Back, back, back, back, back.
Adam Curry, John C.
Dvorak.
It's Sunday, January 12th, 2025.
This is your award-winning Kimmel Nation Media
Assassination Episode 1729.
This is no agenda.
Never wasting a crisis for its good.
And broadcasting live from the heart of the
Texas Hill Country here in FEMA Region Number
6.
In the morning everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley where we do
call in gruesome newsome, I'm John C.
Dvorak.
It's Crackpot and Buzzkill.
In the morning.
This show is so uniquely situated for this
moment in time at this hour.
Because we have you.
Me.
We have you.
We have media deconstruction.
We've got producers everywhere.
But we have you who has such a
knowledge of these issues in California.
And you still live there, I might point
out.
Which is just incredible to anybody.
It's unbelievable.
How does he do it?
Anybody who listens to the show, I mean,
I get tweets, I get emails.
Hey man, is it time for John to
finally leave?
Have you figured it out yet?
Is it not a good idea to live
there?
Figured out what?
Figured out that it's time to leave the
hellscape.
It's only out of love.
No, it's just part of the whole scheme
to get everyone to leave California so they
can pick up real estate cheap.
I'm not buying into it.
So last night I was flummoxed and somewhat
flabbergasted.
As we decided to, before we went to
bed, I said, hey, let's just take a
look, because Tina is doom scrolling.
She said, oh, look at this, look at
this.
She's really up to speed on everything happening.
And I said, let's just take a look
at the news.
What happened to the news?
Saturday night, CNN is running a documentary of
the Columbia shuttle.
MSNBC was, I don't know what they were,
I mean, no one is doing any news.
And then on Fox, they have like some
kind of joke show.
Have you ever seen this thing Saturday night?
A Jimmy Fallon show?
It's the bottom line, I think is what
it's called.
There's more than one joke show on Fox.
And by that we mean supposed comedy show.
Not a show that's a joke.
And they're reaching so far down the barrel
that they're pulling out podcasters.
We don't have any staff to report on
any news.
We only pay these people for three days
a week.
They've been working four.
We paid overtime so we can't have them
working Saturday night.
We can't bring you any news.
Let's bring in Jillian Michaels.
It's absolute madness.
And I've seen that clip of that mother.
And she says to the governor, will it
be different next time?
He says, it has to be.
Next time.
This just happened four months ago.
All of northern Malibu just burned down four
months ago.
It happened in 2018 when I lost my
house.
And not only was it not different, PG
&E, who was responsible for the fire that
burned down my house with equipment that was
over 100 years old, was not only not
held accountable, he completely let them off the
hook.
And they weren't forced to update the infrastructure.
The fire hydrants are broken.
The reservoirs ran dry.
Well, guess what?
In 2014, Californians voted on Proposition 1 to
put billions toward building new reservoirs.
Not one is complete 10 years later.
Let's talk about forestry.
I grew up in California.
There were regular, controlled burns.
You would get notices from the city that
you had to do brush cleanup and your
home was going to be inspected.
This all stopped before Newsom, to be fair.
But if we're going to, I'm going to
go full-blown devil's advocate on you.
California is prone to fire.
Bad Santa Ana winds.
We know this.
Let's go with global warming.
Perfect.
Since you know the places at Tinderbox, why
are you not doing the work?
Prepare!
Listen, I get it.
I understand you want to protect the environment.
But how's the environment now when you just
killed I don't know how many coyotes, how
many mountain lions, you have baby deer running
in flames down the road.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Baby deer running in flames.
Environment now when you just killed I don't
know how many coyotes, how many mountain lions,
you have baby deer running in flames down
the road.
Really?
Or how about when all of this runs
off into the Pacific?
Is that good for the environment?
None of this makes any sense.
None of it.
Yeah, she is doing a podcast rant.
You know, she has gone, ever since she
was kind of got sketchy about being a
left winger, which she's always been historically.
And she's kind of switched over to the
other side.
And everyone's taking her in.
Oh yeah, come on.
You can do our show.
You'll be on TV a lot more.
She's gone nuts.
But that was it.
That was the extent of the coverage on,
I mean, so.
Oh yeah, well, that's probably true.
Don't worry, there's plenty of coverage starting tomorrow.
Actually, I have to say, BBC, you know,
because the BBC doesn't necessarily, in this particular
case, have to take a political position, they
were pretty good.
I have a couple of clips here that
are worthwhile.
This is reported kind of straight up news.
Surprising.
We heard about the problem.
And they do it in such a nice
voice.
It's so good.
We heard about the problem with fire hydrants.
Reports saying that some in the Palisades area
were completely unusable.
The governor of California has been talking about
it, hasn't he?
What has he had to say?
Well, this was a problem right at the
beginning of this crisis.
And as you say, the fire hydrants simply
dried up.
Now, there are lots of possible reasons for
that.
And the governor, Gavin Newsom, wants to get
to the bottom of what happened.
He was actually accosted in the street the
other day by a woman who was furious
about this situation, was demanding answers from him.
And, well, he promised that he would try
to get to the bottom of it.
And now he has announced this full independent
review.
Just briefly, one of the explanations could be
that the sprinklers that come on in homes,
which is activated by heat, by fire, they
simply kept flowing.
What?
Hold on.
Stop the clip.
That's a good one.
I like that one too.
Have you ever had a house that had
sprinklers that come on automatically?
No.
In California, as far as I can tell.
And you've been to some rich people's homes.
I've been to a lot of rich people's
homes, and I've been in California forever.
I had never seen this in any home
in California ever.
It's rare to even be in an office
building.
Once in a while, in the tall ones,
yeah, they're there.
I'm curious where they got that.
This is bull crap.
I'm curious where they got it from and
why they threw that in there.
Anyway, it's 14 more seconds.
On in homes, activated by heat, by fire,
they simply kept flowing with water, even if
the home eventually burnt down.
But you can imagine, street after street after
street, house after house, all of this water
flowing.
That could be one reason why the...
Well, hold on a second.
Stop it again.
I told you this was a good report.
No, I said it wasn't political, per se.
Oh, yes.
It's definitely not political.
It's just bull crap.
This is terrible.
All of this water flowing, that could be
one reason why the reserves that the firefighters
would have used was rapidly depleted.
Well, here's another little bit from the BBC,
and you know a lot about this, so
I'm going to let it play.
It's only a minute, and you're going to
give us commentary.
If you need to stop it, feel free.
Throughout the crisis, firefighters have been struggling with
a lack of water.
Among the possible contributing factors, a reservoir which
helps to supply water to the Pacific Palisades
area was undergoing maintenance when the fires broke
out.
The intensity of the fire is so high,
it has overwhelmed LA's capacity to fight it.
And in many of the Southern California communities,
they have a tank system that is usually
at the highest end of the community and
feeds water by gravity into the fire hydrants.
And what happened in a number of places
in this particular fire is they just ran
out of water.
They either emptied their tank and were unable
to refill it quickly enough, or there were
so many straws in the glass, I mean,
so many hoses hooked up to the hydrants
that basically there was no pressure.
Now, in some places, the storage was empty
at the beginning of the fire.
This time of year, we don't expect fires
in January in Southern California, so oftentimes they're
doing maintenance on their systems and they'll just
drain it and do maintenance.
That seems like the appropriate time.
Is that true?
Okay, here we go.
Here we go.
So, first of all, what is he talking
about tanks?
Well, no, what I understand is they do
have tanks that are filled up from the
reservoir and those tanks are elevated.
The reservoirs are gravity-fed.
I'm just telling you.
We have reservoirs around here, too.
But these are tanks.
They tend to be at higher elevations.
They're gravity-fed.
Most of the pressure that goes into the
hydrants is gravity.
It's not pumped.
Correct.
Like Biden said.
There's no tanks involved.
Oh, I heard that.
Where's the tanks?
Now, I have seen, there are tanks here
and there.
Every so often, there's one in Oakland.
There's a big tank.
But the tank thing is minor because that
one reservoir, that Palisades Reservoir, is huge.
And it was dead empty at the beginning
of the fire.
Is that because of maintenance?
And is that typical for this time of
year?
Well, that's what they say.
They say they were always being repaired.
But it doesn't make sense.
Is this really your low-fire risk time
of year?
It doesn't make sense.
It's not around here.
These days, it's actually dangerous for us.
There is no low-fire risk period.
California is a desert state.
It's a tinderbox, always.
It's a desert state.
And it has some areas where you have
Mediterranean climates, where you have a little more
rain.
We have a lot of rain in Northern
California.
There's no chance of any fires happening anytime
soon, which usually happens up in the wine
country.
And Southern California didn't get any of the
rain at all.
But they had two years of heavy rain,
and so a lot of brush and weeds
grew up over the last couple of years
that weren't trimmed back.
And when the Santa Ana winds come, it's
usually around the same time of year every
year, and the tank should be full at
that point, you'd think.
The tank thing is going to have to
be looked into.
I don't know why this large reservoir was
dead empty, but they keep showing pictures of
it.
The LA Times said it was empty.
Maintenance.
I have two more clips, and then I
want to hear what you have.
And by the way, tanks are where they're
really in great use.
If anyone looks at the skyline of New
York City.
Yeah, there's lots of tanks.
Every building, every big building in New York
has a giant water tank at the top.
That's what they blew up to put out
the towering inferno.
I remember the movie well.
It was perfect solution.
And then something else happened with my favorite
term.
The other sense of frustration is, and this
is very unusual, about 24 hours ago, a
city emergency alert system sent out texts to
everyone in the Los Angeles area warning of
an evacuation, of a compulsory evacuation.
Problem is, it was not intended.
It was a computer glitch.
I got 99 glitches.
Yeah, baby, a glitch from the BBC!
Glitch, glitch, glitch, glitch, glitch!
And put a goatee on there, will you?
Of an evacuation, of a compulsory evacuation.
Problem is, it was not intended.
It was a computer glitch.
It was faulty, and there's a major investigation
now internally reflecting a lot of that anger
as to why it happened and what can
be done to stop it happening again.
I don't understand this story.
So it went out to everybody and it
wasn't intended?
It turns out two of these announcements went
out.
Yes, and not only just, they went out
to everyone with a cell phone.
Did you get one on your cell phone
in the drawer?
I don't know, I'd have to go look
on the phone.
I'd have to reboot it.
First I'd have to fill it up with
some minutes.
I don't have any.
You're out of minutes.
It's a track phone.
$15 a month max.
You're out of minutes.
I'm out of minutes.
Yeah, and then the guy, this kind of
a feet male comes on.
Well, you know, I don't know how.
No human was involved.
We don't know what happened.
It goes on and on.
It just happened, and they had to send
out a second thing saying it was a
false alarm after everyone panicked.
Then I understand the second one went out,
same thing.
The computer, it's the computer.
It's a glitch.
It's just a mess down there.
The place is not run very well, let's
face it.
It's a mess.
These people are incompetent.
There's all lesbians.
I mean, it's just crazy.
Hey, lesbians can be competent.
Well, I think Whitney Cummings, I didn't get
the clip, but I heard it.
I should have clipped it.
Whitney Cummings comes on and goes on in
a tirade.
She's another L.A. left winger.
Why are there three lesbians at the top
of the fire department?
The chief, the associate chief, and some other
woman who's a big, giant lesbian.
She says, this is unbelievable.
This is impossible statistically.
We're supposed to have diversity.
There's no diversity.
Just lesbians.
So she went on off the rails.
It was quite humorous.
We have to look that one up.
That sounds good.
Cummings is pretty funny.
I like her.
She did a good, her whole bit on
New Year's Eve at CNN was great.
She was very funny.
So, yeah, well, they need that.
And I'm not so sure she's left anymore.
I think a lot of people have left
the left.
Yeah, they left the left.
But unfortunately, they go nuts like Julian Michaels.
I mean, they just go, all of a
sudden they have free speech, which they didn't
have because they were all held back by
politically correct language.
So they go nuts.
And it's like, what?
Wow, we wouldn't even say that.
Here's the CBC on the homeowners insurance.
The rising threat of wildfires has many private
insurers opting not to renew policies for large
parts of the state, creating a crisis for
homeowners.
For those still able to purchase coverage, premiums
are skyrocketing.
Horry and Charles Sadler say they paid $65
,000 U.S. for a new policy after
their previous coverage was not renewed.
It's an enormous amount of money.
It's a whole year of income.
Insurance companies declined to renew 2.8 million
homeowner policies in the state between 2020 and
2022, according to the California Department of Insurance.
Today, Ricardo Lara, the state's insurance commissioner, said
companies should do the right thing.
I am using my moratorium power to stop
all non-renewals and cancellations.
The problem of canceled policies has forced many
homeowners to use a program set up by
the state called the California Fair Plan.
The public insurance option was set up to
be a last resort decades ago, but demand
has soared, now covering more than $450 billion
U.S. worth of residential property.
California is rolling out sweeping new insurance regulations,
trying to force private companies to take back
much of the coverage now handled by the
state.
That doesn't seem possible.
They're going to force insurance companies to insure?
They won't do it.
They'll just walk from the whole state.
And as you said, it'll be worse?
It'll be worse.
Here's a couple of things that happened.
One is that this insurance commission, which is
poorly operated, all our commissions are poorly operated
in California.
It's a corrupt state.
It's just basically been co-opted by the
Democrat Party using absentee and mail-in ballots,
which is all the three West Coast states
have done.
And so they just put corrupt.
And so you have a bunch of people
are bought out.
It's all a scam.
And so the insurance guys decided, well, to
make life easy, we'll just put a cap
on insurance.
The insurance company says, no, we can't cap
this stuff because some people really live in
areas that are going to catch on fire.
And you guys are doing nothing about fire
mitigation at all in this state.
So we're getting out of here because you're
going to break us.
We can't afford this, which is reasonable looking
at what happened in Palisades for what the
insurance companies did was wise, although sleazy.
And so we're just a mess.
And so a lot of people are going
to have lost everything, and they're not going
to get anything back except unless they beg
the government to get some sort of loan
deal.
Has this impacted you in North California, the
insurance skyrocketing?
Not much, though.
Not much.
You're on a hill.
You're good.
You're on bedrock.
You're on solid ground, my friend.
My bedrock is one of those areas that
are earthquake resistant.
Like my watch is water resistance.
No, I had a guy, a geologist that
lived across the street.
The only reason he lives on the same
hill I'm on, which is an anomaly.
If you look across the bay, and he
says, what's this hill doing here?
This shouldn't be here.
It's because he says this is like a
big one giant rock that just hasn't eroded
over the millions of years.
It stays solid.
And so when we have a quake, it
acts like a giant ship.
So instead of having ground waves or anything
that knock your house off its foundation, the
whole thing goes like a giant ship, and
you're like just a passenger.
And the appeal of living there is what
exactly?
Well, there's that.
It's safe.
I have a view of the bridge.
And the mudflats.
The sunsets are dynamite.
It must be beautiful, yes.
And the Zephyr goes by.
The Zephyr doesn't go by on Thursdays.
Well, it goes by but too early, which
is a bummer.
We don't get a Zephyr report.
No Zephyrs.
The one thing we're really missing from this,
and I'm quite surprised, we don't have a
name for it yet.
And we have the Great Fire, the Great
San Francisco Fire.
I mean, we don't have a name.
No one has called this anything yet.
Well, that's because it's still only 30%
controlled maybe.
They're still putting it out.
The Great Palisades Fire maybe?
It's going to have to be that because
that's a good name.
It doesn't encompass everything.
Yeah, but it's a reference point.
I think it's a good name to call
it the Great Palisades Fire of 2025.
And have you ever seen it this bad
in California in all your years there?
No, no.
This is the worst thing that's imaginable.
And I've been to the Palisades, and a
friend of mine used to live there.
And I've been on Amalfi Drive, which is
part of the Alphabet Streets, which I think
is completely wiped out.
Wow.
And it's a beautiful area.
It's calm.
It's not as spread out as Beverly Hills,
but it's a great Southern California enclave.
Hey, can't they blame it on Trump?
So how the Great Trump Fire?
I mean, that would be funny.
They mistimed it.
Trump's not in yet.
So it's a great area.
And if you went there during any time,
this has been, I think it was established
around 1910, and it actually dates back to
the 1800s.
Never had an issue like this.
You would have never guessed that this would
happen.
No.
It's very disturbing.
But again, paradise, you know, California when it
burnt to the ground.
But that was understood.
That was a weapon.
That was a directed energy weapon.
Yes, you're correct.
And then you have Maui, which is another
thing.
You went to La Jolla.
Hey, how come none of those elites had
blue roofs?
Don't they know?
Didn't they learn from Maui?
Yeah, this is very disturbing.
So I want to hear your fire clips.
What did you pick up?
Because you're boots on the ground.
Well, I'm boots on the ground nowhere near
the fire.
Oh, it's close enough.
But, of course, I will say this.
I got a Great DEI Fire.
I'm sorry.
The Troll Room has a lot of good
names.
I like the Great DEI Fire.
That's a great name.
The Trolls.
The Great DEI Fire.
That's not bad.
Well, let's just start with the fires, PBS.
Let's just start with this.
There's Climate again.
Oh, wait.
If you're going to go Climate, I got
a lot of Climate things.
Well, OK.
Let me put that off there.
Yeah, put it off.
Do that last.
I'll put it off.
I'll end with that.
Yes, please do.
So let's go Cal.
What is this Cal?
No, Fire NPR Latest and Weird.
Fire NPR Latest and Weird.
And you want to support NPR's mission to
create a more informed public.
If all that sounds appealing, then it is
time to sign up for the NPR Plus
Bundle.
Why did you put that in there?
Forget that clip.
I mean, I can move past it.
I can see in the waveform where it
starts.
So just pick it up.
I don't know why I got that in
there.
You're promoting the NPR Bundle.
The Bundle.
What has happened to you?
Southern California is seeping into your brain.
California firefighters are getting help from Canada and
Mexico as teams of first responders make their
way to the Los Angeles area this weekend
to help fight terrifying fires.
At a briefing earlier, L.A. Mayor Karen
Bass updated reporters on how fire victims are
being assisted.
FEMA teams are on the ground providing in
-person support, helping Angelenos apply for disaster relief
at the Westwood Recreation Center and Ritchie Valens
Park.
The Small Business Administration is now offering home
disaster loans, business disaster loans, and economic injury
disaster loans.
More strong winds are forecast this weekend.
Here's L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney.
These winds, combined with dry air and dry
vegetation, will keep the fire threat in Los
Angeles County high.
At this hour, the Palisades Fire, the largest
of the California blazes, is only 11 percent
contained, but firefighters are making progress on the
Kenneth Fire.
Thousands of Southern Californians have lost their homes
to wildfires this week.
What's next for each varies, but Rachel Miro
from Member Station KQED reports some survivors are
planning to weather the near future together.
What does that mean?
It doesn't mean anything.
Okay.
So now we're going to go, now this
is from yesterday, so this is the closest
to our show.
This is the rundown from PBS.
As the light of day dawned over Los
Angeles, a thick wall of smoke fanned out
over hillside neighborhoods that so far have been
spared by the flames.
But as those fires crept ever closer, helicopters
scrambled to drench the wildfires with water pulled
from a nearby reservoir.
As you can see, the Palisades Fire continuing
to chew through the Santa Monica Mountains.
Overnight, the fire burning through Pacific Palisades spread
northeast and tore through vast tracts of the
Santa Monica Mountains.
That flare-up spurred additional evacuations in the
Brentwood and Encino neighborhoods.
Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristen Crowley gave
an update this morning.
We immediately redeployed resources from the San Fernando
Valley to begin evacuation and extinguishment efforts with
a relentless air attack utilizing all available aircraft
in the area.
Mayor Karen Bass stood by Crowley, responding to
mounting criticism about inadequate firefighting resources.
We have got to stay focused until this
time passes.
When the fires are out, make no mistake,
we will have a full accounting of what
worked and especially what did not.
A Los Angeles Times investigation found that a
key area reservoir was empty in the lead
-up to the fires, when firefighters confronted dry
hydrants.
Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney defended
the department's preparations and deflected criticism aimed at
decision-makers.
I did everything in my power to make
sure that we had enough personnel and resources
before the first fire started.
It wasn't for a lack of preparation and
decision-making that resulted in this catastrophe.
It was a natural disaster.
I think the fire chief is the smartest.
She came right out and said, no, no,
I got let down by the city, it's
no good.
They screwed me over.
Why are they, I mean, I don't, I
really don't know if they would have been
able to suppress this.
But with firefighting, I mean, the only way
to suppress it is to prevent it, which
is just not done.
Well, that prevention one, and also jumping on
it when it started, instead of letting it
get out of control.
Was there a delay?
Well, there had to be.
I mean, it's just like, well, it looks
like something's starting up.
Something's going on over there.
So we got, now this is one of
the council women from the LA City Council,
Tracy Park, who is the one representing Palisades.
And she's irked.
She's just lost her constituents.
She's got to get voted in again because
there's no one left.
No one left.
But she was a, she's a Republican turned
Democrat, because in California, if you want to
run for office and you're a Republican, forget
about it.
You change your party to Democrat and run
as a Democrat with Republican talking points.
And you tend to win a lot, but
here's.
There's a guy who did that in Austin
to get on city council.
Yeah.
But he actually went around to parties saying,
you know, I'm really Republican, but I just
registered as a Democrat to get in.
And everyone looked at him like, you fool.
No one voted for him.
Well, they shouldn't have said that.
No, I know.
It was the dumbest thing ever.
It's idiotic.
I don't know why he did it.
I've seen the light.
I'm now a Democrat.
All right.
Tracy Parks.
Tracy Park represents Pacific Palisades in the Los
Angeles City Council.
What happened in the Palisades over the last
several days was not unpredictable.
We already know when there's a wildfire event,
our communication systems go down.
We already know that during evacuation processes, we
have traffic bottlenecks.
So to see those same issues repeat in
what has now become the most devastating natural
disaster in Los Angeles history is incredibly frustrating.
Park says the L.A. Fire Department's budget
is inadequate for today's needs.
We have about the same number of firefighters
and fire stations in the city of Los
Angeles that we had 60 years ago.
But our demands for service have tripled.
There's 4 million people.
There's 4 million people in the city of
Los Angeles.
We have about 100 fire engines and ambulances
out of service sitting in the maintenance yard.
Why?
Why is this the case?
Because they don't have enough mechanics.
And here in the city of Los Angeles,
we need at least 62 new fire stations
to meet average daily demand in our city.
Not 5, not 10, not 25, 62.
I hope that this is a wake-up
call.
So is there any conversation you have with
your neighbors?
Oh, I'm sorry.
What am I even thinking?
But let's say you had conversation with your
neighbors.
Yeah, last conversation I had with my neighbor
was that Putin's running the country.
So it was 8 years ago.
Well, it doesn't matter.
Nothing's changed.
Putin's running the country.
Is anyone in Northern California talking about preparedness
and RR?
Because, you know, you have similar type of
leadership going on.
In fact, you have the same governor.
I mean, if something bad happens in Northern
California, do you feel that everyone's prepared there?
No.
Okay, good.
No, nobody cares.
Nobody cares?
Why not?
No, nobody cares.
What is this?
Why does nobody care?
Why is there – what is that?
What is it about the milieu?
Anomie.
It what?
It's from being depressed by being run by
a bunch of – it's a corrupt state.
And everyone's just kind of giving up on
it?
There's no organization?
Well, I don't see anybody talking much about
it except, oh, those poor Angelenos, those idiots
down there.
Oh, yeah.
You know, they should have saw this coming.
When the Santa Ana winds get pretty wild,
we get this sort of wind too.
It's called offshore breeze.
And it never gets 100 miles an hour
or anything.
But in LA, it does all the time.
Not every year, but every so often.
About once every decade with the high winds.
And when I was a little kid, I
remembered them talking about the Santa Ana winds
and the fires down there.
There was the Bel Air fire, I think
it was 1969.
I'm not sure.
61, 69.
You look it up.
It's on Wikipedia.
It was like one of the worst fires,
but it doesn't even compare to this.
But it burnt down Bel Air, which is
a nice community.
The Bel Air fire was 61, November 6,
61.
Yeah.
484 homes, 6,000 acres.
That's a teeny weeny fire.
There's nothing compared to this.
Yeah, it was a teeny weeny fire.
It was a big deal because of all
the celebrities that were affected.
It was easy to list it.
Yeah.
But the number of celebrities in this one
is really a whopper.
Yeah.
So let's go to, I've got two more
clips and you can take it to climate,
which is fires and COPD, which I thought
was interesting.
The vast plumes of smoke and ash from
these fires are threatening the health of people
miles away.
It's led both the Biden administration and Los
Angeles County to declare public health emergencies.
Allie Rogan spoke with Dr. Russell Boer, an
assistant professor of medicine and public health at
UCLA.
Dr. Boer, thank you so much for joining
us.
You've lived on the West Coast for a
long time.
How does this fire compare to others that
you've experienced?
And what sort of symptoms are folks presenting
in your clinical practice right now?
It's been a very busy few days and
lots of calls and messages from patients and
lots of folks coming into clinic feeling more
short of breath, more chest tightness, and generally
just worse than their baseline, and spent a
lot of time trying to figure out how
to optimize people's respiratory medications to compensate for
that, but also a lot of time doing
counseling on how to best keep themselves safe
given these difficult circumstances that we're experiencing here
in LA right now.
What sort of health issues tend to crop
up when there's fires like this?
We worry the most about people with chronic
heart and lung disease, and that's because small
particles can actually work their way all the
way down not only into the deepest parts
of the lung, but even sometimes transit into
the bloodstream through the lung.
And so what we worry about most is
acute flare-ups of cough, shortness of breath,
and wheezing, especially in the lungs, and that
can affect even people without pre-existing lung
disease, or for people that do have pre
-existing lung disease, to flare-up inflammation to
the point of needing medical attention if the
inflammation gets so bad that people aren't able
to get enough oxygen into their body.
Even short-term high doses of exposure, like
we see when the air quality index is
above 200, can be very hazardous to people
who are otherwise healthy.
And I tell people, you know, even if
you're a seasoned athlete, this is not the
time to be going outside and taking a
nice hike up to the top of the
hills to see if you can see the
fire or not.
This is affecting everyone.
Sucking in soot.
That's right.
Obama predicted it.
Before you go to climate, can I just
play two short clips from Gavin Newsom?
Yeah, absolutely.
There's something else going on here that I
want to ask you about.
This is from Meet the Press.
He did an extensive interview, a lot of
Trump stuff in there, of course.
But this was interesting.
Over the course of the next several years,
Los Angeles will be host to the World
Cup, and then the Super Bowl, and then
the Olympics.
With this rebuilding effort needing to take place,
is LA going to be ready for all
of those global events?
My humble position, and it's not just being
naively optimistic, that only reinforces the imperative of
moving quickly, doing in the spirit of collaboration
and cooperation.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump,
to his credit, was helpful in getting the
Olympics to the United States of America to
get it down here in LA.
We thank him for that.
This is an opportunity for him to shine,
for this country to shine, for California and
this community to shine.
The opportunity with all of that, and all
that opportunity, and that pride and spirit that
comes from not just hosting those three iconic
games and venues, but also the opportunity, I
think, to rebuild at the same time.
And that's why we're already organizing a Marshall
Plan.
We already have a team of looking and
reimagining LA 2.0. And we're making sure
everyone's included, not just the folks on the
coast, people here that were ravaged by this
disaster.
LA 2.0, getting ready for the World
Cup, the Olympic Games, the Super Bowl.
How can they do this?
Is LA hosting the Super Bowl?
LA?
Well, that's not this year.
It's a year or two from now.
Okay, but they're not going to rebuild all
this within two years, are they?
You can't.
Or maybe they have the...
You don't need to rebuild it for Russia's
Super Bowl.
It's probably going to be in that new
SoFi, not SoFi, but there's that stadium that
I think the Chargers play in.
The stadium's not damaged.
And they could play in the LA Coliseum.
It's not damaged.
It's highly inappropriate.
The Palisades is not anywhere near where these
sports venues are going to be.
I know, but it's inappropriate.
Oh, it's bull.
Nobody cares.
Let's learn about the...
Well, the television audience won't care.
Let's listen to the Marshall Plan.
You just said you're organizing a Marshall Plan
for the rebuilding of California.
What is that Marshall Plan?
Would you mind explaining, for my benefit, the
Marshall Plan, the original Marshall Plan, just trying
to get some context as to why he's
calling it a Marshall Plan?
Yeah, George...
I think it's George C.
Marshall, I could be wrong, was the general
after World War II who instituted a build
-back-better Europe plan to get Europeans to
get the...
especially to get the Germans back on their
feet because it's a powerhouse operation that really
produces a lot of stuff.
They're an important part of the capitalist system.
And we just dedicated a lot of money
and effort to re-establishing...
spent a lot of American taxpayer dollars to
get the capitalist system back on track in
Europe.
I mean, that was...
Supposedly, it was to help the people, but
no, it was to help big business get
its act together.
There's a tire factory that needs rebuilding.
Maybe Firestone can own it.
I mean, that kind of thing.
Okay, so there you go.
And we'll listen to the Marshall Plan clip,
but bearing that in mind, he's not...
And by the way, I can be correct
in what I said, so...
That's off the cuff.
You're good at that.
You should just say, there's no evidence, and
then you cover it.
There's no evidence.
There's no evidence this is true.
But this is not a Marshall Plan.
Who would represent Marshall in this deal?
Well, my question is, where's the money coming
from?
Unless you are doing exactly what you described...
You heard where the money's coming from with
the first clip there.
Companies.
No.
Trump.
We'll see.
You just said you're organizing a Marshall Plan
for the rebuilding of California.
What is that Marshall Plan?
For this region, we're just starting to lay
out.
I mean, we're still fighting these fires, so
we're already talking to city leaders.
We're already talking to civic leaders.
We're already talking to business leaders and nonprofits.
We're talking to labor leaders.
We're starting to organize how we can put
together a collection of individuals on philanthropy for
recovery, how we can organize the region, how
we can make sure that we are seeking
federal assistance for the Olympics more broadly, but
also federal assistance for the recovery efforts, and
how we can galvanize the community with folks
that love this community to really develop a
mindset so that at scale we're dealing with
the scope of this tragedy and responding to
it at scale with efficiency, like the executive
order I talked about, time value of delivering
projects, addressing building codes, addressing permitting issues, and
moving forward to rebuilding and being more resilient.
Yeah, that's going to take a lot of
change in California to do that.
But maybe that's a great idea.
Maybe California becomes a new manufacturing hub.
You know, just change everything.
He's talking a big game here, man.
We're driving people out of the state with
the taxation problems and all the rest of
it.
Except John Ciavora.
He's just talking a big game because he
wants to make it look like he's actually
trying to accomplish something.
Yeah.
And if you read between the lines, it
seems to me that they're just looking for
federal money because, hey, look what happened to
us.
And meanwhile, of course, the people in North
Carolina, including some cutie pie who was on
one of the Twitter posts, and she's going
and she's ranting.
And I think others are too.
Of course.
Hey, what about us?
We got people living in the snow here.
They've got no houses.
They're in tents.
Nobody's doing anything.
And you're going to give all the money
to California all of a sudden?
The fire's not even out.
How about Maui?
Well, Maui's done.
Yeah.
Oprah bought it.
The last time I saw you in the
Palisades on Wednesday, right after this fire started,
you were on the phone at the side
of the road trying to reach President Biden.
Subsequent to that, he pledged 100% of
the disaster recovery relief for the next six
months.
Is that enough?
Well, it's significant.
I mean, in fact, when I was on
the phone, you saw me on the phone.
I was trying to get the satellite to
phone work.
I asked for 90%.
And he said, no, I'm going to do
100%.
So what is this 100% of?
It's nothing.
It's bull crap.
First of all, this phone call.
He was being confronted by – many of
us have seen the clip.
He's confronted by some angry woman shaking her
fist at him basically.
And all of a sudden, oh, I got
a call.
He claims he had a call or he's
going to call.
He had some reason to get on the
phone.
And it looked like a regular cell phone
to me.
It didn't look like a sat phone.
I don't know.
Well, you know, the new iPhones, you wouldn't
know this, but the new iPhones.
Of course not.
The new iPhones are able outside supposedly to,
I think, do text.
I don't think you can actually do a
call.
He was lying.
Look, let's just be honest.
He was lying.
That was the point.
He was lying.
He was just lying.
Yeah, he was lying.
But Biden did come out and say he
was going to give a big support.
I don't know why Gavin seems to have
this need to embellish the results of Biden's
claim.
He's going to give 100 percent of necessary
money for the next six months to 90.
To say, oh, you know, I only asked
for 90 percent, but good old Joe, he
gave us 100.
Why is he adding this unnecessary piece of
information to make it sound like there's really
a back and forth going on?
I don't know.
I mean, come on.
Yeah, you're right.
I was negotiating and he upped me.
It was crazy.
I was on the phone satellite.
Yeah.
All right.
That's it for me.
People have ever seen a true sat phone.
Oh, yeah.
The thing is huge.
It's huge.
It's got an antenna.
That's a big, giant, thick, giant antenna.
Like a like a soup can.
Please, please do not email me pictures of
your sat phone that has a very small
antenna.
Okay.
There's no sat phones with small antennas.
We're just being humorous.
If it had a small antenna and had
that much power, it would blow your brain
out if you used it.
We're just being humorous, people.
All right.
What's your next clip?
All right.
I guess I can wrap it here with
there's not that much change from the last
show, to be honest about.
But we do have I did have to
get this real short part.
I didn't play the whole I didn't clip
the whole thing because it's this dumb.
This is the PBS, their take on the
whole thing.
And they have to throw climate change in.
Prolonged drought in those powerful Santa Ana winds
set up extreme conditions that have fueled those
devastating Los Angeles area wildfires.
Conditions compounded by climate change.
And today, researchers from NOAA and NASA underline
that point, releasing analysis showing that 2024 was
the hottest year in recorded history, dating back
almost 200 years.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Wait, hold on.
Stop a second.
The hottest year on record in dating back
200.
Wait, there's records before 200 years ago.
Oh, I have I have even better statistics.
Exactly.
Oh, this is the worst ever since forever.
All recorded history is basically what he said.
Yes.
All for all recorded history.
200 years ago.
This is the hottest year ever.
And it's like dubious.
It would be great.
If one of our producers could go into
being it dot IO and get the clip
from every single year that says this is
the hottest year on record, because it has
been that way for every year, at least
five years, maybe longer.
They just keep doing it.
Oh, hottest year ever.
Hottest year on record.
So I want to get into some climate
change stuff because immediately, immediately.
I didn't even play the there were a
couple of clips before the end of the
year.
Maybe we played one or two because Copernicus
had already announced is the hottest year on
record.
It was so dumb.
And I think people are tired of it.
So it wasn't even really a news story
anymore.
But it popped to the top of the
stack right away.
Oh, yes.
We have a climate change angle.
We got nothing else to say.
Let's do climate change.
It was spurred on, I might add, by
our vice president who reemerged in the Oval
Office at an incredible moment where our mentally
demented.
Is that the right word?
Mentally retarded because it is a retardation.
Challenged.
No, it's a retardation of his mental acuity.
He he was talking almost like a conspiracy
theorist, like this was a directed energy weapon.
I mean, he this could have been about
the Maui fire.
He could have been Tim Pool.
It was amazing.
And then Kamala throws in the climate change
kind of to save the day.
Listen to this.
Look to me as I travel.
I was out with you in California.
What it reminded me of reminded me of
more of a war scene where you had
certain targets that were target bombarded.
Bombarded artillery was just blew them up.
No, it was with no rhyme or reason.
In other words, you'd have this fire going
crazy and burning everything down and three houses
being fine.
Nothing champion or neighborhoods that were still green.
We still green.
And next to a place that, for example,
you know, we're just looking at a Secret
Service house.
It was out there.
You know, all the vehicles are melted.
No, no.
The house next door still has green shrubbery
on.
Hey, after his presidency is over, Biden can
do a podcast.
This is fantastic.
Really good.
This is great.
What is what is the Secret Service house?
I think that's Kamala Harris's Secret Service house.
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
He's talking space lasers here, people.
And, you know, the house is fine.
There's only, I think, four or five houses
in that 200.
You know, it's in the Pasadena area.
But my point is, it's almost what is
your point?
Kamala, get in there.
You get in there and change the messaging.
It's a battle scene.
But, you know, Mr. President, we saw that
in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida
with hurricanes.
Yeah.
This is also the nature of, to your
point, this changing climate.
To your point.
No, he was making a directed.
Your point is changing climate?
What?
So this.
Wow.
This was the big virtue signal like, OK,
we're switching to climate.
Hello.
We're switching to climate, everybody.
Smirkonish, get on your show.
Here's the bottom line.
The prospect of change coming from Washington is
dubious, especially where President-elect Trump has denied,
ridiculed actually, the idea of a warming planet.
No.
And the public has shown no reluctance to
continue to build and live in areas repeatedly
hit by wildfire and tropical storm, whether it's
California, North Carolina or Florida.
But maybe.
Exactly the same.
North Carolina is being hit by tropical storms
constantly and fire.
No.
He misunderstood what the vice president said because
she said those exact three states.
Only he thought, what did he just.
He messed it up.
He flubbed this line.
But the message went out.
This is this is the messaging.
It's extreme weather equals climate change and areas
repeated, which I have to say, I'm surprised.
I'm really surprised that they're doing this.
It's like, do you think the American people
are stupid?
I mean, sorry for being rhetorical, but we're
not stupid.
We can see what's happening with the great
DEI fire.
We understand this is a leadership breakdown.
We really do.
But you're going to try and gaslight us.
I'm I'm I'm going to go with the
DEI fire.
I like that a lot.
It's good, isn't it?
Yeah.
I forget who's whoever said that.
Let me know who that is so we
can credit you in.
They all take credit.
No, no, no, no, no.
I did it.
No, no, no.
In areas repeatedly hit by wildfire and tropical
storm, whether it's California, North Carolina or Florida.
But maybe change is coming in the form
of depleted insurance companies no longer covering areas
prone to extreme weather.
And if they won't insure, then banks won't
lend, leaving certain areas accessible only to the
very few who can afford to purchase without
a mortgage.
Without a mortgage and without insurance?
Huh?
How many will have to be uprooted before
we realize?
What kind of idiot are we talking about?
Yeah, it's crazy.
We're in it together.
Where, sadly, the cause of the California wildfires
seems like it's destined to become a partisan
football.
Here's today's poll question at smirkandish.com.
Which is more to blame for the devastation
we're seeing in California?
Is it the climate change or government mismanagement
of resources?
I love this.
We're going to do a poll.
We don't actually have a troll room that's
live.
You know, we're just going to throw some.
This is this reminds me.
Where did you get this?
This is CNN.
Smirkandish.
You know, they have just deteriorated.
I mean, MSNBC is stuck with their guns
and they still hate Trump in the same
old way.
They haven't changed anything.
But CNN has actually gotten worse.
Back in the MTV days, I did dial
MTV.
And now we're talking 88, 89.
And so you could call in and you
could say, I want this is my favorite
video.
I want poison.
I want I want Janet Jackson.
And it was always a racist voice like
that.
Was that right?
Well, it was standby because what happened is
new kids on the block hit the scene.
And MTV did not play new kids on
the block.
They hated new kids on the block because,
you know, we're much cheaper than that.
I'm not going to play Maki Maka.
New kids on the block play all that.
That was another racist voice.
I did.
And what kind of a racist?
I don't know.
I don't know what's happened to me.
I don't know.
You lost it.
But these stories are good.
Keep going.
So so you could call in one hundred
dial MTV.
I remember the number.
And we'd count them down the top 10
videos of the day right here on dial
MTV, which later became Total Request Live with
Carson Daly, which shows you if I had
not left MTV, I could have been on
the Today Show.
But anyway, so new kids on the block
and they just kept it was number one.
And then a certain point is just it
wasn't on there anymore.
They just said no.
When people kept calling requesting new kids on
the block, either we wouldn't play it like,
oh, we don't have time for new kids
on the block.
Got to go to a commercial or we
just remove it from the list.
It was total phoniness.
It was fake.
And it was it was dumb.
And why?
I know.
Television fake.
I can't believe it.
So smirk on it with this.
We're doing a poll.
What do you think?
Is it climate change or is it incompetency?
I don't know.
So then he brings on Senator Whitehouse, the
Democrat.
Oh, that asshole from Rhode Island.
Joining us now is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of
Rhode Island, who until recently was chair of
the Senate Budget Committee.
He is now the ranking member on the
Committee of Environmental and Public Works.
Thank you for being here, Senator.
Your whole heard my whole setup.
What is most significant from your perspective, given
how you've spent the last two years working
on these issues?
What do you think he's going to say?
Climate change is killing us.
I would say two things.
I would say, first, a long campaign of
lies and disinformation by the fossil fuel industry
is now colliding with the business model of
the insurance industry, which requires it to accurately
predict future risk.
And this isn't just L.A. The risk
is increasing in Florida, as you mentioned, even
states like Oklahoma.
And the cascade that follows is this.
Climate change makes risk to homeowners unpredictable, which
makes home insurance either unaffordable or flat unavailable.
You see, in a backward way, in a
roundabout way, they're blaming Trump for this.
You have to understand this is what's so
great about it.
They have they are following the playbook because,
you know, all these problems is because of
the fossil fuel industry.
And, you know, that's why the insurance industry
can't accurately predict what's going to happen, even
though they've done quite well.
Their profits have been phenomenal.
Have you seen it?
They're just doing exceptionally well.
I should mention some years ago when, you
know, the these Congress people who have invest
a lot.
They keep their the records are available to
the public, but they're in the basement of
some building.
You have to actually go physically to look
at it.
Is that still the case?
I don't think that's still the case.
I believe it's still...
No, no, no.
No, no.
Because people, they're getting Pelosi's trading records.
Well, that's true.
But I think it's because they're going into
the basement and then publishing it.
This is not government data that you're...
Because I know there's a couple of websites
that show all these different holdings that these
guys have and they're trading and what they're
up to.
But this isn't something the government's doing.
That was what was requested by the people
that wanted...
So White House is a big investor in
fossil fuels.
Okay.
Yes.
Well, of course.
I mean, but still, we're going to use
this to blame Trump, which makes more...
Yeah, I think you're right.
This is very subtle.
And I think it's almost too subtle.
Well, standby.
Because nobody's buying this crap.
Which makes mortgages...
Well, I take it back.
I take it back.
Yeah.
I think people are buying it.
Which makes mortgages unavailable on that property or
in that region.
And with mortgages unavailable, property values crash.
And the property values crash is predicted to
be significant enough that it creates an economic
cascade into the entire U.S. economy, just
like 2008 did.
And in fact, this is a global problem,
leading the April issue of The Economist magazine,
saying that climate change is shaking the foundations
of the biggest asset class on the planet,
real estate.
So, we're looking potentially at going off a
very steep cliff here when the rate of
insurance failure accelerates.
Okay.
So, he's obviously all in on the climate
change, not thinking about government inadequacies.
So, let's try and see if we can
get him to talk about that.
So, I read the report of the Budget
Committee the way you've explained it, and the
report made perfect sense to me.
But you know that some are watching, paying
attention and saying, wait a minute, the reservoir
was empty, the fire hydrants had no water.
They're even going so far as to introduce
DEI factors and questioning some of the hires
that have been made among firefighters.
You would say what to those people?
There is obviously a lot of nonsense that
is going to be propagated by fossil fuel
interests and the Republicans who are paid by
fossil fuel interests.
It's Twitter's fault.
Where's our fossil fuel money?
Exactly.
Where's our fossil fuel check?
But if you look aside from just this
fire, you also see fire risk and coastal
flooding risk, and in case of Oklahoma, hail
risk.
Hail!
The risks are increasing, and you can't blame
the floods in Florida.
Oh, hold on.
We know that there's never been hail, historically,
never been hail in Oklahoma, Texas.
It's all new because of climate change.
I was just about to say, we've never
had hail.
No, it's never been an issue.
Never ever been an issue.
And you can't blame the floods in Florida
on a bad reservoir in California.
There really is a risk profile that's changing.
We've gone from $2 billion plus disasters a
year to 18.
As you pointed out, we've just...
You know what?
Who cares?
Just stop giving money to Ukraine.
You'll make it back in two weeks.
Broken through the 1.5 degrees danger barrier
for climate change.
Danger barrier!
There's always going to be some local made
up excuse, but the fact of the matter
is that the weather is changing.
It is changing from climate change.
That is what is changing the risk.
And the insurance companies have to look forward
and try to judge this accurately for their
stockholders and for their business model.
And they're the ones who are saying across
the country, we've got to back off.
We've got to raise rates.
We've got to get out.
What the hell's going to happen here?
I don't think he answered the question, but
OK, that's fine.
It was all misinformation, disinformation.
We're going to wrap it up with these
two short clips.
Social media reaction from the world of X.
What do we have?
A lot of reaction, I'm told already.
I'm not surprised.
Unfortunate had no clue that Smirconish was a
climate cult guy.
Really?
You know why?
Really?
So first he's going to take some some
responses on X and he's going to discredit
them because someone called him a climate cult
guy.
Really?
A climate cult guy.
Really?
You know why?
You know why Smirconish has become a climate
cult guy?
Oh, yes.
Because I have two things.
Take take it off the screen.
I have two things.
I have a TV set.
Hold on.
Is he talking about himself in the third
person?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, what an egomaniac.
That's what you do.
You know what Dvorak says?
What does Dvorak say?
He says bull crap.
Why?
You know why Smirconish has become a climate
cult guy?
Because I have two things.
Take take it off the screen.
I have two things.
I have a TV set and a window.
Hey, you got a TV set and a
window.
I do.
I have a TV set and I have
a window.
You could be a climate cult guy.
You got a TV set and a window.
I could be.
Yeah, I should be.
Probably.
I'd be on CNN.
You should demand your gig.
Okay.
Do you need anything more than to know
what's going on, big picture, than to have
a television set and a window?
That's all you need to understand science is
a television set and a window.
Preferably tuned to something mainstream.
Let's wrap it up with the poll results.
So there's the results so far of today's
poll question.
It's for kind of a lot of voting.
Damn.
Thirty seven thousand nine hundred and twenty nine,
which is more to blame for the devastation
of the California wildfire.
Seventy three percent saying it's climate change.
Twenty seven percent.
Almost a third.
Bull crap.
Saying government mismanagement of resources.
Seventy three percent says climate change.
Of the five people watching.
You know, this was a very well set
up presentation by you because you brought in
that MTV nonsense.
Yeah.
It's a total scam.
It's rigged, man.
You can't trust CNN.
Now, unfortunately.
Which really, by the way, I should mention
this.
I am stunned that CNN is as bad
as it is with when you have one
of the board members of discovering the network
that owns them.
The corporation that owns them is John Malone.
Yeah.
John Malone is one of the most staunchest
conservative Republicans in business history.
And he puts up with this.
He's all he's in his 80s, an octogenarian,
as you call him.
And so I guess he's lost his his.
He needs to get testosterone or something because
he's getting pushed around.
Let's go around the world and check in
with the weather.
All right.
It is time for a check of the
weather.
Samara Theodore has the latest.
Samara, what are you tracking?
Right now, we're talking about the Pacific Palisades
and the fires out there.
But take a look at this stunning visual
of this fire whirl here hitting the ground.
Absolutely terrifying.
And, you know, as the climate is changing,
we are seeing that these wildfires are becoming
more extreme and we're getting more extreme weather
events.
In fact, in 2024, warmest year for the
Earth since 1850, when we've been keeping records,
Earth's annual temperature was above that one point
five degrees Celsius threshold.
And what impact does that potentially mean?
Forty one percent more land is burned by
wildfires as a result.
That's a look at the forecast across the
country.
Let's see what's going on in your neighborhood.
OK, in my neighborhood, my neighborhood is chilly
here in Texas.
We are freezing during the night.
But, OK, the danger barrier has been crossed.
And the National Oceanic guys, they're here to
tell us why.
Tom, how does 2024 rank in the climate
record?
In the climate record.
Oh, let's listen.
At the very top, 2024 is the second
year in a row where global temperatures were
the hottest in our at least 175 year
record.
175?
I wish they could get their numbers straight.
200 since time began, 200, 175.
This is NOAA.
You'd think that that would be the guys,
right?
That is kind of scary to hear that
our climate continues to get warmer and warmer.
And how does this impact Coloradans and other
Western states?
Yeah, so we're experiencing the impacts from our
warming temperatures and our climate change every single
day.
But for the most part, especially for folks
out in Colorado, you experience that through hotter
temperatures during the summertime.
You can experience that where precipitation falls as
rain and not as much as snow.
It can lead to there being heavy rainfall
events during periods of the year.
It can lead to flash flooding.
It can also lead to even drier than
average conditions.
So it can lead to flash flooding, more
rain and drier conditions.
It's amazing, this climate change.
Really, really hot temperatures and not a lot
of rain.
It can dry out.
I don't understand.
It's like really, a lot of rain.
It's crazy.
And it can lead to really, really dry
weather.
You know, it's like, what do you call
it, weather.
Really, really, really, really, really quickly.
That's the conditions for wildfires to break out.
If only they had more rain.
I can't imagine the job of trying to
take the Earth's temperature.
How does NASA and NOAA undertake that project?
You stick a thermometer up its butt.
Well, we're not alone.
We have the cooperation of countries across the
entire globe, who basically have weather stations situated
across their countries.
Allow all of us to grab all of
that data, not only land-based, but also
ocean-based.
We have buoys in our oceans and ships.
We take all of that information and be
able to basically quilt it together into a
global product, which allows us to tell you
all that 2024 was indeed the warmest year
on record.
There it is, indeed the warmest year on
record.
That is the global product.
It is atrocious.
Now, we knew 15 years ago that children
in the UK would never see snow again
except in snow globes.
Let's check out the UK.
Well, the cold snap continues with the UK
recording its chilliest January night in 15 years.
Temperatures fell as low as minus 18 degrees
in northern Scotland on Friday, and the frost
is being felt across the UK as the
cold weather is set to continue into next
week.
Talk to the guy, he's standing out there
in the snow, in the snow.
If we weren't doing the show so hard.
I always find that hilarious.
But do you remember the articles?
Oh, children will only see snow in snow
globes.
Oh, yeah, no, never see snow again.
Only in snow globes.
This is why we are allowed to be
skeptical, in fact, deniers of this nonsense, because
we've been hearing this for more than 17
years.
And we remember when it was Leonard Nimoy
in the blizzard telling us it was going
to be global cooling and we're going to
a new ice age.
It is all a lie.
It is a money grab.
It is a grift.
I'm going to wind up this nonsense with
the clips from NPR, which you just won't
believe.
Our national treasure helps us understand why this
is 2024.
It's the hottest year on record ever.
Let's put some numbers on this extraordinary heat.
Extraordinary heat.
It's been the coolest summer in Texas that
I can recall.
Extraordinary heat.
Hey, Curry, weather's not climate, OK?
Yeah, we remember that one.
Until it was.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA,
and NASA just announced their official numbers on
Friday.
And they both say that 2024 was about
1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than it was
back in the 1800s before people started burning
tons of fossil fuels.
For reference, that's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
And 1.5 C, you might have heard
of it, it's kind of a symbolic number
because back in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement,
most countries tried to pledge to keep global
warming to less than 2 C and ideally
less than 1.5. And I want to
be clear that being past that number for
just one year, that doesn't mean those goals
are breached, but it's not a good sign.
But you said last year was actually hotter
than scientists had anticipated?
Yeah, 2023 and 2024 were both off the
charts hot.
Off the charts!
Here's how climate scientist Zeke Hausfather describes some
of the temperature records from 2023.
Gob-smackingly bananas.
Very descriptive.
Can you believe this?
They throw to a clip of a scientist
like a Nat Pop and they just throw
that in.
Gob-smackingly bananas.
Come on.
Wait, wait, wait, very descriptive of what?
It's not descriptive at all, it's just hyperbole.
Yeah, yeah.
Hotter than scientists even expected.
Hotter!
That might not sound like a lot, but
Hausfather says it's equivalent to about a decade
of global warming.
And that really matters because it's important to
know if this extra heat represents a permanent
change to the climate or something else.
And why?
Why?
That is definitely the question.
Why?
That's the question.
Why?
Can we answer the question?
Scientists have looked at so many things.
They looked at stuff like the solar cycle.
That wasn't it.
Nope.
They looked at dust in the air.
Nope.
That wasn't it either.
And then there was this other idea about
a volcano that erupted in 2022.
No.
And that volcano shot water vapor into the
atmosphere, which could theoretically heat up the planet.
But that didn't pan out either.
It's you, you stupid humans.
So a number of possibilities, but no one
thing could be held responsible for those numbers.
Oh, come on now.
What else is on the suspect list?
Oh, John, what else could be on the
suspect list?
What have we not discussed yet?
What could be on the suspect?
It wasn't the volcano.
It wasn't the sun.
Cough farts?
El Niño was El Niño, which is part
of this natural climate cycle.
And during El Niño years, the planet is
generally warmer.
But when it first got unexpectedly hot, El
Niño hadn't even started yet.
Devin Schmidt is a climate scientist at NASA's
Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
It's hard to blame the El Niño for
things that happened before the El Niño even
really started.
It turns out that El Niño probably had
some effect on 2024's numbers.
But overall, scientists were still scratching their heads.
Oh, really?
They didn't read the memo?
You're supposed to blame humans?
Thank you for reminding us of cow farts.
And burps.
And farts.
And burps.
And what did they find?
Yeah, they went to one other place, Scott.
The next thing they looked at were these
weird kinds of clouds.
These are the tracks of ships.
It's like a contrail from an airplane.
Uh, you mean chemtrails?
Holy crap.
Now they're just coming out and saying it.
It kind of looks like contrails, but it's
not.
It starts as a contrail, but then it
kind of spreads out.
But from a ship over the ocean.
That's Andrew Gettleman.
He's a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory.
Ships burn fossil fuels, and the pollution from
that actually creates these cloud trails behind them
that cool Earth.
And in 2020, that ship fuel actually— Ships?
Ships.
Wait, see, the ships cool the Earth.
But wait, in 2020, something changed.
And in 2020, that ship fuel actually got
cleaner.
And that meant smaller ship track clouds and,
in turn, a hotter planet.
And that could actually make up about half—
You've got to follow the logic here.
There is no logic.
So the ships created these clouds.
Not airplanes, no.
The ships created these clouds.
But since shipping fuel got cleaner— I must
have missed that story.
Since shipping fuel got cleaner, there's no more
clouds.
Smaller ship track clouds and, in turn, a
hotter planet.
And that could actually make up about half
of the mystery heat.
And scientists think decreases in other clouds that
were also thermally— Oh, hold on a second.
Do you remember the— Why isn't the tides
rising?
Because Australia's acting like a giant sponge.
Remember that story?
Australia's acting like a giant sponge.
Australia is like a giant sponge.
And so the oceans aren't rising because this
sponge-like quality of Australia, somehow, is sucking
up the water.
You don't remember that?
Well, somebody, I'm sure, does.
But I have to go dig it up
now.
These crazy cockamamie stories that are just reverse
-engineered to explain why something doesn't happen the
way they want it to.
I think this is actually engineered to bring
in something that they do want.
It's 25 seconds.
And scientists think decreases in other clouds that
were also formerly caused by pollution might make
up another chunk.
So let me understand this.
Clearer skies, sunnier skies caused by less pollution
ends up promoting climate change?
Yeah, it's not ideal.
But scientists like Schmidt say that that just
means cutting fossil fuel emissions is even more
important to get at that main driver of
climate change.
What?
We have a solution, everybody.
Don't worry about it.
We just do some chemtrails and we'll bring
the clouds back.
This, they are, it's, and that was NPR.
NPR.
Meanwhile.
Don't send them your money, people.
Meanwhile, the entire finance industry, finance, they're out.
They're not participating in it anymore.
These, these propagandists are tilting at windmills because
no one is going to pay for this
stuff.
Everybody's out.
You're just trying to gaslight everybody, but there's
no more money.
The banks are done with funding this nonsense.
As Los Angeles burns and climate scientists paint
a darker vision of the future, the heat
is on the world's financial leaders to help
solve the crisis.
But after committing to the cause a few
years ago, big American institutions are now getting
cold feet.
A similar chill in Canada may be on
the way.
Right here, right now is where finance draws
the line.
A splashy statement from a different time.
That's former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney
on stage at a U.N. climate conference
in 2021, spearheading a huge alliance of financial
institutions committed to getting emissions down.
Quite frankly, facilities that do not scale up
aren't relevant to the scale of the problem.
Fast forward and some of those facilities, those
banks, have bailed on this so-called net
zero banking alliance.
From Goldman Sachs to Citigroup, every major U
.S. bank has left.
JPMorgan Chase, the last to quit this week,
saying little more than it'll still focus on
low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security.
Disappointing, if not surprising.
Patti McCulley is with the French non-profit
Reclaim Finance.
The idea of the voluntary alliance was for
banks to focus money into renewables and eventually
away from fossil fuels.
But in the U.S., the winds have
shifted.
All the U.S. banks are running scared
of Trump 2.0. Their fear of being
attacked by Trump is much greater than their
climate commitment.
So thank God you can bring it back
to Trump.
This is great.
Oh, Trump 2.0, which is the new
thing now.
Trump 2.0. And because of Trump, just
the fear of Trump, the banks are pulling
out.
He is responsible for our future deaths.
The entire ESG scheme is designed to funnel
your retirement money.
During his last campaign, President-elect Donald Trump
galvanized voters against ESG, environmental, social and governance
investing.
But Adam Scott, climate finance expert and executive
director at Shift Action, says the backlash isn't
driven by public desire.
It's not a real political movement of citizens.
It's a cynical attempt by the fossil fuel
industry, in collusion with governments, to try to
slow down this inevitable transition.
The fear is that all of Canada's major
banks might follow suit, though some critics say
that's not necessarily a bad thing, considering these
institutions continue to fund fossil fuel projects.
Ultimately, these are supposed to be coalitions of
leaders.
Their commitments are meaningful, and it's not helpful
to pretend that these institutions are taking this
seriously.
Notice that even the Canadian banks, they're afraid
of Trump 2.0. The Canadian Banking Association
says its members know they have a role
in the energy transition, but decide their alliance
participation individually.
Another factor, experts say, is the complexity of
net zero itself.
Diane-Laure Régéliez is with Western University's Ivy
Business School.
There were new forms of climate exposure, new
carbon emissions that were not really anticipated.
So for them, right now, it's extremely difficult
to commit to net zero.
But she adds all institutions need to shift
to longer-term thinking as climate change raises
financial risks, such as property loss from fire
disasters.
It's a very rational economic decision.
Each day we wait, it's a loss of
opportunity, and it's going to be more costly
in the future.
But even with these high-profile exits, experts
see hope, with European alliance members carrying the
net zero torch forward.
Please, Europe, you do it.
You do it.
You save the world.
Never talk about China.
I feel like it's a scheme to sucker
Europe into doing it because they're so dumb.
Yeah, well, they're...
Well, you know, we can't do it over
here because we've got this Trump guy, and
he's going to make life difficult.
So we're going to have to go all
in on fossil fuel, get cheap energy so
everybody, all prices come down, because cheap energy
makes a huge difference in the economy.
But you Europeans, you can hold the banner
high.
Yes, Queen Ursula.
You dumb Europeans.
Go on.
Go do it.
The problem is their parliamentary systems, and it's...
They can't.
They just can't.
I mean, they would have...
Europe needs a revolution, but they're not going
to do it.
They have been muted.
They have been beaten down and muted.
They haven't...
There's no way they can do it.
Look at Geert Wilders.
This was the far right.
You know, his party won.
What happens?
They bring in the former spook, and nothing
happens.
Nothing happens.
Nothing changes.
Final bit on this nonsense, actually going back
to the fire, is Hollywood.
Because, of course, Hollywood has been severely affected.
We've had many stars' homes burn, including some
iconic film sets.
Thousands of families have lost their homes this
week.
Also gone in the devastating wildfires are pieces
of Hollywood history, with a number of historic
houses and sets used in iconic TV and
film.
Will Rogers Ranch House, a property dating back
to the 1920s, was completely destroyed in the
Palisades fire.
Built on 186 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean,
it has 31 rooms, corrals, a stable, riding
ring, pole field, golf course, and hiking trails.
It was where the famed actor lived and
rode horses before his death in 1935.
And then there's the infamous Bunny Museum.
His widow, Betty Rogers, gave the property to
the state in 1944, and it became a
historic state park.
The Bunny Museum, located in Altadena and dedicated
to all things bunnies, was also destroyed.
Okay, great.
Um, for a more serious...
I've never heard of the bunny...
All things bunnies?
All things bunnies.
That's right, the Bunny Museum was destroyed.
For a more serious take on the impact
on Hollywood, we go to Reuters.
What's been the impact to the entertainment industry?
Well, the immediate impact is some productions are
shut down.
The Oscar nominations have been delayed by two
days.
We've just kicked off awards season with the
Golden Globes.
Everybody was feeling optimistic about a new year,
and now other red carpet events are being
postponed.
So that's kind of put a cast over
the whole thing that is, you know, not
as joyful in the celebratory season.
But beyond that, Hollywood has been through a
lot.
First, it was the pandemic, where there was
no production.
Then we had two strikes last year, where
a lot of people were out of work.
And the industry has still been recovering from
that, especially the crew members, the working class
people who work on TV and movie sets.
A lot of them have been out of
work for a long time.
And this is just another disruption.
Hopefully, this is a shorter, temporary one.
But, you know, it also makes you wonder
about the long-term impact.
There's been production leaving LA anyway, because it's
expensive to film here.
And, you know, I know there are people
asking questions like, oh, gosh, is this another
negative for LA as far as when people
are deciding where to shoot?
Are they going to once again decide we
want to go somewhere else?
And a lot of people in the entertainment
industry live here.
They love it here.
And they prefer to work here if they
can.
Oh, goodness gracious.
And everyone was so excited.
We had the Golden Globes, the 82nd.
Everyone was upbeat.
It was going to be another great year.
We're kicking off award show season.
And since this is my beat, Nikki Glaser
had this to say during the award.
So much has already happened in the first
half.
And the acceptance speeches have been on fire.
Who got shouted out the most?
Let's look at the numbers.
All right.
Cast and crew are leading the way with
11 mentions.
Moms are holding strong with three shout outs.
God, creator of the universe, zero mentions.
And Mario Lopez, host of Access Hollywood, won.
All right.
No surprise in this godless town.
Yeah.
A lot of people sent me that clip,
John.
Well, I saw that clip.
I was going to clip it.
No surprise.
No surprise in this godless town.
By the way, the funny joke in there,
because this is scripted, she's the one who
mentioned Mario Lopez.
Mario Lopez, that was the punchline.
But you heard everybody laugh.
Oh, yes, God got zero.
Don't mock God.
Yeah, I noticed that, too.
And then I thought back on it when
these fires broke out.
Why not?
Don't worship idols of gold.
Just some things to think of, Hollywood.
Anyway, I think we've covered the fires and
climate change sufficiently here.
The question is, will the fire still be
going by Thursday?
Oh, what do they have contained?
11% now or something?
No, no.
The last report, it was close to 20,
or in and around 20.
Yeah, I don't know.
And then if the wind dies.
They can put a stop to it pretty
quickly once the wind stops.
But it's a mess.
It is a mess.
A deserved mess.
It is a mess.
So I have some clips on TikTok and
what's happening.
Yeah.
Talk.
TikTok.
TikTok clips.
I don't see any TikTok clips.
What?
Oh, it's not TikTok clips.
It's about.
Oh, about TikTok.
Yes, about.
You don't have to.
There's a big difference between TikTok clips and
about TikTok.
Yeah.
And by the way, I want to mention
anybody out there who's trying to follow this.
I will say that John Oliver, about a
month when this thing first started breaking.
Okay.
John Oliver on Last Week in Tech is
about a month.
This is a month old.
Wait a minute.
He doesn't have a show called Last Week
in Tech.
I mean, Last Week in the New.
Whatever it is, this week, last week, whatever
it's called.
Last Week in Tech.
Okay.
Last Week in Tech.
He did a breakdown of this that was
absolutely stunning.
It was very good, and it's available on
YouTube.
You can just look up.
Oh, I should look at that.
TikTok ban.
Okay, I should look at that.
You don't have to go find it.
Get it free.
Screw those pay stuff.
So let's go with the TikTok law.
This is about the new law coming up,
and whether or not it's going to have
an impact.
And I put going right into the middle
of the discussion, not so much about the
background, and we go with the law explained
right off the bat, clip one.
Bobby, let me start with you.
What does this law actually do on the
19th?
The TikTok lawyer today kept saying that TikTok
would go dark.
Is that an overstatement?
Yeah.
On January 19th, Apple and Google will be
legally forced to remove TikTok from app stores,
and that means new users can't download it,
and ByteDance in China will not be able
to send the app software updates.
Also, web hosting services that provide back-end
support for TikTok will have to sever ties.
That means it's not going to have any
cloud support.
That's going to be a huge problem for
all of the people taking videos, commenting, trying
to use TikTok, because basically it will cripple
TikTok's infrastructure.
And Marcia, in the arguments today, what were
the justices focusing on?
John, they were really focused on the two
reasons that Congress and the administration have given
to justify the law, as Bobby just stated
it.
That had to do with the fact that
the Chinese government, through its very close alignment
with ByteDance, the China-based owner of TikTok,
may engage in covert content manipulation, as well
as its collection of the data of private
citizens, Americans, about 177 million Americans and their
contacts, and use both of those to undermine
national security.
There was also a First Amendment argument, wasn't
there?
Well, actually, the guts of this case is
whether the law itself violates the First Amendment
speech rights of TikTok USA and the users
of TikTok.
They're called creators, those who put content up
on TikTok.
They're called creators.
Content, wait a minute, covert content manipulation.
Nice term.
Very nice.
Yeah, there's no evidence of it, but it's
a great term.
Well, you can't see it.
It's the algo that is feeding our children
dumb crap.
It's hurting our children, and somehow they're stealing
more of your information than any other app.
Than all the rest of the people stealing
information?
Than any other app or phone or service.
They're all stealing information, but somehow this is
worse.
Yeah, well, we should probably reiterate before we
continue that our take here is that this
is just a, and the bill, the original
bill was sponsored by representatives who had huge
investments, mainly from Google.
This is about removing a competitor.
It's just, there is no evidence, I like
saying that, of them- You too, you're
worse than me.
Of stealing more data than anybody else.
And now, is there evidence of them giving
us, our children, although it's mainly adults in
my opinion, giving our children horrible things to
look at?
More so than reels?
More so than YouTube shorts?
I don't think there is evidence of that.
It looks the same to me.
And, of course, they give the Chinese kids
smart videos to look at.
Ooh, so smart.
There was a thing brought up in the,
John Oliver thing that wasn't brought up in
these clips, and I'll just mention it.
They had, he played a clip from some,
it was a podcast or some interview show
where they had three guys, three senators that
were on the intelligence committee, and they all
claimed, which Oliver ridiculed to no end, they
all claimed, well, you know, we have seen
things, we have our intelligence, we've been briefed,
we've been read in.
There's something else, there's a piece of missing
information that we're not getting, which could be
total bull crap, that supposedly the intel community
has found out something or they had a
secret memo or they got a mole that
they can't name, so they redacted a lot
of stuff.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
You know, I know what it is.
Hey, hey, what's that in your mouth?
Yeah, well, it's probably one of those elements,
but let's go with clip two.
Today, during the arguments, it was very interesting
because there was a lot of skepticism about
the first justification, the Chinese government engaging in
manipulation, covert manipulation of content, and whether there
actually was a speech interest here to look
at, as some of the justices said, and
I'll point in particular to Chief Justice Roberts.
He said Congress didn't care about the expression
on TikTok, meaning the speech or the ideas
on TikTok.
Congress didn't want to stop TikTok, he said.
What Congress wanted to do was to stop
China's control of TikTok.
So he was very skeptical that there was
a speech right here.
Also, there were justices who did recognize there
were speech rights belonging to TikTok USA and
the users of TikTok, but they questioned, for
example, Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether those speech
impediments or restrictions were really substantial because the
law itself, she said, really was targeted at
ByteDance and its divestiture.
Were the justices more skeptical of one side
or the other?
Did they tip their hand at all about
what they might do?
Well, I think they were very tough on
both sides, but I think what resounded most
with the justices was that second interest that
the government offered for the law, the collection
of the private information of American citizens.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, he said that's
a huge concern now and in the future.
How about this?
How about the Intel guys took these representatives
aside and said, look at all this information
they have on you.
Look at all this data.
Look at what they did.
Did you know?
You know, like one of those emails you
get, you know, saying you need to send
me a Bitcoin because I have video of
you jerking off.
You know that scam?
No, I don't know that.
I haven't gotten that scam.
Oh, this is a well-known scam.
In fact, it's it's upped.
It's they've upped it a little bit.
So everyone gets the same email.
It's important to pay attention to this message
right now.
Take a minute to relax, breathe and really
dig into it, because we're about to discuss
a deal between you and me and I
ain't playing games.
You do not know anything about me.
And it goes on and on and on.
I placed a malware on a porn website
and you visited it to watch.
You know what I mean?
While you were busy watching those videos, your
device started functioning as a remote protocol device,
which provided me complete access to your smartphone.
I can peep at everything on your screen,
flick on the cam and the mic.
You wouldn't have a clue.
Oh, and I have access to all your
emails, contacts and social media accounts as well.
So in essence, they say, can you imagine
this note coming to me?
There's a reason.
But I'd have to go check the phone
in the drawer and see what the hell
is going on.
But they've upped their game now.
And it's quite it's quite good now because
everyone's Tina received this email.
I got one.
I've got this a couple of times.
But and everyone I know who has a
phone has received one.
But now they're they are sending the same
email.
And it says, I know that calling and
then it has your phone number or visiting.
It has your address would be a better
way to contact you in case you don't
act.
So now someone has got a database.
That's good.
It's good.
They probably bought that that that database.
You can buy the database.
You can also actually this relates to a
tip of the day, by the way, coming
up later in the show.
What you just said.
But they can also do nowadays.
They can get your social security number and
throw that in there.
Oh, that'll be next.
So.
So my point is, there's a lot of
information and you just take one of these
people aside and say, look at what I've
got on you.
And, you know, please don't pay attention to
what Google, Facebook, everybody else has on.
You know, these guys have it.
That's what you do.
That's how you do it.
And, of course, the biggest problem with Tick
-Tock probably is they don't allow as much
access to our Intel or Intel community as
these other guys do.
And now that I think about it, I
think it is not coincidental that Zuckerberg all
of a sudden is changing the policies because
he knows that this is going to happen.
Tick-Tock is going to go down.
Come to reels.
We let you do free speech stuff.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Yeah.
So I got one short clip in the
final one.
And the short clip is the wow clip.
And it's got pieces.
I thought this was a good one.
This clip three.
As the government pointed out, that data, private
data could be used by China in the
future to blackmail future CIA officers.
It could be used to try to turn
certain America's Americans into spies.
And so I think when you look overall
at the argument.
Wait a minute.
Does she say turn Americans into spies?
Yeah.
Earn certain America's.
Yeah, Tick-Tock could turn Americans into spies.
It could be used to try to turn
certain America's Americans into spies.
And so I think when you looked overall
at the arguments, that was something that may
persuade a majority to very much uphold this
law.
So.
So let me just understand the scenario.
Wow.
This is a cool dance.
These kids are doing.
I think I'll become a spy for China.
Yep.
Well, actually, I'm going to skip.
No, we'll play clip four.
But before we do that, I want to
back off, back up and go to an
NPR clip called the Tick-Tock blackmail.
This is the.
Now, what kind of blackmail?
You just kind of got maybe an angle
on the blackmail.
But listen to NPR's interpretation of how you
can.
There's lots of ways of getting blackmail using
Tick-Tock.
This is what they think it is.
Yeah.
In court, Prelogger said.
I mean, think about it.
Beijing has all of this information on millions
of teenagers now.
But, you know, maybe they don't want to
do anything with it now.
But weaponize it later when some of these
teens say, you know, take jobs with the
government or maybe join the military.
So they're going to basically do what parents
do to their kids.
You take a video of the little kid
when he's three crying or making a fuss.
Then you show it at his high school
reunion.
I mean, this is basically the theory is
that, yeah, you got some dipshit girl doing
that stupid dance, you know, when she's 14
or 13 or 12.
And let's save that for the next 20
years.
Let's save it in the vault.
And then we'll look her up.
And then when she starts to work for
the Health and Human Services, we'll bring it
up and blackmail her with it.
What are you nuts?
Wow.
These NPR people must be doing some really
dirty stuff with their phones.
Or they're doing some real heavy duty coke.
So let's go with this Tick-Tock for
the final clip.
And Bobby, if that happens, if this law
is upheld, is there any indication what Tick
-Tock and its owners would do as the
19th approaches?
That's really the million-dollar question.
We don't know.
Tick-Tock and its parent company.
Since when did it become the million-dollar
question?
Sorry to be kind of nitpicky about this,
but it was the $64,000 question.
Is there or has there ever been a
million-dollar question?
Yeah, actually, yes.
Oh, there is?
There's been more than a few.
Like, do you want to be a millionaire
is one of them.
Oh.
And the original $64,000 question was upgraded
some years later on a show that I
think failed over time.
And I think the final amount was a
million.
Okay.
I stand corrected.
And Bobby, if that happens, if this law
is upheld, is there any indication what Tick
-Tock and its owners would do as the
19th approaches?
That's really the million-dollar question.
And we don't know.
Tick-Tock and its parent company, ByteDance, are
in this really precarious amount of uncertainty right
now.
If the law is upheld, President-elect Donald
Trump will not yet be in office.
And between January 19th, the start date, and
when Trump is sworn in the 20th, there's
going to be 24 hours of limbo.
Limbo!
And I have sources inside of Google and
inside of Apple who say, look, we've heard
from our general counsels that we're not about
to be out of compliance with a federal
law on the books.
So they are planning, the two big tech
companies, to remove Tick-Tock on the 19th.
And I think a big question is, even
if the law is upheld, will Trump then,
can he rather, extend the deadline?
How do you—this came up in the court
today, right?
How do you extend the deadline on a
ban that has already started?
So lots of unknowns, but it could get
really serious really fast for Tick-Tock.
And actually, at the end of last year,
the president-elect filed a brief in the
court asking them to delay this so that
he could have time to try to negotiate
a deal, as he put it.
And is there a chance that he just
might—if the law is upheld, he just might
not enforce it?
That's a possibility.
Trump, remember, was the person who started the
Tick-Tock ban movement during his first term.
But now coming into office, he wants to
be Tick-Tock's savior.
And it is within the realm of possibility
that he instructs his Justice Department to not
enforce this law.
If you look at the language of the
law Congress passed, it puts a lot of
leeway in the hands of the president.
The president will be the one who will
be interpreting and instructing his administration to enforce
the law.
So a lot will come down to what
is Trump going to do once he's in
office, regardless of what the high court decides.
That's interesting.
What do you think?
I really am clueless about what's going to
happen.
I mean, they could put the ban on
it.
I think they may punt and say, well,
you know, we're supposed to come up with
this.
We're going to push it off a couple
of days, just enough to get Trump in
and let Trump come in and make a
fuss one way or the other.
I don't think they're going to get the
decision out in time.
I think they're going to push it.
They've done this before.
Well, you know, we almost have a decision.
We got to think about another week.
Do you hear those hoofbeats?
Do you hear the hoofbeats?
I hear a knight in shining armor on
a white horse.
Oh, yes.
It's Mr. Wonderful.
The reports are you're buying TikTok.
So what's the deal?
The reports are you're buying TikTok.
Is that happening?
Are you getting close?
What's the status here of you and TikTok?
Well, if it's going to be sold, I'm
going to be buying it.
And I'll tell you what we're waiting for.
Four o'clock on Friday, this Friday, Supreme
Court hearing is going to occur.
I've teamed up with Frank McCourt.
The two of us were bidding against each
other for a long time.
But it made sense to get together for
a whole host of reasons.
And we put an announcement out on Monday
for one specific reason.
The company has appealed to the Supreme Court.
They've lost every case right up to the
Supreme Court.
So here we are.
What they're telling the Supreme Court is, hey,
look, we know we're spyware, but we operate
in a society of free speech.
So even for spying on you.
I don't think they've said that.
Screw you.
And no one's going to buy us because
we're not going to sell the algorithm.
So we decided to let the justices know
by putting out a press release saying we
have a letter of intent.
We've got a syndicate.
We have the 20 billion dollars we think
we need.
And we don't want the algorithm.
It's spyware.
It's Chinese spyware.
You keep the algorithm, keep spying on everybody
else and your own people.
That's fine.
But we don't want that.
And that's why you're getting shut down in
the first place.
So we're going to rewrite it, Americanize it
and make TikTok wonderful again.
That guy is such a phony jamoke.
O'Leary?
O'Leary.
I mean, I heard him the other day.
He's buying 20 billion dollars worth of land
that has coal in it so he can
build data centers for AI.
The guy is a fantastic.
He just makes stuff up on the spot.
He's really good television.
He's great television.
I have thoughts about this.
And I was surprised at my own thinking.
I should have thought.
Wow.
I was stunned.
I guess he is.
What the United States is good at, what
we have always been good at, is media.
We're great at television.
We're great at movies.
We're great at music.
We dominate the world.
Podcasting.
Well, I have separate thoughts about podcasting.
But just mainstream dribble and drab.
We are fantastic at it.
We don't need less.
We need more.
We need much more.
We need a national investment fund to create
more short-form video companies.
We need more influencers, not less.
More TikTok.
We need many more Kardashians and Paris Hiltons.
We need a lot more Taylor Swift and
Beyonce.
These people are, in fact, good for our
GDP.
I have a whole series of clips on
short-form video.
They're making global sales out of nothing but
creativity.
We export this to the entire world.
We need to dominate in this.
We do.
Yes, more, more, more.
Export it all.
I need 10 Taylor Swifts.
More of this stuff.
Now, of course, to offset that, we need
local podcasts, obviously.
I mean, that's what I'm doing.
But this is so obvious to me.
And have them hawk American products.
Get them in bikinis on our cars.
Drink in our beer.
This is what we excel at.
This is very short-sighted to shut down
these things.
We need more.
Who cares about the kids?
You know, some of these dancers have millions
of followers.
They're great.
It's great.
Export dancing.
Exactly why no one knows.
Export the dancers.
Sell stuff with it.
America should be.
The dancing dipshits, that's what I call them.
America should be short-form first.
Make short-form American again.
And more bubblegum pop like Taylor Swift.
I saw J-Lo on Saturday Night Live.
More of that.
More hips.
This is what we do.
Okay, speaking of hips, we had the one
girl from South America.
What was her name?
My hips don't lie.
Shakira.
One.
We got one.
What other superstars do we have?
ABBA, they're almost dead.
There's nothing else coming from anywhere in the
world.
We are it.
We need to be exploiting this through the
Internet with many more short-form video influencers
and bubblegum crap.
Reverse the flow.
We're going to have to because if you
listen to these clips, the short-form clips
that we have time for before the break.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I'm excited.
You're all in on me.
It's China.
China.
That's really kicking ass in short-form video.
I don't see it.
And by the way, when I play these
clips, I kept thinking about Ron Bloom.
Bloom should be in charge of this fund.
Ron Bloom should be running the TikToks, the
short-form video company fund.
We need to subsidize this stuff.
It was like, you know, there was this
at Meteor.
You come to you founded with Bloom.
There was this push toward the short-form
video stuff, which never took off.
It's his birthday today, by the way.
Oh, yeah.
Happy birthday.
He's not listening to the show.
I guarantee you he's not listening to the
show.
Well, let's play clip one, and then I
will talk about some of this stuff.
These days, most of the video entertainment we
watch isn't at the movies, on television, or
even on a computer.
It's on a smartphone.
To cater to these changing habits, companies, many
of them Chinese, are turning out bite-sized
soap operas for phone viewing.
The company literally was called Bite Size TV.
That was what Mevio became.
Amazing.
He was far ahead of his time.
I'm beginning to think so.
And you know who else was ahead of
their time?
Who was it?
Remember, was it Geffen?
What was that stupid company where they were
doing little shorts and series?
Actually, I have it right here.
On the tip of your tongue.
What was it called?
With the woman who ran HP into the
ground.
What was her name?
I know.
Well, play clip two, and I'll have it.
Here again, Allie Rogan.
You may have seen the ads on TikTok
or Facebook.
The plots often involve billionaires, werewolves, or sordid
affairs.
And the dramas unfold in one to two
-minute increments.
In the palm of your hand.
Showing up everywhere I go again, and the
business deals with me.
With one cliffhanger after another to entice viewers
to continue.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say
you're still in love with me.
And in the first quarter of 2024, apps
like RealShort and DramaBox raked in $146 million
in global revenue outside of China, an 8
,000% increase over 2023.
E.J. Dixon is a senior writer at
New York Magazine covering culture.
E.J., thank you so much for joining
us.
Walk us through what these micro dramas are,
and what is the appeal?
So, they're called vertical shorts.
Vertical shorts!
And they're essentially feature-length films that are
broken down into minute-long chunks, like the
size of your average TikTok video.
And the idea is that the viewer will
just scroll through them like they do with
a TikTok feed.
And watch the whole thing in one sitting.
They're not intended for consumption like on a
laptop, or on like a traditional big-screen
TV.
It's almost exclusively for mobile consumption.
Okay, the good news is the troll room
gave me the company name, Quibi.
The bad news, the troll who gave it
to me has the nickname Rape Dwarf.
Actually, I sent Brunetti these clips to get
his feedback.
These are Hollywood clips.
And he said, remember, it's Jeffrey Katzenberg's Quibi.
You know what?
No.
What is $159 million?
That's nothing.
Drop in the bucket.
When it gets to the Chinese numbers, that's
what's frightening.
Anyway, he says Katzenberg's Quibi was supposed to
do this.
Clearly, it didn't work.
But the idea will sustain as evidenced by
the shorts referenced here.
It's inevitable.
Phones have reduced everyone's attention span.
Okay, so this does strengthen my argument, right?
Yeah, actually, there's no contradiction here.
Tell us about how popular this is in
China and outside of China.
We know that in China it's a $4
.4 billion industry.
$4.4 billion.
But how much has the industry grown since
it took off there?
They're incredibly popular in China.
They sort of took off around the pandemic.
And the industry has grown exponentially since then.
The biggest market is not in the United
States.
It's in countries where people are more likely
to consume entertainment on their mobile phones, like
India and the Philippines.
They have big market share there.
But they're also popular in the United States.
I spoke to the CEO of one of
these companies, RealShort, which is kind of like
the leading app in this space.
And they're based in Silicon Valley.
And he said that they're pulling in about
$10 million in revenue per month, which is
pretty staggering.
No.
I don't mean to overgeneralize here, but the
content is not exactly— it doesn't feel Oscar
-worthy.
Is that— You fool.
You fool.
Is that a trademark of this genre?
And is that something that, if it becomes
more mainstream, would have to change?
I would say not Oscar-worthy is a
good way of putting it.
It's some of the most abysmal content I've
ever seen in my life, to be perfectly
frank.
And when you talk to the actors and
the producers and even, like, the CEO of
RealShort about this, they see that as an
asset.
Like, they don't see the low quality as
being detrimental to the success of the platform
because they don't really—they don't see it as
an art form.
John, call up John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins.
Tell him we're coming in.
We have a deck.
We've got a pitch.
We've got a pitch for him.
We've got a pitch that he just—he doesn't
want to lose out on this one before
we go to Calacanis.
Because we will.
I have to read what Brunetti says in
terms of this quality problem.
He says, As for production quality, people have
become much more forgiving, expecting to focus on
the content of information rather than the production
value due to things like YouTube and podcasts.
No agenda.
It's a case in point.
Lower production value is a draw.
What are you talking about, Brunetti?
In quality they expect.
Wow.
If there's one thing people say about our
show, it's the quality of production.
We play 90 clips in a show.
Yeah.
Well, no, I think he was referring to—
And we're tight.
Yeah, we are.
Yeah.
All right.
Clip four.
Maybe it's offhanded.
But let's go with it.
That was peculiar.
He's a jealous Hollywood douche is what he
is.
That's what he's doing.
That's what he is.
He tried doing podcasting too, you know.
I know.
Exactly.
Did he consult me?
No.
How did it work out?
No, but you know, this is the thing.
I said it before.
You're easy to get a hold of.
And, by the way, with the tip of
the day, you'll be easier to get a
hold of.
Uh-oh.
Okay.
It's a tip of the day.
You know, this tip of the day coming
up is something that I'm very reluctant to
give as a tip because it's just so
good.
Okay.
So we're on clip four?
Yes.
Yeah, we can skip this.
This is just bitching and moaning about production
quality.
Okay.
All right.
We already just did that.
All right.
Clip five?
So let's go to payment.
Clip five.
How do you make money?
Bitcoin.
By the way, this is outrageous, if true.
Bitcoin.
It's Bitcoin.
No.
What's the payment model?
How do people pay to get this content?
Typically what happens is somebody will download the
app, and they advertise heavily on TikTok and
Instagram.
And you'll swipe through about 15 minutes worth
of content, or 15 one-minute videos.
And then they'll say, if you want five
more chapters, or if you want to watch
five more minutes, you have to pay X
amount of money.
It's the premium model.
$5.
So in order to finish one of these
series, the user typically has to pay between
$25 to $40.
Do you anticipate that this is going to
continue to grow?
Is this what audiences are looking for these
days?
It's a great question.
I got a lot of mixed answers on
that.
There are people, even within the vertical shorts
industry themselves, who think this is just a
fad, this is a niche thing, this is
never going to get traction in mainstream Hollywood.
Mainstream Hollywood thinks of this as a joke.
But I've also heard rumors that pretty big
platforms are interested in getting into this genre.
I think that what we've learned over the
past five years with the streaming wars and
with the strikes and all the obstacles that
Hollywood has had to overcome is that Hollywood
underestimates this type of digital content, this type
of innovative digital content at its own peril.
Well, so I think she might be somewhat
wrong because Brunetti had a positive view of
this thing.
And the other thing is you've already done
this with your detective stories.
Remember that you were like a detective on
some podcast that was shot in Georgia or
something and you came in as one of
the stars of the detective show?
What are you talking about?
Don't you remember this series?
You did some acting.
A Swamp Thing?
No, no.
It was later.
It was some other thing.
It was on Mevio.
I remember it.
And you came in, you wore a trench
coat.
Wait, wait, wait.
That was written by Mark Yashimoda Nemkov.
Yeah.
I'm kind of remembering this.
And you were an actor and it was
a terrible product.
Yes.
Just like this.
It was a bad product.
Just like this.
I'm looking at my IMDb.
And you could have been divvied up into
a bunch of little segments and you could
have made this the millions of dollar deal
here.
No.
But you've already done this is the point.
This is how unbelievable this is.
You've already done it and forgot you did
it.
And, as usual with things I do early
on, made no money from it.
It's amazing.
It's a triple threat.
My track record is intact.
No.
Sure, this is what, and a lot of
money will be spent on this.
This is why I joked about calling Kleiner
Perkins.
What people want.
They want the dancing.
They want the makeup in the morning.
Hey, get ready with me.
They want.
By the way, how many women are on
these shows talking about one thing or another
or just talking about makeup and putting makeup
on during the TikTok video?
I know a little bit about the.
Slashing themselves with makeup and doing the eyeliner
and cut, cut, cut.
Yes.
Selling moving product, baby.
Moving products.
I know a little bit about the cosmetic
industry.
It's a great business.
It's just goop in a different tube.
Everyone gets the eyeliner pencils all from the
guys in Germany.
One company does all the eyeliner pencils.
It's goop and just goop.
Goop in a tube.
This is great.
We want to see the cooking videos.
How do I make a carnivore pizza?
This is what we want.
And we are the rulers of that.
And of course, of course, Brunetti would like
this.
He's a Hollywood guy.
He's going to lose his shirt if he
gets into this business.
Stay away from it, Dana.
Stay away.
You want to have the influencers.
You want to have the nut jobs who
are cheap.
And then, you know, you heat them up
with your, with your algo.
Oh, look at this guy.
He's got a million, a million followers.
Boom.
You get 2 million followers.
Keep it going.
Export.
That's the business.
Not this vertical shorts.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, it's limited.
Limited versus the hundreds of billions that American
make exporting.
Our dancers, our cookers, our makeup ladies, our
guys with guns.
Guys with guns.
Oh, my God.
This is such a great, great category.
So, I have to, I don't want to
burst your bubble.
Chicks in bikinis with guns.
Even better.
Yeah, well, that's always a winner.
There's a winner, by the way.
So, I have, I usually run off of
a VPN.
So, when I hit TikTok online, it usually
is TikTok in Argentina.
And so, they start throwing these videos at
me because I'm always looking for somebody complaining
about the elections or some, usually a black
woman bitching about how Ken was going to
still be president.
But they don't have those in Argentina.
But they have the dancing girls.
And they got the guys falling down.
They got the cooking.
Everything's exactly the same.
Yes.
And that should be us.
In Spanish.
I know.
We can export.
We got Spaniards.
We got Spanish chicks.
I got a Spaniard over here right now.
Hey, buddy.
We are a melting pot.
We are a melting pot of cultures.
Anyway, that, if I ever get to speak
to President Trump, this is what I will
tell him.
We need more influencers.
Mr. Wonderful, buy it.
I'm all for it.
Let's go.
And with that, I want to thank you
for your courage.
In the morning to you, the man who
put the C's in covert content manipulation.
Say hello to my friend on the other
end.
The one, the only, Mr. John C.
Devorah.
Yeah, in the morning to you, Mr. Adam
Carell.
Say in the morning to the ships, the
seaboats, and the raffia, and the air subs,
and the water, and the dames and knights
out there.
Hello, trolls.
In the morning to you.
Let me count you for a second.
What do you think it is today?
What do you think we have?
It should be 2,500.
Yeah, it's right below that.
2,432.
With the average.
Well, we're also late.
We're a little late.
But average.
Average.
What is not average is the support we
got today.
Below average.
Below average, it was terrible.
We're lucky to be alive.
We're going to have to start doing makeup
tips.
That's just terrible.
Just to stay afloat.
Video, yeah, I can see it.
Just to stay afloat.
Poke your eye out.
Oh, my eye.
I don't even know how women can draw
those.
I guess you get used to it after
doing it for hundreds of years.
You know, Donnie Wahlberg, he's married to Jenny
McCarthy.
And they have a whole spiel, man.
She goes live for hours selling her own
makeup line.
He's sitting there next to her going, yeah,
that looks good, babe.
It looks good, babe.
Really?
You have to watch this.
And it's almost like QVC.
The stream runs continuously.
Like, she never sleeps.
And she's like, hey, guys, look at this.
And, of course, she's beautiful.
And she just keeps on putting this stuff
on.
And then, look at this product.
You can buy it now.
Go to my website.
This is the future.
What do you think?
We're going to manufacture stuff?
Come on.
I just don't see it.
You know, it will make some things.
Beer, beer, guns, cars.
Yeah, but we also can make jet fighters.
Jet fighters, burgers, big beautiful ships.
Jet fighters and burgers are us.
Yes.
And there's nothing wrong with it.
You know, I check out these fast food
places.
I got a burger.
I got something worth eating.
You got a burger update.
Yes.
The bacon melt on sale at Jack in
the Box is quite edible.
Now, does that come with bread?
Or is it just bacon, cheese, burger, and
melt?
No, it's got two pieces of, it looks
like, upside down buns.
So the outside looks like there's a piece
of bread.
But it's two patties with two things of
gooey cheese and some bacon.
What more could you ask for?
It's five bucks.
What made you purchase this product?
I'm surprised.
Every time they have Burger Wars, you know,
and all these chains, I always say, this
is interesting.
Burger Wars.
I go check them out every so often
for the benefit of the show.
Because, you know, I used to do the
McDonald's.
You can't do that anymore.
It makes you sick.
No, because it's so unedible.
It makes you sick.
Or inedible that I don't even try a
McDonald's anymore.
It's nasty.
It's like eating paper.
It's nasty.
I'm with you.
It's nasty.
Just nasty.
And the fries are soggy?
I mean.
Oh, no.
It's gone off the rails.
And I don't understand why people go there
at all.
The trolls are in the troll room.
And, of course, have been quite helpful today.
Good work, trolls.
We appreciate you.
They tune in every single Thursday and Sunday.
We do the show live, which is, it
is the way.
If you're thinking of doing a podcast, do
it live.
Just do it live.
Because you have a built-in studio audience.
I mean, it's amazing.
It is truly the way to go.
And so they're listening at trollroom.io. They
listen live.
They can hop into the troll room if
they want to.
You can also use one of the modern
podcast apps.
Don't use anything phony, like from China or
Cupertino or Sweden.
Get something made in America.
Like the guys from Fountain there in the
UK.
Get a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com.
You'll get a bat signal when we go
live.
And when we publish 90 seconds later, you're
like, Whoa, they're published already.
It's good to go.
And we appreciate that.
Well, we don't get it out in 90
seconds.
No, no.
When we publish, it's out in 90 seconds.
Oh, yeah.
When we publish, you get a bat signal.
Just for people to know, it takes about
a half an hour to, usually about a
half an hour to get the show wrapped
up.
Yeah, half an hour to 45 minutes.
Yeah, sometimes.
So the trolls contribute.
We appreciate that.
Time, talent, and treasure.
Actually, to help us out today to explain
the value for value model, although not entirely
correct, I love the fact that we started
this 17 years ago.
We have been using the phrase value for
value.
In the last couple years, it has started
to catch on.
People are using it without even knowing the
origin.
But there's another podcast out there that is
using value for value, and they credit us.
Oh, well, that's nice.
Please welcome J-Cal, Jason Calacanis.
And we had this concept of anybody could
be a producer this week in startups.
And I had cribbed that from Adam Curry,
who was doing that on his No Agenda
podcast at the time.
And I wound up panning that because we
had so much advertising, I didn't need the
money.
And I thought, I'll just go with ads.
But the one thing that I think Adam
Curry and John C.
Dvorak, John Dvorak, what they got right was
they have such an engaged audience.
I forgot about No Agenda for a couple
of years, and then I started listening to
it again.
And it's actually quite good.
And what I love about what John Dvorak,
who I grew up on, he used to
write for PC Magazine, which was a print
magazine about PCs.
And I always idolized John Dvorak, Jim Seymour,
all the guys who wrote these columns, because
I was obsessed with PCs in the 80s.
And my dream was to someday be a
columnist in PC Magazine.
And, of course, Adam Curry was, hey, it's
Adam Curry, watch the VJ.
I was like, well, that's a pretty cool
gig, too.
So I love both of those guys.
They're probably a decade or two ahead of
me in careers.
And I just thought they were great broadcasters
and writers.
Putting all that aside, that's such an activated
audience.
And they do something called value for value.
So you can provide value to them by
writing show notes or suggesting stories or making
album art.
And then, or you can make a donation,
and then they shout you out on the
air.
I'm not planning on doing that.
But what I think is really interesting is
that they...
Okay, there's your mistake.
No credit for you.
We're not doing that, no.
We're not doing any of that credit, no,
no.
I love J.
Cole.
Now, he did a thing recently where he
went after Zuckerberg on his show with all
the VCs up there.
I forget the name of the show called.
Yeah, the...
Shout Out or...
The VC show.
Choke Point.
Choke Point show?
I don't know what the name of the
show is.
No, that was the title of that episode.
No, it's called All In, All In Podcast.
All In, which is good.
It's entertaining if you want to listen to
the financial guys go on and on about
how they're going to make money.
But he goes off on Zuckerberg.
I thought it was over the top.
But very entertaining.
Well, that's what he does.
J.
Cole does that.
He's always been entertaining.
So we want to give credit...
Even though he talks like this.
We want to give credit to Darren O
'Neill for his outstanding album art for episode
1729, which we titled Hatchet Man, which Elon
Musk is Trump's hatchet man.
And he did a stroopwafel, or as some
would say, stroopwafel, which had the No Agenda
Bakery, Noah Curry Dvorak.
It had a windmill on there.
It was in cellophane packaging.
We suspect it probably wasn't even AI generated.
And what we said is, if Tante Neil
had done this, we would have not even
wavered and chosen it right away.
And turns out Tante Neil, there was a
little conversation going on there over the mastodons.
She said, I would have done this exactly
myself, but I was on an airplane and
couldn't do it in time.
How about that for coincidence?
Wow.
So Darren is channeling Tante Neil.
He is a Dutch master now.
A Dutch master.
I don't know if everybody got this, but
it entertained us.
We thought it was cool.
Let me see what else.
I just thought it was, it was a
well-structured, composition-wise, and it looked so
realistic looking.
It looks like we do own a bakery.
In fact, exit strategy.
No Agenda Bakery.
Buy your stroopwafels here.
Yeah.
Other arts.
I got a note.
I got a note from someone.
Oh, do tell.
Because I bitched about this stupid idea of
letting the thing soften and get gooey.
And he says, you're wrong, Dvorak.
And he shows me a picture of some
company's stroopwafel that actually has instructions on the
back on how to do it.
How to put the thing over the steaming
hot cup of coffee.
Yeah.
Silliest thing ever.
No, it's the Dutch way.
It's the Dutch way.
Well, my dad used to dunk donuts.
Yeah.
So all the other art was mediocre at
best.
A lot of lighter fluid.
You know, okay.
Fire extinguishers.
There was some fish.
I did use comic strip bloggers Hollywood sign
on fire for the newsletter.
Yeah, that was decent.
And we talked about correct the records Canada
flag with the maple leaf saying I have
a complaint, but it was so simplistic compared
to the intricacies of the stroopwafel that it
just barely lost out.
Just barely.
It's a good idea though.
Yes.
On that note, as I take notes, everybody
has to understand, John does nothing.
He just tells me to remember everything, to
do everything, to write everything down, make a
note, put this in the show.
And John just shows up.
You make me sound like a slouch.
John just shows up.
And it was my job to remind you.
You're in, you're out.
The leaderboard recap of 2024 of the art
generator and the artists.
I was just about to bring that up.
Oh, sure you were.
Yeah.
It turns out that last year's winner in
so far as the annual count was concerned,
it was Francisco Scaramanga.
I think he won 15 times 16 as
of recently.
Wow.
Beating Kenny Ben by four and Darren by
five.
Darren is really up there.
Tantaniel got eight and Sir Shug is a
six, correct the record, six.
But so he gets the MFA.
Master of Fine Arts.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
So Scaramanga, go to noagenderings.com, I guess.
Or send a note to noagendershow.net and
tell Jay.
Notes at noagendershow.net.
What's your name?
It should be on the MFA and we'll
send one out to you.
Yes.
Congratulations.
Yeah, I was actually, I was stunned by
that.
That's great.
Now it's fantastic.
That's good.
I mean, the guy hates the show.
It's amazing.
And we're just showering love on him.
Poor.
You know, some people, they just soak it
up and they give you the finger.
It's just the way it is with some
people.
You give your enemy to drink and to
eat, it's like pouring hot coals on his
head.
It just, it will come back to him
eventually.
We'll see.
A reminder, right after today's show, and we
have plenty of shows still to come, Satellite
Skirmish will be on live, which is this,
it's this huge musical cacophony of crazies on
the stream.
I think they have video too.
So that'll be right after No Agenda today.
I definitely wanted to mention that because that
is No Agenda Nation at its finest.
That's the kind of stuff that needs to
be on TikTok, to be quite honest, but
they won't do it because they don't believe
in that stuff.
So that'll be there for you.
Other ways you can contribute, of course, is
through sending your treasure.
Yeah, we love that.
Not a lot today, but, you know, we're
hoping that this minor complaint will spur people
by saying, you know, I get a lot
of value from those guys.
I found today's episode valuable.
And now that I think about it, I
listen to six hours a week of these
guys.
I should probably return some value.
We, unlike Jason, J-Cal, we thank everybody.
$50 and above, and we give you the
amounts and we tell you where they live.
Well, not their full address, of course, but
their general area.
And just like Hollywood, because this is the
Hollywood portion of the show, the new Hollywood
is value for value.
We like to give away credits, and these
credits do work in the old-fashioned Hollywood,
whatever's left of it, like imdb.com.
$200, you are an associate executive producer.
You get that credit.
It's good for the rest of your life.
You know, it's documented.
It's in the show notes.
You get the credit.
Again, you can use it anywhere.
Credits are recognized.
Put it on your CV, your resume.
Put it in your social media profiles, whatever
you want, and we'll read your note.
$300 and above, you become an executive producer,
which is one step higher, according to us.
And with that, you get that credit for
the rest of your life, and we also
read your notes.
So I will kick it off here with
Eric Reinhart, right down the road in San
Antonio, Texas, who sends us $343.75 and
says, this is it.
Thank you for all the value you two
provide.
Stay alert.
No agendization.
And he wants some relationship karma, which, oops,
which, of course, I shall provide for him.
You've got karma.
Thank you very much, Eric.
And then we go from him to, oops,
hold on.
I just moved my spreadsheet back, back, back,
back, back, to Sir Tyler in Alaska.
Ah, Sir Tyler, Tyler Systems.
Yeah, and he came with $345.75, actually
the same amount, which I believe is $333.
It's probably $333.33. Yeah, $333 plus extra
money, yeah.
And he writes, he's the AI guy that
didn't get his note in last show, but
here it is.
Good.
Tyler Systems is in Anchorage.
LLC continues to outsource problems and insource solutions
by supporting the best media deconstruction.
The planet McLuhan teaches us.
You brought him up.
Yep.
The medium is the message.
And what is AI but another medium?
You snooze, you lose, producers.
Keep engaging with me, and more importantly, with
the technology, and you will find yourself understanding
it better than most.
It's very doable.
My Boots on the Ground experience, also informed
by formal academic research, shows that the best
managers are actually the most effective users of
chatbots.
Really?
This is specific to chatbots, but a talented
middle manager, a rare gem, is a better
GPT user out of the box than a
skilled programmer who sucks at communicating, much less
rare.
I watch productive public sector managers automate their
jobs with chat GPT in a few hours.
He's creating a monster here.
Yeah.
In a few hours.
And also watch incredibly talented programmers refuse to
even touch it because they just fancy autocomplete.
They say it's just fancy autocomplete.
That would be you, Adam.
Yes.
Who is...
He didn't write that.
I did.
Who is better positioned for our future?
Your motivated millennial, Sir Tyler in Alaska.
Slow to respond, but standing by at Tyler
at tylersystems.com.
There you go.
He responds to all inquiries in time.
Thank you, Sir Tyler.
Let us know how the business is going.
Sir Scott of Diablo is in Clayton, California,
333.33, and he sent the fees.
We appreciate that.
Happy New Year, gents, from Sir Scott of
Diablo.
Was overdue on patronage.
No Agenda remains my number one podcast and
regular priority to get your respective takes on
the latest hootenannies in this world.
Wishing you well from Clayton, California.
See?
This is what it is.
He recognizes the value he receives.
He returned it.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, brother.
Clayton.
Shout out to Clayton.
Sir Kevin, which is a nice little town
in eastern Contra Costa County.
Sir Kevin deals in Huntersville, North Carolina, 333
.33. On the last show, he writes, during
the donation segment, you discussed backup solutions.
I usually visit my parents once a week,
and my dad, by the way, this is,
yes, this is Sir Kevin, and my dad,
photographer, and I, amateur photographer and computer geek,
have a longstanding agreement to exchange external hard
drives whenever we need to.
Each of us has one hard drive at
home and another at the other's house.
There you go.
The initial expense of another external hard drive
is a bit of a hurdle.
No, not in today's world.
You can get an 18 terabyte drive for
next to nothing nowadays, 18.
But if things go sideways, one of us
can always restore the other's files.
Every show we talk about how connection is
protection.
It's a very simple way for producers to
protect themselves without relying on the cloud.
Buy a couple of external hard drives and
don't buy them at the same time.
Yes.
It's a Dvorak tip.
Find another, because they'll be in the same
batch and if one goes, they both go.
That's right.
Find another producer at your local meetup and
swap hard drives whenever you get together.
Thank you for your courage, Kevin Dills.
A backup and a backup to that backup
and a backup to the backup to the
backup.
He didn't ask for that, but I couldn't
resist.
Anonymous comes in with 33333 and sends in
a typewritten note, says, ITM, Adam and John,
my wife and I were listening to show
1578.
Whoa, that's...
We haven't gotten there yet, have we?
Oh yeah, that's an old show.
No, 1578.
When we heard you read the note from
Pete, the podcast shoplifter, at which point my
wife started calling me a shoplifter douchebag.
Whoa.
But I wasn't moved until show 1691 when
John mentioned that Mimi said the exit strategy
talk was having a dampening effect on donations.
That convinced me that you boys won't be
esconding to Brazil.
With this donation, 33333, please admit me to
your truth cabal.
Please play Yak Karma for your excellent producers
as their COVID reports were invaluable.
Also, please play Fletcher's Leo Yell.
Really?
Play Fletcher's Leo Yell as Twit is where
I first heard of the best podcast in
the universe.
Thank you for your courage.
Anonymous, dude named Ben.
Leo!
You've got karma.
It's been a while.
There we go.
Dame Astrid and Sir Mark.
There they are.
There they are in Tokyo.
Dear John and Adam, or dear John, dear
Adam, you're fabulous.
And life is marvelous listening to No Agenda.
Wish we were here in Tokyo for our
no cheesecake sheneka.
Sheneka.
Hai!
Sheneka!
AKA New Year meetup on January 25th, Saturday.
If you're in Tokyo, you need to go
to their meetups.
Those guys know how to do meetups and
they're great people.
We love them.
They've been around for a long time.
They're no slouches, people.
They're no slouches and they have superior taste.
They do.
So everything is tasteful and unusual.
And they can probably get you out of
jail.
Much love to you both, she writes.
And then she signs off with Dame Astrid
plus Sir Mark.
Very nice.
Sir Face Tension, I don't know where he's
from, but he says, happy second, third day
of the week.
This donation is a shout out to the
South Central Florida meetup crew formally organized by
the Reiki Princess.
Yeah, something happened.
Something has happened with the South Central Florida
meetups.
The group has blown up, imploded.
I think it was after the axe throwing.
I'm not sure.
This is the axe throwing group.
Yes.
So Sir Face Tension wants to thank the
Reiki Princess for her courage in organizing and
producing so many great meetups and memories and
wish her much love, luck and karma.
Gosh, I really...
Reiki Princess, would you just email me?
Somebody send him a note.
I just want to know what's going on,
if you're okay.
Because, you know, I've had nice conversations with
her and all of a sudden, boom, it's
gone.
I don't know if she's overboard or something's
going on.
I'd just love to hear from you.
To help our area members regroup, please email
me your contact information to noagendanation at hotmail
.com.
That's noagendanation at hotmail.com.
Whether you're a No Agenda newcomer or a
meetup veteran, I invite all of you to
introduce yourselves via email while we rebuild our
WhatsApp network.
That's noagendanation at hotmail.com.
Onward, he says, and request the Sunday morning
service followed by the JCD Spooky Donate.
My children, it's a Sunday morning service.
Tell us it's a No Agenda.
We're going to get some Adam Curry.
We're going to get a little Josh.
We're going to roll around.
Lord, help us out.
Donate.
I have a feeling that the Florida Cell
got captured.
This is a very bad development.
They were one of the, they did great.
They were doing good work.
Great promos and everything, yeah.
Yeah, it'll be explained.
It happens, it happens.
And we wrap it up with Linda Lupak
and her buddy in Lakewood, Colorado, of $200,
and she wants some jobs, Carmen says, for
a resume that gets results, visit ImageMakersInc.com.
That's ImageMakersInc with a K, your go-to
for all your executive resume and job search
needs.
And work with Linda Lu, Duchess of Jobs
and writer of resumes.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs.
And that concludes our list of executive and
associate executive producers.
Thank you all very much.
We will be thanking the rest of our
donors, $50 and above, as we always do
because we love them so much and we
appreciate them so much.
And remember, you can always go to noagendadonations
.com.
That's noagendadonations.com.
So that, did you fix Dvorak.org slash
an A like you said you would?
I'm working on it.
Dvorak, noagendadonations.com.
You can set up a recurring donation.
Those are very important, particularly on slower days
like this.
Any amount, any frequency, it's all up to
you.
And once again, thank you to our executive
and associate executive producers for this episode.
Our formula is this.
We hit people in the mouth.
Order.
Yee-haw!
Shut up, Steve.
I've got a little ask Adam here.
Oh, I wasn't expecting that.
Hold on a second.
Let me get a, ask Adam.
Don't play it.
It's because it's answered in the, it's just
that one clip.
Hold on.
Ask Adam.
Okay, so, you have the answer, or I'm
not playing the clip, or what am I
doing?
No, the clip has the answer.
How can that be an ask Adam?
I'm going to ask the question.
I'm going to ask Adam.
I am going to ask Adam.
Okay, ask Adam, go!
What are you, Mark Levin?
Yes.
So, Mr. Producer, so, what, if you had
a Stradivarius violin, Yes.
which would be nice to own.
Yeah, I wouldn't be doing this show.
What do you think it's worth?
A Stradivarius violin?
Yeah, a Stradivarius.
Yeah.
Wow.
Now, I only, I haven't heard the word
Stradivarius for many, many years, and I think
back in the day they were probably going
for about 12 million, between 8 and 12
million.
I would say, taking money printing into effect,
the debasing of the U.S. dollar, I'm
going to say 47 million dollars.
Wow.
I wouldn't mind owning one of those.
Here we go.
And a violin made by Italian craftsman Antonio
Stradivari is estimated to fetch a record price
of up to 18 million dollars when it
goes to auction next month.
The Joachim Ma Stradivarius was crafted in 1714
during what's considered the violin maker's golden period.
Its name comes from two of its prior
owners, Joseph Joachim and Sihon Ma, both accomplished
violinists.
Ma gifted the violin to the New England
Conservatory in Boston where he had studied.
Proceeds of the sale will go towards student
scholarship.
Okay.
Now, this is not a fair ask, Adam,
because that is what is expected to fetch.
I want you to track this auction and
let's see what it actually goes for.
Well, check it out.
Sure, I will.
I have a feeling it's going to go
closer to that number that I said.
Well, I think it's interesting that the guy
had the violin and he just gives it
away.
Yeah, well, Yo-Yo Ma is loaded.
He left a cello in a cab.
Be like, eh, whatever.
Remember that?
Remember he left the cello in the cab?
How do you leave a cello in a
cab?
I bet you we still have that clip.
You have to be drunk.
Cello.
Let me see.
Cello.
Wow, we've lost a lot of good clips.
Yo-Yo Ma.
You mean we lost good clips?
Yeah, we lost some in the big drop
.io fiasco.
What was the drop.io fiasco?
Gosh, you don't remember anything.
I remember a lot, but I don't remember
the drop.io fiasco.
This is what set me on a rampage
of never trusting Silicon Valley or cloud or
anything like that.
We were using a system called drop.io
and it was kind of cool because you
had a webpage and you could just type
in there and post stuff and then you
could drag and drop any file and it
would put it right there.
It was almost like a, you know, it
was like a whizzy-whizzy.
You didn't keep backups?
To the backup of the backup of the
backup?
No, I was young, inexperienced, and I trusted
them.
Oh, that was your first mistake.
And I trusted them.
Well, I still have all my original clips,
so you just lost your clips.
Oh, okay.
Well, you should send me your original clips
because I don't, I do not have anything.
Let me see.
I have back to...
What's the first show that we have stuff
from?
You're going to cry when you hear it.
2014.
What was show number?
Show number.
Show number...
579.
Oh, that's not too bad.
Now, luckily, luckily, we have bingit.io. We
have all of the actual shows and through,
thank you, Sir Deanonymous, through bingit.io, we
can find everything and we can at least
clip those if we want to.
And this is, in fact, exactly what Sir
Comfrence did.
And he was...
It's kind of sad.
We remember everything.
Our memories are so great, right?
On episode 371, which was January 5th, 2012,
we actually discussed, as he can recall, and
he got me the clip, for the first
time, a phenomenon which we have just been
discussing as if it's something new.
How many times has this happened to us?
Lots.
Yeah, jingles are a big part.
Santorum...
I caught two things where he's doing doublespeak
and I want you to listen to him
and try to tell me exactly what he
said because you won't be able to.
But earlier, he was on Meet the Press.
Earlier, I caught this very weird style of
chatter that incorporates, I've never seen this before
and I've tried to do it myself and
I can't do it.
Do you know what this is about?
No.
By the way, you sound so energetic as
a young John C.
DeVos.
Well, I also sound like I've got something
wrong with me.
You're in a bucket.
There's something wrong with me.
Oh, this is something you've just recognized.
You know where people, you run into people
that are always making assumptions about the way
you think so they'll say something.
Why?
Because otherwise they drop the word why into
the sentence.
Yeah, well, it's very much like in Silicon
Valley people say...
So you basically stole my bit.
I guess, I guess.
You didn't reclaim it.
Let's just listen to a little more.
Yeah, well, if I didn't reclaim it then
it's not stolen.
You're right.
Open source!
Which is basically making you affirm what he
just said.
Exactly.
Right?
Or look.
Why?
That's another one.
Why?
Look.
Exactly.
Look.
Why?
Yeah.
So they'll say...
It always makes the assumption...
This was Rick Santorum.
So this is 2012.
Was he running as a Republican candidate at
the time?
2012 election?
I think so, right?
Probably.
I mean, he was a...
He was a douchebag.
Remember we had Santorum.com?
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I vaguely remember that.
Which turned out to be something really rude.
I always find it offensive when I hear
the word why asked like that because it's
making an assumption that I'm actually asking a
question.
Your lead-ins were way longer back then.
Want to know why?
Why don't you just tell me?
You don't have to ask me why.
It works.
Now, Santorum, you have to listen very carefully
to this Santorum neuro-linguistic...
God, my lead-in is taking forever.
I know!
Get off the air, slouch!
Why in the stream in such a way
that it doesn't even...
It's not even a question.
It's just the word...
I think you thought I was really dumb,
so you'd be like...
Tighten it up, dude.
You're over-explaining it to me.
You're really dumb.
This stupid VJ.
He won't understand.
I don't think that was it.
Yeah, I think so.
And I would challenge you, without writing something
down, to actually do what you're about to
hear.
You'll hear the word why twice, and it's
just in the flow, and I found it
extremely fascinating.
...the Republican Party.
The question is, are those values ones that
you can trust when they become president of
the United States?
Is it someone who you know is going
to fight not just for certain things, but
for the entire Republican platform at plank?
Why?
Because those things integrate together.
All right.
Anyway.
So, we have identified things over and over
again.
I think we're at the end of our
runway here on this show when we don't
even remember we've done these things.
It's...
It was almost ten years ago.
Slightly disturbing to me.
Just slightly disturbing.
I'm like, wow.
Well...
Four more years!
I think that this has gone on from
the get-go, and it's a little different.
If we compare it to, like, when Rush
Limbaugh was at his peak, he would do
the same thing on one show where he'd
introduce a concept in hour one, and then
he'd introduce it again in hour two, the
same thing as though it was new, and
then introduce it again in hour three as
though it was new.
We at least stretch it out.
The audience is probably completely turned over.
True.
No one remembers this, but circumference, he's the
only one that remembers.
It must have had an impact on him.
Well, he sent me an email and said,
I knew I'd heard this.
I went to bingit.io, and I found
it.
He was so happy.
I understand.
It does make you happy.
All right, let's switch just a little bit.
Some interesting news from Germany.
As we know, Elon Musk is the hatchet
man for Trump.
He's breaking everything.
He's going like a bull in the China
shop, running through the EU.
He wrote an op-ed about the AfD,
alternative for Deutschland.
The far right, far right, far right party.
They're probably Nazis.
Far right, far right.
And there's news from the far right.
The far right alternative for Germany, or AfD,
continues its party convention today after confirming Alice
Weidel as its first ever candidate for chancellor
in next month's elections.
Matthew, what does the fact that they've now
named a chancellor candidate mean?
This is a very significant milestone for the
far right party in Germany.
By naming a candidate for chancellor, they're basically
saying they believe in themselves.
It's a sign of self-confidence.
And they've named someone, Alice Weidel, who is
quite an interesting character, Claire.
This is a person who worked for Goldman
Sachs.
In an interview with Elon Musk recently, she
described herself as a libertarian conservative, which didn't
go down well with everyone in the party.
She also lives with a Sri Lankan woman.
Her partner is a Sri Lankan woman.
Or rather, a woman with Sri Lankan roots.
And they have two children together.
So not exactly the picture that you would
maybe expect from a far right.
I mean, far right, far right.
What, they have a lesbian far right?
The picture that you would maybe expect from
a far right party.
And despite the fact that they've nominated Alice
Weidel as their leader, there's a kind of
acknowledgement here in the room that they're not
going to be anywhere near power because of
a firewall.
That's because the older and the other parties
in Germany have described, basically said that the
AFD, the far right, are too extreme and
too anti-democratic.
They won't work with them.
However, they see signs of that, basically, that
firewall chipping away.
In Austria, recent political events there, that's happened.
The far right are now in power there.
And so that gives them hope.
And they're hoping, and their main hope here,
and the AFD, is not necessarily of the
elections next month, but of the elections in
five years' time, in 2029.
Far right!
God, that guy needs to lay off the
coffee.
This is the problem in Europe.
They all have a parliamentary system.
Then this is the same thing that happened
in the Netherlands with Geert Wilders, and France.
And they just all say, no, no, we're
just all going to work together.
Hey, you green people, you animal lovers, whatever,
you nut job party, piercing party, you all
join with us, we're going to stop them.
Piercing party.
Oh yeah, they exist.
We're going to stop them.
And so nothing the people want ever gets
done.
It's bad.
Yeah, well, they're going to take it in
the shorts.
The vertical shorts.
Unlike many of the so-called podcasts on
YouTube, and I just want to set something
straight here, just because a couple of people
with headphones and microphones are talking on YouTube
does not a podcast maketh.
In fact, I would go so far as
to say a podcast is just audio.
It's just got to be audio.
It's got to be, you got to get
it in an app.
You know, you got a RSS feed.
So, you know, you have complete control.
What would you call a YouTube podcast?
A YouTube video.
A YouTube?
A YouTube video.
They're YouTubers.
Yeah, I would call them YouTubers.
Now, Rogan, his podcast is on all the
apps, and he happens to upload it to
YouTube.
That's fine.
It's mostly clips on YouTube, isn't it?
No, I think he also has the full
episodes.
Well, it wasn't when Spotify was dominating.
No, no, then they only had clips, right.
But all these algo chasers, that's what they
are.
They're algo chasers.
Algo chasers.
You're coming up with phrase after phrase today.
Thank you.
They are.
They're algo chasers, and they have no life,
because, you know, they don't build an audience.
No, they don't build an audience.
What they have to do is they have
to chase the algo and keep it.
Yeah, they get big numbers, but you're right.
They're not billing.
It's the algos giving them the audience.
In fact, what happens is people are looking
at all the videos, all the algo chasers,
then they come to us.
Okay, what do the boys actually think of
this?
Because we're here.
We're here, just like a steady stream.
You subscribe to us.
We do the same thing over and over
again.
We're not running around.
There's no audience capture.
There's no advertising to screw us over and
make us do other things.
We don't have to run around and do
the hottest thing right now.
Oh, we got to talk about this.
Oh, Trump is crazy.
Oh, Biden.
None of that.
Take a clip, Derek.
We don't have to do that.
Now, of course, we don't make YouTube money,
but most people don't make YouTube money, and
that's just fine.
No, there's a few that do, but they're
the ones that everyone points to.
So one of the, and I just got
to call this PBD guy.
Yeah, this is a pet peeve you're expressing.
Eh, somewhat.
So this PBD guy.
Oh, Patrick Bet Davis.
The infotainment guy.
Infotainment.
No, it's not infotainment.
It's valutainment.
Come on.
Get it straight.
Valutainment.
What am I thinking?
Valutainment.
You know how I'm always moaning about these
military algo chasers?
Although, so Bongino's on the show.
Bongino's on the show.
And is Bongino still on SiriusXM?
Do they still put him on there?
I don't know if he's on SiriusXM, but
he still has a syndicated show.
He replaced it with Rush.
Oh, he has a radio show?
He's a radio guy, and he has a
podcast.
Well.
And he's kind of breathless all the time.
So, yeah.
But, you know, but he's in this milieu.
No, he's totally in it, yep.
He was one of the grid-go-down
guys.
The what?
He was one of the grids-going-down
guys.
Oh, yes.
You know, gets his information through, you know,
sources.
And it's podcast propaganda.
And I'm not saying he's complicit.
It's just he hears from his sources.
His sources heard from other sources.
The back-up to the back-up to
the back-up.
And it's injected into the podosphere.
And since he can't get any traction with
it, he has to go on this algo
chaser PBD and listen to this.
I'll show you what I mean in a
second.
Another thing I've been telling you about, the
inauguration's coming up.
We're two weeks away.
Folks, I'm really hesitant to talk about this.
By the way, that's something, if you're an
algo chaser, which I think he is now,
that's what you do.
I did, you know, we'll probably be taken
down for saying this.
You can record this while you can.
This is actually the modern version of the
guy at the dinner table who's not funny.
He says, I got a real funny joke.
And he prefaces that.
He prefaces the joke with, I've got a
real funny joke, and it's not funny, ever.
So this is the thing.
All that's missing is him saying, hey, guys.
But, of course, he's a guest on the
show.
But when you say that, like, I have
no, I probably, I shouldn't be saying this.
They're probably going to shadow ban me, demonetize
my channel.
I can't have this.
But I've got to share this with you.
I'll show you what I mean in a
second.
Another thing I've been telling you about, the
inauguration's coming up.
We're two weeks away.
Folks, I'm really hesitant to talk about this.
But I feel an obligation to put it
out there.
I'm taking personal risk.
I have to do it.
Because I don't have any other avenue to
do it other than you guys in the
Bongino Army.
No other place but here.
He's got a radio show.
He's got a podcast.
What is he talking about?
No, he needs to be on Valuetainment.
I don't think the Secret Service is prepared.
And I think the Secret Service, along with
the FBI, are lying to this transition team.
This transition team knows it.
And, unfortunately, there's nothing they can do until
they formally take power in two weeks.
But when they take power in two weeks,
Donald Trump is going to be sitting there
exposed at the inauguration.
So, here's not just anybody.
Dan Bongino was a police officer, New York
City police officer.
It's this stuff that just drives me crazy.
Spins everybody up.
Trump's in danger!
Don't you know God is protecting Trump?
It's a foregone conclusion.
Yeah, really.
Make up your mind.
Thank you.
Make up your mind about that.
That's it.
That's all.
That was really just a cover for me
to launch the term algo chasers.
You were right.
I have to cop to it.
Do you write these down before the show?
I think you do.
I have a remarkable…
You're a little OCD, you know that?
I have a pad.
I have one of these remarkable tablets.
And I heard once from somebody who I
think is…
whose opinion I value very highly, that you
should journal every single day.
You should.
If you want to be a good writer.
And if there's one thing I'm not, it's…
I'm not a good writer.
So I've taken to that.
And this is…
That's the thing.
You know, what's that guy's name who…
I was on his podcast.
He used to be at…
He used to be the Apple pundit.
Guy Kawasaki.
It's his company.
Oh, Guy Kawasaki.
It's his company.
And…
Oh, you call my podcast, I'll send you
one.
He never sent me one.
Of course.
He bitched about me not getting a flu
shot or a COVID shot, but he didn't
send me the promised tablet.
And then I was at my buddy Vic's
place in Dallas, and he said, you know,
you'll love this.
And I do.
It's remarkable too.
So, yes.
So I write.
When I have an idea, I jot it
down.
And then I'll go and review my notes.
And sometimes I put them in my show
prep.
So, yes, that's…
You're correct.
I do work.
Huh.
Yeah.
Surprised.
You never know.
Yeah.
Surprised.
Yeah, Guy Kawasaki.
You know, so I'm up at the…
You should tell people who he is.
Guy Kawasaki was the first guy, I think,
who put evangelist on his business card back
in the day when he worked for Apple.
He was an Apple evangelist.
Did he get paid for that, do you
think?
Yeah.
No, he was actually working there in product
management or something.
But he took it upon himself to become
the evangelist.
So he's a big…
And he became a big shot.
And he had a lot of…
He got on a lot of stuff.
He's kind of an interesting…
I knew him pretty well enough.
I never came over for dinner, so he
doesn't count for as a friend.
But I knew him.
And so one day we're giving a…
He's kind of an oddly humorless.
In a very curious way, because he's always
got a smile on his face.
After the interview on the podcast, I said,
Adam, you know, you're a very smart guy.
And I really want you to live.
So please reconsider.
Take the COVID shot.
It's really important you do that.
Really?
Really.
So anyway, so he…
So we're up on the stage giving out
awards for the Mac User Awards.
And he's one of the presenters.
I'm a presenter.
We're both up there.
And I'm going and I'm doing my thing.
He did his thing.
He's standing right next to me.
I said, you know one thing, guy, we
both have in common?
And he goes, no, what?
I said, conflict of interest.
A classic JCD move.
And I bet he just deadpanned you like,
huh?
Exactly.
It was the biggest blank stare I've gotten
from a good line in my life.
And did the crowd crack up?
Well, the crowd thought it was amusing.
But, you know, it was still like, what's
wrong with the guy?
So I just…
And so, yeah, I can see him taking
COVID very seriously.
Because he takes everything seriously.
But he's got a big smile on his
face.
He's a nice guy.
Yeah, but what he didn't do is send
me the tablet.
I had to go and buy one.
Yeah, well, there you go.
That's why I did the show.
I'm like, this is great.
I get a tablet out of it.
No.
It would have been version one, which I
hear wasn't so good.
I got sniffed by Michael Dell on one
of these deals once.
Michael Dell, the billionaire?
Yeah, well, it was like we're doing…
And I know him pretty well.
And he's been to some of the Dvorak
parties we used to throw at Comdex.
I can call him.
But, so I do this thing.
You have to do this thing for some
rollout or something.
This was some years ago.
I said, I don't have time to do
this thing.
He said, I'll give you a computer.
What computer do you want?
I said, okay, I'll do it for a
computer.
Of course.
I never got the computer.
Well, our producer, Jeremy, will send you a
Dell Slimline 3080.
This guy…
Our producer, Jeremy, he already, I think, got
contact.
He had all the extra computers because he's
taking them offline.
Yeah.
That's that guy, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I sent him my request.
I never got anything.
Well, he gave it to me to give
to you and…
Oh, no.
He's giving it to you to give to
me because I got something for you to
give to you that he gave to me.
And this guy gave it to me to
give to you.
Big mistake.
People, just send the stuff directly.
Adam has a boast office box.
He'll give you the number if you ask
him and you can send directly to him.
I got stuff backed up that I'm supposed
to send to you.
It's all stale now, by the way, unfortunately.
But I'll tell you, the No Agenda…
A live chicken?
Come on.
I can't send that to Adam.
Here's one thing, and Tina's really good about
this.
The No Agenda Fudge people, NoAgendaFudge.com.
They sent us fudge, and in the fudge
was a check for like $385 made out
to No Agenda, which I don't know if
they got credited for that or not or
how they did that or why they did
that, but Tina's really good.
She's like, boom, I'm sending it off to
John, and she does that.
She does that really well.
Yeah, she's the one who does that.
Yeah, she does that.
It's not you.
You need one of those to send stuff
to me.
Actually, Jay will do that.
Yeah, well, ask Jay to send that stuff
to me, and I'll ask Jeremy to send
you a Dell directly.
Anyway, so Michael Dell never follows through.
So you have two Dells now.
Yeah, but I already ruined one, so don't
ask me about it.
What?
Don't even ask me how that happened.
It's a long story.
You're not supposed to drop them in the
toilet.
No, it's a long Windows story.
But Linux on it.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, forget about it.
Forget about it.
Oh, you toasted it.
I toasted it.
Anyway, so he reneged on you.
You can still call him.
You can still call Michael Dell, billionaire computer
manufacturer, Michael Dell.
Yeah?
Call him and say, hey, Dell, hey, Dell.
He probably already forgot about the promise.
I'm sending Curry over.
I'm sending Curry over to pick it up.
I just always keep these things.
I got a couple Biden clips.
Okay, let's see.
Well, yes, this will be one of the
last few weeks.
We get Biden clips before they announce he's
dead.
The first one is this one, which is
the biggest.
This is the biggest.
You know, Biden has decided months ago, I
guess Jill decided, Joe, we got to get
travel as much as we can before we
lose the jet.
The 747 jet.
Yes.
So what can we do?
Where can we go?
I know Vatican.
So play this clip.
In other news, President Biden has given Pope
Francis the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom with distinction.
The citation describes Francis as a light of
faith, hope and love that shines brightly across
the world.
It's the first and only time Mr. Biden
has made the award with distinction.
The president and the pope spoke by phone
today.
They were to have met this weekend in
person at the Vatican.
But Mr. Biden canceled the trip in order
to focus on the deadly Los Angeles wildfires.
I'm glad I was going to take a
trip to the Vatican a week before the
inauguration of Trump because Jill wanted another trip
and they wanted to go to the Vatican.
Give me a break.
This was a scam award.
Thank you for playing that, because it reminded
me I got a note from one of
our producers.
And you told me, remember this, and I
didn't write it down.
And you will now.
You got your pad.
I do.
I got my pad.
And this was about the.
About the the the medals that Biden gave
out recently.
Yeah.
And so we were wondering about Tim Gill.
Who was that?
Why did he get a medal?
Tim Gill.
Do you remember this, Tim?
Yeah, I remember.
And I think it has something to do
with donations or something.
So here's the note I got from my
buddy, Rob.
Tim Gill gave four hundred thousand dollars to
Biden and told me that would be my
buddy Rob at a party.
He expects something for it.
And his partner, Tim Gill's partner, is ambassador
to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
That's how it works, people.
You want a medal?
Pony up.
You want an ambassadorship?
Pony up.
How about that for some inside dirt, huh?
We're going to do ambassadorships on the show.
There you go.
And it's not going to cost four hundred
thousand bucks.
And you can only be one per country.
Well, I don't think we do.
But I think it should be ambassador at
large.
You're just the ambassador.
But shouldn't you get a country?
Do you want to do it by countries?
The no agenda ambassador to someplace or other?
Yeah.
It complicates things on the on the on
the certificate.
It complicates the trying to keep it simple.
I think ambassadorship is the way to go.
And we need to do it a month
ahead if we don't get better donations.
You know, we still haven't got an instant
night all year.
I got back to Biden.
Back to Biden.
Yeah.
OK.
Here is Biden.
This is again, this is just to screw
Trump over.
Biden, new sanctions.
The Biden administration announced new sanctions against Russia's
energy sector today, hoping to deal a massive
blow to its economy over the war in
Ukraine.
Massive blow to Trump.
The measures punish two of Russia's largest oil
and gas companies, plus energy officials and entities
that do business with Russia.
They also target a fleet of more than
180 vessels Moscow has used to evade previous
sanctions.
Officials say they're the most significant such measures
to date, costing Russia billions of dollars per
month.
But they acknowledge it's up to the incoming
Trump administration to keep the sanctions or scrap
them.
Wow.
Yeah, we can figure that one out.
That's bullcrap.
And my last Biden clip is here's Biden's
slamming meta for going free speech.
The U.S. president has slammed as shameful
IT giant.
Hold on a second.
Is this the BBC?
No, this is NHK.
Oh, it's slammed.
Since when did the news start using the
term slammed?
It's better.
I know.
We've been hearing it for a while.
What's her name?
The woman that we have to play a
clip about playing her clip.
Amy.
Oh, you said her name.
Amy says it all the time.
Slammed.
Give me a break.
All right.
Slammed.
The U.S. president has slammed as shameful
IT giant Meta's decision to end its third
-party fact-checking program.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that
the company has decided to abandon the practice
on its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
We're going to get back to our roots
and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies
and restoring free expression on our platforms.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Biden called the
decision contrary to American justice.
When you have millions of people reading, going
online, reading this stuff, it is anyway, I
think it's I think it's really shameful.
It's shameful.
Did you see Zuckerberg on Rogan or hear
Zuckerberg on Rogan?
I saw some clips of it.
Yeah.
What'd you think?
You know, Rogan could have gone after him
a little harder.
Because there is that there is the there
is the meme.
It's not a meme, but it's a posting
that he did in.
I think it was after Trump got became
president or or when before he was running
in 2020.
I just Zuckerberg slamming the president saying we
had to take him off the platform.
He's banned forever.
And he went on and on and on
about it.
And this was never addressed.
He's kind of some other things were never
addressed.
He's kind of slippery.
Our man Zuck there because he was in
full on.
Well, you know, I run the company.
I'm focused on the future.
I have a team.
You know, he threw it all on the
team.
The team is supposed to do that now.
And there and the government was caught.
By the way, the Supreme Court ruled that
the government was OK with what they did,
which I found to be the true tragedy
of misjustice that the government was calling and
screaming at our people.
And that was the government calling and they
were they coerced us.
OK, well, he actually testified before Congress.
There was a good article written by some
lefty and the verge that actually took him
to task.
And he actually testified before Congress that in
the at the end of the day, no
matter what the government did, it was my
decision.
Oh, really?
Yes.
And I now I remember him saying it
when he was giving testimony.
Well, who's really responsible is my I me.
I decided I'm the decider.
And so he he also he also said,
you know, I control the company, which is
true because of the share structure.
They have the.
Oh, yeah.
If you had just said, you know, I
was wrong, I would have been OK with
that.
Nobody does that.
No one does that anymore except us.
Yeah, we do it all the time because
people send us notes and say, hey, you're
wrong.
And we read the note.
Well, sometimes we go on.
We try to keep this show honest.
We're honest to honest dudes.
We do.
I have two clips about this Trump conviction
that I think we just need to get
out of the way.
Because I have to follow up clip.
OK, which will be the Capehart talking about
a clip.
Never before has this court been presented with
such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances.
And so began Judge Warren Roshan's historic sentencing
delivered in a lower Manhattan courtroom filled with
reporters and lawyers.
Donald Trump was spared the spectacle of an
in-person appearance.
He learned his fate watching by video feed
from his Florida estate.
The only lawful sentence that permits entry of
a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the
highest office in the land is an unconditional
discharge.
There will be no jail time, no fines
and no real punishment after being found guilty
on 34 felony charges for hush money payments
to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep
their alleged affair quiet during the 2016 election.
The judge explaining Trump's reelection factored into his
decision, acknowledging there are protections that come with
being the occupant of the Oval Office.
Though Trump is a convicted felon, the first
ever American president with a criminal record.
Trump's team plans to appeal the decision which
he again railed against in court.
This has been a very terrible experience.
I'm totally innocent.
I did nothing wrong.
Yeah, I think this will be overturned on
appeal.
I'm pretty sure.
Well, that's what everybody thinks.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I mean, I actually think so, too.
But it's annoying because it was a statute
of limitations issues.
A strange construction of the law issues for
misdemeanors turning into felonies.
The whole thing is sketchy, sketchy.
You have more clips because before Capehart really
tops this off.
Well, I don't know, because I have George
Conway with Joy Reid.
I'm I'm I'm a little.
Oh, no, no.
Play Conway first.
A person who normally is convicted of a
felony can't vote in the state of Florida
and about eight other former Confederate states already.
The governor said, no, we're going to let
him vote anyway.
We're going to clear his record.
Let him do.
I love how she says Confederate states.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Confederate states.
Check the calendar, babe.
In a state of Florida and about eight
other former Confederate states already, the governor of
Florida said, no, we're going to let him
vote anyway.
We're going to clear his record.
Let him do that.
Like 38 countries you not supposed to be
able to travel to, including England, Canada, Mexico,
Australia, Japan, China, Argentina, all of which he
visited in his first term.
Thirty eight countries.
You're not allowed to get in if you're
a felon.
You know, all of the stigma that normally
associates you to check a box.
If you want to buy a gun, if
you want to get certain licenses, you can't
sell weed, have a weed business.
Donald Trump is already getting a blight on
all of that.
I mean, I don't know.
Does he get to travel to one of
these countries?
He's threatening tariffs.
Let's say, oh, buddy, you want to do
25 percent tariffs.
How about you can't come here because you're
a felon?
Yeah, I don't know what the Canadian law
is, but they're probably they probably will have
to give him away.
You know, I mean, the first felon, who
I also like to call the first whiner,
this is this is par for the course
for him.
He has been skating throughout his life and
yet he's led this life of crime.
And it's it is distressing.
I love the idea of Trump weed.
As a great it's a great business.
Everybody would be buying that.
It's the best.
You know, it's probably he may have given
him an idea.
It's the best weed gets you really high.
It's dynamite weed.
No skunk.
This is not some this is top notch
kush.
Well, you know, he's he's a teetotaler, but
he does own a winery.
Mm hmm.
So it's and he would never use the
weed, but he could.
I can see it.
Don Junior could do it.
Don Junior could run it.
It'd be fine.
He looks like a stoner.
Yeah.
So.
All right.
So.
So we go to PBS and we have
Brooks and Capehart.
And so we get a real rundown on
the on this case.
And Capehart being the complete a-hole that
he is.
All right.
Really?
And showing showing no sympathy or understanding.
And if Brooks and Capehart, they sit there,
the two of them ones, you know, they're
both on the same side of the political
spectrum trying to give us insight, but not
doing any sort of triangulation on a topic.
Self-reflection.
No reflection.
No triangulation.
Nothing where you can actually where the where
the viewer of PBS NewsHour can actually learn
something or get some sort of perspective.
That's not.
I hate Trump.
Donald Trump should have been president.
I'm sorry.
Wait, wait.
I'm sorry.
Perfect.
So here he goes with his evaluation.
That is nonsense.
Donald Trump is vowing to appeal this conviction.
We'll see what comes of that.
But after, you know, being convicted of 34
felonies, there are people who look at this
case and they say that, you know, Donald
Trump walks away with a punishment that is
less than what one would receive for a
speeding ticket.
Look, look, look, look.
This case, this hush money case was the
case that everybody said was the crappy case
of the four.
Remember, Donald Trump was indicted four times.
And this one was the least important, the
shakiest.
And yet it's the one case where Donald
Trump was held accountable.
The one case where he was brought to
trial before a jury of his peers in
his hometown of New York City and was
found guilty 34 times.
I think that is great punishment.
What's also great punishment is the sentencing today
where the judge said, you know, you're going
to be president.
You're not going to go to jail.
But you're a convicted felon.
And so for the rest of his life,
any story written about him will have to
mention the fact that he is a convicted
felon.
If not on the first reference, definitely by
the second reference.
And that is fitting, that is right, that
is just.
Do I wish the other three cases had
gone to trial and that he had faced
accountability on those?
Yes, but this will do.
What a creep.
Now, the thing is, what in the rule
book of journalism that you're talking to, you're
writing about somebody, you have to say they're
a convicted felon if they're a convicted felon.
In the prose, in the text.
Where is that?
I've never heard of it.
Well, that's journalistically correct, John.
Certainly you know this.
It's journalist bull crap.
This guy's a liar.
You don't have to make a reference, but
they love doing it.
And again.
I'm sorry.
That's all right.
It was perfect.
Imagine all the people who could do this.
Oh, yeah, that'd be fabulous.
Yeah, on the agenda.
In the morning.
We're out of sync, baby.
We're out of sync.
It happens.
We can't hit it all the time.
The show's too long.
We're out of sync.
It happens.
The show's too long.
We're out of time.
We're tired.
We're sloppy.
Sloppy.
The show is just sloppy.
That's right.
It's all right.
We'll fix it in post.
It'll sound great.
Edward Gellin starts us off with the donation
segment.
Yellen for Gellin.
124-33.
Radar Rider in Milton, Georgia.
120-25.
Needs a job as a car mechanic.
We'll give you that at the end if
Adam remembers.
Right on that little text pad.
Jared Cook in Manor, Texas.
100.
Kevin McLaughlin's there already.
8008.
Boobies.
The Archduke of Luna.
Lover of American boobs.
He's on a roll.
Sir Lineman in Anna, Illinois.
Sir Lineman of the Net.
69-69.
And Nana Moose.
850 in Laurel Hill, Florida.
60.
Really getting down fast.
Sir Beeboop.
New Brighton, Minnesota.
Nuts.
56-78.
William Galt in Naples, Florida.
51-50.
That's a switcheroo.
Oh, it's a switcheroo for convicted felon Donald
J.
Trump.
All right.
Yeah, 51-50.
It has some meaning there in the laws.
It means you're nuts.
You're insane.
Upbeats Musical Podcast.
Yeah, that's my buddy.
He's a great show.
He's in Copperus Cove.
Whatever you pronounce it in Texas.
51 dollars.
ITM.
It was that time to show my appreciation.
Okay.
Kevin McEnany.
McEnany in Deer Park, Wisconsin.
In honor of my husband, Kevin.
Oh, it's his wife that sent this in.
This was actually a switcheroo.
In honor of my husband, Kevin, who loves
your show and makes me listen to it.
Now I love it too.
That's 50.
And the rest of these are all 50s.
I'm just going to name a location.
Starting with Kevin there.
Michelle Petty in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Stephen Shumake in Xenia, Ohio.
Shannon in Citra, Florida.
And she has a heart icon in there.
Thanks, guys, she says.
John Akin, A-K-I-N, in Babson
Park, Florida.
Two Floridians.
Tim DelVecchio in Blandon, Pennsylvania.
Mike Moon in Athens, Georgia.
Andrew Garasso in Mineola, New York.
Gary Mao in Woodland Hills, California.
Michael A.
Friedle in Kansas City.
And he wants to call out Robert Friedle
as a douchebag.
Douchebag.
And Michael needs a de-douching.
You've been de-douched.
And on our very short list, this is
the shortest list we've had in two years.
28 total donors.
Shortest list in two years.
Wow.
28.
28 people out of a million listeners and
29,000 people on the mailing list.
28.
Yeah, I know.
Rachel comes in at the bottom of the
list.
She's Rachel Rotrammel, Rotrammel, Rotrammel, I think, in
Decatur, Illinois.
And she says, thanks for all you do.
And we thank her for the donation.
We want to thank everybody, actually, who helped
us do it.
That was the last one?
Yep, you're done.
Wow.
All right, thank you all very much.
And, of course, thanks to everybody who came
in under $50.
We never mention those for reasons of anonymity.
To ensure anonymity, I see you, $49, but
we can't read your note.
May have been a mistake.
And, of course, you can always set up
a recurring donation.
Go to noagendadonations.com.
Noagendadonations.com and set up a recurring donation.
Any amount, any frequency, you make it up.
It is value for value.
We appreciate all of our supporters for today,
our producers, and, of course, our executive and
associate executive producers for episode 1729.
As requested, Jobs Karma.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs.
Jobs Karma.
And for the first time in a long
time that I can remember, no birthdays.
No birthdays today.
Nothing.
Not a single birthday to celebrate.
Make babies, people.
It's time for some birthdays.
Yeah, we need more birthdays.
We do have one dame who will be
welcomed onto the podium today, so I will
grab.
I got a blade for her.
Okay.
Oh, you do have a blade for her.
That's right.
Come on up here.
Emily.
Wait a minute.
Where are you?
There you go.
Emily Bauer.
Emily, I'm not quite sure exactly what happened
here.
I don't have a note, but you today
will be branded as a dame of the
No Agenda Roundtable thanks to your support of
the show and the amount of $1,000
or more.
I'm very proud to pronounce the K-D
as Dame Emily of Eau Claire.
And at the roundtable for you, we have
Rent Boys and Chardonnay.
You'd probably be into that.
If not, we've got Red Heads and Ryes.
We've got Vodka Manila, Bong Hits and Bourbon.
Sparkling Cider and Escorts.
We've got Ginger Ale and Gerbils.
We have Breast Milk and Pablum.
And as always, the Mud and the Mead.
Emily, head over to NoAgendaRings.com and take
a look at that beautiful knight and or
dame ring.
It's a signet ring.
That means that in the package that you
give us the address for and your ring
size, there is a handy ring sizing guide
at NoAgendaRings.com.
We will give you some wax.
With that, you can use the signet ring
to seal your important correspondence and as always,
a certificate of authenticity because this stuff is
real, yo.
Welcome to the roundtable, Dame Emily of Eau
Claire.
No Agenda Meetup.
It's like a party.
Like a party.
That's right.
Connection is protection.
When you go to a No Agenda Meetup,
the people you meet there will be your
first responders in an emergency.
They will keep you stable, which makes you
able and we have some meetup reports.
Very happy to report that the Los Angeles
meetup went on as planned.
Here's Leo Bravo with his report.
Hey, everybody.
It's Leo Bravo at meetup number 59.
I'm passing the phone around for our guests
to say some nice things.
In the morning, this is Angie on the
ranch and I listen to the end for
John's no tip of the day.
In the morning, folks.
Connection happens at the HMS Bounty.
It's B.
Dizzle from Altadena and my house burned down
to the ground and I still made it
here, so what's your excuse?
John and Adam, thank you for your courage.
Hey, this is John and Adam, Sir Leah
Kim Full Pop.
We didn't start the fire.
It was always burning since the world's been
turning.
Thank you for your courage.
Celebrating the quaddemic here in the fire capital
of the world.
LA!
In the morning.
In the morning!
All right, there's your Los Angeles producers.
Milwaukee, come on in.
John and Adam, hello.
This is Dennis.
And we are here at the Schlemiel Schlemazel
meetup.
In the morning.
Hey, it's Chris Fox from Hairball.
I'm here playing the Riverside and we have
a lovely meetup.
And in the morning.
Yay!
Jay from Green Bay.
Sir Stacker checking in for the Hairball meetup.
Making a difference.
Unaffiliated difference maker.
Hey John, in the morning.
This is Chris from Menomonee Falls.
Take your phone out of the drawer.
My name is Greg and we're here going
to the concert soon.
Hi Tia, this is Sir Camera Chris.
Is that a gravitic device in your pants
or just an alien probe?
Hey, it's the Baron of BNA.
Here in MKE.
In the morning.
Planes good, trains bad.
And then finally, we have quite the staple
of the No Agenda meetup scene.
Dirty Jersey Whore.
And he hosted the Yukon meetup.
You want the truth?
Yukon handle the truth.
Here we are at the Yukon No Agenda
meetup.
This is Dirty Jersey Whore just passing through.
Just thought I'd stop by and harass all
these wonderful people here in Oklahoma.
A.K.A. The Red Estate in the
Union.
Dave here in the morning everybody.
It is nice to be harassed sir.
This is Dame Cassidy Eastwood in the morning.
In the morning.
Matthew Littlesberger did not kill himself.
Thanks for coming to Yukon.
Carol Jolly.
This is Sir Knight.
No, Sir Price.
Not of astonishment.
Trains good, electric pickups bad.
In the morning.
In the morning from Dame Flipper.
This is Dame Raisenberg.
I am looking for my H1B replacement.
In the morning.
This is Grace.
If they can get you asking the wrong
questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
This is Hannah Nicholas.
Bird flu is not real.
Shout out to Millennial Media Offensive.
Tuesday night.
MMO.
All the offensive.
In the morning.
Wow.
Sounds like a great meetup there.
Of course, many of these people and many
of those shows that were mentioned can be
found on the No Agenda stream.
We have the satellite skirmish coming up next,
but you're not done with this yet.
I want to remind you that we do
have meetups taking place today.
In fact, underway is the Blind Owl Brewery
Indianapolis.
That's the Indy NA Inaugurate.
Mark and Maria of the Greenwood are hosting
that.
We always get a nice meetup report from
them.
Too Many Eggs.
Keene, New Hampshire.
Underway as well at Margarita's Keene in Keene,
New Hampshire, of course.
The second Mountains and Rivers meetup is coming
up.
The Damn Restaurant and Bar today in South
Slocan, British Columbia, Canada.
Make sure you send a report.
Next Thursday, our next show day, the night
of January 16th at 630, Lincoln's Roadhouse, Denver,
Colorado.
Servido hosting that.
Charlotte's Thirsty Third Thursday, 7 o'clock at
Edge Tavern on Thursday, of course, in Charlotte,
North Carolina.
Many more, including Buenos Aires on January 17th.
Make sure you send a meetup report.
We collect those from lands far away.
And you can go to noagendameetups.com to
find one near you.
If you can't find one, start one yourself.
It's easy and always a party.
Sometimes you want to go hang out with
all the nights and days.
You want to be where you won't be
triggered or held to blame.
You want to be where everybody feels the
same.
It's like a party.
I'm doing much better on the ISOs these
days.
Okay.
Got a lot more ISOs.
Got much more.
Let me see.
I have this one.
That hurts my retinas every time.
I can't really hear it that well.
Can't hear it.
No.
Thank you for your time.
I have this one.
It all seems very gay and happy, and
I am here to observe.
That's too long.
I have this one.
Take care of your neighbors.
And the one I think is kind of
worth it.
Gob-smackingly bananas.
I actually like that one.
Yeah.
Which was from the show.
What have we got here?
Okay.
All right.
Change.
I got two versions of this.
Change history.
Wow.
Oops.
This is going to be something that is
going to change history.
Gosh.
It's a little long, John.
Four seconds.
Yes.
That's why I edited down to number two.
Okay.
This is going to change history.
Yeah.
It's okay.
It's not bad.
I'm working on my editing skills.
Here's a wow.
Wow.
Excellent podcast.
Oh, goodness.
Just when I thought you wouldn't make it,
you wouldn't be able to compete with mine.
Gob-smackingly bananas.
Wow.
Excellent podcast.
Which one do you want?
They're both good.
Let's do them both.
No, we can't do both.
I'll take the wow.
Wow.
Excellent podcast.
Yeah.
But keep the other one in abeyance.
All right.
We will.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time
for your favorite part of the show, John's
tip of the day.
Great advice from you and me.
Just the tip with JC Dean.
And sometimes Adam.
Created by Dana Burnetti.
And if you don't mind, this is one
of those sometimes Adam, sometimes Adam moments.
Oh, good.
Why don't you give yours?
I have a tip for a great gag
birthday gift.
Okay.
And the reason why is my- It's
a girl and a cake.
My stepdaughter, Elise, who lives in New York.
She just turned 28.
A Zoomer.
She is a Zoomer.
That's correct.
She was given a printed book, which her
friend took a lot of time and trouble
to go through to have it printed because
it's available on a PDF.
The Laptop from Hell, Hunter Biden book, which
is a hilarious gag gift.
It has all the hooker pictures, the coke
pictures.
It has lists of all the stuff he
did.
It is a very funny gag gift, and
it's available as an EPUB.
You can download it, and then you can
have it bound, and people will appreciate this
gag gift if you give it to them.
Where do you download it?
The link in the show notes.
Okay.
You can just search for it.
That's not much of a gag.
I think it's a good gift.
Well, it's kind of a gag gift.
I mean, it is kind of a gag
gift.
It's a gag gift, man.
It's a gag gift.
It's good.
He was gagging a lot.
Hey, there it is.
Now, we have a tip that is so
good, you almost don't want to give it.
Yeah, I almost didn't want to do this.
I've been excited for the whole show.
If you remember in the early days of
the internet, all these phones, every phone company
came with their own yellow pages and their
search engines.
Wait a minute.
I'm actually in the printed yellow pages, the
internet yellow pages.
Do you remember that book?
Yeah, I remember that book.
Yeah.
They thought that people would want...
That was done by McGraw-Hill.
Yes.
People thought that they would want to have
a...
I had an imprint with that company at
the time.
I bet you did.
And so, that all went by the wayside.
And next thing you know, you got to
pay for every information.
You can't get phone numbers or information about
anybody anymore without having to go through rigamarole.
And it's just almost impossible, except for this
one search engine, I think.
Oh, boy.
And it doesn't work with the PBS.
Okay.
Did I say PBS?
I meant VPN.
You did say that.
It doesn't work with PBS either.
Nothing works with PBS.
It's called TruePeopleSearch.com.
Oh, wow.
And it'll give you where somebody lives, where
they lived before, who they're married to, where
they work in, what their phone number is,
what their email is, and on and on
and on.
And it's really good.
Hold on.
So, you can track down your old buddies
using this.
Now, that said, it's a little weak on
email addresses because they'll just cite a whole
bunch of email addresses.
And I have a secondary tip, which is
how to get somebody's email address.
You find like a source like this, it's
TruePeopleSearch.
You look yourself up.
You'll find yourself in there with your address.
You take all the email addresses and put
one of them in the two, versus two,
and you put the email address up there.
And then under BCC, you put the other
40 email addresses.
And so, the guy will get one or
two emails, but it doesn't look like you
have a blank carbon copy going in there.
And you'll get kickback notices of all the
bad ones.
And you could quickly isolate what the person's
real email address is using this technique.
Wow.
This is horrible.
This is absolutely horrible.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's why I was reluctant.
Yeah.
I can see why.
You're all over this thing.
Oh, yeah.
Luckily, I got houses more than once.
So, I can hide.
So, they can firebomb all of your houses.
This is great.
That is a horrible tip, John.
I don't know if I can appreciate this
tip that you gave everybody.
Well, I think it's a tip that needs
to be out there, because it saves money.
You can find people.
Yeah.
You can find their phone numbers.
Like Dana Brunetti.
Easy to find.
That's very cool.
I like it.
You can find their phone numbers.
You can find them and call them up.
Say hello.
Call them up.
Hey.
Okay.
There it is.
Your dangerous, very, very, very dangerous tip of
the day.
That is it from John C.
Dvorak.
Go to tipoftheday.net, noagendafund.com.
There you go.
That is probably one of your best tips,
but also one of your most horrific tips.
That's why I said, I prefaced it.
You did.
How do I get off of that website
is my question.
That will be the next tip of the
day.
Probably not even possible.
Now, you can get off of the ones
that you have to pay to find people,
but this is a little rough.
But you know what, John?
TikTok is the problem.
That's the problem.
TikTok is the problem.
Not realpeoplesearch.com.
End of show mix is coming up from
Lee O.
LaPuke.
A great one.
Professor Jay Jones and Tom Starkweather, known as
Melodious Owls.
It is all dynamite.
Remember, we have the satellite skirmish coming up.
It will switch over seamlessly.
And coming to you from the place you
can find on realpeoplesearch.com, the heart of
the Texas Hill Country.
In the morning, everybody.
True people search so you don't get confused.
But I think he wants you to go
someplace else because he's in there, too.
In the morning, everybody.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley where we still
do say gruesome, newsome.
And he's in this.
You can find him, too.
You can find his wife, everybody.
It's unbelievable.
I'm John C.
Duvoir.
We return on Thursday.
Remember us at knowagenthedonations.com.
Until then, adios, mofos, a-hooey, hooey, and
such.
I am the god of hellfire.
And I bring you fire.
What the hell?
Is it really?
Governor Newsom is right there.
Expecting the damage.
Look at this entourage.
We were not expecting a gruesome newsome appearance.
You're fired, sir.
Is that Gavin Newsom?
That's the governor.
Governor, I live here, governor.
Please tell me what you're going to do.
I'm literally talking to the president right now.
Can I hear it?
Can I hear your call?
Because I don't believe it.
I have to get self-service.
Let's get it.
I want to be here when you call
the president.
Why is there no water in the Hall
of Remembrance, governor?
Is it going to be different next time?
It has to be.
Burn sites rapidly green with opportunity.
Scientists marvel at their power of regeneration.
I say that's the California way.
As your governor, I promise you, whatever challenges
come our way, I will always lead the
California way.
Protecting our planet and always planting seeds for
the future.
Gavin Newsom makes me drier than a California
fire hydrant.
So if one dies, do not pet it.
I have one clip here about why.
Why would somebody want to do that?
Yeah, why?
I don't know.
Horowitz does it too, I might add.
Because we wanted to do that for the
same reasons why we don't want to do
it right now.
We want to do it for the same
reasons we don't want to do it.
Why?
Why, why, why?
That's correct!
Someone coming out and saying, yeah, I'm ex
-CIA, it's a plague.
Put it in the Redbook.
NGO official in Ukraine.
Why?
And then you should follow up by saying,
that's a great question.
You're either still CIA or you were never
CIA.
Okay, what is this?
I don't know, Horowitz does it too, I
might add.
This is why, Blake?
This is something new.
They've sent terrorists from Afghanistan, reason here why?
Why?
We have terrorists in this country that we
don't even know why they're trying to do
this against us because- I have one
question about why, why are we doing this?
Why would somebody want to do that?
Yeah, why?
Prozempic, that's correct.
This is why, Blake?
Let's leave Sarah Adams, known to be 10
% humanitarian, 90% warlord.
I don't believe it for a second.
Vaccines do not, repeat, do not cause autism.
Why?
Because it's a great question.
It's a great question.
What is the cure?
Sarah Adams, aka Superbad.
Why, why, why?
Massive skyrocketing cancer.
I still think there will be good relations
with President Trump.
Gavin Newsom had an opportunity to have millions
of gallons a week, a day.
Millions and millions of gallons come down from
the North.
Millions and millions of gallons come down from
the North.
Millions of gallons.
He said, I don't want to sign it.
I don't want the water.
We don't need the water.
I said, you need the water.
Millions of gallons.
You need the water.
There's so much water that they wouldn't know
what to do.
Millions of gallons.
I was going to give him unlimited water
with millions of gallons.
You need the water.
Millions of gallons.
There's so much water that they wouldn't know
what to do with.
Millions of gallons.
Millions and millions of gallons come down from
the North.