1719 - "Pod Roll"

That goat yogurt, Adam Curry, John C. DeVora, December 8th, twenty twenty four. This is your award winning give on Asian media assassination. Episode seventeen. Nineteen. This is no agenda. Backpacks, bombs, boondoggles and broadcasting live from the heart of the country here in FEMA, region number six in the morning. Everybody, I'm Adam Curry. And for Northern Silicon Valley, where it took all of nine days to turn over Syria, what's that all about? I'm John Cena Black is in the morning.

Well, it is on the West Clark seven list, so. You know, it's did we did we already kind of knock that off the West Clark seven list or was it still officially on? No, son. Yeah. No, but I mean, was it already taken? It already been done. I mean, we've got we've got Lebanon. I guess we have Libya, I guess. Sudan, you know, any of this, what we got this, we got that. You don't know what we're doing. You know, the the oil baron was here this weekend. Ah, let's talk.

You know, I want to talk about Syria and its collapse overnight. Yeah, that was kind of interesting, wasn't it? But before we do that, I think it'd be better to listen to this, but but but he had to say, well, it has to be. I have to assume this has something to do with oil or pipelines. Yes, I would agree. Agree with you. First of all, turns out that he has been drilling in Libya for quite a while. So that kind of answers the question. Well, that's Libya. We're talking about Syria. I know.

I know. But I just said, do we have Libya on the West Clark seven list? Oh, yeah. The answer is, yeah, you said Syria at the beginning. I thought I said Libya. OK, I meant Libya. But regarding Syria and regarding oil, let me say this about that, because we did have some very interesting. We did. Hubert Humphrey did have some very interesting conversations. And it is specifically about this. Starting on day one, we will end Kamala's war on American energy and we will drill baby drill.

We're going to drill baby drill. That's going to bring down prices of everything because energy brought it up. We're going to terminate the Green New Scam. It's called the Green New Deal. It's a scam. We took almost 10 trillion dollars for nonsense, for absolute nonsense. We'll do bridges. We'll do roads. We'll do things that we need. So the oil baron says all of us in the oil business are laughing out loud about this. He says there's not going to be any drill baby drill at all.

Because ever since 2017, really, he says the streets, the streets, Wall Street is demanding cash flow instead of investment and growth. He says Chevron just reduced their their drilling by 10 percent. He says there's not going to be any drill baby drill. And Trump knows it. Everybody else knows it. And they're baffled other than he must have a plan to to lower the price of oil that does not include drill baby drill. And I think this is where Syria comes into play as just one of many options.

Well, I see nothing wrong with this thesis, because as we know and we've talked about, I've talked about on this show and also on Horowitz's DH unplugged. Our oil supplies have gone way up. Yeah. They haven't gone down during the Biden administration. Smart money knows this. What's gone up is the prices. But how does that work? How do you have supply and demand reversing? It's you know, you make it sound like there's a shortage when there's no shortage, so you can jack up the prices.

Yeah, pretty slick. Well, war does that, of course, that always jacks up the prices to some degree. But he he feels that reopening Russia. Getting their oil back onto the market would be would be one way that it's going to take place, and we could probably see that. Also, there's something else that's taking place, which was just announced, I think, Friday in the European Union. And then I'll let you get into Syria.

Twenty five years in the making, the European Union and the South American trade bloc, Mercosur, finally came to an agreement on a historic trade deal on Friday. My first message is that economically, this is a win win agreement. Europe is already Mercosur's second largest French. Oh, yeah. Investment and trade partner. So, you know how we do business together. The deal first proposed in 1999 aims to create one of the largest free trade zones in the world. So this is South America.

So Argentina, lots of places with oil and the EU. And I can only presume free trade means no tariffs. So they're looking to get their energy from places other than the United States. So there's a lot of dynamics happening here. Well, the French aren't too pleased because they see this because besides the Brazil, they got a lot of energy that the other countries don't so much. But the but Argentina is like is really the beef capital of the world. They're going to wipe out the French beef farmers.

The clip continues covering over 700 million people and nearly 25 percent of global GDP. The agreement received the support of leaders in Europe and South America like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Argentinian President Javier Millet, both celebrating the deal. But while an agreement has been reached, getting it approved is another matter altogether. It needs the green light from at least 15 of the European Union's 27 member nations.

That could prove to be a challenge as several countries oppose the deal, notably France, who have denounced its impact on the environment as well as unfair competition for its farmers. Farmers who've on the line has looked to reassure and to our farmers. If you we've heard you listen to your concerns and we are acting on them. We have listened to your concerns. And we say, if you we don't care about you, we have nice Argentinian beef coming.

Yeah, this is and, you know, Macron and France is is melting down over this. Is this the EU is a mess? It's a mess. France is melting down, but they're cozying up to Trump as fast as they can. It's it's it's just it's entertaining to see it all happen. I hope people find it as entertaining as we do. I'm sure everyone's sitting there like talk about the shooter, man, the CEO shooter. Well, we'll get to that. We'll we'll get to that. We'll play.

There's plenty to talk about the shooter for the next few weeks. That's shooter. That's the point. You know, there's someone murdered in New York City every single day. But this one. Oh, stop the presses. Get the media. Everybody. Oh, hair on fire. Oh, walking around. Oh, we've got drones. We're we're checking. Oh, we're finding everything. He's got a black coat. He's got a white coat. He's got a black backpack. He's got a he's got a black mask. He's got a white mask. Come on. Come on.

Hilarious. Wait, let me just let me just do this to get it out of the way. Because wait, wait, wait. Before you do that, I want to mention one thing. So they find his backpack. I got I got all this. I got the. Oh, you got the guy. Yeah, I got I got the clip. We begin with breaking news and the shooter who murdered the United Health Care CEO less than one hour ago. Police released these brand new images. Brand new. This comes a day after searching sent the NYPD underwater earlier this afternoon.

A team was this guy's like, hey, let's break out the scuba gear. Let's go all out. Let's just have some fun today. Spotted in Central Park, searching the pond near Bethesda, a fountain for clues to find the killer. NYPD divers went underwater. Saturday's water for answers in the Central Park Lake by the Bethesda fountain. The net is tightening and we're going to bring this person to justice. The net is tightening.

OK, Eric. Early Wednesday morning, a killer opened fire in midtown targeting 50 year old Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Care. Police believe the gunman ditched his backpack near the bandstand in Central Park. We've learned there were clothes inside, including a Tommy Hilfiger coat seen in some of the surveillance video and curiously some monopoly money. Police first had to make sure there were no explosives in the bag.

Then they used an excavator to remove the backpack and some of the surrounding area in case there was extra DNA evidence. Oh, brother. It's all now in a lab in Queens. Let me get through these because this is hilarious. Wait, I didn't know this part where they dug up all the dirt. Oh, yeah, it's in a lab. It's in the lab in Queens. So I'm looking for what the media has not done yet is we haven't come up with a name. So I hear the Hilfiger coat. I'm like, could we call him the Hilfiger hero?

Could we call him the monopoly money murderer? I mean, we've got to come up with a name for this guy. This is what we do in the American media. We come up with cool names and and we just haven't done it yet. I think the Hilfiger hero could be one because they're not going to use hero. Every well, the media won't do that because then it looks like they're encouraging this. Well, here's the media is aware of what's happening to CNN.

The New York Times writes this, quote, The dark commentary after the death of the 50 year old insurance executive from Maple Grove, Minnesota, highlighted the anger and frustration over the state of health care in America, where those with private insurance often find themselves in Kafka as tangles while seeking reimbursement for medical treatment and are often denied. And that frustration is something that doctors say they've seen from patients throughout their careers.

I see people when they're at their lowest, when the system has failed them. And I'm frankly not surprised they feel abandoned. They feel exploited. They feel lied to when it comes to the health care system and especially insurances because of the things you mentioned. Denials, prior authorization, narrow networks, the cost of health care. It's been going on and bottling up for a long time.

So our panels by Annie Linsky, you know, we're going to be clear here about the tragedy that is Mr. Thompson and his family. Right. And set that aside. But what we do see in the wake of this is an outpouring of anger around the way people have been treated by these companies. Now, we are, again, going to be clear. We are not saying that this justifies any sort of violence at all.

In a CNN story that was just published about this, they note that a Facebook post that was put up by United Health Group expressing sadness about the CEO's death, it received 62,000 reactions. I'm a 57,000 of them were laughing emojis, laughing emojis. We are so, so dark in America, so dark. And everyone is is looking at, you know, the possibility of this being a disgruntled patient. But the constitutional lawyer checked in in particular around the words delay, depose, defend.

Now, we've probably all seen there is a book that has similar words delayed, denied, defend the same. It's the same words on the book. And I think now I think depose was one of the words in the book. Well, the book is a bestseller now, by the way. Yeah, we don't we don't know exactly what's on there, but the book is delayed and I defend why insurance companies don't pay claims and what you can do about it. Now, the constitutional lawyer writes in and I was allowed to talk about this.

He says my firm represents scores of doctors in reimbursement cases against United Health Care. United Health Care is notorious for not reimbursing physicians, even emergency physicians who have no choice but to treat emergency patients. And my first thought, he said, is when I heard about this assassination was the assassin might be a disgruntled doctor. It will be interesting to learn more about the suspect.

And he said he said, I should add that the United Health Care is hardly alone in this respect. I know the health care industry is of course has has questionable conduct all around, but the insurers are distressingly cheap when it comes to reimbursing physicians who are billing them for their services.

I have seen emergency doctors who have stitched people back together after horrific accidents in the insurers pay their claims at fractions of a penny on the dollar, sometimes don't pay them anything at all. So we need to take a doctor into account. And then the we remember the United Health hack on Optum, which is their their network.

That happened on February 21st, 2024, United Health discovered a cybersecurity breach on the same day Nancy Pelosi made her second purchase of call options in Palo Alto Networks, who then were announced as the company chosen to investigate the breach. That's always fun to bring in Pelosi. And. I have to say that all of the video evidence we're being shown is such bull crap. Literally, the guy, he's in the taxi cab with a white mask.

He's in the youth hostel with a with a with a tan jacket and a black backpack. I mean, everything is bunk, but we do have another possible name here. You see, authorities say he was calculated, but sloppy, leaving behind a burner phone and a water bottle that's being tested for DNA. We're looking for the passport. A flirtatious smile with a front desk clerk at a hostel could help break the case, according to authorities. It's an age old story. Beauty killed the beast.

She said, oh, let me see your face. And he just said, OK, and pulls his mask down. And here we are. Beauty killed the beast. I mean, they're loving it. And of course, don't don't worry about Trump's assassination attempt. Don't talk about that. You know, don't talk about anything. Tucker talking to Lavrov is not important. Let's focus on this. So I have to call it the distraction of the week at this point.

So, yeah, it's going to get worse because I was reading a newsletter for a for the one of these substack things that come that I'm sorry, this is the one from McCullough McCullough Foundation. They have a lot of weird theories. And I think that maybe the guy was a actual pro made to look like an amateur. There you go. So it was very meta.

Yeah. And and the reason was is because this guy, this the CEO was going to the meeting to blow the lid off with some facts about Medicare fraud and scams that are going on. Well, it just as an aside, it is. And we even talked about, I think, on the show at some point that UnitedHealthcare specifically had moved away from having people review cases and a turn to the old mighty A .I. And they went from 10 point things like 10.9 denial percentage to 22 percentage

points because of A.I. You know, which which also I mean, that by itself seems like a very iffy practice at best. So there's not a lot of love, and I think this is also in a way, John, but we played those clips from the insurance, the health insurance coalition about how they have all the pieces and how it operates. A lot of people went, I didn't know that they have no idea. So I think we are in the middle of the season of reveal. Yeah. Any chance I get. Yeah, I don't know why.

Because beyond me, people are learning. People are learning about, you know, how the system works. They know it wasn't working in their favor, but now they're like, oh, wait a minute. This is truly, truly rigged. I think a lot of people didn't realize this. You know, this brought up something that this is off off this topic, but it's similar in terms of the sociology. So we're at dinner of J.C. and Jesse were over the house and the J .C. brought up this interesting phenomenon he's discovered.

He says that when he mentions to any liberals whatsoever about the fact that there was a phone app that illegals were using to to bypass the system, they'd go on this app and then they'd get into the country. Yeah, the CPB. We all know about the phone app. Yeah. Not one liberal that he knows, believes, knows about this. And they're all aghast about it. He says so far it's 30 for 30. Wow. But then they're shocked. They're they're actually shocked.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So so it's everything is like this. Yeah. I mean, we have family members who are convinced that Trump is going to take away their Social Security, convinced. Demanding a full refund today of everything they've paid in. He says the only common denominator he can find is they all read the New York Times. Yeah, that would probably do it. Yeah. But, you know, does anyone go after the New York Times and blow them up? No. There's your problem.

Let's go to the root of the problem, people. Let's go to the roots. Probably wouldn't help. Not advocating for that, obviously. And it probably wouldn't help. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Anyway, let's get to Syria, because Syria has a number of aspects to it. And I see that you're you're loaded for bear. Actually, I have plenty of stuff. But first, I want to play the rundown that took this is yesterday's story. This is Syria. Good rundown from NPR. And this is from yesterday in Syria.

Rebels are nearing Damascus after they claim they took the city of Homs. Meanwhile, Qatar has hosted a flurry of meetings, including one between Saudi Arabia and Iran and another between top figures from Hamas and Turkey. What exactly constitutes a flurry? More than two. The most urgent meeting, though, focused on Syria and the lightning advances by fighters, they're seeking to topple the government. And here's I have a Charlie has more.

The meeting brought together the Syrian government's most important backers, Russia and Iran, with the fighters main backer, Turkey. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the ministers called for ending hostile activities in Syria and implementing a years old U.N. resolution for a political process between the government and opposition. Lavrov said he cannot forecast what Russia will do militarily to support the Syrian government, but that guessing what is going to happen.

We are trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail, even if they say that they are no longer terrorists. It comes as fighters led by Hayat Tahrir Sham inch closer to the Syrian capital after a blitz on key cities in recent days. Hold on a second. Was that Lavrov from the Tucker interview? Because that's what it sounds like. Well, he always sounds like Lavrov from the Tucker interview.

I watched the whole interview, and I think that was that was taken from the I'm just as a point of interest, like, oh, OK. Well, that would be interesting if they're taking if NPR is taking clips from Tucker, it wouldn't surprise me. Oh, yeah. So I have I have the the. Thirty second breaking news from the from from this morning, which I'm sure you have a longer version of. I have the well, let me let's play this first before we get into the analysis, which is the part that I wanted to play.

The breaking news is that they the place fell apart. Assad is gone. Assad flees. Does it tell you where he went? No, it doesn't even tell you how he fled. But all I saw consistently was like, am I watching a rerun of Iraq where they're pulling down the statues of Saddam Hussein? It's exactly the same. Pulling down statues. Not from what I could tell, looking at the real reporting that took place by the by the bonus to play the bonus clip. And then we can go into discussing that. It's a long one.

Three minutes. This bonus. It's because I didn't have time to chop it up. Just a short time ago, CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward was on Lebanon's border with Syria, where celebrations erupted after the Bashar al -Assad regime collapsed. We are just now about 20 miles from the Syrian border. And you can see celebrations are breaking out everywhere. This woman actually has just offered me some sweets. My brook and the Lebanese. This is the mood right now. It is festive.

It is jubilant. Take a look with me. You can see people are waving the flag, the flag of the Syrian revolution. It has got three stars. You can see children. And it's just an extraordinary moment. I think no one realized that this would ever actually happen. After so many years of waiting, so many years, a lot of fireworks, as well as people in Syria. And I'm on the house. And I'm still in the house. I'm going to be able to see the Bashar al-Assad. And I'm so proud.

Wow. Well, it's like Amsterdam on New Year's Eve. Now she goes on and on. This Clarissa Ward is something to behold. She is the foreign correspondent. I am going to read from her wiki page. Yes, here we go. Let me. I don't think I don't know what kind of a spook she is or if she's just spook adjacent. But she's been she was a war correspondent or a foreign correspondent for CBS, ABC, Fox. She's been positioned all over the world. Now she's with CNN.

She's the first that doesn't say it in this report. But she is the only boots on the ground reporter for all Western media. She's actually in Damascus as we speak. And she is just hanging out. She says, let me read this. Ward speaks fluent English, French, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese. What's her first name again? Clarissa. Clarissa. You can look at her to see if she looks she has a kind of a common look. That's she cute. She's more. Let's put it this way.

You're going to look at pictures. She's more telegenic than photogenic. Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Yale, Yale, Yale, Yale. OK. Yes, but she has no other. But she was like born and she lives in England and London. She's a Londoner. She was her parents are American and British. No good for her. Yeah. Well, finally, she's got something to do. That's good for us. No, well, she's she was at the in Iraq when Hussein fell. She was this woman has knows how to position herself.

Basically, if this woman shows up in your country, batten down the hatches is what you're saying. OK. There's some elements of that. It looks like. So she goes on and she's there reporting and she talks. And there's a bunch of stuff left out. And she she breaks it up, but she doesn't discuss it. And one of them is the third star on the Iraqi flag, which is what the rebels are using. And it's like the Iraqi flag is two stars is that there's a third star.

But that third star flag has been in and out of vogue since the 40s. It comes and goes with different colors. The Iraqi flag itself is a mystery as to what it is. Listen to this. Listen, she she got married in 2016 to Philip von Bernsdorf, a fund manager whom she met in 2007 at a dinner party in Moscow as one does. I mean, yes, as one does the whole. Yeah. When you start seeing it, you know, this sort of thing. What dinner party? Where's my dinner party in Moscow?

And, you know, met a fund manager. Yeah. OK. Yeah. All right. Good. Yeah. Oh, it's great. It makes it makes our job entertaining. Yes. And she is good at what she does. And she's wandering around. She didn't have a headscarf or anything. She's wandering around, looking very Western, speaking fluent street Arabic. Yeah. And talking to everybody. It's the funniest report to watch. But it's all this morning.

There's she's dominating the scene because she's the only one that's actually made inroads now. But we skipped the rest of it. Let's get into the analysis because obviously with oil in mind and everything else is going. Well, the analysis tells me one thing in particular, why this happened in the first place. And I have to harken back to the commentary that we have from our various Muslim contacts that listen to the show like to tell us contacts. Oh, I like how you position that.

And they are they have one of them was actually predicting this would happen on Fridays. And our contact said Syria is going down. It was before it was on the news. Yeah. And the the commentary earlier on in this discussion was that the that the street thinks that the United States, Iran and Russia are in all this together. The streets, not the Wall Street, but the streets of of the Middle Streets of Cairo, basically. Yeah. Oh, OK. So so Russia, America and Iraq, you said Iran.

Oh, Iran. Oh, well, this is what the Iranians always say. They say we're always working with the US together. But I'm I'm all in. So the analysis does bring up a point that kind of I don't think NPR notices it when they bring this guy on to talk about it. But I did. Here we go with analysis one. This is not the CIP. OK, I got it. Syria analysis one. Got it. It has been a dramatic week in Syria as the country's long stagnant civil war, which began in the early 2010s, has reignited.

Insurgent groups have taken over big cities, long controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad's authoritarian government. And today they reached the suburbs of the capital city, Damascus, according to the Associated Press. I think we should just stop for one second and remind everybody that in 2010, 2012, the Guardian published an article about when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie met the Assad's. Do we remember this? I think we just. Oh, yes, there was a photo op.

We need to we need to present this properly so that you understand how quickly this turned. And they weren't the only ones that were doing photo ops with them. Oh, no. And his wife was in Vogue magazine, by the way, that Vogue magazine no longer available online. And Asma, and she says, my husband was driving us all to lunch. It relates, Asma is in The Guardian. And out of the corner of my eye, I could see Brad Pitt was fidgeting. I turned around and asked, is anything wrong?

Where's your security? Asked Pitt. So I started teasing him. Oh, see that old woman on the street? She's one of them. That old guy crossing the road. Yeah, that's the other security. The president joins in the punch line. Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to come and get some training. So it was so laid back during the so-called dictator's reign and gassing the people, which we also found out was completely bogus, completely. It's all been theater. It's all been bullcrap.

His dad did some bad stuff. But this ophthalmologist, not much of a dictator. But that's been the narrative for the past 12 years. I think I think we we've positioned. Yeah, I'm not going to argue that. OK, we'll continue. As we monitor this fast changing story, we're going to focus in on one aspect of it. The role that Russia has played in keeping Assad's government in power and how that has changed in this latest phase.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has for years provided critical military support that propped up the Assad regime. But with a war dragging on in Ukraine and a struggling economy at home in Russia, the thinking seems to be different. Here to talk more about this is Mark Katz, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who specializes in Russian policy toward the Middle East. Welcome. Great to be here. As I just laid out, it's been such a surprising last few days in the Syrian civil war.

It's been going on for more than a decade. Let's look backward, especially to those early years of the war. How critical was Putin's support for Assad and Russia's support for the Syrian government in those early years of this war? And since it was really very important, I mean, certainly from the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011 up until mid 2015, Putin was sending arms, but it was Iranians and Hezbollah who were fighting on the ground to defend Assad.

But then 2015, Assad seemed to be on the ropes. But Putin's intervention in September of that year really turned things around, saved Assad, helped him gain back territory and didn't take all that many men. And partly because, you know, the Iranians and Hezbollah had a lot of people there already. But Putin's small intervention was successful compared to the large American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq that were not. So it was very dramatic.

Surely in this NPR analysis, they mentioned that we've had a military personnel in Syria flying drones, doing all kinds of stuff up until, you know, up until this so-called revolt, revolution, capture, et cetera, and that we've funded rebel. I mean, do they have any history? Do they remember anything? This is really about. The theme of this little analysis turns out to be all mostly about Russia.

Gee. And what it which brings us to when we get to the end, it brings us back around to the thesis that you introduced early, unthinkingly about oil, getting Russia back in the oil game. Yeah. All right. Part two. What's the best way to frame the current Russian interest in Syria right now, whether that's the focus of the Russian government or whether that's Russian manpower in Syria or not in Syria?

I think the relationship with Syria is very important because at the time of the Arab Spring, Assad was his last Arab ally. And if he had fallen, there wouldn't have been much room for Russian influence in the Middle East. But the fact that not only did Putin save Assad, but oddly enough, even Arab governments who didn't like Assad were impressed by Putin having supported him so strongly compared to what they claimed was a lack of American support for its allies.

And so I think that, you know, Putin's position in Syria has helped him, you know, build relations with a lot of countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates in particular. And they have, you know, very important relations with these. But now if Assad is going to fall and the question arises is, well, just how how useful an ally is Putin after all. Right. And has there been any Russian support in this particular dire moment for the Assad government?

Or is it fair to say that Russia is focused on Ukraine and just is not able to contribute in the same way? Russia is mainly focused on Ukraine. And certainly the the images and the reporting seems to be that the Russians are moving out. They've moved their naval vessels out of the port at Tartarus. They seem to be pulling back their assets to the, you know, both the air base and the naval base. They're not they're not moving people in. They seem to be moving people away from the battle.

How does this guy know? Is it you? How does he know? Don't know his sources. I mean, I mean, he's in the marriage. He's retired, supposedly. If it came from that ward woman, I'd take it as, you know, some fact. But this guy's sitting somewhere. Where is he, London? Where is he sitting? He is in. They do say, I think, at the very end, OK, he's in the Middle East someplace doing something. I don't know what it is. This whole thing is spooky to the extreme.

And so he knows because he knows, hey, he knows because he knows. But this what's clear is that this was like a knee jerk. Like someone said, OK, let's do this. Because there was no ramp up, there was no media ramp up to it. We haven't really heard about the evil dictator Assad for quite a number of years. Now, the whole thing is overnight. Yes. This is the Clarissa mentioned this the entire revolution, quote unquote, this this civil war, whatever. It's nine days total from beginning to end.

But how does that work? It's been dragging on its feet forever. And I love these guys with the with the fresh, completely spot free, soil free new camos. Their boots are clean. I mean, it's like someone went in, dropped off a container of gear. OK, it's time. The objects are obvious. So what does that mean for the Assad government? First and foremost, do you think that if the support is just not there, do you think that makes the coming weeks that much more precarious?

It makes the coming days much more precarious for the coming hours. What? Why is he coming hours? He nailed it from yesterday. Why is he laughing? Because he knows. Yeah. Why do you think he's laughing? And then he throws in the coming hours. Yeah, it's not there. Do you think that makes the coming weeks that much more precarious? It makes the coming days much more precarious in the coming hours.

Yeah, I think that certainly there have been some complaints by Russians that Assad has not been willing to fight, that Assad's troops have not been willing to fight. So the implication is, how can Russia defend people who aren't willing to defend themselves? It just seems that the Russians seem to understand that the situation is pretty dire and that they're just not in a position to help.

And we've also seen the Iranians seem to be moving out as well, which I think is really surprising, because if anything, the relationship with Syria is even more important to them than to Russia. Although it's obviously debatable. If the Assad government falls, how much does that weaken Russia in the Middle East? Well, it's certainly it's going to hurt Russia. Now, of course, I mean, they have relations with places that do important things to them.

There's cooperation with the Saudis on oil, lots of economic cooperation with the UAE. Certainly the Egyptians will probably still work with them. But it means that Putin is not as powerful. And I think that for a lot of countries who really accepted the narrative that the Americans are not reliable, but Putin is, that this has now been going to be undermined tremendously. Hmm. Oil. Yeah, only reliable. It's going to be the Chinese, the way things are going. Yeah. So the Russians bailed out.

They just bailed out. This is what happened. And nobody talks about it. And there are, you know, the mainstream media besides the NPR. Is the Russians let it's OK, we're done. And so they left. And it turns out the Iranians, oh, well, it's they're leaving. We're leaving as if this isn't schemed because these guys with those fresh uniforms, oh, well, we can't handle them. So the final clip, I think we're coming to. I want to ask about one other factor here.

And like you said, this might be a matter of days in terms of the immediate change in enforcements in Syria. But looking forward, you have Donald Trump coming back into office in the United States when he was president. Trump made it very clear that he was incredibly skeptical of American intervention in Syria. What do you see? How do you see a second Trump administration changing the dynamics in Syria?

If Assad falls before Trump comes to power, I think that Trump, when he comes in, would be very likely to pull the remaining 900 US soldiers out of Syria that leave Syria to the Syrians. In other words, if it's not going to be under the control of an external great power, then that's sort of what America was trying to prevent. Although we were there to fight ISIS. But I think it'll be very hard for the US, no matter who was president, to maintain its presence.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Trump in particular withdraws it. That is Mark Katz, professor emeritus at George Mason University. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk us through all of this. OK, so, yeah, I see the oil play, but there is one other thing that I would not put past our intelligence services being CIA, because we know the military industrial complex doesn't want Pete Hegseth. And I have some funny, some funny stuff on him in a moment.

And they've really been pushing hard to to just discredit this guy. And Trump keeps saying, no, no, stay strong. You're the guy. The intelligence services. Well, well, well, well, pimping DeSantis is the backup. Oh, of course. He's the perfect guy to be the backup. I take you back seven years in time. You met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. What is your response to the criticism that doing so essentially legitimizes a war criminal?

My focus has been and continues to be on how we can bring about peace to the people of Syria, how we can bring about an end to this counterproductive regime change war that the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar and other countries have been waging in Syria that has caused this tremendous loss of life, destruction and suffering, as well as the refugee crisis that's being faced.

We have to be willing to meet with President Assad, who, whether people like it or not, remains the president of Syria. If we care about bringing about peace for the Syrian people. What did you and President Assad discuss? It was a lengthy discussion. We talked about a variety of things, including the reconstruction of Syria, how to ensure that these refugees who have left Syria because of the war are able to return home.

We talked about, again, how to ensure that Syria is able to continue as a secular country. We talked about the effect and impact of sanctions and what effect that has had on the Syrian society as a whole. So this meeting that Tulsi Gabbard had with Bashar al-Assad seven, eight years ago has been hanging over her head. They haven't really quite been able to pump it up. But now that this has taken place, well, it only took the mustache man Bolton a few seconds to pop on to CNN.

Yeah, I think she's totally unqualified to be DNI. And I think her positions put her beyond the outermost fringe of American politics. Why are you laughing, Bolton? On the outermost fringe of American politics. When she visited Assad in Syria, he was effectively a Russian Iranian ally. And what she said about the Syria not being a direct threat to the United States, that was her justification for going. It's completely false.

The Syrians and their combination with Iran and Hezbollah have posed direct threats to Americans across the region. They certainly pose a direct threat to key American allies, Israel and Jordan. And it's going to be very interesting to see what the files that may be uncovered in the Syrian government, if the rebels succeed in capturing Damascus, what they show about a number of Americans. And I think there's a there's a chance that might have just been coincidence.

But I think the intelligence services are very happy this is happening so they can have the senators discredit Tulsi Gabbard during her confirmation process. Good one. And I forgot about that interview. Yeah, actually, I actually pulled, you know, when she was running for president in the Democrat debates, I pulled a quick clip here and she's talking to, I think, Chris Matthews. And she was interesting. Just listen to what she said.

I've served in Congress for seven years on the Foreign Affairs Committee, on the Armed Services Committee, on the Homeland Security Committees, meeting with world leaders, working with military commands, getting high level national security briefings focused on ensuring our nation's security, the safety and security and the freedom of the American people and working towards peace.

That was why I was willing to meet with a brutal dictator of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in the interest of peace and national security.

And why, as president, I'll be willing to meet with any leader from any other country if it means that we are able to ensure no more of my brothers and sisters in uniform are needlessly, unnecessarily sent into harm's way, fighting in these regime change wars that have been so costly and so destructive to my brothers and sisters in uniform and to every single American.

This is why I'm calling for this sea change, a shift in our nation's foreign policy away from the Bush-Clinton legacy of interventionism and more regime change wars and instead toward a foreign policy that leads to diplomacy and cooperation. Obama. It's Bush-Clinton-Trump. Oh, I hope he doesn't. I couldn't understand what was going on there. Well, she's saying the regime change. No, I understand. I heard her, not he's him. He said it's Bush-Clinton-Obama.

And she said, no, it's Bush-Clinton-Trump. I thought that was just interesting. Oh, that is interesting. Yeah, it's a mess. It's a mess. But I think that, you know, the way this came about, because what really if they want to get rid of her? Yeah. Oh, they do not. And and it's that they might do a quid pro quo. You know her for Hegseth. Oh, man. Hegseth. NPR had a great piece. You know, the was it New Yorker magazine did this big hit piece, big hit piece. Oh, big hit piece.

And so NPR got the got the journalist who wrote this hit hit piece. Let me see. I don't have her name. Do I have her name? Jane. Hold on. Jane Meyer. So here's NPR's Mary Louise Kelly with New York writer Jane about this hit piece she wrote on Pete Hegseth. Well, among the other journalists who have been looking into Hegseth's record is Jane Mayer of the New Yorker. She's with me now. Hey, Jane. Hi there, Mary Louise. Hi there, Mary Louise. Mary Louise. Hello, Mary Louise. Hi there, Mary Louise.

If I was on the radio and my name was Mary Louise, I would change it. I would change it. Mary Louise. Jane. Hi there, Mary Louise. Your reporting cites documents, cites eyewitnesses to alleged sexual impropriety, also financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse. Oh, my. Start with that last one. Oh, my. Now it's it used to be money issues. Now it's financial. What did you say? Financial? Tell us. What was it? Back it up and play it again.

Yeah. To alleged sexual impropriety, also financial mismanagement, financial mismanagement, alcohol abuse. Start with that last one. Tell us. Yeah, let's start with the most important one. Wow. Yeah, you might be ripping off the whole world, but let's talk about your drinking problem. Oh, and it gets good. Start with that last one. Tell us what Hegseth's former colleagues told you about witnessing alcohol related incidents in professional settings. Now, what do you think?

What kind of professional setting do you think this would be? So I'm having to assume that that would include the Christmas party. Professional settings. Listen, what I was hearing was a fairly alarming catalog of specific instances. I love this. A fairly alarming catalog. A catalog. Wow. It's like the Sears catalog of alarming incidents.

I was hearing was a fairly alarming catalog of specific instances that his former employees at a veterans organization called Concerned Veterans for America saw and reported. A group of them put a report together that they sent to. By the way, concerned. I haven't looked it up, but it sounds like. Veterans Concerned Veterans for America sounds like a political group that are concerned about the direction of the country doesn't sound like it's specifically for, you know, helping veterans.

I'm just guessing I haven't looked it up. The veterans organization called Concerned Veterans for America saw and reported. A group of them put a report together that they sent to the managers of this group. And what it describes is about two years worth of moments where Pete Hegseth was repeatedly inebriated, often to the point of almost blacking out where he had to be carried to his room.

There was one particular description of him at one point as needing to be restrained from getting on the stage at a strip club. Oh, no. He tried to get up to dance with the strippers. And a female employee had to pull him away. He was about to be thrown out of the club, according to this. Oh, no, because that's never happened to any guy ever jumped up on the stage, drunk to dance with the strippers. And he was about to get thrown out of the club.

Oh, my whistleblower didn't get thrown out about what? Because the female clubs don't put up with that crap. They throw you a female. But a female colleague who was also at the strip party and the strip bar has restrained him to get up to dance with the strippers. And a female employee had to female employees pull him away. Another stripper, i.e. another stripper, one. Hey, get off the stage, Bozo. And a female employee had to pull him away.

He was about to be thrown out of the club, according to this report. This whistleblower report. It's a whistleblower report. And another instance that was also kind of a standout was one where a different former employee sent a letter to the managers saying that Pete Hegseth had closed down a bar at two thirty in the morning in Cayuga Falls, Ohio, where he was chanting with another person, kill all Muslims, kill all Muslims, man. This is what we call a hit piece.

This is what we call a hit piece. Kill. So we're drunk. We. Oh, man. And NPR, Marie Louise. I don't know this. Well, this Meyer woman is notorious for she's obviously a Democrat operative. She's one of the people that went after Clarence Thomas wrote a book about it. Oh, is that who she is? OK. Yeah, she is. Gotcha. Gotcha. Got a lot. She she was it wrote a book about dark money. She's a very smart girl, obviously. She graduated another Yalie graduated top of her class, Phi Beta Kappa.

And so she's no dummy, but she went right into journalism. This doesn't make a lot of sense, but OK. That's what she did. And all her stuff is about slamming Republicans. OK, pretty much. She's doing her job. She's doing what she's what she's paid to do. Here's President-elect Trump speaking out on behalf of Pete Hegseth. Today, President-elect Trump renewing his support of Pete Hegseth. His pick for secretary of defense.

Trump posting on social media, saying Hegseth support is strong and deep, adding he'll be a fantastic high energy secretary of defense. As long as Donald Trump wants me in this fight, I'm going to be standing right here in this fight. Today, multiple sources confirmed to ABC News Hegseth will be getting an FBI background check. Hegseth's attorney on CNN.

I am expecting that the background check is going to take a lot of the false stories that have been circulated in the media and is going to put them completely to bed. Hegseth faces accusations of financial mismanagement, sexual misconduct and excessive drinking. Allegations he denies. Trump in New York last night touting his transition at an award show broadcast by Fox Nation. I think you have seen more happen in the last two weeks than you've seen in the last four years.

And we're not even there yet. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy yesterday on Capitol Hill answering questions from lawmakers about Trump's newly created Department of Government Efficiency. Elon and Vivek, they both told me how much they enjoyed it, how productive it was. Musk and Ramaswamy will lead the outside advisory group looking to slash government spending.

Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote and how we're spending the American people's money. It's not clear what programs could be cut. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the meeting a brainstorming session. He says Americans will find dollars in hand without cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security. No, they're coming for your Social Security. They're coming for you, so is Trump.

So I think we need to go to some dumb Dems for a moment just to get a little temperature of how this is playing out with the dumb Dems. And when we talk about dumb Dems, well, I mean, who else could I bring in, John? Dumb Dems? Yeah. Who wouldn't you bring in? Well, I'm going to bring in Kara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway. Oh, you're buddies. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because they've got a lot to say about all these appointments. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. Big story.

Big story. President-Elect Donald Trump What? What's that? They have a band? Oh, yeah. They've got these hits like these these audio hits. Let's go to our first story. Bum, bum, bum, bum. Because we're not a tech news, we're news. It's a podcast, isn't it? Unlike us. Podcasts with hits? OK. Yeah. Unlike us. Now for real news. President-Elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the FBI is former national security official Kash Patel. That's a what a strange man he is.

Patel is a Trump loyalist who's vowed to come. Oh, now she's making fun of an Indian name. What a strange. What is kind of a racist comment was that? Oh, no. He's got the funny name and he's a loyalist. He's a loyalist. They're all loyal. That's what you do. You what are you going to do? Who are you supposed to hire if you don't hire a loyalist? Well, I'm just asking the question rhetorically. Who would you hire that? What do you don't want? Yeah, I would. That guy hates my guts.

He's got the job. Well, how does that work? Well, the reason the term loyalist is chosen and you'll hear it in the in the coming few. No, they say it over and over. I've heard it. No, but I'm telling you why. The reason why is because that's the same. You'll hear it over and over again in a different context. I was going to finish my sentence. You will hear it in the context of Bashir al-Assad's loyalists. So they're doing associative. Yes. So loyalist is a bad person.

Well, a loyalist is someone who is loyal to a dictator. That's the association. Loyalist Putin, loyalist Assad, loyalist, loyalist. That's what a strange man he is. Patel is a Trump loyalist who's vowed to come after Trump's enemies, including people in the media. A number of high level Senate Republicans have already indicated their willingness to get behind the choice, but others not so much. It's a real it's a real mixed bag on this guy.

By the way, he has to fire Chris Ray, who was appointed by Trump on it to a 10 year term, so Chris Ray shouldn't be in office until 2027. It's alarming a lot of people. At the same time, the Pete Heggs nomination is still raising big questions. This New Yorker piece is a damning whistleblower report on his previous behavior at running two organizations. They keep calling it a whistleblower report. This is not against the government. Whistleblowers. Did she say that? Yeah. And that was in the.

How's it whistleblowing? Well, the NPR lady said it, too, was always this is a whistleblower. We had whistleblowers talking here. So Kara basically read read the article. Oh, it's a whistleblower. I don't think it qualifies as a whistleblower. No, it's just a standard. The smear. Yeah, that's a whistleblower. Is a damning whistleblower report on his previous behavior running two organizations where he drank too much. She abused women, sexual harassment.

So I think the abused women and sexual harassment is the stripper story. I think that's the folder falling on the stage holding that in. Bunch of lying, misspending, mismanagement. This story has got it all by Jane Mayer. And it's it's based on well, it's it's a it's a devastating, devastating, devastating, very well reported piece about very bad. No, it's not. There's no there's no well reported if you have all anonymous sources. Very, very well reported.

Hey, Kara is a journalist and an author. She knows what she's talking about. Very well reported piece about how bad a manager he was. It may have been a bad period of his life. But boy, was it bad. The New York Times also has a twenty eighteen email from Hegseth's mother calling her son an abuser of women. That email was something else. She told The Times she'd written the messages in anger and had apologized for it. But boy, did it have a ring of truth at the time.

I guess it was during the same time period. Had a ring of truth. Now, just like just like the guy who was laughing about all hours, it's hours from now. Kara Swisher seems to know about new reporting before it comes out. Anyway, we'll see what happens here. But it's disturbing. I would recommend reading the mother's letter is disturbing is along with the story from the New Yorker for Hegseth. That's for sure.

And I'm looking forward to the Kash Patel story, which is going to be just worse, I think, in a different way. And it tells the Gabbard stories. Anyway, journalists are doing a great job with these things. And I thought it was a very fair story. And Pete Hegseth, it really was. So, you know, whatever. Her voice is going to fall over here if it's any more bright. Yeah, journalists are doing a great job here. They're doing a great job. Wait until you see the Tulsi story.

Wait until you see the the cash Patel story. So it's going to be worse. It's much worse. Cash Patel. They were two strippers. I'm telling you that cash Patel goat yogurt, goat yogurt. Where does that come from? It's just fermented goat yogurt. The guy can't hold it. Obama is also out on the on the trail. He was speaking at a democracy forum. Yeah, I'm glad you got this clip. Yeah, it's this is that this clip was played. I think it's just Obama's flailing personally. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. They've made a lot out of this as though some scheme is afoot. Well, that's the whole point. That's and first of all, he looks very thin. Doesn't look very just doesn't look healthy. I don't know. He's probably I agree with that. I think and I think he doesn't look healthy. I think he looks unhealthy. So it takes him 45 seconds to say 15 seconds worth of content. But here we go. There are going to be times potentially when one side tries to stack the deck and lock in a a permanent.

Grip on power. What he's saying, there's no more elections either by actively suppressing votes or politicizing the armed forces or using the judiciary, the criminal justice system, go after opponents. And in those circumstances, this guy see the irony in that comment, you mean what you say by yourself? Make your cop do the health. Yes, exactly. And in those circumstances, pluralism does not call for us to just stand back and say, well, I'm not sure. That's OK. Very. In those circumstances.

A line has been crossed and we have to stand for. It's not who we are. Just back to to Swisher and Galloway, just have two short clips here because they're just such morons, it's funny. So who really should we be selecting for these for these important, these important cabinet positions? What would we be? What would be our job if you had to pick one? We do exactly what we're doing right now because our lives are really nice. I understand.

But if you had to take a cab, they said, here, Scott, you have to take one cab job. You don't have a choice. Oh, easy. I'd want to be secretary of education. Oh, wow. Interesting. What would you guess I would want to be? Head of the CIA. That's right. That's right, my friend. That's correct. I'd spy on you. You do spy on me. You fucking text me at three in the morning. You know, I she wants to be a spy so bad. You identified this like a couple of years back. Some time ago.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe in her bio. But I'm I'm sure she talks to people all the time. You know, maybe this is part of their job. It's not. They have a pretty big reach amongst the Democratic elite. They all love the oh, we love pivot. We love. This is why I listen to it. And that was a little back and forth there that was kind of kind of disturbing. Oh, they do this all the time. They are they are they are massive elites. And they just talk elitist. It's it's it's fun.

And so who would clean up the food instead of, you know, we can't have RK Jr. Who would Kara Swisher want to really get rid of chemicals in our food? Who could it be? Who would be the right guy for that? No guesses. No, it's important. But I one of the ones as we're just talking about this UnitedHealthcare thing is the health and human services director. I would make that Mark Cuban, you know, or someone like that. You need to facilitate change in how health care goes in this country.

I'm going to never guess that in a million years that anyone would be so lame to suggest Mark Cuban as HHS. I know it's a basketball team. He sold broadcast dot com. Give me a break. We know how that went down. Now, there are two. There's another this is this is a kind of something odd that I picked up. Trump has appointed Lutnick, is it Howard? Howard Lutnick from Cantor Fitzgerald to be the commerce secretary. Yeah. Now, interesting by himself. So Musk's Musk. Is that a Musk play?

Well, Musk wanted him to be treasury. Right. Well, so first of all, the 200 million dollars, 200, 200000 Bitcoin that we have is going to go is from what I understand is going to go into Cantor Fitzgerald for safekeeping. And they're and they're the guys who are now pumping up tether stable coin that just bought another five billion dollars worth of treasuries. So he's he's very, very intertwined with all of that. But there's something else that he is doing.

And he is and I have the other investor as a second clip. He is investing in Sata Logic. And I had not heard of Sata Logic, but it makes sense that that he's friends with Musk. Let me start with you, Howard, because you were there first in a sense, as far as I know. Tell us about this company, Sata Logic, and your deal with it. Why it's a good investment. Well, we felt we felt that space and the satellites in particular is really the next coming gigantic market for data.

I mean, to have images of the whole Earth, data on the whole Earth, the amount of decisions that that will unlock and the ability and the economics of how that will unlock was extraordinary. So we found the company Sata Logic. It has the best technology. It builds, it redesigned every inch of the satellite. It takes 10 times the images of everybody else. I mean, you look at these images, 70 centimeters.

So you can count the containers on the ships, count the cars, count the trees, count the number of what's working and what's not working in a solar farm. I mean, this is this is incredible technology. And I think it just unlocks a vast, vast sea of opportunity in marketplaces. And so this is the best technology. And that's why they redid the transaction. Yeah, I don't like that so much. Yeah, we can see everything. How many cars are on the lot? We can look down to 70 centimeters.

We can see the pubes on you. This is way, way too excited about that. And who is the other investor who was in the same interview? Oh, it's our old buddy Steve Mnuchin. So, Mr. Secretary, from your point of view, we've talked before about your new fund, the things you want to do with it. Explain why this was such an important investment for you and your fund. Well, David, it's great to be with you.

And we're very focused on investments where not only can we bring capital, but we can bring our expertise. And we're particularly focused on the technology area, national security and in other forms where we can add a lot of value. So what we liked about this is great technology. We can add a lot of value here. We're adding value. Yeah, that's a value. So what we liked about this is great technology, very scalable, very affordable.

And the combination of having a lot of data with a lot of A.I. really will enable both very big government markets and more importantly, very big commercial markets. We're a long term investor. Our horizon is generally five years or longer. So we're really not focused on where the markets are in the short term. But, you know, the opportunity here is with vast amounts of data. We can really analyze climate issues, energy supply, food security, supply chains.

So we really believe that this is going to create all new types of markets with scalable, affordable imagery. Yeah, scalable, affordable imagery. How about the border? Maybe they should be doing border security. There you go. Well, yeah, we'll be check. We'll be watching the border for your president. I don't like these guys. You don't like who? I don't like either of them. Well, oh, I like him, but I don't want this commerce guy this being in our commerce guy.

If he's all he's got commerce on his mind. Well, that's what he did, you know, seems like a conflict. For some reason, Musk likes him. Maybe it's the satellites, the satellites. Of course. Have you seen how many satellites are blanketing our globe that Musk has? It's cool, especially with these these little moving ones that you're using for your for your Internet. Yes. For your protection. Yeah. I don't know. Keep your eye on these guys.

I did pull two clips from the Tucker Lavrov interview, which just I was excited. I'm like, wow, he's talking all kinds of interesting stuff. And then it just felt completely like a dud. It was at four hundred thousand views on YouTube. And I'm sure it's all jacked and and and, you know, rigged or whatever. I'm sure it is. No, no, it's it's like five hundred thousand this morning. Oh, so that's not a lot. No, it fell flat or at least the numbers.

Well, maybe it was Lavrov's not the most exciting guy to chat with. Well, he he he had two specific things that I that I wanted to play, because it's always fun when you get, you know, Putin's, I would say, right hand man is probably fair to call to call you out. You know, like, well, what are we really fighting over? What is this really about? Tucker asked. We fight for our legitimate security interests.

They say, for example, 1991 borders Lindsey Graham, who visited some time ago, is a nasty for another another talk. I love that he's calling out the Lindy hop. He bluntly in presence of Zelensky, I think, said that Ukraine is very rich with rare earth metals. And we cannot leave this this this rich this richness to the Russians. We must take it. We fight, so they fight for. Oh, wait, exactly what he did. But Lavrov gets better. He's like, oh, he's taking the high road. We fight.

So they fight for the regime, which is ready to sell or to give to the West all the natural and human resources. We fight for the people. Uh huh. Yeah. Oh, brother. There you go. No, I fight for the boy. He's going to take it one step further. Who have been living on this lands, whose ancestors were actually developing those lands, building cities, building factories for centuries and centuries.

We care about people, not about natural resources, which somebody in the United States would like, would like to keep and to have Ukrainians just as their servants on seeking these natural resources. Whores will make them slaves, slaves and whores. That's all you want, Lindsey Graham. So the message which we wanted to sell by.

I like you, but instead of saying the message we wanted to to send, he says the message we wanted to sell, which I think is some form of a of a flub, you know, like truth wanted to come out because the test missile was what he's referring to. We wanted to sell a message to you sitting on these natural resources. So the message which we wanted to sell by testing in real, in real action, this hypersonic system is that we will we will be ready to do anything to defend our legitimate interest.

We hate even to think about war with the United States, which will take, you know, nuclear, nuclear character. So the timing of all this is not lost on me because we have Trump. We went to the reopening of of the cathedral in Paris and Zelensky was there. So we're starting to ramp up the deal. We've heard continuously, well, we got to give these guys all that we can because they have a position of strength for the coming peace negotiations. So everybody knows this is coming.

And and, you know, who who walks into the UFC arena with Trump is Tucker. So, you know, how does does he just call up and say, you know, I think it's a it's a good time for me to interview Lavrov. Let me see if I can call Lavrov. No, no. This is a setup. This is a deal.

And it got thwarted by the CEO assassination, because I believe the idea was to have the truth come out about the war in Ukraine, about, you know, the true, you know, mission, which is to take the resources and and have the Ukrainians go back to being slaves and hookers for everybody else the way in the good old days, Lindsey Graham leading the pack. And to again reiterate that this is a war that NATO started. But the whole thing just fell flat in the media.

And even in the I believe old boss, new boss, you know, the podcasters, I thought the idea was have Tucker sit down. Oh, my God. Tucker did an interview with Lavrov. I expected Megyn Kelly to be on it. Dan Bongino to be on it. But they're all on the on the usual the hill figure hero. You know, they're all on the Monopoly money murderer. So they completely got distracted. But I do want to play Lavrov's reiteration of of the the coup.

But I just wonder how worried you are that considering there doesn't seem to be a lot of conversation between the two countries. Both sides are speaking about exterminating the other's populations, that this could somehow get out of control in a very short period and no one could stop it. It seems incredibly. No, we are not. We're not talking about exterminating anybody's population. We did not start this war.

We have been for years and years and years sending warnings that pushing NATO close and close to our borders is going to create a problem. Yes. 2007 Putin, Putin started to explain, you know, to the people who seem to be overtaken by the end of history and being dominant. No challenge and so on and so forth. And of course, when the coup took place, the Americans did not hide that they were behind it.

There is a conversation between Victoria Nuland and the then American ambassador in Kiev when they discuss personalities to be included in the new government after the coup. The figure of five billion bucks spent on Ukraine after independence was mentioned as the guarantee that everything would be like the Americans want. So we don't have any any intention to exterminate Ukrainian people. They are brothers and sisters to the to the Russian people.

So, no, we didn't get through to Code Bongino with this. I thought it would happen, but everything got sidetracked. And for good reason. I want to ask you, does it make sense for us, because we've done it a couple of times, two and a half minutes to replay that Victoria Nuland call just so everyone kind of. Oh, I love that call. In fact, in fact, the funny thing is that he brought it up. I want to mention this before it was good that you play the you haven't lined up.

I think the Russians, because they're the ones who it's obvious who captured this. This is Russian intelligence. They grabbed this. They had everybody tapped and they had this beautiful call. High end quality. High end quality call. Beautiful. And it didn't get the results they expected. No, the media completely ignored it completely. So here it is. They must have been. I have to say they have to have been beside themselves. Like how dumb are them?

Is the American public that we can do this and they don't even give a shit? I'll tell you that, you know, hanging out with the oil baron. He said ever since I started listening to no agenda, he says my whole view on the world has changed. Here's the guy who even understands such basic fundamentals as drill baby drill is bull crap. But he he he wasn't really thinking in these ways, you know, the no agenda way of thinking.

And I think part of it's just, you know, exposure to the stuff that we play, which is out there is just it doesn't get picked up. It doesn't get into any form of any stream, let alone mainstream or alternative stream or or urine stream. It's just it doesn't get picked up. Oh, please. Oh, well, I think that you get there because the media and the and the narratives and bringing it back again to J.C. presenting his liberal buddies with this one piece of information they never got 30 for 30.

They never is that it's it's so controlled. The public perception is so controlled by these guys that to break through it, you once you get breakthrough, you're you should be able to live with yourself. But I guess it's an eye opener. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say this clip should have really opened everybody's eyes about what's going on. And it's still nobody. Half the people don't know behalf. Nobody knows about it.

This is 2014. After Victoria Nuland was on the Maidan Square handing out cookies and doughnuts to the protesters, Brennan was there. Don't forget CIA Director Brennan was there. Lindsey Graham was there. John McCain was there. Everybody was there. And Hunter, of course. What do you think? This is the call. She's talking to the U.S. ambassador and his name is Piatt. And here we go. What do you think? I think we're in play. The the Klitschko piece is obviously the complicated electron here.

And for those who don't know, Klitschko became the mayor of Moscow. He he actually owned some strip clubs, I think. Or some brothels. Then a very famous famous boxer, a fighter, boxer became the world champion heavyweight boxer with his brother. They both did. Yeah. And they they didn't really want him in, but they wanted him adjacent. And this is the guy who recently went on X and said, hey, Joe Rogan, put me on your podcast. I will tell you how it is really working.

OK, because obviously the complicated electron here, especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister. And you've seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now. So we're trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you'll need to make, I think that's the next phone call we want to set up is exactly the one you made to to yachts. And I'm glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario.

And I'm very glad he said what he said in response. Good. So I don't think we should go into the government. I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it's a good idea. Yeah, I mean, I guess you think what in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I'm just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate Democrats together. The problem is going to be Tony Bok and his guys.

And, you know, I'm sure that's part of what Yanukovych is calculating on all of this. I just I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's he's the guy, you know, what he needs is Cleach and Tony Bok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week. You know, do you remember Yatsenyuk, the guy who they installed initially, that wimpy ass soy boy guy? And he and he was a big disappointment. That was that was the wrong choice.

I just think Cleach going in, he's going to be at that level working for Yatsenyuk, it's just not going to work. Yeah, no, I think that's I think that's right. OK, good. Well, do you want us to try to set up a call with him as the next step? My understanding from that call, but you tell me was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a three way, you know, three plus one conversation or three plus two with you.

Is that not how you understood it? No, I think I mean, that's what he proposed. But I think just knowing the dynamic that's been with them, where Klitschko has been the top dog, he's going to take a while to show up for whatever meeting they've got. He's probably talking to his guys at this point. So I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three.

And it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind you behind it before they all sit down. And he he explains why he doesn't like it. OK, good. I'm happy. Why don't you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after? OK, we'll do. Thanks. OK, I've now written. Oh, one more wrinkle for you, Jeff.

Yeah, I can't remember if I told you this or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning, he had a new name for the U.N. guy, Robert Sari. Did I write that this morning? Yeah, I saw that. He's now gotten both Sari and Ban Ki -moon to agree that Sari could come in Monday or Tuesday. OK. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and have the U .N. help glue it. And, you know, fuck the EU. Yeah, there it is.

And the only thing that the media reported on is, well, the Russians tapped her phone and they heard her say F the EU. That's the only part of the call that was. I don't remember that, to be honest about. Yeah. And then, you know, later she talks about having Biden come in to midwife this deal, because, of course, and with that, she meant Joe Biden. I mean, this whole thing was so obvious and it was ridiculous.

And now Trump had the right idea, like, oh, we'll get this going to the the the new podcast narrative, the new podcast virality. And it just fell flat. Fell flat, but. They they still had the meeting. In Notre Dame, I have let me see. I just I have to Notre Dame. OK, OK. The first one is interesting because you you've been in Notre Dame. Yes, I've been there at least three or four times.

I mean, when you go to Paris, you don't go always go there, but you go there because it's a pretty cool place of a one and done. Honestly, it's like I've been there a couple of times. Well, I usually I've taken different people. So, hey, look at this. Hey, I'll say this on your head. If you're a woman, you got to put a paper bag on your head. No, you don't. Yes. Yes. It is a wailing wall. No, no, no. I've never seen any paper bag on there. Not an actual paper bag.

But you have to cover your head in the Notre Dame. Women have to cover their head. I don't believe this to be true. Well, when I was there anyway. OK. I will say this, and you have to you must have noticed this, too. It doesn't look like the same place at all. No, no, it does. It is just dynamite looking because when you went there in the olden days, it was kind of dingy, to be honest about. It was dark. Everything was dirty.

The you know, because of the grime for hundreds and hundreds of years of coal burning in the area, it's all got in. So everything was like a that that European kind of grayish look that all of all the everything becomes because of the coal soot that gets into everything. It's white. Yeah. Yeah. And it's spectacular looking. I go back just to see what it looks like now. So here we go with the clip one.

The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral rang this evening in Paris for the first time since a fire devastated the landmark in 2019. After that fire, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed that the ravaged cathedral would be repaired within five years. And tonight, the doors of Notre Dame opened again. And here's Eleanor Beardsley was there to witness it all and joins us now. Hey, Eleanor. Hi, Scott. What an emotional evening. It really was.

You know, that bell you're talking about is a 13 ton bell called Emmanuel, and they've just put it back up in that spire in November. You know, remember the church, what we saw, the roof collapse, the spire collapse. There was a huge hole, twisted metal. Yeah, it's like a brand new church. You go in the soaring ceilings are white. The stones are all white. Now the gray is gone. The glowing golden chandeliers. It just it's absolutely pristine. The clergy.

I mean, it was something from the movies tonight. You know, the archbishop and all the bishops with them. They wore their long cloaks and their miters as big hats. And these vestments were all made for the occasion. And then, Scott, the ceremony, the rituals, the symbolism. I mean, it felt like almost medieval. I mean, to start with the archbishop, he took his crozier. That's his staff. And it's made from one of the charged roof, charred roof timbers. And he banged on the door three times.

And it sounded like this. So he says, Notre Dame, please open your doors for us. And it was like, wow, you know, what we were witnessing. Yeah, well, I apologize. It is shoulders. You can have no bare shoulders in Notre Dame. Women cannot have bare shoulders. Yeah, I thought I looked it up. I did. I looked it up on the on the Notre Dame website. No bare shoulders. You get a little bib. I will say this. The thing is spectacular. But I'm reminded of St. Xavier South. It's near Tucson.

Which is a Catholic church that is more traditionally decorated like they were, I guess, during the era of the of all these churches that were built all over the West Coast by the. The what are the group of people that floated around building churches and making Indians do work? Yeah, I don't know. Who were they? Well, it's a term that alludes to me for some unknown reason.

But whatever the case that that church, if anyone gets to see it, you go, holy mackerel, this church, you'd go to this church and you say the same thing. I think this church, you'd go to this. Nobody goes to these churches anymore. The worst example, if anyone wants to check it out, there's a a cathedral similar to Notre Dame is not quite as elaborate in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That is just a dump. It's just a dump.

And the and you can see where people like kind of lose the interest is, I don't know why am I coming here? This place is stinks. It's a dump is dirty. And Notre Dame was that way, more or less compared to what it is now. You could see what people would just go crazy. So wait a minute. So you're suggesting that maybe this was an insurance scam by the church to spiffy it up and get people interested again? I wasn't suggesting that at all. But now that you mention it, it's quite possible.

It is spiffy looking. I agree. It was kind of I think the word dank would come to mind like dank. That's a better word. Yeah, it was dank. And it's because of all the buildup of all that soot from, you know, it's just like, yeah, first time I went to Europe was in 1973. And I had to change my shirt. I was in London. I had to change my shirt three times during the day because around the collar and around the sleeves, it was just black within just a few hours of walking around.

So everything everything is dingy and dank, dank, dingy and dank. Yeah, that's right. All right. Clip two. Also, some real politics today. President-elect Trump was there and he met with Macron, right? Absolutely. Well, President-elect Trump was here. And First Lady Jill Biden with her daughter Ashley. And they sat in the front of the cathedral. And actually, Trump sat between President Macron and First Lady French First Lady Brigitte Macron because he came alone.

But before the ceremony, yes, he met up at the Elysee. He was welcome to the Elysee. And Macron says, welcome back. Do you remember this room? And, you know, he reminded people were there that Trump was president when Notre Dame burned. And he thanked him then how he was so moved. And he thanked Trump and Americans for their solidarity with the cathedral. And then Macron did something that he loves to do, these little political coups. He was meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky after Trump.

And by the way, Zelensky got a round of applause when he entered into the cathedral tonight. But anyway, Macron's meeting with Zelensky. And he, you know, asked Trump to wait. So we actually got them together. So the three of them also met. Interesting. One more important question. Notre Dame isn't just a landmark. Hold on a second. What is where's this report from? NPR. So we have Macron, who was called for boots on the ground. We have Trump, who was called for peace.

And we have Zelensky, who is, you know, all for money. But but listen to how NPR handles it. And he, you know, asked Trump to wait. So we actually got them together. So the three of them also met. Interesting. The three of them met. Interesting. What? What? It's not just interesting. That's that's like an off the books meeting that is beyond interesting. NPR. One more important question. Could it be about Ukraine? Notre Dame isn't just a landmark. It's a Catholic cathedral.

Is there going to be mass tomorrow? There sure is two masses tomorrow and it will open for the public. But let me tell you, you've got to now go online and get a slot. And I don't think you're going to be able to get a ticket any time soon. A lot of people want to go. You always have to go. Yeah, you always have to get a slot. You got to get a slot. I did. Well, you were there much, much different time. I also went to the roof. Was it on fire? No, you could.

There was there's one pathway you could climb all the way to the roof and go sit on the roof of the Notre Dame. Cool. Right next to the gargoyles. There's usually about a half dozen or a dozen people up there. Yeah. And you just sit down, you have lunch or whatever you want to do. It's actually quite, quite remarkable to do that. It's a pain in the ass to get up and down those steps, though. And the pope did not show. I thought that was rather interesting. Well, the pope.

Yeah. Well, there's you can talk to your Catholic buddies about this. I think even I think even Mark, I think Void Zero would have some comment about why this was. You are my Catholic buddy. What are you talking about? OK. But well, why not a real pope? Oh, I see what you're saying. OK. Well, yes, I would say universally most Catholics I know certainly don't think he's the he's a good one. So, you know, he's not going to show up, dude. I didn't show up late. Yeah, he did.

He didn't want to show up and get struck by lightning is what you're saying. I didn't say that. No, I am. No, I am. So anyway, yeah, it does look like a spectacular view now. And now it'd be interesting to see, because it's probably in the condition it was when it was built before the suit. Well, we might as well stay on some some dumb political news. And I have a couple of clips here. You see, this is oh, this is a shorty to introduce the topic. We talked about it briefly on Thursday.

Well, just days after President Joe Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his son, Hunter, sources say the president is considering even more pardons, and these could be for the people who might be targeted by the incoming Trump administration. An ABC News source close to the president confirms that Biden and his senior aides are discussing pardons for current and former officials.

They include retired General Mark Milley, senator elect Adam Schiff, Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Republican Representative Liz Cheney. Survivors campaign. Trump vowed to enact retribution on his political enemies. Please. So there. This is ridiculous, by the way. I have two clips I want to play. This is, you know, the kind of ridiculousness you get from these guys. This is Rachel Maddow. You saw these, right? No, I have not.

I have meet the press, but I'll take Rachel Maddow over, meet the press any day. This is in 2020. She was ridiculing Trump because there was some phony baloney rumor that he was going to do these crazy pardons for his family. Oh, that's a preemptive for his family. Yes. OK. Yeah. Of course, he didn't do any of that. But OK. 2020. It's not beyond her to talk about it. Here's your this is pardons 20.

This is in 2020. President Trump, as he winds down his last few weeks in office, is considering preemptive pardons for all his adult children. Including his son in law, Jared. What a mess. More as we know. He did, of course, pardon Jared's dad. And that was in jail. Yeah. And pardon him and made him ambassador. Well, that's recently he didn't make him ambassador then. No, but he's an ambassador, wasn't he? Didn't he become ambassador or was he a friend for it? Yeah. Oh, good.

Which is a nice best one. They have the best residents. Well, actually, the best one I and I think we've talked about this. Do you think London was really the best way? If you want any one of these jobs, you get one. Vatican. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's basically just all party. Grand grand crew burgundies for the rest of your life. Nonstop partying. There's nothing else to do there. All right. Now we have Rachel Maddow on the twenty twenty four pardons.

I'm sure this is in stark contrast to what she said about Trump. Here we go. Exactly. All the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth today about a president using his power, his pardon power, his powers as president to do something for a family member. Tell me more about how outraged we all are about President Biden's pardon for his son. She's the worst. All right. I have my Catholic buddies have checked in with me. Here we go.

Francis is the real pope, but he's like that very old grandpa that comes over for dinner and nobody likes what everyone has to respect for, you know, reasons. He's just a typical happy, clappy Kumbaya boomer. He's tried to reduce the importance of traditions and people who do love traditions, the Latin mass, etc., are just being thrown aside as being rigid while we think that he and his mentality are rigid.

But OK, we got to respect him because he's the highest authority on earth after all, and we can choose to ignore his personal opinions. That's the that's that's for my Catholic buddies. Yeah, it was. It sounds like boys. Yeah, of course, it's void zero. Who else did you expect it to be? All right. So here's meet the press on the preemptive pardons. So is the only check on a president's pardon power essentially impeachment?

Yes. And I would argue that since the Supreme Court's immunity decision this past year, that it's even less checkable now because let's say, for example, imagine a situation where a president pardons people that were arguably co-conspirators in a crime that he committed. This is exactly what one of the framers, George Mason, was worried about when they argued about whether to include the pardon power in the Constitution.

They almost didn't include it, or at least there were those who argued against it, even though it came from the English tradition and was already in existence in the colonies. There were folks who didn't want the pardon power for exactly that concern. So it's strange that now post immunity decision, that exact conduct might not even be prosecutable. So, yes, the short answer is it may be that the only check is impeachment and probably not even criminal prosecution for a criminal pardon.

What are they saying there? I don't even know. Well, there's more of it. Is accepting this pardon essentially an admission of guilt? Oh, that is a thorny question. Oh, that's better than a great question. Oh, that's better than a great question. It's a thorny question. I like that. I like this. Supreme Court case from 18. Wait, let me I want to hear him say it again. Oh, that is a thorny question. Supreme Court case from 1815 suggested that, yes, acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt.

But in the modern era, that's probably not the case anymore. For example, I handle wrongful conviction cases. And often if you get a pardon, critical is whether or not it's a pardon based on actual innocence because actual innocence is key to wrongful conviction payout statutes. So in a modern era, it's still an open, thorny question. But the more likely answer is that depending on the language in the pardon itself that can control a pardon may no longer be, per se, an admission of guilt.

No, boy, they'll do anything to make it to paper over it, won't they? You know, we brought up the Rachel in 2020 when Trump was leaving. I found this clip which has been going around again for some reason. And this is the clip that ran on NBC just before Trump got kicked out of office. And as I listen to it, I think I'm wondering what do you mean kicked out? You mean when he lost the election? What do you mean kicked out of office? He was he lost the election. Oh, OK. All right.

But under strange circumstances. Yes. Is it possible that this is the circumstances? This is the second half of a show clip called History 2020, the space aliens clip. OK, here we go, everybody. This is by the way. Wait, wait. This is just this ran just before the the the rigged 2020 election. Aliens exist and President Trump knows about it. That's according to Israel's former space security chief.

In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, he said the aliens have been waiting until today for humanity to develop and reach a stage where we will understand in general what space and spaceships are. NBC News chief global correspondent Bill Neely explains this one. Hi, Alison. Well, this is quite a story, and it comes from the man who headed Israel's space security program for nearly 30 years.

Chaim Eshed is making the extraordinary claim that the United States and Israel have been in contact with a group of aliens for years, not immigrants, but extraterrestrials. He has called them the Galactic Federation of Aliens. And he says President Trump is aware of the existence of these aliens and had been on the verge of revealing their secrets, he claims, but was asked not to do so by the Federation in order to prevent what he calls mass hysteria.

Well, the retired general said the US and Israel have kept it from the public because, quotes, humanity isn't ready. And the aliens don't want to reveal themselves until humanity can evolve, he says, and understand what space really is. Well, the good news is that he claims an agreement has been reached between the US government and the aliens, a contract to do experiments here. There's also, he says, a secret underground base on Mars where there are American and alien representatives.

Well, Space Force. I love it, John. Mars. That's why Musk is all over the Mars thing. There you go. He's got to go have a meeting with the Galactic Council. No. Well, since you have introduced the second half of show, allow me to thank you for your courage and say in the morning to you, the man who put the sea in my Catholic buddy. Say hello to my friend on the other end. The one, the only Mr. John C. DeVore.

Yeah, well, in the morning, you must read the morning all ships and sea boots on the ground, feet in the air, the subs in the water and all the dames and knights out there. Hold on a second. So I'm going to tell you. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. OK, what do we have? We have twenty four sixty nine. That is a little higher than normal. Not much now. Twenty four sixty nine. It's a little higher than normal. Well, yeah. Twenty four. OK, sixty nine. That's a little higher than normal. Sixty nine.

Sixty nine. Those trolls are with us live in the troll room. That's right. Hello, trolls. The oil baron was like, I can't get in the troll room. How do I want to be? I don't want to be just web troll number. I want to be the oil baron in the troll room. So, you know, he might be in there. I don't know. I haven't seen him yet. People, people getting into it, into the troll room. They're loving it. That's a little. Yeah. People like it. They like I don't like being a number. I want to be oil.

I want to be funny enough. That's not how he talks. Isn't that interesting? Or a bear. Does he hear texting? Does he talk through his teeth? There's I'm going to shoot you some new guy. I get you some from the King's Ranch pretty soon. Yeah, that's exactly how he talks. You nailed it. So you can join the oil baron in the troll room, troll room dot IO. And of course, you should be listening to us on a modern podcast app where you can get alerted when we go live.

A lot of people seem to enjoy that as a feature. Not available on your legacy podcast apps. And so it's really it's a nice thing. Or when we when we when we release the show, 90 seconds within release, the modern podcast apps will tell everybody about it. We have all kinds of extra goodies like transcripts. It's easy for you. English is a second language. People, you can read along if you feel like it. And we have chapters. So you can jump around the topics.

Dreb Scott does that with a lot of the images used, created by the artists uploaded to no agenda art generator dot com, which is part of our value for value model. We love it because that's it's a it's a great way of receiving value back for the value we provide for the show, which is the only way. I think the more I look into it now, there's been a lot of people trying to help, still trying to do advertising in this whole this whole.

It's at this point almost a psyop of, but if you don't have video, your podcast is never going to do anything good. This is they continuously trying to push everybody to YouTube. And I'm here to say it's not necessary. It's not even even Swisher and Galloway aren't on video. Thank God. But, you know, it's like they were. No, they're not on video. No, no. Can you imagine? I mean, seriously, Galloway is great in audio. He does not have he's not telegenic. Let's put it that way.

Now, that's why he's done three CNN pilots. They all fail because he's I'm sorry, he just he has a face for podcasting. This is he was a producer. We'll go look at him like, no, no, he's not good for television. And we don't want to be honest. We don't want to do video because it's complicated. It adds all kinds of complexity that we don't want to deal with. And you got to get dressed up. Well, I don't think I would. But yeah, you got to get dressed up.

You know, I don't want to you know, I'll be very self-conscious the whole time. Like, oh, everyone sees my Tourette's. I don't want any of that, though. And, you know, you don't want to show your although you used to show your studio on on Twit. Although a little bit of your studio, of your office, I should say, you would have like a Bert and Ernie doll behind you or something. What was that doll? That was Barney, Barney, the Barney, Barney, Bert and Barney doll. There you go.

So the artists, we're always very appreciative of what the artists do when they go to no agenda art generator dot com. Anybody can do it. It's completely open. And we like to comment on the art because that is it's a kind of like a value loop. We send value back again to the artists and we tell them why we didn't choose them, which is something that they never hear from art directors or people that they, you know, submit art for for a project or for an advertisement.

No, they just get kicked off and they don't get picked and they never know why. They don't get to it. They don't get to analyze the tastes of the of the art director necessarily. So they can't I mean, to the extreme, they can with us. Exactly. I'm just looking at let me see this for a second, huh? So this is M Adams who did the artwork for episode 17, 18. We titled it on the fritz, which we still think is just groovy. We're not we're never going to use the word glitch anymore.

We're just going to say it's on the fritz. We're bringing that word back into the lexicon. And so the artist is MxAdam.com. And if you go to MxAdam.com, you should do that. I mean, he he isn't he is an artist. He does a lot of art that he hasn't submitted to to the show. This is all different art. I didn't even realize that. And it looks like he does some commercial art as well. I don't know if he's all commissioned. He has commissioned art. Interesting.

This seems like he's kind of the real deal. Interesting. The the art was did you see you looking at it? Yeah, I am. It's just the way that you put it, you know, like this is some sort of shocker like that. We have actual artists who submit artwork. I know now this piece. We both liked it because, you know, you had the tsunami alert. There was an earthquake. There was all kinds of warnings, which you didn't. You just slept right through it. Didn't feel a thing.

In fact, Berkeley, is there a harbor in Berkeley? Yeah, the Berkeley Marina. Yeah, the Berkeley Marina was supposed to be, you know, the target of the tsunami, it turns out. But none of that happened. It was quite far away. And I don't think there was any substantial damage. But this piece of art tsunami was it was a dud was it was a dud seven magnitude, but it was a dud. And this was clearly. Yes. Yeah, they explained it.

If you want to know what the well, I didn't have any uplift and you had any uplift to get the tsunami to happen. It was just two things banging to each other different. This piece of art was clearly San Francisco under severe stress from an earthquake, and it was a very apocalyptic, but yet somehow cartoonishly funny piece. It was a good piece. Yeah, it was. And we both liked it. We didn't want to pick it right away, but we both agreed on it. I like the and I use for the newsletter.

I use Darren O'Neill's on the Fritz piece. Yes. Which was a box. I know I was a box. The point of that was, I'm not sure. But he had every imaginable meme and whatever he could jam into this thing that I don't know how this managed to happen. He must have his own trained A.I. He knows how to do something with that. It is pretty interesting, Darren. It's too bad that we didn't talk about the Sinterklaas chocolate letters that the Dutch give each other. So December 5th, which is our last show day.

The good St. Nick comes to the Netherlands and he or he's in the Netherlands and he and his black Pete's the racist. They go around and the good boys and girls, they get candy in their wooden shoe. And the bad boys and girls, the the evil black Pete, you know, puts him in a burlap bag and takes him on the steamboat to Spain. And so she had some. Why Spain? That's where he's from. Didn't you know that? No, I don't. I don't recall it. Let's put it that way.

Yes. Sinterklaas comes from Spain on a steamboat with his black Pete helpers every year to reward the good children and punish and stuff the bad children into the burlap sack and take them away to Spain. Mommy. Exactly. So she had some N.A. chocolate letters, which had we talked about it, I would have probably fought harder because she she had that perfect piece, but we just didn't talk about it. And then she also tried to do a hunter shoe with a with a pardon present in it, I guess.

But we didn't talk about any of that. So she was she was doing some preemptive programming. Yeah, she was guessing she was guessing is another way of looking at it. Yes. People who do that always fail. It's too bad. Yeah, it usually does fail. Oh, I'm sure because we are our topics tend not to be. Topic is obvious. Some of them aren't obvious. We're not very topical, it turns out. So thank you. MX Adam dot com for bringing us the artwork for episode 17, 18. We appreciate that.

It is value for value. We accept all kinds of value in return. You can tell someone about the show. You can you can. Well, a lot of people do websites for us. I don't think we've actually built our. Well, we are no agenda donations. We built no agenda rings dot com or Jay has built that no agenda meetups and the art generator. Many, you know, tip of the day dot net, which we'll talk about later as we have a tip of the day. All of that has been done by producers to help us.

We love the boots on the ground. That's very helpful. Boots on the ground are fantastic. Gives us insight. So we have. And we already knew what was going to happen in Syria. And we just didn't have a show on Friday, but we already saw this coming down the pike and there's more. We have more boots on the ground coming up. And of course, we like to thank our producers who support us with treasure. It's one of the three T's time, talent and treasure. And we thank anybody who sends in $50 or more.

And we thank everybody with the amount. So, you know, I think we're one of the most transparent shows in show business and our executive and associate executive producers are people who support us with just that little bit more. Two hundred dollars or above. You get an official credit associate executive producer. And we read your note. Three hundred dollars and above executive producer for this episode.

And we and you get that credit, which is good for your lifetime and usable in any show business context, including IMDB dot com. And we will read your note as we start off with William Grantham from Paradise Valley, Arizona, who comes in with one thousand dollars. And I believe he is vying for an instant night. And he says, I can't remember my last donation, but it's been years. So I'm sending this to make up for all the free shows I've been getting.

Please send some new contract karma and knight me as surplusage. I would think it's pronounced of the Wind River Valley. So there you go. There's a guy who's like, you know, it's time for me to send back some value. And he and he catches up. And I think it's beautiful. And I thank you. You've got karma. Calla Pidgeus, Colin, Colin, Colin, Colin, Colin, Colin, Colin in Willow Spring, North Carolina, four, four, four, four, four, four.

Switcheroo in the morning, John and Adam, this donation brings me to knighthood status. See accounting below. I'd like to bestow this honor posthumously and to my son, Jacob, the amount of four, four, four, four, four is in honor of the 44 days he spent in the NICU gravely fighting all manner of complications related to being born too early at just 23 weeks. On December 7th, 2021, he went on to a much greater reward in the presence of Jesus.

And we know that he has been cheering on his twin brother every day since. Please dub him, Sir Jacob, dearly loved refugee of room six and prized resident of the county far above the chemtrails. We have trails. We love you, sweet Jacob. No jingles, no karma. Thank you for what you do. Calipages Colin in dubbed Spring, North Carolina. OK, well, that's a very nice commemoration. Yeah, it's kind of nice. Bryson Wolfert, Sandpoint, Idaho, three thirty three to thirty three.

ITM Adam and John, longtime listener, first time producer. I was hit in the mouth during Adam's Joe Rogan appearance in September 2020. I have been seeing thirty threes all week. Oh, we know what that means. And the final straw was doing the math on listening to nearly 33 days over seven hundred and eighty five hours of podcast this year. That's what I knew. I had to pay homage to the podfather. Thanks, he says. Well, thank you. Yes, it's it's just no jingles, no karma, just a deduction.

You've been deduced. Well known facts. When you see the magic number, it's time to donate. And meanwhile, Sir Zach of Fudge in Frankenmuth, Michigan, three three three to three three in the morning, John and Adam, I forgive forgiving for my handwriting and grammar on the note I sent out with our fudge, John. Adam, your fudge is in the mail. It's it's a new version of your check is in the mail. Hey, man, your fudge is in the mail.

And don't forget no agenda friends free shipping on any orders over 30 dollars. Order now at no agenda fudge dot com. Have you looked at the website? Uh, I got no, actually, I haven't. I should have no agenda or miss fudge doc. Let me see what it what it goes to. OK, they got a bunch of different kinds of fudges. Yeah, they got they should have a they should have like a no agenda fudge. And J.C.'s wife, Jesse, is from Michigan, and she recognized when she saw the boxes of fudge.

She recognized the brand as one of the best in the world. Really? Yeah, it's just a Michigan company. Everybody in Michigan apparently is all jacked up about these guys. Well, it just goes to show we have the most amazing producers in the universe. And they do weddings. I just read. You have the note from Michael Stojak, apparently, as they do. It's Michael Stojak from Kingston, Washington. Home of the Kingston Ferry, three, three, three, three, three, he has a note. Sounds legit.

Turned out to be on a piece of paper. First and foremost, I must say, I do believe I do believe no agenda is an exceptional product. This is without doubt. I've been listening since Adam was on JRE, another JRE donation in 2020, and I have been streaming. Sats via Podverse. Sats via Podverse. It all goes to our producers, goes to the artists.

For the past year, however, since I guess John didn't quite understand Bitcoin's value and since this is my first fiat donation to the show, please de-douche me. You've been de-douched. That's funny. Adam, I've also been a regular listener of Podcasting 2.0 since discovering this product, and I'm extremely grateful to you and Dave for continuing to support the decentralization of podcasting. I greatly enjoy the board meeting every week. P.S., thanks for working the holidays.

Jingles. Oh, oh, I didn't realize I put it here. Jingles. Trump, I'm going to come. Uh-huh. And there's something hot on my leg. Not a completely original thought there with those two, but many thanks, Michael Stojak. I'm going to come. I just felt something hot on my legs. All right. I like how you do the the minute it's someone who's, you know, using a modern podcast app. It all of a sudden turns into like some kind of nut job with that voice you did. I'm not sure why exactly.

That's that's that's kind of a mild version of Jiminy Glick. Who's Jiminy Glick? Yeah, yeah. You can look him up. It's a Martin short character actually in his own TV show for a while. OK. All right. Hey, we go to Dame Astrid, who doesn't know her grand duchess of Japan and all the islands, the disputed islands in the Japan Sea. And she is in Japan.

She comes in with 27272 and says, Dear John and Adam, thank you and all the lovely producers who kindly reached out with get well, karma, prayers and messages. Yes, she had she had a nasty fall and had to have the ball bearing the ball of her femur replaced, which is just well, she says, in fact, here it was nowhere near as gruesome as you mentioned on the show. In true Sparta fashion, I even hobbled home about 100 meters thinking the pain would go away.

But trying to sit down was something totally else. In Tokyo, you get to walk right after the operation before you lose muscle mass and confidence. So, yes, I am walking all right. It's sitting down and getting up from the toilet that is more tricky. And I can say I've been to her house. She has an awesome toilet. She got one of those Japanese deals. You know, the can it automatically opens? Yeah, it opens automatically. It has the heater and it has the spray.

I'm thinking maybe just turn the spray, the spray pressure up. It'll it'll boost you right or off the toilet. The most annoying part of it all is that I didn't get to meet Jay and her husband, my daughter, Nanami, who I've met, who was she's fantastic. Along with Yuko from the office, did the honors on my behalf. And I hope they had fun anyway. Have you heard from Jay? Did they have a good time? Did not I mean, show them a good time? I haven't heard about anything since the meeting. Oh, no, sir.

Mark and I truly will try and redeem ourselves with a proper Tokyo meetup in the new year. Watch this space. Cool sneakers only from now on. And much love to you all from Daymaster. I'm going to give her a little bit of karma because we love day mastering. You've got karma. And here we have the Indy no agenda meetup report from Greenwood, Indiana. And I guess they do their little donation, the raffle, raffle, raffle, which are a raffle donation from the Indy no agenda monthly meetup.

I can't John and Adam for this. And by the way, it's 255 bucks for this past month's in a indie meetup. I was blessed to be the lucky winner of the producer credits I took. Oh, OK. Sir Cycle Pass. Yes. Jonathan Keegan. I took a same day round trip flight from Charlotte. This is pretty dedicated to spend the afternoon with fellow no agenda producers and new friends. It was like a party and everyone had a great time.

Next time I'll try to be in Indianapolis longer than five hours attending a meetup, especially one that isn't local. Connection is protection. I am overdue for a promotion at one of the largest financial institutions. So would you please send me some jobs, Karma? Additionally, I never claimed my territories when I became barren. And therefore, I would like to claim Seversville, Stoneham and Lake James, North Carolina as my territories. Thank you for your cursor, psychopath.

Jonathan Keegan, Charlotte, North Carolina. Jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs. Let's vote for jobs. Yes, I think it's Stonehaven. You said Stoneham, but I think it's Stonehaven and Dame Rita comes in with a nice sequential support number here. Two, three, four, five, six. She's in Sparks, Nevada. I.T.M. John and Adam, thank you for the best podcast in the universe. From Dame Rita. Oh, beautiful Dame Rita. Associate executive producer title for you. And thank you for the short message.

Eli, the coffee guy in Bensonville, Illinois. Two twelve. Oh, eight. He's got a big don't read, but they posted it. Put it in there anyway. I don't think you should. You won't read. The other day I received a text message asking me to contact my senator, Dick Durbin, and tell him to block the nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director. Ah, they're out to get him. But Dick Durbin is not going to vote for anybody anyway. I was in.

This was intriguing, as I've never received any sort of political text regarding a political nominee, only the usual chip in or go vote. Chip in text message. I would guess the fireworks are going to fly regarding many of Trump's nominees. It will make for great show material if it's anything close to Kavanaugh's buddies, boofing booze. For those that prefer drinking their beverage, coffee is a fine choice. Visit gigawatt coffee roasters dot com and use code ITM for 20 percent off your order.

Stay caffeinated. Eli, the coffee guy. Yeah. You know, he's he's not wrong. I'm still receiving political texts and it's of similar nature. I thought it would end and it did slow down abruptly after the election, but they started to come back again, which is rather annoying. By the way, a tip for all of you gigawatt coffee roasters dot com lovers. Tina uses the espresso from gigawatt for her rub on the tri tips we she makes. It's dynamite. It really tastes good. The espresso.

You want to do this next one, I'll do the long one, because, you know, we've had nothing. Yeah, I do. Rozier two hundred six to ten sixty. He wants he's from Calumet, Michigan. He came in with two ten sixty and he wants a a jingle dying in the dark. I don't know this jingle. And it's science. Well, we have the it's science. But do we have dying in the dark? I don't think that's a jingle. I think that that might have been something. I don't know it. I don't I don't know it.

But I remember something about this. Freedom dies in darkness. That's good enough. I just did it. Perfect. Shut up already. Science. I don't have anything with darkness. And people sometimes hear a clip and they. And you think that that's I have. Are you ready to pierce the heart of darkness? Yeah, I don't think so. I don't know what that is. Andrew, Ocala, Florida, two ten sixty. I did it after two years, two hundred fifty thousand miles and one Trump derangement syndrome divorce notice.

I finally did it. Knighthood. Talk about the pinnacle of your of your life. I love it. Yeah. Big thanks to Eli and the amazing live wire brew for keeping me focused on the road and for boosting me on my road to knighthood. Hopefully I got this in time for tomorrow's show. We did. We're doing it now, which is seventh, which was, of course, yesterday. His 55th birthday, December 7th, 1969, a day that you're living in for me. I told the guy I used to work with my birthday was Pearl Harbor Day.

He said, man, how old are you? Still need to still need to make a meet up and look forward. There was a good line. And look forward to 17 more years. Dub me, sir. Fred Pound. I used to use that name because I play guitar and kind of heavy music. Pounding the frets. But now that I'm old and out of shape, it tends to make more sense that I'm just fretting over the pounds. Oh, he's he's on a roll. Andrew from Ocala, Florida, for the round table.

I'd like to request Bacardi 151 and a Coke smoked brisket brisket. And for dessert, Kenafa Kenafa. What is Kenafa? Do we know Kenafa is Kenafa? Yeah, sounds like something tasty, something sticky and tasty. No jingles, no karma. Soon to be. This sounds sticky, sir. Fred Pound. Andrew. Well, congratulations, brother. I love it. He's a blesser. And last night for a while. Yes. Last on our list from Lakewood, Colorado. Linda Lou Patkin, $200.

And she wants a jobs karma and says for a resume that has that hits people in the mouth. Go to ImageMakersInc.com for all your executive resume and job search needs. That's ImageMakersInc with a K dot com and work with Linda Lou, Duchess of Jobs and writer of resumes. Jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs. Let's vote for jobs. Karma. All right. Those are the executive and associate executive producers of Episode 1719. Thank you all so much for supporting us.

Of course, we love all support, financial support. We thank everybody over 50 under 50. We don't talk about for reasons of anonymity. And we have a number of people who are helping us out with sustaining donations. We really appreciate those. No matter when you donate, what you donate, if you can set up a sustaining donation, any amount, any frequency, we really appreciate that. You can do it at no agenda donations dot com.

Set up your sustaining donation today or get an executive producership and no agenda donations dot com. That's no agenda donations dot com. Our formula is this. We go out. We hit people in the mouth. I. Wanted to have some quickies here because of Hotez Hotez Hotez, who who promised us a new pandemic and just a vast amount of viruses and death and destruction that is coming upon us on a specific date, January 21st. Not before. Not a day before.

But on January 21st, that's when it's all happening. So I have my eyes open and something bad could happen to my eyes because, man, if this one gets on the loose, we're all in trouble. The mysterious disease that has sent alarm bells ringing in Congo. The mysterious disease is a flu like disease that has reportedly sickened hundreds of people and killed at least 79 since late October. The disease emerged at a time of increased influenza circulation and the culprit is likely to be airborne.

Patient specimens are being analyzed at a national lab. Meanwhile, in Rwanda, health officials continue to monitor an outbreak of what's being called the bleeding eye virus or Marburg virus. The outbreak has triggered concern about a potential spread outside the country. One of the typical symptoms of the disease is bleeding of the eyes. Yeah, Ebola, Ebola does that. Yeah, it's bleeding from the eyes. This would be so cool.

You imagine a bunch of people walking on the street and all of a sudden the blood starts stripping down. Oh, this that would be a good one. OK, that would be good, Hotez. Or maybe we could just stick with the same old bird flu. In today's daily health, the U.S. is ordering raw milk nationwide to be tested for bird flu. The CDC says the contagious virus has infected hundreds of dairy herds this year.

Recently, a California dairy farm recalled all of its raw milk products after the virus was found in several samples. The CEO of that farm told The Los Angeles Times that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s transition team encouraged him to apply for a position at the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be health and human services secretary and would oversee the FDA if he is confirmed. Let's bring in NBC News medical contributor Dr. Kavita Patel.

Dr. Patel, let's talk about what the what the testing is going to do here. And what are some of the dangers of drinking raw milk? Oh, John, did you know that drinking raw milk can be dangerous? I've heard this usually on NPR. Oh, believe me, my next report is from NPR. Yeah. And to be clear, there has not been any cases of bird flu, which is what the testing is for, as you mentioned, Kate, and taking in raw milk. So let's take the first one. Bird flu. This is a bogus report.

They've been making a big fuss about this. And then we have no examples of it ever happening. No, but wait, we can still scare you. Flu testing at farms. This is actually something that we've been calling for for a long time now, because if we can detect at the farm level what's happening, then we can try to monitor any spread and contain it pretty quickly.

But you don't want, Kate, is for it to not be detected, which is what's been happening up until now, leading up to the 52 cases that we have today with three recent cases where we're not quite sure about the transmission. And that indicates a potential spread with raw milk. Separately, there's a lot that can happen, including dangerous bacteria, salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter, listeria, to name a few. Well, you can get that from a from a quarter pounder.

And it can really lead to severe foodborne illness, vomiting, diarrhea, especially for young people, elderly people, pregnant women and immunocompromised people. And to date, I've been scanning the literature. There's no health benefit of raw milk in the evidence that we know of yet. There's no benefit that we know of yet. Why are you doing it, you fools? You can get bird flu. You know, I have to conclude after listening to these reports for the last I don't know how many years. Yeah, yeah.

There must be something in raw milk that is really good for you. That is really good for you. It must be that they don't want you to ingest. Yes, it must be. You're you're right. Because they're just syoping us so hard. It's they're they're going overboard. So NPR went exactly where we would think they would go. And they spoke to researchers who were doing a study. It's I believe it's Colorado University of Colorado. And the question is, because I mean, you can't just talk about bird flu.

Now, you have to ask the question, what would it take for the bird flu virus to spark a pandemic? Yeah, that's what we really want to know. A bird flu infection starts when a protein on the virus binds to a receptor on the cell it wants to take over. Luckily, the version of H5N1 spreading in cattle has not evolved to target the receptors that dominate upper airways in humans. For that to change, there would need to be mutations affecting the viral protein. Oh, oh, somebody quick.

Make that change, please. So that if someone were infected, the virus could easily spread. When you sneeze on someone, you have a very small amount of virus that's being transferred through the air. That's Jim Paulson at Scripps Research Institute. And in that context, it becomes extremely important for the virus to have success, to be able to latch on strongly to the receptors that it encounters.

For many years, Paulson and his collaborator, Ian Wilson, also at Scripps, have tracked how other dangerous influenza viruses have made this leap. So these are not Colorado University. It's a different, different outfit. But it sounds to me like these guys are trying to figure out how it could become a pandemic. And they're in a lab doing this. Does that sound familiar to you? Yeah, this is what you do. They wanted to know. Illegally, I might add, but nobody's latest.

Whatever happened to hold on. I said, what happened to the Geneva Convention about biological warfare and all this stuff that we know they've already been caught doing it. There's plenty of evidence of that. But nobody brings up the Geneva Convention that this is a war crime and people should be executed. Tell other dangerous influenza viruses have made this leap. They wanted to know, could this happen with the latest bird flu virus? We looked at these mutations one at a time.

This was in a lab using proteins, not actual viruses. They did a handful of experiments. Most mutations did not lead the viral proteins to switch from an avian type receptor to a human type. But there was one. It was completely switched. Wilson says all it took was one mutation in the right spot. Yeah, they were expecting from previous research. It might take three. That was really quite surprising and concerning because it raises the odds of this happening.

Paulson says one mutation was enough in some previous influenza pandemics to allow the virus to switch to human type receptors, triggering some of the early infections. I'm sorry. What what previous influenza pandemics have we had? Well, there was one in nineteen eighteen. Well, they're making it sound like, you know. Well, that was something else. That was the swine flu they're talking about. I don't know. Twenty twelve, whenever that was. How about covid? Maybe that was an influenza.

Yeah, but that's not influenza. It's coronavirus. It's different. Yeah, sure. Specifically said influenza. Yeah. OK, finished up. That said, he's quick to point out. We don't want to leave with the that we think that this is going to happen tomorrow. Not tomorrow. January 21st. No, January 21st. We all know the date. This is the report from Colorado University, who I guess have have. I'm just guessing. I don't know for sure. Seems like maybe they have some kind of deal with the Ozempic people.

Well, a medicine that accidentally became a miracle weight loss drug may have just accidentally become an anti addiction drug. A study underway right now at CU Anschutz Medical Campus is looking at how Ozempic can curb alcohol use. Now, the study won't be finished until late next year, but researchers say it is showing a lot of promise in reducing the desire to drink. So today I went out to Aurora and met with Dr. Joseph Schacht, who's leading this study. Schacht.

They tell us that they are less interested in drinking, that they feel less interested in having another drink after having one or two and that they just don't want alcohol as much. Now, though, this study is specifically focused on alcohol. Dr. Schacht says there's also growing evidence that drugs like Ozempic are reducing other addictions like smoking and illicit drug use. We hope that this might be something like a Prozac moment in which we. Oh, yeah, that's what you want, brother.

A Prozac moment. I don't think that's a good thing, Broseph. A Prozac. We're hoping that this is another Prozac moment. Just take it for everything. We hope that this might be something like a Prozac moment in which we suddenly have, you know, a effective and widely used drug for alcohol and other addictions. Now, you may recall that these drugs were actually created as a treatment for diabetes, and this weight loss was an unintended consequence.

So the CU study is still looking for more participants. So if you would like to stop or reduce your drinking, they'd love to hear from you. The number is 303-724-2424. Or you can email alcoholstudy at ucdenver.edu. Hey, are you a lush? Call these guys. They can help you. It's unbelievable. No, it's actually very believable. What am I saying? They really need it. They're just going for it. They're swinging for the fences. They want it in in in the package. They want the government to pay for it.

Bankrupt everybody. Just a moment on China. Do you have anything on China? Not really. We were talking about the National Defense Authorization Act, and you had a clip about it was the Falun Gong Protection Act. The following going, what are they doing in there? Well, producer. Whose name shall not be mentioned in Thursday's episode, Falun Gong was mentioned, and if they operate in Taiwan, they do. I lived in Taiwan from 2010 to 2013, and my wife is Taiwanese.

She detests Falun Gong being a devout Christian, as I am, and their practices. The general thrust is holding banners and banging drums outside popular spots in the three larger cities of Taiwan, Taipei, Kaohsiung and Tainan in the main squares. The weird thing is his word is when there's a rally of any kind, there are huge numbers of supporters that come out of nowhere and they hold candlelight vigils or hours long sit downs. All this is very Taiwanese style.

The Taiwanese are very genteel nation of people, except in Parliament. And the Falun Gong signage is just allowed to happen as it is regarded as a mild nuisance. But the numbers at the events are, I imagine, mainlanders coming to bolster the numbers. The local government know who they are and they just let it happen. But then he goes on and he has a revelation on to Lino. We discuss Lino. You remember this? No. Lesbian in name only. Oh, Lino. He says Lino is rife in Taiwan.

My wife used to work as one of the directors of Ogilvy Taiwan and was a big cheese, shall we say, in the advertising industry before she saw Jesus and smiled a lot more. Nearly all her friends in the company were gay, with a few exceptions. The thing is, the girls were only wanting to have partners, not physical relationships, regardless as to the dykes they were with who wanted more. The two that stand out are JP Tower and Bumper, Asian nicknames, as they all have girlfriends for years.

We're both shunned men and a true mental and physical gay relationship. This is everywhere. All caps in Taiwan. How about that? What is interesting? Yes, I say all this in Taiwan because a lot of the men are homogenous fembots who actively seek darkness and solitude after leaving school with a lot of kids staying home for a long time and essentially disappointing a lot of parents and have little to do with girls.

And the girls are actively turned off by the female ridden looks and behaviors of the boys. Gaming and digital brain rot has a lot to do with this. Trans Maoism is a real thing here. That's our future, I guess. Yikes. What a report. Who? I did not expect the lino part of the report. That's what kind of surprised me. Like, man, that's pretty crazy.

Well, the Chinese, the mainlanders, they they're I think they're somewhat aware of what's going on, like that's where they're putting the the yeah, the the the kibosh on this stuff. That's the word I'm looking for. They're putting the kibosh on this bull crap. Stop it. But I don't know that you can. That's the thing. It's like, you know, the computer revolution, the personal computer itself, the phone revolution, the pocket computer, which is what it amounts to. Yeah, all that is part of it.

Interesting, right? Yeah. More than interesting. All right, well, let's see what we got here from my list. OK, we have the the stuff going on in the Supreme Court with the trans. Yes, yes, this is. Now, I had a series of clips on the last show, but I just boiled down. I think it turned out that PBS had a report on this. But I thought the NPR report looking back on it is better. And I think it'll keep people can catch up quicker.

And it's not a bad report, even though it's slanted, obviously, as it would be. But you can take the slant out of it. It's not bad. SVP trans NPR at the Supreme Court today, the conservative majority seemed very likely to uphold Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors in the last few years. Fully half of states have adopted similar bans. Today's case provided the first test of those laws, as NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.

Three Tennessee families and the Biden administration are challenging the bans on puberty blockers and medications for kids who say their gender doesn't align with their sex at birth. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar led off today, telling the justices that the state cannot eliminate medically approved treatments for gender dysphoria while allowing the same medical treatments for minors suffering from other conditions from early onset puberty to endometriosis.

The state law, she said, singles out one particular use in its ban. It doesn't matter what parents decide is best for their children. It doesn't matter what patients would choose for themselves. And it doesn't matter if doctors believe this treatment is essential for individual patients. She got immediate pushback from the court's conservatives. Justice Thomas, isn't this simply a case of age classification when it comes to these treatments as opposed to a ban?

Chief Justice Roberts followed up by noting that this case is heavily involved with medical judgments and different studies conducted outside the U.S. Doesn't that make a stronger case for us to leave those determinations to the legislative bodies rather than try to determine them for ourselves? Do they come to a conclusion? Because the the constitutional lawyer examined this case for us. You want to hear his short summary or do you want to play the clips? The conclusion is in July of next year.

Well, the the the constitutional lawyer says the there is there is a report that that he sent me concludes that the justices are leaning towards not disturbing the ban, which would be consistent with the court's general approach of taming our sprawling federal government. And he believes states rights may be coming off the ventilator. Well, well, it's not in this report, but the best report I've heard is from some laywoman who has a podcast. Oh, of course.

And she brought out the fact that it's the immutability. Angle and the way she explained things to for this law, the law is based on. Discrimination, male, female, trans discrimination. But because because one of the justices pulled a stunt and said, well, you think this, you think that you think this, you think that. And then brought up the fact that. Was that Jackson? I bet it was content Katanji. It was a conservative who brought up the no Katanji's off the rail.

She doesn't know what she's doing. I think they're going to have to knuckle under some of this because it there can be no discrimination if something's not immutable. And it turns out that by tricking them into accepting the fact that somebody says they're trans, oh, I'm trans. I have to I'm a boy. It has to be a girl. Do you ever switch back? And if there's any examples of that, then the immutability thing is off the window. No, if you can switch back, then this is bullcrap.

Oh, and so that's the kind of be the thing, the crux of the matter. But let's listen to these because this is still interesting besides kind of ignoring that fact. Justice Alito reeled off a list of studies from Sweden, Finland and the UK studies that he said showed damaging effects of these treatments for minors. In light of that, he asked, would you like to modify your claims?

No, replied Prelogger, noting that the medical evidence overall indicates these treatments can be medically necessary for some minors. Pressed by Justice Kagan about whether all state laws would have to be struck down under her theory, Prelogger said no. We do think there is a real space for states to regulate here. And I point to the example of West Virginia. West Virginia was thinking about a total ban like this one.

But then the Senate majority leader, who's a doctor, looked at the underlying studies and the West Virginia legislature changed course and imposed a set of guardrails that are far more precisely tailored to concerns surrounding the delivery of this care. Justice Kavanaugh noted that some minors who undergo these transition treatments later have regrets. And then there was this from Kavanaugh who coached his daughter's basketball team.

If you prevail here, what would that mean for women's and girls sports? Those questions are different, said Prelogger, because they pit the rights of trans kids to participate in sports against the rights of cisgender kids concerned that they're being disadvantaged on the field. Oh, man. Yes. OK, it was Kavanaugh who brought up the immutability thing. They didn't cover it in this report because they missed it. Yeah. Well, again, NPR missed that little ditty, did they? Yeah, they did.

I think there's one more clip. Yeah. Both Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett asked about parental rights to determine their kids' medical treatments and noted that even if the trans kids lose this case, the parents can come back with a fresh challenge based on parental rights. Next up to the lectern and representing the trans kids was Chase Strangio, the first openly trans lawyer to argue before the court. He, too, faced questions about whether these are policy or legal questions.

Again, here's Chief Justice Roberts. My understanding is that the Constitution leaves that question to the people's representatives rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor. Here, what they've done is impose a blunderbuss ban, overriding the very careful judgment of parents who love and care for their children and the doctors who have recommended the treatment. Countering that argument was Tennessee Solicitor General Matthew Rice.

The law allows the use of drugs and surgeries for some medical purposes, but not for others. Thus, he maintained the law is based on purpose, not sex. But Justice Kagan wasn't buying that argument at all. I mean, the prohibited purpose here is treating gender dysphoria. The whole thing is imbued with sex. It's a dodge to say that this is not based on sex. Justice Sotomayor followed up asking whether the state could similarly block treatments for trans adults. Rice said, yes, it could.

All this prompted this comment from Justice Jackson. I'm worried that we're undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases. Justice Gorsuch, usually quick with questions, had none today. He's the author of the court's only decision on trans rights and a decision that favored those rights in the context of employment. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington. I'm guessing the lawsuit didn't come up in this hearing.

The lawsuit against Dr. Joanna Olson Kennedy, known as America's best practitioner of youth gender medicine, who is being sued for medical negligence by a former patient, young girl who underwent a gender transition. And now feels deeply betrayed. Well, it was only brought up in the sense of the immutability question where people can switch back. Well, your prediction is coming true, though. I mean, they're suing the doctors. It's happening.

No, my prediction is they're going to shoot the doctors eventually. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There you go. OK. Well, we got a lot of things. Well, I have something very important, which I would have hoped you would have had. Do you have any tick tock clips today? No, I had a couple I was thinking about. But they were usually just whining guys like the women tick tock.

I was going to set you up because, you know, it's coming down to me up at the next show. I have some tick tock clips. But the news is now tick tock has lost its bid to strike down a law that would lead to a ban of the app in the United States. Tick tock argued that the law, which requires the app's parent company ByteDance to sell to a non-Chinese owner, is unconstitutional. A U.S. appeals court upheld the law in a ruling released today.

ByteDance now has until January 19th to sell the app or face a ban. The law was passed over concerns that the app poses a national security risk. If I were them, I'd get out of there, sell because we've got the pandemic coming two days later. Yeah, you should sell and get out of town.

Hmm. I don't know how this is going to end up, but the tick tockers have been blamed for the a couple of the screwball elections around the world, supposedly the Russians, the Russians, those Russians are infiltrated tick tock. And the next thing you know, they're telling people how to vote and they're doing it. They're following whatever it says on tick tock. Yes. I don't buy any of this. I have I have a clip. Yes, here it is. That's referring to Romania, of course.

Romania's current president was due to end his term later this month, but now Klaus Yohannes, due to an unprecedented decision by the country's constitutional court, says he will be staying in the job until a new president is elected and says that's because of Russian interference. The candidate illegally benefited from massive electoral promotion during the two days when, according to the law, this is prohibited the Saturday before the election and even on election day.

Romania is in crisis after the constitutional court annulled the first round of the presidential election held on the 24th of November. That came after Yohannes declassified intelligence, alleging Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far right outsider Kalin Georgescu. Georgescu won the vote in a shock result after he scored only single digit numbers in opinion polls beforehand. He would have been going into a second round runoff this Sunday.

He says he broke no campaign rules. It's absolutely clean, free and more than that was based on the sovereignty of the people. Georgescu declared zero spending on his campaign, which took place on social media. One of his policy platforms was to end all support for Ukraine. He was due to face a centrist pro -EU candidate on Sunday. A new date will now be set to rerun the vote from scratch. Yeah, I love those countries. The European Union voted, didn't vote the way we wanted. You voted wrong.

We're nullifying it. So why would Russia want a bunch of right wingers to take over some place? I mean, there's a communist country. I mean, it doesn't make any sense from that perspective if they don't want to be in Ukraine. That's another story. Yeah, I guess it would be a good idea. But what are they doing about what is Romania? Big player in Ukraine. Come on. And Georgia, of course, is still on the block. People getting hosed down there for their own little mini Maidan.

We don't know how that's going to turn out. I'm getting a little sick of all these Netflix documentaries. You know, they're bringing all this stuff back. And I guess it's working. Which one? We have the Menendez brothers. Yeah. And then JonBenet Ramsey. Now they're bringing that one back. It's like it's like you have a Netflix documentary and you and I could do it. I mean, we could do a Netflix documentary on Son of Sam, whatever. Zodiac killer, the Zodiac killer. And we should find another one.

You know, we had the Central Park five, all this stuff. This is real news, everybody. Tonight, we are hearing from the father of JonBenet Ramsey amid the popularity of that new Netflix docuseries about her murder. Ramsey spoke with ABC News about where the case currently stands. If the police will do what we've asked to do regarding DNA testing, genealogy research, I think there's a very good possibility that we will have him behind bars sooner than later.

Somebody asked me once, what would you say to JonBenet if he could? I would tell her, I'm sorry I didn't protect you. Sounds like a distraught father to me. That's a father's job. It's heartbreaking words. And ABC News is reporting that sources briefed on the investigation say progress is being made. Now, it's unclear exactly what that means.

In an update last week, the police chief said the department continues to follow up on tips and have now digitized all the evidence into a searchable database. Oh, it's in a database. Oh, please watch the Netflix documentary. Next on the agenda. Next on the next on the next train stop. AI. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That we ran some AI on the DNA database and we found the killer. Win, win, win, win. Yes. All right. All right. Well, I got a I've got a horrible NPR, horrible report.

On social media, which is worth listening to. Oh, yes. We like horrible reports. If it bleeds, it leads on the no agenda. This is one of many NPR has some sometimes have some very good approaches. Almost as good as NTD. And then sometimes they just go nuts. Social media. This time. Sorry, sorry. No, I tried to time it. Here we go. Yeah. Social media has played, as usual, an outsized role in launching and shaping cultural trends in twenty twenty four.

And here to walk us through some of the year's most significant ones is NPR culture correspondent Chloe Veltman. Hey, Chloe. Hey, Chloe. Hello. That's always good to talk to you. Likewise. Why a British lady? So what would you say the biggest trend? The experts on social media. Yeah, yes, yes. In culture on social media was in twenty twenty four. Well, Scott, let me sum it up in one word. Fans, fans. Yeah. Fans have completely transformed the entertainment landscape this year.

Through social media. Tell me more. What you mean by that? Well, of course, fans have this enormous influence. What we watch used to be decided on by these big networks and mainstream media and then streamers. But now what fans create or love is spilling over into everything. I took a look at the new reports released this week from companies like YouTube, TikTok and Spotify. And I have two big examples for you to illustrate this. All right, let's do it. What's the first one?

The first one is the beef that took place this year between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. I am well aware of it, but wasn't I mean, that was a real life beef, right? This this existed independently of social media. It did. Yes, they exchanged tracks, songs where they attacked each other over accusations of domestic abuse, fathering illegitimate children and so on. But the spat was hugely amplified by fans dissecting every single beat of it on podcasts and videos and making their own related content.

So here's one animated short film from May, a cartoon Kendrick Lamar confronts a cartoon Drake about hiding a child he fathered. And it's in Japanese. So this video has racked up nearly two and a half million views on YouTube and three million views on X.com. And all of this fan related content, it seems to increase the fan bases for both Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Awesome, John, I love I love the sound effects. Yeah, well, somebody had the shooter.

Yeah, it goes on and on and I have one more part of this because she's just nuts. This is a woman. She's talking about fan base. Now she's talking about how, you know, because of this, they're taking stuff that's on the platforms and they're moving it to mainstream. You know, this is like the reverse of what's really going on is mainstreamers are going to podcasting and the other way around.

But, OK, they're seeing it this way because, of course, they're representing mainstream as being part of the NPR. But I want to remind people that this is a phenomenon of going from bouncing back and forth. Really, I think began with if people can remember back this far, it was probably before the show began, I think. Yeah, it was before our show even began. Rocket boom. Yes, it was. Well, no, we used we used to laugh about rocket boom on the show. They were still around when.

Yeah, they were still around, but they began in twenty two thousand four. What happened? What was that? What's her name? The rocket boom girl. And she got Amanda Congdon. Yes. And then she got an agent and then rocket boom fell apart. She got an agent and they moved her to the mainstream media where she didn't have the chops for it because she was really good at what she did on line.

But it was it was different media media is people always have to understand these things aren't all the same just because there's a video involved. This doesn't mean it's the same as being on network TV, doing a movie is not the same as doing a TV show, doing a YouTube video is not the same as anything. It's the same as remember Tommy Lahren when she was Tommy Lahren, just the social media. She was great. And then they put her on Fox and she says, no, it's no, it didn't work.

And she got an agent. I remember she got an agent. Yeah. I'm going to make you a star. Hey, baby, I want to make you a star. So I don't know whatever happened to Amanda Congdon. She disappeared off the face of the earth. Maybe she listens to our show and she can tell us what happened. But yeah, so this is not a new for the day. All this is bullcrap. This is a filler show and I felt really that it was like, why am I making people suffer by listening to it? It's just because I had to.

After the election, a lot of talk about the manosphere and how influential men have been in this space. What are you seeing about this? Yes, indeed. Men continue to dominate social media celebrity space. Mr. Beast, for example, is still at or near the top of social media charts for popularity. He's the face of an enormous social media empire. Of course, focused on elaborate stunts and giveaway videos that he makes. And then there's the ever popular Joe Rogan.

President-elect Trump made an appearance on his show. But let's not forget women also made a big impact this year. There was Charlie XCX's Brat Summer. Brat, which translates sort of a swagger and attitude, is Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year. And it was widely applied to presidential nominee Kamala Harris. She appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast hosted by a woman, Alex Cooper. This seems like a trend that's going to continue.

Digital space, podcasts, streamers and politics all merging together. I think so. I talked to Abigail DeCosnick. She's an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies social media and fandoms. She says in 2025, we can expect to see cultural spaces on social media increasingly becoming co-opted by political factions in our very polarized society. I think a lot of it will be culture wars at many levels.

I think a lot of the culture warring will have real ramifications for politics and for everyday life. Let's end with this, Chloe. What is your favorite social media cultural moment of 2024? Oh, I'm so glad you asked, Scott. Well, I think I think my gold star has to go to Jules LeBron's viral TikTok video. Very demure, very mindful. She not only coined a new phrase, but this was also named 2024's word of the year by dictionary dot com. Thank you, Chloe. You were very demure. Oh, thank you, Scott.

I do try to be mindful. Oh, gracious. Well, this is NPR, national treasure. Well, you actually lead me into something I wasn't going to bring up because I was reading this report article. It's in a military industrial complex blog. And they were talking about the do you remember the recruitment video for the army's the fourth psychological operations group, the ghost in the machine? It was this really strange cartoonish. Video, I do not. Well, if you saw it, you would probably.

Yeah. And and in this article, they talk about the psychological operations on social media. I pulled two quotes from this article. Psychological operations or PSYOP is all about influencing governments, people of power and everyday citizens.

PSYOP soldiers are described as adaptive thinkers who have language and cultural expertise, specialize in deception and cyber warfare and work in small teams to persuade and influence populations in support of the US military military throughout the world, throughout the world. Psychological operations are occurring literally everywhere, every day in every component of our lives. And we know that we know this to be true, mainly with entertainment products.

They go on to say social media is used to replicate conditions of low intensity warfare in order to physically induce people into political radicalism so they can be cultivated as assets and deployed in the media narrative to replicate conditions of low intensity warfare. At the end of the day, conspiracy theorists aren't far off, but then they become most frequently another means by which the low intensity eternal culture war is developed. And I thought, yeah, this is absolutely true.

And the and the next spot for this is going to be Blue Cry. From what I understand, threads, threads, the the Facebook social network is kind of dead because everybody left for Blue Cry, including the European Federation. Yeah, I know you're using that as a nickname. You call it Blue Cry, but I don't think everyone's getting that blue sky and blue cry. Yeah, well, because you say Blue Cry, it always takes me a couple of beats to figure out what you're talking about. OK, blue sky. Blue sky.

And I should also mention that there's a number of interesting theories out there that blue sky is just a A.I. SOP. Well, they are now, according to the CEO, considering advertising. So you know what that means, once you get advertising, what they don't have advertising? No. Well, they're just giving it away. Well, to get everybody in. Yeah. Including the European Federation of Journalists who are leaving X. Oh, we're leaving.

The European Federation of Journalists has officially announced that it will no longer be posting on Twitter. So starting on January 20th, 2025, the day Donald Trump is sworn into office, the president. I'm getting to it. The president of the EFJ slammed Elon Musk in a statement following the group's announcement. And here it is.

After the U.S. elections, EFJ pointed out the threats to democracy and freedom of expression posed by the cooperation between the president of the most powerful country in the world, Donald J. Trump, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, was also the owner of Social Network X and has been appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency Doge.

When Donald J. Trump takes office as president on January 20th, 2025, we cannot continue to participate in the social network feed of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists. Wait a minute. So let me get I want you to straighten me out here. So I'm an outlet for, let's say, news articles or tidbits that I post, you know, people would go follow up and read the whole thing or go to my site or whatever.

Yeah. So I have a and so I have a bunch of followers because I've been on the site for a long time. I got hundreds of thousands. You got 100,000. No, I'm talking about these guys. Oh, they must have millions. I have a hundred thousand and two. Yeah. Which is low. So you have this group of people, you have a bunch of followers and you post it, so you post there and then you post it Facebook, you post on Insta, you just do all these posts because the real idea is it's a marketing approach.

You just post all over. I mean, I try to post that. I'll probably get a blue sky account myself so I can just post the link to the show. So I'm going to pull this. I'm going to pull my my huge audiences and screw the artist. I'm going to not post there anymore, hurting my own brand. And I want you to explain to me the logic behind this thinking. Virtue signaling, I have this no other reason for it is dumb, but it's completely dumb.

And you know what, honestly, I didn't even know there was a European Federation of journalists. So we kind of worked, you mentioned it kind of worked. They already did a shitty job of pulling themselves up to the floor. But I think once a blue sky goes to an advertising model that only makes it easier for, uh, for people to be used for psychological operations, because then the, the military or whoever else, the entertainment comp, whoever it is, can come in and can target people directly.

That's what those tools are meant for. Exactly. As we heard the, um, the global engagement center of the state department doing, Oh, well we just went to Facebook and we could target people exactly where we wanted them. So blue sky is going to be, it's going, I predict we're going to see a lot more people going very crazy. Like what we're seeing with the Trump is going to take away all my rights women. And, uh, he's going to take away my social security people.

You know, the, the same way that people don't hear about the CBP app for the, for the asylum seekers, they'll only hear about what they hear about. And it's, and it's already rampant on blue sky. None of this is good. None of this whole concept of social media is not good. They are digital towers of Babel. They need to be taken down. They're no good. I like that way.

This contrast with your, your previous, um, I would say boosting, I believe it's not the right word, but of the Fediverse and Mastodon, but they don't have algorithms. Yeah. Well, they don't have users either. I'm going to show myself old by donating to no agenda. Imagine all the people that do that. Oh yeah, that'd be fab. That's exactly right. See Nostra, another, you know, Oh, it's decentralized. No one could take away our freedom.

Well, no one's used like 40,000 people use it because A it's only people talking about Bitcoin and B there's no algorithm. That's exactly right. People don't use things that aren't exciting and entertaining. Just like blogging was never really exciting and entertaining. And you had a life. You did stuff outside of social media. You went outside. I blame the blogger role for failing. Yes. We're going to stay brought that up to me. So why don't we bring back the blog role?

Maybe that'll make blogging popular again. You know, we have a pod role in podcasting 2.0. Is that right? Yes. And in some of the apps, not all, but some of them, um, you will, if you look at, uh, I don't, they surface it differently, but even our show has a, has a pod role. I can tell you what's in there. Hold on a second. Uh, show. We have a pod. We have a pod role. And I have in there, I have the DH unplug podcast. I have the curry and the keeper podcast.

Now add anything you want, but you want another, you want another, uh, pod in the pod role that was going on. But now I'll start to think about it. We can unlimited, we can put unlimited pods in the pod role. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It's not all the apps are using it yet, but we actually had a conversation about the other, the other day. I'm like, you know, people should be doing this. Make it exciting with a pod role, pod role, pod role. Everybody wants it. I think that's almost a show title sandwich.

It's taking me like a lobster roll. Only it's funky. That's a pod role. Let's end this thing. All right. Uh, we have a tip of the day coming up with the exciting development. John and I had a meeting about the tip of the day, which I want to remind you of because I don't forget these meetings. We don't have many meetings. Do you remember the meeting? Let's talk about it. We'll talk about the meeting.

It's going to be this like a Hollywood situation, which means it will take a long time to really develop if it ever comes to fruition. Before that, we want to thank our producers $50 and above who supported the show. Episode 1719 and John, take it away. Yeah. Jorge Zavala in Strathmore, Strathmore, Victoria, Australia, started us off at a hundred dollars. It's a long, a kind of a long note dedicated to, he's been a listener for six years.

My wife Maggie used to be skeptical, but the pandemic opened her ears. Got big ears. That woman. So, um, it does a donation for her. He wants to give her a de-douching. You've been de-douched. He wants to know how he can become Australia's no agenda ambassador. Well, that will be a promotion we do next year. We can do it anytime we want. Yeah. True. Well, we get like five people. Okay. Kevin McLaughlin's up. This is a very short list. This is an embarrassingly short list.

You should be embarrassed. Kevin McLaughlin comes in from Concord, North Carolina, 8008. Of course. He's been doing this now for some time, quite a while. And he's the Archduke of Luna lover of American boobs. I have to get the exact date when he began this trek. Victor Gregg in Corvallis, Oregon, 67, 18. Sir Chris in Arlington, Virginia, 63, 63. David Cox in Austin. Sixty three, twenty five. Grayson and Grayson Insurance in Aurora, California, Colorado.

Grayson. That's Grayson Insurance over the G. The Outer Swamp meet up in North Bethesda. Oh, he came with six or six, by the way, small boob. The Outer Swamp meet up in North Bethesda, Maryland. Yeah. January. Yeah. January 22nd. It's spook country. Oh, yeah. That's why it's the Outer Swamp. It's the Outer Swamp. Yeah. Anything in there? No. He needs a group de-douching. That's what he needs. You've been de-douched. Sarah King, a Kring, Sarah Kring Nielsen in Quebec, 54, 27.

The Real Bobby Z in Port Isabel, Texas, 52, 72. Brittany Miller in Trinidad, Colorado, 52, 72. Josiah Thomas in Ankeny, Iowa, 51. Kate Myers actually is a switcheroo for Steve. Or Booper of Noses, as you'd know him, she says. That means he's one of those guys that, you know, hey, look, you got a stain on your shirt. Oh, your nose. Kate Myers in Williamston, Booper, actually of Williamston, New Jersey, 50, 23. Now the rest were already in a $50 donor's name and location.

The few that are on here will start with Stephen Ray in Spokane, Washington. Edward Misurik in Memphis, Tennessee. Ray Howard in Kremling, Colorado. William Kidwell in Dover, Delaware. Julie Brenneman in Marshall, Illinois. And last in the short list is Chris Scooter, Scouter, Scouter, S-C-O-U-T -E-R in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Well, that's nice. You need some house selling karma and you were given maybe that if you feel like it at the end. And we do need a de-douching back here.

I saw I just saw it. Julie Brenneman says she needs a de-douching for the holiday season. You've been de-douched. This actually was a donation that this husband gave and Julie got on the list. But she needs the both. They both are douchebags, according to him, and she got the de-douching. She's good to go. And Chris Schouler says that it has been years since he mugged me on the way to the MeVeo office. I don't remember being mugged. Where's this? That's Chris Schouler.

His note there from New Zealand. He said, Adam and John, it's been years since I mugged Adam on the way to the MeVeo office, but I'm still here. Hmm. Did you get robbed? I don't recall. But there was a lot of weed in my life back then, so I don't know. It could have happened. Hey, man, take it. Thank you very much to these supporters, these donors, these value for value producers who support us for episode 1719. Again, thanks to all who came in under $50 for reasons of anonymity.

Or if you're doing one of those no agenda sustaining donations, they are very much appreciated and help us get through these slower moments. It's no agenda donations dot com. Any amount, any frequency, you make it up yourself. That's the good news about it. You can start stop whenever you want. No agenda donations dot com. Here's the car Maz requested. You've got karma. Once again, no agenda donations dot com. And we do have a couple of birthdays on the list. We have Kate Myers.

We just heard we see her husband, Steve, a.k.a. Booper of Nose is a happy birthday. He turned 40 on this on December 6th. Andrew turned 55 yesterday and he's about to become a knight. And Paul Saltzman, who's been a longtime supporter, he celebrates on December 10th. So we say happy birthday to everybody here from the best podcast in the universe. We do not have any titles today, but we do have a doctorate. We have a brand new doctorate of education. This goes to William Grantham.

William, you are now here by an official doctor of education specializing in climate change studies. Congratulations. And you can go to no agenda rings dot com. That is where anyone can go take a look for their handsome knight or dame rings. And that's also where you let us know what you want on your doctorate of education and where you want it sent. And we'll be happy to take care of that for you. And we do have a couple of knights who will be receiving rings today.

If you can give me a couple of knights blade. There we got three. A couple of knights blade. Beautiful. Here he is, William Grantham, Jacob and Andrew. All three of you gentlemen are about to become knights of the no agenda round table. I am very proud to pronounce the as Sir Plussage of the Wind River Valley. Sir Jacob, dearly loved refugee of room six and prized resident of the county far above the chemtrails. That is our posthumous knight and Sir Fred Pound.

For you, we have the customary hookers and blow rent boys and chardonnay. We also have prostitutes and cigars, Bacardi 151 and coke, smoked brisket and for dessert a canape. Along with that sparkling cider escort, ginger ale and gerbils, fresh milk and pavloman, of course, the requisite mutton and mead. Go to no agenda rings dot com. We'll be happy to send it off to you. Just let us know what size, what address. And with that comes official wax.

Yes, wax, you can melt onto your correspondence and seal it with this night ring, which is a signet ring. And with that, always a certificate of authenticity. And thank you all very much for supporting the best podcast in the universe. No agenda meet up. Yeah, we don't have a long meet up list today, but we do have a number of reports that came in. The first one is from the Ottawa meet up.

They said that a pretty good turnout in the second Ottawa meet up, considering the typical Ottawa snowstorm that was happening and getting worse. Some fresh faces joined and a toddler came as well by itself. There's the toddler drive. I see why John enjoys having kids at the meet up. Yeah, I guess they're fun. Thank you both for all you do again. I hope this meet up helps the show in some way, the Ottawa meet up. And then we have the Goleta California meet up. ITM, Buzzkill and Crackpot.

This is the 805 meet up in Goleta, California. And this is Dame Bang Bang. JD Anymouse here. Out of the way, you swine. A podcaster's coming. This is Gabriel. Thank you for hitting me in the mouth. Introducing my smoking hot wife. Kelly. Hi. Merry Christmas. And Sir DH Slammer out here on the patio where the occupancy is 33. ITM boys. Merry Christmas in the morning. Go edit it in post. Yeah, very good. And then we have the Gitmo Brats and Festive Hats. This was Gladewater, Texas.

This is Rudy reporting for the No Agenda Gitmo Brats and Festive Hats meet up. Passing the mic around for today's report. This is Dirty Jersey Gore from the international meet up here in Gladewater, Texas. Y'all be good. This is Crypto Andy reporting. Bitcoin hit 100, over 100,000 just two days ago. Crazy time. 2025. This is the Boone. Obviously, an international addition to the Gladewater family here. Very exciting to see what's going on here.

Wishing everybody the best of luck with their future investments. Talk to you soon. Next time. Carpe Diem. Glad to see Bitcoin over 100,000. Glad to be here. And Merry Christmas to everybody. This is Dirty Jersey escaping from China to Hui Hui. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. In the morning. And thank you for your courage. And thank you for your courage. Indeed. Then we have the Wageningen meet up in the Netherlands. They called it the WEF Food Hub.

Those guys are always dark and dank over there. And now it's time for the meet up report of the WEF Food Hub meet up. From the Wageningen Frankenfood Valley. Frank, a.k.a. Mike in the morning. Super cozy here. This is Roland in the morning. Mike here. Here, Joe Derks from Six Feet Thunder. Very cozy meet up. Hey, this is Natalia. I'm going to fast for four days tomorrow. So I ate three burgers. Yes, from Amsterdam. Where is Zwarte Piet? Yes, what should I say now?

The Schimmel balls are pretty tasty. In the morning. In the morning. Yes, you notice the term Gezellig there. John Gezellig, a very typical Dutch word. It's untranslatable. Gezellig is what it is at the WEF Food Hub. And finally, the biggest meet up. Yes. You want to say something? No, I just said, hmm, hmm. The biggest meet up we have consistently with a very snappy, fast report. But man, there's a lot of people in Indy. Hi, this is Sir Mark. And this is Dame Maria.

And we had a fantastic meet up with a couple of fly-ins. One, one drove in. One came in from North Carolina. Very cool. And we are so thankful for you, Adam and John. Happy Thanksgiving. In the morning, John and Adam, Sir PBR Street Gang, working on my Dutch master degree here in Indianapolis. In the morning, Dame Trinity, having a great time in Indy as always. Thank you for your courage. This is Sir Cyclopath from Charlotte, North Carolina, who came to Indianapolis just to give my tip.

Brewski here. This is a great meet up at the Broad Ripple Tavern. Shout out to Millennial Media Offensive. Brrrr! Hey, this is Emily, your shufflecrack spook. And can we do better than Doge? That's a silly billing. We can do better than that. So my name is Molly. I was here at my local watering hole. I see this group next to me. Very rowdy, ruthless. And I get asked to choose, like, your raffle ticket, yeah. Very happy to oblige. Had a great time with these folks. What a great group of people.

In the morning, I am Sir Ripover the Mifle. And I want to wish John and Adam, all the producers, a very happy Thanksgiving. And a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, because I won't be speaking again until February. In the morning, this is Sparrow, a.k .a. Reporting on-site from this no-agenda meetup. A happy report, there's only moderate subversive activity occurring during this meetup. Sparrow out. In the morning, Dame Swaney. Sir Betty, and I'm looking for Max Buffer. I can't find him.

Broadcasting live from the Moonlight Lounge, this is Newbie Dave in Indianapolis. In the morning. This is Mike from the Easy Peasy podcast. If protection is connection, why does nobody have a condom? Oh, I have a condom. Dear Santa, this is Nick, and this year I won an Octocopter. Hi, I'm Brooke, I'm with the Vaudeville Tavern. I served the no-agenda meetup today, and they were great. In the morning, happy Thanksgiving. I love it when they bring in the servers.

Everybody should have their server in the meetup, and hit them in the mouth while you're at it. And if you want to go to a meetup today, and you're in Denver, Colorado, Lincoln's Roadhouse will be host of the Denver Christmas Kwanzaa Kandunuka meetup, 6.30. And the fourth amygdala checkup, 7.33. It's Amsterdam time. Oh, I guess they're already underway. They're probably done in Leiden, the Netherlands. Well, we expect a meetup report from them. Thank you all very much.

Many more on the calendar at noagendameetups.com. Connection is indeed protection. These people will be your first responders in an emergency. Go to a meetup. If you can't find one near you at noagendameetups.com, start one yourself. ♪ Sometimes you wanna go hang out ♪ ♪ With all the nights and days ♪ ♪ You wanna be where you want to be ♪ ♪ Trick or treat or hell to claim ♪ ♪ You wanna be where everybody feels the same ♪ It's like a party. Yeah, like a party. They are like a party.

They sound like parties, actually. It is a party. It's always a party. I don't think I've done very well with ISOs. Again, I know I'm not doing well. Yeah, this has been going on for a month now. I know, I'm in an ISO glutch. Glutch, no, gulch. ISO gulch. It's just a glut. No, it is a glut. It's an ISO glut. I'm not doing well. No, glut means there's excessive. No, then what is when I'm in a dip? An ISO dip. Slump. You're in a slump. I'm in a ISO slump. That's it. So here's my one.

Full of facts and just great journalism. I know. It's actually not bad. It's okay, it's okay. I'd love it to be these. I got two. Dipshit. Goodbye, dipshits. Yeah, yeah, that's gonna beat my, I'm removing mine from the lineup already. What's your next one? Expect. What did you expect? We are done. No, no, no. Goodbye, dipshits. That's the one. There's no doubt about it. That's definitely the one. I like it. Very good.

Do you wanna have the conversation about the meeting now before we get into the jingle? Or what do you wanna do? Because this was a little troubling for me. Yes, the idea is that in the tips of the day jingle within the jingle, Dana Brunetti, our Hollywood guy. Hollywood producer of films like 50 Shades of Grey and House of Cards and 50 Shades of Greyer, which was even more raunchy. Well, he also did Captain So-and-so and he did about 10 good films.

Good. Yeah, but everyone knows him from 50 Shades of Grey. Let's be honest. That's the movie that everybody knows. Well, that's where he got all his money. Yes, exactly. It's dirty money. He's very ashamed of this, by the way. Yeah, he should be. It's dirty money. Dirty money for a dirty film. Yes, dirty money for a dirty film. Yeah, so Dana Brunetti called you. He never calls me and he did not back channel me on this one, which is odd for a Hollywood guy. I find that to be peculiar.

Yes, odd for a Hollywood guy. He wants creative credit for the tip of the day because it was his idea. This doesn't- And he wants us to slip it into the jingle and there's a spot where it gets slipped in, I'm going to produce this. It's going to take a while because there's so much work to produce these- Hold on, stop. Why does he, I mean, there are lots of people who've created things.

How come he- He says he gets paid the big bucks to come up with these ideas and we haven't even given him, barely given him credit. He's very offended by the whole situation. Something else has got to be going on with Dana. I think he doesn't get mentioned enough. No, I think that's it. I think there's something else going on. And the fact that he hasn't back-channeled me means that I think he wants to talk with me. Oh, that could be, he wants to talk to you. Maybe he's got a project.

Here's, well, how about this thought? One of the hottest categories right now in movies, if you look at Angel Studios, they got this new movie, Homestead. Christian movies are hot now. Yeah, they are. And I think that Dana just doesn't know anyone in the space and he's very worried about his hedonistic projects. And he wants some kind of a wheelbarrow to get him in. And I think he's looking, he's searching. He's looking for me to help him to get into this category.

It's within the realm of possibilities. Dana, it's okay. First of all, God loves you and I'll be your God. I'll be your guide. No worries. We'll take care of you. You can call me. We'll set it up. And by the way, it's a killer category. Now, ladies and gentlemen, created by the one and only Dana Brunetti, it's John's tip of the day. ♪ Great advice for you and me ♪ ♪ Just a tip with JCD and sometimes Adam. ♪ We're going to kill it. We're going to do so well, Dana.

I'm excited about the opportunity. Okay. Well, this is what the tip is. This is a screwy tip, but here it is. Oh, you're opening the tip of the day. And I had qualms about this. I have to say it's quite tasty, but it is a liquid. One of our producers said, you got drinking the wrong stuff. You want to drink a sparkling water that's called liquid death. Yes. Who drinks? Dave Jones was drinking this for a while. My buddy, Dave Jones, liquid death. Yes. All the kids are drinking it.

And here, and I, so I'm at the table. I had, he sent me a couple of cases of it. You got cases from who? Yeah. From the liquid death people? From our producer. One of the producers. I'm not going to tell you who it is because now you're going to sponge them. Oh. So. I'm too busy sponging Dana. Don't worry about it. You'll get a bit part before I do. I will.

So, so I'm at the, we're having a dinner, Brennan and Jay there, and I said, I don't know why is anybody, because I saw this stuff before, I said, who in their right mind is going to buy a product called liquid death? It just sounds terrible, like a bad idea. And so Brennan explained it to me, and as soon as he said it, the logic was so good I had to use it as tip of the day. For one thing, it comes in a big 16 ounce can. It's not like a normal can of sparkling water.

It's a huge can of sparkling water. It looks like a beer. Hmm. And it's a drink that you have at cocktail parties, so you hold a can of this stuff, it says liquid death, and you drink it like a beer, and you look cool as opposed to just drinking some, you know, sparkling water. Well. Because you're drinking liquid death at the party. It's a cocktail party gag is what it really amounts to.

From what I'm reading in the troll room, liquid death, now this is interesting, and you need to talk to your son-in-law about this. Liquid death is a huge sponsor on podcasts that accept advertising. Is it possible that this is, that Brennan has somehow snuck in a native ad and he's actually getting paid for this? No, no, Brennan was unaware I even had this stuff. Huh. The guy who sent it to me is possibly, he could be working for the company for all I know, and that's a possibility.

So they're getting a free, that's possible that the liquid death people that support, I didn't know this by the way, but I know it now. I didn't know it, I just read it. I mean. It's possibly I've been duped. Yeah. And I've been giving a free advertisement to these guys, the liquid death guys, although we give, our advertisements, and what we give, tell people to do, is based on sincerity, not payment.

We didn't get paid to do this, but now having done it, I expect these guys from liquid death to send us a couple of cases, and you should get a few too. Thank you very much for creating this awesome advertisement, Dana Brunetti. Good work, everybody. There's John's tip of the day. Creative lives for you and me, just a tip with JCD. Created by Dana Brunetti. And by the way, the liquid death sparkling water, it is good, and it has a nice, kind of a medium-sized bubble.

Okay. Man, we got duped again, Dvorak. We keep missing the boat on all of this stuff. I don't know how we do it. You know why? Because we're just here to provide a service to people. A public service. We're too busy providing a public service to spin you down and keep your world sane. And all we ask is if you get any value from this show, like you feel sane, send it back to us, noagendadonations.com. Time, talent, or treasure. Or cases. Or liquid death. Or cases of liquid death.

Coming up next, we have end of show mixes. Let me see. We have nothing new, by the way. These are all evergreens. We have Maddie J. We've got Leo LePuck. And we've got Brian Longenecker. There you go. Next up on No Agenda Stream, we've got Fun Fact, oh no, we have, yes, Fun Fact Friday. The last one, the very last episode. A new show, Everything's an Argument, coming up next. And I am coming to you from the heart of the Texas Hill Country in the morning, everybody.

I'm Adam Curry. And from Northern Silicon Valley, where it's smoggy out for some unknown reason, I'm John C. Dvorak. Noagendadonations.com. Remember us there until Thursday. Adios, mofos, a-hooey-hooey, and such. They, I think, feel like they can't depend on America. They don't know what to expect. And this is a global political crisis. Lisa Lara, do you think it's that serious, a global political crisis?

Or do you think people are just kind of listening to the president and thinking, well, you know, wait 15 minutes and see what he says? Oh, no. He is unpredictable to the point where they have no faith or trust in him. Oh, no, oh, no. I think it's a global political crisis. I totally agree with that. Global, global, global political crisis. I totally agree. Um, Michael. It's a global political crisis we are witnessing, John.

Unless somebody told us, because we need to know this for the show, but he is unpredictable to the point where they. Oh, no, oh, no. I think it's a global political crisis. We're gonna have to leave it there. Global political crisis. By the way, the website is cosmicweenie.com. Justify. We're gonna have to leave it there. Justify. The American public needs to stay outraged. Obama passed it, and leave it alone!

I want you to argue with him, and get in their face, get in their face, get in their face. I know who's asked to kick, to kick, to kick. This unworthy president. He does not deserve to be the president of the United States. Outrageous, outrageous. You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Do it again now. You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals. If you shoot me, you better shoot straight, there's nothing.

Dog meat, tough, snake meat, tougher, and roasted grasshoppers, crunchy. Outrageous, outrageous, outrageous, outrageous, outrageous. Eggs, eggs, eggs. There's nothing embarrassing about a hen laying an egg, and you'd better lay one or it's your neck. I give them the old needle once in a while. I love eggs! Egg prices are continuing to soar. The cost of eggs has been soaring across the country. High cost of eggs. So what's behind eggflation?

Pathogenic eggflue influenza, more commonly known as bird flu. The worst bird flu outbreak in years. That has just swept through the country. Tens of millions of birds have died or been slaughtered. Bird flu has reduced the egg-laying hen population by more than 40 million. 40 million, that's astounding to think about. That looks like eggs are the new toilet paper. It's egg-streamly bad news. You might want to consider alternatives. This is an egg replacement item.

These chickens that were laying eggs, those are mature hens, right? So we don't get a mature hen overnight. It takes some time for a chick who hatches out of an egg to be, this could be lasting us into the summer. Can I offer you a nice egg in this trying time? Yeah, he's got an egg, you might not! The best podcast in the universe! Adios, mofo. Dvorak.org slash n-egg. Goodbye, dipshits.