1729 - "Algo Chasers"

Back, back, back, back, back. Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak. It's Sunday, January 12th, 2025. This is your award-winning Kimmel Nation Media Assassination Episode 1729. This is no agenda. Never wasting a crisis for its good. And broadcasting live from the heart of the Texas Hill Country here in FEMA Region Number 6. In the morning everybody, I'm Adam Curry. And from Northern Silicon Valley where we do call in gruesome newsome, I'm John C. Dvorak. It's Crackpot and Buzzkill. In the morning.

This show is so uniquely situated for this moment in time at this hour. Because we have you. Me. We have you. We have you. We have media deconstruction. We've got producers everywhere. But we have you who has such a knowledge of these issues in California. And you still live there, I might point out. Which is just incredible to anybody. It's unbelievable. How does he do it? How does he do it? Anybody who listens to the show, I mean, I get tweets, I get emails.

Hey man, is it time for John to finally leave? Have you figured it out yet? Is it not a good idea to live there? Figured out what? Figured out that it's time to leave the hellscape. It's only out of love. No, it's just part of the whole scheme to get everyone to leave California so they can pick up real estate cheap. I'm not buying into it. So last night I was flummoxed and somewhat flabbergasted.

As we decided to, before we went to bed, I said, hey, let's just take a look, because Tina is doom scrolling. She said, oh, look at this, look at this. She's really up to speed on everything happening. And I said, let's just take a look at the news. What happened to the news? Saturday night, CNN is running a documentary of the Columbia shuttle. MSNBC was, I don't know what they were, I mean, no one is doing any news. And then on Fox, they have like some kind of joke show.

Have you ever seen this thing Saturday night? A Jimmy Fallon show? It's the bottom line, I think is what it's called. There's more than one joke show on Fox. And by that we mean supposed comedy show. Not a show that's a joke. And they're reaching so far down the barrel that they're pulling out podcasters. We don't have any staff to report on any news. We only pay these people for three days a week. They've been working four. We paid overtime so we can't have them working Saturday night.

We can't bring you any news. Let's bring in Jillian Michaels. It's absolute madness. And I've seen that clip of that mother. And she says to the governor, will it be different next time? He says, it has to be. Next time. This just happened four months ago. All of northern Malibu just burned down four months ago. It happened in 2018 when I lost my house.

And not only was it not different, PG &E, who was responsible for the fire that burned down my house with equipment that was over 100 years old, was not only not held accountable, he completely let them off the hook. And they weren't forced to update the infrastructure. The fire hydrants are broken. The reservoirs ran dry. Well, guess what? In 2014, Californians voted on Proposition 1 to put billions toward building new reservoirs. Not one is complete 10 years later. Let's talk about forestry.

I grew up in California. There were regular, controlled burns. You would get notices from the city that you had to do brush cleanup and your home was going to be inspected. This all stopped before Newsom, to be fair. But if we're going to, I'm going to go full-blown devil's advocate on you. California is prone to fire. Bad Santa Ana winds. We know this. Let's go with global warming. Perfect. Since you know the places at Tinderbox, why are you not doing the work? Prepare! Listen, I get it.

I understand you want to protect the environment. But how's the environment now when you just killed I don't know how many coyotes, how many mountain lions, you have baby deer running in flames down the road. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Baby deer running in flames. Environment now when you just killed I don't know how many coyotes, how many mountain lions, you have baby deer running in flames down the road. Really? Or how about when all of this runs off into the Pacific?

Is that good for the environment? None of this makes any sense. None of it. Yeah, she is doing a podcast rant. You know, she has gone, ever since she was kind of got sketchy about being a left winger, which she's always been historically. And she's kind of switched over to the other side. And everyone's taking her in. Oh yeah, come on. You can do our show. You'll be on TV a lot more. She's gone nuts. She's gone nuts. But that was it. That was the extent of the coverage on, I mean, so.

Oh yeah, well, that's probably true. Don't worry, there's plenty of coverage starting tomorrow. Actually, I have to say, BBC, you know, because the BBC doesn't necessarily, in this particular case, have to take a political position, they were pretty good. I have a couple of clips here that are worthwhile. This is reported kind of straight up news. Surprising. We heard about the problem. And they do it in such a nice voice. It's so good. We heard about the problem with fire hydrants.

Reports saying that some in the Palisades area were completely unusable. The governor of California has been talking about it, hasn't he? What has he had to say? Well, this was a problem right at the beginning of this crisis. And as you say, the fire hydrants simply dried up. Now, there are lots of possible reasons for that. And the governor, Gavin Newsom, wants to get to the bottom of what happened.

He was actually accosted in the street the other day by a woman who was furious about this situation, was demanding answers from him. And, well, he promised that he would try to get to the bottom of it. And now he has announced this full independent review. Just briefly, one of the explanations could be that the sprinklers that come on in homes, which is activated by heat, by fire, they simply kept flowing. What? Hold on. Stop the clip. That's a good one. I like that one too.

Have you ever had a house that had sprinklers that come on automatically? No. In California, as far as I can tell. And you've been to some rich people's homes. I've been to a lot of rich people's homes, and I've been in California forever. I had never seen this in any home in California ever. It's rare to even be in an office building. Once in a while, in the tall ones, yeah, they're there. I'm curious where they got that. This is bull crap.

I'm curious where they got it from and why they threw that in there. Anyway, it's 14 more seconds. On in homes, activated by heat, by fire, they simply kept flowing with water, even if the home eventually burnt down. But you can imagine, street after street after street, house after house, all of this water flowing. That could be one reason why the... Well, hold on a second. Stop it again. I told you this was a good report. No, I said it wasn't political, per se. Oh, yes.

It's definitely not political. It's just bull crap. This is terrible. All of this water flowing, that could be one reason why the reserves that the firefighters would have used was rapidly depleted. Well, here's another little bit from the BBC, and you know a lot about this, so I'm going to let it play. It's only a minute, and you're going to give us commentary. If you need to stop it, feel free. Throughout the crisis, firefighters have been struggling with a lack of water.

Among the possible contributing factors, a reservoir which helps to supply water to the Pacific Palisades area was undergoing maintenance when the fires broke out. The intensity of the fire is so high, it has overwhelmed LA's capacity to fight it. And in many of the Southern California communities, they have a tank system that is usually at the highest end of the community and feeds water by gravity into the fire hydrants.

And what happened in a number of places in this particular fire is they just ran out of water. They either emptied their tank and were unable to refill it quickly enough, or there were so many straws in the glass, I mean, so many hoses hooked up to the hydrants that basically there was no pressure. Now, in some places, the storage was empty at the beginning of the fire.

This time of year, we don't expect fires in January in Southern California, so oftentimes they're doing maintenance on their systems and they'll just drain it and do maintenance. That seems like the appropriate time. Is that true? Okay, here we go. Here we go. So, first of all, what is he talking about tanks? Well, no, what I understand is they do have tanks that are filled up from the reservoir and those tanks are elevated. The reservoirs are gravity-fed. I'm just telling you.

We have reservoirs around here, too. But these are tanks. They tend to be at higher elevations. They're gravity-fed. Most of the pressure that goes into the hydrants is gravity. It's not pumped. Correct. Like Biden said. There's no tanks involved. Oh, I heard that. Where's the tanks? Now, I have seen, there are tanks here and there. Every so often, there's one in Oakland. There's a big tank. But the tank thing is minor because that one reservoir, that Palisades Reservoir, is huge.

And it was dead empty at the beginning of the fire. Is that because of maintenance? And is that typical for this time of year? Well, that's what they say. They say they were always being repaired. But it doesn't make sense. Is this really your low-fire risk time of year? It doesn't make sense. It's not around here. These days, it's actually dangerous for us. There is no low-fire risk period. California is a desert state. It's a tinderbox, always. It's a desert state.

And it has some areas where you have Mediterranean climates, where you have a little more rain. We have a lot of rain in Northern California. There's no chance of any fires happening anytime soon, which usually happens up in the wine country. And Southern California didn't get any of the rain at all. But they had two years of heavy rain, and so a lot of brush and weeds grew up over the last couple of years that weren't trimmed back.

And when the Santa Ana winds come, it's usually around the same time of year every year, and the tank should be full at that point, you'd think. The tank thing is going to have to be looked into. I don't know why this large reservoir was dead empty, but they keep showing pictures of it. The LA Times said it was empty. Maintenance. I have two more clips, and then I want to hear what you have. And by the way, tanks are where they're really in great use.

If anyone looks at the skyline of New York City. Yeah, there's lots of tanks. Every building, every big building in New York has a giant water tank at the top. That's what they blew up to put out the towering inferno. I remember the movie well. It was perfect solution. And then something else happened with my favorite term.

The other sense of frustration is, and this is very unusual, about 24 hours ago, a city emergency alert system sent out texts to everyone in the Los Angeles area warning of an evacuation, of a compulsory evacuation. Problem is, it was not intended. It was a computer glitch. I got 99 glitches. Yeah, baby, a glitch from the BBC! Glitch, glitch, glitch, glitch, glitch! And put a goatee on there, will you? Of an evacuation, of a compulsory evacuation. Problem is, it was not intended.

It was a computer glitch. It was faulty, and there's a major investigation now internally reflecting a lot of that anger as to why it happened and what can be done to stop it happening again. I don't understand this story. So it went out to everybody and it wasn't intended? It turns out two of these announcements went out. Yes, and not only just, they went out to everyone with a cell phone. Did you get one on your cell phone in the drawer? I don't know, I'd have to go look on the phone.

I'd have to reboot it. First I'd have to fill it up with some minutes. I don't have any. You're out of minutes. It's a track phone. $15 a month max. You're out of minutes. I'm out of minutes. Yeah, and then the guy, this kind of a feet male comes on. Well, you know, I don't know how. No human was involved. We don't know what happened. It goes on and on. It just happened, and they had to send out a second thing saying it was a false alarm after everyone panicked.

Then I understand the second one went out, same thing. The computer, it's the computer. It's a glitch. It's just a mess down there. The place is not run very well, let's face it. It's a mess. These people are incompetent. There's all lesbians. I mean, it's just crazy. Hey, lesbians can be competent. Well, I think Whitney Cummings, I didn't get the clip, but I heard it. I should have clipped it. Whitney Cummings comes on and goes on in a tirade. She's another L.A. left winger.

Why are there three lesbians at the top of the fire department? The chief, the associate chief, and some other woman who's a big, giant lesbian. She says, this is unbelievable. This is impossible statistically. We're supposed to have diversity. There's no diversity. Just lesbians. So she went on off the rails. It was quite humorous. We have to look that one up. That sounds good. Cummings is pretty funny. I like her. She did a good, her whole bit on New Year's Eve at CNN was great.

She was very funny. So, yeah, well, they need that. And I'm not so sure she's left anymore. I think a lot of people have left the left. Yeah, they left the left. But unfortunately, they go nuts like Julian Michaels. I mean, they just go, all of a sudden they have free speech, which they didn't have because they were all held back by politically correct language. So they go nuts. And it's like, what? Wow, we wouldn't even say that. Here's the CBC on the homeowners insurance.

The rising threat of wildfires has many private insurers opting not to renew policies for large parts of the state, creating a crisis for homeowners. For those still able to purchase coverage, premiums are skyrocketing. Horry and Charles Sadler say they paid $65 ,000 U.S. for a new policy after their previous coverage was not renewed. It's an enormous amount of money. It's a whole year of income.

Insurance companies declined to renew 2.8 million homeowner policies in the state between 2020 and 2022, according to the California Department of Insurance. Today, Ricardo Lara, the state's insurance commissioner, said companies should do the right thing. I am using my moratorium power to stop all non-renewals and cancellations. The problem of canceled policies has forced many homeowners to use a program set up by the state called the California Fair Plan.

The public insurance option was set up to be a last resort decades ago, but demand has soared, now covering more than $450 billion U.S. worth of residential property. California is rolling out sweeping new insurance regulations, trying to force private companies to take back much of the coverage now handled by the state. That doesn't seem possible. They're going to force insurance companies to insure? They won't do it. They'll just walk from the whole state. And as you said, it'll be worse?

It'll be worse. Here's a couple of things that happened. One is that this insurance commission, which is poorly operated, all our commissions are poorly operated in California. It's a corrupt state. It's just basically been co-opted by the Democrat Party using absentee and mail-in ballots, which is all the three West Coast states have done. And so they just put corrupt. And so you have a bunch of people are bought out. It's all a scam.

And so the insurance guys decided, well, to make life easy, we'll just put a cap on insurance. The insurance company says, no, we can't cap this stuff because some people really live in areas that are going to catch on fire. And you guys are doing nothing about fire mitigation at all in this state. So we're getting out of here because you're going to break us.

We can't afford this, which is reasonable looking at what happened in Palisades for what the insurance companies did was wise, although sleazy. And so we're just a mess. And so a lot of people are going to have lost everything, and they're not going to get anything back except unless they beg the government to get some sort of loan deal. Has this impacted you in North California, the insurance skyrocketing? Not much, though. Not much. You're on a hill. You're good. You're on bedrock.

You're on solid ground, my friend. My bedrock is one of those areas that are earthquake resistant. Like my watch is water resistance. No, I had a guy, a geologist that lived across the street. The only reason he lives on the same hill I'm on, which is an anomaly. If you look across the bay, and he says, what's this hill doing here? This shouldn't be here. It's because he says this is like a big one giant rock that just hasn't eroded over the millions of years. It stays solid.

And so when we have a quake, it acts like a giant ship. So instead of having ground waves or anything that knock your house off its foundation, the whole thing goes like a giant ship, and you're like just a passenger. And the appeal of living there is what exactly? Well, there's that. It's safe. I have a view of the bridge. And the mudflats. The sunsets are dynamite. It must be beautiful, yes. And the Zephyr goes by. The Zephyr doesn't go by on Thursdays.

Well, it goes by but too early, which is a bummer. We don't get a Zephyr report. No Zephyrs. The one thing we're really missing from this, and I'm quite surprised, we don't have a name for it yet. And we have the Great Fire, the Great San Francisco Fire. I mean, we don't have a name. No one has called this anything yet. Well, that's because it's still only 30% controlled maybe. They're still putting it out. The Great Palisades Fire maybe? It's going to have to be that because that's a good name.

It doesn't encompass everything. Yeah, but it's a reference point. I think it's a good name to call it the Great Palisades Fire of 2025. And have you ever seen it this bad in California in all your years there? No, no. This is the worst thing that's imaginable. And I've been to the Palisades, and a friend of mine used to live there. And I've been on Amalfi Drive, which is part of the Alphabet Streets, which I think is completely wiped out. Wow. And it's a beautiful area. It's calm.

It's not as spread out as Beverly Hills, but it's a great Southern California enclave. Hey, can't they blame it on Trump? So how the Great Trump Fire? I mean, that would be funny. They mistimed it. Trump's not in yet. So it's a great area. And if you went there during any time, this has been, I think it was established around 1910, and it actually dates back to the 1800s. Never had an issue like this. You would have never guessed that this would happen. No. It's very disturbing.

But again, paradise, you know, California when it burnt to the ground. But that was understood. That was a weapon. That was a directed energy weapon. Yes, you're correct. And then you have Maui, which is another thing. You went to La Jolla. Hey, how come none of those elites had blue roofs? Don't they know? Didn't they learn from Maui? Yeah, this is very disturbing. So I want to hear your fire clips. What did you pick up? Because you're boots on the ground.

Well, I'm boots on the ground nowhere near the fire. Oh, it's close enough. But, of course, I will say this. I got a Great DEI Fire. I'm sorry. The Troll Room has a lot of good names. I like the Great DEI Fire. That's a great name. The Trolls. The Great DEI Fire. That's not bad. Well, let's just start with the fires, PBS. Let's just start with this. There's Climate again. Oh, wait. If you're going to go Climate, I got a lot of Climate things. Well, OK. Let me put that off there.

Yeah, put it off. Do that last. I'll put it off. I'll end with that. Yes, please do. So let's go Cal. What is this Cal? No, Fire NPR Latest and Weird. Fire NPR Latest and Weird. And you want to support NPR's mission to create a more informed public. If all that sounds appealing, then it is time to sign up for the NPR Plus Bundle. Why did you put that in there? Forget that clip. I mean, I can move past it. I can see in the waveform where it starts. So just pick it up.

I don't know why I got that in there. You're promoting the NPR Bundle. The Bundle. What has happened to you? Southern California is seeping into your brain. California firefighters are getting help from Canada and Mexico as teams of first responders make their way to the Los Angeles area this weekend to help fight terrifying fires. At a briefing earlier, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass updated reporters on how fire victims are being assisted.

FEMA teams are on the ground providing in -person support, helping Angelenos apply for disaster relief at the Westwood Recreation Center and Ritchie Valens Park. The Small Business Administration is now offering home disaster loans, business disaster loans, and economic injury disaster loans. More strong winds are forecast this weekend. Here's L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney. These winds, combined with dry air and dry vegetation, will keep the fire threat in Los Angeles County high.

At this hour, the Palisades Fire, the largest of the California blazes, is only 11 percent contained, but firefighters are making progress on the Kenneth Fire. Thousands of Southern Californians have lost their homes to wildfires this week. What's next for each varies, but Rachel Miro from Member Station KQED reports some survivors are planning to weather the near future together. What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything.

Okay. So now we're going to go, now this is from yesterday, so this is the closest to our show. This is the rundown from PBS. As the light of day dawned over Los Angeles, a thick wall of smoke fanned out over hillside neighborhoods that so far have been spared by the flames. But as those fires crept ever closer, helicopters scrambled to drench the wildfires with water pulled from a nearby reservoir. As you can see, the Palisades Fire continuing to chew through the Santa Monica Mountains.

Overnight, the fire burning through Pacific Palisades spread northeast and tore through vast tracts of the Santa Monica Mountains. That flare-up spurred additional evacuations in the Brentwood and Encino neighborhoods. Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristen Crowley gave an update this morning. We immediately redeployed resources from the San Fernando Valley to begin evacuation and extinguishment efforts with a relentless air attack utilizing all available aircraft in the area.

Mayor Karen Bass stood by Crowley, responding to mounting criticism about inadequate firefighting resources. We have got to stay focused until this time passes. When the fires are out, make no mistake, we will have a full accounting of what worked and especially what did not. A Los Angeles Times investigation found that a key area reservoir was empty in the lead -up to the fires, when firefighters confronted dry hydrants.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney defended the department's preparations and deflected criticism aimed at decision-makers. I did everything in my power to make sure that we had enough personnel and resources before the first fire started. It wasn't for a lack of preparation and decision-making that resulted in this catastrophe. It was a natural disaster. I think the fire chief is the smartest. She came right out and said, no, no, I got let down by the city, it's no good.

They screwed me over. Why are they, I mean, I don't, I really don't know if they would have been able to suppress this. But with firefighting, I mean, the only way to suppress it is to prevent it, which is just not done. Well, that prevention one, and also jumping on it when it started, instead of letting it get out of control. Was there a delay? Was there a delay? Well, there had to be. I mean, it's just like, well, it looks like something's starting up. Something's going on over there.

So we got, now this is one of the council women from the LA City Council, Tracy Park, who is the one representing Palisades. And she's irked. She's just lost her constituents. She's got to get voted in again because there's no one left. No one left. But she was a, she's a Republican turned Democrat, because in California, if you want to run for office and you're a Republican, forget about it. You change your party to Democrat and run as a Democrat with Republican talking points.

And you tend to win a lot, but here's. There's a guy who did that in Austin to get on city council. Yeah. But he actually went around to parties saying, you know, I'm really Republican, but I just registered as a Democrat to get in. And everyone looked at him like, you fool. No one voted for him. Well, they shouldn't have said that. No, I know. It was the dumbest thing ever. It's idiotic. I don't know why he did it. I've seen the light. I'm now a Democrat. All right.

Tracy Parks. Tracy Park represents Pacific Palisades in the Los Angeles City Council. What happened in the Palisades over the last several days was not unpredictable. We already know when there's a wildfire event, our communication systems go down. We already know that during evacuation processes, we have traffic bottlenecks. So to see those same issues repeat in what has now become the most devastating natural disaster in Los Angeles history is incredibly frustrating.

Park says the L.A. Fire Department's budget is inadequate for today's needs. We have about the same number of firefighters and fire stations in the city of Los Angeles that we had 60 years ago. But our demands for service have tripled. There's 4 million people. There's 4 million people in the city of Los Angeles. We have about 100 fire engines and ambulances out of service sitting in the maintenance yard. Why? Why is this the case? Because they don't have enough mechanics.

And here in the city of Los Angeles, we need at least 62 new fire stations to meet average daily demand in our city. Not 5, not 10, not 25, 62. I hope that this is a wake-up call. So is there any conversation you have with your neighbors? Oh, I'm sorry. What am I even thinking? But let's say you had conversation with your neighbors. Yeah, last conversation I had with my neighbor was that Putin's running the country. So it was 8 years ago. Well, it doesn't matter. Nothing's changed.

Putin's running the country. Is anyone in Northern California talking about preparedness and RR? Because, you know, you have similar type of leadership going on. In fact, you have the same governor. I mean, if something bad happens in Northern California, do you feel that everyone's prepared there? No. Okay, good. No, nobody cares. Nobody cares? Why not? No, nobody cares. What is this? Why does nobody care? Why is there – what is that? What is it about the milieu? Anomie. It what?

It's from being depressed by being run by a bunch of – it's a corrupt state. And everyone's just kind of giving up on it? There's no organization? Well, I don't see anybody talking much about it except, oh, those poor Angelenos, those idiots down there. Oh, yeah. You know, they should have saw this coming. When the Santa Ana winds get pretty wild, we get this sort of wind too. It's called offshore breeze. And it never gets 100 miles an hour or anything. But in LA, it does all the time.

Not every year, but every so often. About once every decade with the high winds. And when I was a little kid, I remembered them talking about the Santa Ana winds and the fires down there. There was the Bel Air fire, I think it was 1969. I'm not sure. 61, 69. You look it up. It's on Wikipedia. It was like one of the worst fires, but it doesn't even compare to this. But it burnt down Bel Air, which is a nice community. The Bel Air fire was 61, November 6, 61. Yeah. 484 homes, 6,000 acres.

That's a teeny weeny fire. There's nothing compared to this. Yeah, it was a teeny weeny fire. It was a big deal because of all the celebrities that were affected. It was easy to list it. Yeah. But the number of celebrities in this one is really a whopper. Yeah. So let's go to, I've got two more clips and you can take it to climate, which is fires and COPD, which I thought was interesting. The vast plumes of smoke and ash from these fires are threatening the health of people miles away.

It's led both the Biden administration and Los Angeles County to declare public health emergencies. Allie Rogan spoke with Dr. Russell Boer, an assistant professor of medicine and public health at UCLA. Dr. Boer, thank you so much for joining us. You've lived on the West Coast for a long time. How does this fire compare to others that you've experienced? And what sort of symptoms are folks presenting in your clinical practice right now?

It's been a very busy few days and lots of calls and messages from patients and lots of folks coming into clinic feeling more short of breath, more chest tightness, and generally just worse than their baseline, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to optimize people's respiratory medications to compensate for that, but also a lot of time doing counseling on how to best keep themselves safe given these difficult circumstances that we're experiencing here in LA right now.

What sort of health issues tend to crop up when there's fires like this? We worry the most about people with chronic heart and lung disease, and that's because small particles can actually work their way all the way down not only into the deepest parts of the lung, but even sometimes transit into the bloodstream through the lung.

And so what we worry about most is acute flare-ups of cough, shortness of breath, and wheezing, especially in the lungs, and that can affect even people without pre-existing lung disease, or for people that do have pre -existing lung disease, to flare-up inflammation to the point of needing medical attention if the inflammation gets so bad that people aren't able to get enough oxygen into their body.

Even short-term high doses of exposure, like we see when the air quality index is above 200, can be very hazardous to people who are otherwise healthy. And I tell people, you know, even if you're a seasoned athlete, this is not the time to be going outside and taking a nice hike up to the top of the hills to see if you can see the fire or not. This is affecting everyone. Sucking in soot. That's right. Obama predicted it.

Before you go to climate, can I just play two short clips from Gavin Newsom? Yeah, absolutely. There's something else going on here that I want to ask you about. This is from Meet the Press. He did an extensive interview, a lot of Trump stuff in there, of course. But this was interesting. Over the course of the next several years, Los Angeles will be host to the World Cup, and then the Super Bowl, and then the Olympics.

With this rebuilding effort needing to take place, is LA going to be ready for all of those global events? My humble position, and it's not just being naively optimistic, that only reinforces the imperative of moving quickly, doing in the spirit of collaboration and cooperation. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, to his credit, was helpful in getting the Olympics to the United States of America to get it down here in LA. We thank him for that.

This is an opportunity for him to shine, for this country to shine, for California and this community to shine. The opportunity with all of that, and all that opportunity, and that pride and spirit that comes from not just hosting those three iconic games and venues, but also the opportunity, I think, to rebuild at the same time. And that's why we're already organizing a Marshall Plan. We already have a team of looking and

reimagining LA 2.0. And we're making sure everyone's included, not just the folks on the coast, people here that were ravaged by this disaster. LA 2.0, getting ready for the World Cup, the Olympic Games, the Super Bowl. How can they do this? Is LA hosting the Super Bowl? LA? Well, that's not this year. It's a year or two from now. Okay, but they're not going to rebuild all this within two years, are they? You can't. Or maybe they have the... You don't need to rebuild it for Russia's Super Bowl.

It's probably going to be in that new SoFi, not SoFi, but there's that stadium that I think the Chargers play in. The stadium's not damaged. And they could play in the LA Coliseum. It's not damaged. It's highly inappropriate. The Palisades is not anywhere near where these sports venues are going to be. I know, but it's inappropriate. Oh, it's bull. Nobody cares. Let's learn about the... Well, the television audience won't care. Let's listen to the Marshall Plan.

You just said you're organizing a Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of California. What is that Marshall Plan? Would you mind explaining, for my benefit, the Marshall Plan, the original Marshall Plan, just trying to get some context as to why he's calling it a Marshall Plan?

Yeah, George... I think it's George C. Marshall, I could be wrong, was the general after World War II who instituted a build -back-better Europe plan to get Europeans to get the... especially to get the Germans back on their feet because it's a powerhouse operation that really produces a lot of stuff. They're an important part of the capitalist system.

And we just dedicated a lot of money and effort to re-establishing... spent a lot of American taxpayer dollars to get the capitalist system back on track in Europe. I mean, that was... Supposedly, it was to help the people, but no, it was to help big business get its act together. There's a tire factory that needs rebuilding. Maybe Firestone can own it. I mean, that kind of thing. Okay, so there you go. And we'll listen to the Marshall Plan clip, but bearing that in mind, he's not...

And by the way, I can be correct in what I said, so... That's off the cuff. You're good at that. You should just say, there's no evidence, and then you cover it. There's no evidence. There's no evidence this is true. But this is not a Marshall Plan. Who would represent Marshall in this deal? Well, my question is, where's the money coming from? Unless you are doing exactly what you described... You heard where the money's coming from with the first clip there. Companies. Companies. No. Trump.

We'll see. You just said you're organizing a Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of California. What is that Marshall Plan? For this region, we're just starting to lay out. I mean, we're still fighting these fires, so we're already talking to city leaders. We're already talking to civic leaders. We're already talking to business leaders and nonprofits. We're talking to labor leaders.

We're starting to organize how we can put together a collection of individuals on philanthropy for recovery, how we can organize the region, how we can make sure that we are seeking federal assistance for the Olympics more broadly, but also federal assistance for the recovery efforts, and how we can galvanize the community with folks that love this community to really develop a mindset so that at scale we're dealing with the scope of this tragedy and responding to

it at scale with efficiency, like the executive order I talked about, time value of delivering projects, addressing building codes, addressing permitting issues, and moving forward to rebuilding and being more resilient. Yeah, that's going to take a lot of change in California to do that. But maybe that's a great idea. Maybe California becomes a new manufacturing hub. You know, just change everything. He's talking a big game here, man.

We're driving people out of the state with the taxation problems and all the rest of it. Except John Ciavora. He's just talking a big game because he wants to make it look like he's actually trying to accomplish something. Yeah. And if you read between the lines, it seems to me that they're just looking for federal money because, hey, look what happened to us.

And meanwhile, of course, the people in North Carolina, including some cutie pie who was on one of the Twitter posts, and she's going and she's ranting. And I think others are too. Of course. Hey, what about us? We got people living in the snow here. They've got no houses. They're in tents. Nobody's doing anything. And you're going to give all the money to California all of a sudden? The fire's not even out. How about Maui? Well, Maui's done. Yeah. Oprah bought it.

The last time I saw you in the Palisades on Wednesday, right after this fire started, you were on the phone at the side of the road trying to reach President Biden. Subsequent to that, he pledged 100% of the disaster recovery relief for the next six months. Is that enough? Well, it's significant. I mean, in fact, when I was on the phone, you saw me on the phone. I was trying to get the satellite to phone work. I asked for 90%. And he said, no, I'm going to do 100%. So what is this 100% of?

It's nothing. It's bull crap. First of all, this phone call. He was being confronted by – many of us have seen the clip. He's confronted by some angry woman shaking her fist at him basically. And all of a sudden, oh, I got a call. He claims he had a call or he's going to call. He had some reason to get on the phone. And it looked like a regular cell phone to me. It didn't look like a sat phone. I don't know. Well, you know, the new iPhones, you wouldn't know this, but the new iPhones.

Of course not. The new iPhones are able outside supposedly to, I think, do text. I don't think you can actually do a call. He was lying. Look, let's just be honest. He was lying. That was the point. He was lying. He was just lying. Yeah, he was lying. But Biden did come out and say he was going to give a big support. I don't know why Gavin seems to have this need to embellish the results of Biden's claim. He's going to give 100 percent of necessary money for the next six months to 90.

To say, oh, you know, I only asked for 90 percent, but good old Joe, he gave us 100. Why is he adding this unnecessary piece of information to make it sound like there's really a back and forth going on? I don't know. I mean, come on. Yeah, you're right. I was negotiating and he upped me. It was crazy. I was on the phone satellite. Yeah. All right. That's it for me. People have ever seen a true sat phone. Oh, yeah. The thing is huge. It's huge. It's got an antenna.

That's a big, giant, thick, giant antenna. Like a like a soup can. Please, please do not email me pictures of your sat phone that has a very small antenna. Okay. There's no sat phones with small antennas. We're just being humorous. If it had a small antenna and had that much power, it would blow your brain out if you used it. We're just being humorous, people. All right. What's your next clip? All right.

I guess I can wrap it here with there's not that much change from the last show, to be honest about. But we do have I did have to get this real short part. I didn't play the whole I didn't clip the whole thing because it's this dumb. This is the PBS, their take on the whole thing. And they have to throw climate change in. Prolonged drought in those powerful Santa Ana winds set up extreme conditions that have fueled those devastating Los Angeles area wildfires.

Conditions compounded by climate change. And today, researchers from NOAA and NASA underline that point, releasing analysis showing that 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history, dating back almost 200 years. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wait, hold on. Stop a second. The hottest year on record in dating back 200. Wait, there's records before 200 years ago. Oh, I have I have even better statistics. Exactly. Oh, this is the worst ever since forever. All recorded history is basically what he said.

Yes. All for all recorded history. 200 years ago. This is the hottest year ever. And it's like dubious. It would be great. If one of our producers could go into being it dot IO and get the clip from every single year that says this is the hottest year on record, because it has been that way for every year, at least five years, maybe longer. They just keep doing it. Oh, hottest year ever. Hottest year on record. So I want to get into some climate change stuff because immediately, immediately.

I didn't even play the there were a couple of clips before the end of the year. Maybe we played one or two because Copernicus had already announced is the hottest year on record. It was so dumb. And I think people are tired of it. So it wasn't even really a news story anymore. But it popped to the top of the stack right away. Oh, yes. We have a climate change angle. We got nothing else to say. Let's do climate change.

It was spurred on, I might add, by our vice president who reemerged in the Oval Office at an incredible moment where our mentally demented. Is that the right word? Mentally retarded because it is a retardation. Challenged. No, it's a retardation of his mental acuity. He he was talking almost like a conspiracy theorist, like this was a directed energy weapon. I mean, he this could have been about the Maui fire. He could have been Tim Pool. It was amazing.

And then Kamala throws in the climate change kind of to save the day. Listen to this. Look to me as I travel. I was out with you in California. What it reminded me of reminded me of more of a war scene where you had certain targets that were target bombarded. Bombarded artillery was just blew them up. No, it was with no rhyme or reason. In other words, you'd have this fire going crazy and burning everything down and three houses being fine.

Nothing champion or neighborhoods that were still green. We still green. And next to a place that, for example, you know, we're just looking at a Secret Service house. It was out there. You know, all the vehicles are melted. No, no. The house next door still has green shrubbery on. Hey, after his presidency is over, Biden can do a podcast. This is fantastic. Really good. This is great. What is what is the Secret Service house? I think that's Kamala Harris's Secret Service house. I don't know.

It doesn't matter. He's talking space lasers here, people. And, you know, the house is fine. There's only, I think, four or five houses in that 200. You know, it's in the Pasadena area. But my point is, it's almost what is your point? Kamala, get in there. You get in there and change the messaging. It's a battle scene. But, you know, Mr. President, we saw that in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida with hurricanes.

Yeah. This is also the nature of, to your point, this changing climate. To your point. No, he was making a directed. Your point is changing climate? What? So this. Wow. This was the big virtue signal like, OK, we're switching to climate. Hello. Hello. Hello. We're switching to climate, everybody. Smirkonish, get on your show. Here's the bottom line.

The prospect of change coming from Washington is dubious, especially where President-elect Trump has denied, ridiculed actually, the idea of a warming planet. No. And the public has shown no reluctance to continue to build and live in areas repeatedly hit by wildfire and tropical storm, whether it's California, North Carolina or Florida. But maybe. Exactly the same. North Carolina is being hit by tropical storms constantly and fire.

No. No. He misunderstood what the vice president said because she said those exact three states. Only he thought, what did he just. He messed it up. He flubbed this line. But the message went out. This is this is the messaging. It's extreme weather equals climate change and areas repeated, which I have to say, I'm surprised. I'm really surprised that they're doing this. It's like, do you think the American people are stupid? I mean, sorry for being rhetorical, but we're not stupid.

We can see what's happening with the great DEI fire. We understand this is a leadership breakdown. We really do. But you're going to try and gaslight us. I'm I'm I'm going to go with the DEI fire. I like that a lot. It's good, isn't it? Yeah. I forget who's whoever said that. Let me know who that is so we can credit you in. They all take credit. No, no, no, no, no. I did it. No, no, no. In areas repeatedly hit by wildfire and tropical storm, whether it's California, North Carolina or Florida.

But maybe change is coming in the form of depleted insurance companies no longer covering areas prone to extreme weather. And if they won't insure, then banks won't lend, leaving certain areas accessible only to the very few who can afford to purchase without a mortgage. Without a mortgage and without insurance? Huh? How many will have to be uprooted before we realize? What kind of idiot are we talking about? Yeah, it's crazy. We're in it together.

Where, sadly, the cause of the California wildfires seems like it's destined to become a partisan football. Here's today's poll question at smirkandish.com. Which is more to blame for the devastation we're seeing in California? Is it the climate change or government mismanagement of resources? I love this. We're going to do a poll. We don't actually have a troll room that's live. You know, we're just going to throw some. This is this reminds me. Where did you get this? This is CNN. Smirkandish.

You know, they have just deteriorated. I mean, MSNBC is stuck with their guns and they still hate Trump in the same old way. They haven't changed anything. But CNN has actually gotten worse. Back in the MTV days, I did dial MTV. And now we're talking 88, 89. And so you could call in and you could say, I want this is my favorite video. I want poison. I want I want Janet Jackson. And it was always a racist voice like that. Was that right?

Well, it was standby because what happened is new kids on the block hit the scene. And MTV did not play new kids on the block. They hated new kids on the block because, you know, we're much cheaper than that. I'm not going to play Maki Maka. New kids on the block play all that. That was another racist voice. I did. And what kind of a racist? I don't know. I don't know what's happened to me. I don't know. You lost it. You lost it. But these stories are good. Keep going.

So so you could call in one hundred dial MTV. I remember the number. And we'd count them down the top 10 videos of the day right here on dial MTV, which later became Total Request Live with Carson Daly, which shows you if I had not left MTV, I could have been on the Today Show. But anyway, so new kids on the block and they just kept it was number one. And then a certain point is just it wasn't on there anymore.

They just said no. When people kept calling requesting new kids on the block, either we wouldn't play it like, oh, we don't have time for new kids on the block. Got to go to a commercial or we just remove it from the list. It was total phoniness. It was fake. And it was it was dumb. And why? I know. Television fake. I can't believe it. So smirk on it with this. We're doing a poll. We're doing a poll. What do you think? Is it climate change or is it incompetency? I don't know.

So then he brings on Senator Whitehouse, the Democrat. Oh, that asshole from Rhode Island. Joining us now is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who until recently was chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He is now the ranking member on the Committee of Environmental and Public Works. Thank you for being here, Senator. Your whole heard my whole setup. What is most significant from your perspective, given how you've spent the last two years working on these issues?

What do you think he's going to say? Climate change is killing us. I would say two things. I would say, first, a long campaign of lies and disinformation by the fossil fuel industry is now colliding with the business model of the insurance industry, which requires it to accurately predict future risk. And this isn't just L.A. The risk is increasing in Florida, as you mentioned, even states like Oklahoma. And the cascade that follows is this.

Climate change makes risk to homeowners unpredictable, which makes home insurance either unaffordable or flat unavailable. You see, in a backward way, in a roundabout way, they're blaming Trump for this. You have to understand this is what's so great about it. They have they are following the playbook because, you know, all these problems is because of the fossil fuel industry.

And, you know, that's why the insurance industry can't accurately predict what's going to happen, even though they've done quite well. Their profits have been phenomenal. Have you seen it? They're just doing exceptionally well. I should mention some years ago when, you know, the these Congress people who have invest a lot. They keep their the records are available to the public, but they're in the basement of some building. You have to actually go physically to look at it.

Is that still the case? I don't think that's still the case. I believe it's still... No, no, no. No, no. Because people, they're getting Pelosi's trading records. Well, that's true. But I think it's because they're going into the basement and then publishing it. This is not government data that you're... Because I know there's a couple of websites that show all these different holdings that these guys have and they're trading and what they're up to.

But this isn't something the government's doing. That was what was requested by the people that wanted... So White House is a big investor in fossil fuels. Okay. Yes. Well, of course. I mean, but still, we're going to use this to blame Trump, which makes more... Yeah, I think you're right. This is very subtle. And I think it's almost too subtle. Well, standby. Because nobody's buying this crap. Which makes mortgages... Well, I take it back. I take it back. Yeah. I think people are buying it.

Which makes mortgages unavailable on that property or in that region. And with mortgages unavailable, property values crash. And the property values crash is predicted to be significant enough that it creates an economic cascade into the entire U.S. economy, just like 2008 did. And in fact, this is a global problem, leading the April issue of The Economist magazine, saying that climate change is shaking the foundations of the biggest asset class on the planet, real estate.

So, we're looking potentially at going off a very steep cliff here when the rate of insurance failure accelerates. Okay. So, he's obviously all in on the climate change, not thinking about government inadequacies. So, let's try and see if we can get him to talk about that. So, I read the report of the Budget Committee the way you've explained it, and the report made perfect sense to me.

But you know that some are watching, paying attention and saying, wait a minute, the reservoir was empty, the fire hydrants had no water. They're even going so far as to introduce DEI factors and questioning some of the hires that have been made among firefighters. You would say what to those people? There is obviously a lot of nonsense that is going to be propagated by fossil fuel interests and the Republicans who are paid by fossil fuel interests. It's Twitter's fault.

Where's our fossil fuel money? Exactly. Where's our fossil fuel check? But if you look aside from just this fire, you also see fire risk and coastal flooding risk, and in case of Oklahoma, hail risk. Hail! The risks are increasing, and you can't blame the floods in Florida. Oh, hold on. We know that there's never been hail, historically, never been hail in Oklahoma, Texas. It's all new because of climate change. I was just about to say, we've never had hail. No, it's never been an issue.

Never ever been an issue. And you can't blame the floods in Florida on a bad reservoir in California. There really is a risk profile that's changing. We've gone from $2 billion plus disasters a year to 18. As you pointed out, we've just... You know what? Who cares? Just stop giving money to Ukraine. You'll make it back in two weeks. Broken through the 1.5 degrees danger barrier for climate change. Danger barrier!

There's always going to be some local made up excuse, but the fact of the matter is that the weather is changing. It is changing from climate change. That is what is changing the risk. And the insurance companies have to look forward and try to judge this accurately for their stockholders and for their business model. And they're the ones who are saying across the country, we've got to back off. We've got to raise rates. We've got to get out. What the hell's going to happen here?

I don't think he answered the question, but OK, that's fine. It was all misinformation, disinformation. We're going to wrap it up with these two short clips. Social media reaction from the world of X. What do we have? A lot of reaction, I'm told already. I'm not surprised. Unfortunate had no clue that Smirconish was a climate cult guy. Really? You know why? Really? So first he's going to take some some responses on X and he's going to discredit them because someone called him a climate cult guy.

Really? Really? A climate cult guy. Really? You know why? You know why Smirconish has become a climate cult guy? Oh, yes. Because I have two things. Take take it off the screen. I have two things. I have a TV set. Hold on. Is he talking about himself in the third person? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Oh, what an egomaniac. That's what you do. You know what Dvorak says? What does Dvorak say? He says bull crap. Why? You know why Smirconish has become a climate cult guy? Because I have two things.

Take take it off the screen. I have two things. I have a TV set and a window. Hey, you got a TV set and a window. I do. I have a TV set and I have a window. You could be a climate cult guy. You got a TV set and a window. I could be. Yeah, I should be. Probably. I'd be on CNN. You should demand your gig. Okay. Do you need anything more than to know what's going on, big picture, than to have a television set and a window? That's all you need to understand science is a television set and a window.

Preferably tuned to something mainstream. Let's wrap it up with the poll results. So there's the results so far of today's poll question. It's for kind of a lot of voting. Damn. Thirty seven thousand nine hundred and twenty nine, which is more to blame for the devastation of the California wildfire. Seventy three percent saying it's climate change. Twenty seven percent. Almost a third. Bull crap. Saying government mismanagement of resources. Seventy three percent says climate change.

Of the five people watching. You know, this was a very well set up presentation by you because you brought in that MTV nonsense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a total scam. It's rigged, man. You can't trust CNN. Now, unfortunately. Which really, by the way, I should mention this. I am stunned that CNN is as bad as it is with when you have one of the board members of discovering the network that owns them. The corporation that owns them is John Malone.

Yeah. John Malone is one of the most staunchest conservative Republicans in business history. And he puts up with this. He's all he's in his 80s, an octogenarian, as you call him. And so I guess he's lost his his. He needs to get testosterone or something because he's getting pushed around. Let's go around the world and check in with the weather. All right. It is time for a check of the weather. Samara Theodore has the latest. Samara, what are you tracking?

Right now, we're talking about the Pacific Palisades and the fires out there. But take a look at this stunning visual of this fire whirl here hitting the ground. Absolutely terrifying. And, you know, as the climate is changing, we are seeing that these wildfires are becoming more extreme and we're getting more extreme weather events.

In fact, in 2024, warmest year for the Earth since 1850, when we've been keeping records, Earth's annual temperature was above that one point five degrees Celsius threshold. And what impact does that potentially mean? Forty one percent more land is burned by wildfires as a result. That's a look at the forecast across the country. Let's see what's going on in your neighborhood. OK, in my neighborhood, my neighborhood is chilly here in Texas. We are freezing during the night.

But, OK, the danger barrier has been crossed. And the National Oceanic guys, they're here to tell us why. Tom, how does 2024 rank in the climate record? In the climate record. Oh, let's listen. At the very top, 2024 is the second year in a row where global temperatures were the hottest in our at least 175 year record. 175? I wish they could get their numbers straight. 200 since time began, 200, 175. This is NOAA. You'd think that that would be the guys, right?

That is kind of scary to hear that our climate continues to get warmer and warmer. And how does this impact Coloradans and other Western states? Yeah, so we're experiencing the impacts from our warming temperatures and our climate change every single day. But for the most part, especially for folks out in Colorado, you experience that through hotter temperatures during the summertime. You can experience that where precipitation falls as rain and not as much as snow.

It can lead to there being heavy rainfall events during periods of the year. It can lead to flash flooding. It can also lead to even drier than average conditions. So it can lead to flash flooding, more rain and drier conditions. It's amazing, this climate change. Really, really hot temperatures and not a lot of rain. It can dry out. I don't understand. It's like really, a lot of rain. It's crazy. And it can lead to really, really dry weather. You know, it's like, what do you call it, weather.

Really, really, really, really, really quickly. That's the conditions for wildfires to break out. If only they had more rain. I can't imagine the job of trying to take the Earth's temperature. How does NASA and NOAA undertake that project? You stick a thermometer up its butt. Well, we're not alone. We have the cooperation of countries across the entire globe, who basically have weather stations situated across their countries.

Allow all of us to grab all of that data, not only land-based, but also ocean-based. We have buoys in our oceans and ships. We take all of that information and be able to basically quilt it together into a global product, which allows us to tell you all that 2024 was indeed the warmest year on record. There it is, indeed the warmest year on record. That is the global product. It is atrocious. Now, we knew 15 years ago that children in the UK would never see snow again except in snow globes.

Let's check out the UK. Well, the cold snap continues with the UK recording its chilliest January night in 15 years. Temperatures fell as low as minus 18 degrees in northern Scotland on Friday, and the frost is being felt across the UK as the cold weather is set to continue into next week. Talk to the guy, he's standing out there in the snow, in the snow. If we weren't doing the show so hard. I always find that hilarious. But do you remember the articles?

Oh, children will only see snow in snow globes. Oh, yeah, no, never see snow again. Only in snow globes. This is why we are allowed to be skeptical, in fact, deniers of this nonsense, because we've been hearing this for more than 17 years. And we remember when it was Leonard Nimoy in the blizzard telling us it was going to be global cooling and we're going to a new ice age. It is all a lie. It is a money grab. It is a grift.

I'm going to wind up this nonsense with the clips from NPR, which you just won't believe. Our national treasure helps us understand why this is 2024. It's the hottest year on record ever. Let's put some numbers on this extraordinary heat. Extraordinary heat. Extraordinary heat. It's been the coolest summer in Texas that I can recall. Extraordinary heat. Hey, Curry, weather's not climate, OK? Yeah, we remember that one.

Until it was. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and NASA just announced their official numbers on Friday. And they both say that 2024 was about 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than it was back in the 1800s before people started burning tons of fossil fuels. For reference, that's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

And 1.5 C, you might have heard of it, it's kind of a symbolic number because back in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, most countries tried to pledge to keep global warming to less than 2 C and ideally less than 1.5. And I want to be clear that being past that number for just one year, that doesn't mean those goals are breached, but it's not a good sign. But you said last year was actually hotter than scientists had anticipated? Yeah, 2023 and 2024 were both off the charts hot. Off the charts!

Here's how climate scientist Zeke Hausfather describes some of the temperature records from 2023. Gob-smackingly bananas. Very descriptive. Can you believe this? Can you believe this? They throw to a clip of a scientist like a Nat Pop and they just throw that in. Gob-smackingly bananas. Come on. Wait, wait, wait, very descriptive of what? It's not descriptive at all, it's just hyperbole. Yeah, yeah. Hotter than scientists even expected. Hotter!

That might not sound like a lot, but Hausfather says it's equivalent to about a decade of global warming. And that really matters because it's important to know if this extra heat represents a permanent change to the climate or something else. And why? Why? That is definitely the question. Why? That's the question. Why? Can we answer the question? Scientists have looked at so many things. They looked at stuff like the solar cycle. That wasn't it. Nope. They looked at dust in the air.

Nope. That wasn't it either. And then there was this other idea about a volcano that erupted in 2022. No. And that volcano shot water vapor into the atmosphere, which could theoretically heat up the planet. But that didn't pan out either. It's you, you stupid humans. So a number of possibilities, but no one thing could be held responsible for those numbers. Oh, come on now. What else is on the suspect list? Oh, John, what else could be on the suspect list? What have we not discussed yet?

What could be on the suspect? It wasn't the volcano. It wasn't the sun. Cough farts? El Niño was El Niño, which is part of this natural climate cycle. And during El Niño years, the planet is generally warmer. But when it first got unexpectedly hot, El Niño hadn't even started yet. Devin Schmidt is a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. It's hard to blame the El Niño for things that happened before the El Niño even really started.

It turns out that El Niño probably had some effect on 2024's numbers. But overall, scientists were still scratching their heads. Oh, really? They didn't read the memo? You're supposed to blame humans? Thank you for reminding us of cow farts. And burps. And farts. And burps. And what did they find? Yeah, they went to one other place, Scott. The next thing they looked at were these weird kinds of clouds. These are the tracks of ships. It's like a contrail from an airplane. Uh, you mean chemtrails?

Holy crap. Now they're just coming out and saying it. It kind of looks like contrails, but it's not. It starts as a contrail, but then it kind of spreads out. But from a ship over the ocean. That's Andrew Gettleman. He's a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ships burn fossil fuels, and the pollution from that actually creates these cloud trails behind them that cool Earth. And in 2020, that ship fuel actually— Ships? Ships. Wait, see, the ships cool the Earth.

But wait, in 2020, something changed. And in 2020, that ship fuel actually got cleaner. And that meant smaller ship track clouds and, in turn, a hotter planet. And that could actually make up about half— You've got to follow the logic here. There is no logic. So the ships created these clouds. Not airplanes, no. The ships created these clouds. But since shipping fuel got cleaner— I must have missed that story. Since shipping fuel got cleaner, there's no more clouds.

Smaller ship track clouds and, in turn, a hotter planet. And that could actually make up about half of the mystery heat. And scientists think decreases in other clouds that were also thermally— Oh, hold on a second. Do you remember the— Why isn't the tides rising? Because Australia's acting like a giant sponge. Remember that story? Australia's acting like a giant sponge. Australia is like a giant sponge.

And so the oceans aren't rising because this sponge-like quality of Australia, somehow, is sucking up the water. You don't remember that? Well, somebody, I'm sure, does. But I have to go dig it up now. These crazy cockamamie stories that are just reverse -engineered to explain why something doesn't happen the way they want it to. I think this is actually engineered to bring in something that they do want. It's 25 seconds.

And scientists think decreases in other clouds that were also formerly caused by pollution might make up another chunk. So let me understand this. Clearer skies, sunnier skies caused by less pollution ends up promoting climate change? Yeah, it's not ideal. But scientists like Schmidt say that that just means cutting fossil fuel emissions is even more important to get at that main driver of climate change. What? We have a solution, everybody. Don't worry about it.

We just do some chemtrails and we'll bring the clouds back. This, they are, it's, and that was NPR. NPR. Meanwhile. Don't send them your money, people. Meanwhile, the entire finance industry, finance, they're out. They're not participating in it anymore. These, these propagandists are tilting at windmills because no one is going to pay for this stuff. Everybody's out. You're just trying to gaslight everybody, but there's no more money. The banks are done with funding this nonsense.

As Los Angeles burns and climate scientists paint a darker vision of the future, the heat is on the world's financial leaders to help solve the crisis. But after committing to the cause a few years ago, big American institutions are now getting cold feet. A similar chill in Canada may be on the way. Right here, right now is where finance draws the line. A splashy statement from a different time.

That's former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on stage at a U.N. climate conference in 2021, spearheading a huge alliance of financial institutions committed to getting emissions down. Quite frankly, facilities that do not scale up aren't relevant to the scale of the problem. Fast forward and some of those facilities, those banks, have bailed on this so-called net zero banking alliance. From Goldman Sachs to Citigroup, every major U .S. bank has left.

JPMorgan Chase, the last to quit this week, saying little more than it'll still focus on low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security. Disappointing, if not surprising. Patti McCulley is with the French non-profit Reclaim Finance. The idea of the voluntary alliance was for banks to focus money into renewables and eventually away from fossil fuels. But in the U.S., the winds have shifted. All the U.S. banks are running scared

of Trump 2.0. Their fear of being attacked by Trump is much greater than their climate commitment. So thank God you can bring it back to Trump. This is great. Oh, Trump 2.0, which is the new thing now. Trump 2.0. And because of Trump, just the fear of Trump, the banks are pulling out. He is responsible for our future deaths. The entire ESG scheme is designed to funnel your retirement money.

During his last campaign, President-elect Donald Trump galvanized voters against ESG, environmental, social and governance investing. But Adam Scott, climate finance expert and executive director at Shift Action, says the backlash isn't driven by public desire. It's not a real political movement of citizens. It's a cynical attempt by the fossil fuel industry, in collusion with governments, to try to slow down this inevitable transition.

The fear is that all of Canada's major banks might follow suit, though some critics say that's not necessarily a bad thing, considering these institutions continue to fund fossil fuel projects. Ultimately, these are supposed to be coalitions of leaders. Their commitments are meaningful, and it's not helpful to pretend that these institutions are taking this seriously. Notice that even the Canadian banks, they're afraid

of Trump 2.0. The Canadian Banking Association says its members know they have a role in the energy transition, but decide their alliance participation individually. Another factor, experts say, is the complexity of net zero itself. Diane-Laure Régéliez is with Western University's Ivy Business School. There were new forms of climate exposure, new carbon emissions that were not really anticipated. So for them, right now, it's extremely difficult to commit to net zero.

But she adds all institutions need to shift to longer-term thinking as climate change raises financial risks, such as property loss from fire disasters. It's a very rational economic decision. Each day we wait, it's a loss of opportunity, and it's going to be more costly in the future. But even with these high-profile exits, experts see hope, with European alliance members carrying the net zero torch forward. Please, Europe, you do it. You do it. You do it. You save the world.

Never talk about China. I feel like it's a scheme to sucker Europe into doing it because they're so dumb. Yeah, well, they're... Well, you know, we can't do it over here because we've got this Trump guy, and he's going to make life difficult. So we're going to have to go all in on fossil fuel, get cheap energy so everybody, all prices come down, because cheap energy makes a huge difference in the economy. But you Europeans, you can hold the banner high. Yes, Queen Ursula. You dumb Europeans.

Go on. Go do it. The problem is their parliamentary systems, and it's... They can't. They just can't. I mean, they would have... Europe needs a revolution, but they're not going to do it. They have been muted. They have been beaten down and muted. They haven't... There's no way they can do it. Look at Geert Wilders. This was the far right. You know, his party won. What happens? They bring in the former spook, and nothing happens. Nothing happens. Nothing changes.

Final bit on this nonsense, actually going back to the fire, is Hollywood. Because, of course, Hollywood has been severely affected. We've had many stars' homes burn, including some iconic film sets. Thousands of families have lost their homes this week. Also gone in the devastating wildfires are pieces of Hollywood history, with a number of historic houses and sets used in iconic TV and film.

Will Rogers Ranch House, a property dating back to the 1920s, was completely destroyed in the Palisades fire. Built on 186 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean, it has 31 rooms, corrals, a stable, riding ring, pole field, golf course, and hiking trails. It was where the famed actor lived and rode horses before his death in 1935. And then there's the infamous Bunny Museum. His widow, Betty Rogers, gave the property to the state in 1944, and it became a historic state park.

The Bunny Museum, located in Altadena and dedicated to all things bunnies, was also destroyed. Okay, great. Um, for a more serious... I've never heard of the bunny... All things bunnies? All things bunnies. That's right, the Bunny Museum was destroyed. For a more serious take on the impact on Hollywood, we go to Reuters. What's been the impact to the entertainment industry? Well, the immediate impact is some productions are shut down. The Oscar nominations have been delayed by two days.

We've just kicked off awards season with the Golden Globes. Everybody was feeling optimistic about a new year, and now other red carpet events are being postponed. So that's kind of put a cast over the whole thing that is, you know, not as joyful in the celebratory season. But beyond that, Hollywood has been through a lot. First, it was the pandemic, where there was no production. Then we had two strikes last year, where a lot of people were out of work.

And the industry has still been recovering from that, especially the crew members, the working class people who work on TV and movie sets. A lot of them have been out of work for a long time. And this is just another disruption. Hopefully, this is a shorter, temporary one. But, you know, it also makes you wonder about the long-term impact. There's been production leaving LA anyway, because it's expensive to film here.

And, you know, I know there are people asking questions like, oh, gosh, is this another negative for LA as far as when people are deciding where to shoot? Are they going to once again decide we want to go somewhere else? And a lot of people in the entertainment industry live here. They love it here. And they prefer to work here if they can. Oh, goodness gracious. And everyone was so excited. We had the Golden Globes, the 82nd. Everyone was upbeat. It was going to be another great year.

We're kicking off award show season. And since this is my beat, Nikki Glaser had this to say during the award. So much has already happened in the first half. And the acceptance speeches have been on fire. Who got shouted out the most? Let's look at the numbers. All right. Cast and crew are leading the way with 11 mentions. Moms are holding strong with three shout outs. God, creator of the universe, zero mentions. And Mario Lopez, host of Access Hollywood, won. All right.

No surprise in this godless town. Yeah. A lot of people sent me that clip, John. Well, I saw that clip. I was going to clip it. No surprise. No surprise in this godless town. By the way, the funny joke in there, because this is scripted, she's the one who mentioned Mario Lopez. Mario Lopez, that was the punchline. But you heard everybody laugh. Oh, yes, God got zero. Don't mock God. Yeah, I noticed that, too. And then I thought back on it when these fires broke out. Why not?

Don't worship idols of gold. Just some things to think of, Hollywood. Anyway, I think we've covered the fires and climate change sufficiently here. The question is, will the fire still be going by Thursday? Oh, what do they have contained? 11% now or something? No, no. The last report, it was close to 20, or in and around 20. Yeah, I don't know. And then if the wind dies. They can put a stop to it pretty quickly once the wind stops. But it's a mess. It is a mess. A deserved mess. It is a mess.

So I have some clips on TikTok and what's happening. Yeah. Talk. TikTok. TikTok clips. I don't see any TikTok clips. What? Oh, it's not TikTok clips. It's about. Oh, about TikTok. Yes, about. You don't have to. There's a big difference between TikTok clips and about TikTok. Yeah. And by the way, I want to mention anybody out there who's trying to follow this. I will say that John Oliver, about a month when this thing first started breaking.

Okay. John Oliver on Last Week in Tech is about a month. This is a month old. Wait a minute. He doesn't have a show called Last Week in Tech. I mean, Last Week in the New. Whatever it is, this week, last week, whatever it's called. Last Week in Tech. Okay. Last Week in Tech. He did a breakdown of this that was absolutely stunning. It was very good, and it's available on YouTube. You can just look up. Oh, I should look at that. TikTok ban. Okay, I should look at that.

You don't have to go find it. Get it free. Screw those pay stuff. So let's go with the TikTok law. This is about the new law coming up, and whether or not it's going to have an impact. And I put going right into the middle of the discussion, not so much about the background, and we go with the law explained right off the bat, clip one. Bobby, let me start with you. What does this law actually do on the 19th? The TikTok lawyer today kept saying that TikTok would go dark. Is that an overstatement?

Yeah. On January 19th, Apple and Google will be legally forced to remove TikTok from app stores, and that means new users can't download it, and ByteDance in China will not be able to send the app software updates. Also, web hosting services that provide back-end support for TikTok will have to sever ties. That means it's not going to have any cloud support.

That's going to be a huge problem for all of the people taking videos, commenting, trying to use TikTok, because basically it will cripple TikTok's infrastructure. And Marcia, in the arguments today, what were the justices focusing on? John, they were really focused on the two reasons that Congress and the administration have given to justify the law, as Bobby just stated it.

That had to do with the fact that the Chinese government, through its very close alignment with ByteDance, the China-based owner of TikTok, may engage in covert content manipulation, as well as its collection of the data of private citizens, Americans, about 177 million Americans and their contacts, and use both of those to undermine national security. There was also a First Amendment argument, wasn't there?

Well, actually, the guts of this case is whether the law itself violates the First Amendment speech rights of TikTok USA and the users of TikTok. They're called creators, those who put content up on TikTok. They're called creators. Content, wait a minute, covert content manipulation. Nice term. Very nice. Yeah, there's no evidence of it, but it's a great term. Well, you can't see it. It's the algo that is feeding our children dumb crap.

It's hurting our children, and somehow they're stealing more of your information than any other app. Than all the rest of the people stealing information? Than any other app or phone or service. They're all stealing information, but somehow this is worse. Yeah, well, we should probably reiterate before we continue that our take here is that this is just a, and the bill, the original bill was sponsored by representatives who had huge investments, mainly from Google.

This is about removing a competitor. It's just, there is no evidence, I like saying that, of them- You too, you're worse than me. Of stealing more data than anybody else. And now, is there evidence of them giving us, our children, although it's mainly adults in my opinion, giving our children horrible things to look at? More so than reels? More so than YouTube shorts? I don't think there is evidence of that. It looks the same to me.

And, of course, they give the Chinese kids smart videos to look at. Ooh, so smart. There was a thing brought up in the, John Oliver thing that wasn't brought up in these clips, and I'll just mention it.

They had, he played a clip from some, it was a podcast or some interview show where they had three guys, three senators that were on the intelligence committee, and they all claimed, which Oliver ridiculed to no end, they all claimed, well, you know, we have seen things, we have our intelligence, we've been briefed, we've been read in.

There's something else, there's a piece of missing information that we're not getting, which could be total bull crap, that supposedly the intel community has found out something or they had a secret memo or they got a mole that they can't name, so they redacted a lot of stuff. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. You know, I know what it is. Hey, hey, what's that in your mouth? Yeah, well, it's probably one of those elements, but let's go with clip two.

Today, during the arguments, it was very interesting because there was a lot of skepticism about the first justification, the Chinese government engaging in manipulation, covert manipulation of content, and whether there actually was a speech interest here to look at, as some of the justices said, and I'll point in particular to Chief Justice Roberts. He said Congress didn't care about the expression on TikTok, meaning the speech or the ideas on TikTok.

Congress didn't want to stop TikTok, he said. What Congress wanted to do was to stop China's control of TikTok. So he was very skeptical that there was a speech right here.

Also, there were justices who did recognize there were speech rights belonging to TikTok USA and the users of TikTok, but they questioned, for example, Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether those speech impediments or restrictions were really substantial because the law itself, she said, really was targeted at ByteDance and its divestiture. Were the justices more skeptical of one side or the other? Did they tip their hand at all about what they might do?

Well, I think they were very tough on both sides, but I think what resounded most with the justices was that second interest that the government offered for the law, the collection of the private information of American citizens. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, he said that's a huge concern now and in the future. How about this? How about the Intel guys took these representatives aside and said, look at all this information they have on you. Look at all this data. Look at what they did.

Did you know? You know, like one of those emails you get, you know, saying you need to send me a Bitcoin because I have video of you jerking off. You know that scam? No, I don't know that. I haven't gotten that scam. Oh, this is a well-known scam. In fact, it's it's upped. It's they've upped it a little bit. So everyone gets the same email. It's important to pay attention to this message right now.

Take a minute to relax, breathe and really dig into it, because we're about to discuss a deal between you and me and I ain't playing games. You do not know anything about me. And it goes on and on and on. I placed a malware on a porn website and you visited it to watch. You know what I mean? While you were busy watching those videos, your device started functioning as a remote protocol device, which provided me complete access to your smartphone.

I can peep at everything on your screen, flick on the cam and the mic. You wouldn't have a clue. Oh, and I have access to all your emails, contacts and social media accounts as well. So in essence, they say, can you imagine this note coming to me? There's a reason. But I'd have to go check the phone in the drawer and see what the hell is going on. But they've upped their game now. And it's quite it's quite good now because everyone's Tina received this email. I got one.

I've got this a couple of times. But and everyone I know who has a phone has received one. But now they're they are sending the same email. And it says, I know that calling and then it has your phone number or visiting. It has your address would be a better way to contact you in case you don't act. So now someone has got a database. That's good. It's good. It's good. They probably bought that that that database. You can buy the database.

You can also actually this relates to a tip of the day, by the way, coming up later in the show. What you just said. But they can also do nowadays. They can get your social security number and throw that in there. Oh, that'll be next. So. So my point is, there's a lot of information and you just take one of these people aside and say, look at what I've got on you. And, you know, please don't pay attention to what Google, Facebook, everybody else has on. You know, these guys have it.

That's what you do. That's how you do it. And, of course, the biggest problem with Tick -Tock probably is they don't allow as much access to our Intel or Intel community as these other guys do. And now that I think about it, I think it is not coincidental that Zuckerberg all of a sudden is changing the policies because he knows that this is going to happen. Tick-Tock is going to go down. Come to reels. We let you do free speech stuff. Yeah, you're probably right.

Yeah. Yeah. So I got one short clip in the final one. And the short clip is the wow clip. And it's got pieces. I thought this was a good one. This clip three. As the government pointed out, that data, private data could be used by China in the future to blackmail future CIA officers. It could be used to try to turn certain America's Americans into spies. And so I think when you look overall at the argument. Wait a minute. Does she say turn Americans into spies?

Yeah. Earn certain America's. Yeah, Tick-Tock could turn Americans into spies. It could be used to try to turn certain America's Americans into spies. And so I think when you looked overall at the arguments, that was something that may persuade a majority to very much uphold this law. So. So let me just understand the scenario. Wow. This is a cool dance. These kids are doing. I think I'll become a spy for China. Yep. Well, actually, I'm going to skip. No, we'll play clip four.

But before we do that, I want to back off, back up and go to an NPR clip called the Tick-Tock blackmail. This is the. Now, what kind of blackmail? You just kind of got maybe an angle on the blackmail. But listen to NPR's interpretation of how you can. There's lots of ways of getting blackmail using Tick-Tock. This is what they think it is. Yeah. In court, Prelogger said. I mean, think about it. Beijing has all of this information on millions of teenagers now.

But, you know, maybe they don't want to do anything with it now. But weaponize it later when some of these teens say, you know, take jobs with the government or maybe join the military. So they're going to basically do what parents do to their kids. You take a video of the little kid when he's three crying or making a fuss. Then you show it at his high school reunion.

I mean, this is basically the theory is that, yeah, you got some dipshit girl doing that stupid dance, you know, when she's 14 or 13 or 12. And let's save that for the next 20 years. Let's save it in the vault. And then we'll look her up. And then when she starts to work for the Health and Human Services, we'll bring it up and blackmail her with it. What are you nuts? Wow. These NPR people must be doing some really dirty stuff with their phones. Or they're doing some real heavy duty coke.

So let's go with this Tick-Tock for the final clip. And Bobby, if that happens, if this law is upheld, is there any indication what Tick -Tock and its owners would do as the 19th approaches? That's really the million-dollar question. We don't know. Tick-Tock and its parent company. Since when did it become the million-dollar question? Sorry to be kind of nitpicky about this, but it was the $64,000 question. Is there or has there ever been a million-dollar question? Yeah, actually, yes.

Oh, there is? There's been more than a few. Like, do you want to be a millionaire is one of them. Oh. And the original $64,000 question was upgraded some years later on a show that I think failed over time. And I think the final amount was a million. Okay. I stand corrected. And Bobby, if that happens, if this law is upheld, is there any indication what Tick -Tock and its owners would do as the 19th approaches? That's really the million-dollar question. And we don't know.

Tick-Tock and its parent company, ByteDance, are in this really precarious amount of uncertainty right now. If the law is upheld, President-elect Donald Trump will not yet be in office. And between January 19th, the start date, and when Trump is sworn in the 20th, there's going to be 24 hours of limbo. Limbo! And I have sources inside of Google and inside of Apple who say, look, we've heard from our general counsels that we're not about to be out of compliance with a federal law on the books.

So they are planning, the two big tech companies, to remove Tick-Tock on the 19th. And I think a big question is, even if the law is upheld, will Trump then, can he rather, extend the deadline? How do you—this came up in the court today, right? How do you extend the deadline on a ban that has already started? So lots of unknowns, but it could get really serious really fast for Tick-Tock.

And actually, at the end of last year, the president-elect filed a brief in the court asking them to delay this so that he could have time to try to negotiate a deal, as he put it. And is there a chance that he just might—if the law is upheld, he just might not enforce it? That's a possibility. Trump, remember, was the person who started the Tick-Tock ban movement during his first term. But now coming into office, he wants to be Tick-Tock's savior.

And it is within the realm of possibility that he instructs his Justice Department to not enforce this law. If you look at the language of the law Congress passed, it puts a lot of leeway in the hands of the president. The president will be the one who will be interpreting and instructing his administration to enforce the law. So a lot will come down to what is Trump going to do once he's in office, regardless of what the high court decides. That's interesting. What do you think?

I really am clueless about what's going to happen. I mean, they could put the ban on it. I think they may punt and say, well, you know, we're supposed to come up with this. We're going to push it off a couple of days, just enough to get Trump in and let Trump come in and make a fuss one way or the other. I don't think they're going to get the decision out in time. I think they're going to push it. They've done this before. Well, you know, we almost have a decision.

We got to think about another week. Do you hear those hoofbeats? Do you hear the hoofbeats? I hear a knight in shining armor on a white horse. Oh, yes. It's Mr. Wonderful. The reports are you're buying TikTok. So what's the deal? The reports are you're buying TikTok. Is that happening? Are you getting close? What's the status here of you and TikTok? Well, if it's going to be sold, I'm going to be buying it. And I'll tell you what we're waiting for.

Four o'clock on Friday, this Friday, Supreme Court hearing is going to occur. I've teamed up with Frank McCourt. The two of us were bidding against each other for a long time. But it made sense to get together for a whole host of reasons. And we put an announcement out on Monday for one specific reason. The company has appealed to the Supreme Court. They've lost every case right up to the Supreme Court. So here we are.

What they're telling the Supreme Court is, hey, look, we know we're spyware, but we operate in a society of free speech. So even for spying on you. I don't think they've said that. Screw you. And no one's going to buy us because we're not going to sell the algorithm. So we decided to let the justices know by putting out a press release saying we have a letter of intent. We've got a syndicate. We have the 20 billion dollars we think we need. And we don't want the algorithm. It's spyware.

It's Chinese spyware. You keep the algorithm, keep spying on everybody else and your own people. That's fine. But we don't want that. And that's why you're getting shut down in the first place. So we're going to rewrite it, Americanize it and make TikTok wonderful again. That guy is such a phony jamoke. O'Leary? O'Leary. I mean, I heard him the other day. He's buying 20 billion dollars worth of land that has coal in it so he can build data centers for AI. The guy is a fantastic.

He just makes stuff up on the spot. He's really good television. He's great television. I have thoughts about this. And I was surprised at my own thinking. I should have thought. Wow. I was stunned. I guess he is. What the United States is good at, what we have always been good at, is media. We're great at television. We're great at movies. We're great at music. We dominate the world. Podcasting. Well, I have separate thoughts about podcasting. But just mainstream dribble and drab.

We are fantastic at it. We don't need less. We need more. We need much more. We need a national investment fund to create more short-form video companies. We need more influencers, not less. More TikTok. We need many more Kardashians and Paris Hiltons. We need a lot more Taylor Swift and Beyonce. These people are, in fact, good for our GDP. I have a whole series of clips on short-form video. They're making global sales out of nothing but creativity. We export this to the entire world.

We need to dominate in this. We do. Yes, more, more, more. Export it all. I need 10 Taylor Swifts. More of this stuff. Now, of course, to offset that, we need local podcasts, obviously. I mean, that's what I'm doing. But this is so obvious to me. And have them hawk American products. Get them in bikinis on our cars. Drink in our beer. This is what we excel at. This is very short-sighted to shut down these things. We need more. Who cares about the kids?

You know, some of these dancers have millions of followers. They're great. It's great. Export dancing. Exactly why no one knows. Export the dancers. Sell stuff with it. America should be. The dancing dipshits, that's what I call them. America should be short-form first. Make short-form American again. And more bubblegum pop like Taylor Swift. I saw J-Lo on Saturday Night Live. More of that. More hips. This is what we do. Okay, speaking of hips, we had the one girl from South America.

What was her name? My hips don't lie. Shakira. Shakira. One. We got one. What other superstars do we have? ABBA, they're almost dead. There's nothing else coming from anywhere in the world. We are it. We need to be exploiting this through the Internet with many more short-form video influencers and bubblegum crap. Reverse the flow. We're going to have to because if you listen to these clips, the short-form clips that we have time for before the break. Yeah, yeah, sure. I'm excited.

You're all in on me. It's China. China. That's really kicking ass in short-form video. I don't see it. And by the way, when I play these clips, I kept thinking about Ron Bloom. Bloom should be in charge of this fund. Ron Bloom should be running the TikToks, the short-form video company fund. We need to subsidize this stuff. It was like, you know, there was this at Meteor. You come to you founded with Bloom. There was this push toward the short-form video stuff, which never took off.

It's his birthday today, by the way. Oh, yeah. Happy birthday. He's not listening to the show. I guarantee you he's not listening to the show. Well, let's play clip one, and then I will talk about some of this stuff. These days, most of the video entertainment we watch isn't at the movies, on television, or even on a computer. It's on a smartphone. To cater to these changing habits, companies, many of them Chinese, are turning out bite-sized soap operas for phone viewing.

The company literally was called Bite Size TV. That was what Mevio became. Amazing. He was far ahead of his time. I'm beginning to think so. And you know who else was ahead of their time? Who was it? Remember, was it Geffen? What was that stupid company where they were doing little shorts and series? Actually, I have it right here. On the tip of your tongue. On the tip of your tongue. What was it called? With the woman who ran HP into the ground. What was her name? I know.

Well, play clip two, and I'll have it. Here again, Allie Rogan. You may have seen the ads on TikTok or Facebook. The plots often involve billionaires, werewolves, or sordid affairs. And the dramas unfold in one to two -minute increments. In the palm of your hand. In the palm of your hand. Showing up everywhere I go again, and the business deals with me. With one cliffhanger after another to entice viewers to continue. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're still in love with me.

And in the first quarter of 2024, apps like RealShort and DramaBox raked in $146 million in global revenue outside of China, an 8 ,000% increase over 2023. E.J. Dixon is a senior writer at New York Magazine covering culture. E.J., thank you so much for joining us. Walk us through what these micro dramas are, and what is the appeal? So, they're called vertical shorts. Vertical shorts!

And they're essentially feature-length films that are broken down into minute-long chunks, like the size of your average TikTok video. And the idea is that the viewer will just scroll through them like they do with a TikTok feed. And watch the whole thing in one sitting. They're not intended for consumption like on a laptop, or on like a traditional big-screen TV. It's almost exclusively for mobile consumption. Okay, the good news is the troll room gave me the company name, Quibi.

The bad news, the troll who gave it to me has the nickname Rape Dwarf. Actually, I sent Brunetti these clips to get his feedback. These are Hollywood clips. And he said, remember, it's Jeffrey Katzenberg's Quibi. You know what? No. What is $159 million? That's nothing. Drop in the bucket. When it gets to the Chinese numbers, that's what's frightening. Anyway, he says Katzenberg's Quibi was supposed to do this. Clearly, it didn't work.

But the idea will sustain as evidenced by the shorts referenced here. It's inevitable. Phones have reduced everyone's attention span. Okay, so this does strengthen my argument, right? Yeah, actually, there's no contradiction here. Tell us about how popular this is in China and outside of China. We know that in China it's a $4 .4 billion industry. $4.4 billion. But how much has the industry grown since it took off there? They're incredibly popular in China.

They sort of took off around the pandemic. And the industry has grown exponentially since then. The biggest market is not in the United States. It's in countries where people are more likely to consume entertainment on their mobile phones, like India and the Philippines. They have big market share there. But they're also popular in the United States. I spoke to the CEO of one of these companies, RealShort, which is kind of like the leading app in this space. And they're based in Silicon Valley.

And he said that they're pulling in about $10 million in revenue per month, which is pretty staggering. No. I don't mean to overgeneralize here, but the content is not exactly— it doesn't feel Oscar -worthy. Is that— You fool. You fool. Is that a trademark of this genre? And is that something that, if it becomes more mainstream, would have to change? I would say not Oscar-worthy is a good way of putting it. It's some of the most abysmal content I've ever seen in my life, to be perfectly frank.

And when you talk to the actors and the producers and even, like, the CEO of RealShort about this, they see that as an asset. Like, they don't see the low quality as being detrimental to the success of the platform because they don't really—they don't see it as an art form. John, call up John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins. Tell him we're coming in. We have a deck. We've got a pitch. We've got a pitch for him.

We've got a pitch that he just—he doesn't want to lose out on this one before we go to Calacanis. Because we will. I have to read what Brunetti says in terms of this quality problem. He says, As for production quality, people have become much more forgiving, expecting to focus on the content of information rather than the production value due to things like YouTube and podcasts. No agenda. It's a case in point. Lower production value is a draw. What are you talking about, Brunetti?

In quality they expect. Wow. If there's one thing people say about our show, it's the quality of production. We play 90 clips in a show. Yeah. Well, no, I think he was referring to— And we're tight. Yeah, we are. Yeah. All right. Clip four. Maybe it's offhanded. But let's go with it. That was peculiar. He's a jealous Hollywood douche is what he is. That's what he's doing. That's what he is. That's what he is. He tried doing podcasting too, you know. I know. Exactly. Did he consult me?

No. How did it work out? No, but you know, this is the thing. I said it before. You're easy to get a hold of. And, by the way, with the tip of the day, you'll be easier to get a hold of. Uh-oh. Okay. It's a tip of the day. You know, this tip of the day coming up is something that I'm very reluctant to give as a tip because it's just so good. Okay. So we're on clip four? Yes. Yeah, we can skip this. This is just bitching and moaning about production quality. Okay. All right.

We already just did that. All right. Clip five? So let's go to payment. Clip five. How do you make money? Bitcoin. By the way, this is outrageous, if true. Bitcoin. It's Bitcoin. No. What's the payment model? How do people pay to get this content? Typically what happens is somebody will download the app, and they advertise heavily on TikTok and Instagram. And you'll swipe through about 15 minutes worth of content, or 15 one-minute videos.

And then they'll say, if you want five more chapters, or if you want to watch five more minutes, you have to pay X amount of money. It's the premium model. $5. So in order to finish one of these series, the user typically has to pay between $25 to $40. Do you anticipate that this is going to continue to grow? Is this what audiences are looking for these days? It's a great question. I got a lot of mixed answers on that.

There are people, even within the vertical shorts industry themselves, who think this is just a fad, this is a niche thing, this is never going to get traction in mainstream Hollywood. Mainstream Hollywood thinks of this as a joke. But I've also heard rumors that pretty big platforms are interested in getting into this genre.

I think that what we've learned over the past five years with the streaming wars and with the strikes and all the obstacles that Hollywood has had to overcome is that Hollywood underestimates this type of digital content, this type of innovative digital content at its own peril. Well, so I think she might be somewhat wrong because Brunetti had a positive view of this thing. And the other thing is you've already done this with your detective stories.

Remember that you were like a detective on some podcast that was shot in Georgia or something and you came in as one of the stars of the detective show? What are you talking about? Don't you remember this series? You did some acting. A Swamp Thing? No, no. It was later. It was some other thing. It was on Mevio. I remember it. And you came in, you wore a trench coat. Wait, wait, wait. That was written by Mark Yashimoda Nemkov. Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of remembering this.

And you were an actor and it was a terrible product. Yes. Just like this. It was a bad product. Just like this. I'm looking at my IMDb. And you could have been divvied up into a bunch of little segments and you could have made this the millions of dollar deal here. No. But you've already done this is the point. This is how unbelievable this is. You've already done it and forgot you did it. And, as usual with things I do early on, made no money from it. It's amazing. It's a triple threat.

My track record is intact. No. No. Sure, this is what, and a lot of money will be spent on this. This is why I joked about calling Kleiner Perkins. What people want. They want the dancing. They want the makeup in the morning. Hey, get ready with me. They want. By the way, how many women are on these shows talking about one thing or another or just talking about makeup and putting makeup on during the TikTok video? I know a little bit about the.

Slashing themselves with makeup and doing the eyeliner and cut, cut, cut. Yes. Selling moving product, baby. Moving products. I know a little bit about the cosmetic industry. It's a great business. It's just goop in a different tube. Everyone gets the eyeliner pencils all from the guys in Germany. One company does all the eyeliner pencils. It's goop and just goop. Goop in a tube. This is great. We want to see the cooking videos. How do I make a carnivore pizza? This is what we want.

And we are the rulers of that. And of course, of course, Brunetti would like this. He's a Hollywood guy. He's going to lose his shirt if he gets into this business. Stay away from it, Dana. Stay away. You want to have the influencers. You want to have the nut jobs who are cheap. And then, you know, you heat them up with your, with your algo. Oh, look at this guy. He's got a million, a million followers. Boom. You get 2 million followers. Keep it going. Export. That's the business.

Not this vertical shorts. No, no, no, no, no. No, it's limited. Limited versus the hundreds of billions that American make exporting. Our dancers, our cookers, our makeup ladies, our guys with guns. Guys with guns. Oh, my God. This is such a great, great category. So, I have to, I don't want to burst your bubble. Chicks in bikinis with guns. Even better. Yeah, well, that's always a winner. There's a winner, by the way. So, I have, I usually run off of a VPN.

So, when I hit TikTok online, it usually is TikTok in Argentina. And so, they start throwing these videos at me because I'm always looking for somebody complaining about the elections or some, usually a black woman bitching about how Ken was going to still be president. But they don't have those in Argentina. But they have the dancing girls. And they got the guys falling down. They got the cooking. Everything's exactly the same. Yes. Yes. And that should be us. In Spanish. I know. We can export.

We got Spaniards. We got Spanish chicks. I got a Spaniard over here right now. Hey, buddy. We are a melting pot. We are a melting pot of cultures. Anyway, that, if I ever get to speak to President Trump, this is what I will tell him. We need more influencers. Mr. Wonderful, buy it. I'm all for it. Let's go. And with that, I want to thank you for your courage. In the morning to you, the man who put the C's in covert content manipulation. Say hello to my friend on the other end.

The one, the only, Mr. John C. Devorah. Yeah, in the morning to you, Mr. Adam Carell. Say in the morning to the ships, the seaboats, and the raffia, and the air subs, and the water, and the dames and knights out there. Hello, trolls. In the morning to you. Let me count you for a second. What do you think it is today? What do you think we have? It should be 2,500. Yeah, it's right below that. 2,432. With the average. Well, we're also late. We're a little late. But average. Average.

What is not average is the support we got today. Below average. Below average, it was terrible. We're lucky to be alive. We're going to have to start doing makeup tips. That's just terrible. Just to stay afloat. Video, yeah, I can see it. Just to stay afloat. Poke your eye out. Oh, my eye. I don't even know how women can draw those. I guess you get used to it after doing it for hundreds of years. You know, Donnie Wahlberg, he's married to Jenny McCarthy. And they have a whole spiel, man.

She goes live for hours selling her own makeup line. He's sitting there next to her going, yeah, that looks good, babe. It looks good, babe. Really? You have to watch this. And it's almost like QVC. The stream runs continuously. Like, she never sleeps. And she's like, hey, guys, look at this. And, of course, she's beautiful. And she just keeps on putting this stuff on. And then, look at this product. You can buy it now. Go to my website. This is the future. What do you think?

We're going to manufacture stuff? Come on. I just don't see it. You know, it will make some things. Beer, beer, guns, cars. Yeah, but we also can make jet fighters. Jet fighters, burgers, big beautiful ships. Jet fighters and burgers are us. Yes. And there's nothing wrong with it. You know, I check out these fast food places. I got a burger. I got something worth eating. You got a burger update. Yes. The bacon melt on sale at Jack in the Box is quite edible. Now, does that come with bread?

Or is it just bacon, cheese, burger, and melt? No, it's got two pieces of, it looks like, upside down buns. So the outside looks like there's a piece of bread. But it's two patties with two things of gooey cheese and some bacon. What more could you ask for? It's five bucks. What made you purchase this product? I'm surprised. Every time they have Burger Wars, you know, and all these chains, I always say, this is interesting.

Burger Wars. Burger Wars. I go check them out every so often for the benefit of the show. Because, you know, I used to do the McDonald's. You can't do that anymore. It makes you sick. No, because it's so unedible. It makes you sick. Or inedible that I don't even try a McDonald's anymore. It's nasty. It's like eating paper. It's nasty. I'm with you. It's nasty. Just nasty. And the fries are soggy? I mean. Oh, no. It's gone off the rails. And I don't understand why people go there at all.

The trolls are in the troll room. And, of course, have been quite helpful today. Good work, trolls. We appreciate you. They tune in every single Thursday and Sunday. We do the show live, which is, it is the way. If you're thinking of doing a podcast, do it live. Just do it live. Because you have a built-in studio audience. I mean, it's amazing. It is truly the way to go. And so they're listening at trollroom.io. They listen live. They can hop into the troll room if they want to.

You can also use one of the modern podcast apps. Don't use anything phony, like from China or Cupertino or Sweden. Get something made in America. Like the guys from Fountain there in the UK. Get a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com. You'll get a bat signal when we go live. And when we publish 90 seconds later, you're like, Whoa, they're published already. It's good to go. And we appreciate that. Well, we don't get it out in 90 seconds. No, no. When we publish, it's out in 90 seconds.

Oh, yeah. When we publish, you get a bat signal. Just for people to know, it takes about a half an hour to, usually about a half an hour to get the show wrapped up. Yeah, half an hour to 45 minutes. Yeah, sometimes. So the trolls contribute. We appreciate that. Time, talent, and treasure. Actually, to help us out today to explain the value for value model, although not entirely correct, I love the fact that we started this 17 years ago. We have been using the phrase value for value.

In the last couple years, it has started to catch on. People are using it without even knowing the origin. But there's another podcast out there that is using value for value, and they credit us. Oh, well, that's nice. Please welcome J-Cal, Jason Calacanis. And we had this concept of anybody could be a producer this week in startups. And I had cribbed that from Adam Curry, who was doing that on his No Agenda podcast at the time.

And I wound up panning that because we had so much advertising, I didn't need the money. And I thought, I'll just go with ads. But the one thing that I think Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak, John Dvorak, what they got right was they have such an engaged audience. I forgot about No Agenda for a couple of years, and then I started listening to it again. And it's actually quite good.

And what I love about what John Dvorak, who I grew up on, he used to write for PC Magazine, which was a print magazine about PCs. And I always idolized John Dvorak, Jim Seymour, all the guys who wrote these columns, because I was obsessed with PCs in the 80s. And my dream was to someday be a columnist in PC Magazine. And, of course, Adam Curry was, hey, it's Adam Curry, watch the VJ. I was like, well, that's a pretty cool gig, too. So I love both of those guys.

They're probably a decade or two ahead of me in careers. And I just thought they were great broadcasters and writers. Putting all that aside, that's such an activated audience. And they do something called value for value. So you can provide value to them by writing show notes or suggesting stories or making album art. And then, or you can make a donation, and then they shout you out on the air. I'm not planning on doing that. But what I think is really interesting is that they...

Okay, there's your mistake. No credit for you. No credit for you. We're not doing that, no. We're not doing any of that credit, no, no. I love J. Cole. Now, he did a thing recently where he went after Zuckerberg on his show with all the VCs up there. I forget the name of the show called. Yeah, the... Shout Out or... The VC show. Choke Point. Choke Point show? I don't know what the name of the show is. No, that was the title of that episode. No, it's called All In, All In Podcast.

All In, which is good. It's entertaining if you want to listen to the financial guys go on and on about how they're going to make money. But he goes off on Zuckerberg. I thought it was over the top. But very entertaining. Well, that's what he does. J. Cole does that. He's always been entertaining. So we want to give credit... Even though he talks like this.

We want to give credit to Darren O 'Neill for his outstanding album art for episode 1729, which we titled Hatchet Man, which Elon Musk is Trump's hatchet man. And he did a stroopwafel, or as some would say, stroopwafel, which had the No Agenda Bakery, Noah Curry Dvorak. It had a windmill on there. It was in cellophane packaging. We suspect it probably wasn't even AI generated. And what we said is, if Tante Neil had done this, we would have not even wavered and chosen it right away.

And turns out Tante Neil, there was a little conversation going on there over the mastodons. She said, I would have done this exactly myself, but I was on an airplane and couldn't do it in time. How about that for coincidence? Wow. So Darren is channeling Tante Neil. He is a Dutch master now. A Dutch master. I don't know if everybody got this, but it entertained us. We thought it was cool. Let me see what else.

I just thought it was, it was a well-structured, composition-wise, and it looked so realistic looking. It looks like we do own a bakery. In fact, exit strategy. No Agenda Bakery. Buy your stroopwafels here. Yeah. Other arts. I got a note. I got a note from someone. Oh, do tell. Because I bitched about this stupid idea of letting the thing soften and get gooey. And he says, you're wrong, Dvorak.

And he shows me a picture of some company's stroopwafel that actually has instructions on the back on how to do it. How to put the thing over the steaming hot cup of coffee. Yeah. Silliest thing ever. No, it's the Dutch way. It's the Dutch way. Well, my dad used to dunk donuts. Yeah. So all the other art was mediocre at best. A lot of lighter fluid. You know, okay. Fire extinguishers. There was some fish. I did use comic strip bloggers Hollywood sign on fire for the newsletter.

Yeah, that was decent. And we talked about correct the records Canada flag with the maple leaf saying I have a complaint, but it was so simplistic compared to the intricacies of the stroopwafel that it just barely lost out. Just barely. It's a good idea though. Yes. On that note, as I take notes, everybody has to understand, John does nothing. He just tells me to remember everything, to do everything, to write everything down, make a note, put this in the show. And John just shows up.

You make me sound like a slouch. John just shows up. And it was my job to remind you. You're in, you're out. The leaderboard recap of 2024 of the art generator and the artists. I was just about to bring that up. Oh, sure you were. Yeah. It turns out that last year's winner in so far as the annual count was concerned, it was Francisco Scaramanga. I think he won 15 times 16 as of recently. Wow. Beating Kenny Ben by four and Darren by five. Darren is really up there.

Tantaniel got eight and Sir Shug is a six, correct the record, six. But so he gets the MFA. Master of Fine Arts. Yeah. Fantastic. So Scaramanga, go to noagenderings.com, I guess. Or send a note to noagendershow.net and tell Jay. Notes at noagendershow.net. What's your name? It should be on the MFA and we'll send one out to you. Yes. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah, I was actually, I was stunned by that. That's great. Now it's fantastic. That's good. I mean, the guy hates the show.

It's amazing. And we're just showering love on him. Poor. You know, some people, they just soak it up and they give you the finger. It's just the way it is with some people. You give your enemy to drink and to eat, it's like pouring hot coals on his head. It just, it will come back to him eventually. We'll see.

A reminder, right after today's show, and we have plenty of shows still to come, Satellite Skirmish will be on live, which is this, it's this huge musical cacophony of crazies on the stream. I think they have video too. So that'll be right after No Agenda today. I definitely wanted to mention that because that is No Agenda Nation at its finest. That's the kind of stuff that needs to be on TikTok, to be quite honest, but they won't do it because they don't believe in that stuff.

So that'll be there for you. Other ways you can contribute, of course, is through sending your treasure. Yeah, we love that. Not a lot today, but, you know, we're hoping that this minor complaint will spur people by saying, you know, I get a lot of value from those guys. I found today's episode valuable. And now that I think about it, I listen to six hours a week of these guys. I should probably return some value. We, unlike Jason, J-Cal, we thank everybody.

$50 and above, and we give you the amounts and we tell you where they live. Well, not their full address, of course, but their general area. And just like Hollywood, because this is the Hollywood portion of the show, the new Hollywood is value for value. We like to give away credits, and these credits do work in the old-fashioned Hollywood, whatever's left of it, like imdb.com. $200, you are an associate executive producer. You get that credit. It's good for the rest of your life.

You know, it's documented. It's in the show notes. You get the credit. Again, you can use it anywhere. Credits are recognized. Put it on your CV, your resume. Put it in your social media profiles, whatever you want, and we'll read your note. $300 and above, you become an executive producer, which is one step higher, according to us. And with that, you get that credit for the rest of your life, and we also read your notes.

So I will kick it off here with Eric Reinhart, right down the road in San Antonio, Texas, who sends us $343.75 and says, this is it. Thank you for all the value you two provide. Stay alert. No agendization. And he wants some relationship karma, which, oops, which, of course, I shall provide for him. You've got karma. Thank you very much, Eric. And then we go from him to, oops, hold on. I just moved my spreadsheet back, back, back, back, back, to Sir Tyler in Alaska. Ah, Sir Tyler, Tyler Systems.

Yeah, and he came with $345.75, actually the same amount, which I believe is $333. It's probably $333.33. Yeah, $333 plus extra money, yeah. And he writes, he's the AI guy that didn't get his note in last show, but here it is. Good. Tyler Systems is in Anchorage. LLC continues to outsource problems and insource solutions by supporting the best media deconstruction. The planet McLuhan teaches us. You brought him up. Yep. The medium is the message. And what is AI but another medium?

You snooze, you lose, producers. Keep engaging with me, and more importantly, with the technology, and you will find yourself understanding it better than most. It's very doable. My Boots on the Ground experience, also informed by formal academic research, shows that the best managers are actually the most effective users of chatbots. Really?

This is specific to chatbots, but a talented middle manager, a rare gem, is a better GPT user out of the box than a skilled programmer who sucks at communicating, much less rare. I watch productive public sector managers automate their jobs with chat GPT in a few hours. He's creating a monster here. Yeah. In a few hours. And also watch incredibly talented programmers refuse to even touch it because they just fancy autocomplete. They say it's just fancy autocomplete.

That would be you, Adam. Yes. Who is... He didn't write that. I did. Who is better positioned for our future? Your motivated millennial, Sir Tyler in Alaska. Slow to respond, but standing by at Tyler at tylersystems.com. There you go. He responds to all inquiries in time. Thank you, Sir Tyler. Let us know how the business is going. Sir Scott of Diablo is in Clayton, California, 333.33, and he sent the fees. We appreciate that. Happy New Year, gents, from Sir Scott of Diablo.

Was overdue on patronage. No Agenda remains my number one podcast and regular priority to get your respective takes on the latest hootenannies in this world. Wishing you well from Clayton, California. See? This is what it is. He recognizes the value he receives. He returned it. Appreciate it. Thank you, brother. Clayton. Clayton. Shout out to Clayton. Sir Kevin, which is a nice little town in eastern Contra Costa County. Sir Kevin deals in Huntersville, North Carolina, 333

.33. On the last show, he writes, during the donation segment, you discussed backup solutions. I usually visit my parents once a week, and my dad, by the way, this is, yes, this is Sir Kevin, and my dad, photographer, and I, amateur photographer and computer geek, have a longstanding agreement to exchange external hard drives whenever we need to. Each of us has one hard drive at home and another at the other's house. There you go.

The initial expense of another external hard drive is a bit of a hurdle. No, not in today's world. You can get an 18 terabyte drive for next to nothing nowadays, 18. But if things go sideways, one of us can always restore the other's files. Every show we talk about how connection is protection. It's a very simple way for producers to protect themselves without relying on the cloud. Buy a couple of external hard drives and don't buy them at the same time. Yes. It's a Dvorak tip.

Find another, because they'll be in the same batch and if one goes, they both go. That's right. Find another producer at your local meetup and swap hard drives whenever you get together. Thank you for your courage, Kevin Dills. A backup and a backup to that backup and a backup to the backup to the backup. He didn't ask for that, but I couldn't resist. Anonymous comes in with 33333 and sends in a typewritten note, says, ITM, Adam and John, my wife and I were listening to show 1578.

Whoa, that's... We haven't gotten there yet, have we? Oh yeah, that's an old show. No, 1578. When we heard you read the note from Pete, the podcast shoplifter, at which point my wife started calling me a shoplifter douchebag. Whoa. But I wasn't moved until show 1691 when John mentioned that Mimi said the exit strategy talk was having a dampening effect on donations. That convinced me that you boys won't be esconding to Brazil. With this donation, 33333, please admit me to your truth cabal.

Please play Yak Karma for your excellent producers as their COVID reports were invaluable. Also, please play Fletcher's Leo Yell. Really? Play Fletcher's Leo Yell as Twit is where I first heard of the best podcast in the universe. Thank you for your courage. Anonymous, dude named Ben. Leo! Leo! You've got karma. It's been a while. There we go. Dame Astrid and Sir Mark. There they are. There they are in Tokyo. Dear John and Adam, or dear John, dear Adam, you're fabulous.

And life is marvelous listening to No Agenda. Wish we were here in Tokyo for our no cheesecake sheneka. Sheneka. Sheneka. Sheneka. Sheneka. Sheneka. Hai! Sheneka! AKA New Year meetup on January 25th, Saturday. If you're in Tokyo, you need to go to their meetups. Those guys know how to do meetups and they're great people. We love them. They've been around for a long time. They're no slouches, people. They're no slouches and they have superior taste. They do. So everything is tasteful and unusual.

And they can probably get you out of jail. Much love to you both, she writes. And then she signs off with Dame Astrid plus Sir Mark. Very nice. Sir Face Tension, I don't know where he's from, but he says, happy second, third day of the week. This donation is a shout out to the South Central Florida meetup crew formally organized by the Reiki Princess. Yeah, something happened. Something has happened with the South Central Florida meetups. The group has blown up, imploded.

I think it was after the axe throwing. I'm not sure. This is the axe throwing group. Yes. So Sir Face Tension wants to thank the Reiki Princess for her courage in organizing and producing so many great meetups and memories and wish her much love, luck and karma. Gosh, I really... Reiki Princess, would you just email me? Somebody send him a note. I just want to know what's going on, if you're okay. Because, you know, I've had nice conversations with her and all of a sudden, boom, it's gone.

I don't know if she's overboard or something's going on. I'd just love to hear from you. To help our area members regroup, please email me your contact information to noagendanation at hotmail .com. That's noagendanation at hotmail.com. Whether you're a No Agenda newcomer or a meetup veteran, I invite all of you to introduce yourselves via email while we rebuild our WhatsApp network. That's noagendanation at hotmail.com.

Onward, he says, and request the Sunday morning service followed by the JCD Spooky Donate. My children, it's a Sunday morning service. Tell us it's a No Agenda. We're going to get some Adam Curry. We're going to get a little Josh. We're going to roll around. Lord, help us out. Donate. Donate. Donate. I have a feeling that the Florida Cell got captured. This is a very bad development. They were one of the, they did great. They were doing good work. Great promos and everything, yeah.

Yeah, it'll be explained. It happens, it happens. And we wrap it up with Linda Lupak and her buddy in Lakewood, Colorado, of $200, and she wants some jobs, Carmen says, for a resume that gets results, visit ImageMakersInc.com. That's ImageMakersInc with a K, your go-to for all your executive resume and job search needs. And work with Linda Lu, Duchess of Jobs and writer of resumes. Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs. Let's vote for jobs.

And that concludes our list of executive and associate executive producers. Thank you all very much. We will be thanking the rest of our donors, $50 and above, as we always do because we love them so much and we appreciate them so much. And remember, you can always go to noagendadonations .com. That's noagendadonations.com. So that, did you fix Dvorak.org slash an A like you said you would? I'm working on it. Dvorak, noagendadonations.com. You can set up a recurring donation.

Those are very important, particularly on slower days like this. Any amount, any frequency, it's all up to you. And once again, thank you to our executive and associate executive producers for this episode. Our formula is this. We hit people in the mouth. Order. Order. Yee-haw! Shut up, Steve. I've got a little ask Adam here. Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Hold on a second. Let me get a, ask Adam. Don't play it. It's because it's answered in the, it's just that one clip. Hold on.

Ask Adam. Okay, so, you have the answer, or I'm not playing the clip, or what am I doing? No, the clip has the answer. How can that be an ask Adam? I'm going to ask the question. I'm going to ask Adam. I am going to ask Adam. Okay, ask Adam, go! What are you, Mark Levin? Yes. So, Mr. Producer, so, what, if you had a Stradivarius violin, Yes. which would be nice to own. Yeah, I wouldn't be doing this show. What do you think it's worth? A Stradivarius violin? Yeah, a Stradivarius.

Yeah. Wow. Now, I only, I haven't heard the word Stradivarius for many, many years, and I think back in the day they were probably going for about 12 million, between 8 and 12 million. I would say, taking money printing into effect, the debasing of the U.S. dollar, I'm going to say 47 million dollars. Wow. I wouldn't mind owning one of those. Here we go.

And a violin made by Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari is estimated to fetch a record price of up to 18 million dollars when it goes to auction next month. The Joachim Ma Stradivarius was crafted in 1714 during what's considered the violin maker's golden period. Its name comes from two of its prior owners, Joseph Joachim and Sihon Ma, both accomplished violinists. Ma gifted the violin to the New England Conservatory in Boston where he had studied.

Proceeds of the sale will go towards student scholarship. Okay. Now, this is not a fair ask, Adam, because that is what is expected to fetch. I want you to track this auction and let's see what it actually goes for. Well, check it out. Sure, I will. I have a feeling it's going to go closer to that number that I said. Well, I think it's interesting that the guy had the violin and he just gives it away. Yeah, well, Yo-Yo Ma is loaded. He left a cello in a cab. Be like, eh, whatever. Remember that?

Remember he left the cello in the cab? How do you leave a cello in a cab? I bet you we still have that clip. You have to be drunk. Cello. Let me see. Cello. Wow, we've lost a lot of good clips. Yo-Yo Ma. You mean we lost good clips? Yeah, we lost some in the big drop .io fiasco. What was the drop.io fiasco? Gosh, you don't remember anything. I remember a lot, but I don't remember the drop.io fiasco. This is what set me on a rampage of never trusting Silicon Valley or cloud or anything like that.

We were using a system called drop.io and it was kind of cool because you had a webpage and you could just type in there and post stuff and then you could drag and drop any file and it would put it right there. It was almost like a, you know, it was like a whizzy-whizzy. You didn't keep backups? To the backup of the backup of the backup? No, I was young, inexperienced, and I trusted them. Oh, that was your first mistake. And I trusted them.

Well, I still have all my original clips, so you just lost your clips. Oh, okay. Well, you should send me your original clips because I don't, I do not have anything. Let me see. I have back to... What's the first show that we have stuff from? You're going to cry when you hear it. 2014. What was show number? Show number. Show number... 579. Oh, that's not too bad.

Now, luckily, luckily, we have bingit.io. We have all of the actual shows and through, thank you, Sir Deanonymous, through bingit.io, we can find everything and we can at least clip those if we want to. And this is, in fact, exactly what Sir Comfrence did. And he was... It's kind of sad. We remember everything. Our memories are so great, right?

On episode 371, which was January 5th, 2012, we actually discussed, as he can recall, and he got me the clip, for the first time, a phenomenon which we have just been discussing as if it's something new. How many times has this happened to us? Lots. Yeah, jingles are a big part. Santorum... I caught two things where he's doing doublespeak and I want you to listen to him and try to tell me exactly what he said because you won't be able to. But earlier, he was on Meet the Press.

Earlier, I caught this very weird style of chatter that incorporates, I've never seen this before and I've tried to do it myself and I can't do it. Do you know what this is about? No. By the way, you sound so energetic as a young John C. DeVos. Well, I also sound like I've got something wrong with me. You're in a bucket. There's something wrong with me. Oh, this is something you've just recognized.

You know where people, you run into people that are always making assumptions about the way you think so they'll say something. Why? Because otherwise they drop the word why into the sentence. Yeah, well, it's very much like in Silicon Valley people say... So you basically stole my bit. I guess, I guess. You didn't reclaim it. Let's just listen to a little more. Yeah, well, if I didn't reclaim it then it's not stolen. You're right. Open source! Open source!

Which is basically making you affirm what he just said. Exactly. Right? Or look. Why? That's another one. Why? Look. Exactly. Look. Why? Yeah. So they'll say... It always makes the assumption... This was Rick Santorum. So this is 2012. Was he running as a Republican candidate at the time? 2012 election? I think so, right? Probably. Probably. I mean, he was a... He was a douchebag. Remember we had Santorum.com? Yeah. Well, yeah. I vaguely remember that.

Which turned out to be something really rude. I always find it offensive when I hear the word why asked like that because it's making an assumption that I'm actually asking a question. Your lead-ins were way longer back then. Want to know why? Why don't you just tell me? You don't have to ask me why. It works. Now, Santorum, you have to listen very carefully to this Santorum neuro-linguistic... God, my lead-in is taking forever. I know! Get off the air, slouch!

Why in the stream in such a way that it doesn't even... It's not even a question. It's just the word... I think you thought I was really dumb, so you'd be like... Tighten it up, dude. You're over-explaining it to me. You're really dumb. This stupid VJ. He won't understand. I don't think that was it. Yeah, I think so. And I would challenge you, without writing something down, to actually do what you're about to hear.

You'll hear the word why twice, and it's just in the flow, and I found it extremely fascinating. ...the Republican Party. The question is, are those values ones that you can trust when they become president of the United States? Is it someone who you know is going to fight not just for certain things, but for the entire Republican platform at plank? Why? Why? Because those things integrate together. All right. Anyway. So, we have identified things over and over again.

I think we're at the end of our runway here on this show when we don't even remember we've done these things. It's... It was almost ten years ago. Slightly disturbing to me. Just slightly disturbing. I'm like, wow. Well... Four more years! I think that this has gone on from the get-go, and it's a little different.

If we compare it to, like, when Rush Limbaugh was at his peak, he would do the same thing on one show where he'd introduce a concept in hour one, and then he'd introduce it again in hour two, the same thing as though it was new, and then introduce it again in hour three as though it was new. We at least stretch it out. The audience is probably completely turned over. True. No one remembers this, but circumference, he's the only one that remembers. It must have had an impact on him.

Well, he sent me an email and said, I knew I'd heard this. I went to bingit.io, and I found it. He was so happy. He was so happy. I understand. It does make you happy. All right, let's switch just a little bit. Some interesting news from Germany. As we know, Elon Musk is the hatchet man for Trump. He's breaking everything. He's going like a bull in the China shop, running through the EU. He wrote an op-ed about the AfD, alternative for Deutschland. The far right, far right, far right party.

They're probably Nazis. Far right, far right. And there's news from the far right. The far right alternative for Germany, or AfD, continues its party convention today after confirming Alice Weidel as its first ever candidate for chancellor in next month's elections. Matthew, what does the fact that they've now named a chancellor candidate mean? This is a very significant milestone for the far right party in Germany.

By naming a candidate for chancellor, they're basically saying they believe in themselves. It's a sign of self-confidence. And they've named someone, Alice Weidel, who is quite an interesting character, Claire. This is a person who worked for Goldman Sachs. In an interview with Elon Musk recently, she described herself as a libertarian conservative, which didn't go down well with everyone in the party. She also lives with a Sri Lankan woman. Her partner is a Sri Lankan woman.

Or rather, a woman with Sri Lankan roots. And they have two children together. So not exactly the picture that you would maybe expect from a far right. I mean, far right, far right. What, they have a lesbian far right? The picture that you would maybe expect from a far right party. And despite the fact that they've nominated Alice Weidel as their leader, there's a kind of acknowledgement here in the room that they're not going to be anywhere near power because of a firewall.

That's because the older and the other parties in Germany have described, basically said that the AFD, the far right, are too extreme and too anti-democratic. They won't work with them. However, they see signs of that, basically, that firewall chipping away. In Austria, recent political events there, that's happened. The far right are now in power there. And so that gives them hope.

And they're hoping, and their main hope here, and the AFD, is not necessarily of the elections next month, but of the elections in five years' time, in 2029. Far right! God, that guy needs to lay off the coffee. This is the problem in Europe. They all have a parliamentary system. Then this is the same thing that happened in the Netherlands with Geert Wilders, and France. And they just all say, no, no, we're just all going to work together.

Hey, you green people, you animal lovers, whatever, you nut job party, piercing party, you all join with us, we're going to stop them. Piercing party. Oh yeah, they exist. We're going to stop them. We're going to stop them. And so nothing the people want ever gets done. It's bad. It's bad. Yeah, well, they're going to take it in the shorts. The vertical shorts.

Unlike many of the so-called podcasts on YouTube, and I just want to set something straight here, just because a couple of people with headphones and microphones are talking on YouTube does not a podcast maketh. In fact, I would go so far as to say a podcast is just audio. It's just got to be audio. It's got to be, you got to get it in an app. You know, you got a RSS feed. So, you know, you have complete control. What would you call a YouTube podcast? A YouTube video. A YouTube? A YouTube video.

They're YouTubers. They're YouTubers. Yeah, I would call them YouTubers. Now, Rogan, his podcast is on all the apps, and he happens to upload it to YouTube. That's fine. It's mostly clips on YouTube, isn't it? No, I think he also has the full episodes. Well, it wasn't when Spotify was dominating. No, no, then they only had clips, right. But all these algo chasers, that's what they are. They're algo chasers. Algo chasers. You're coming up with phrase after phrase today. Thank you. They are.

They're algo chasers, and they have no life, because, you know, they don't build an audience. No, they don't build an audience. What they have to do is they have to chase the algo and keep it. Yeah, they get big numbers, but you're right. They're not billing. It's the algos giving them the audience. In fact, what happens is people are looking at all the videos, all the algo chasers, then they come to us. Okay, what do the boys actually think of this? Because we're here.

We're here, just like a steady stream. You subscribe to us. We do the same thing over and over again. We're not running around. There's no audience capture. There's no advertising to screw us over and make us do other things. We don't have to run around and do the hottest thing right now. Oh, we got to talk about this. Oh, Trump is crazy. Oh, Biden. None of that. Take a clip, Derek. We don't have to do that.

Now, of course, we don't make YouTube money, but most people don't make YouTube money, and that's just fine. No, there's a few that do, but they're the ones that everyone points to. So one of the, and I just got to call this PBD guy. Yeah, this is a pet peeve you're expressing. Eh, somewhat. So this PBD guy. Oh, Patrick Bet Davis. The infotainment guy. Infotainment. No, it's not infotainment. It's valutainment. Come on. Get it straight. Valutainment. Valutainment. What am I thinking?

Valutainment. You know how I'm always moaning about these military algo chasers? Although, so Bongino's on the show. Bongino's on the show. And is Bongino still on SiriusXM? Do they still put him on there? I don't know if he's on SiriusXM, but he still has a syndicated show. He replaced it with Rush. Oh, he has a radio show? He's a radio guy, and he has a podcast. Well. And he's kind of breathless all the time. So, yeah. But, you know, but he's in this milieu. No, he's totally in it, yep.

He was one of the grid-go-down guys. The what? He was one of the grids-going-down guys. Oh, yes. You know, gets his information through, you know, sources. And it's podcast propaganda. And I'm not saying he's complicit. It's just he hears from his sources. His sources heard from other sources. The back-up to the back-up to the back-up. And it's injected into the podosphere. And since he can't get any traction with it, he has to go on this algo chaser PBD and listen to this.

I'll show you what I mean in a second. Another thing I've been telling you about, the inauguration's coming up. We're two weeks away. Folks, I'm really hesitant to talk about this. By the way, that's something, if you're an algo chaser, which I think he is now, that's what you do. I did, you know, we'll probably be taken down for saying this. You can record this while you can. This is actually the modern version of the guy at the dinner table who's not funny. He says, I got a real funny joke.

And he prefaces that. He prefaces the joke with, I've got a real funny joke, and it's not funny, ever. So this is the thing. All that's missing is him saying, hey, guys. But, of course, he's a guest on the show. But when you say that, like, I have no, I probably, I shouldn't be saying this. They're probably going to shadow ban me, demonetize my channel. I can't have this. But I've got to share this with you. I'll show you what I mean in a second.

Another thing I've been telling you about, the inauguration's coming up. We're two weeks away. Folks, I'm really hesitant to talk about this. But I feel an obligation to put it out there. I'm taking personal risk. I have to do it. Because I don't have any other avenue to do it other than you guys in the Bongino Army. No other place but here. He's got a radio show. He's got a podcast. What is he talking about? No, he needs to be on Valuetainment. I don't think the Secret Service is prepared.

And I think the Secret Service, along with the FBI, are lying to this transition team. This transition team knows it. And, unfortunately, there's nothing they can do until they formally take power in two weeks. But when they take power in two weeks, Donald Trump is going to be sitting there exposed at the inauguration. So, here's not just anybody. Dan Bongino was a police officer, New York City police officer. It's this stuff that just drives me crazy. Spins everybody up. Trump's in danger!

Don't you know God is protecting Trump? It's a foregone conclusion. Yeah, really. Make up your mind. Thank you. Make up your mind about that. That's it. That's all. That was really just a cover for me to launch the term algo chasers. You were right. I have to cop to it. Do you write these down before the show? I think you do. I have a remarkable… You're a little OCD, you know that? I have a pad. I have one of these remarkable tablets.

And I heard once from somebody who I think is… whose opinion I value very highly, that you should journal every single day. You should. If you want to be a good writer. And if there's one thing I'm not, it's… I'm not a good writer. So I've taken to that. And this is… That's the thing. You know, what's that guy's name who… I was on his podcast. He used to be at… He used to be the Apple pundit. Guy Kawasaki. It's his company. Oh, Guy Kawasaki. It's his company.

And… Oh, you call my podcast, I'll send you one. He never sent me one. Of course. He bitched about me not getting a flu shot or a COVID shot, but he didn't send me the promised tablet. And then I was at my buddy Vic's place in Dallas, and he said, you know, you'll love this. And I do. It's remarkable too. So, yes. So I write. When I have an idea, I jot it down. And then I'll go and review my notes. And sometimes I put them in my show prep. So, yes, that's… You're correct. I do work.

Huh. Yeah. Surprised. You never know. Yeah. Surprised. Yeah, Guy Kawasaki. You know, so I'm up at the… You should tell people who he is. Guy Kawasaki was the first guy, I think, who put evangelist on his business card back in the day when he worked for Apple. He was an Apple evangelist. Did he get paid for that, do you think? Yeah. No, he was actually working there in product management or something. But he took it upon himself to become the evangelist. So he's a big… And he became a big shot.

And he had a lot of… He got on a lot of stuff. He's kind of an interesting… I knew him pretty well enough. I never came over for dinner, so he doesn't count for as a friend. But I knew him. And so one day we're giving a… He's kind of an oddly humorless. In a very curious way, because he's always got a smile on his face. After the interview on the podcast, I said, Adam, you know, you're a very smart guy. And I really want you to live. So please reconsider. Take the COVID shot.

It's really important you do that. Really? Really. So anyway, so he… So we're up on the stage giving out awards for the Mac User Awards. And he's one of the presenters. I'm a presenter. We're both up there. And I'm going and I'm doing my thing. He did his thing. He's standing right next to me. I said, you know one thing, guy, we both have in common? And he goes, no, what? I said, conflict of interest. A classic JCD move. And I bet he just deadpanned you like, huh? Exactly.

It was the biggest blank stare I've gotten from a good line in my life. And did the crowd crack up? Well, the crowd thought it was amusing. But, you know, it was still like, what's wrong with the guy? So I just… And so, yeah, I can see him taking COVID very seriously. Because he takes everything seriously. But he's got a big smile on his face. He's a nice guy. Yeah, but what he didn't do is send me the tablet. I had to go and buy one. Yeah, well, there you go. That's why I did the show.

I'm like, this is great. I get a tablet out of it. No. It would have been version one, which I hear wasn't so good. I got sniffed by Michael Dell on one of these deals once. Michael Dell, the billionaire? Yeah, well, it was like we're doing… And I know him pretty well. And he's been to some of the Dvorak parties we used to throw at Comdex. I can call him. But, so I do this thing. You have to do this thing for some rollout or something. This was some years ago.

I said, I don't have time to do this thing. He said, I'll give you a computer. What computer do you want? I said, okay, I'll do it for a computer. Of course. I never got the computer. Well, our producer, Jeremy, will send you a Dell Slimline 3080. This guy… Our producer, Jeremy, he already, I think, got contact. He had all the extra computers because he's taking them offline. Yeah. That's that guy, right? Yeah. Yeah, I sent him my request. I never got anything.

Well, he gave it to me to give to you and… Oh, no. He's giving it to you to give to me because I got something for you to give to you that he gave to me. And this guy gave it to me to give to you. Big mistake. People, just send the stuff directly. Adam has a boast office box. He'll give you the number if you ask him and you can send directly to him. I got stuff backed up that I'm supposed to send to you. It's all stale now, by the way, unfortunately.

But I'll tell you, the No Agenda… A live chicken? Come on. I can't send that to Adam. Here's one thing, and Tina's really good about this. The No Agenda Fudge people, NoAgendaFudge.com. They sent us fudge, and in the fudge was a check for like $385 made out to No Agenda, which I don't know if they got credited for that or not or how they did that or why they did that, but Tina's really good. She's like, boom, I'm sending it off to John, and she does that. She does that really well.

Yeah, she's the one who does that. Yeah, she does that. It's not you. You need one of those to send stuff to me. Actually, Jay will do that. Yeah, well, ask Jay to send that stuff to me, and I'll ask Jeremy to send you a Dell directly. Anyway, so Michael Dell never follows through. So you have two Dells now. Yeah, but I already ruined one, so don't ask me about it. What? Don't even ask me how that happened. It's a long story. You're not supposed to drop them in the toilet.

No, it's a long Windows story. But Linux on it. Yeah, yeah. Well, forget about it. Forget about it. Oh, you toasted it. I toasted it. Anyway, so he reneged on you. You can still call him. You can still call Michael Dell, billionaire computer manufacturer, Michael Dell. Yeah? Call him and say, hey, Dell, hey, Dell. He probably already forgot about the promise. I'm sending Curry over. I'm sending Curry over to pick it up. I just always keep these things. I got a couple Biden clips.

Okay, let's see. Well, yes, this will be one of the last few weeks. We get Biden clips before they announce he's dead. The first one is this one, which is the biggest. This is the biggest. You know, Biden has decided months ago, I guess Jill decided, Joe, we got to get travel as much as we can before we lose the jet. The 747 jet. Yes. So what can we do? Where can we go? I know Vatican. So play this clip.

In other news, President Biden has given Pope Francis the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction. The citation describes Francis as a light of faith, hope and love that shines brightly across the world. It's the first and only time Mr. Biden has made the award with distinction. The president and the pope spoke by phone today. They were to have met this weekend in person at the Vatican.

But Mr. Biden canceled the trip in order to focus on the deadly Los Angeles wildfires. I'm glad I was going to take a trip to the Vatican a week before the inauguration of Trump because Jill wanted another trip and they wanted to go to the Vatican. Give me a break. This was a scam award. Thank you for playing that, because it reminded me I got a note from one of our producers. And you told me, remember this, and I didn't write it down. And you will now. You got your pad. I do. I got my pad.

And this was about the. About the the the medals that Biden gave out recently. Yeah. And so we were wondering about Tim Gill. Who was that? Why did he get a medal? Tim Gill. Do you remember this, Tim? Yeah, I remember. And I think it has something to do with donations or something. So here's the note I got from my buddy, Rob. Tim Gill gave four hundred thousand dollars to Biden and told me that would be my buddy Rob at a party. He expects something for it.

And his partner, Tim Gill's partner, is ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. That's how it works, people. You want a medal? Pony up. You want an ambassadorship? Pony up. How about that for some inside dirt, huh? We're going to do ambassadorships on the show. There you go. There you go. And it's not going to cost four hundred thousand bucks. And you can only be one per country. Well, I don't think we do. But I think it should be ambassador at large. You're just the ambassador.

But shouldn't you get a country? Do you want to do it by countries? The no agenda ambassador to someplace or other? Yeah. It complicates things on the on the on the certificate. It complicates the trying to keep it simple. I think ambassadorship is the way to go. And we need to do it a month ahead if we don't get better donations. You know, we still haven't got an instant night all year. I got back to Biden. Back to Biden. Yeah. OK. Here is Biden. This is again, this is just to screw Trump over.

Biden, new sanctions. The Biden administration announced new sanctions against Russia's energy sector today, hoping to deal a massive blow to its economy over the war in Ukraine. Massive blow to Trump. The measures punish two of Russia's largest oil and gas companies, plus energy officials and entities that do business with Russia. They also target a fleet of more than 180 vessels Moscow has used to evade previous sanctions.

Officials say they're the most significant such measures to date, costing Russia billions of dollars per month. But they acknowledge it's up to the incoming Trump administration to keep the sanctions or scrap them. Wow. Yeah, we can figure that one out. That's bullcrap. And my last Biden clip is here's Biden's slamming meta for going free speech. The U.S. president has slammed as shameful IT giant. Hold on a second. Is this the BBC? No, this is NHK. Oh, it's slammed.

Since when did the news start using the term slammed? It's better. I know. We've been hearing it for a while. What's her name? The woman that we have to play a clip about playing her clip. Amy. Oh, you said her name. Amy says it all the time. Slammed. Slammed. Give me a break. All right. Slammed. The U.S. president has slammed as shameful IT giant Meta's decision to end its third -party fact-checking program.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the company has decided to abandon the practice on its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Biden called the decision contrary to American justice.

When you have millions of people reading, going online, reading this stuff, it is anyway, I think it's I think it's really shameful. It's shameful. Did you see Zuckerberg on Rogan or hear Zuckerberg on Rogan? I saw some clips of it. Yeah. What'd you think? You know, Rogan could have gone after him a little harder. Because there is that there is the there is the meme. It's not a meme, but it's a posting that he did in.

I think it was after Trump got became president or or when before he was running in 2020. I just Zuckerberg slamming the president saying we had to take him off the platform. He's banned forever. And he went on and on and on about it. And this was never addressed. He's kind of some other things were never addressed. He's kind of slippery. Our man Zuck there because he was in full on. Well, you know, I run the company. I'm focused on the future. I have a team.

You know, he threw it all on the team. The team is supposed to do that now. And there and the government was caught. By the way, the Supreme Court ruled that the government was OK with what they did, which I found to be the true tragedy of misjustice that the government was calling and screaming at our people. And that was the government calling and they were they coerced us. OK, well, he actually testified before Congress.

There was a good article written by some lefty and the verge that actually took him to task. And he actually testified before Congress that in the at the end of the day, no matter what the government did, it was my decision. Oh, really? Yes. And I now I remember him saying it when he was giving testimony. Well, who's really responsible is my I me. I decided I'm the decider. And so he he also he also said, you know, I control the company, which is true because of the share structure.

They have the. Oh, yeah. If you had just said, you know, I was wrong, I would have been OK with that. Nobody does that. No one does that anymore except us. Yeah, we do it all the time because people send us notes and say, hey, you're wrong. And we read the note. Well, sometimes we go on. We try to keep this show honest. We're honest to honest dudes. We do. I have two clips about this Trump conviction that I think we just need to get out of the way. Because I have to follow up clip.

OK, which will be the Capehart talking about a clip. Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances. And so began Judge Warren Roshan's historic sentencing delivered in a lower Manhattan courtroom filled with reporters and lawyers. Donald Trump was spared the spectacle of an in-person appearance. He learned his fate watching by video feed from his Florida estate.

The only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge. There will be no jail time, no fines and no real punishment after being found guilty on 34 felony charges for hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep their alleged affair quiet during the 2016 election.

The judge explaining Trump's reelection factored into his decision, acknowledging there are protections that come with being the occupant of the Oval Office. Though Trump is a convicted felon, the first ever American president with a criminal record. Trump's team plans to appeal the decision which he again railed against in court. This has been a very terrible experience. I'm totally innocent. I did nothing wrong. Yeah, I think this will be overturned on appeal. I'm pretty sure.

Well, that's what everybody thinks. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, I actually think so, too. But it's annoying because it was a statute of limitations issues. A strange construction of the law issues for misdemeanors turning into felonies. The whole thing is sketchy, sketchy. You have more clips because before Capehart really tops this off. Well, I don't know, because I have George Conway with Joy Reid. I'm I'm I'm a little. Oh, no, no. Play Conway first.

A person who normally is convicted of a felony can't vote in the state of Florida and about eight other former Confederate states already. The governor said, no, we're going to let him vote anyway. We're going to clear his record. Let him do. I love how she says Confederate states. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Confederate states. Check the calendar, babe.

In a state of Florida and about eight other former Confederate states already, the governor of Florida said, no, we're going to let him vote anyway. We're going to clear his record. Let him do that. Like 38 countries you not supposed to be able to travel to, including England, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, China, Argentina, all of which he visited in his first term. Thirty eight countries. You're not allowed to get in if you're a felon.

You know, all of the stigma that normally associates you to check a box. If you want to buy a gun, if you want to get certain licenses, you can't sell weed, have a weed business. Donald Trump is already getting a blight on all of that. I mean, I don't know. Does he get to travel to one of these countries? He's threatening tariffs. Let's say, oh, buddy, you want to do 25 percent tariffs. How about you can't come here because you're a felon?

Yeah, I don't know what the Canadian law is, but they're probably they probably will have to give him away. You know, I mean, the first felon, who I also like to call the first whiner, this is this is par for the course for him. He has been skating throughout his life and yet he's led this life of crime. And it's it is distressing. I love the idea of Trump weed. As a great it's a great business. Everybody would be buying that. It's the best. You know, it's probably he may have given him an idea.

It's the best weed gets you really high. It's dynamite weed. No skunk. This is not some this is top notch kush. Well, you know, he's he's a teetotaler, but he does own a winery. Mm hmm. So it's and he would never use the weed, but he could. I can see it. Don Junior could do it. Don Junior could run it. It'd be fine. He looks like a stoner. Yeah. So. All right. So. So we go to PBS and we have Brooks and Capehart. And so we get a real rundown on the on this case.

And Capehart being the complete a-hole that he is. All right. Really? And showing showing no sympathy or understanding. And if Brooks and Capehart, they sit there, the two of them ones, you know, they're both on the same side of the political spectrum trying to give us insight, but not doing any sort of triangulation on a topic. Self-reflection. No reflection. No triangulation.

Nothing where you can actually where the where the viewer of PBS NewsHour can actually learn something or get some sort of perspective. That's not. I hate Trump. Donald Trump should have been president. I'm sorry. Wait, wait. I'm sorry. Perfect. So here he goes with his evaluation. That is nonsense. Donald Trump is vowing to appeal this conviction. We'll see what comes of that.

But after, you know, being convicted of 34 felonies, there are people who look at this case and they say that, you know, Donald Trump walks away with a punishment that is less than what one would receive for a speeding ticket. Look, look, look, look. This case, this hush money case was the case that everybody said was the crappy case of the four. Remember, Donald Trump was indicted four times. And this one was the least important, the shakiest.

And yet it's the one case where Donald Trump was held accountable. The one case where he was brought to trial before a jury of his peers in his hometown of New York City and was found guilty 34 times. I think that is great punishment. What's also great punishment is the sentencing today where the judge said, you know, you're going to be president. You're not going to go to jail. But you're a convicted felon.

And so for the rest of his life, any story written about him will have to mention the fact that he is a convicted felon. If not on the first reference, definitely by the second reference. And that is fitting, that is right, that is just. Do I wish the other three cases had gone to trial and that he had faced accountability on those? Yes, but this will do. What a creep.

Now, the thing is, what in the rule book of journalism that you're talking to, you're writing about somebody, you have to say they're a convicted felon if they're a convicted felon. In the prose, in the text. Where is that? I've never heard of it. Well, that's journalistically correct, John. Certainly you know this. It's journalist bull crap. This guy's a liar. You don't have to make a reference, but they love doing it. And again. I'm sorry. That's all right. That's all right. It was perfect.

Imagine all the people who could do this. Oh, yeah, that'd be fabulous. Yeah, on the agenda. In the morning. We're out of sync, baby. We're out of sync. It happens. We can't hit it all the time. The show's too long. We're out of sync. It happens. The show's too long. We're out of time. We're tired. We're sloppy. Sloppy. The show is just sloppy. That's right. It's all right. We'll fix it in post. It'll sound great. Edward Gellin starts us off with the donation segment. Yellen for Gellin.

124-33. Radar Rider in Milton, Georgia. 120-25. Needs a job as a car mechanic. We'll give you that at the end if Adam remembers. Right on that little text pad. Jared Cook in Manor, Texas. 100. Kevin McLaughlin's there already. 8008. Boobies. The Archduke of Luna. Lover of American boobs. He's on a roll. Sir Lineman in Anna, Illinois. Sir Lineman of the Net. 69-69. And Nana Moose. 850 in Laurel Hill, Florida. 60. Really getting down fast. Sir Beeboop. New Brighton, Minnesota.

Nuts. 56-78. William Galt in Naples, Florida. 51-50. That's a switcheroo. Oh, it's a switcheroo for convicted felon Donald J. Trump. All right. Yeah, 51-50. It has some meaning there in the laws. It means you're nuts. You're insane. Upbeats Musical Podcast. Upbeats Musical Podcast. Yeah, that's my buddy. He's a great show. He's in Copperus Cove. Whatever you pronounce it in Texas. 51 dollars. ITM. It was that time to show my appreciation. Okay. Kevin McEnany. McEnany in Deer Park, Wisconsin.

In honor of my husband, Kevin. Oh, it's his wife that sent this in. This was actually a switcheroo. In honor of my husband, Kevin, who loves your show and makes me listen to it. Now I love it too. That's 50. And the rest of these are all 50s. I'm just going to name a location. Starting with Kevin there. Michelle Petty in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Stephen Shumake in Xenia, Ohio. Shannon in Citra, Florida. And she has a heart icon in there. Thanks, guys, she says.

John Akin, A-K-I-N, in Babson Park, Florida. Two Floridians. Tim DelVecchio in Blandon, Pennsylvania. Mike Moon in Athens, Georgia. Andrew Garasso in Mineola, New York. Gary Mao in Woodland Hills, California. Michael A. Friedle in Kansas City. And he wants to call out Robert Friedle as a douchebag. Douchebag. And Michael needs a de-douching. You've been de-douched. And on our very short list, this is the shortest list we've had in two years. 28 total donors. Shortest list in two years.

Wow. 28. 28 people out of a million listeners and 29,000 people on the mailing list. 28. Yeah, I know. Rachel comes in at the bottom of the list. She's Rachel Rotrammel, Rotrammel, Rotrammel, I think, in Decatur, Illinois. And she says, thanks for all you do. And we thank her for the donation. We want to thank everybody, actually, who helped us do it. That was the last one? Yep, you're done. Wow. All right, thank you all very much. And, of course, thanks to everybody who came in under $50.

We never mention those for reasons of anonymity. To ensure anonymity, I see you, $49, but we can't read your note. May have been a mistake. And, of course, you can always set up a recurring donation. Go to noagendadonations.com. Noagendadonations.com and set up a recurring donation. Any amount, any frequency, you make it up. It is value for value. We appreciate all of our supporters for today, our producers, and, of course, our executive and associate executive producers for episode 1729.

As requested, Jobs Karma. Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs. Let's vote for jobs. Jobs Karma. And for the first time in a long time that I can remember, no birthdays. No birthdays today. Nothing. Not a single birthday to celebrate. Make babies, people. It's time for some birthdays. Yeah, we need more birthdays. We do have one dame who will be welcomed onto the podium today, so I will grab. I got a blade for her. Okay. Oh, you do have a blade for her. That's right. Come on up here. Emily. Wait a minute.

Where are you? There you go. Emily Bauer. Emily, I'm not quite sure exactly what happened here. I don't have a note, but you today will be branded as a dame of the No Agenda Roundtable thanks to your support of the show and the amount of $1,000 or more. I'm very proud to pronounce the K-D as Dame Emily of Eau Claire. And at the roundtable for you, we have Rent Boys and Chardonnay. You'd probably be into that. If not, we've got Red Heads and Ryes. We've got Vodka Manila, Bong Hits and Bourbon.

Sparkling Cider and Escorts. We've got Ginger Ale and Gerbils. We have Breast Milk and Pablum. And as always, the Mud and the Mead. Emily, head over to NoAgendaRings.com and take a look at that beautiful knight and or dame ring. It's a signet ring. That means that in the package that you give us the address for and your ring size, there is a handy ring sizing guide at NoAgendaRings.com. We will give you some wax.

With that, you can use the signet ring to seal your important correspondence and as always, a certificate of authenticity because this stuff is real, yo. Welcome to the roundtable, Dame Emily of Eau Claire. No Agenda Meetup. It's like a party. Like a party. That's right. Connection is protection. When you go to a No Agenda Meetup, the people you meet there will be your first responders in an emergency. They will keep you stable, which makes you able and we have some meetup reports.

Very happy to report that the Los Angeles meetup went on as planned. Here's Leo Bravo with his report. Hey, everybody. It's Leo Bravo at meetup number 59. I'm passing the phone around for our guests to say some nice things. In the morning, this is Angie on the ranch and I listen to the end for John's no tip of the day. In the morning, folks. Connection happens at the HMS Bounty. It's B. Dizzle from Altadena and my house burned down to the ground and I still made it here, so what's your excuse?

John and Adam, thank you for your courage. Hey, this is John and Adam, Sir Leah Kim Full Pop. We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning. Thank you for your courage. Celebrating the quaddemic here in the fire capital of the world. LA! In the morning. In the morning! All right, there's your Los Angeles producers. Milwaukee, come on in. John and Adam, hello. This is Dennis. And we are here at the Schlemiel Schlemazel meetup. In the morning.

Hey, it's Chris Fox from Hairball. I'm here playing the Riverside and we have a lovely meetup. And in the morning. Yay! Jay from Green Bay. Sir Stacker checking in for the Hairball meetup. Making a difference. Unaffiliated difference maker. Hey John, in the morning. This is Chris from Menomonee Falls. Take your phone out of the drawer. My name is Greg and we're here going to the concert soon. Hi Tia, this is Sir Camera Chris. Is that a gravitic device in your pants or just an alien probe?

Hey, it's the Baron of BNA. Here in MKE. In the morning. Planes good, trains bad. And then finally, we have quite the staple of the No Agenda meetup scene. Dirty Jersey Whore. And he hosted the Yukon meetup. You want the truth? Yukon handle the truth. Here we are at the Yukon No Agenda meetup. This is Dirty Jersey Whore just passing through. Just thought I'd stop by and harass all these wonderful people here in Oklahoma. A.K.A. The Red Estate in the Union. Dave here in the morning everybody.

It is nice to be harassed sir. This is Dame Cassidy Eastwood in the morning. In the morning. Matthew Littlesberger did not kill himself. Thanks for coming to Yukon. Carol Jolly. This is Sir Knight. No, Sir Price. Not of astonishment. Trains good, electric pickups bad. In the morning. In the morning from Dame Flipper. This is Dame Raisenberg. I am looking for my H1B replacement. In the morning. This is Grace. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

This is Hannah Nicholas. Bird flu is not real. Shout out to Millennial Media Offensive. Tuesday night. MMO. All the offensive. All the offensive. In the morning. Wow. Sounds like a great meetup there. Of course, many of these people and many of those shows that were mentioned can be found on the No Agenda stream. We have the satellite skirmish coming up next, but you're not done with this yet. I want to remind you that we do have meetups taking place today.

In fact, underway is the Blind Owl Brewery Indianapolis. That's the Indy NA Inaugurate. Mark and Maria of the Greenwood are hosting that. We always get a nice meetup report from them. Too Many Eggs. Keene, New Hampshire. Underway as well at Margarita's Keene in Keene, New Hampshire, of course. The second Mountains and Rivers meetup is coming up. The Damn Restaurant and Bar today in South Slocan, British Columbia, Canada. Make sure you send a report.

Next Thursday, our next show day, the night of January 16th at 630, Lincoln's Roadhouse, Denver, Colorado. Servido hosting that. Charlotte's Thirsty Third Thursday, 7 o'clock at Edge Tavern on Thursday, of course, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Many more, including Buenos Aires on January 17th. Make sure you send a meetup report. We collect those from lands far away. And you can go to noagendameetups.com to find one near you. If you can't find one, start one yourself.

It's easy and always a party. Sometimes you want to go hang out with all the nights and days. You want to be where you won't be triggered or held to blame. You want to be where everybody feels the same. It's like a party. I'm doing much better on the ISOs these days. Okay. Got a lot more ISOs. Got much more. Let me see. I have this one. That hurts my retinas every time. I can't really hear it that well. Can't hear it. No. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. I have this one.

It all seems very gay and happy, and I am here to observe. That's too long. That's too long. I have this one. Take care of your neighbors. And the one I think is kind of worth it. Gob-smackingly bananas. I actually like that one. Yeah. Yeah. Which was from the show. What have we got here? Okay. All right. Change. I got two versions of this. Change history. Wow. Oops. This is going to be something that is going to change history. Gosh. It's a little long, John. Four seconds.

Yes. That's why I edited down to number two. Okay. This is going to change history. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. It's not bad. I'm working on my editing skills. Here's a wow. Wow. Excellent podcast. Oh, goodness. Just when I thought you wouldn't make it, you wouldn't be able to compete with mine. Gob-smackingly bananas. Wow. Excellent podcast. Which one do you want? They're both good. Let's do them both. No, we can't do both. I'll take the wow. Wow. Excellent podcast.

Yeah. But keep the other one in abeyance. All right. We will. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for your favorite part of the show, John's tip of the day. Great advice from you and me. Just the tip with JC Dean. And sometimes Adam. Created by Dana Burnetti. And if you don't mind, this is one of those sometimes Adam, sometimes Adam moments. Oh, good. Why don't you give yours? I have a tip for a great gag birthday gift. Okay. And the reason why is my- It's a girl and a cake.

My stepdaughter, Elise, who lives in New York. She just turned 28. A Zoomer. She is a Zoomer. That's correct. She was given a printed book, which her friend took a lot of time and trouble to go through to have it printed because it's available on a PDF. The Laptop from Hell, Hunter Biden book, which is a hilarious gag gift. It has all the hooker pictures, the coke pictures. It has lists of all the stuff he did. It is a very funny gag gift, and it's available as an EPUB.

You can download it, and then you can have it bound, and people will appreciate this gag gift if you give it to them. Where do you download it? The link in the show notes. Okay. You can just search for it. That's not much of a gag. I think it's a good gift. Well, it's kind of a gag gift. I mean, it is kind of a gag gift. It's a gag gift, man. It's a gag gift. It's good. He was gagging a lot. Hey, there it is. Now, we have a tip that is so good, you almost don't want to give it.

Yeah, I almost didn't want to do this. I've been excited for the whole show. If you remember in the early days of the internet, all these phones, every phone company came with their own yellow pages and their search engines. Wait a minute. I'm actually in the printed yellow pages, the internet yellow pages. Do you remember that book? Yeah, I remember that book. Yeah. They thought that people would want... That was done by McGraw-Hill.

Yes. People thought that they would want to have a... I had an imprint with that company at the time. I bet you did. And so, that all went by the wayside. And next thing you know, you got to pay for every information. You can't get phone numbers or information about anybody anymore without having to go through rigamarole. And it's just almost impossible, except for this one search engine, I think. Oh, boy. And it doesn't work with the PBS. Okay. Did I say PBS? I meant VPN. You did say that.

It doesn't work with PBS either. Nothing works with PBS. It's called TruePeopleSearch.com. Oh, wow. And it'll give you where somebody lives, where they lived before, who they're married to, where they work in, what their phone number is, what their email is, and on and on and on. And it's really good. Hold on. So, you can track down your old buddies using this. Now, that said, it's a little weak on email addresses because they'll just cite a whole bunch of email addresses.

And I have a secondary tip, which is how to get somebody's email address. You find like a source like this, it's TruePeopleSearch. You look yourself up. You'll find yourself in there with your address. You take all the email addresses and put one of them in the two, versus two, and you put the email address up there. And then under BCC, you put the other 40 email addresses. And so, the guy will get one or two emails, but it doesn't look like you have a blank carbon copy going in there.

And you'll get kickback notices of all the bad ones. And you could quickly isolate what the person's real email address is using this technique. Wow. Wow. This is horrible. This is horrible. This is absolutely horrible. Yeah. Wow. That's why I was reluctant. Yeah. I can see why. You're all over this thing. Oh, yeah. Luckily, I got houses more than once. So, I can hide. So, they can firebomb all of your houses. This is great. That is a horrible tip, John.

I don't know if I can appreciate this tip that you gave everybody. Well, I think it's a tip that needs to be out there, because it saves money. You can find people. Yeah. You can find their phone numbers. Like Dana Brunetti. Easy to find. That's very cool. I like it. You can find their phone numbers. You can find them and call them up. Say hello. Call them up. Hey. Okay. There it is. Your dangerous, very, very, very dangerous tip of the day. That is it from John C. Dvorak.

Go to tipoftheday.net, noagendafund.com. There you go. That is probably one of your best tips, but also one of your most horrific tips. That's why I said, I prefaced it. You did. You did. How do I get off of that website is my question. That will be the next tip of the day. Probably not even possible. Now, you can get off of the ones that you have to pay to find people, but this is a little rough. But you know what, John? TikTok is the problem. That's the problem. TikTok is the problem.

Not realpeoplesearch.com. End of show mix is coming up from Lee O. LaPuke. A great one. Professor Jay Jones and Tom Starkweather, known as Melodious Owls. It is all dynamite. Remember, we have the satellite skirmish coming up. It will switch over seamlessly. And coming to you from the place you can find on realpeoplesearch.com, the heart of the Texas Hill Country. In the morning, everybody. True people search so you don't get confused.

But I think he wants you to go someplace else because he's in there, too. In the morning, everybody. I'm Adam Curry. And from northern Silicon Valley where we still do say gruesome, newsome. And he's in this. You can find him, too. You can find his wife, everybody. It's unbelievable. I'm John C. Duvoir. We return on Thursday. Remember us at knowagenthedonations.com. Until then, adios, mofos, a-hooey, hooey, and such. I am the god of hellfire. And I bring you fire. What the hell? Is it really?

Governor Newsom is right there. Expecting the damage. Look at this entourage. We were not expecting a gruesome newsome appearance. You're fired, sir. Is that Gavin Newsom? That's the governor. That's the governor. Governor, I live here, governor. Please tell me what you're going to do. I'm literally talking to the president right now. Can I hear it? Can I hear your call? Because I don't believe it. I have to get self-service. Let's get it. Let's get it.

I want to be here when you call the president. Why is there no water in the Hall of Remembrance, governor? Is it going to be different next time? It has to be. Burn sites rapidly green with opportunity. Scientists marvel at their power of regeneration. I say that's the California way. As your governor, I promise you, whatever challenges come our way, I will always lead the California way. Protecting our planet and always planting seeds for the future.

Gavin Newsom makes me drier than a California fire hydrant. So if one dies, do not pet it. I have one clip here about why. Why would somebody want to do that? Yeah, why? I don't know. Horowitz does it too, I might add. Because we wanted to do that for the same reasons why we don't want to do it right now. We want to do it for the same reasons we don't want to do it. Why? Why? Why? Why, why, why? That's correct! Someone coming out and saying, yeah, I'm ex -CIA, it's a plague.

Put it in the Redbook. NGO official in Ukraine. Why? And then you should follow up by saying, that's a great question. You're either still CIA or you were never CIA. Okay, what is this? I don't know, Horowitz does it too, I might add. This is why, Blake? This is something new. They've sent terrorists from Afghanistan, reason here why? Why?

We have terrorists in this country that we don't even know why they're trying to do this against us because- I have one question about why, why are we doing this? Why would somebody want to do that? Yeah, why? Prozempic, that's correct. This is why, Blake? Let's leave Sarah Adams, known to be 10 % humanitarian, 90% warlord. I don't believe it for a second. Vaccines do not, repeat, do not cause autism. Why? Because it's a great question. It's a great question. What is the cure?

Sarah Adams, aka Superbad. Why, why, why? Massive skyrocketing cancer. I still think there will be good relations with President Trump. Gavin Newsom had an opportunity to have millions of gallons a week, a day. Millions and millions of gallons come down from the North. Millions and millions of gallons come down from the North. Millions of gallons. He said, I don't want to sign it. I don't want the water. We don't need the water. I said, you need the water. Millions of gallons.

You need the water. There's so much water that they wouldn't know what to do. Millions of gallons. I was going to give him unlimited water with millions of gallons. You need the water. You need the water. Millions of gallons. There's so much water that they wouldn't know what to do with. Millions of gallons. Millions and millions of gallons come down from the North.