Meanwhile, your ad's running on cat videos.
Not that I'm against cat videos.
I'm a fan of the cat channel.
The cat channel's the best.
You just don't hear about this anymore.
No.
We're riding on a big...
You want to try to keep the scam going as long as you can.
There was a collapse with the.com collapse in the 2000 era.
Yeah, when we figured out that hits doesn't equal visits.
That's when that happened.
Yes, it was hits.
The old hits thing was nonsense.
But there was a pullback of advertising during that little era when the.com companies were going out of business.
Right.
Everybody...
Pulled out and it exacerbated the problem and even more companies went out of business.
And it took five or six years to get that shake-up turned around.
That's right.
It just wiped everybody out and it's going to happen again.
Well, I for one can't wait.
Time to get rid of some of these stupid...
I mean, nothing would be better than to see some of these social networks just collapse under their own weight.
Because there's a lot ready to spring into action.
Well, we'll see.
I think social network.
I don't like...
I'm not a fan of social networks in the first place.
I think they exaggerate problems.
I'm not seeing the benefit to society or individuals.
People waste too much time on them.
This is just like the same with these smartphones and people having to put cameras on overpasses to catch people driving, but they can't spend one minute away from the damn phone.
Man, people are laughing at me with my Nokia.
Are you...
They can't believe it here.
They're very connected.
Although iPhones are pretty much out.
People are all buying Samsungs because they can't afford the iPhone anymore.
And the Dutch...
Yeah, I thought the price was out of control.
The Dutch in particular are like, yeah.
Yeah, they'd be like...
Stingy.
What about Huawei?
Are there any Huawei phones there?
I think there'd be Huawei.
Huawei's a dynamite phone.
Huawei is paying the Dutch government to install the 5G systems.
They love Huawei here.
Of course they do.
They got no problem with that.
Same as the Dutch won't really talk about...
Remember, just going back to Groningen for a second...
Houses are now being built without gas.
There's no gas.
So there's no gas for heating, no gas for cooking.
It's all electricity.
And that's all because they cannot bring themselves to use Russian gas.
They just can't.
It's like, well, that's the enemy.
So we can't use that gas.
So, well, don't worry.
We're going to use renewables.
People are going to get cold in this country in the future.
I predict it.
What do you think electricity is made from?
I mean, isn't this cleanest form of electricity outside of nuclear, isn't that natural gas?
Yeah.
Natural gas is number one.
So they can't use that.
They're killing themselves.
Well, why would some...
That's another thing.
Well, I'm not...
You know, this is the veganism concept.
You're right.
You're eating for political reasons.
I tend to eat You know, because I like, you know, certain kinds of food I like to cook.
I'm not taking a political stand with what I eat.
And it's always political.
So taking a political stand of your own well-being is ridiculous.
It's crazy.
And the fact that you can get talked into it, which is, I mean, I'm less, I mean, it's funny in some ways, but the fact that you can be talked into these things because it's Why are you politicizing your life like that?
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
Well, this is the...
So politics enters into your decision making.
So I'm not going to do that because that's a right winger that somewhere made that cookie.
So I'm not going to buy it.
This is why we all wear our invisible no agenda hats here.
Hold on a second.
Let's...
There you go.
Let's put your hats on because you live smarter, more healthy.
Your amygdala is small.
And with that, I'd like to thank you for your courage and say in the morning to you, the man who put the C in the cat channel, John C. DeVore!
In the morning to you, Mr.
Adam Curry.
In the morning to all of us on the graphene.
We got a short list today.
We got one guy.
This is sad.
It's very sad considering that the newsletter went out specifically asking for associate Let me ask you a question.
Do you think that reading all the names from the meetup, that hurts and people don't like the show?
It always hurts when we have a lot of people contributing.
That's why we yo-yo.
It always hurts the next show.
Yeah, that's why we yo-yo.
No, those guys are doing fine.
This is why you don't brag about how much money you make or don't make.
You bitch about it.
But the point is that there was a...
I said specifically that this was going to happen in the newsletter.
You're right.
And not one person, not one person out of almost 20,000 people that get that newsletter...
Took the offer for either executive or associate executive producer.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
This guy did his own thing.
I mean, he's not...
Because the numbers aren't the ones that were offered.
This is a higher number, actually.
And so we have one loan.
Let me change the ratios of this thing so I can actually read this note instead of being a shrunken thing on the spreadsheet.
Bop, bop, bop, bop.
This is Sir Lucas of the Lost Bits in Tacoma.
He came in at $333.
And so he's our guy.
He's the executive producer.
He could have given $201 he'd be the executive producer.
Sir Lucas of the Lost...
This is really pathetic, by the way.
I should mention the people out there.
I am back from a four-week trip to visit my wife's family in Vietnam.
Oh, nice.
Now that I'm back...
A little report would be good.
It's a nice country to visit.
Now that I'm back, I'm looking forward to catching up on the best podcast in the universe, Jingle Request, Jobs Karma.
Alright, thank you very much, Sir Lucas of the Lost Bits.
Welcome home!
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
You've got karma.
Did you hear that digital artifact?
No.
Okay, I've been...
The new rig developed this, and at first I thought it was a...
I've heard stuff, but I haven't been thinking about it.
I just think it's one of the skyline.
Yeah, it's what it sounds like.
It sounds like sky is dragging for a second, but I figured out what it is.
I don't know how to fix it just yet, but for some reason I have too much running through the USB 3.0 hub, and the data is being slowed down, but the problem is the surface...
The 6 that I have, Surface Pro, only has one USB port, so I can only operate with the hub.
And I think just between the drive and this external monitor and everything, that it's just not getting the bits through or something.
It's an actual sound.
You may be bandwidth limited, right?
So you might be stuck at the ceiling.
That's possible.
And this is, by the way, an actual glitch.
That is the correct usage of an audio glitch is what you hear when it does this.
I'm going to have to start listening for it now.
Anyway, so I want to thank Sir Lucas for helping us produce show 1118.
Yes.
And everybody else, you know, what am I going to do?
I mean, we don't even get another donation until we get down to the $100 level.
So that was a huge disappointment.
But we did get one.
At least it wasn't one of those.
Hey, at least it's one.
Yeah, at least it's one.
Just before we move on to the donation segment, some sad news.
Squirrel mail is effectively being killed off.
What?
Yes.
You know the C-panel?
CPanel is like every standard kind of Unix installed, you know, server has a CPanel.
And they've just, and which, you know, this is back, you know, of course, Squirrel Mail comes from way back in the days when Webmail first started, but now they're removing it From cPanel, which really is the death knell, since it'll no longer be installed.
There'll be no more people jumping on it unless you install it yourself specifically.
And the reason is...
Well, I know the guy who invented squirrel mail.
Well, he must be very sad.
I'm going to ask him what's going on.
Listen to this.
Squirrel Mail's last update was May 30th, 2013, with their last release on July 12th, 2011.
In that seven years, four versions of PHP have reached end of life.
We have worked with others in the community to maintain squirrel mail.
Unfortunately, recent security patches have significant problems forcing us into a choice.
Exclude the security fix and ship squirrel mail with known security flaws.
Ship a secure version with known interface issues or attempt to fix the problems.
Well, they decided to just give up on it.
That's terrible.
What are you going to do?
What am I going to do?
Yeah.
I'm going to use the old squirrel mail.
But it's not secure.
There's something wrong with it.
It's not good for you anymore.
I don't notice this.
I've got systems running.
I've got...
I've got monitors going on for both malware and viruses.
I'm not really concerned.
Once in a while, you know, somebody will sucker me into clicking on something and I get all the alarms go off and they say, we're throwing this page away and get back to where you belong.
Well, I think I have to put the squirrel mail song at the end of the show then, just as a kind of a tribute.
Yeah, a tribute.
I'll find out what's going on.
I'll get the skinny from the inventor himself.
Very good.
Well, thank you very much to our very sole, single, solitary executive producer for this episode of The Best Podcast in the Universe, episode 1118.
We do appreciate it.
And of course, we'll be thanking more people, $50 and above in the second half.
And please support the show, support the work as our Value for Value Network needs you.
Another show coming up on Sunday.
Also from the runway suite.
So look forward to that.
And you can do it at...
Don't tell me you don't know everything about deplatforming.
Please go out there and propagate our formula.
Our formula is this.
We go out, we hit people in the mouth. Order. Order.
Shut up, slay.
Shut up, slay.
So let's go back to your little trip.
Yeah.
Did you get a plug-in for the show on the big network?
Dude, they didn't even say I was the inventor of podcasting.
I got like nothing.
I got nothing.
Couldn't slip something in?
No, no, no.
How about wearing a No Agenda shirt?
No.
Yeah, that's classy.
That's real classy.
No!
How am I going to do that?
It wasn't about me.
It was about Lex and his book.
I was just there to make it entertaining.
But the host has promised she's going to interview me because she did a big special around the 2016 U.S. elections.
She famously had kind of like a blowjob interview with Hillary Clinton, which a lot of people here are like, no, what the hell is that?
And so she's going to do it again for 2020 and she said, can I come and interview you?
She said, absolutely.
So she'll come and interview me for 2020 and then I'll just do it in the studio with all kinds of no agenda signs everywhere.
What do you mean, the Cluedio?
No, by 2020, hopefully I'll be out of the Cludio and should have my own studio in Casa Curry.
Signage up, yeah.
I get some wallpaper.
Signage.
I need a skirt for the table.
Yeah.
Skirts.
I'm sure our producers will whip something up by the time.
But we got a little ways to go.
And by the way, we should probably do a proper meetup in Amsterdam before then.
One of these trips, I've just got to pre-produce it and get it done because people are antsy.
We've got a lot of nights here.
I didn't realize.
I think we probably have, Eric was telling me, over a hundred nights in Holland?
Sounds like a lot.
It doesn't surprise me.
Whenever we discuss No Agenda with the radio guys, they had a party, a book party after the TV show.
It must have been about a hundred people, all between 60 and 90 years old.
Because these guys had all been on the pirate ships.
Sure.
They're old.
You know what they all have?
You're like the young buck.
Yes.
They all have their own museum.
Hey, man, have a flyer.
Yeah, they all got their little broadcast museum.
They all have rented some little space.
I got a rock and roll museum.
Okay.
Hey, man, come visit my museum.
Have a t-shirt for my museum.
Okay, thanks.
I don't know how I came up with that.
Anyway, it is true.
It's true.
Okay, let's see.
What else do we have going on?
Well, might as well just play the liar of the week.
I think this somehow has to do with Michael Jackson.
You know, it's all kind of coming at the same time.
This R. Kelly interview on CBS. I don't know if you saw that.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I watched it.
It was like...
Guys all worked up and yelling at Gail, and I thought this thing was just too much show business and not enough substance.
Well, the only thing I cared about was him freaking out.
Yeah, well, that's the only part that was good.
But if you're telling the truth, don't you say, this is a lie.
I didn't do this.
Or do you say, why would I do that?
Isn't that the tell of all tells?
It's definitely a tell.
So I think the point you're making is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you have never held anybody against their will.
I don't need to.
Why would I? Well, I'm...
How stupid would they be for our...
Right off the bat, he doesn't even say no.
With all I've been through in my way, way past, to hold somebody...
Let alone 4, 5, 6, 50, you said.
How stupid would I be to do that?
That's stupid, guys!
Is this camera on me?
That's stupid!
Use your common sense.
Forget the blogs.
Forget how you feel about me.
Hate me if you want to.
Love me if you want.
But just use your common sense.
How stupid would it be for me to, with my...
Crazy passing what I've been through.
Oh, right now I just think I need to be a monster and hold girls against their will, chain them up in my basement, and don't let them eat and don't let them out unless they need some...
Say what?
Too much detail.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And there's more detail.
Shoes down the street from their uncle.
Stop it.
Y'all quit playing.
Quit playing.
I didn't do this stuff.
This is me, y'all.
I'm fighting for my f***ing life.
Y'all killing me with this s***.
I gave y'all 30 years of my f***ing family.
30 years of my career.
Y'all trying to kill me.
This is great.
This is not about music!
I'm trying to have a relationship with my kids and I can't do it!
I just don't want to believe the truth!
You don't want to believe it!
At this point, we briefly pause the interview to give Kelly a moment.
His publicist helped calm him down.
I hope this camera keep going.
This is not true!
This doesn't even make sense!
Why would I hold all these women?
Their mothers and fathers told me we're going to destroy your career.
I got to tell you, these interviews like with Jesse Smollett and now we get Jesse Smollett and I get R. Kelly.
These are good.
This is entertaining.
It is entertaining.
It's like this new format, you know?
Take down the big celeb.
Great.
Yeah.
Good old Gale.
You've got to find a psycho celebs that makes it work.
Well, I think, certainly with today's, as we were discussing earlier, today's social media, we're going to see more of these people, these celebrities who fry.
Yeah, you're probably right.
The short-circuiting is what's happening.
And R. Kelly, he's been hiding out with his whatever, his harem alleged.
I don't know, maybe he's not paying attention to what's going on.
Maybe he's all over it.
But this is a short-circuiting.
It's also kind of like you go on Gail's show.
It's like you're in the stockade, public hanging.
It's the modern-day version.
Modern-day version.
Well, so they're going after Trump in a funny new way.
This is a new one I have to add to the list.
Uh-oh.
There's...
Actually, a couple new things that are being...
In fact, they come up in the conversation here.
But it has to be added to the list, which is that...
And this is a rewrite.
I've seen this before.
This was done...
And it's going to lead to another...
We talked about it in the newsletter.
It's going to lead to another round of nonsense.
This latest one, which began with...
I forgot who started it.
Oh, it was in The Intercept.
Some...
British, Middle Eastern writer there claims that Trump, you know, what truth do we have that if he gets voted out that he's going to leave?
Oh, yes.
You put this in the newsletter.
I think you nailed it with that.
You might want to reiterate it literally because that was good.
Yeah, well, he just apparently Trump's not going to want to quit.
And if he gets impeached, he's not going to – and he's going to call to arms for everybody to rebel.
Yes, and right after he starts the Trump News Network, then he'll also write a law, an executive order that he can have a third term.
Yeah, that would be the next – this is what happened with – I first saw this with Nixon.
Obama had that too.
The right was saying about Obama.
George Bush was going to run for the third term and Obama was going to run for a third term.
Clinton, maybe not.
I don't remember the Clinton one exactly.
But it's all bull crap.
So they start picking up on it.
This becomes like a theme now.
So we have this theme that Trump's not going to quit.
So let's move it around the networks a little bit and let's put it on Chris Matthew's show with Donnie Deutch.
Oh, Donnie Deutch.
Donnie Deutch, the former advertising exec?
I'm correct.
That's the same guy, right?
Yeah, that guy.
How did he ever get into this news business?
What standing does he have?
He has no standards except that he'll come on and do stuff like this.
Let me get back to Donnie.
You know Trump over the years.
You're not his buddy or anything, but you know him.
What's his endgame?
What's his gotterdammerung?
How does he end up in the bunker?
What will he do?
Run for reelects to protect him from status limitations?
Hold on to the pardon power?
Just try to get reelected at all costs to keep himself out of prison or what?
What's his endgame?
Take it one step further.
Michael Cohen's final warning in his testimony, and I've thought this and said this before.
Donald Trump, we will not have a peaceful transition.
Donald Trump, I believe, whether he's going to be impeached, whether they're disqualifying him for running for office, even if he...
Oh, hold on.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Before we continue.
Disqualifying for running for office?
I have no idea what that means.
That's new.
I heard it the same way you did.
It was a showstopper.
Huh.
How does that work?
How do you disqualify him from running for office?
Maybe he lied about his age?
He's not old enough?
They're disqualifying him from running for office.
Even if he gets elected out, he will tell his people to take the streets.
I know that sounds extreme.
That's who this man is.
There's 30% of this America, of this country, that he believes he owns, and he actually does own them.
What did he say?
He flubbed something.
30% of this America?
There's 30% of this America?
Stop, stop.
This is the other thing that's got to go on the list in the Trump rotation.
TrumpRotation.com, everybody.
Yeah, TrumpRotation.com.
I have heard this so many times.
Out of the blue, along with this original, this idea that he's not going to leave if he's voted out.
No, actually, he said something else.
If he's elected out, which is even better...
I think that was just him elected out.
We're going to have an election.
I think he's just like he's fumbling for trying to sound curious.
We're going to have an election about who we don't want.
I voted you.
Anyway, so this 30% thing, it keeps coming up.
There's 30% of the public likes Trump and that's it.
And this really goes back to Brooks on the old PBS NewsHour, who always, at the beginning of the Trump run, was always seeing a 30% ceiling.
This is some liberal progressive notion that there's this 30% of the public dummies that are going to support Trump at whatever, no matter what happens.
And they keep using this 30% as though...
You have 70% leeway to vote somebody else in.
It's bullcrap.
But anyway.
Also, you've got to be worried when people start talking numbers like that, like 30%.
Is there a list you can get on to be a part of this 30%?
I have no idea.
He gets elected out.
He will tell his people to take the streets.
I know that sounds extreme.
That's who this man is.
There's 30% of this America, of this country, that he believes he owns, and he actually does own them.
The normal things we see, the peaceful transition, I believe Donald Trump is not beyond starting a civil war.
Chris, I've known this man for 20 years, and if you watch every one of his plays, he tees off what he's going to do.
I think we are really headed for a very ugly time in American history.
I'm sad to say that.
Well, you know I'm sorry.
Thank you so much.
U.S. Congresswoman Jackie Spirit, as always, thank you very much.
He got shut up pretty quick.
Sad as that is, thank you so much.
Goodbye.
You had a hard break.
He wasn't really rousting him.
He was glad to hear this stuff.
I mean, if you listen to the whole beginning of that where Chris is going on about, well, if he doesn't go to jail, he's always talking about jail.
Jail?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, yeah, no, there's...
You guys are still looted.
I've heard a lot of this, like, you know, he'll be ineligible because he'll be in jail.
You know, it's one of those.
Meanwhile, there's an interesting bill to fix our broken election system.
It's H.R. 1...
That's right.
The first from the House.
You may also call this the For the People Act of 2019.
And yes, the idea is, specifically when it comes to campaign finance, we want to level the playing field.
And one of our producers, Sir How Now Brown Cow, was at the committee hearing.
So I'm not sure what Sir How Now Brown Cow does, but I don't think you can just be at the committee hearing as a public member.
I may be wrong, but he was there.
I think you can.
Well, he was there then for three hours.
He says, I just spent three hours in the Rules Committee hearing on H.R. 1, the For the People Act.
After hearing everything...
I'm convinced media elements must have had a hand in this bill and likely paid outside groups that wrote it.
At the core of the bill is a 6 to 1 match on any donation under $200.
In other words, if you donate $199 to a candidate, the federal government will match that donation with $1,194.
You with me?
What?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's in this bill?
Yes, it's in this bill.
And I'll just say it again, and then I'll tell you what's wrong with it, according to our producer.
So again, a 6-1 match on any donation under $200.
We've heard about this before.
We should even that up and make it more fair so everyone can get some money, not just the rich people.
So, again, if you donate under $200, $199 to any candidate, the federal government will match the donation with $1,194.
Here's the kicker.
It's a per donation match.
So if you donate five times, you split your $1,000 into five separate $199 donations, that will grant the candidate a total of $5,970.
So really it turns a million bucks, which could be from just a thousand people, into five million.
This is a scam waiting to happen.
Well, Sir How Now Browncow, I think, with his invisible no agenda hat on there in the committee meeting, he says, I think this is benefiting the people who sell ads.
Of course.
It always does.
Someone figured it out.
The media's not going to mention this in a million years.
How can we get a factor six on our ad buys?
Well, there you go, people.
That is...
It still has to pass.
It's got a lot.
It's got road to go.
But I can see this getting somewhere.
Let's see if people figure out this six-time match scam.
Big scam.
Big scam.
Yeah, you won't read about that in the New York Times because it's like money in their pockets.
They're not going to talk about it.
Yeah, you probably won't hear it on CNN. By the way, CNN International?
Wow, that is far superior to the crap we have to watch in the U.S. It truly is.
Do you have CNN International on your system?
Are you able to get that?
I used to, but I don't anymore.
It's really good.
At least it's diverse.
It's not just the same.
Turns out there's other things going on in the world, such as the Geneva Auto Show.
Or do you want to stick with Trump?
No, you can go back to Trump.
I mean, I just wanted to have that one piece, but I got other Trump stuff.
But what about the auto show?
Well, the Geneva Auto Show is on, and they have two clips.
I guess this is kind of an interesting angle, as the reporting has been about, you know, it's always the trend when you do a big auto show.
I actually know a guy who's at the auto show.
He has the flying car.
It's the...
Oh, no, I forget what it's called.
Um...
It's basically an auto gyro and a motorcycle slapped together.
I wouldn't call that a flying car, but okay.
Yeah, it is.
It is a flying car when you see it.
It's the V-Pal, I think is what it's called, or the PAL-V. Can I put the kids in the back seat?
Yeah, you have a back seat.
Yeah, it's the PAL-V. And it is, you can look at it, pal-v.com.
And they even bill it as the world's first flying car.
It actually works.
It's an auto gyro that you can drive around and it's, you know, it folds up all of its blades and everything.
And it's relatively inexpensive and it's certified it's good to go.
So it's already flying.
But no mention of any flying cars whatsoever.
No, but first, let's talk about Brexit.
Brexit.
We've had to assume a no-deal Brexit.
We've prepared for a no-deal Brexit, and we can cope with a no-deal Brexit.
On tariffs into the EU, our assumption is that we'll have to pass the net price onto the customer, but obviously the pound will crash.
So net-net, hopefully not so much.
We might lose a little bit of market share in the EU. We'll pick that up, more than pick that up in the United Kingdom, because our competitors are coming from Europe, and we'll have tariffs in the opposite direction.
So tariffs are not worried about.
The worry has always been one of supply chain, getting the parts through customs.
And obviously, my board of directors has signed off a 30 million pound contingency.
We're using that as we need to.
We've increased the number of stillages.
We've increased the inventory.
We're ready.
And we have to be ready because I'm building cars now that will leave the factory in April and May post whatever Brexit looks like.
So, you know, that's all I can say really is we're ready.
I thought it was very encouraging.
They seem to have their shit together.
It's okay.
We're ready for it.
We're not too worried about the tariffs.
Yeah, some custom stuff we'll have to deal with.
There's a lot of fear-mongering for the amount of ease that this...
I think this was the BMW guy.
But the big winner this year at the show, you can already guess what it is.
I hope.
Well, what category of vehicle is the star?
Oh, it's got to be something to do with climate change.
Battery cars!
Battery cars!
Everyone's got a battery car!
There's an atmosphere of change here at the Geneva Motor Show 2019 as brands, both old and new, shift away from fossil fuels and towards an electrified future.
The electric pulse races from the fastest to the slowest cars.
One of the fastest is from new brand Automobili Pininfarina.
It has nearly 2,000 horsepower.
The thing closest to that I've driven is probably an F1 car with nearly 900 horsepower, and this car will have more than double.
And as Citroen celebrates its centenary, it's showing off the slowest car at the show, the AMI-1 Concept.
This is pretty cool.
It looks like a cardboard box with wheels.
We don't call it a vehicle.
We call it an object.
It's not a vehicle.
We call it an object.
Yeah, you should be against the law to call this thing a vehicle.
The slowest car at the show, the AMI-1 concept.
We don't call it a vehicle.
We call it an object for urban areas, so big cities.
Anybody can drive it.
You don't need a driving license.
It's only 2.5 meters long.
Maximum speed, 45 kilometers.
Autonomy, 100 kilometers.
So it's obviously a concept, but we're just testing to see where it's going to go.
There are pure electric cars here, but also plenty of hybrid electric.
That's to say they have a petrol engine on board, like this BMW 530e, but also an electric motor.
And you plug it in right there.
The use case of plug-in hybrids is actually very suitable to Europe.
People who want to drive shorter distances, for example, with zero local emissions, they can do that in full electric mode, for example, in cities, and then have the ease of mind to be able to do longer distances without having to recharge, supported by petrol engines.
Driving the electrical surge across the car industry are the tough new EU emission standards coming into force next year.
Jeremy Wilkes at the Geneva International Motor Show for Euronews.
So this is indeed the trend, and I've heard a lot of people talk about their hybrids, and they all kind of say, the marketing is working, they all say the same thing.
Well, when I'm driving around my own city, my own town, I want to be electric, I want to keep it clean.
And then when I get on the highway, then I can blow it wide open and use the petrol part of the car.
So the marketing is keep your hometown clean.
It's a reasonable approach.
It's working.
It's working.
They got them here.
All kinds.
I see Mercedes, BMWs.
Everyone's driving them.
Yeah, you got to keep charging them.
That's the problem.
But the flying car is off the radar.
Of course.
We don't want the flying car.
We want an electric car that doesn't really go very far so you can't keep the public.
So you can't escape.
That's the idea.
No escape.
There's no escape in your battery vehicle.
None.
All right.
Well, a couple of the other things are going on that might be worth discussing unless you want to take a break.
No, we took a break.
I'll take a break if you want, but the show will be over.
Let's take a listen to what's going on.
The anti-Israel stuff is really cropping up all over the place.
I think it's part of some sort of a trend.
I think somebody's behind it because it's too much.
It has to do with Omar.
Let's start with her.
She's, like, they've given her, I guess some guys have whispered in her ear to, like, keep it up.
This is Omar, the freshman?
Yeah, the freshman congresswoman who hates Israel and hates Jews.
Let's just summarize.
Oh, okay.
Let's play this Omar Stuff CBS. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Tuesday a resolution...
Omar Stuff CBS? Oh, I'm sorry.
My mistake.
Yes, here it is.
This is the one I meant.
I know what intolerance looks like.
The latest comment to land Omar in hot water was this one she made at a DC bookstore, slamming congressional support for Israel.
I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.
In response, her own party drafted a four-page resolution rejecting anti-Semitism.
Without mentioning Omar by name, it says her comment suggests that Jews cannot be patriotic Americans and trusted neighbors.
New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer.
As someone who is Jewish, the idea that you would question my loyalty to the country as a lawmaker because of my religion is obviously offensive and deeply hurtful.
The president called it a dark day for Israel, and GOP leaders urged the Democrats to go further.
Nancy Pelosi has to remove her from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Speaker Pelosi shares the cover of this month's Rolling Stone with Omar, who is the nation's first Muslim congresswoman.
But Pelosi also reprimanded Omar last month for a tweet about a Jewish lobbying group and money.
I posted a statement.
Omar says she's being held to a double standard.
Just last week, a poster was erected in the West Virginia state capitol, linking her with 9-11.
We get to be called names and we get to be labeled as hateful.
No, we know what hate looks like.
We experience it every single day.
That argument has clearly resonated with some.
Tonight, Democrats say they're going to be reworking this anti-Semitism resolution to include anti-Muslim bias as well.
And they say the vote, Jeff, will likely get pushed off to Thursday.
Elon!
Let's talk about this for a second.
It's a different Elon, but I like it.
Before we talk about it, you want to play the other one while we're at it?
The short one from Democracy Now?
That's about the resolution.
Yeah, let's play that.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Tuesday a resolution condemning anti-Semitism will now also condemn anti-Muslim bias.
The resolution is seen as a direct rebuke of recent comments by Minnesota Congressmember Ilhan Omar questioning the U.S. relationship with Israel, even though the draft resolution does not explicitly name the freshman Congressmember.
The resolution was announced after comments by Omar at an event last week in which she called out the, quote, That says it's okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country, referring to Israel.
All right.
So, first an observation.
The anti-Semitism meme, and there may be truly an uptick, an increase in anti-Semitism, is all over Europe as well.
It almost feels like the world is, we're devolving into chaos, and the people who are responsible for it hate the Jews, they're blaming the Jews.
I see that in the Netherlands.
I see it in France.
I see it in Germany.
Actually, all over the EU. I'm reading it in the press.
A lot of this started with the BDS movement, I believe.
The boycott, divest, and...
What's the S? I forget.
Sanction.
Sanction.
Boycott, divest, and sanction.
The Obama administration spent a lot of time promoting the plight of the Palestinians.
But then there's this other percentage thing that's going around, and although the percentages are correct, I think this is where the problems stem from for OElon, is 3% of the U.S. population is Jewish, identifies as Jewish.
60% of the U.S. Congress is Jewish.
These are rough numbers, so don't hold me to it.
And this is where the allegiance comes from.
All these senators have dual passports, which I have never seen any evidence for.
I don't believe that.
I don't believe it either.
It may be true, but I've just never seen it, but I have heard this before.
I don't know exactly why this happens, but for sure, the talk about it is taking place.
Well, they're not going to let whoever they are, are not going to let Omar let up.
They're going to have her.
She's like the – they're throwing her to the wolves to see what happens.
I want to play this one more clip.
This is another one about the same topic.
This is the UK Liberal Party anti-Israel demands.
In Britain, Labour Party and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn's renewing calls for the UK to stop selling arms to Israel in light of the recent UN inquiry that found that Israel may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in their response to protesters in Gaza since the start of the Great March of Return last March demonstrations.
The report says that Israeli forces targeted unarmed protesters in Gaza with lethal force, including children, journalists and the disabled, And that they killed 189 Palestinians, almost all of them, with live ammunition.
The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel.
Labor leader Corbyn tweeted after the report was published.
The Labor Party, which is not currently in power, passed a motion last year calling for an embargo on arms sales to Israel.
Hmm.
Israel makes their own arms.
As far as I know.
I mean, they do buy arms, but they...
Oh, come on.
We sold them the Iron Dome.
We give them money to buy stuff.
Come on.
The Iron Dome is a defensive product, and they're not going to stop sales of that.
Let's add another data point.
Is Trump moving the embassy?
This didn't help.
Yes, that got everybody all bent out of shape.
A few other countries have suggested doing it too.
Well, a couple of presidents have suggested doing it, but they never did.
And I don't know why.
They all suggested doing it, but they never did.
Trump did it.
Yeah.
There's a lot of stuff that's always been suggested and nobody ever did.
Well, let's stick with that for a second.
Is it perhaps possible that this is also an anti-Trump thing?
Well, we can assume that a lot of these things are anti-Trump things.
Maybe.
That may be the whole thing.
It may all be anti-Trump.
That's so sick.
I mean, these guys are desperate.
I've never seen anything like it.
But...
Yeah.
They had a...
Michael Savage, who is one of the major right-wing talkers, has decided to change everything his whole life.
He's going to a shorter format.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I'm reminded of Conan O'Brien's experiments.
People are doing experiments.
You go into a shorter format, he's going to split the time with Ben Shapiro, who has his own show.
No, no, no.
This is not Michael Savage making a decision.
This is Michael Savage being worked out.
Well, I think there's some truth to that, but Michael Savage has become a podcaster in the meantime, thinking that that's his exit strategy.
Good luck.
I think he could actually do well as a podcaster, because I've seen the stuff that he's doing as the podcaster is way...
It's just really more entertaining than anything he does on the radio.
What does he have that we don't have?
He doesn't need the money.
Sorry?
I was going to say, alright, so successful but not financially successful.
That makes sense.
I don't know what financially successful would mean to him.
At this point, I don't think he cares.
Because he...
He's more of a, I think he's an egomaniac, but I think he just likes being able to just say what he feels like without anybody interrupting or telling him not to do it or stations dropping him like WABC did.
When WABC dropped him or said they would, I think they did drop him.
That's when he started the podcast ideas.
He says, that's it, I've had him doing podcasting.
And because I can't be held hostage by these radio stations.
Right.
But he had this guest on who just wrote a book.
And there's kind of an Occam's Razor thing in here that he's trying to get the guest to tell him...
Why they hate Trump so much?
Because this guy wrote a book about the case for Trump, showing all the things that he's actually done.
He made promises that he kept and things along those lines.
And then the guy, and this comes out, this is the weird Michael Savage clip.
Well, he certainly used them with Donald Trump, that's for sure.
And he's using them with them, and the whole organization, these corrupted FBI agents, are they using them against Trump also, yes?
It's a shame.
No, wait, stop, stop, stop.
I believe that this is not the guy who wrote the book.
Maybe it is.
But this guy is related to the mob.
And he's on to talk about how the mob has changed and...
Anyway, play it again, but I'm not certain of this guy's pedigree.
Well, he's certainly used them with Donald Trump, that's for sure.
And he's using them with them, and the whole organization has corrupted the FBI. He's using them against Trump also, yes?
It's a shame.
It's a shame.
Why do you think, knowing powerful men your whole life, why do you think they hate Trump so much?
What has he really done that invokes their wrath so much?
He's a businessman.
These people are politicians.
They don't want to see a businessman secede.
He goes against their beliefs.
He's from the outside, in other words.
He's from the outside.
He's a businessman.
So they don't want to see a businessman over a politician to secede and make America greater than they did.
That's the lesson you want to see.
I don't think that's that weird.
That makes sense.
It's actually kind of an Occam's Razor thing.
It's like...
Hello?
Trump is not a politician.
He didn't even come in through the political system.
That's the whole problem.
He's a businessman.
Even though Michael Savage missed it as usual, he says, oh, he's an outsider.
No, no.
It's not that he's an outsider.
Because if you remember, and I remember this because I've witnessed this forever...
This constant harping, especially by the Republicans, that we need businessmen to run the country.
We need a businessman, but then we always elect a politician.
Oh, we need a businessman because they'll change things.
And then there was the counterargument.
No, no, no, no.
The businessman doesn't know how things work in government.
Government's different.
Government needs politicians and these people that know how to work a governmental system.
Did you have that back and forth argument?
If the whole thing just boils down, as this guy thinks, to just to hate the Trump hate and the whole machine is because he's a businessman proving the old theory correct, that a businessman can run, you know, government operations, you know, maybe eventually get the Pentagon audited.
The simplicity of that is just kind of like took me back a bit because it's possible.
That's all it is.
Well, remember when or recall when he first came onto the scene and when he first looks like he was really going to elect it.
Just look at all the pictures.
I mean, every single politician, every politico in the United States is somewhere mugging on camera with Trump at some party because he's one of those guys.
I've been to parties where Trump was there.
It's the same idea.
All that happens is they put up with him with his boorish behavior and his golden life because he contributes to their campaigns.
He's got a lot of money.
He has a lot of say.
He has some influence.
And they just put up with him, but they all just like, that guy's a dick.
He's a douche.
What a moron.
What a shithead.
But then all of a sudden he connected.
He becomes president.
Yeah, and that's not why we invited you to the party, Donald.
You're not supposed to, like, get into our lane here.
Stay out.
Yeah.
Stay in your lane, bro.
It's the arrogance of the political class.
And this may never happen again in our lives.
I'm happy we're witnessing it.
We may not have a life after this.
You never know.
Just about Ben Shapiro.
So Savage is going from radio to podcast.
Shapiro, who is a Hollywood creation, has had a Hollywood agent.
They taught him how to dress.
I don't know who taught him how to dress, but they're dressing him differently than whatever he was wearing before.
He's moving in from podcasts into the mainstream.
And he's got backing.
He's got real money behind him.
It's not just his little ads that are running.
Here's something he said the other day.
They have no agenda.
Facts.
Apples, not bananas.
Facts.
There you go.
That's Ben Shapiro.
Well, there's another one that's got to be watched.
I think this is a piece of crap because I've been listening to it.
Play the podcast update.
Oh, hold on a second.
Oh, good.
Podcast news.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, and a new podcast host called Newt's World.
You know, he should join Luminary.
Did you read about Luminary?
Maybe.
Get ready.
Here is Podshow all over again.
With big stars and paid subscriptions, Luminary aims to be the Netflix of podcasts.
Oh, yeah.
So, 40 exclusive shows this company Luminary has lined up.
This is a little different than Gimlet.
We should just make a list of all these networks.
The offerings come from podcast startup called Luminary that has emerged from stealth mode to...
Stealth mode.
Stealth mode.
Here we go.
We're in Stealth Mode.
They've emerged from Stealth Mode to unveil nearly $100 million in funding.
Now, here's a little difference.
With a subscription-based business model that it hopes will push the medium into a new phase of growth.
And here's the quote.
This is from the New York Times.
We want to become synonymous with podcasting in the same way Netflix has become synonymous with streaming.
By the way, I don't think Netflix is synonymous with streaming at all.
This is Matt Sachs, Luminaries co-founder and chief executive.
I know how ambitious that sounds.
We think it can be done.
And with some of the top creators in the space, they all agree.
Creators in the space.
Hold on.
Creators in...
I gotta write this down.
If someone says, I'm a creator in the space.
Creators in space!
Okay, that's the opening of the show.
That's good.
So, the idea is he's going to charge $8 a month for subscribers to gain access to Luminary's lineup.
$96 a year?
Yeah, for creators, Luminary is offering large upfront payment guarantees in exchange.
We did this.
In exchange for exclusive rights to distribute their work, reducing the risk of a concept and hopefully encouraging greater creativity and higher production values.
Yeah, this is pod show all over again.
Yeah, and it will not work.
Do you guys have any sense of history?
No.
You know, the New York Times that could have called me.
For an opposing opinion, we called the Podfather.
No, they didn't call you.
You're not on the Rolodex.
So, you know, this...
It's very different when you're talking.
What are some of these shows?
I mean, keep reading.
This is good stuff.
I mean, I always enjoy your cynical reading.
Oh, I didn't know you were interested in that.
Okay, let me tell you some of the shows.
Patti LuPone as a bebop singing junkie nun in John Cameron Mitchell's musical follow-up to Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
A new show from Lena Dunham called The C Word.
Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh.
Are they putting Broadway shows on the podcast?
Yeah, this is a musical follow-up to Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Yeah.
Let's see if there's anything.
Well, they say here...
Patti LuPone, by the way, is the most, of all the Broadway actresses, especially older ones, the most Trump-hating woman.
I think she's beyond Barbra Streisand.
Wow.
That's saying something.
It is.
A new show from Lena Dunham called The C Word.
And a series from Conan O'Brien.
Malcolm Gladwell, Trevor Noah.
They got the big names, John.
They're bringing in the big guns.
Malcolm Gladwell has his own podcast.
They're just moving it over to this system.
Is that what he's doing?
I think so.
Yeah, so these people are giving up.
It's like moving to SiriusXM.
You know, you will be relevant to a very small amount of people, and it's, you know, discovery just becomes an issue.
Too many people, too many shows, too many channels.
And also, we've...
Yeah, but discovery is a huge...
The real problem with podcasting is you can't...
You have to develop an audience because you can't get discovered.
Yeah, and it's not...
You look at all the top 20 podcasts.
I mean, every magazine does these.
By the way, we're never on them.
Never.
We're never on them.
And so they have the list, and I've looked at those lists, and I've never visited any of those podcasts.
Now, once in a while, this is my habits, and I listen to a podcast or two, but I'll go to, like, I see these new networks.
There's a bunch of them.
Gimlet, for example.
And I'll go there and I'll look at all these different podcasts about this and that, and then I'll play part of one and I start it, and it's just always dull.
And I just give up on them.
So discovery of the good podcast that's in there.
I mean, I think your buddy down there, Benjamin, a 5x5, you know, he's had good.
I like his podcast when he talks about podcasting.
It's one of the best there is.
So you're hitting upon it.
I mean, you cannot equate podcasts to television shows.
You cannot equate a podcast to a movie you get on Netflix.
Excuse me.
You're joining a community because that's podcast.
Yeah, you may have a news podcast like The Daily or Pod Save the Privilege, but that's going to be a community of like-minded political thinking, which can be quite large, but it's a community.
Those people are never going to go and find anything else that doesn't interest them.
A lineup of stuff doesn't work.
You will hear this word of mouth.
We've seen this growth.
We grow year over year.
We grow about, what, John, 8% maybe?
Maybe?
That's a reasonable number, about 8%, 8 to 10, maybe on a good year.
And that includes, that's a net because we lose...
Yeah, we lose people, of course.
We lose a lot of people.
Right, and that's not – the growth doesn't come from people seeing an ad or even in a lineup, although I will say ever-changing artwork does make people curious and it does have – It's a form of advertising.
It's more an alert mechanism, I think.
It's like, oh, there's something new that I see that you already subscribe to.
Also, you know, the idea of subscribing, it doesn't really matter anymore, as long as a link someone can click on and listen to.
But it's going to be a community, and you have to know how to build one.
It's not like a blog.
It's not something that people can get a quick hit of.
It's like you don't get a quick hit of the No Agenda show.
You're either in it, you're interested.
It's like a comic.
Like, talk about comic books.
There's going to be an audience and if you follow our value for value model, you'll be able to sustain yourself and I think certainly a comic book podcast could do that.
I think so.
It makes no sense for me to say, oh, I'm going to promote the comic book podcast.
There'll be people who will listen But they're going to find it through a community they already belong to, and they're not going to hear it from me.
It's just not the same.
It's being treated as music by some.
You know, you like that, you like this.
None of that works.
We've seen it not work consistently for 15 years.
We've seen the monetization ideas of a network of shows not work for 15 years.
You cannot monetize it that way.
They're just soaking some VCs.
This is a matter of the VC soak.
Dumb VCs that don't want to talk to anybody who knows what they're talking about just throw money at these sorts of things because they've got a good sales pitch and they use old media examples to try to promote it.
And you're right.
It's going to be a few people make out and that's about it.
By the way, how well is Netflix doing really?
You know, they have a huge issue.
They have to raise the price.
And Wall Street knows this.
They're the darlings for sure.
They came out of nowhere and shot up like crazy.
But now, now it's plateauing.
Now, just like the iPhones and the smartphones, everyone has some stuff.
You know, do we need more?
Do I need another service?
You know, I might have to add Amazon.
People only have so much money.
And Netflix is not going to be able to sustain itself.
Unless they really somehow figure out how they can make enough money on their own productions, which is incredibly expensive.
Amazon's all loss leader.
No, that's totally risky.
So, you know, whenever you're in this type of situation, you know that your supply chain, which is Hollywood, which you make some of, they're going to raise their prices.
So it just won't work.
There's only so much talent.
I mean...
Well, they're intermediaries.
Being an intermediary is very hard to do the arbitrage to make the money between what you owe in royalties and what you can bring in.
When it's advertising, like everyone else is doing except for this guy, the problem is the advertisers are God, and they tell you what you can and can't say and where they do or do not want their ad placed.
When you do it with subscription...
You just can't charge people enough money.
You can't do this on a network level anymore.
They haven't figured it out yet.
They're going to have to crash and burn.
They will.
How's Gimlet doing?
Well, Gimlet has its own issue because people are very worried that their favorite shows are, you know, you'll now have to go to Spotify.
And, of course, Gimlet is saying, oh, don't worry about that.
We will never do that.
We'll never, no!
Of course, I can guarantee you they're going to have to put a couple of their big shows behind the paywall or figure out different ways, you know, I guess with the advertising model.
Already they're saying, well, newer shows won't be freely available.
You know?
If they're not freely available, they're not going to get any listeners.
That's why John and I, over time, it wasn't like we wrote it on a whiteboard, but we're agile enough and we cared enough to figure out what the community was capable of doing and how to grow it.
We came up with a value-for-value concept.
It's 11 years.
We're still here, but we're not a network of shows.
We're a network of producers.
It was such a nice ending and then I hit the wrong button.
Yeah, you do that every once in a while.
That's why we're not slick.
I'm not Gimlet, you know?
I'm going to show myself by donating to No Agenda.
Imagine all the people who could do that.
Oh yeah, that'd be fun.
We're on No Agenda in the morning.
We do have a few people to thank.
Very few, I might say.
Very few.
Susan Johnson leads the list.
She's in Hillsborough, Oregon.
Dame Susan, I believe.
100 bucks.
Matthew Anderson in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, $100.
John D. Carney in Alpharetta, Georgia, $800.
Scott McKenzie in Wimslow, Cheshire, UK, $79.43.
Yeah, we need to read this.
He's got a knighthood thing going on.
Yeah, so I thought I might be getting...
Shall I read it?
Yeah, go read, read.
I thought I might be getting close to my knighthood, so I did some quick accounting, and it turns out I was very close.
I've just sent $79.43 for your way to round up my long overdue contribution to the roundtable.
I've been a listener since episode number one.
Wow.
I guess I'm proof that anyone can get to a knighthood with a regular monthly donation along with one-offs here and there.
Your show is a continued source of inspiration for my Noagenda novels and giblets.
Yes, this is Scott McKenzie, who has written several Noagenda novels.
Look them up on Amazon.
And long may it continue.
I have another Noagenda novel in the works called The Archivist.
You should have some funny ones.
The red cell is the one I have sitting here on my desk.
Just Red Cell.
The Red Cell, which is good, yeah.
That's a good one, yeah.
But it sounds like you may be the subject of the next book, John.
Yeah, I should be a detective.
I don't know if that's what you'll be, but you will be the archivist.
We'll see what happens.
I'd like to be known as Sir Scott of the Chesser Plains, and I'd like to request Footballers Wives and Prosecco at the Roundtable.
Footballers, wives, and Prosecco.
All right.
He says, keep up the great work.
Thank you for your courage.
Let me just put...
Let me add that to the table.
Look forward to that for later.
Let me call...
Abraham Daly in Raymond, Maine.
I'm calling room service.
7510.
He asked...
There's a note that I need to read because this is kind of interesting because this is something I posted like 20 years ago.
Okay.
line of your chili recipe.
Uh-oh.
This is a spicy bean stew that shows off a mixture of four distinct-looking and distinct-tasting beans.
The first use of the word distinct is missing or is spelled wrong.
It's missing an N.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for that update.
I will change it at some point in the future.
And where can we find this chili recipe?
I don't know.
It's on some...
I have it posted all over the place.
Can you say Dvorak's chili recipe and it'll pop up somewhere?
I give it a shot.
Go on Google and see if that works.
It might work because it's here and there.
Well, I use Sear X, of course.
Dvorak's Chili Recipe.
Let's see.
So that's the meta search.
There it is.
Just add the Super Bowl and beer.
John C. Dvorak's Chili Recipe.
2014.
Right under that, obituaries.
I do not know why I got that third result.
Maybe people think that the recipes, they think it's a killer.
Yes, it's a killer recipe.
Oh, the recipe that won the first Comdex Chili Cook-Off.
Yes, it did.
All right.
It has beans, which causes a huge controversy.
Make sure you spell beans right.
Anyway, sir, Paul from Twickenham in Twickenham, Middlesex, UK, 6969.
Robert Marsh in Hearts.
Oh, he needs emergency goat scream jobs karma.
You know, since we have a short list, I think we can do that.
Okay, give it to him.
Yeah, okay.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
That's Robert.
Yeah, that's Robert Marsh.
I'm sorry, Marsh.
Yeah, Robert Marsh.
We've got Nate and Sebastopol, 69, 69.
Baron Mark Tanner, our buddy, 6789.
We've got to set up another LA meet-up so we can chat.
Paul Moss in Lansing, Michigan.
6666.
Another nighting coming up.
Yeah.
Dear John and Adam, with this donation of 6666, that's double, double 33s for extra luck.
My total donation should reach the $1,000 mark to gain full knighthood.
My previous donation of 933.34 will be attached in the follow-up email to provide validation.
Upon nighting, I would like to acquire the title of Superfluous of the Best Words.
Superfluous of the Best Words.
At the roundtable, I request plenty of bourbon and blunderbusses in the hope that hilarity and not calamity will ensue from the combination of said items.
I do not request any jingles or karma, but do look forward to the Michigan Local One meetup on Sunday, where I'm sure topics of many varieties will be discussed.
I've got to say, Michigan, they have their own meetups regularly.
This is a good idea.
They all seem healthy.
Also, I'm glad to hear that Pat is no longer a douchebag.
In the morning, Phil.
All right, Phil, I'll see you at the roundtable.
Derek Cope in Shanghai, China, 66.
Derek Cope, a NASCAR driver used to be named Derek Cope.
It doesn't have anything to do with it.
So my second donation, please, with my son Jackson Cope, a happy birthday on the show next Sunday as his birthday is March 13th.
He will be turning 13 and entering young manhood.
Also, please wish my smoking hot wife a happy anniversary.
10th.
On March 23rd.
All right, Derek, you got it.
Steven Davidson in Olala, Washington, 5510.
Sir Tom Darien, DeForest, Wisconsin, Double Nickels on the Dime, 5510.
Michael Gates, 5280.
Theodore Kotick in Austin.
He needs a de-douching, so I'd like to give that to him.
You've been de-douched.
He said he really enjoyed the Austin meetup.
Yeah, cool.
He says he's 5505.
Now the following people are $50 donations, name and location if appropriate.
Villarreal, Villarreal in Mercedes, Texas.
Heather Rodriguez in Stockton, California.
Jonathan Meyer in Xenia, Ohio.
Aaron Ostrander in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
He says, he has a note.
Note to listeners, instead of getting hopped up on Adderall and listening to the show at 2X, eat a bunch of brownie edibles and listen at 1.5X. That's right.
That would be something.
Sir Matthew Januszewski in Chicago.
Paul Van de Cordelar in Oymond.
I'm Oden.
I'm Oden.
Todd Moore in Arlington, Virginia.
Diane Sago, who's got a birthday coming up to his first smoking hot husband.
Victor Munoz in Miami, Florida.
Andrew Martin in Sydney, New South Wales.
anonymous scrometer.
Oh, yeah.
Please tell Adam not to stop talking about marijuana and marijuana products on The No Agenda Hemp community needs its voice.
Wait a minute.
I didn't know we had a No Agenda Hemp community.
We probably do.
Edward Mazurik in Memphis, Tennessee.
Jason Deluzio in Chatsford, Pennsylvania.
And last but not least, Sir Brett.
Sir Brett.
Farrell in OKC, Oklahoma City.
I want to thank all these folks for helping produce and keep the show going.
It was show 1118.
Short list, but meaningful.
But a good list.
Yeah, short list, but meaningful.
Thank you.
Good people.
I do have a make good.
Let me see.
Stevie B missed that on the last show and you did house finding karma.
So let me give that to him right now.
You've got karma.
All right, so we don't have any meetups to promote at the time being.
Is there nothing further in March?
I don't know if anything's coming up in April.
So this is something, people, you can organize.
And once the keeper and I get through moving house, getting married, resting for a second, I think we're ready to travel.
Where should we go next for a meetup, John?
Moving house.
After we get out of hospital, we move house.
Where should we go?
Where should we go?
What's a good spot?
Tennessee Beckons.
Tennessee Beckons.
But they have had a meetup.
I'd like to go somewhere.
Yeah, but they haven't had a meetup with either of us.
But there's some states that have zero meetups.
Well, how about Chicago?
Chicago.
Are she kind of relatives there?
Yes.
Oh, that's not a bad idea.
Possibility.
All right.
Well, we'll be taking a request for proposals, so send your RFP. RFP. Yes, send the RFP. We're looking for your RFPs.
Yeah, if possible, please give us some insight as to why your state should be next, or your country for that matter.
We'll work on that.
But, of course, we want to thank everybody who supported us today, the Value for Value Network.
It continues to work and survive, and we certainly appreciate it.
Also, everybody who came in under $50 on a lot of our subscriptions.
Some people like to remain anonymous.
That's our deal.
Under $50, we don't mention you.
Everything else above, we do, and we appreciate it.
Please remember us for the next show, which will be on Sunday.
For those who need the jobs, Karma?
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
You've got...
Karma.
Today is the 7th of March, 2019.
Here is our list for today.
Not too long.
Douchebag Brianna says happy birthday to her boyfriend, Bryce Shonka.
He celebrates tomorrow.
Dan Victor, surviving the media.
Happy birthday to his mom.
Hey, mom.
It was her birthday yesterday.
Derek Cope says happy birthday to his son, Jackson, 13 on the 13th.
And Sam Diane Sago says happy birthday to her smoking hot husband, Trey Tom Yorke.
And we say happy birthday to everybody there from the best podcast in the universe.
Yeah, it's great, John.
Sounds really good, the recorder.
No, you were kind of in key.
Well, you know.
That's my blade.
It's postmodern.
Yes.
Pick up the blade.
Pick up the blade.
I got it.
I got it here.
There it is.
Okay.
Brian Hoskins!
Phil Moss!
Scott McKenzie!
Gentlemen, join us up here on the podium next to the lecture, and you are about to join all of our Knights and Dames here at the Roundtable, the No Agenda Roundtable of the Knights and Dames, thanks to your contribution and the amount of $1,000 or more, and therefore, I am proud to pronounce the KV... Sir Ulfgar, Knight of Orange County, Sir Perth Lewis of the Best Words, and Sir Scott of the Cheshire Plains.
For you gentlemen, we have at the roundtable hookers and blow, rent boys and chardonnay, footballers, wives and prosecco, bourbon and blunderbusses, cookies and vodka, zucchini and meatloaf, harlots and haldol, beer and blunts, bong hits and bourbons, sparkling cider and escorts, gin trail and gerbans, and...
Gerbils.
Mutton and mead.
To all of you.
Three of you.
The trio.
Head over to noagendination.com slash rings.
Eric Schill will take care of you.
We'll get those out to you as soon as possible.
Wear them with pride.
Share with everyone that you are a knight.
And for those of you who would like to join the lineup for next show on Sunday, Dvorak.org slash NA. And...
Oh!
I have a new Hummer clip Oh, nice.
Jill Abramson still does the rounds.
For those of you listening at the Half Speed podcast, After the edibles you'll enjoy it.
Facebook plays a huge role in siloing the audience for news because the almighty algorithm you know it values what you click on and what you share so what you like and what you share and so it keeps feeding you what you like you'll like and what you'll share and For political news,
that tends to be news that reflects your political outlook, either on the left or the right.
Right.
Why does never anyone who says, do you know you have vocal fry?
I wonder that myself.
In fact, I tried to get an interview with her through the publicist at Simon& Schuster.
And?
And, you know, a podcaster.
Really?
Yeah, well, she's got a long list.
She's got a lot on her table.
Maybe we can get you some other authors.
And so I sent back, yeah, Stephen King.
I'd love to talk to him.
It'd be kind of funny.
Wow, kind of denied.
But did you say that this is not just any podcast?
It's the best podcast in the universe?
I do everything I can.
It's always like, you know, well, you know, we got other people that will listen.
We have a podunk radio station in Fayette, Arkansas.
Let me ask you a question.
It's a higher priority than any podcast.
Question.
You want to see if we can prove a point?
And just ask our producers to write to the publisher and request the Jill Abramson interview for this podcast?
Uh...
No.
And why is that?
Because I would like to work with this publicist for a while before...
Okay.
That's too bad.
...the screws to her.
Okay.
All right.
Too bad.
I understand.
Makes sense.
Well, I'll tell you this.
There is a...
Here's the interview I'd like to get a whole...
Do.
And if you find a way to push this one...
This is the better.
Bill Shatner.
Oh...
If you guys want to push me to do an interview, do it with William Shatner.
He's on Twitter.
He's there.
He's amenable to being hounded, I think.
But he's got a front mandate.
I've dealt with this guy before.
He's the gatekeeper.
I can't remember his name.
I knew two guys who could make one call and get him for you.
The problem is one is dead.
The other one's in jail.
But either one of those guys could have made the call.
Well, thanks for the thought.
So who's the front guy?
We'll have the producers swamp the front guy.
You're going to have to find some bypasses.
You've got to get around these front guys.
The front guys are no good.
They tend to be just gatekeepers.
No, no.
No podcast?
No, not going to happen.
You're not going to do any podcast.
You've tried as a podcaster?
You've tried to get Bill Shatner?
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
And you're on first name basis Bill, like Bob Mueller, but yet you can't get him to come on the show?
Bill.
Bill?
No, I can't get a hold of him because he's got this gatekeeper.
Bill is also in his 80s, I think, now, isn't he?
Yeah, but he's still pretty lively.
He'd be a great interview.
No, no kidding.
Maybe.
That'd be great.
That'd be terrible.
That'd be great for May 19th.
But he is himself an interviewer, and he prides himself as being good at it, so it might be fun.
Okay.
What do I have here?
Yes, I have...
Oh, this was...
By the way, I should point this out, people.
I told you guys you should do more interviews.
The successful interviewers, and there's plenty of them out there, they're not successful because of their style or whether they're famous or anything.
It's because they all have, with almost no exceptions, fabulous bookers.
Yes.
Who have big...
Big, giant Rolodexes.
Yes.
Also known as an address book these days.
Well.
Rolodex is somewhat outdated, but yes.
That's what it's called.
And yeah, that bookers, and we have no bookers, and so, you know, if there's any bookers out there that want to help us, that'd be great.
But I don't think we have any bookers that listen to the show.
We do have a pretty good booker at Silicon Spin for a while.
We do have literary agents.
We have that.
Yeah, literary agents are okay, but most authors aren't that interesting to speak with, to be honest about it.
Yeah.
Well, you know, one thing to do is, you know, you could finish a book and then go on all kinds of other shows and get interviewed and, you know, make the show better that way.
Because you'd be the guy that would go on every podcast.
I can't hear you.
Hello?
All right.
Hey, how about a Venezuela update, John?
Yeah, how about a Venezuela update?
Alright, we're gonna begin tonight with the very latest out of Venezuela as the U.S. continues to try and push for its seemingly appointed president, Juan Guaido, while at the same time trying to take down the Maduro regime.
The plan, however, seems to be hitting roadblocks both from an operational perspective as well as from a PR perspective as the State Department takes issue with reporters for not writing the Venezuela story the way that they want it to be told.
That's verbatim, by the way.
We're going to show you.
We have several reports tonight, both on Venezuela and on Elliott Abrams.
And we're going to begin with RT correspondent Dan Cohen.
Sanctions have been called the silver bullet of the American national security arsenal.
And while they've failed to topple Nicolas Maduro so far, now the Trump administration is threatening to level sanctions against international banks just for doing business in Venezuela.
In a statement released Wednesday morning, National Security Advisor John Bolton said, quote, The United States is putting foreign financial institutions on notice that they will face sanctions for being involved in facilitating illegitimate transactions that benefit Nicolas Maduro and his corrupt network.
This transition, what many call an outright coup d'etat, hasn't gone as Washington envisioned.
But the State Department wants journalists to call Juan Guaido the interim president anyway.
Now, I wish I knew a little bit more about these financial sanctions, because it's not really reported in any detail.
This is clearly, all sanctions hurt people.
It is a form of warfare.
It's a style of, from what I understand, by the way, I want to mention something as preface to this clip in the next one.
This is RT, which I'm going to for these clips, because RT, Russians on the side of Maduro, So this is going to be a skewed report that I think you're going to get more information from.
Knowing it's a skewed report that you're going to get from the mainstream.
Oh, for sure.
My understanding is that these are these targeted sanctions where you find some rich guy who's like loaded and he's made a lot of money out of the regime and he's got bank accounts in New York and, you know, and...
Yeah, so they seize his assets, basically.
Yeah, those are the Russian oligarchs.
Yeah, yeah.
Same thing.
It's a great system.
We're very good at it.
Go Bitcoin.
Yeah, we're the best.
Go Bitcoin.
Okay.
We know it.
We'll break up this report.
I have a report from Euronews, which has a different slant on it, but as far as I can tell...
Guaido has zero power.
Daniel Kreener had only been in his job for a year.
Now he's been told to quit Germany's embassy in Caracas.
The sanction came after he joined a group of diplomats that welcomed self-proclaimed leader Juan Guaido on his return to Venezuela on Monday.
Guaido condemned the expulsion when he addressed Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly.
They are threatening an important European country, which is helping Venezuela in a humanitarian way.
It is important that the people of Venezuela know that.
Not only are they blocking and burning, they are also verbally threatening whoever is helping Venezuela.
Germany has joined most Western nations in recognizing Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate head of state.
But President Nicolas Maduro's government accuses Crina of interfering in the country's foreign affairs.
A statement from Maduro's foreign ministry said Venezuela would not accept a foreign diplomat acting in clear alignment with the conspiracy agenda of extremist sectors of the Venezuelan opposition.
It sounds like Guaido has no power.
They're just kicking anybody out they want.
Well, this is getting ridiculous, but let's play part two of this RT report.
We have noticed in news coverage that some outlets are incorrectly referring to Juan Guaido as the opposition leader or the self-proclaimed president.
Neither is correct to refer to Juan Guaido as anything but interim president falls into the narrative of a dictator.
Don't tell that to the White House, which has dropped the interim tag altogether and now calls Juan Guaido the legitimate president of Venezuela.
But journalists aren't following the State Department's orders.
You're complaining because news outlets are calling him by a title that you don't think that he...
Not a complaint.
Pointing out.
Just trying to correct.
Well, it sounds like a complaint to me, and that seems pretty weak sauce.
I don't understand what your problem is.
I mean...
He's the interim president, and we don't want to...
Well, you consider him to be the interim president, and as you say, 50 other countries outside of Britain recognize him as the interim president.
But there are more than 190 members of the United Nations, so your 50 countries is not even close to half.
What AP journalist Matt Lee said is true.
There are 195 countries, and last I checked, 50 is a lot less than half of 195.
But Senator Marco Rubio is taking the pressure campaign to another level.
First, he chastised The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, not exactly staunch critics of U.S. foreign policy, for using the terms opposition leader and self-declared interim president to describe Guaido.
Then Rubio pondered if CNN is conspiring with Moscow to undermine Guaido.
There's no telling what the U.S. will do next or who it might sanction.
Perhaps it will force CNN and the Wall Street Journal to register as foreign agents just like this network.
Okay.
Yeah, typical RT dig at the end.
Well, first of all, thanks for bringing Matt Lee back to the show.
That's great.
Yeah.
What do you say?
That's weak sauce?
Yeah, weak sauce.
Oh, nice!
I gotta start paying attention to Matt now that he's...
He was on a lot of planes.
He was always flying around.
He wasn't at the press briefings that much.
Yeah, he looks like he's back on track.
Oh, good.
That's good.
One last clip, which is Abrams and genocide in Venezuela, which is also from RT. Elliott Abrams, the Trump administration's special envoy to Venezuela, is coming under fire by a group of both genocide survivors as well as family members of victims in World War II's Holocaust and genocides in Latin America during the 19th century.
Now, this has a lot to do with where I'm standing right now.
I'm at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and this group is demanding that Abrams be removed from the museum's Committee on Conscience, of which Abrams has been a member since 2009.
In a letter to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, they claim that Abrams is a, quote, proven supporter of some of the world's most nefarious perpetrators of genocide and mass murderers for nearly The family members also invoked his role in US policy promoted by the Reagan administration in Guatemala, which was even defined as a genocide by a Guatemalan court last year.
US-backed death squads killed 200,000 people in Guatemala alone.
Yeah, when he was asked to answer for his role in this massacre on Charlie Rose, he simply laughed.
And some say he even pioneered the strategy of using aid as a Trojan horse delivering weapons to U.S.-backed forces, referring, of course, to his overseeing the smuggling of weapons through Iran to Nicaraguan right-wing rebels.
And Abrams even heralded the decision to supply Nicaraguan forces as a, quote, big change in the right direction.
He said that violence would increase because the purpose of our aid is to permit people who are fighting on our side to use more violence.
Hmm.
There you go.
You know, what are they doing?
What is the plan?
I mean, there's no plan.
They just expected this to work out, I guess.
Who was that high that they thought seriously that would work?
Again, this is old school politicians thinking that they can, and that's nice that you had Matt Lee in there, thinking that they can control the message.
The message is, this guy is the president.
We said so.
All you little people go out there and say yes.
You heard Euro News is all in on it.
He's the president.
Every other publication, the mainstream.
But the people, the people know it's bullcrap.
We're talking about it right now.
We're circumventing all of that.
The politicians really believe that that stuff still works.
But this is what I'm afraid of.
So when they see a dozen, then what do they do?
And then there's, you know, kinetics is like what's left.
Well, rebelize, man.
It's kinetics.
Exactly.
Bill!
Bill!
Okay.
I didn't have an opportunity to clip.
I saw on CNN International, I saw the Cuomo kid.
I have to be honest, against all better judgment, he's kind of making a little more sense these days.
He's not really as unhinged as I thought he was.
Now maybe I've just been beaten down by the European media into submission of maybe this guy is good.
I don't know what it was, but He had a whole thing about this crazy amount of migrants coming to the border from the South.
And I was like, wait a minute.
Is this the upside-down world?
And he said, no, the numbers will scare you.
And here's from the New York Times from yesterday.
Border at breaking point as more than 76,000 unauthorized migrants cross in a month.
Yeah, it's out of control.
But everyone was saying that this was not true.
It was like, it's down, it's the lowest ever.
And now, overnight, because we follow this all the time.
You and I pay attention to this.
I don't know.
So, first couple of paragraphs.
The number of migrant families, this is an important point, crossing the southwest border has once again broken records with unauthorized entries nearly double what they were a year ago, suggesting the Trump administration's aggressive policies have not discouraged new migration to the United States.
First dig at Trump right at the beginning.
The guy who says build a wall.
More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February.
An 11-year high and a strong sign that stepped up prosecutions, new controls on asylum, and harsher detention policies have not reversed what remains a powerful lure for thousands of families fleeing violence and poverty.
So are they going through ports of entry, John?
It's never made clear.
I think they probably aren't.
I mean, the point is, somebody keeps bringing this up, and I think it's just a logical thing.
It sounds like R. Kelly is, you gotta just think.
Um...
The argument, you see these people, just the liberals again, arguing with the conservatives saying, well, you know, the conservatives making the drug argument, which is what Trump needs for his, to use some military, one of that law that you pointed out.
The drugs are coming across.
No, no, no.
Yeah, USC 10-284.
No, no, no, the liberals say, it's a known fact that all the drugs that we're capturing are coming through the points of entry.
And that's so that's the place we got to beef up that the rest of it is open border doesn't mean anything.
And the counter argument is, well, let's see, if you have a choice between going through a port of entry or just waltzing across a big open wide space with your illegal drugs, which one would you prefer?
Duh!
And there's no counter-argument to that.
End of the first part of this article.
President Trump has used the escalating numbers, which they've all denied up until now.
Now, I don't know what's true anymore, but okay.
President Trump has used the escalating numbers to justify his plan to build an expanded wall along the 1,900-mile border with Mexico.
But, says the New York Times...
But a wall would do little to slow migration, most immigration analysts say.
While the exact numbers are not known, many of those apprehended along the southern border, including the thousands who present themselves at legal ports of entry, surrender voluntarily to border patrol agents and eventually submit legal asylum claims.
So they do go across illegally at other parts.
Yeah, of course they do.
It makes nothing but sense.
That's what you do.
I mean, if you think about it, why would you go stand in some line to go across a Tijuana?
When you can just waltz across somewhere, around Texas somewhere, wherever there's no protection whatsoever.
The main problem is not one of uncontrolled masses scaling fences.
No.
A humanitarian challenge created as thousands of migrant families surge into remote areas where the administration has so far failed to devote sufficient resources to care for them, as is required under the law.
Jeez.
I mean, this is what...
Here's what I saw from a meta perspective, because we've been watching this.
This is what you and I do.
For the past months, it's bullcrap.
It's really not bad.
It's ports of entry.
There's not a lot.
It's diminishing.
It's going down.
And then overnight, oh my God!
It's here!
Yet that wall is not a good idea.
Am I the only one who's seeing it this way?
Did they just switch their story?
They did switch the story, I think.
I don't know why.
Because it's unavoidable?
Because it's crazy?
No, I think it's because the other story was working.
Well, yes, this is true.
All the drugs are going through the legal points of entry.
All the drugs, because nobody, because the drug guys are so stupid that that's what they do.
It's just a, it's very, I don't know.
It's some sort of lie.
It's lies.
There was an interesting show the other day here, and they were talking about fake news.
This term fake news is not just something we use.
It's used in every country around the world.
They'll speak Dutch, and they'll say...
So you just hear the fake news.
They're using the English word.
Not the Dutch word, which would be nepnews.
No, they say fake news.
So it's a brand.
But what they call fake news here is a little different.
Fake news here is Russian bots and agents provocateurs online.
It's not fake news about, you know, from the mainstream.
And they use that consistently.
Good job of marketing it.
It is a very good marketing job.
Writing up some fake news.
Trying to get cheap clicks and top page views.
Writing up some fake news.
Oh, it's propaganda time.
Here is a report, a Euronews report.
The reporter is Russian.
It'll take you about a sentence to get into her accent.
Because there is new legislation in Russia regarding fake news.
No more critics or jokes about Vladimir Putin will be allowed in internet.
This is probably how the nearest future will look like as the Russian lower house of parliament has just adopted in the third reading this very controversial law.
It bans Any publication that shows disrespect to the state, the state's institutions, the symbols of the state like the Russian flag, for example, the law enforcement agencies, so basically all the deputies, for example, and the head of the state will be protected by this law.
Those who violated face huge fines, and if they repeatedly violated, they face up to 15 days in prison.
However, they will be given a day in order to destroy and delete this publication.
And what does disrespectful mean?
Actually, the lawmakers gave their explanation.
They said that it could be any publication that offends human dignity and public morality.
I'd say that's a pretty good law for Putin.
Putin.
Putin.
By the way, this reporter, I would have, if I had an American show on television, I'd have her on.
I think the accent is fantastic.
It's really a good one.
It's not anything you can even imitate that's so out there.
I'm not sure that you can't get a handle on it.
I don't think so.
It's really odd.
It's definitely something.
Well, that's kind of interesting.
This is a sedition law's censorship.
Yeah, Putin's got sick of it.
He's just sick of the bullcrap, I guess.
You know, Trump probably wishes he could do that.
Put everybody out of business.
I was going to ask you, has no one picked this law up yet?
Because that would be exactly what I'd ask my little MKUltra mockingbird talking heads to do, is say, here, read about this law, because that's what Trump wants to do here!
Yeah, that's coming.
It's not on the rotation yet.
I did catch an interesting clip about, you know, they're still talking about the finding ways to investigate Trump and Nadler is like, you know, going after him and this is going to end poorly for Trump.
I think a lot of people, not necessarily Trump.
But I want you to listen to this, and then I want you to comment on this.
This is the investigating Trump insurance purposes democracy now.
One week after Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, delivered an explosive congressional testimony, the New York Times is reporting...
New York state regulators are investigating insurance claims and policies of Trump's businesses and have subpoenaed the Trump Organization's insurance broker Aon.
Michael Cohen told lawmakers last week the Trump Organization regularly inflated the value of its assets for insurance purposes.
The news comes one day after the House Judiciary Committee requested documents from 81 people and groups in Trump's inner circle.
Wow.
That's their strategy, huh?
Well, here's something, because this is supposed to be a scandal, and this is examples of, like, millennials and also people whose never owned property know nothings like Amy.
I don't think Amy's not a millennial.
No, but I said know nothing like Amy.
Inflating your insurance value, inflating the value of something for insurance purposes is what you do.
Yes.
This is what you do.
It's not a scandal.
If you ever watch the Antiques Roadshow people, the guy will give you the different price.
Well, the auction value is $50,000 and you probably find it in a retail setting for $75,000.
And for insurance purposes, I value it at $100,000.
It's always like double the actual value.
You do that and you pay the rate for the higher amount.
You pay an increased rate.
You pay an increased rate.
So what is scandalous about this?
This is general – this is standard operating procedure.
It's not a scandal.
But the way she presents it is as though it's, oh my god, he's – this is scandalous.
This is again the example of the earlier clip where you have a businessman – One week after Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen delivered an explosive congressional testimony, the New York Times is reporting.
New York state regulators are investigating insurance claims and policies of Trump's businesses and have subpoenaed the Trump Organization's insurance broker, Aon.
Michael Cohen told lawmakers last week the Trump Organization regularly inflated the value of its assets for insurance purposes.
The news comes one day after the House Judiciary Committee requested documents from 81 people and groups in Trump's inner circle.
Are you sure she's got the information right?
Is there not like a second part to this explanation?
Explosive information.
This is really what they're doing.
And so there really are prosecutors who are investigating this.
Actual legal people.
Like within the justice system.
I have no idea what they're thinking.
It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
And to make it sound like it's some scandal is beyond me.
I mean, how dumb are you?
But the fact...
Let me hear again who's doing that.
One week after Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen delivered an explosive congressional testimony, the New York Times is reporting New York state regulators are investigating insurance claims.
New York state regulators.
So that's not justice.
That's politician enforcers.
Yeah.
Regulators.
They regulate insurance companies.
They don't regulate people.
Oh, I thought maybe it was government regulators.
They are government regulators from New York State.
Okay, but she doesn't really say what kind of regulator.
Okay, I guess it's insurance regulators.
She said insurance regulators.
We have commissions.
They have insurance regulators.
Why would they be doing that?
I hope someone from Iowa maybe even, Des Moines, or Connecticut if it has to be, Can send us some information about this.
Maybe there is something weird about, or not kosher, so to speak, about inflating your asset values for insurance rates.
I don't see how it's a problem either.
But maybe we're missing something.
No, you inflate them to make sure that they're covered if something bad happens.
And you pay for that inflated rate.
Yes, you pay it.
Exactly.
Hmm.
Okay.
That's baffling.
You're right.
It's a head shaker.
And it's like, they play this stuff straight when they run these stories.
She does an unthinking kind of reporting.
It's just this really rampant.
The whole country, you can't get anything.
The news is terrible.
Yes.
It is.
We can end.
If you've got one more clip, that'll be our last for the day.
I've got a clip I want to play.
This is the Birmingham School in the UK. I think it's a fun story.
The LGBTQQAAPKK whatever is they're going to stop teaching certain things in the school because they're just fed up.
A primary school in Birmingham has caved into pressure and temporarily pulled the plug on its lessons on LGBT rights.
That's after hundreds of parents reportedly kept their children at home in protest.
RT's Polly Boyka gives us the details.
Well, the cause of this row is an educational diversity programme called No Outsiders.
And it aims to teach kids about the different types of families that they might encounter and talking to them about things like the idea of having two mums or two dads and reading books to kids as young as four about the concept of same-sex family.
The programme was devised by the deputy head of the school at the centre of this row.
His name is Andrew Moffat and actually he's been nominated for the World's Best Teacher Award.
Take a look at him talking about the programme.
Mummy Lula hugged her and now they're sick on both of them.
Mummy Nina got some tissues and wiped them both.
You know our side is about teaching children that you are different but you can still be friends with anybody.
There's a huge rise in hate crime in the last year.
At schools we have to find ways to teach children to counter that really.
But the majority of the parents at this school are unhappy with Andrew Moffat's teaching methods.
It's a predominantly Muslim school and parents fundamentally disagree with the idea of teaching kids about homosexuality and LGBT issues.
Some of our viewers might know that in Islam, homosexuality is forbidden.
Up until now, the school had really held firm and said that they would continue this, what they see as a very necessary diversity program.
But now a number of media outlets are saying that the school has sent a letter to parents saying that the lessons are going to be stopped.
Take a listen.
Up to the end of this term, we will not be delivering any No Outsiders lessons in our long-term year curriculum plan, as this half-term has already been blocked for religious education.
Equality assemblies will continue as normal and our welcoming no outsiders ethos will be there for all.
Oh, man, you did it.
You did it right at the end of the show.
That's really that's I'm impressed.
I'm impressed.
Wow.
The Muslim part blew me away.
Like, what?
That's the thing.
The irony of the whole thing is that Muslims are pretty conservative in some ways, and that's one of them.
And they're not putting up with this crap, as opposed to the Christians who are cowed into putting up with all of it.
You know, I ordered the book, and I started reading it.
I did not bring it with me.
Raising Your Transgender Child.
Very interesting.
Oh, well, you have to give us a report.
Oh, no, I will be giving a book report.
Totally.
I don't know if you want to take the time to read it, but that's why I'm doing it for you.
But it's very enlightening.
And this is a book that I know, with certainty, some parents of very young transgender children are reading.
I wanted to understand what they're reading.
And it's well worth discussing.
But that won't be until next week because I'm still going to be here on Sunday.
Tomorrow I finally get to hang out with my daughter and watch some more European news and watch it unfold.
See if I can learn anything to share with the group.
Great.
Always entertaining.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Also, thank you to Matt Lazari, to Sidonian, and Leo Lapuke for the end of show mixes.
Appreciate it, as always.
And we did not thank...
I did not thank the Troll Room or the artist of the last show.
Somehow I missed that, so I'll have to do that on...
Sunday show.
Coming to you from the runway suite here at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, Gitmo Nation lowlands.
Remember us at Dvorak.org slash NA until Sunday.
Good morning, everybody.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, where it's sunny today.
Maybe it's stopped raining for a while.
It's been raining like crazy.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
We return on Sunday right here on No Agenda.
Make sure you're there.
And remember, Dvorak.org slash NA. Join the Value for Value Network.
The perks are unbelievable.
Until then, adios mofos!
and such.
It's not easy being a douche
Spending each day letting people down When I think it could be nicer giving a buck or five or ten a month to the best podcast in the universe It's not easy being a douche
Cause it's really cheap like a cup of coffee, a week of an ice cream, a movie, it really makes a big difference.
Giving some steady support to Adam and John.
But a donor is better than a boner.
Cause the show is so cool and with friends I like.
And no agenda can change a life.
And you're a middle of that high-seed world.
And the media is like our own 33.
When a small gift makes the change.
And it can even make me a knight to sit at the round table.
Ground table with other knights and dames and hookers and blow.
Oh yeah, that's it.
Oh, that's just what I... Sir Douchebag!
That sounds bitter in the morning.
Douchebags.
We have 12 years or this planet is going to suffer irreversible damage.
I was considered crazy.
The world is going to end in 12 years.
As far as private jets are concerned, would you want to ban those as well?
No.
It was close to 12 years without a major hurricane right after Al Gore told us we were going to have Catrinas every year and we were all going to die.
They told us back then that we had about 10 years and that was 14 years ago now.
And now they have started a new timeline.
They start the clock over again.
It's like turning the hourglass upside down that, you know, Margaret Hamilton with a flying monkey next to her.