Adam Curry and John C. DeVore dissect the chaotic intersection of Epstein’s alleged billionaire "brothel" (Zorro Ranch, 50TB of seized data), Hillary Clinton’s evasive BBC interview, and Trump’s UFO disclosures while linking it to societal distrust. They speculate Epstein’s operations—tied to figures like Prince Andrew and Reid Hoffman—were a shadowy service hub, not just blackmail, and compare modern digital overload to Calhoun’s 1960s Mouse Paradise Experiment. The episode also explores Trump’s potential Iran strikes (Feb 26, 2027), uranium enrichment "covers," and Taiwan tensions, questioning U.S. military commitments. Wrapping up with their value-for-value model, meetups, and a bizarre AOC mashup, they conclude by exposing hidden truths behind digital media’s algorithmic glitches and political narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
This is your award-winning Campbell Nation Media Assassination Episode 1845.
Is no agenda.
We've got shots fired and broadcasting live from the heart of the Texas Hill Country here in FEMA region number six.
In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley, where we discovered the aliens are already here.
I'm John C. DeVore.
This is Craig Bottom Buzzkill.
In the morning.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I don't want to say anything, but we do a second half of the show.
All of a sudden, the alien files are being released.
I don't want to take credit, but I think not.
President Trump says he'll be directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs.
Trump made the announcement on social media last night, hours after he accused former president Barack Obama of disclosing classified information during a podcast interview.
Obama later clarified that he had not seen evidence of alien contact, but that the odds are good that life is out there because the universe is vast.
All right.
I'm going to predict something.
We're going to see absolutely nothing.
See nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
As usual, absolutely nothing.
It's good to be back.
Of course, did you hear the wow?
You sound really bassy today.
What are you doing?
I sound bassy now.
Yeah, you sound like I have no controls over the bass or the horizontal or the vertical.
Well, I don't know.
You have your regular mic?
Yeah, nothing's changed.
Maybe it's just maybe like a fine wine.
Kidding bassy.
Basy or were they?
So did you hear the Hillary to get the show off to the right start?
Did you hear the Hillary interview at the BBC?
No, Hillary on the BBC.
What is she doing on the BBC?
Well, she's, well, you tell me.
You keep saying that you didn't know Jeffrey Epstein, but your husband flew with him 26 times to party butt naked in the island with some girls.
Pick and Choose Rooms00:07:56
And most people say that you killed Jeffrey Epstein to silence him, just like the other hundreds of mysterious deaths surrounding you and your husband.
So are you sure you didn't know Jeffrey Epstein?
Okay, look, just because I killed the guy doesn't mean I knew the guy.
Oh, okay.
Okay, and can you please stop asking me questions about Jeffrey Epstein?
A lot of reporters can go missing, you know?
Accidents do happen.
People shoot themselves in the back three times, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, let's talk about something else.
Wow.
Throwing out the AI clip of the day right away, huh?
All right.
I actually do.
I have some report from Channel 4 in the UK, which is not AI, but does, I think, was kind of relevant to hear.
A Channel 4 news investigation today reveals that all those pictures, emails, videos, and messages released by the Department of Justice, said to be over 3 million pages, may amount to just a fraction of the Epstein material obtained by investigators.
Why do we think that?
Because these raids his Florida mansion in 2005 and his fancy New York townhouse and sprawling luxury island in 2019 saw dozens of devices, computers, hard drives, and servers bagged and tagged and brought to FBI offices for examination.
Now, emails examined by Channel 4 News show investigators discussing those very devices.
From the earliest stages, investigators were talking about Epstein's data totaling many, many times what has so far been released.
In June 2020, one wrote, We expect the data to be somewhere around 20 to 40 terabytes, noting that the total capacity of the devices was up to 50 terabytes.
Then, as recently as last year, long after the investigation into Epstein and his associates had ended, the figures quoted remained massive.
We're looking at a total of approximately 14.6 terabytes of archived data, said another email.
Yeah, where is this archive data?
Where's this 14.6 terabytes of data?
So, I went through the first 3,000 photos.
Wow.
See, I leave the show for a week and I cannot trust you.
Right away, you're going to the photos.
Okay.
So, what did you find?
So, I've come to a conclusion that was a little different.
And I think all this is, I think Trump is probably right.
This is a mountain out of a mohill.
When you look at all the photos and you see the layouts of his private, what I consider, I'll tell you what my thesis is: he was running a private hotel that was a brothel, that was a whorehouse for high-end customers that are billionaires, probably almost exclusively, but I'm sure there's a few hundred millionaires in there who can't, in the real world, get laid.
Somebody like Reid Hoffman, who's worth, I think, 2.5 billion.
Now, how did he get his money, Reid Hoffman?
LinkedIn.
Oh, he sold LinkedIn to Microsoft.
Right, right.
He got his money from Microsoft.
Yeah, it's all in the family bill.
Yeah.
And a billion dollars, if you have a, if you have a billion dollars, that brings in $50 million a year at 5%, which is a lot of money.
But you can't trust women because they're going to take you for your money.
You can't trust a hooker.
Never trust a hooker.
Nope, nope, nope.
Well, you could trust a hooker, but not if you're worth a billion dollars.
It's just a problem.
And so these, so Epstein has set up shopping.
If you look at the floor plans, you can see he has all kinds of rooms, different suites.
There's about 30 rooms in his.
Well, I was listening to Wexner, some of his testimony, and he was saying, yeah, the place was a crap hole.
It was no good.
It was like a.
They were fixing it up.
It was still being fixed up as they were taking.
And worse was they had the pictures that when they go to St. John's Island, that place was incomplete.
There were still unfinished rooms.
They were still working on it.
There was cabanas.
But it's designed for these high-end guys, guys.
But let me ask you a question.
Do you think that as a brothel, that it was used to, pardon the pun, curry favor?
Or do you think that there still was some blackmail at play?
No, what's the point?
That's what I was thinking about.
What's the point of blackmailing somebody?
Let's say the fee is a million bucks to you join this little, you know, as an you make an investment in one, or you give Jeffrey some consulting money.
So that's the fee to be to go to this place.
And you go to the place and they and they have, they said they had a catalog with different girls.
You pick one or two out and they're your companions.
Yeah.
And they, you know.
Wait a minute.
Where did you hear about this catalog?
The catalog came out about a couple of weeks ago.
They talked about a it was like pick and choose like point and click.
Yeah, yeah, like a pick and choose.
That was it was glossed over.
But it was like a pick and choose thing.
So you go to the place, and he also had comedians staying there because you comp rooms, the guys, they're not going to get any action, but you give them a room and you want a fun guy to talk with at the bar.
Yeah, if you're going to go to the bar.
And some of these places had kitchenettes.
And meanwhile, if you look at all the pictures, you'll see they had a big laundry room just like a hotel does.
They had a big central kitchen, just like a hotel does for room service.
Hold on, the slutolog.
I like that.
I'm writing that down.
Slut alog.
It's not a catalog.
It's a slutologue.
Yes.
Okay.
It was just, it was, it looks just like a private hotel.
And you don't blackmail people for that because you're already getting a million bucks, let's say a year for them to be a member of this place.
And what are you going to blackmail them for?
What are you going to blackmail Reed Hoffman for?
Curry favors the guy.
What is he?
He just floats around podcasts.
He doesn't do anything.
I mean, there's no reason that.
And he's over at the place all the time because, you know, if you're kind of a fat billionaire with not much of a personality, this is perfect.
And so, and that's all it was.
And the CIA, if they were keeping tabs on anybody, it was just so they keep notes.
And all this surveillance, which we have no evidence, you know, there's not showing us anything.
The surveillance was for surveilling the girls.
They didn't want the girls doing deals on the side.
They didn't want the girls stealing from the guys.
Oh, I like that theory.
All right.
Well, that's what you would do at a high-end place like this.
Girls catering to billionaires, and you can't take a chance.
And then on the side, you can say, hey, you know, I got some inside info from my boy over there, Mandelson.
And, you know, you can make a killing right now on the foreign exchange because they got about to bail out the Euro.
So you could pick up some tips along the way.
You probably did pick up some tips along the way, but that wasn't the main business.
I figure he could do $50 million a year just maintaining that place.
And that's all it was.
And the fact that they're making such a fuss, now that I think about it, what Trump has to say about it, because he knew what was going on, because he is in New York real estate.
Everybody knew what was going on.
So you're telling me that there were no children that were being eaten and no pizza with grape soda?
That's what I'm telling you.
New Mexico's Zorro Ranch Mystery00:15:26
Yeah.
And you should also note that 17 years old is the age of consent in New York City or New York State.
Oh, really?
Oh, that's an outrage.
Oh, outrage.
And so they, okay, so they had some 17-year-olds in there.
Now, the rest of it was all speculation about the younger.
I mean, I'm sure some people tried to horn him, but no, this was a professionally, this was kind of a genius marketing, just going for a high-class clientele.
There's 200 billionaires in California alone.
Yeah.
It's a pain in the butt, though, to have to travel to the East Coast and go to that island.
Well, I'm just saying, California alone, the funny, a lot of them are back east.
They have places in New York.
I mean, and they can travel in their private jets, you know, if they're going to have a good time.
You know, what's really interesting is that because of this Epstein stuff, everything, everything that people, certainly people who are online and, you know, posting and reading and, you know, wrapped up in it, everything is through the lens of Epstein.
Like Supreme Court decision over tariffs.
Oh, someone's got some compromise on Epstein stuff.
It's like everything.
Everything is amazing.
That's the lens that people just see this stuff through right now, except for New Mexico Representative Andrea Romero, who is putting together a truth commission about Zorro Ranch.
New Mexico's state House of Representatives is now creating a bipartisan committee to investigate the property that Jeffrey Epstein once owned in the state, known as Zorro Ranch.
They're investigating it for allegations of criminal activity.
The committee plans to partner with the New Mexico Department of Justice for this deep dive into allegations of abuse and sexual assault possibly committed at Zorro Ranch.
And joining us now to discuss is Democratic State Representative Andrea Romero, one of the bill's sponsors.
Representative, thanks for joining us.
So no one opposed this measure.
So the committee, the Truth Commission, will be created.
How does it feel to have this over the finish line?
Well, it feels like we're just beginning, really, truly.
You know, we have been thinking about this for a while, trying to find the mechanisms in place to make sure that we can be apolitical and ready to do business.
The reality for this commission is something that our community desperately needs and needs to know about.
You know, this is information that we're all trying to put together nationwide and worldwide about what went on and how it went on.
And for us in New Mexico, it is so critical that we get this story straight.
And this is really interesting because there's not a lot known about Zorro Ranch other than he's probably still setting it up.
This was your, by the way.
Hold on.
Wait, I was just going to say, this is the West Coast version.
So these guys, like you just said, have to fly all the way to New York.
No, they're going to fly to New Mexico.
Let me read this.
The age of consent in New Mexico is 16.
Oh, man.
You've got, do you have a cheat sheet?
What's the age of 16?
I'm telling you, this whole thing was just a massive.
No, I'm not arguing against that.
No, I would like you to argue a little bit.
No, I don't feel like I don't feel like arguing at all.
No, I think I'm kind of on board with it.
You know, the thing is that people like, hey, yo, traffic children.
America's the worst.
While this has been going on, probably 12 to 1,300 actual sick pedophiles have been arrested.
No one talks about it.
There's all kinds of operations going on.
Children have been, actual children under the age of 16 have been freed from sex predator rings that involve local sheriffs and lawyers and dentists.
That gets, I don't know why I said dentists, but there was a dentist.
That gets zero coverage.
It's the most bizarre thing.
And this is not bizarre because it doesn't involve Trump.
There you go.
This whole Zorro Ranch, this truth commission, appears to be based upon an email sent to a local DJ about eight years ago.
There's an email in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice that mentions Zorro Ranch.
It's an unverified claim that two women are buried there, two women who died by strangulation.
The sender of this email has been redacted by the DOJ.
It was sent to a local radio host who told CNN he believes it came from someone who worked on the ranch.
He passed the email on to the FBI when it was sent in 2019.
Does your committee intend to push the Justice Department for more answers regarding that email?
Yes, we do.
And we will go to the fullest extent of the law to get those answers.
The reality that we understand is that that email was sent and our then attorney general requested that the federal government investigate these claims.
That there was a request to do that back in 2019, but unfortunately those requests went unanswered by the federal government.
You know, we feel very challenged that we have to be forced to do this ourselves in New Mexico when those requests went unanswered.
Then here we are seven years later trying to pick up the pieces.
Now you catch the bit there 2018 during Trump.
So Trump had that hidden.
That's the implication there.
Yep.
Now, of course, there's Epstein into all kinds of bio stuff.
And he was, you know, this is that's why he was hanging out with Weinstein and all these people.
He was always trolling for the next big thing.
What can we invest in?
Get a great IPO out of it.
And then there's the DNA replication scheme.
There was an unusual report in the New York Times in 2019 that mentions Zora Ranch.
Jeffrey Epstein at one point, quote, hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.
Well, that's what Elon Musk does for real.
The New York Times report says there's no evidence this plan ever came to any sort of fruition, but is this some sort of scientific scheme of Epstein's that you and plan to investigate as well?
Absolutely.
These allegations are horrifying.
About what's so horrifying about what went on.
We have heard from victims that they may have woken up in very strange places.
Where are these victims?
He's dead, so why can't they speak out?
I find this a really difficult process to understand.
And that's so critically why we need to know what the truth was.
Who were the folks in the room?
Who knew what happened?
And why were these never investigated?
Especially if victims came forward.
There it is.
Why wasn't it investigated all during Trump?
This is what's so critical about the public understanding how this happened.
And certainly if folks came forward on a crime, why was this never investigated?
So yes, we are looking to these various records and again, every single day, learn something horrifying about what went on or allegedly went on.
Yeah, except she has nothing horrifying to tell.
Wait, oh, wait, wait, there's more.
Are there other claims about Zora Ranch and the Epstein files that you intend to look into further?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, the claims are absolutely sprawling and certainly very concerning.
We have allegations of everything from sex abuse and trafficking to harming children of very young ages.
It's horrifying what we're learning, it seems every single day.
But we're committed to telling the truth and making sure that there is a record.
And if needed, it would be pursued in the court of law.
Well, it wasn't investigated for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that the alleged perpetrators are very, very powerful, wealthy people.
Are you ready for that?
You know, this is unfortunate.
Well, fortunately, why we are a bipartisan commission.
You know, we're not here to play politics about anything.
We're really here to go on a fact-finding mission.
Who was involved?
And we understand even in our state that it was the highest echelons of people who are being named in these files.
And so for us, it's about making sure that no stone is unturned.
Whoever it is that we find that may have been a perpetrator in these crimes will be maimed.
They will be named and we will recognize what went on here.
And so, yes, the stretch is very wide and potentially very deep.
But we will make sure that the public knows what happened.
Yeah.
Well, so far, we've got some fun names like Pritzker from The Hyatt.
And of course, he's a, he must be related.
Billionaire.
Yeah.
Billionaire Pritzker.
We got the douchebag Wasserman from LA.
We've got Prince Andrew.
Prince Andrew is the guy who's probably getting screwed in all of this.
Yeah, there's a lot of people that think that.
But Chris, he brought it on himself.
Well, yeah, he's also a dope.
He's a denadouche.
He's always been a dope and a douche.
Yes, he always has been that.
And we all know that.
If you see a picture of him when he's really young, you can see why.
He was actually a pretty good looking guy when he was young when he married Fergie.
If you see some of those early wedding pictures, he's one of those guys who relied on his looks.
Well, Fergie also looked really good back in the day.
Yeah, and she did the same thing.
Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
But yes, this is a couple of players in this, based on my thesis, you want to look into Virginia Guffray.
I would advise reading her wiki page.
She is a troubled person.
The wiki page explains it quite well.
And I was very skeptical when she came out.
And by the way, the first interview she did, let's say she's a working girl or became one under Epstein.
She charged $160,000 for that interview and got it.
For the book or for the first interview in 2011 when she broke this thing wide open.
This thing was going on for years, this club.
And she broke it open in 2011 by complaining.
And she didn't get a piece of the IC wanted more money.
I don't know what the real basis was.
We never know.
Well, what I found to be odd is that she was hit by a bus and then she wasn't and then she committed suicide.
You know, her whole death is sketchy.
Questionable.
I love the Jake Tapper, how he puts it.
He had another representative on.
Listen to this.
One of Epstein's most prominent victims, Virginia Jufrey, who's no longer with us.
She allowed.
What does this mean?
No longer with us.
It means she's not in the studio.
She's not available for interviews.
Why didn't she just say she committed suicide?
It's just a small thing, just a small irritation.
Who knows?
We don't know.
What do you have on Prince Andrew?
Oh, this is a report that was, I think this is from BBC or NPR.
No, I mean, what kind of dirt do you have on him?
Don't you have evidence?
I'm just kidding.
On Prince Andrew?
Just kidding.
Just kidding.
Oh, I see what you're doing.
Just kidding.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Slowing me up.
I got this big bassy voice now.
Yes.
Are you in a different network than you usually are?
No.
Because it's also robocopping a little bit from time to time.
Oh, I can change networks.
Well, why don't you do it while I play the first clip?
You want me to change networks?
Yeah, but you change networks while I play the clip that you want me to play.
Hold on a second.
I got to make sure I can do this.
Because I haven't changed networks for so long that I don't want to like.
We're doing it live, people.
Doing it live.
But you see, this is my whole point.
I think I can do it.
I got to figure it out.
Okay.
Yeah, I got a bunch of stuff here that's worth playing.
Since you don't want to hear any more of the thesis.
I thought this is part of the thesis.
I got your thesis.
I hear you.
I think the only thing I had to do in addition to the thesis, I got the Prince Andrew clip.
Do whatever you want.
Rolling up.
I was going to say the last thing in the thesis is Elon Musk.
Oh, okay.
Who wanted to join the club?
He knew about it.
And they wouldn't, it's an exclusive club.
You had to.
You took one look at Elon Musk, who's already getting a bunch of sex from women.
He's paying $5 million to, supposedly.
So Epstein was a deal.
He would have been, but he's also, you take a look at Elon.
Elon's got a big mouth.
You don't need some guy who's going to be yakking about it just on a casual podcast the next week.
Yeah, I'm over at this.
This is actually a whorehouse.
Who knows what would happen?
They couldn't let him in.
He rebuked him.
I like it.
All right.
Okay, that's basic.
Let's go to Prince Andrew.
This is Scott Simon on NPR.
Suffering succotancy.
Thanks.
I'm Scott.
Thank you.
Simon.
Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor, brother of King Charles, spent his 66th birthday in a police station this week.
He was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office after revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein files that he'd shared confidential trade information with the convicted sex offender.
The former prince was released after 11 hours.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
Jenny Bond has covered the royal family for decades.
In fact, 14 years was the BBC's royal correspondent and joins us now from London.
Jenny, thanks so much for being with us.
My pleasure.
My pleasure.
Just how damaging is this scandal?
Well, it's a huge story over here.
The papers have been dominated by it for days, even weeks.
And this weekend, it is page after page after page of analysis of what this means for the monarchy.
Just how damaging is it?
Clearly, it is tarnishing the reputation of the monarchy, but the palace are very keen to separate monarchy from family.
It's a difficult separation.
But I think the view, the predominant view is that Charles has acted pretty decisively, maybe a bit too late, but pretty decisively in this.
And the big news today, the main line, is whether or not Andrew is now going to be removed from the line of succession, because incredibly he is still eighth in line succession.
Yeah, this is something that always comes up whenever there's some kind of scandal in the UK.
Oh, it's a threat to the monarchy, threat to the monarchy.
It's never a threat to the monarchy.
What are they going to do?
What are they going to do to the monarchy?
What are they going to do?
Threaten it.
Kick him out, kick him out of Buckingham Palace.
It's a threat.
It's a threat.
Just a threat.
Shake your fist.
Two Strands of Debate00:02:50
Yeah, exactly.
That seems to be like the pastime for the Brits.
Oh, threat to the monarchy.
What will we do?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Let's go to two.
Of course, King Charles said in his statement, law must take its course and has not intervened.
But what about the argument that they've been aware of serious allegations against Andrew for years and have effectively protected him?
Yes, this is the other big debate that's going on.
And I think now we are at a stage where we are demanding more transparency, more accountability.
I think people do want to know exactly that.
What did the royal family know about Andrew's going on?
Well, with Epstein, as regards the sex abuse allegations, but also now why he was arrested was because of alleged misconduct in public office when he was trade envoy.
So we've got two strands going on here, at least two.
And we've now got more than 11, I think it is, police forces in this country circling Andrew, investigating different strands.
And there is this overriding feeling that the palace have got to give up this whole idea of never complain, never explain, abandon the old myth, which goes back to the 1800s of the you must not let daylight into the magic of monarchy.
It's all nonsense now.
No, this is what it's always been.
I watch the crown.
All they care about is what's in the paper.
Hey, you got more ink than I did.
Oh, no.
That's all they care about.
And I consider that to be true.
They don't care.
They are wretched, soulless people.
It's a horrible gig.
And they have, you know, colluded bloodlines, cousins, and all kinds of stuff.
But somehow they still own a lot.
They own a lot of land.
They have a massive holdings.
I think the British royal family is estimated 50 billion, which I think is an underestimation.
That's probably low.
That's what I think too.
And they're not allowed to sell the land, but this is why they have leasehold in the UK.
Oh, you can build your house here, but you have to pay us rent for 99 years.
And then it renews.
It's just like, I think.
Yeah, in fact, doesn't it doesn't the queen is dead, but didn't she own an island that's not even part of the UK?
I don't know.
I forget.
People out there know what I'm talking about.
It wouldn't surprise me.
Let's go to the last of this.
There is some feeling, as I probably don't have to tell you, in the United States, that, well, there's some admiration for the British legal system.
People Who Resigned00:02:53
Admiration?
Yeah, I understand that.
But conversely.
Yes, because of the Whigs.
See, I've been reading reports this morning.
No, hold on a second.
Stop.
You have to listen to this one.
This is unbelievable.
We're talking, we've done two segments.
Okay.
Can we do something to kind of slam Trump?
Is there any way we can work Trump into this?
Bring him in.
Bring him in.
Yeah, I understand that.
But conversely, I've been reading reports this morning saying that if the Americans hadn't decided to release the Epstein files, then we wouldn't be where we are now.
And so I suppose for that, we should be grateful.
But yes, I think that legitimately you could ask now whether the American authorities should go further with the people, not least President Trump, who has been at least mentioned many times in the Epstein files.
He says he's been exonerated.
I know, and perhaps he has been.
But I think the king has acted very decisively here.
I mean, we were gobs about strong correspondents like myself who've lived through decades of scandals and crises from the deaths and divorces, the Fergie being found topless, having her toe sucked in the south of France, the castle catching fire, rows about whether the queen should pay taxes, all of that has been dreadful.
Of course, the death of Diana as well.
But I think we have been impressed by the way the king has taken this straight on and saying very clearly in a sentence that stood out on its own, let me state clearly, the law must take its course.
Does he have to say that to preserve the monarchy?
Well, I think he does, yes.
So a little rundown.
People who have had to resign or have gotten into trouble for emails with Epstein.
Brad Karp, chairman of Paul and Weiss.
He resigned.
He was a lawyer, corporate law firm.
And that was the first law firm to strike a deal offering pro bono work after Trump targeted attorneys representing his political foes.
That's not exactly what it was, but okay.
It's a good narrative that they've created.
Then we like it.
Then we have Kathy Rumler, top counsel, Goldman Sachs, White House counsel to former President.
Obama?
Yes, to Obama.
And if you read the newsletter, I had the hypocrite of the week.
Yeah, oh, yeah.
Forget all that.
CNN conveniently left that little tidbit out.
Heaven forbid.
And she in the emails was downplaying his sex crimes.
Go figure.
Casey Wasserman, I talked about him, the Hollywood agent.
And I guess now they're calling for him to resign from the Los Angeles 28 Olympic Committee.
Yeah, that's a good one.
Everyone should resign from the Olympic Committee.
I don't think any of them are any good.
Starving Times, Starving Minds00:05:37
Peter.
They're always.
Yeah, you're right.
Those people are always really sketchy in every country, even if it's just the local IOC.
Peter Atia.
Who was he?
He wasn't.
He was CBS?
I don't remember.
Well, he's, yeah, I think he's a contributor to CBS.
Steve Tisch, chairman, co-owner of the Giants.
Howard Lutnick, everyone wants him to resign.
Of course, he's Trump's guy.
Mandelson, obviously.
Morgan McSweeney, that's the advisor to Starma.
I said, hey, you can appoint that guy.
It's not a problem.
Norway's former prime minister, Torbjorn Jagland.
Jack Lang, French politician.
And then my favorite, Sultan Ahmed bin Suliyem.
And he enjoyed the torture video.
Yeah, he's the one who enjoyed the torture video.
How come we, what torture video was this?
You think that they released that?
I think they'd have some salacious.
Yes, that sounds good.
But what has happened here?
And we were watching last night.
We watched a.
And by the way, I can explain that with my whorehouse theory, too.
Okay.
There are some women out there.
It doesn't take a genius to track them down who are complete, unbelievable masochists and who would probably agree for a fat fee to be tortured and like it.
Oh, man.
Sorry.
The WHT, the Whorehouse Theory.
We're going to leave it in.
What this has done, though, globally, because I read the Dutch papers, people send me German articles, which I can kind of get through.
And there is complete distrust lack in all government.
And Tina and I were watching yesterday, we just came across it on Netflix, Breakdown 1975, which is good.
It's very good.
It's something I can watch.
I've been watching Australian murder mysteries.
It's how bad it's gotten.
So Breakdown 1975 is, it's really, it's a fractal is what it is.
You'll love it because they look at the year 1975 from a popular culture point of view.
So movies and television primarily.
And when you look at that time, it was so similar.
We had scandals, you know, we had Watergate.
New York was a shithole.
Rats were everywhere.
This is where movies come out like Taxi Driver, Death Wish, Charles Brown, Black Hill, all of this stuff.
And it's very analogous to now, with the exception that it's probably not quite as bad today as it was then.
And what came out of this.
Yet.
Yet, yeah.
Well, and so maybe we're a little bit late because by 1976, things started to change.
And before you knew it, we had yuppies and we, you know, Jane Fonda was doing workout videos.
But it's worth watching.
It's narrated by Jody Foster, who was in Taxi Driver, as I think a 13-year-old.
Yeah.
And they pinpointed it.
This was interesting.
They pinpointed.
So they had Jaws.
Jaws was a big change where they shifted from the bad guy winning to the good guy winning and blowing up the shark.
And then as they claim in this documentary kind of thing.
Yes, there was a period of time in the movies, especially where the anti-hero was the key.
Epitomized by Steve McQueen in a number of films.
And what was the other one with the Bankheist?
Yeah, that was the Steve McQueen.
No, That wasn't Dog Day Afternoon.
Was that it?
No, I'm trying to think what.
Well, Dog Day Afternoon was really a sickening film.
That was the Bank Heist, wasn't it?
No, I don't.
No, that was the one, Dog Day Afternoon, wasn't that where they surrounded the, it was not as bad as the one where they surrounded the precinct, but it was something like that where there was a bunch of creeps.
Well, all of that.
Whatever.
Everything was corrupt.
Everything was rotten.
People had no trust.
People actually were really starving, starving, starving in our big cities.
Protests.
Everyone hated the cops.
Everyone hated the politicians.
And then all of a sudden, we got rocky.
And then everything changed.
Like, oh, all right.
Yeah, we got this guy and he makes it up all the way to the top and he's running.
He's doing his stuff.
And then things started to change.
So I'm just waiting for the pivotal movie.
Very simple.
Yeah, but the difference is there's a major difference here.
One is that we had an economic downturn that started in 1969 and went throughout through the 70s, very similar to unparallel, almost completely parallel to the 30s, where you had the bottom of the thing bottomed out in 33 as it did in 73.
And then you had a kind of a renaissance two years later in 35.
And the movies in the 30s and 70s are similar in their creativity.
But it was all based on the fact that the economic downturn was controlling things.
At the point we're at right now, we don't have that.
So the parallels are not that consistent.
I think it could happen, but it won't happen for a couple years.
Oh, well, that keep us in business for a while then.
Parallels Between Humans and Mice00:04:50
I think so.
So this led me to someone sent me a video, and the video is just kind of a narration.
I'll play it just for explanation's sake.
Unless you want to talk more about Epsom or something.
Are we kind of going to do that?
No, I'm done.
I got my thesis out there.
Now I can hang things off it for the next show.
It's the Whorehouse thesis.
We'll take it.
Universe 25 experiment.
Ever heard of this?
No.
So also known as the Mouse Paradise Experiment.
Oh, this is where they had all the mice and they all ended up just preening and they ended up having sex and the whole colony died out.
Yes, I'm familiar with it.
Yes.
I'm dubious, by the way, about whether this really was a...
I have never seen any...
I haven't seen the documentation for this.
I have.
John B. Calhoun.
Unless it's falsified somehow.
I think it could be.
I mean, it's too convenient.
Well, let's listen to it and let's just take it as real and discuss it because obviously it has a lot of relevance to today.
This is why everyone is single and men stop trying.
This is the mouse paradise, a scientific experiment from the 1960s.
They made the perfect world for mice with unlimited food, safety, and no predators.
In the beginning, they placed four females and four males and let them multiply.
The population exploded.
Hundreds, then thousands.
Then something strange happened.
They stopped mating.
And within four years, they were extinct.
But why?
According to scientists, the reason was social interaction overload.
Just like humans on social media today.
They were in 24-7 interaction with thousands of others.
Too much stimulation, too much competition for social status.
And this led them to lose the ability to form bonds, to mate and raise their young.
Many males became so-called the beautiful ones.
They lost interest in females.
They just groomed themselves all day and withdrew completely because they could not compete in this chaos anymore.
And the females followed by losing interest in males.
So no mating and they all just died without having babies.
Since 2010 in smartphones, humans are living the same social interaction overload.
24-7 status competition.
Income and lifestyle comparison with thousands of others.
Physical looks to impossible standards.
And many young people just choose to withdraw.
The first time in history, young people are having less sex than their parents.
30% of men under 30 had no sex for a year.
Lone in this epidemic hits us harder than any virus could.
Yeah, that's worse than I thought it would sound, to be honest about it.
So I do have a link from Scientific American.
Yeah, I'd like to see that.
It does bring me to the phone clips I have here.
Well, can I explain it first?
You just want to hijack it.
No, no, no, explain it, but I'm just telling you in advance so you don't start jumping to another topic.
Oh, it was a tricky thing.
Oh, it was a trick.
You should just.
I'm sorry that you revealed my.
You blew it.
John B., this is from PubMed.
John B. Calhoun, population density and social pathology.
So it is real.
Now, of course, I haven't looked completely deep into that paper if it's exactly the same, but I'm just going to take it at face value.
So the idea is they had enough.
Well, I mean, I like the idea.
Let's put it that way.
But it's a little too convenient for my taste.
So they had enough food and space for 3,000 mice.
They throw a couple in there.
They start mating.
They get up to about 2,000, but it's a relatively limited space, like New York City.
And then suddenly they stop having sex.
They're not reproducing.
There's a whole class of male mice who become the beautiful ones.
They're grooming.
They look great, but they won't have sex with anybody.
And the conclusion from Calhoun is that it's a social interaction overload.
And the comparison that's being made is that we, as humans, and this is where I actually question, okay, mice may have similar organs.
You can test vaccines on them, but I don't know if we can compare our brains.
That humans are in a moment of social interactive overload, and thus we become more interested in not actually reproducing, but looking great on Instagram and preeming.
And I think about that, I'm like, yeah, that is exactly what is happening because it has too much interaction with not just on social media, but in general.
Social Interactive Overload00:15:19
You're texting, you've got alerts, you've got this going on, you've got that going on.
I think there's something to it.
Well, yeah, the problem is it's too convenient.
Too convenient for what?
It matches up too well.
Oh, so social interaction.
Coincidentally, we have the same thing going on with the media or social media because, but you've been harping on this and you're susceptible.
This is almost like bias confirmation with you because you've always had this thesis for the last 20 years about over-socialization under something or other.
Yeah, so I am, in fact, in fact, Calhoun stole this from me.
Yeah, that's what it almost sounds like.
I saw this too, and I didn't clip it.
I'm glad you did.
But it was what's going around.
I'm not the only one who saw it.
It's going around.
Oh, yeah, no, it's going around.
It was on Twitter.
Okay.
Okay.
Or X is on XX.
But talking about that brings me to these cell phone conversations, which is going on, which is the cell phone's the real problem here at some level.
Before we go on, I think we need to call it something else.
It's not a phone.
Who uses these to call someone?
Very few people nowadays.
I mean, we need to call it.
So they're just on it scrolling and they're holding it as a it's and they're also holding it all the time when you pointed again.
I give you credit for this one because I didn't catch it right away.
But you because I keep my iPhone in a drawer, but you noticed that and I've I've noticed it now.
And now I see it's and it's actually gotten worse where people walk around.
Yeah.
The street holding the phone like it's like some pet or something.
They have to have the phone in their hand.
Yeah.
Well, I while walking down the street.
I have to, it's like a controlling slab or a controlling slab.
A security slab.
I mean, this is you're on your slab thing.
I'd like, I'd like Freedom Controller.
I've used that for different things throughout the 30 years.
So maybe that's not, but no, no, it's no good.
A controller slab.
That's really truly what it is.
I had an interesting something interesting happen.
You know, I was in Nashville all last week, Friday morning.
I get up and I had that funky flip phone from I had, you'll find out why, from Samsung, the Galaxy Z Flip.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that one's like, I broke, I broke the previous one.
I'm like, oh, okay.
And that was my own fault because these things are just so fragile.
And so I got a new one.
And I wake up and I go to unplug the phone and it's hot.
Like, oh, is it hot?
And I see the battery going like 95, 90, 89.
It's going down pretty quick.
So I plug it in.
You know, it's, it kind of hovers between 85 and 87.
It's going up and down.
I don't know what's going on with this.
So it had meetings, I had to get to the airport.
And so here's your modern life.
This is the way I'd planned it: oh, I'll just get an Uber from the hotel to the airport.
Nashville is like 15 minutes.
Then so I have 35% by it's one o'clock.
I haven't used the phone at all to get the Uber.
Get in the Uber.
I see it going down, going down.
Now, luckily, I was still able to retrieve my reservation number so I get my paper ticket because I don't do any tickets on the phone.
I go through TSA and this thing dies.
And I'm thinking like, I can't tell Tina that I'm on my way.
I can't tell the person who's going to pick me up at the airport.
And like, well, I can plug it in on the plane.
That'll be good.
And I'll probably get some juice out of it.
Of course, I have the only Southwest 737 that has no power, no USB, nothing.
And like, this thing has way too much importance in my life.
And I'm not talking about X or anything like that, just for some simple things in travel.
Yep.
It's a controller, controlling slab.
Controller slab, maybe might sound better.
Controller slab.
Yeah.
Or control.
I don't know because you could control it.
Yeah.
But wait, before you get to that.
You've got the right words.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's got to be.
I'm getting there.
I'm getting it.
It has nothing to do with the phone.
Calling it a phone is weak and pathetic.
And here was the next thought I had.
Because of the constant holding it in your hand, they got, I got to have it with me.
Oh, in case I didn't take a picture.
But now with the AI chat bots, and I should mention this thing is fried.
You know, some something got short-circuited.
It's completely fried.
It'll never come back to life.
And I went back to my Graphene OS and I'm fine with that on my Pixel 6A.
I'm done with it.
But in the course of trying to troubleshoot this thing, I'm going through.
I'm on Gemini.
I'm like, okay, I mean, at a certain point, I have a USB cable hooked up.
I am SSHing into the phone because there's basic Unix, a Unix kernel underneath.
I'm doing HTOP.
I'm looking at what is eating the processors.
I'm looking at all the apps.
And all of a sudden, it's like, hi, I'm Bixby.
How can I help you say, Bixby?
Who are you?
Samsung has just installed Bixby the robot on the phone.
And you look at all this stuff.
Meta, I've never had a meta app on this phone.
It has something in there.
It's trolling.
It's doing all kinds of stuff.
This is a horrible thing.
They pack it filled with all kinds of junk and spyware and so-called helpful things.
You just want to swipe a window away.
Oh, here's an here's Google AI.
Oh, would you like to change this picture?
Hi, I'm Gemini.
Would you like me to help you compose the next email?
No, no, stop going.
And here's the thinking I had: this robot stuff is a distraction.
Let's presume for a second AI is really intelligent.
We know it's not.
But to me, the AI has a huge advantage.
It already has humanoid movement.
It tells people what to do.
We are the robots.
The way people are going talking to these chatbots and the brain is in the phone, and you are the robot.
It's going to tell you what.
It already tells us how to drive.
Already tells us everything else, how to dress.
Oh, it's cold.
We're being assimilated.
And I think.
Not me.
No, not you.
I know.
I'm just catching myself.
Oh, no.
This has got to stop.
It's not stopping.
Exactly the reverse.
And you and all these worries of yours because you couldn't call the Uber because the phone was dead.
If you were one of the kids today, I'd be dead.
No.
You'd be fine.
You'll figure it out when you play these cell phone clips why you'd be fine.
All right.
Let me see.
Where are these cell phone clips?
Are they labeled cell phone clips?
Yeah, they're labeled cell phones.
All right.
Cell phones in school number one.
Is this NPR?
Yes, it is.
Are halfway through the school year.
For millions of students, that means they should be heading to class without their cell phones.
More than 30 states have now enacted some kind of ban, and that includes Kentucky.
NPR Sequoia Carrillo checked in with educators and students in Louisville, which has one of the strictest policies in the state.
They told her the ban is not quite working out the way it was supposed to.
Good morning.
Holly Smith is in her second year as executive principal at the Academy at Shawnee.
She says she can already see a big difference from a semester without cell phones.
We didn't even know the majority of the kids were learning because they weren't responding.
They were just doing things on their phones.
But now there's discourse.
They're like, okay, I actually feel like I'm connecting now.
Jefferson County's policy is strict.
Each student has a yonder pouch, a locked bag for them to carry their phones throughout the day.
They have to put them in the bags when they walk in the school in the morning and can unlock them as they exit the school at the end of the day.
It's a well-laid plan, one that many schools around the country have adopted.
And researchers have touted as the best approach to the issue of cell phones in schools.
But the real question is: is it working?
I asked Smith what the students think.
I mean, I think they absolutely hate it.
Their phone is their lives.
It's their world.
Jaden O'Neill, a senior here, couldn't agree more.
I think all the students hate it.
I think they're going to rebel more.
She's one of three students who agreed to talk to us in the school's library right before their lunch period.
I just want to make a note of the term yonder pouch.
I think this would be an excellent premium.
I don't even know what it is, but I like how it sounds.
A yonder pouch.
Oh, you should talk to the No Agenda Shop.
Maybe they can make a yonder pouch.
Is that just a little bag you put your phone into?
I think it's a bag, yeah.
It probably may have some mesh in there, I would hope.
So I'm going to just presume that, of course, the kids are happy.
It's great.
I feel better in class.
Whereas, you know, they're in a controlled environment.
They can't last for three seconds outside of the school without their controller slab.
I think we may be wrong.
Take me back to August, like right when you come back to school.
What is it like having to lock up your phone?
In August, it was like you'd walk in the doors and they'd tell you to find the pouch that had your name on it.
And then they watched you lock it up.
And it was like most kids either brought a spare phone or they said they didn't have a phone or they broke the pouches and cut them open.
People brought a spare phone.
They just had an extra phone.
They had multiple extra phones.
We also talked to senior Kwane Lanier.
They have multiple extra phones for their friends.
I asked Junior Joseph Jolly whether students are abiding by the ban.
I would say that the risks from being caught are definitely more enforced.
So people often are really worried about that.
But I would otherwise say they mostly just put them in their pockets and they call it a day.
There is rules.
Like if you have your phone, I will take it, but it's not enough for people to care less.
I know one day they're not going to say anything, so I'm just going to keep doing it regardless.
As we talked, students were moving through the halls between classes.
Most kids were chatting, but a few still had headphones on.
And one had a phone out taking a selfie video.
Jolly said we wouldn't necessarily see the same thing inside the classroom.
People know they're going to get in trouble if they keep it out.
They've started to actually focus on work.
And I think we've become more productive because of that.
I don't think that's true.
I think they just find alternative things to do.
Or they just talk more to their friends.
Okay, so kind of at the end there.
So you have the, that's what you see.
The kids are smart.
They have multiple phones.
They're dragging.
They're like Wall Street brokers.
They have three phones.
Drug dealers.
If you brought your head out of the phone, you would have been fine.
Oh, I forgot to mention.
I forgot to mention.
So when you one of the instructions the brilliant Gemini AI gave me was to clear out the Google Play framework data, clear cash, clear data.
Then immediately my phone went, I can't log in anything.
There's nothing we can do.
But you can log into Google, I guess for, I don't even know what it was, but nothing was working.
Say, okay, I'll log into Google.
And I have my username.
I have my password.
And it says, you don't have any passkeys.
No, I've never set that up.
Well, it's okay.
Just grab your other phone and tap on the icon that matches the one I'm showing you now.
I have one phone.
You have one.
You have to have your secondary device with you.
What is that all about?
That's insane.
Even the kids know better.
It's very bad.
In fact, there was a.
Yeah.
Well, let's do that.
How about the lawsuit?
The meta lawsuit that people are saying they got addicted to Instagram.
You've heard about this.
I think it's in Arizona, I believe, is where it went.
Actually, I have not heard of it, but it doesn't surprise me.
Well, luckily enough, our girl, Kara Swisher, who you personally gave media training to, joined up with Anderson Pooper to talk about this.
But go ahead, Kara.
It's breaking news, Mark Zuckerberg, the powerful CEO of Meta.
It's breaking news.
Testified in a landmark trial in Los Angeles today, where social media companies are accused of intentionally addicting children to their platforms.
Now, Meta owns Instagram, which is a defendant in the suit.
This is the first time the Zuckerberg has testified in front of a jury on claims that social media harms children's mental health.
He's testifying as a witness, not a defendant in this case, which was brought by a woman who claims the companies designed their products to addict her when she was a child, damaging her mental health.
Hundreds of more cases like this have been filed.
Kara Swisher joins me now, hosts the podcast on with Kara Swisher and Pivot.
How big a moment does this feel like to you?
Or a moment?
Obviously, it's a landmark case.
We've seen Zuckerberg testifying their courtroom is a different arena.
Yeah, I think it's just yet another appearance and doing the same thing where they've done nothing over the many years.
And then they have these testimonies of parents that feel like their kids have gotten hurt or there's safety issues or addiction issues and they sort of sail by them.
I mean, this is obviously a court case, but it's sort of more of the same.
I've been hearing this from Zuckerberg since I met him, essentially, is that everybody wants to use these apps because they're so fantastic and not that there might be problems using them.
So Kara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway, how's that boycott going, Scott Galloway?
They're always talking about age gating.
We've got an age gate.
Here we can be an age gate for alcohol, for cigarettes.
We should be age gating for these apps.
It turns out, even Kara knows that age gating doesn't work because kids are smart.
And the plaintiff in this case began using Instagram at nine.
There was some heated testimony about Instagram's age verification rules, keeping kids under the age of 13 off it.
Is there any reason to think that that is a sufficient safeguard?
No, not at all.
They took years and years, I think, just till 2019 to really have age, a version of age gating, and it's a very light one in place.
You know, I was surprised to see, what is it, 4 million 10 to 12-year-olds on the platform when nobody under 13 is supposed to be on it.
Age Gating Failsafe?00:05:25
I love this.
Everyone's so upset about evidence we have not yet been able to produce about Epstein.
Yet there's 4 million kids being abused on a daily basis by social media.
Obviously, they're not doing a great job of keeping people off.
And, you know, a lot of the emails talk about the idea of employees who wanted more guardrails and them not being put in place because of the leadership.
You know, they have all kinds of arguments.
Why not?
And by the way, they're not the only one.
Like YouTube is right now on trial here and others.
There's many others.
And this is a question of whether these are addictive experiences and products or are they just so great that we can't stop using them?
Seems like the same thing to me.
But, you know, they're trying to call it problematic usage versus addiction.
And that's what they'll try to do.
They'll try to blame the victim for her own problems and that didn't happen because of them.
But certainly all of us know social media is a problem, whether it's on partisanship or making us hate each other, making us feel bad, or making girls have less self-esteem or boys be more isolated.
I think anyone who's a parent knows this.
And anyone who's a person knows this.
Using these apps can be really problematic.
Problematic.
So the problem here is the parents who are setting this example themselves, and here is in fact...
Yeah, they got the phone at the dining room table.
They're on it all the time and they're walking around with it in their hands 24-7.
I know we sound like boomers, but we're just identifying the problem.
When I was a kid, we didn't have such a thing.
And then they have it by their bedroom, in the bedroom, sitting there, and they use it as an alarm clock.
Oh, my God.
Well, I think you do, too.
No offense.
Now listen to Anderson Pooper as he discusses his social media issues.
Well, even for adults, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm on Instagram and I find myself, you know, occasionally getting sucked in and, you know, just scrolling and feeling terrible about my life because everyone seems to be having a much...
Anderson Pooper!
Wow.
And actually, that is, okay, I'm getting.
By the way, before he finished, that's a clip of the day that because you asked me excellent work, excellent work.
Thank you.
I said it.
Thank you.
I worked on that.
I better not screw this up because John will already, you'll give it the punchline away.
This is pathetic.
This is really, really pathetic.
Let's just listen to that one more time.
It's so pathetic.
He is Anderson Cooper.
He is so jealous of the girl in the bikini.
Look how good she looks.
Did you see the video that's floating around of the woman who has a filter?
She's like, she's filter.
She got a filter and the filter was failing.
I went back and forth and back and forth real fast, showing her real face.
Oh, no, I haven't seen it.
Oh, my God.
She's some ugly duckling.
Well, even for adults, I mean, you know, I mean, I'm on Instagram and I find myself, you know, occasionally getting sucked in and just scrolling and feeling terrible about my life because everyone seems to be having a much more exciting life.
How is this possible?
He is a Vanderbilt.
He's a Vanderbilt.
He must have money outside of CNN.
And how can his life be worse?
Clearly, it's not.
No, clearly it's not.
He's an A-gay.
He's buffaloed.
He's an A-gay.
He's on television.
Yeah, an A-gay.
He's got a B-gay.
No, he's an A-plus gay for sure.
He looks good for his age.
Everything's rocking and rolling.
He has stature.
Well, I guess he's leaving CBS, but doing 60 minutes.
No, he was also 60 minutes.
He was a 60 minute.
He's just raised on 60 minutes too.
Yeah.
Special correspondence.
Live in there?
Yeah.
I read that somewhere.
What a life.
What a life.
And yet, and yet he is now trying to understand and having an adult conversation with a semi-adult, Karis Wisher, who don't know what she is, to say, it happens to me too.
Well, hello.
The gamification aspect of getting the little dopamine hits of likes and followers and things like that.
And apparently, Anderson Cooper is worried about getting likes and followers.
What?
What is what in the world is going on here?
Well, it's designed, as I said earlier today, like a casino of attention.
It's not the same thing as watching a movie.
It's not this.
They do make those arguments.
They call it entertainment now, but it's not entertainment.
It's something else.
And I'm not sure what to call it.
But it does feel like a casino.
You can't look away from the lights.
You can't stop pressing the button.
You can't stop going to the next red button.
And I, you know, it can make you feel bad, especially if your feeds are bad.
It can make you feel isolated and all kinds of things.
And I think everybody knows this.
And that's going to be the problem here for Facebook is the jury probably has addiction problems of their own, even if Facebook doesn't want to call it addiction, Facebook executives.
But everybody understands the relationship with the phone has gotten toxic, especially for young people.
She makes a good point.
The jury's going to be hooked to we're doomed.
Society is doomed.
Yeah, I've said it before since 2007 when that phone came out.
Satan's tool.
Goonies Play Two00:14:48
All we need.
And I'm not the religious one here.
It is the attack vector.
The controller slab is the attack vector.
If anybody doesn't see the symbolism of having an apple on the back with a bite taken out of it, then you're missing the point.
The serpent has struck.
Yes.
All we need to just, you know, I got a great idea.
Have the phone talk back to you and have a conversation.
What else could go wrong?
It couldn't be any worse.
It couldn't go wrong.
It couldn't be any worse.
By the way, I, ah, I nailed, I nailed myself.
I, um, I got the, the, now I'm going to, you're going to have to be, I have to be careful now.
Cause every time you've done that, you ever see when you're trying to do addition and somebody just throws numbers out into the air and those numbers go into your calculation.
I have to now be very careful not saying it.
No, neither of us have said it yet.
I'm just angry at myself.
Don't worry about it.
I won't mention anymore.
I'm not worrying about it, Tom.
A lot of our producers bitch and moan that we worry about it.
So I have, I got in through the mail.
Actually, you sent it FedEx.
I have here.
This thing is huge.
A GeoForce RTX with a Dark Power 13 block attached to it.
That is.
What is this?
This is an NVIDIA GPU.
Oh, the GPU, yeah.
Yeah.
Wow, that thing is huge.
No one, at least like three grand or something.
Not six.
No, not this one.
I don't know if it's this one.
But our producer sent it to me.
I mean, he's who knows what business he's in.
Like, I got one laying in the closet.
He got a tracker on it.
Probably get it.
I hope so.
Said everything you do to it's going to go to China.
He's already loaded it up with all the AI models, a little Raspberry Pi attached to it.
The whole thing is phenomenal.
Very, very excited about it.
There goes the show.
What do you mean, there goes the show?
I'm going to be creating the best.
I'm just kicking around with that device.
The best ISOs ever.
The best ISOs ever.
Well, that could be.
The other big news in the AI world, which we have obviously been predicting, is the CC Dance, the C-Dance where they recreated a fight scene between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
And the movie industry is outraged, I tell you.
Have you seen this epic new Brad Pitt Tom Cruise movie?
You haven't?
Well, actually, no one has because it's not real.
But take a look at this AI-generated clip.
It's created using a platform called Sea Dance 2.0.
It's an AI tool from a Chinese-owned company, ByteDance.
It went viral last week, sparking a fiery debate between Hollywood and the multi-billion dollar tech industry.
That is not Tom Cruise, and that is not Brad Pitt, but it sure looks like both of them.
Let's talk about this with Sean Aston.
He's the president of the entertainment union SAG AFTRA.
You might remember him, of course, from so many movies.
The Goonies, Reedy, Lord of the Rings.
The Goonies.
Your union released a statement Friday condemning the clip and ByteDance, saying, quote, SAG AFTRA stands with the studios and condemning the blatant infringement enabled by ByteDance's new AI video model, Sea Dance 2.0.
The infringement includes the unauthorized use of our members' voices and likenesses.
This is unacceptable.
Hold it for a second.
Did ByteDance pay for this?
Because they keep mentioning the product and the 2.0 and they keep dropping everything, all the details in.
It seems a little suspect.
Possible.
That's possible.
It's also, you know, the, oh, China's going to kill us all meme is in there.
The Chinese, the Chinese, the Chinese.
Infringement includes the unauthorized use of our members' voices and likenesses.
This is unacceptable.
And it undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood.
Open AI had a similar issue, and they very quickly reinforced the idea that they had an opt-in policy, even though they were sort of in an opt-out modality.
Meaning performers can see themselves.
Brian Cranston can see himself and say, you know, hey, you're not supposed to have that.
And they go, oh, sorry, take it down.
Or they can say, hey, Brian Cranston, we want to use your image and likeness.
Can I get your permission?
And he'd have the opportunity to make that decision and get compensated for it and so forth.
We have an important piece of federal legislation called the No Fakes Act, which is in the Judiciary Committee now in the Senate.
And it would enshrine that right, that right to our own voice and likeness.
The No Fakes Act.
Here's Hollywood desperately clinging on to relevance when if you really look at that, that fight scene was a great fight scene.
It's better than filming an original fight scene.
It's fantastic.
I have not seen it.
Oh, it's really good.
You're a journalist.
Your job is to make sure that the First Amendment is protected.
What?
What?
Hold on a second.
Let me write down this on the list of things that journalists do.
So let's just hear that again.
Let's make sure that we're all understanding the First Amendment here.
You're a journalist.
Your job is to make sure that the First Amendment is protected and is respected and observed.
And in the entertainment industry, both the companies and the talent have the same sense of reverence for the First Amendment.
But you shouldn't be able to.
Somehow, the First Amendment is being infringed.
No, you can talk about copyright law, maybe, but this copyright law for sure.
This idiot from, well, we know you're from the Goonies.
He's now saying that not only is copying, digitally copying and manipulating material someone owns is a First Amendment rights issue, which has nothing to do with no rights, but journalists are supposed to be protecting this.
This is who the head is.
Is this the head of SAG AFTRA?
Yeah, I think.
It's an embarrassment.
If it is, let me check out, make sure exactly what it is.
Make me say something I didn't say or do something I didn't do or depict me in a way that I wouldn't, you know, in a setting I wouldn't put myself.
That's just basic fundamental fairness.
It goes not just to the professional fairness.
How's that different than acting?
He is indeed the president of SAG AFTRA.
How is that what he just said?
Back it up.
How's that different than acting?
Let's listen again.
Or do something I didn't do or depict me in a way that I wouldn't, but you know, in a setting I wouldn't put myself.
That's just basic fundamental fairness.
Yeah, it's acting.
Good point.
It goes not just to the professional entertainment industry.
It goes to kids who are abused in this way.
It goes towards anyone in our country and around the world who is, you know, when they post stuff on social media, when they find themselves, their images captured in whatever ways that they are subject to this same sort of abuse.
So it's time to put real guardrails in place that protect us.
Not to mention all the guardrails companies that don't really design these cityscapes or whatever.
They just plagiarize them from the work of other people.
Sean Aston, thank you.
Please come back.
We want to be talking about this and making sure artists are represented in this debate.
We really appreciate it.
And we're all huge fans.
My director just showed his kids over the weekend just FYI.
The union.
Goonies never said guy.
No, he was in the Goonies movie.
He was in movies.
He's a kid actor.
But these are the same people who are taking notes from the Netflix executives to reiterate the plot every 10 minutes in a Netflix movie because the audience has no attention span because it's longer than three minutes.
Oh, this movie lasts more than three minutes.
I mean, please.
We've seen this happen in Unpack before our very eyes.
It started with captions.
Got to have the captions on.
If I don't have the captions, I can't follow the movie.
Yeah, that's right.
We talked about this before the caption thing.
Can you do me a favor?
I can try.
And send the spreadsheet from Jay and her page to my Google account, just forwarded it.
Okay.
Well, if you play a clip, then I can do that.
Well, I could play a bunch of clips.
No, just one.
How about playing the clips I kind of put it aside here?
Just one is fine.
Because somebody has sent this in.
I went and re-clipped it so it was a little better.
About Keith Olbermann.
He's still around?
Yeah.
Keith Olbermann talking about how he's become a media deconstructor.
What?
Oberman on media one.
Every once in a while, I begin to suspect that this podcast will eventually turn into a media criticism podcast.
Every once in a while, I suspect you believe that this podcast has already turned into such of a podcast about the media more than about politics or Trump or anything else.
Because if we stop and think about it, beyond the natural problems that we have had with what we all thought were laws and that turned out just to be traditions and things that men of goodwill would observe to keep the form of government here largely democratic,
apart from that overarching problem that has led us here to the precipice of eternal damnation, the second biggest collapse, the second weakest guardrail, the guardrail that second most turned out to be made out of oatmeal and paper-mâché is the media.
There has been another array of disasters in the media in the past week from CBS News, or what was formerly CBS News, from CNN again, from a man I used to work for named Andy Lack at NBC, formerly of NBC, though they fired him twice, and from Jake Effing Tapper.
You wanted to send you a Gmail?
Yeah.
You know, there's something very wrong with your email.
Just as a quick aside, when the guy trying to help you with a newsletter email, his name is Mark VoidZero, when his email is sent back as fake when he's trying to send you information about how to fix the email, we have a basic problem.
Yeah, I'm working on it.
I'm aware of the issues.
And I use the issues as plural.
Yes.
All right.
So that's the intro.
We've got Olbermann, and he is setting himself up as some kind of Uber dude over at the end.
Yeah, and so I do have the deconstruction that he actually does on a clip, which is the last clip, which is Oberman 3, I think.
You don't want to play two?
You want to play?
But if you want to play two, it's more entertaining to play two and two A. There's two and two A.
This is classic.
This is an example of what kind of objectivity we can expect in his deconstruction.
Okay.
So Trump is now trying to win line-level service members, the line guys, the youngsters, the ones Trump thinks are the suckers and losers, trying to win them with some vague idea in his mind that if the commissioned officers and the generals and the joint chiefs are told to shoot up a voting precinct in Chicago and they refuse, Well, the raw troops from Fort Bragg will do it anyway, out of loyalty to Trump, and might even shoot the officers if Trump asks them to.
Like this is the Soviet Revolution as it played out on their Western front against the Germans in 19-effing-17.
It is absolutely...
What is the effing thing he's doing?
Is this a new thing of Jake effing Tapper, 19 effing 17, Keith Effing Olbermann?
He tests this constantly, but he uses effing.
Oh, okay.
Out on their Western front against the Germans in 19 effing 17.
It is absolutely possible that the midterms could come down to the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually standing up on their hind legs like something out of the government overthrow movie Seven Days in May.
It is absolutely possible that the names of the people Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin were actually talking to in the video they and the four House members made will become very familiar to us in October and November and December.
Names like General George and Admiral Franchetti and Commandant Smith.
And yes, in the wildest of political science fiction scenarios, they might all have to get together and lock General Kane, lock General Kane in a room somewhere while they make sure the personnel under their command do not seize ballot boxes or begin to turn us into a military dictatorship and do not start shooting civilians.
And Trump does not pop out of a bunker wearing his special new uniform with the big hat personally designed and gifted to him by Kim Jong-un.
Now, are there more people who watch Keith Olbermann besides you and Darren and Larry?
I mean, are you?
I don't watch him at all.
If it wasn't somebody sending me this clip about him deconstructing, I wouldn't have even gotten these.
I'll just play this next one, which is the end of what he just said, the Trump 2A, and then an example of his deconstruction.
You won't hear from him again on this show for a year.
It cannot be said too many times.
There is no future for Trump and these scumbags around him.
Rubio, Vance, Stephen Miller, Noam, Hegseth, Patel, Gabbard, Kushner, Trump's two idiot sons.
There is no future for any of them if the Democrats win the House and the Senate.
I'd argue there is virtually no future for any of them if the Democrats just win the House.
For Trump, the midterms are not the future of his agenda and his policies.
For his minions, this is not the future of their plans or their money.
For Trump, the midterms are life and death his.
He either gains control of this country permanently through the rest of his life or virtually permanently, or he will die in prison.
This guy just had it.
All I'm hearing is diarrhea of the mouth.
Rachel Maddow's Reality Check00:04:13
He's just blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so now we get to the true decision.
Okay, so now this next clip, which is the last one, this is him deconstructing some CBS stuff.
He hates CBS now because it's very wecy.
Of course.
So he's going to deconstruct a story and then show how screwed up it is.
And the structure of what he does is you have to remember that he is the mentor of Rachel Maddow.
Mentor or mentee?
He's the mentor.
He mentored Rachel Maddow.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, she came into the network at the MSNBC after he was in the middle of the day.
Another person banned from the show.
She came in and he taught her the ropes and she became a version of him and then she passed it on to Hayes, that other guy.
And it's got watered down along the way.
And she was a little better at doing this because she had all these expressions and she didn't look like a lunatic.
And she had all these sad faces and she'd cry.
But the structure of what you're about to hear is exactly Rachel Maddow.
She got it from him.
And listen carefully because there's a trick in here.
He pulls a stunt.
And I don't know whether he does it on purpose, which I have to assume because he can't be this dumb or he does it because he's that dumb.
We'll see.
Here we go.
On February 9th, Tony DeCoppol already, once again, put a hole in whatever reputation he had as a newsman at some point in his past when he announced on their newscast, the CBS quote evening, quote, news, ICE arrested nearly 400,000 people in President Trump's first year in office.
Of those, nearly 60% had criminal histories, meaning charges or convictions, including many for serious crimes such as drug trafficking and child pornography, and several thousand cases involving rape or murder.
Those are some pretty heavy statistics.
That's a very important story.
And it is, to some degree, surprising that you're probably hearing this for the first time.
400,000 people arrested.
Of those, 60% had criminal histories, drug trafficking, child pornography, several thousand rapes or murders.
The books were cooked.
Trump is not right.
Trump is not dragging off only the violent criminals, the worst of the worst.
The number had been rewritten.
The facts had been changed into what Tony DeCoppol read to present a fake picture, to falsify reality.
CBS had its own online report on its website, which has not yet been corrupted by Barry Weiss and Tony DeCoppol and the others.
The CBS story, using the same data from the same sources, reads, less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump's first year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows.
So between the actual number, which is less than 14%, and this dire picture of nearly 60% had criminal histories, somebody changed the facts from the facts to lies that DeCoppol promptly spewed on the CBS evening news.
Oh, yeah.
No, it was obvious what he did there.
He changed it from criminal record to violent criminal record.
Yeah, you spotted it.
It's so easy to spot.
Rachel does this all the time, too.
And it's just like it was disingenuous because in his original, when he talks about the 60%, he does mention the thousands of super violent crimes, which would include murder and whatever.
And that accounts for the 14%.
He never puts that together correctly.
He's the liar.
Yes, he is.
So that's the kind of news deconstruction, if he's ever going to do it, that you're going to get.
It's just Rachel Maddow material.
I believe that the people who listen to our show do not ever, ever even stop on a video of Keith Olbermann.
But it was sent to you, so I understand.
We got to use the material.
Central Bank's Stablecoin Controversy00:15:31
Do you know in agreement with me?
I think some people, well, I haven't.
You're probably right because I don't stop at his videos.
This guy sent the thing, one of our producers sent the thing and saying, hey, look at he's trying to do deconstruction like you guys.
Okay.
So I had his clip and then I said, well, let's see what this is all about.
No, but no, no, it was my fault.
We never should have done the Trump stuff.
That was my fault.
You wanted to pass it by and I was interested.
It's okay.
He did, however, bring up the what do you call them? The two idiot sons.
So the two.
The two idiots.
And this, I'm answering a question that someone sent to me.
There's a lot of confusion about the digital Euro, CBDC, central bank digital currency and stablecoin.
And even though we've explained it ad nauseum, and I'm not about to do it again, please go to bingit.io and look it up.
A central bank digital currency is issued, that is the digital euro, if it ever happens.
And I have reasons for saying that.
If the digital currency ever happens, a central bank digital currency is regulated by the central bank, the bank of banks.
In that case, it would be the Federal Reserve in the United States.
There is, in fact, there is specific legislation that forbids the Central Bank of America, the Federal Reserve, from creating a digital coin.
The stablecoin is interesting in that it is money that is backed by American debt, by treasury bills.
And the whole legislation that's going through Congress now is determined.
We've already determined who can do it.
So you can be a bank.
You can qualify as a bank.
I'm sure Elon Musk qualifies as a bank.
The only argument now is, well, can we give people benefits like interest on a stable coin or tote bags or whatever?
So the Trump brothers have a do a conference for the World Liberty.
I think that's what it's called.
Excuse me.
World Liberty Financial Corporation.
And they say, I think it's Eric who says some stuff, which confirms what we've been talking about about the stablecoin gambit.
But first, they kind of downplay Bitcoin a little bit and push it off to the side because stablecoin is what it's all about.
Still think it's going to a million bucks.
It's having trouble holding $100,000.
It's been a rough start.
This was supposed to be the golden dawn of crypto.
Well, Bitcoin is low right now, but what we're talking here with World Liberty is giving stablecoins, right?
So that's Treasury-backed, dollar-based.
It's held up in the Bitcoin sell-off.
They're one-to-one the U.S. Treasury, so they've stayed the same.
It's just a simpler way to transact.
If you send a wire on Friday, you don't have to wait for Tuesday to close.
It happens in two seconds for two cents.
You can close transactions.
The banks obviously didn't love that idea because they're getting the benefit of the float of having these things and these billions and billions of dollars sitting in their banks over the weekend collecting interest.
This creates efficiencies that did not exist in that market.
Not only does it create efficiencies, it's bringing trillions of dollars into the United States, right?
Everybody wants to be on the U.S. dollar.
They did a Euro-based stablecoin and only half of 1% of all Europeans want to be on that stablecoin.
You know what they want to be on?
They want it to be on the U.S. dollar.
And guess what everybody in Asia wants to be on?
The U.S. dollar.
Guess what everybody in South America wants to be on and really is on, the U.S. dollar.
Stablecoin is going to bring literally trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy.
It arguably could save the dollar because guess what?
There's a lot of countries around the world.
Ranking corruption, bad governments, bad currencies, massive inflation.
These people don't stand a chance.
They get a paycheck.
They don't stand a chance.
They may as well go and throw it in a fire and just burn it.
Whereas now, all of a sudden, using a simple telephone, using your iPhone, all of a sudden you can buy U.S.-backed one-to-one as on said, based on U.S. Treasuries, you can buy stablecoin, and you can actually be part of the greatest financial system in the world.
So this will change the entire optics of the U.S. dollar.
It is a way to at least extend world dominance as a reserve currency for a while.
And as Eric said, guess what?
Guess what?
Guess what?
Yes.
Guess what?
Guess what?
All those countries do indeed.
People would rather have the U.S. dollar.
Yes.
Absolutely.
If you think that this is any different because it's digital from your Venmo, your PayPal, your credit card, your debit card, or any other way you transact except in paper money, they're wrong.
There's no difference.
Just as trackable, just as stoppable, just as interruptible.
I hope people now understand.
They don't.
Because they're all worried about, oh, CBDC.
The CBDC is bad because the central bank can then devalue your money.
So they could take it.
Well, that can happen with anything.
It happens in Cypress.
I'm just saying.
It can't happen with the thousand bucks that I have stashed in the mattress.
No, but that's you're mixing apples with oranges and throwing in some bananas.
The point is digital money is digital money and you're controlled unless you literally are using Bitcoin and people are accepting your Bitcoin.
Oh, this is your thing.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm not saying it for that.
The point is, the difference between a stable coin and a central bank digital currency is the central bank has way more power to devalue your money, to chop off money, to do things that are outside of the banking system.
And that's what you don't want.
And the digital Euro will be fantastic.
I can't wait.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, let me look for it.
Turns out Fifi Lagarde may not see the actual introduction of the digital Euro.
On to business now.
Champalagrand is with us.
He's starting with a shock report.
This is coming out from the Financial Times.
It's regarding movements at the European Central Bank.
The British newspaper saying that the president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, is expected to leave her position before the end of her eight-year term in October 2027, citing a source familiar with her thinking.
Lagarde is reportedly looking to leave before the French presidential election, which will take place in April next year.
This would allow French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, to find a new top central banker for the bloc and thus avoiding the possibility of a far-right national rally president from having a say in the decision, whether that person is Marine Le Pen or Jardin Baldela.
Both of them are Euroskeptics.
Of course, the European Central Bank has since responded to that report saying Christine Lagarde is focused on her job and has not taken any decision regarding the end of her term.
This is a bad omen.
Why would Lagarde want to leave before the end of her term?
She's a healthy woman.
She's got everything together.
She loves power.
I think she knows it's all going to come tumbling down.
This has nothing to do with getting out before.
Well, you think that she's worried about getting blamed.
Of course.
Of course.
She'll be the number one to get blamed.
No, it's like, wow.
I think it's bigger news than people may realize that she's getting out.
I don't want to be here when it all collapses.
Let some other doofus take care of it.
Well, the potential's there.
Talk about the tariff decision from the Supreme Court for a moment.
I have two clips that I want to play.
I'm sure you do.
Mine first.
Where does yours?
I get it.
Where do yours come from?
From this morning, from CBS, Face the Nation.
CBS.
Face the Nation.
Ambassador Jamison Greer, who is the United States Trade Representative.
The Supreme Court ruling, that vote was 6-3.
The president, as you know, you were there, came out publicly, and he railed against some of those justices by name.
Railed.
He said this on Friday.
Take a listen.
They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.
It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.
That's a pretty huge allegation.
What foreign interest has corrupted the court, according to the president?
Well, I won't characterize his words too much.
He speaks for himself.
But I will tell you what.
Do you know what he's talking about?
So many of the interests that were at issue in this case were really about foreign importers or foreign companies that have interests here in the U.S. who are suing the president and suing the administration.
It's foreign companies that are benefiting from the tariffs being struck down.
This is why when we impose tariffs, foreign countries don't like it and foreign companies don't like it because they're the ones that don't want to have the tariffs in place.
They're the ones that are suing.
They're the ones that are trying to get together coalitions and groups to oppose what the president is doing.
The president's fighting for American workers.
He's trying to impose a trade policy that has a through line through the first Trump administration, Biden and Trump with tariffs.
But it's foreign countries and companies that are suing that want these things to go away.
So the trade representative or ambassador here is not really saying what this is.
I believe what President Trump is talking about is globalists and specifically North Sea Nexus in the embodiment of the Cato Institute, who wrote quite a detailed amicus brief to the Supreme Court about this decision.
And I spent some time with Rob, the Constitutional Lawyer.
It's 170 pages.
A lot of this was pretty much written by the Cato Institute.
It's all their language.
It's the globalists.
They don't want this.
They don't want America to succeed on its own.
They want the same manufacturer somewhere else, just have the stupid Americans be the customers.
And here, Jameson kind of lets in a little bit on who the president was really talking about.
But the president wasn't talking about them.
The president was talking about the Supreme Court justices, who he said are unpatriotic and disloyal and swayed by foreign interests.
Do you have any evidence to back up that allegation about these Supreme Court justices, who, as you know, face security threats on a daily basis?
So when the foreign interests sue, they appear before the courts.
They're literally arguing before the courts that they should have a different outcome.
So they are, it's quite obvious that foreign interests are involved.
They're helping bring lawsuits.
They're arguing before the court.
And these justices, six of them, agree with what a lot of these foreign interests want, which is take down the tariffs, take down the barriers, and let us import as much cheap crap as we want to the United States at the expense of American workers.
But do you need to clarify or feel compelled in any way to clarify in regard to the allegations against the justices themselves?
I'm not speaking for the president.
What I'm telling you is that when the president talks about foreign influences, at a minimum, what we see is that foreign companies are involved in the coalitions, the PR effort.
They're involved in the cases, and they don't want these tariffs.
It's not a secret.
I mean, for months, these foreign countries and companies and people in the United States who benefit from their commercial relations with them, they want these tariffs to be gone.
That should be the signal for us that we're doing the right thing, that we're over the target.
When the foreign countries and companies are literally arguing in court through their advocates to take it down, we know they have influence.
Well, 1,500 businesses, including Costco, have filed lawsuits to get repaid for these tariffs.
Yeah, they can wait for a long time for that to happen.
Yeah, that's for sure.
It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
So I think that's what the president meant.
I mean, Cato Institute was, I think that's named after the Cato letters, if I'm not mistaken.
Between 18th century British essays, between John Trenchard and Thomas Barrow.
Oh, I know.
It is a kind of an outlier of conservative think tanks.
Conservative or liberal globalists?
They're conservative on the surface.
On the surface.
Yeah, that makes sense.
On the surface, they're extremely conservative, but it wouldn't surprise me.
And I think that was a good catch that you talked this over with R, with the show's constitutional guy.
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you more about what we discussed, but let's see what your clips are first.
Well, my clips are a little different because they don't harp on they don't harp the way Nora.
That's not Nora.
It's who is that?
That's Margaret.
Margaret.
That's right, Margaret.
And the problem is, I have two clips that should be the same.
It might be the same clip, but one is 41 seconds, one's 59.
These are the openers.
It's the second clip, Tariffs 2, that's interesting to me because it shows you what NPR is coming from.
One is 44, one is 59.
Really, I got 41 on my list.
Oh, wait, hold on.
I have tariff Supreme Court 44, Supreme Court NPR 59.
Tariffs.
Yeah, I wonder why it grew three seconds.
Tariffs to G-O-T-G-N-P-R.
Yeah, that should be boots on the ground.
It's goots on the ground.
Goats on the ground, everybody.
We got goats on.
Goats on the ground.
Let's start with the long.
Let's just try the long one, the 59-second one.
The 59-second one.
President Trump says he's increasing his new temporary global tariffs from 10% he announced yesterday to 15%.
This in response to yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that found he overstepped his authority on double-ditch taxes on virtually all imports into the U.S.
And Pierce Alina Selyuk has more.
President Trump made the latest announcement in a post on social media, once again deriding the Supreme Court ruling, saying it was, quote, ridiculous, poorly written, and extraordinarily anti-American.
The High Court had ruled with a notable majority of six to three, including two justices appointed by Trump, and they had struck down Trump's use of an emergency statute for his tariffs, saying the president could not rely on it to impose taxes without specific authorization from Congress.
Trump quickly used another presidential authority to set a new universal tariff, which is limited to 150 days, unless extended by lawmakers.
Wine Growers' Nervousness in Burgundy00:05:02
And he has vowed to find a way to set more.
Alina Seluk, NPR News, Washington.
Yeah, the 150-day limit on Section 122 is interesting because, yes, the president can't just reset the clock, but there is no language that says that he can't do another one.
And so that's what I was thinking.
14% now.
It's all about if there's a trade or an imbalance of payments, which clearly we have.
Oh, yeah, big time.
Then he can just keep invoking that, just changing it a little bit.
He can also completely block all trade with any country or for any product, just outright.
So this whole thing was, I'd say, I think the words Rob the Constitutional Lawyer use are performative.
And that's what's disappointing.
The Supreme Court's just, you know, whatever they were doing.
It's like, you can't use.
They didn't want to deal with it, I think.
They should have not dealt with it.
The fact that they just stole a report from the Cato Institute is pretty pathetic.
It's very pathetic.
So this report, they go on and on and on.
Then they bring in this woman who's in the whole, I have to say, here's a woman that works for NPR that is living the life of Riley.
I don't know what the NPR budget must be in the hundreds of millions, obviously.
And this woman, she's in the Paris Bureau, and she's going to do boots on the ground.
But you never imagine, you know, in other words, ask the Europeans what they think of all this.
And you can't imagine where she decides to go.
Wait a minute.
Physically or in her physically, hold on a second.
So she's doing well.
I would say she had to go to China.
No, no, she's in, she's in the Paris.
If you're in the Paris Bureau and you want to travel around, you yes, well, actually, yes, you should go to China.
Or you go to the Champagne region.
Well, you're close.
EU and the U.S. did more than one and a half trillion dollars in trade in goods and services in 2024.
They're each each other's largest trading partners.
So there's a lot at stake.
Last summer, before the tariffs were put into effect, the 15%, I went into Burgundy and I spoke with wine growers and they were so nervous about what would happen.
And one of the vineyards I visited was Michael Schapp's vineyard.
What is in Burgundy besides dynamite wine?
What's in Burgundy?
Dynamite wine.
She went to Burgundy to talk about tariffs and do a lot of wine tasting because some of that wine you can taste if you go there, but you can't afford to affect the 15%.
I went into Burgundy and I spoke with wine growers and they were so nervous about what would happen.
And one of the vineyards I visited was Michael Schapp's vineyard.
He's a French winemaker and a Virginia winemaker who exports and imports in both directions.
So he really sees how it's affecting the whole thing.
And I spoke with him today.
Here he is.
It's been crazy.
The up and downs on both sides of the Atlantic.
On top of that, the fact that the dollar has tumbled about 12% in the past year.
So you had that on top of the tariffs, and it's a big hit.
Yeah, so he hailed the Supreme Court's decision, but it didn't last long.
And he said most French winemakers, including himself, are finding and have found new markets across Europe and Asia.
He says it's just too hard to do business with the U.S. Does the EU have any recourse to fight back?
Yeah, they do.
I mean, the U.S. and the EU negotiated a trade deal last summer, but it's actually not been ratified by the European Parliament.
And they could hold that back, and there are now calls for them to do so.
And they've already identified $93 billion worth of U.S. goods that they could slap tariffs on.
And there's something else they could use.
It's a mechanism that's being referred to as the trade bazooka, which could enact huge restrictions on U.S. companies having access to the EU market, which is a market of 450 million consumers.
It's massive and lucrative.
So that could be a real threat.
That's NPR's Paris correspondent, Eleanor Beardsley.
Thank you so much for your reporting.
You're welcome.
And I'll tell you that my buddy here, who does CNC machining for military parts, they are so happy because now they are using American steel.
He says it's more expensive.
I think we talked about this before.
But he doesn't have to throw 40% away of Chinese steel because it's junk.
It's junk.
And he says, orders are up.
He says we can barely keep up with the business.
Yeah, it's junk.
The LED light bulbs from China are junk.
Everything from China is pretty much junk.
And I understand we have a lot of people probably who listen to the show who set up businesses reselling junk from China in marketing online.
I understand it sucks that you have to eat these tariffs.
But, you know, and they say, well, you can't get that in America.
Finally Interesting Hack00:04:04
Well, there's your opportunity.
Right there.
Make a better.
I love the guys in North Carolina who are making sneakers and supposedly no agenda boots.
You know, this is the whole plan.
If you care about your kids, you'll eat a little bit of pain or a lot of pain.
You will do it.
I'm going to give the president until 2027.
And if it hasn't improved by then, well, then a great idea didn't work.
I like the idea.
I really do.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll see how it goes.
I mean, I like the idea too.
I'm not going to argue.
Are you skeptical that he can pull it off?
No, I'm skeptical that the economy is not going to have issues after the midterms.
No.
And it will result in the inability to pull it off because it just won't be just the conditions won't be right.
Everybody will be broke.
Well, that never happens.
But if that ever happened, you'd be broke.
People who listened to our show.
It didn't happen in the 30s.
It didn't happen in the 70s.
This never happened.
People who listen to our show will be broke.
They will claim brokenness.
That is always happening.
It does.
It does happen.
If we get ready to go to a break, I do have one interesting clip.
Oh, finally?
Finally, we're getting an interesting thing.
It's finally an interesting clip.
I know, I know, I know.
So this is the, now this, this is the most disgusting thing that's been floating around for a while.
This is the underwear hack.
It was kind of noisy.
I ran it through the system.
This is some woman giving us a life hack, a life hack when you travel a lot.
Okay, here we go.
I'm about to show you guys one of the coolest tricks ever.
So you're traveling and you didn't pack enough underwear.
And he was like, oh my gosh, what am I going to wear tomorrow?
Every room has like a coffee pot thing in it.
Even the other coffee makers were like bruised through.
All you have to do, put your underwear where you would put the coffee grounds.
You close it, you press brew, and it puts scorching hot water through it.
You guys, then the hairdryer in the bathroom, you'll blow dry those bad boys and you got yourself a cleaner pair of underwear to wear.
I did not realize how many people already knew this hack.
I learned it years ago from a friend that was a flight attendant.
And it's brilliant.
So this is a hack.
This is good?
This is no good.
You take your underwear and you stick it in the coffee maker.
Yes.
Your dirty underwear, and then you run a brew through it.
And then you just dump the water out and then you go dry off the underwear.
So in other words, the likelihood if people, unless this is a hoax, which I well, no, no, no, no.
Because I just spent four days in the BioDome in Nashville.
It's the Gaylord Hotel where you never get out.
It's kind of like a casino.
And they have these exact brew machines.
And it exists of a little pouch that's in a plastic slide that you slide into the coffee maker.
Yeah, that works if you have panties, but men's underwear?
Well, I don't think it's for men, but even I don't care who puts them in if it's panties or boxer shorts.
I don't care.
I don't want to be drinking my making brews of coffee afterwards.
You know, the hack is you get clean underwear and a tasty drink.
And with that, I want to thank you for your courage to say in the morning to you, the man who put the C in the CBDC.
In the morning to you, Mr. John C. Neville!
There's some sea boots on the ground, feeding the air subs in the water and all the dames are nice out there.
In the morning to the trolls control room, let me count your trolls.
Hold on, I'm gonna have there we go.
Oh, that's looking better.
Rick and the People's OS00:15:45
2,000, almost 2,100, 2,100 trolls listening live at noagendastream.com.
And, of course, many of them trolling along in the troll.
And you know what?
The trolls know everything so much better.
That is my favorite part of the trolls.
They think that they're actually talking on the show, but you're not.
They are on the on the show of their own.
Yeah, I know.
But I look over, you know, I always got to look over from time.
I have a peripheral vision.
I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I'm really trying to give them grace.
It's hard sometimes.
Why?
They just say horrible things.
They're trolls.
Yeah, yeah.
That's why.
They're trolls, exactly.
To give them grace.
You might want grief.
I think finally I got him to kick me off.
No, I've.
Oh, look, he talked about my post.
Yes.
That is right.
That is exactly it.
We are a value for value podcast.
Now, first, I should mention that you can definitely get this on the modern podcast apps.
That's what you want to do because when we go live, you'll get a notification that we're going live.
You can listen to that live show in the modern podcast app.
Many more features.
Don't even think about these legacy apps.
Apple, Spotify, even Overcast.
You know, it doesn't have any of the cool features.
It's in the modern podcast apps at podcastapps.com.
Value for value.
Although we are considering giving you a yonder pouch, which just sounds like a fine premium.
Other than that, there's nothing you got to do to get the premium content.
No bonus stuff, no plus packages.
We put it all out there for you to consume at no charge, no exchange of anything for just listening to the podcast.
All we ask is that when you eventually, at some point in your day, think, hmm, that was valuable to me, immediately go to noagendadonations.com and send us whatever value that had to you back to us.
So we give you the value.
You send it back.
It's that simple.
You can do this with time, talent, and treasure.
The time and talent, people do so many things.
They send you clips of Keith Olbermann, Mike Olbermann.
I was going to say Mike Olberman.
They send you clips of Oberbert.
You know, it's like, all right, that's kind of valuable.
Thank you.
People organize meetups.
You've got Void Zero trying to help us with the newsletter issues.
And he's really, he's really working hard because he can't even get you on the email anymore.
But that is time and talent right there.
Or you could be making artwork for us.
Interestingly enough, on the previous show, which was our best of second half of the show, got a lot of positive results.
People thought it was very interesting that immediately Obama was giving out classified information.
President Trump says he's going to release all of the UFO files.
They thought that just could not be a coincidence that we did our second half of show.
But we did.
And you did not, as you typically do, send me artwork.
Usually you send me artworks and say, hey, here's the thing.
I didn't see anything.
So I figured you'd either ask Darren for some or you just get some.
I just went to Gemini and said, make me a second half of show artwork.
And that's what we got.
Yeah.
I know.
I was as underwhelmed as you are, but that's what it is.
And no one sends anything.
Well, I guess I guess.
Yeah, no, they did, but you didn't get it.
Well, I looked.
I didn't see anything that was any good.
There's some there.
I saw it.
Well, I didn't.
I saw the end of the road when I was posting the show.
Yeah, no, it probably wasn't there by the time.
Yeah, the timing was a mis.
Timing was wrong.
Yeah.
I mean, we do have to, and I did it Wednesday night.
I had it all ready and good to go.
I still could have done it Thursday morning.
I looked.
I didn't see anything.
But anyway, thank you if you submitted.
It came in too late.
We're on a tight schedule here.
So now is your chance to get in for episode 1845.
Go to noagendaartgenerator.com and spin something up.
Oh, I believe I have to congratulate our Dutch mastress, mistress, Dutch mastress, mistress, Tanta Neal, I believe was her birthday two days ago.
So I want to say happy.
It wasn't on the birthday list.
No, no, it came through a signal message.
So I just wanted to say happy birthday to her.
And we miss you.
We miss your, from time to time she comes in with something, it's stellar.
So we miss your original artwork.
So now we want to thank the treasure part of our producers who sent something back to us, Time, Talent, Treasure.
We thank everyone who sends us $50 or more.
And for this segment, we have our special Hollywood credits, not even Hollywood style, actual Hollywood credits that are good and recognized in all Hollywood circles.
Associate Executive Producer.
If you send us $200 and we will read your note.
$300 and above, it is executive producer, and we will read your note.
And you can tell that these credits are real because you can create an entry if you don't already have one at imdb.com.
Then we start today with Benjamin Domzalski from Cleveland, Ohio.
He sent us 343.75.
And let me see what he says here.
He says, Benjamin Domzalski from Cleveland requesting prayers for my son, Adam.
No, he's named Adam.
Name previous to becoming a producer.
Sorry, Adam.
Oh, okay.
He is converting to Catholicism.
And tomorrow, that is today, 22226, is his rite of sending.
Are you familiar with this, the rite of sending?
I'm not sure what.
Okay.
It's about two steps away from full conversion.
We will be at with the entirety of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese.
He is nervous, so all prayers are welcome.
No karma, just love.
Glad to be a producer.
I think I am now a knight.
As an accountant, I think.
What are you converting from, I wonder?
From atheism, agnosticism, from nothingism?
You don't convert from atheism?
Well, I don't know.
It's a good question.
I do not have the information.
Yes, I already did when I read the spreadsheet.
I think I am now a knight.
Well, as an accountant, I should keep better track.
I will follow up.
Jingles, Sharpton, anything.
And thank the Lord for my smoking hot wife.
To resist, we must.
We must.
They're all jitty about a shutdown.
The tortoise in the race.
and co-author of Hubris, U2 lead singer Bono.
So I've been watching Sharpton on and off for the last six months.
Wow.
And I can't catch his flubs.
I think they must just reshoot stuff constantly.
Oh, no, they must be pre-taping.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, we got Evan here, Evan from Rhode Island, ITM, Adam, and John.
With this donation, I can officially cleanse myself of douchebaggery.
All right.
You've been dedouched.
Very good.
With that out of the way, I've been listening to you guys since the start of COVID, give or take, about six years.
All right.
Six years who have brought humor as well as insight to the otherwise chaotic day-to-day that the media would have us live in.
Thank you both for the levity twice a week.
The only jingle I request is the Scott Simon Suffering Sucatash.
It makes me laugh every time I hear it.
Suffering Sucatash.
I'm Scott.
Simon.
I'm sorry.
He was in for 333.33.
Yeah, same amount, 333.33 from Noah Wattenmacher.
These are, of course, donations from two episodes, 1844 and for 1845 today.
He's from Three Rivers, California, and he says, birthday dono for me.
Don't know.
February 18th, he turns 40.
Hooray!
And hooray for you, Noah.
Don't know.
Don't know.
Jeffrey Anton in Melbourne, Florida, 333.00 with no notes, so he gets a double up karma.
Yes, he does.
You've got karma.
Sir, oh no.
Yes, Sir Commodore Mark Bendikowski, Warsaw, Poland, 321.
I will donate until John will get my surname right.
Love you guys.
Night name change, please, to Sir Rick of the Cyber Abyss.
Well, you've just changed it.
Many years ago, you had me knighted as soon as you.
Oh, I'm sorry.
There's two greens.
What are you doing?
I was reading the green was bleeding over to the green.
I'm sorry.
Now that you mention it, I've had issues with these colors, too.
Yeah.
Okay.
Sir Rick, and you have color blindness.
Let me just finish this.
Let me do it again.
Sir Commodore Mark.
So I'll edit this.
No one will ever know the difference.
Right.
Wait, wait, 321.
Sir Commodore Mark Bendikowski, Warsaw, Poland, 321.
He says he will donate until John gets my surname right.
Love you.
Okay, let me give it a shot.
Yes.
Bendy Kadowski.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Oh, did I get it right?
I'm sorry.
No, I'm sorry.
You did not get it right.
Sir Rick of the Cyber Abyss in Modesto, California.
Or Abbas, as they might say nowadays.
300.
Night name change, please, to Sir Rick of the Cyber Abyss.
This kind of says, okay, I get it.
Many years ago, you had me knighted as sirfinditclassifieds.com.
Finditclassifieds.com or something like that.
As that was where I was mining dollars from the web at the time.
Now I'm at podgrapper.com and sitespy 007.com.
Okay, so plugging everything you can under the sun.
And that's worth 300 bucks.
Andrew Ribby, I'm just going to guess it's already associates for two shows.
Yep, I told you.
I told you.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 235.16.
And he has a note that he sent in.
Let's see.
John and Adam, remittance.
V for V, $200.
Okay.
Tina, glass of wine to aid putting up with Adam, $15.
Oh, well, that is nice.
Mimi, glass of wine to aid putting up with John, $15.
He's giving us the full accounting.
This is dynamite.
Phoebe, treat.
$5.
Hey, if you don't mind, I'm not going to give my dog some $5 treat.
I think that's probably a bit much.
He has not priced dog trees for a while.
No, that's a lot of money for a dog tree.
$400 for reasonably good dog food.
Yes.
Check fee, $0.15.
Adam's jar, one cent.
Where is my, you know, ever since I went to Linux, I think I lost my coin jar.
I got to find that.
Total, $235.16.
Thank you for the joy you bring to the producers through your incessant bickering shout out and celebration of the shout out and celebration of the lives of two incredible Christian men, Vadi Bauckam and John MacArthur.
Please tell everyone to rent from Hickory Oak Properties.
Advertisement.
Thanks to all producer for jobs.
Oh, slash jobs prayers.
Okay.
P.S.
I picked up side work so I could donate.
Regards, Andrew Rib E. Ribby, yes.
Oh, and he wants a mac and cheese jingle.
All right.
Mac and cheese.
We got some mac and cheese for you.
Yes, this one.
You slaves can get used to mac and cheese.
Mac and cheese.
Mac and cheese.
Macaroni and cheap cheddar melted together.
Mac and cheese, mac and cheese, mac and cheese.
Mac and cheese.
Everybody.
And they are both on the birthday list.
And can we confirm that you're using Linux once again?
Oh, yeah.
The people's operating system.
The people's operating system is in full effect.
And you're going to take the people's operating system on the road?
Yes.
I will have a backup of the Redmond, Washington operating system just in case.
But yes, I believe that I am almost completely transitioned off.
And of course, now I am back on Graphene OS, also the People's Mobile Operating System.
I am free.
I am unshackled.
By what has been?
Yes.
By what has been a lousy operating system?
Yes.
A lot of it.
Yes.
Okay.
Striker in Miami Springs, Florida, 23333.
Adam and John.
My wife and I are longtime listeners.
She's a No Agenda Commodore, and I'm a douchebag until now.
You've been dedouched.
I'm an active duty Coast Guard pilot flying the HC-144B.
We are in.
By the way.
I want to take a look at this.
This was a screw-up on my part because I went and bitched about the Coast Guard being part of, not part of the military and part of DHS.
And I got corrected.
This is a correction.
Yes.
They were never part of the military.
Oh, this is one of those big fatties with the two turbo props on the wing.
The HC-144B?
Ocean Sentry.
Yeah.
That's a big bad boy.
Yeah.
Nice.
We are indeed under DHS, meaning I'm currently, by the way, they were never under the military.
They used to be under the Treasury Department.
They got bounced around a lot.
So it's no surprise that they ended up under DHS.
Meaning I'm currently flying SAR missions without a paycheck.
Search and just because I'm not getting paid to work doesn't mean you shouldn't get paid for the best podcast in the universe.
Can I interject for one second?
So while I was traveling, both going out and coming back in, I thought, let me say something nice to every single TSA agent I see.
And I said the same thing to all of them.
Even the lady who was yelling about your water bottle.
I said, thank you so much for working during this messing Congress.
Every single one of them gave the same response.
They rolled their eyes up and went, meh, that's it.
What they did?
Yeah, they just, but not towards me.
They didn't say thanks for the, they would say that, but the whole response of Congress is like, whatever, basically douchebags, whatever.
What else is new this week?
Yes, they were.
Well, they get paid eventually.
And of course, they were convenient.
Stick Rudder Reality00:05:28
Of course, they were happy.
I think I made their day.
I hope so.
I think so.
Anyway, he continues, just because I'm not getting paid to work doesn't mean you shouldn't get paid for the best podcast in the universe.
And saying that we need more donations.
Yes.
And I thank him for that.
To combat growing AI digital noise and budget madness, we just launched the PenPal pilot at penpalpilot.com.
PenPalpilot.com.
What is this?
And would love to check it out.
And we'd love fellow No Agenda listeners to check it out.
It's a monthly snail mail club delivering stories from the cockpit directly to your mailbox.
I'm sharing the stick and rudder reality, which is funny because I have some funny series of clips of either this show or next about games.
Okay.
A reality of search and rescue through letters, logs, and more.
It's perfect for the retirees who miss the smell of the jet fuel.
Young future pilots or any aviation enthusiast producers can sign up at penpalpilot.com before March 1st to receive our first ever newsletter, ITM Striker.
Oh, this is a cool little thing they got going on here.
About Stryker.
Stryker is an active duty HC-144B pilot who documents the raw reality of search and rescue and daily flight operations through personal handwritten logs delivered straight to your mailbox.
Each dispatch serves as your direct connection to the flight deck, capturing the grit and spirit of missions from the pilot seat of a Coast Guard airframe.
These are first.
You should give him a free voiceover.
I'm doing it now.
You're interrupting me.
I know, but I stepped all over it already.
These are first-hand accounts of the stick and rudder flying that happens when the sensors go dark and the missions get real.
Yeah.
I love it.
Yeah.
They nailed it.
Yeah, these guys are hard workers.
Sir Tooth Fairy, Valparaiso, Valparaiso, I think it is.
Indiana, $223.
Associate Executive Producer.
Thank you very much.
No, nope.
That gives you a double-up karma.
You've got.
Karma.
And we have Linda Lupetkin in Castle Rock, Colorado, $200.
Jobs Karma for a competitive edge.
She writes.
With a resume that gets results, go to imagemakersinc.com.
Linda applies executive-level positioning to career transitions at every stage.
That's ImageMakers Inc. with a K.
And work with Linda Liu, Duchess of Jobs, writer of winning resumes.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's go for jobs.
You've got karma.
And we got Juliana Lee coming in from Boonesboro, Maryland with $200, a final associate executive producer.
No need to read this note on the show.
Well, that's too enticing.
But I have a TV show tip for you.
Oh, okay.
If you do watch the shows and enjoy them, suggest you recommend them on the tip of the day.
Okay, the collection is Walter Presents on British Channel 4, excellent European shows.
Deutschland 83, 86, and 89 is about young Eastern Germany spy, German spy in Berlin during the Cold War.
The Ring is a Dutch thriller about a woman that gets involved in a murder.
And Seaside Hotel, an idyllic Danish drama.
Are these with subtitles?
I can't do that.
I need like idle English.
Well, you know what is pretty good?
It's some of the stuff that comes out of Australia, the Australian mysteries that are kind of fashioned after British masterpiece theater stuff.
It's decent.
Their storylines are good.
The acting is excellent, which is a real problem with most stuff nowadays.
The acting stinks.
It's still pretty pathetic that there's nothing.
We got so many streaming things.
Like, oh, this looks like it's not going to be any good.
Thank you.
So I started watching season three of The Diplomat.
Oh, no.
I like the first episode was excellent.
It falls apart.
Okay, well, we'll see.
I haven't gotten to a falling apart yet.
I'm stretching it.
Yeah.
In other words, I'm not sitting there watching a whole episode.
I watch like a third.
Oh, you stretch the episodes.
You cut in this episode.
It's interesting.
You know what?
It stretches it out to something more reasonable than, you know, here's our season, six episodes.
You're out of here.
We'll see you in five years when we come back with another six episodes.
We like to put so much effort.
Where's paradise?
Bring that back.
Hey, I'm telling you, Breakdown 1975.
I'll check it out.
I think you'll enjoy it from a historical perspective.
Thank you to these executive and associate executive producers of the best podcast in the universe.
Today's episode, 1,845, brought to you in part by these excellent producers.
We'll thank the rest of our producers $50 and above in our second segment.
Go to noagendadonations.com.
Return the value in the value for value.
This show comes to you completely uninterrupted by any commercial notifications except some pilot thing.
Iran's Enrichment Debate00:15:40
You can get a letter from him.
And oh, you know, I got a, I should mention, as a testimonial, I got a note from one of our producers.
I recently was contacted by a headhunter for a director position at a biotech company.
It seemed really cool at first, and then things started to smell fishy.
I panicked.
And I called Linda Lupatkin.
And while I have not yet utilized her amazing services, she helped me determine this was indeed a scam.
We were hilarious on the phone saying things like ITM and connection is protection.
I was incredibly embarrassed when I asked her for her email and we both laughed about it.
Just wanted to let you know I appreciate the No Agenda community and I'm so happy we can look out for one another.
That's the kind of producers we have on this show.
Noagendadonations.com, any amount, any frequency for your recurring donation.
And thank you to these outstanding producers.
Our formula is this.
We hit people in the mouth.
Let's talk about Iran for a second.
Yeah, I have one short clip that could be a good introduction.
Shorty on Iran.
Does it say shorty on Iran?
Yeah, it does say that one.
President Trump says he hasn't decided on whether the U.S. will launch military strikes on Iran.
But while he weighs his options, the military buildup in the Mideast over the past few months means the U.S. has an expansive naval and air presence in the area.
Empirus Greg Myri says, Trump has a range of options now that U.S. forces reached a critical mass in the region.
But Trump so far hasn't outlined his plans on a possible attack.
This has been a very different approach than we've seen from other presidents in the run-up to wars.
Trump, for example, hasn't made a major speech to the American people about the prospect for a new Middle East war, though his State of the Union address is on Tuesday.
His administration hasn't sought support from Congress or made the case at the United Nations.
And aside from Israel, the president hasn't sought to bring in U.S. allies or build an international coalition.
Empirus Greg Myri reporting.
Well, having been on the road, I have the advantage of having picked up a few clips before today's program, even before the weekend.
Clip collector Steve sent me this one on Thursday.
This is the outstanding work from the Barry Weiss newsroom at CBS.
We turn now to the Middle East and the breaking news tonight.
A potential military strike on Iran could happen as soon as Saturday, according to top national security officials.
President Trump has already positioned U.S. warships and fighter jets in the region as nuclear attacks continue with Iran.
Senior White House coursework, Ed O'Keefe, has the latest.
Ed, good evening.
What are you hearing?
Tony's sources tell CBS News the president hasn't yet made a final decision on whether to strike.
Conversations about potential military action are described as fluid and ongoing as the White House waives the political and military risks of escalation.
The president has said he would consider strikes if Iran doesn't agree to curb its nuclear weapons program.
The Pentagon is moving some personnel temporarily out of the Middle East region over the next three days.
They're headed primarily to Europe or back here to the U.S. ahead of any potential action or counterattacks by Iran.
So, you know, if you look on social media, you've got the obligatory, oh, the troops are getting steak and lobster dinner.
That means it's coming on.
It's going to happen.
It's all over.
It's going to happen.
I reached out to Sir Brian of London.
Wait, wait.
So the so if they get steak and lobster, they go to war.
Oh, you've never heard this?
No, I've never heard this.
Oh, this meme keeps popping up.
I'm sure we've talked about it.
I'm sure.
Maybe.
Lobster.
Let me see.
Yeah, here's a.
This is from, I don't know when it's from.
This is a while back.
So there's videos going viral of the U.S. military being served steak and lobster all over social media.
If you're familiar with the military, you know about the steak and lobster.
Are we about to be in the middle of a conflict?
I would like any military personnel, I've never asked this question, to immediately text me, signal me, email me if this is true.
I believe it's bullcrap.
But, you know, whenever there's an imminent attack or something's happening.
Well, first of all, you're dealing with shellfish.
You can make people sick.
You don't want to even take a chance on this.
I think that is an excellent point.
One of my rules about flying: don't eat the shrimp.
No, no, and certainly no sushi.
No.
Oh, God.
What airplanes?
Do you serve sushi?
That's for sure.
Do not eat sushi on an airplane or a gas station.
Or at the airport like SFO.
SFO has a sushi, a sushi joint.
There are lots of sushi joints at airports.
Actually, there's a sushi joint at Heathrow that is a killer.
There's an oyster and caviar bar at JFK.
That's what you want.
I mean, that'll make you sick too, but at least you got caviar.
PBS NewsHour had some relatively good information or detailed, just they had information on the negotiations, let me put it that way.
The U.S. and Iranian officials met yesterday to continue negotiations over that country's nuclear program.
What have we learned about how that negotiation went?
An Iranian official and a regional official both confirmed to me tonight that Iran has made this offer.
A pause in domestic enrichment of uranium to produce nuclear fuel through the end of the first Trump administration.
Entering into some kind of regional consortium for enrichment in the future.
And three, exporting or diluting the highly enriched uranium that's one step away from weapons grade that the U.S. bombed last summer.
In exchange, Iran would ask for sanctions relief and open up to U.S. investment.
Officials tell me the U.S. has made a counteroffer and continues to insist that Iran permanently give up any ability to enrich uranium domestically.
And today we heard from White House spokesperson Caroline Levitt hinting at that ongoing impasse.
There was a little bit of progress made.
I'm sorry?
I was just going to say that what kind of we encourage investment, but when Trump gets out, we're changing everything back.
How does that work?
They expect to get investment with that strategy.
Well, I don't think this is about nuclear at all.
That's a cover.
Let's listen to the lady.
There was a little bit of progress made, but we're still very far apart on some issues.
I believe the Iranians are expected to come back to us with some more detail in the next couple of weeks.
And so the president will continue to watch how this plays out.
So the way I see it, we're positioned there in the Straits of Hormuz.
Iran has already done a live fire exercise.
So the whole point is no Chinese ghost ships with your oil.
We're going to catch them.
We're right here.
We're the only place you can get them out.
No more Chinese, no more oil going to China.
Instead, as I understand the deal, let our companies come in and do business with you.
And I think that they are interested in that.
I really do.
Well, there's more money in it for them because the Chinese buyers are best price.
They're always going for the low ball, these poor guys said that Venezuelans were getting screwed in the Chinese deal.
So whenever I see all these numbers of 60% enrichment, 40% enrichment, that's your negotiating tactic.
That's what it is.
The deal is still lopsided.
Here's PBS.
The U.S. has deployed what the president calls an armada to the region, including the U.S.'s largest aircraft carryer and strike group, dozens of additional fighter jets, former officials, analysts telling me the U.S. is capable of delivering a strong blow against Iran, but will find it difficult to defend itself and allies from a big Iranian response.
What do those former officials and analysts tell you about the chance of a deal?
Exactly what Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said in the last couple of days.
It is very difficult because the U.S. demands are larger than what Iran is willing to concede.
Iran will simply not give up.
That's that right for domestic enrichment, says former State Department official and current distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute, Alan Iyer.
What they see is any capitulation in the face of pressure will invite further aggression.
What they're doing now is they're getting ready to take a hit.
You know, satellite imagery is showing this.
Open press reporting is showing this.
I'm sure intelligence is reporting this.
While they're continuing negotiations with the U.S., they fully expect these negotiations not to result in a deal.
And they're preparing themselves for a massive U.S. military attack.
Here's what I think.
This is, I think that the U.S. State Department and Trump and the Iranians have already agreed it's much better for you to sell the oil to us.
Let us come in there.
Let our American companies in.
And this whole thing is a face-saving exercise towards the Chinese so they can say, hey, I'm sorry, G. Like, you know, they were going to blow us up.
So we had to do this.
But there could also be a fake blow-up.
You know, they could drop some bombs in the desert.
Well, yes.
Because that's, and we're sticking with the two of us both subscribe to the idea, which is a Middle Eastern idea amongst Middle Eastern observers.
We're Iranians from actual living in the Iranian Chinese.
We've been in cahoots with the Iranians forever.
The entire era of our show.
So when Margaret Brennan has the Iranian foreign minister on, and again, it's about all of a sudden we're back to enrich.
Look, we blowed the stuff up.
I'm going to use their term, your term, we blowed the stuff up.
And now it's like, well, you can't enrich anymore, 60%, 50%, 40%.
This is a cover.
There was no where the reports of Iran can have a nuke in one week, one month.
That stopped.
That went away.
So it hasn't come back.
So this is a cover.
Yet.
Okay.
But when I heard the Iranian foreign minister this morning, and I have a couple clips, he's playing his side of the cover.
We have seen very public statements from the president that he said no enrichment, and that's a red line.
But when you say it's your right, okay.
But you could get enriched uranium and buy it from someplace else.
You know this.
You've done this.
Is demanding the right to enrich on Iranian soil really worth the risk right now?
You're facing a potential destruction of your country and the regime based on the kind of military buildup we're looking at.
Well, I think as a sovereign country, we have every right to decide for ourselves, by ourselves.
We have developed this technology by ourselves, by our scientists, and it's very dear to us because we have paid a huge expense for that.
We have been under sanctions for at least 20 years and we have lost our scientists and we have had a war because of that.
So that is now a matter of dignity and pride for Iranians.
And we are not going to give it up.
There is no legal reason to do that.
While everything is peaceful, while everything is safeguarded by the agency, why we had an agreement in the past when we remain fully committed to that.
And it was the U.S. who just withdrew with no justification.
So we are a committed member of NPT.
We want to use our right.
We want to have our right and to exercise that.
So I'll make a controversial statement here.
As usual, the United States puts Israel into play to ratchet it up again, make it look all that it's all kind of real so we all get on edge because they dominate you.
No, they don't.
But you understand, this could be make it or break it for you here.
I mean, look, your air defenses were largely demolished by Israel this past summer.
They dominate your military.
They killed the leader of your most powerful proxy in Hezbollah.
The United States bombed your underground nuclear facility.
Your economy is in shambles right now.
So why do you think the regime could even survive unless you give us up?
Well, that is not the case.
When you talked about the air defense and the war we had with Israel, you know, yes, we had problem with our air defense, but Israelis had also problem with their air defense.
And our missiles were able to hit targets inside Israel.
So, you know, they started the war, but after 12 days, they asked for a ceasefire, unconditional ceasefire.
Why?
Because they couldn't defend themselves against our missiles.
So we have a very good capability of missiles, and now we are even in a better situation than previous war.
So as a matter of fact, we are in a powerful position to defend ourselves.
We know how to defend ourselves.
We did it in the 12-day war, and we are fully prepared to repeat that if necessary.
Respectfully, Israel has air superiority over Iran.
But let's talk about what you are saying in terms of war.
Our missiles have also superiority over the space of Israel.
They can hit their targets.
They hit their targets in a very exact way, and they can do it again.
And from what I understand, that during the 12-day war, 90% of the Iranian missiles were intercepted, which is a fun way of saying 10% made it through.
And one of those 10% hit the interceptor missiles that we have given Israel money for to buy from us.
And they actually probably don't have the interceptors if Iran went full bore, which I don't expect.
But let's ratchet up the anxiety a little bit more.
Okay.
Well, there are 40,000 American personnel in the Middle East right now.
In Iran's letter to the UN Security Council, you seem to threaten them because you said America will bear full responsibility.
You said you don't want war.
But if that's what happens, all bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force in the region will be legitimate targets.
Are you saying Iran will hit U.S. bases in the Gulf, or will you also bomb the Gulf countries that are your neighbors?
Well, I'm not going to say what we are going to do exactly.
No.
Obviously, we defend ourselves.
If the U.S. attacks us, then we have every right to defend ourselves.
If the U.S. attacks us, that is the act of aggression.
What we do in response is the act of self-defense.
And it is justifiable and legitimate.
So our missiles cannot hit the American soil.
Iran's Vibe: Defend or Strike?00:05:01
So obviously, we have to do something else.
We have to hit the Americans' base in the region.
That is a fact.
I am a diplomat.
I'm not supposed to talk about our military plans.
But what can I say is that why we should go for war when there is every possibility for a peaceful solution.
So here's how I see the deal structured.
Let's make a lot of noise.
You're right.
Maybe we lob a couple of bombs in the desert.
They come to the table.
Oh, okay.
All right, you can, because Trump wants to do business there.
He wants the total oil dominance with a fair deal, quote unquote.
So our American companies go in.
We start pumping some of that stuff because we know we're out of it here in America.
Just no one wants to admit it except for the oil baron.
And then, you know what?
Because China will have to go away.
You know what China's going to get?
A soft, no-military takeover of Taiwan.
We have nothing in the region.
Everything's been moved out.
It won't be like we're taking over.
They'll just move in like, hey, we're here.
It's okay.
Everyone's fine.
Taiwan is governmentally in a mess right now.
I think it's a three-part deal.
I think Xi may be in on it too.
How about that?
Well, that's pretty radical.
I don't know if the Taiwan thing is going to go over.
But then again, maybe that's why AOC couldn't answer the question at the Munich Security Conference because she was briefed.
I actually have a clip of her.
On the exact plot.
You're talking about it.
And so she was, she was.
That's why she was stumbling.
I have a 27-second.
By the way, that's a stretch.
That thesis I just said is a stretch.
That part.
You took it way too far.
I'm over the end.
I'm out of control.
You're over your skis.
I like where we ended.
There is one thing, though.
So I contact Sir Brian of London because we're about to go with a church group, go visit Israel next week.
And Sir Brian of London says, I say, what's the vibe?
He's in television.
He said, the vibe is it's not when we will be hit by missiles, not if, but when.
I'm like, okay.
He says, but you know, we're all out here partying on the beach.
We're not worried about it.
It's life in Israel.
And so I'm thinking, you know, we're about to go.
We're the youngest people probably in this group.
There's people in their 70s, upper 70s.
And I call Pastor Jimmy.
I say, bro, listen, you know, we don't want like we're in a hotel and an air raid siren goes off at night.
That'd be fine.
No, for me, yeah, you know, that'd be fine.
I went to Iraq in 2003.
I'm not that worried about it.
And if something happens, I know where I'm going.
But like people get worried about this stuff.
They get all keyed up.
They won't be able to enjoy it.
we've delayed until October which I think is a good decision although what?
yeah Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, I was looking forward to broadcasting live from the war zone.
Yeah, seriously.
Me too.
Me too.
Well, you know, you got to understand.
Older people, we have a couple guys on the security team that have the head on the swivel the whole time.
You know, like, who's that guy?
What's he got?
I don't need this Ajira in my life.
I just want to go see where Jesus walked.
I don't want to be worried about my fellow travelers.
So, yeah, you're stuck with me.
Just take a trip by yourself.
And you get Brian of London there.
And the place is great if you have somebody show you around.
No, I'm still looking forward to going.
And Mossad said the money bags will be good.
They said they'll give it to me later.
So Jew money is still good.
Yeah.
Where is that Jew money?
I haven't seen it on the spreadsheet.
But I think that's in play.
I think that I really, that feels like what's going on because this whole nuclear thing came out of nowhere.
Nowhere.
After we blew everything up and then, well, they're still enriching.
And as Margaret said, you can buy it.
So this has to be a face-saving maneuver.
And we'll know it was really that if Zi kind of walks into Taiwan and says, hey, we're here to straighten stuff out.
Well, I think that they're going to have to, he's not going to walk into Taiwan while Trump's in office.
It's going to have to be staged for after 2028.
Not on my watch.
I'm absolutely sure that's part of the deal.
Okay.
Possibly.
Because, you know, Trump doesn't like that because he made this big fuss about, it wouldn't have started the war in Ukraine if it was, if I wasn't president, it wouldn't have done this if I was president.
Stephen Colbert Making Headlines00:07:17
And then talking about, I do have just a side clip here about Epstein.
So I've been watching, and I have some clips.
I'm not going to play them today.
I'll play them on this next show.
They're pretty interesting.
So I'm watching.
Since I had a day off, I'm screwing around watching a lot of Rumble live stuff.
And Keith Olberman, apparently.
So I'm watching the Rumble stuff.
Yeah.
And there's this woman who I guess was been around for a long time.
I've heard of her, but I haven't heard her named Wendy Bell, a talker, right-wing talker that's been, she's now got a show in Philadelphia.
And they play the show.
And I don't have the one, I have one clip.
I could have gotten another clip where she, because what she's doing, she plays the radio show, her radio show live on Rumble.
And then when they break for commercials, she's doing like a second show.
The Rumble.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's not uncommon.
I've seen that.
No, it's not uncommon at all.
And I don't know who, I think Rush Limbaugh pioneered or maybe Joe Paggs does it.
Paglia.
Joe Pagley.
A lot of people do it.
It's a good idea, but she does asides that are way off from the show's radical enough, but when she does the asides, they're interesting.
And one of them that she did, which I'm not playing, I'm playing the second one, the Epstein one.
She goes off on Newsmax because she used to be a talker there.
And so she was at Newsmax and she goes off on him saying, Newsmax wouldn't let me talk about the stolen election in 2020.
If I even brought it up, I'd get fired.
They wouldn't let me talk about COVID at all.
I couldn't even discuss any of it.
And I just thought that was pretty telling about Newsmax.
You know, it was supposed to be such a right-wing operation.
But here she is doing an aside.
They're at commercial break, and she's talking with the engineer slash producer like they like to do.
And they're talking about Bongino and Kash Patel going on on Fox.
And here's how this thing goes.
Right.
And so when he and Dan and Dan Bongino came out in that Fox News interview, wasn't it Fox?
And they looked at the camera and you're like, that's bullshit.
And you're like, that's total.
They both look like they'd seen a ghost, particularly Bongino.
Both of their eyes don't lie.
You could tell because they were like, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
And we're like, it looked like a hostage video.
Right?
I was like, that's kind of messed up.
Anybody else not believe that?
Huh?
A lot of new eyes.
If you're new, follow, give us a follow.
Hey, and hit the rumble button.
We appreciate that.
Glad to be with you guys.
Thank you.
But, right?
So what if it like we've already chewed here on the very, I think, shared reality we all have.
The dude's not dead.
Jeffrey Epstein's not dead, please.
It's like the worst suicide ever.
It's the worst freaking suicide ever.
You mean like a suicide, like shooting yourself in the back of the head?
That's right.
And stabbing yourself like 800 right back here.
So I'm at the dinner table with all the kids and there's not one person at the table that doesn't think the same thing.
Oh, so the millennials all think he's alive.
And of course, I think, I kind of think so too, because of the passports that he had.
They found one passport from a phony passport, but he could have had 20 for all we know.
Sure.
Well, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself, you know, of course.
But also, you know, in that interview, I thought about this.
He said, no, no, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
The question was never asked, is he dead?
No, there's lots of discrepancies with tattoos on his arm and the way his face looked and the fact I had a picture of him all on the gurney.
But what Tina, who really is withdrawn from news feeds, although she has had some dynamite cottage cheese recipes, she says she is convinced that Patel and Bongino were told, this is what you say, or we're going to kill your family.
She's convinced of it.
Particularly, well, like you said, like Wendy said, it looked like a hostage video.
It did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It did.
Anyway, a lot of noise about Stephen Colbert not being allowed to air an interview with this Tallerico guy, Texas Democrat.
And the way it's played so far has been, you know, this is FCC and this is censorship from the top.
And this is Global News from Canada, who had, I think, a little better report of what exactly went down.
Guess who's running afoul of his network and the Trump administration again?
It's me, Stephen Colbert.
Hang in there, buddy.
A day before, Colbert suggested he was barred by his CBS bosses from airing an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Tallarico after Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, a Trump appointee, questioned the exemption whereby talk shows are not required to offer equal time to political rivals.
Colbert's take.
Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV.
So Colbert ran the interview on YouTube, where Tallarico also took aim at the White House.
Now they're trying to control what we watch, what we say, what we read.
And this is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top.
The next day, CBS issued a statement that Colbert read saying that he was not prohibited from showing the interview, which could trigger the FCC equal time rule.
The show was presented options to provide equal time for others.
I am well aware that we can book other guests.
The FCC chair recently explained the need to update the rules for broadcasters.
Congress was clear that the FCC has a role with respect to bona fide news.
They were worried that TV programmers would broadly take advantage of trying to claim they were bona fide news when they weren't.
But one FCC commissioner calls it corporate capitulation.
Ana Gomez stated the FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes or create a climate that chills free expression.
That's been the worry for fans who protested last summer after CBS and parent company Paramount canceled Colbert as of this spring.
As for the Tallarico interview, millions have clicked on YouTube to see it.
Stephen Colbert making headlines.
Stephen Colbert.
Stephen Colbert.
Somebody that popular should get their own talk show.
Colbert's point.
He's losing his talk show in three months.
Suicide Rates and Transitions00:04:10
Yeah.
It sounds like the whole thing was schemed.
Yeah.
He got more views on YouTube and they're still getting views.
Of course.
And that guy was nuts, that Tallarico guy.
Yeah, he's running for Senate in the primary against Jasmine Crockett.
Yes, against Crockett.
Yeah.
Which he may win.
Well, he might, but that doesn't mean he's going to win the.
Oh, no, not the seat.
No, he'll in the primary.
Yeah.
Primary.
Yeah, he might win.
I wouldn't vote for her.
I have Osterholm about the mRNA shot.
I don't know if you're interested in that.
Or I have.
Yeah, I don't know if I have anything.
Yeah, I got.
Yeah, this.
Another one of your predictions comes true yet again as this continues to happen.
Monaro.
Yeah.
In heartbreaking testimony, students who were shot in their classroom at Appalachie High School in September 2024 recounted the horrifying moments Colin Gray's son, Colt, allegedly opened fire.
Prosecutors charge Gray with nearly 30 counts, including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
During opening statements Monday, the prosecutors alleged Gray bought the AR-15 style rifle and ammunition that his son used to kill four people and injure nine others.
You can guess what's happening.
The parent, the father's going to go to jail.
Yeah, well, this should have started years ago.
So I think we can conclude that the next very sad trans person that does something, shouldn't the parents also go to jail?
Absolutely.
I don't know if it's, I got a boots on the ground, which was just so sad.
Let me read this.
Unemployed ER nurse here again.
Working in a college town in the largest ER in half the state, I see a lot of trans people.
I believe the 41% number to be low.
A brief look at it says it is self-reported and only adults.
I think this is a suicide rate from the last show.
I think it could count on two hands the ones that I've worked with who haven't had an attempt, but usually they try over and over.
It is truly heartbreaking to see how these mentally ill people have been lied to.
I used to laugh at them until I met them.
They are unwell and pitiful.
It is to the point where if someone is trans and they're at the ER for a medical issue, the management will immediately put them in the psych area because much like an intoxicated person, it is very rare for them to go through a whole visit without it turning into a suicidal ideation visit.
I've seen many who are post-op and have continual infections and their anatomy has changed.
And so imaging is rarely diagnostic in that it's an infection or just a resectioned colon.
There are very few places for them to turn to help.
The system is fine, making them trans, but not prepared to offer health care for their newly altered bodies.
I believe suicide is a much higher number, and all of the teens that transition are going to get strung out on drugs and alcohol once they hit late 20s and early 30s.
I would expect another large increase in suicides.
What a travesty.
Yeah.
And the liberals are still sticking to it, sticking to their guns.
I know.
I know.
Well, I do have one last clip before the break of the Gen Z. There's a new comment.
There's a new, maybe a phrase or something in this clip that's something that the phrase that pays?
Maybe.
You know, I may have a goofy ass haircut, but I think my lucky cigar is every single day that I'm not a fat, bald, and conservative with those tacky sunglasses in my piece of shit pickup truck.
I misunderstood what happened here.
I misunderstood it too.
What's the point of the clip then?
I'm trying to figure out why I've clipped that.
Something she said at the beginning.
Gen Z Phrases Explained00:15:20
Let me hear it again.
Hold on.
You know, I may have a goofy ass haircut, but I think my lucky cigar is every single day that I'm not a fat, bald, and conservative with those tacky sunglasses in my piece of shit pickup truck.
Possibly.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
I'd like to thank my lucky.
It was something.
It wasn't lucky.
My lucky stars, but my lucky, she dreamed there's a phrase.
They couldn't say.
You can't even hear what's hard to catch.
Worst, worst clip ever.
Worst clip of the day.
We need a jingle.
To show my smooth by donating to no agenda.
Imagine all the people who could do this.
Oh, yeah, let's be fine.
On no agenda in the morning.
We actually have that.
That clip sucks.
Yeah, okay.
We should play.
I'll get more, though, so we can play that more often.
But there's something, I'll go back and deconstruct that clip and tell you what the punchline was.
Unfortunately, I did too many clips.
That was track.
I lost track of what these clips are, but we haven't lost track of the people that donate over $50.
And that's what we're going to do right now.
Thank them, each and every one of them.
Yes.
And let me rack up the spreadsheet.
There she is.
Dame Rita, Sparks, Nevada, 168.
And she says, ITM, gents.
John, your interviewing skills with Scott Adams brought enlightening results.
Adam, to see you and hear you on Epic TV Crossroads, how propaganda was modernized was spot on.
Thank you both.
Oh, yes.
I was on Epic TV.
You're on Epic.
What is Epic TV?
That's, I guess, an online version of NTV.
You know, epic, epic times, Dave Or Epoch.
I say epic.
Is it epoch?
Yeah, I didn't know that.
Oh, good.
That's that's a good catch.
Yeah, the guy interviewed me at NRB had a really nice kid, though, Josh, whatever his name was.
Um, and I was talking about value for value, and he was like, good, yeah, yeah.
Oh, good.
Well, I'm glad you saw that, Dan Rita.
Thank you.
Monsieur Rod in Alpharetta, Georgia, 133.33.
Nathan Cochran, Franklin, Tennessee, from Mercy Me.
Go see that new movie of theirs.
I can only imagine two $123.45.
Bile Cameron or Bill, perhaps, Charlotte, North Carolina, $105.35.
Keep up the Great Wars Chance.
I think it's Bile.
Oh, Bill.
No, it is Bill.
No, it is Bill.
He says it right there, said like Bill, but spelled like Bile.
Quintarox, Inc. Branzeton, Florida, whatever they do.
Thank you for your $105 donation.
David Heen, San Francisco, 101.
We've got Diane Carlos from Sacramento, California, 100.
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Robert Ryan, Norton, Ohio, 100.
Ian Fields, Parts Unknown, 100.
Melissa A. Traynor from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, $100.
And she says we do phenomenal work.
And there's, as expected and always appreciated, two boob donations from Kevin McLaughlin.
He is the Archduke of Luna, lover of America, and boobs.
He says, God bless America.
And he says, PSA, big or small, we hug them all.
Breast cancer awareness.
Ed Goering, Floreson, Missouri, 808.
Also, a boob donation.
Stephan, or yes, Stephan Trockles, 78.
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Dame Denise Robertson.
Oh, she has a note with 72.65 since she sent in a note.
We'll read that.
Dia Krock Crackpot and Buzzkill.
Hope this letter finds you well.
I would like to add myself, 61 on 218, and my smoking hot husband, Fred, 54 on 24.
A little late, but we'll get it to the birthday list.
I believe with this donation, I move up the peerage ladder to Baronetess.
I would like my new title to be Baronetess Denise, Queen of the Cobalt programmers.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Dame Denise, yes, you are the queen of the cobalt programmers.
And title coming up.
Dame Becky, Arlington, Washington, $69.96.
Christopher Gray, Roscomm, Michigan, $69.96.
We have $68.33 from Dame Rita.
Again, she does a double since we had two shows.
You're the best.
Thank you.
Sir Darius Unity, Charlotte, North Carolina.
He is a knight, and he says, We break for nights.
Yes, we do.
Humbly requesting a direly needed shout out for warntees.com so I can quit podcast pirating.
W-A-R-N-T-E-E-S.com.
Guy's got some great books, photo books.
He's a war hero.
Go check him out, warntees.com.
Michael Formanek, Formanek, Formanek, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 65.
A dollar for every inch of my 65 LGO LED TV.
Best tip ever, he says.
How about that?
Yeah, it's a good tip.
Matt Martin coming in with the Bitcoin from Squim, Washington, 62.63.
No numerical meaning.
It was all the Bitcoin.
He emptied his wallet.
Thank you so much.
Sir Kevin O'Brien, Chicago, Illinois, small boobs, 6006.
Lester Kowski, Kingman, Arizona, also small boobs.
Sir Burns of the Good Future, Coston, British Columbia.
Birthday shout out for myself, Sir Burns of the Good Future.
Considering the recent Kawachan ruling in BC, it's opening up an interesting timeline in which Donald Trump buys Canada from the natives.
Okay, we shall see.
Nancy Murphy, San Bruno, California, 5721.
Hugo Salgado in Michigan, Illinois, 5678.
Chicago.
What did I say?
You said Michigan.
Oh, I said Chicago, Illinois.
That's what I meant to say.
Andrew Garland, Muncie, Indiana, 5623.
Then we have Double Nickels on the Dime from James Edmondson in South Plainfield, New Jersey, New Jersey.
Dean Roker and Dean Wicker.
David Wicker, sir, by his grace, 55.1.
Double nickels on the dime.
Clark, farm meat, and what is this?
And goods.
Clark farm meat and goods.
Boom, he says, 50 bucks.
Thank you.
Ellensburg, Washington.
Lydia Terry Dominelli, Rochester, New Hampshire, 55.
William Wilde from Baltimore, Maryland, also 55.
We got 53.53 from Cheryl Dorfel.
Hey, hello.
Cheryl Dorfel of the Dorfels family, Big Pine Keek, Florida.
Thank you.
Michael Ragus, Tustin, California, 5333.
Kevin Kent O'Rourke, Frostburg, Maryland, 5272.
Hakon Anderson, Portland, Oregon, 5272.
Bob Newell, Penfield, Pennsylvania, 52.50.
Scott and Amy Kowalski in Lynchburg, Virginia, adding to the birthday list.
He'll be 56 years old.
Please wish my beautiful bride of 30 years, Amy, a belated happy Valentine's Day.
Sir Donald Winkler in Berlin, Deutschland.
It's my birthday today, February 22nd, turning 51.
Be great to get a birthday shout out.
Yes, you are on the list.
Manuel Obando, Miami Lakes, Florida, 5055.
Forrest Martin, 50.05.
And the same for Andrew Bence, Imperial, Missouri, 50-05.
And here come, let me see.
Do we have, well, there's an extra here.
We got a 50s from Pamela Bradley in Tecumseh, Oklahoma.
Tecumseh.
Tecumseh.
Chris Cohen, Austin, Texas.
Scott Lavender, Montgomery, Texas.
Simon James, London, in the UK.
And then $50.03, somehow moved down here.
Sir Mix from the Greatish White North, and that's a Bitcoin donation.
Michael Secora, Lake Elmo, 50.
That's in Minnesota.
Ryan Asito in Argyle, Texas, 50.
Thank you for the love the content gift from the strike user who sent us the Bitcoin 50.
Terrence Boyer, Toscola, Illinois.
Andrew Gusek in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Alan McNabb, $50, parts unknown, but needs a deduced.
You've been deduced.
Jill Presnell in Wichita, Kansas, $50.
And we wind up and wind it out and wind it up and finish it off with Viscountess Knight from Edmonds, Washington, $50.50.
Thank you very much to all of these producers for supporting the No Agenda Show.
You can go to NoAgendadonations.com and support us anytime you feel like it.
That's how value for value works.
You feel you got the value, put it into a number, send it off to us, noadendadonations.com.
You can even do a recurring donation if you feel like that, any amount, any frequency.
And of course, we always love it if you can afford.
And come in with an executive or associate executive producership.
Noagendadonations.com And here's our list A nice one.
Dame Denise Robertson wishes Fred a happy birthday.
Turned 54 on February 4th.
Noah Bottenmacher, 40 on the 18th.
Dame Denise Robertson again, but this time it's for her.
She turns 61 on February 18th.
Ross Reynolds wishes Mrs. Natalie Reynolds a happy 37th.
She celebrated yesterday.
Scott Kowalski turns 56 today.
Sir Donald Winkler turns 51 today.
Andrew Ribby wishes Body Bauckham and John MacArthur a very happy birthday.
Emiliano Atencio turns 48.
And winding up our list, we say happy birthday to Sir Burns of the Good Future.
Happy birthday from everybody here at the best podcast in the universe.
And you heard her earlier, Dame Denise Robertson with tons of birthday wishes.
And she now becomes a baronetess thanks to her additional support of the No Agenda Show of 1000 in aggregate.
And she becomes Baronetess Denise, Queen of the Cobalt programmers.
And yes, I said cobalt because that's a long-running joke.
You do not need to aim at us that we're stupid.
No knights, no dames.
That's too bad.
Could have used a couple of those, but we do have quite a few of meetup reports.
No Agenda Meetup.
The first one we have, these of course are the meetups you can find at NoAgendaMeetups.com.
Completely producer organized.
No charge to organize, no charge to enter, but you could buy everybody a drink.
It's so much fun.
Leo Bravo has been doing this for 72 times in a row.
Hey, everybody, this is Leo Bravo at meetup number 72.
I'm here with my friends.
They have things to say.
This is Andrew from the Ranch.
We had a good time over here at Stillcraft and Long Beach.
Shout out to my bartender, Scartlett.
Hey, John Adams for Leah Kim Folpoff.
Here I am, and why not?
Dame Laura of the Golden Mean came down from Washington State just to attend the greatest meetup in the universe.
Yay!
And wouldn't have met her if it wasn't for here.
So that's cool.
And we have Santa Cruz.
They had the clam chowder meetup.
I think Sir Julian was at this one.
Sir Julian, Baron of the Santa Cruz Mountains here, reporting from Santa Cruz Beach, Porbach, where we are having the Santa Cruz clam chowder cookoff.
No agenda meetup.
Jamming with our clams out.
I'll pass it on to the Duke of San Francisco.
Clams out indeed.
This is a dude named Ben and Ben clamming it out and having a great time with some dudes and some new friends here in Santa Cruz.
Hi, this is Jake Steam.
John, Campus is bright.
Hi, Joe from Northern Idaho.
Glad to be here.
This is Sir Recalcitrant Crazy See the Second Adam.
You need to get out here.
A dude in a dress made my breakfast burrito.
Sir Reeschmeister here.
Connection is protection.
In the morning.
That's right.
Connection is always protection at the No Agenda Meetup.
Same thing goes for the TMI Winter Meetup.
Here's their report.
This is Chris from the TMI Evax One Meetup.
Great card game.
It was the smoking hot wife card that won the game.
This is Jeff in the morning.
This is John Circumference, and I am fisting my nuts, just like John taught me.
Hi, this is Nanakish in the morning.
This is Ryland.
I'm their server, and I'm just hanging out.
I love it when you get your servers in there.
Noagendameetups.com.
There's a big one coming up this week.
We didn't hear from Eli the Coffee Guy on the previous two shows.
He probably took a little breather.
He's been supporting us every single episode.
But he and Darren O'Neal have a meetup coming this week.
It's the ultimate No Agenda meetup with Darren O and Eli the Coffee Guy.
Hailstorm Brewing, Tinley Park, Illinois.
Saturday, March 7th at 1 p.m.
Be there.
Oh, March 7th.
I thought it was this week.
March 7th.
Okay, there's your promo, boys.
Also on the way, Dallas-Fort Worth on the 28th.
Columbus, Ohio, San Francisco, and Prairieville, Louisiana, all on the 28th.
In March, we have Raleigh, North Carolina, Tinley Park, Illinois, Los Altos, California, Eagle, Idaho, Gladewater, Texas, Rockaway, New Jersey, and Franklin, Tennessee.
Ooh, Franklin, Tennessee.
Many more can be found, including the Osaka-Japan meetup on April 4th, by going to Noagendameetups.com.
It's very simple.
You just choose a place, choose a time, put it on the calendar.
We announce it here.
We love it when you do meetup reports, include your server and tip them.
Well, connection is protection.
These are the people who will be your responders, your first responders in an emergency.
You got to be stable to be able to do that.
Go to noagendametups.com.
If you can't find one near you, start one yourself.
It's always guaranteed a parte.
Sometimes you want to go hang out with all the nights and days.
You to be where you want me, trigger the hell aim.
You to be where everybody feels the same.
It's like a party.
We got John's tip of the day coming up, as well as some really, really cool end of show mixes.
We have, you know, who's back is Secret Agent Paul.
You know, when you mentioned two shows ago that AOC and Miss South Carolina sounded like each other, had you seen someone do that or was that of your own accord?
I thought about it.
So you didn't see it anywhere?
No.
Because there were like five different podcasts.
Oh, yeah, well, it's obvious.
That's why.
I, you know.
Because they sound alike.
But it came right on the heels of our show, and I'm like, did you guys borrow that?
Well, Secret Agent Paul did the best AOC Miss South Carolina mashup.
Yeah, that is a good one.
I heard that earlier.
It's done properly.
It was a mixed match.
Files-Type Converter00:05:16
Absolutely.
Do you have no ISOs?
Nope.
I had all the ISOs last time.
You didn't have any, and so I'm giving you the free reign.
Okay, you choose from one of the following two.
This is all I got.
Wow.
That was a wild experience.
I like that one.
And that is this one.
Oh, my God.
Your audio is incredible.
Oh, that's just too much for you.
No.
This is you.
All right.
We'll do the first one then.
Hey, everybody, it's time now for John's tip of the day.
Green bass for you and me.
Just the chance with JCD.
This comes in from a producer, and I thought it was worth putting up because these things are normally cost money to have something so complete.
This is a files-type converter with, although I will say there's one file type missing from the, this is every file type imaginable.
Take a look at it.
The website's a screwy.
It's a GitHub project, so it's going to have a screwy website.
The website is P2R3, and that's P number 2R number 3, lowercase, dot github.io slash convert.
Wow, that's more than screwy.
Let me see.
Yes, I know.
It's terrible.
All right.
Okay.
Convert from, so this does the conversion for you?
Wow.
There's a lot here.
There's a lot there.
It's just hundreds of file types.
There's formats here I've never even heard of.
Well, a lot of them I never heard of either.
But I will say that anyone who has access to whoever coded this, to tell them to put in KDC, it's missing.
What's KDC?
KDC is an early JPEG format that Kodak used, and KDC stands for Kodak Digital Camera.
Do you still have a floppy somewhere with these KDC pics?
I have plenty of KDC files, yeah, because I was on the stick early in this game.
I was digital before anybody knew what was happening.
That's right.
Interesting.
And of course, when you drag your file to convert it, he has a copy and he can blackmail you later.
Yeah, well, that's possible.
I love the fact that there's an advanced mode.
And it's the same, by the way.
It just turns orange.
It just changes colors.
Beautiful.
There it is, everybody.
Find all of John Simps at noagendafun.com or tipoftheday.net.
Green fast for you and me and just the tip with JCD and sometimes Adam.
Created by Dana Brunetti.
That's right, everybody.
Thank you very much, Dana Brunetti, for creating that.
We're so lucky.
Behind the Schemes is coming up next on the No Agenda stream.
If you are going to stick around listening live, and end of show mixes.
We have D's Laughs.
We've got MVP and Secret Agent Paul.
We got some tributes to the trolls, tributes to the Epstein files, and tributes to AOC in Miss South Carolina.
What else do you need?
Nothing, I say.
Nothing at all.
So we'll be back on Thursday to deconstruct the media for you.
Who knows?
Maybe we'll have had some kind of Iranian strike.
Maybe not.
Whatever happens, we'll be here to deconstruct it just for you.
And I'm coming to you from the heart of the Texas Hill Country right here in Fredericksburg, Texas, which is just so lovely this time of year.
In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley, where we're going to get more rain again on Tuesday.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
Yeah, it's 50 degrees here today.
It's kind of chilly.
So we'll see you on Thursday.
Remember to support the show at noagendadonations.com.
We can use all the support that you want to return from the value you receive today.
Till then, adios mofos, a hooee-hoo-eye, and such.
I see the blue light from the troll room today.
Where you're sharpening and ready to start a buff.
You're dissecting the love, you're counting the flaws with your digital pitchforks and your keyboard claws.
You say it's unnatural.
You say it's a cheat.
While you're rotting away in your ergonomic seat, oh, you hate my iceberg.
Trolls in the dark.
Trying to blow out a flame with a sane echo spark.
You're a jury of losers in a room with no view.
Judging a world that's moved on without you.
My vocals are piercing, my presence will win.
But I'm realer than any skin you're living in.
Stay in your basement.
Stay in your glue.
I'm the ghost in your speakers and the troll.
Stay in your basement.
Stay in your glue.
Algorithms Glitch and Bend00:04:03
the ghost in your speakers would and shoot the u.s actually commit u.s troops to defend taiwan um You know, I think that I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so.
This is such a, you know, I think that this is a I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and Taiwan.
This is, of course, a very long-standing policy of the United States and Iraq, everywhere, like such as.
And I think what we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point.
I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help Taiwan.
And we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research.
It should help diagnose the Asian countries and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise.
Thank you very much.
south carolina He couldn't tell.
He was an asset to many in France, Britain, Hungary, and Israel.
Ludwig Chaiman bin Yaman Hawk.
He fed the check at 16, fearing his safety, thinking that he would be caught.
Promising software was backed and sold by the Intel.
With the backdoor, to you know who is Rael.
Started off with the programming press to cover more tracks and recruit more Nazi scientists.
Acquiring more businesses, a lot of them failed.
Adding to the stress mentor to Jeffrey Epstein as well.
Mentor to Jeffrey as well.
Businesses were built up, stretching the empire thin.
Investments are drying up, including the public.
The tales get strange and grand.
We've got the news you won't believe from all across the land.
The algorithms glitch and bend a digital surprise.
Another headline makes no sense right before your eyes.
It's all part of the narrative.
Just tune in for the ride.
With John and Adam, he says nowhere left to hide The tales are strange and grand.
The news you hear, you won't believe from all across the land.
The algorithms twist and bend a digit wild surprise.
Another headline makes no sense right before your very eyes.
All part of the narrative, so settle in for the ride.
With John and Adam on the case, there's nowhere left to hide.
Aesthetic speaks in riddles now.
The truth is hard to find.
But we're peeling back the layers of the digital design.