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See you in 2024.
Adam Curry.
John C. Dvorak.
It's May 16th, 2010.
Time for your Gitmo Nation Media Assassination episode 200.5.
This is No Agenda.
Welcome to a special backstage tour of the No Agenda show.
Coming to you from the Hilltop Watchtower Crackpot Command Center in Gitmo Nation West.
In the People's Republic of Southern California.
In the morning, I'm Adam Curry.
And it's not really a media assassination today.
It's a No Agenda assassination.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
It's Crackpot and Buzzkill.
In the morning.
We still get to say in the morning.
Yeah, definitely.
In the morning never goes away.
You know the thing is we should tell people since this is really a show where we're just essentially going to talk about the show.
And we're going to answer a lot of questions.
And probably ask some.
But you know one of the things you should immediately note.
We actually had the debate as to whether we're going to play the opening jingle.
It's kind of sad that we didn't put the debate on the backstage show.
This is kind of where we.
Yeah, I think on this show, which is driven by support from our producers slash donors supporters.
Where we kind of bear it all.
Not that we have any secrets, I don't think.
But people just want to know a lot of stuff that we don't put into the show because little known facts.
We make it look easy.
And also a lot of this personal stuff that they're asking.
Because we I sent out a message on Twitter to get some questions.
And we also got a couple of emails and you worked up some questions yourself.
To be honest about it, a lot of it is just plain boring.
Yes, indeed.
You know John and I have been in.
In fact, you said this on episode 200.
We've been in media in all forms of media from print.
You've probably been around typesetting.
Actual actually I used to be a typesetter part time when I was in college.
See doesn't surprise me all the way through to today's reality based television programming.
And everything in between on mainstream media.
And I would say, well, I certainly gave up a number of years ago.
And I am patently unhireable by mainstream media.
In fact, the last especially after you did that CFC thing.
Well, yeah, that's right.
When I said Michael Jackson was probably killed and they cut me off.
And of course now it turns out he probably was.
But yeah, the last radio station I was on.
Which was around the time we started this show actually.
In fact.
No, you were doing this show while we were doing this show.
Yeah, but I think we started this show.
Yeah, but I'd only done a couple like a week or two.
And then we started doing this show, right?
I was doing that first, wasn't I?
No, I think you were fired during.
I was fired during.
We were doing No Agenda when I was fired, but it only just started that show.
Yeah, no, I think we did it for about a month.
So I was trying to think back because that was I think 26 of either October or November 2007.
The first episode was like 35 minutes.
The good old days.
Yes, I was living in London, which did give the show a very different flavor.
I have to say I was also baked out of my mind.
Right.
Although, you know, to be honest about it, I don't think that was apparent.
And I actually argue with you.
I don't think your personality has changed that much since you stopped smoking.
Right.
But I, well, there's a couple of episodes there where I remember one time I actually went off on some tangent and I said, dude, I'm so baked.
Yeah.
But yeah.
I do remember that.
But the personality, I'm happy to hear that.
I'm just more awake and I can do more and I'm more focused.
Yeah. And you finally got a rig that makes me sound decent.
Yeah.
But that's well, you know, at the end there, at the end there, we had we had a pretty good setup.
It sounded OK.
But this is the best one.
I have to say this is definitely the best one.
So now we met at I guess.
What did we meet, John?
Was I in cranky?
Well, tangents, tangents dot com on Twitter asked the question.
The real Dvorak and Curry have a unique relationship.
How did you guys meet?
So did you hit it off right away?
I'll tell you something I found in my crap that arrived from from the UK.
I found a videotape of the CNET pilots where we actually first met for the very first time.
Although I probably that was in 1993, three or four, maybe I think was three.
Yeah. And I and I'm going to get one of those VHS to DVR thingies to to transcode all of this stuff.
But this was when CNET did not have a website.
In fact, I registered CNET dot com and said to Halsey Minor, hey, dude, you know, I'll do your email if you want.
You know, you might want to have a web thing that I think that would be more appropriate for what you're doing here.
But all right. They paid me like 20 grand to do that pilot, which was nice.
And you were doing kind of a Glocklin group type roundtable as the pilot for that show.
Yeah, they I that's kind of interesting because with CNET, they actually went through a whole bunch of people before they decided they wanted me to do it.
And I didn't really want to do it.
I actually, to be honest, I never wanted to work for CNET, but I did like the idea of watching Kevin Wendell at work once they brought him.
He was the guy from Fox.
Yeah, he's a guy from somewhere.
He's a Hollywood guy. He had set up the Fox network.
He was one of the driving programming forces behind Fox.
I don't remember that.
Yeah. Whatever the case was, he was a slick operator and it was fun to watch him work.
And but they first wanted Leo Laporte to be the McLaughlin guy.
And Leo wanted to do it badly.
He was always wanted that torque, that sort of gig.
And because because very serious and it's, you know, this and that.
And but they had me do it, but that never got off the ground.
It just wasn't going to work.
And so then they gave me some other job being a kind of a clownish co-host with Gina St. John.
Oh, yeah. Well, they offered me to move out to San Francisco and be there full time.
And they offered like really low salary, but two million shares of stock.
And I declined. Yeah.
Well, that was an error. Well, who knows what I was like?
Well, I know it's a crapshoot. I did the same thing.
I screwed up.
How many how many shares outstanding?
Well, it's vague, right? I was like, you know, I got a pretty good thing here at MTV.
I'm good.
So anyway, so we met 93 casually, very casually, very casually.
But, you know, we followed each other's careers a little bit.
But then I was kind of triggered by that when you had your moment of richness
and I was floating around Europe and I ran into a newspaper with one of these one of these papers.
I think it was a Dutch story somewhere.
And it had a picture of you and you're some superstar in Holland.
And this is unbelievable. So this guy makes so much money.
And so then you showed up in town again.
And so then we just kind of forced myself.
Wasn't it a yes. And that was nice.
But wasn't it a wasn't I on Cranky Geeks when we connected?
No, I think we met up first and then I put you on Cranky Geeks.
Well, where the hell was it, John? Because we were.
I we did some in the email exchange and I said, let's go have lunch or something.
We had our lunch, our initial the remitting lunch at the Fringal.
And we talked about, you know, getting some getting a daily news show, the Tech Five thing, ideas like that.
And then then we went and had a big meeting with Ron in the office.
Yeah, and you are in Cranky Geeks after that.
I'm trying to look now in my email if I have something from you from that.
Must have been 2007, right?
Probably.
How do you do that Gmail? Do you do date 2007?
I don't know.
Anyway, that's basically the story.
And then we we I don't know.
Then we I just we just kind of naturally got really don't know.
That's the answer. We really don't know how that happened.
We actually get along just in some funny way.
It's not really explainable. It's like, you know, you meet somebody and you go, you've known him for a long time.
So, you know, that they're obviously not assassins.
Of course, that may not be true.
But whatever the case is, you you've always had, you know, you had an acquaintance and then you decide that, you know, now you're working together.
It's almost like, you know, where people meet on a Hollywood set and they're hanging out a lot and then go off their separate ways.
But instead of going off our separate ways, since we were both at Mevio, we decided to start doing a show.
And now it's debatable is that, you know, how it got named when we started.
I think I came up with the name.
I don't know if that's true. I think you're the one that approved the name.
Are you going to tell me it was your brain fart?
I think it was. I say, well, we got, you know, why we got no agenda.
And then you said, let's call it no agenda.
That sounds about right, actually. And that sounds good.
Something like that. And then and then as it evolved, we got into other things which are kind of the same kind of like we don't know who came up with the idea.
And the donation thing. Well, before we get to that, because the show started off with a very different format.
It was in fact, I think our first show was on a Friday and like a Friday afternoon, Friday morning for you.
And we would just talk about stuff and I would grab the Financial Times.
But we would also just talk about stuff, you know, the difference between America and Europe.
Right. And it was just like a casual conversation. Just like a conversation.
Yeah. And this was in my opinion, I've always felt that two guys, an interesting conversation between two people is interesting to everybody.
And I've always believed I could sell conversations I have with my wife.
And I always felt that a good conversational show where there's not a lot of rehearsal or preparation, but just guys who just talking about stuff that they know a lot about.
And coincidentally, because the two of us are so extremely well traveled, I mean, pretty much been everywhere and an observant because, you know, we're generally floating around looking at stuff.
It turns out that we have enough life experience to have an interesting conversation.
And we're both from slightly different backgrounds so we could complement each other in ways that I thought was interesting for those people to listen in on.
Yeah. And from my perspective, I was looking to do a show with total honesty, not in the regard of, oh, let's all hold hands and tell each other a secret, but more like, you know, why don't we just say what it is and not be fake and just talk about stuff and we can contradict and we can have an argument and we don't have to.
In fact, we had no thoughts even I think about making money doing.
No agenda.
Yeah, we had absolutely no agenda. And I was just happy that someone would listen to my bullshit.
Like, hey, here's a guy who actually knows more than me, because he's been around longer for sure.
And, and, and, and we'll listen to some of the because I think I was, I was maybe a late bloomer I was like, saying, oh, wait a minute, the world kind of works a little bit differently, because I was so embedded in the hits.
You know, that's all I did. I played hits on radio on television like, you know, I knew what what all the celebrities were doing and all of a sudden like, this is something else going on here.
I think I corrupted you more than you corrupted me when it comes to this show.
Correct. I would agree.
Mainly because of my natural cynicism. I you know, I took a test one. There's a there was a computer software program some years ago. I've always found it fascinating. That was a career guidance. It was almost like it was a very elaborate tech to computer test.
You'd answer a million questions. It was like an MMPI or Minnesota multi-phase personality inventory that people takes in some companies.
It's actually an illegal test. You shouldn't be forced to take it, but it can tell whether you're a psycho and all these other things. And this was the term what your what your career path should be.
And I took the test a couple of times and it was the weirdest thing to get back at the top of a career path. This is telling you, this is what you should go be doing.
Right. Critic.
Really? Yeah. That's awesome.
That's really good.
I like that.
So anyway, so yeah, we've got that thing. We when we started, there's a couple, you know, I got like hand worker on all my tests. You should be shoveling shit, boy. You shouldn't be in any kind of business.
You might be surprised that test was pretty amazing. I had other people take it was just like nailing people left and right. I wish I could if I could find it in my archive. If you can find it, I'll take it and be producing in a modern format. It would be nice.
So anyway, we started the show just casually and it had a it really started picking up a following quickly and people were feeding back into the mechanism encouraging the continuation of the show. And then somewhere along the line, this was your idea. I'm sure of it because it could have been mine.
You decided to do two shows a week.
Yeah.
I don't remember why.
There was some reason because I think we're starting the show was starting to get long.
Get long. Yeah, we said, well, why don't we why don't we do two shows. Actually, that's when we made a real commitment, though.
And for now that was much later in the game, we made a real commitment to do two shows after we we said, hey, you know, this is real. We're building an audience.
But I think we were going for a good year there just on one show. We probably won a year building an audience. So we had kind of a weird audience because there were really your fans separate from my fans and my fans who say you should do the show by yourself.
You should get rid of Curry and give that motherfucker to the head, man. And I can't believe that you get the same kind of commentary. And it's always made me laugh because it's like, oh, yeah, that's what you want.
Just some guys talking for solid. By the way, I have never conversation, no pace and flow. I've never received never received an email of someone saying get rid of Dvorak ever.
I've seen I have seen the get rid of Dvorak meme on Twitter on Twitter, and I've seen it here and I've never seen it. I can't. I've never seen it. Nice then.
Well, then your fans are less less.
Hostile. Yeah. Hostile. Okay. So at a certain point, though, I think that what what really drew us together is we're both radio guys at heart.
I think we're and I know I am and I grew up in radio. Television was more like a sidetrack for me.
I never felt I am too tall. I'm too lanky. I'm too geeky. I have Tourette's as a whole bunch of stuff that would make me not ideal for television. My head isn't big enough to be really successful.
Know about that. Yeah, you got to have a huge not not metaphorically speaking, but physically a huge head that that makes you successful on TV.
We've already established that. Well, but it was our it was our I think I really are our mutual love of radio and the I love radio.
And the reason there's a lot of reasons I think it should be explored. One is that fact that you don't have to it's it's a different it's different.
I mean, radio is and this is basically what we're doing is radio and it's a modern form of radio podcasting.
You don't have to get dressed. You don't have to framp more than that.
It's theater of the mind is what I like about it. Right. And you can also write the theater of the mind part, which is extremely valuable.
I don't know. I mean, my first broadcasting training was in Ray. I went to Foothill College for a while and went on and I was on the radio station and I just loved it.
I produced a radio play and I did a lot of radio. I was up. I got a third class license, which you had to have at one time.
Oh, yeah. FCC license. I still have mine. Nobody needs them anymore. And I've always liked and I'm very kind of a sound nut.
I like good quality sound, which is why I was always carping on the quality of this broadcast.
Even when I was doing when I was doing Silicon Spin at Tech TV, sound is always forgotten on television.
Yes. And so but as but I made a big stink about it because it sounded so bad. And to the sound engineers that were working there, I was their hero.
I know. Hero of the sound engineers. Because the sound engineers couldn't get anybody to listen to the fact that they were using cheap mics and they weren't doing notching or anything.
And so the sound it sounded like a cheap ass production.
And I think that's interesting is that MIT during the Negroponte era when they had a media lab, they had studied this to death and they had double blind studies over and over again.
And it kept coming up. If you take a group of people and have them watch a TV show with shitty sound and then have them compare and then show another TV show with really great sound like Dolby five channel longer.
It's not just that. If when they do an analysis, they claim the pictures better.
That's fantastic.
That makes sense. And I'm a sound nut, although I've had a lot of trouble, you know, just because of the technology we've been using.
But now, OK, so now it's where it should be.
I am way into creating a custom sound that gives you something that affects the listener in other ways.
By the way, you have the record button pushed.
Oh, yes, I do.
So, you know, we have compression.
I put noise gates on because I don't want to hear when I'm when either I'm talking or this.
By the way, I love silence when neither of us say anything.
The noise gates kick in.
It's completely silent. If I didn't have those on, then I'd hear your room.
You know, I'd hear stuff, rusting of papers.
And that's to me an important part of our sound.
Because in the beginning, certainly when we had a huge Skype delay, people would be like, oh, you know, I keep grabbing my my iPod or my MP3 player because I think that the thing is stopped or it's crapped out.
But then you guys talk again and it gets people's attention.
Silence is beautiful.
Yeah, yeah, it does work.
And we have a moment of silence every so often.
But anyway, so the two of us are kind of have a we have a meanable personalities.
So we were complimentary.
We're not, you know, people say, well, you work because you're the opposite.
No, we're hardly the opposite. Not at all.
We're just complimentary.
We have different kind of needs and issues, perspectives, but they're not opposite.
They're just different.
And so it worked out.
So we have a show that works very rare to do these kind of partnerships.
Somebody else asked a question.
Let me go to this one.
Who is the star of the show?
And of course, that's would be me.
Yeah, exactly.
Right on.
I thought I'd get that in before you gave the same line.
I was wondering if we could actually say it at the same time.
I'm like, no, it'll never work on Skype.
We'll never hit that.
It's the same moment.
But that would have been funny on stage.
So, yeah, in a Smothers Brothers kind of humor way.
There's no star of the show because and there's no like sidekick.
I mean, it's not like there's a dominant character.
I mean, Adam produces the show, so he picks up the dominant side of the production
because he's the one who hits the buttons, it says in the morning,
and he's the one who opens the show because he's got all that gear.
But it's it's just happens to be what you have to do if you're producing.
Because if I was producing, I would be starting the clips on my cue.
I'd be starting to do the thing myself.
But so it's not as somebody has to produce.
You can't have two producers.
No, but what happened and a lot of a lot of people talk about this.
At least I've seen it around like, well, you know, used to be.
In fact, we used to say the show that has we open we would open the show,
the show that has no jingles, no sound effects, no agenda.
And then I think you because people need to know that John is a is a kind of guy.
And this is I really appreciate this, by the way, who will see something on television
or find a crazy documentary or something that you're generally interested in.
And it's often I think it's stuff that you don't even believe in or care about yourself.
But he'll burn you a DVD and make a nice label on it.
And, you know, and I'm always amazed by the labels.
It's always nice art and it's, you know, it's labeled beautifully that way.
If the feds bust in, they look at it, they say, oh, this bus, this isn't a bootleg.
This guy's got to be the real deal.
But that's not like movies.
It's you know, it's documentaries, it's different shows that he's seen.
And you handed me a copy of The Family Guy with the episode Weenie and the Butt.
And that really got the because, again, we're both radio freaks.
And we figured this would just be funny to do.
And it kind of stuck.
And I think that it will be fun.
That's also where In the Morning came from, by the way.
And it's such a takeoff on the morning zoo format and which we both,
I would say, love and hate at the same time.
Loathe, of course, now it's just so old fashioned.
But when you listen to this, you can understand why radio guys get off on Weenie and the Butt.
Two minutes this.
Oh, that's the Hulu.
The Hulu pre-roll.
Watch your favorites anytime for free.
Hulu.
Hey, everybody, it's Weenie and the Butt here live at the Kohog Air Show.
We're all ready for the Weenie Sound-a-like contest.
I don't know, Butt.
I don't think they can say my catchphrase because they ain't no funny.
Oh, there it is.
And if you think you can say that just like Weenie here, you could win $97.1 for the cool weekend ahead.
Weenie and the Butt.
Cool weekends in the morning, $97.1 at them.
Cool weekends in the morning with Weenie and the Butt.
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$97.1!
Weenie and the Butt.
In the morning, cool weekends.
Yes, I have.
Weenie.
And the Butt.
And welcome back.
Excuse me, I gotta find a lost kid.
Can I use your mic?
That's what she said.
Whoa, you got butt slam.
Whoa.
Listen, I could really use a hand here.
That's what he said.
Butt slam.
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Cool weekends in the morning.
Oh, weekend long.
Weenie and the Butt.
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F-M.
Give me that.
Stewie Griffin, will you please report to the radio booth?
Stewie Griffin.
Hey, that's quite a voice you've got there.
You ever think about doing radio?
Well, I listen to a lot of radio.
Peter and Lois leave the radio on when they go out,
so I feel like somebody's home.
Well, here's my card.
Call me if you're interested.
Hey, OK, we've got our first contestant.
Let's hear Weenie's catchphrase.
Danofani.
I think we have a weener.
And that's Dickie the Punchline Donkey on $97.1.
Dickie the Punchline Donkey on Cool 97.1.
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F-M.
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97.1.
It's one of the greatest moments in Family Guy history.
It really is.
And you know they produced all of that stuff,
and they must have had a ball,
because it really was like that in the 90s,
in the 80s, in the 90s.
Radio was absolutely in the morning.
On the radio.
No content.
97.1.
No content.
All filler.
And I used to hate it.
We'd have to do liner cards.
Here, read this, hit the jingle.
All right, $100.1 in cash for you on Z100.
Z100 serving the universe.
So we kind of decided, we didn't decide.
It just happened.
Most of the show, by the way,
for people who are asked all these questions,
it's really an evolution.
Yeah.
There's no meetings.
We don't have meetings.
We don't really talk about it.
No.
In fact, if there's a rule,
we generally agree not to talk about
what we're going to talk about,
because we know that what will happen is
we'll start talking about it,
and then we bring it up on the show,
and then it'll always suck.
It's like, it's like it's been rehearsed.
There's no tension there.
Right.
And you know, so anyway, so this evolved,
but what happened was then of course you ran into Jeff Smith.
In the morning.
And so we ended up getting a bunch of these jingles and things,
which some people complain about,
but the fact of the matter is it paces the show well.
It is a mockery of the other model,
but it adds kind of a nice,
I don't know what it is.
The atmosphere is improved by it.
The in the morning thing is used as a rim shot, generally,
or it should be, and it is often.
So I say something funny,
which is very common on the show,
and then he hits the rim shot.
Or if you go off on a tangent.
I'm just saying that it's the same thing.
So we have a bunch of these things, which we use.
And now we had a couple of questions.
That's an old radio trick for a segue.
It's it's really.
It helps transition the listener's brain from one segment to the next.
It jars you for a moment there.
And if you listen to our last show,
show 200,
Adam was going off the deep end.
On some topic.
So these two, three minutes over, you just stop it.
And I told him to play the Adam Curry's pet peeve of the day jingle,
which I knew a transition.
It would do it, you know, stop him in his tracks.
I don't see.
That's right.
It also stops me.
You're right.
Yeah, it works perfectly that way.
So the show here's from one of our listeners.
The show you do today is very different from the show when you first started.
E.G. personal anecdotes are gone.
No, they're not.
Audio clips and jingles are now prevalent.
Originally less than an hour a week is now four hours a week.
And listeners are now asked to contribute cash is the show where you want it to be.
Are you planning more changes?
We did show just evolved.
So we don't plan anything.
Although we do things individually that may or may not stick.
In fact, if anything, we're always trying.
It's more like when I when I find something.
And by the way, we'll get into this, but a lot of people send me stuff.
That's that's how I get a lot of good information.
And either that's good or I'll find something else that is good that that relates to it.
I'm thinking, oh, man, I'm going to blow John away with this.
He's going to love this when I play this.
I can just hear what he's going to say.
That's what I'm thinking.
Yeah, there's that.
And there's the other time they curiously, though, we both tend to be on the same stories, which is kind of interesting.
But we had a show I can't remember was about six or seven shows ago where you had actually collected the clips that were all complementary to my.
Yeah. Yeah. Discussion.
And it was like because I didn't get some of these clips that I wanted.
You had them. And I actually thought that was the most unbelievable show we've ever done because it it was it looked rigged.
Yeah, it really flowed very nicely.
And that happens from time to time.
But yeah, I'm on board with the evolution.
There's nothing is absolutely nothing is planned.
I have my own things.
John has his things.
Sometimes we might send each other a link from time to time.
And even then, usually the link doesn't get discussed because we saw.
Well, whatever, you know, it's over.
But we have a couple of common interests of things that are funny that we think are funny.
Usually they have to do with mainstream media.
I think that's that's the most fun is when we when we rag on mainstream media and pull it apart and simultaneously open people's eyes as to what's really going on in on television.
You know, that may have been triggered by the weenie in the butt episode of probably of the family guy, because once we start once we became started mocking that model, we started looking at the media, bitching about it generally on a higher plane.
I believe than the than the people at Fox have ever thought of.
And we started we realized that it was actually we were entertaining ourselves and we knew it was very valuable information.
And we had the time.
It's not like anyone can't do this, but most people work for a living.
If you're to have a job at Goldman Sachs and you're there till, you know, seven at night and you have to get in early, whatever.
And then you have to drink all day, which seems to be what the job is about.
And strippers, you know, what strippers, you don't have time to go and start digging around these stories.
To find the one, you know, the missing element or the kind of the crazy connection.
You just haven't got time to do it.
And then, you know, the fact that the mainstream media doesn't do it and they don't is just makes you wonder.
So I will say that there were two seminal moments when we had our equivalent of a meeting.
And the one is when we spoke on the phone and said, you know what?
This thing is real. This is really catching on.
Let's do two shows a week that I do remember.
And that was like, oh, you know, something's happening here.
This is really special. We should just do it.
And then I even I even recall you saying, OK, I've got to switch this around.
I've got cranky geeks on Wednesday.
I mean, this is when we started to really integrate this show into our daily schedule, into our lives, because actual work does go into it.
I don't know about you, but I every single day.
Here's my system. I have labels set up in my email, like Gmail labels.
And whenever I come across something that I think is interesting or that someone sends me or that I find, I'll email it and tag it with that label.
So I have a label now for show 201.
And then the night before the show, that is, if I haven't found anything that that showed up that I really needed to dig into,
which, of course, can take hours of extra work and investigation, then I sit down and I start to start to assemble everything into a huge outline of stuff.
And then I have to read everything, look at all the YouTube clips.
And in the meantime, whenever I can, without destroying my relationship, I'm watching C-SPAN, C-SPAN one, two and three.
I'll skim by HLN, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, just to see what they're doing, see if I find anything funny.
I find myself watching less of Fox these days. It's just too annoying for me.
But C-SPAN, I find to be just I love it so much. To me, that is it is actual entertainment.
And of course, C-SPAN has done a great job with their video library, because all you have to do is remember a line that someone said,
which is typically what I'm looking for. You go to the archive, you type it in, search transcripts.
It'll search the transcripts and come up with that actual piece of video and cue the video to the spot where the line is.
I mean, it's amazing what they've done there. It's a very valuable resource.
And you know, the thing is, on the weekend, they have this what I really like.
I mean, I like the regular C-SPAN, but on the weekend, they have this book TV. Yeah.
They bring these various writers in, and many of them have written crazy books, one way or the other, right wing, left wing, everything.
And they sit them down with a guy who really is a good conversationalist or sometimes somebody that's in their same field of study.
And they talk to him for an hour or more, usually an hour. And it's like a whole hour.
And it's basically it's like books on tape. I mean, you get the whole pretty much the perspective you're looking for.
You find everything out from this person. It's just amazing. It's much better than any talk show, Charlie Rose or any of these commercial things.
And what's nice about that is I know I kind of know what you're watching.
So I know that I don't have to. And I must say from time to time, it happens every other week.
Probably you'll either you'll send me. Sometimes I send you an SMS, a text message saying, dude, C-SPAN 3 now.
Right. And then we'll both sit down and watch something at the same time.
This has happened to me that I've been in the car and I get like C-SPAN 2 now.
I'm like, oh, crap. But I luckily have the C-SPAN iPhone app and I'll listen to the audio. It's like it's sickening.
We're like we're like the guys from The Muppets. It's a little crazy. Yeah, it is.
But it's not as though, you know, and the funny thing is, I don't think when we first began the show that we're going to get so heavily embedded into current events to this extreme.
And like somebody says, you know, your show was about you guys going out to dinner and, you know, and it's yeah, it was a lot of moments.
And we still discuss wine and food occasion when it comes up. And but we don't instead of sitting around talking about our meal that people can live vicariously through our, you know, steaks and and Cabernet.
It did get pretty much kind of just went by the wayside because it wasn't I don't know if the audience also drove that.
And the only way to measure that is by feedback that you get and the growth of the audience. And it was pretty clear what people were interested in.
And they were interested on our take of current events were interested in our unveiling, if you will.
And this is purely because of our experience, our unveiling of the bullshit and the I would say the deception of mainstream media.
And it's and and I think it's helped a lot of people see things in a different light. And that's what the audience wants.
And, you know, John, you and I are both in the audience business at the end of the day.
Yeah. And in fact, it is. You can tell by the way people send you notes.
I mean, yeah, every once in a while, somebody that was there from the original show and they kind of like the fact that we have a wine tip once in a while, which I can still do.
Or there's some observation we made about the trends in food. That's fine, which which is now different than me complaining on the earlier show, the show 200 about the raw milk issues.
That's a kind of a foodie thing. But the point is, is that the people that really got jacked up and the ones are pretty much financing the show because they send in big contributions and say, wow, we like the way you deconstruct these stories, the way you tear them apart, the way you show us.
Me, as it were, the way you show me that this that I'm being led astray.
People, it's very valuable for people to have some sense of understanding of what they're being bombarded with.
So when did we start asking for donations?
That began sometime in 2009.
I believe we semi-seriously may have done something in late 2008.
And I know is I can say this because I can look at the PayPal account since we did it as a PayPal thing.
And we did it at the beginning, I think, with trepidation, not complete trepidation.
But I think you may have a little more night because I've always felt there is a model of direct support.
And I was thinking about this, I kept to keep thinking of different arguments because the ones that do it the best are public broadcasting.
And you're right. That's what it was.
We were talking about that. And then we were talking about PBS.
And I said, why do those dickheads who are clearly shills, not all and all the time, but why do they get away with this?
And why do people support that?
It appears that we have a large number of people who like us the same way they either currently do or used to like public broadcasting.
Right. And public broadcasting also has the issue with the fact that they have commercials.
And we really played up a couple of clips that we developed, we found, about admitting that they're underwriters.
Let's play that one because we can't play that enough.
This was the president of PBS. NPR. Was NPR? Yes, NPR. Being asked about underwriters.
Yeah, about their underwriters and how the state of affairs. And here was our answer.
OK, moving on to money. How are NPR's corporate underwriting revenues holding up in the recession?
And what about foundation grants? Two different stories.
Underwriting is down. It's down for everybody.
I mean, this is the area that is most down for us is in sponsorship, underwriting, advertising. Call it whatever you want.
Right. Call it whatever you want. And then I think we started to open people's eyes.
This is kind of the way it went. We started to open people's eyes about how it really worked.
And people are like, wow, you know, Monsanto sponsors this.
Arthur Daniel Midland sponsors that. And we're like, well, OK, so how about the objective reporting about those companies?
Well, that doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot of it.
And I think a lot of people's this is maybe how it really started, John, and I'm just vague on it.
But as people start to send us like a hundred dollars and say, well, this is what I would have normally spent on PBS, the national treasure.
I want to spend it on you. And I think that's where we said, oh, wait a minute, there's something here.
Well, we definitely had again, this is what this is the problem with answering questions like this.
We don't know what we're doing. Yeah, we're idiots.
No, it is an evolutionary show. And like with anything in evolution, just a model, it's very difficult to put your finger on a spot.
I mean, we can do the weenie and the and the butt spot. And that had some influence.
And we can point right to it. But the rest of it is always vague because it just kind of evolved.
We were actually very, you know, being an open source show, which is another idea that we decided to go with.
In other words, we don't care if you steal the show.
I actually do remember I was in New York with Mickey and it was winter.
It must have been winter 2009. And I remember I called you and I said, you know, hey, this this model that we've been kind of well, not really working on, but that has evolved.
It seems to be working. We should really go for this. We should really try.
And I think at that point, I said, boy, I would love to do this full time. I would love to do nothing else but this. I enjoy it so much.
Well, I mean, well, the model, as I remember, I was always for it from the get go because I've always admired the model itself.
I always admire the fact that you can get if you get you give people what you know, essentially, you if you're doing it, it's like the Max Headroom thing where they had the direct numbers.
You know, the guy was the show was going downhill. The numbers would go down and you can see it in real time.
You can see if we're doing the right thing, if we're doing a good job directly, it's not as you can't.
It's value for value. You can't go off the deep end.
We can't turn the show into like an analysis of the 60s music.
And that's all we talk about for two hours and expect to get any money from anyone.
So we're only doing it at the same time. We don't obviously don't want to be pushed around by the audience.
We have to lead them as as opposed to just doing whatever they want.
So you have to have some leadership. This is like a company that, you know, you don't focus group everything.
Focus grouping takes you. It shows you what they used to like.
But if you want to move the show in new directions or try different things, you actually have to experiment with it.
But you will get that feedback. You're going to get a pushback.
And now, you know, this sucks. Don't do that again. And, you know, and then the donations go way down.
So it's an interesting tightrope walk, but it's direct support from the listeners.
And people have come up with all kinds of different complaints about it.
Well, you know, you know, why do we have to spend a hundred dollars?
Because I can go see a movie for 50 bucks and they put a lot of money into making those movies.
And you guys don't put any money into making this show.
And they this is kind of weird kind of complaints about production costs.
I've been getting every once in a while. And I might I never had a real good retort for it, except, well, it's, you know, it's different.
Like you're paying for books on tape. It's like a book. We're really competing with books on tape.
We're not competing with Avatar. And then I started thinking about the world's competing with radio.
But, you know, radio, you get twenty two minutes an hour of action. Well, less radio is terrible.
Seventeen minutes of programming and thirteen minutes of commercials. You know, make your choice.
Right. And how much is your time worth? So I've used that argument.
But then I also found another one which I really haven't exploited on the show.
But, you know, because people that this production well, it costs a lot of money to make a movie.
What about a novel? Novels are one of the first in that one of the first businesses that are directly user supported.
Good point. You buy a book. Good point. And you read the book and you've you know, you've already paid your money.
Of course, unlike our show, the book you pay in advance for the book and you pay in advance for the for the Avatar movie.
You pay in advance for a lot of these things. We don't do that.
We're more of the church model where you, you know, if you don't like the sermon, you don't have to put anything in the coffers.
But it's the same thing. Your books are user supported. And there's no ads in a book.
No. And once you get over the personal hurdle coming from mainstream, where, by the way, we hate commercials.
I've always hated commercials. I hate that's what the TV are such a godsend.
But I mean, just even as a creative as a creator of content, I'm like, oh, you know, I got it.
I got to hit the commercial break. I got to wait for the commercial.
Oh, yeah. No, they're terrible. You got to interrupt your flow.
Watch one of these shows. Anyone listening to this on Fox or any places and they get somebody in a really heated debate.
But they're on a hard break. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've seen this with Tom Brokaw and the president.
And, you know, and they got some some guys screaming in his ear, counting down the commercial and the president's actually just saying something really interesting.
It's annoying. It's very, very annoying as a creator to go through that.
But then it was kind of weird. At least for me, it was, you know, you feel embarrassed to ask people for money.
And there is a psychological hurdle. But once you're over that, it's not over it pretty quickly.
It's easy sailing. You know, it's like, hey, I had a little I had some pushback from the family.
It's like and I won't say who, but they know who they are.
Yeah. So how can you bring yourself to begging for money for this?
How can you do that? It's been you to can't you get some advertisers?
I don't want any advertisers if I can get money directly from the listeners.
I mean, why would I want that? It screws up the product.
It ruins the product. I mean, there's nobody.
And the thing is, most of the people have not.
We've taken it to one of the reasons we do this show and we do this the money asking for money and support donations is because whatever you want to call it,
it's because it's it's it gets as closer to the audience.
It's actually a good close connection. You know, you know, you know what you're getting for your money.
At some point it becomes a it just it just makes you feel more honest.
And there's another thing we did, which I know was my initiative.
And I think it it helped us in a number of ways is we decided to stream it live when we do the show.
And that that did a number of things. One, it gave at least me.
I appreciate the instant feedback loop of the chat room.
Now, I can't watch it all the time, but sometimes a punch line will come through and they're always on a 25 second delay.
So it's interesting how that works.
But a punch line will come through or someone might drop a link in there.
But I personally, even even if I didn't have the chat room, just knowing that people are listening live at that moment gives me an energy that I've always loved doing things live.
I'm not a big fan of recording.
If I have to record something, it's got to be live to tape like I do daily source code, like you do cranky geeks, all of that stream live as well.
Now, I just want it live, live, live, because then you can leave all the warts in there and all the all the crazy shit.
And that actually makes it more interesting when it's not highly produced.
And it also forces us to kind of, you know, I think before we were doing it live, it's like, hey, what time should we do the show?
Well, I got this. I got that.
Now it's like there's my schedule is Thursday morning.
I get up at the same six thirty.
I get up and from then on out, it's no agenda.
Sunday morning, six thirty. I get up from then on out.
It's no agenda. Yeah, I know.
I have the same thing. I said occasionally we've had to move the show to Wednesday night.
It hasn't. We haven't had that in a long time.
No, we're going to have it next month because I have a travel thing that's interrupting both shows.
Which brings me to.
Oh, well, let me finish one more thing about the donations.
One of the things that when we went into the donation thing, we started asking for money, direct support from the listeners.
This has never really been.
I've been figuring this out because it's a form of marketing that interests me.
But one of the things that people say, well, you can't make it.
I'm sure you're starving to death and you can't do it.
Why don't you get an advertiser?
They always say no one except us. And I believe me, I haven't seen anything close.
And there may be some religious programing that I'm not aware of.
But nobody doing podcasting professional level, good quality podcasting as we're doing, has taken it serious.
Yeah, we are seriously, you know, we have programs we can with the night thing.
We've got a different kinds of this. We also don't call it a tip jar.
We don't work for tips. Yeah.
We do this. We're seriously doing this. And it's like take it or leave it.
This is the model we're working with. It's going to be a lot better.
The product you're going to get a lot better if you forget anything out of it, you get something out of it, you know, contribute.
I mean, just the way it was just new.
Do you feel the show serves as more than just a source of entertainment?
If yes, what do you hope to accomplish?
Well, first of all, let me say from my perspective, I absolutely see this as a form of entertainment.
I hope everyone is entertained by our show. They have to be. If you're not entertained, we have blown it.
You have there has to be a moment where an entertainment comes in in different ways.
It can be funny. It can be dramatic. It can be sad.
It can be frightening, whatever emotion button we're hitting.
It has to be entertainment. Otherwise, why listen?
Let me just be boring.
I remember somebody sent us a link. So, well, there's a couple of people that do a show like yours.
And they sent us a link to somebody's show that was very much like ours.
They deconstructed the news a bit. They tended to not to have our perspectives.
But they, you know, they did a fairly decent job. And it was so dull.
They had no it was just like this academic. You can't get, you know, it's just the modern audience is the modern audience.
And no matter how intellectual you might think you are, you will be better served by someone who feeds you information in a way that that keeps your attention.
And to keep your attention, you have to have an element of entertainment.
Our personalities, generally speaking, I think are are are the entertainment.
Also, and I've only had this one my humor, of course.
Obviously, I've only had this one other time in my career. Sometimes you just find these magical combinations and it's not by design.
You can't train for it. You can't go to school for it.
It just happens. And you have these combos that just work.
And this is one of those that just work. In fact, my biggest fear now, and I know what yours is, John, but my biggest fear is you're going to roll over and die one day.
And the show will be over. And I know you're in years at least.
And you're afraid I'm going to go crazy and leave Mickey and go off the deep end.
I mean, I know you're thinking, yeah, I think that can happen any minute.
Our pledge asks on Twitter, Mr. Devorek, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train.
There's the meme. Why are you so popular?
I think we answered that question just now.
Also, the no agenda chat folks wanted the moderator should be invited. They've donated a lot of their time. Well, they're invited to listen to the show and we're done with it.
Next time, maybe we can do something more for them.
This show is the first one a long time that we're not streaming live, but also this is a different type of show.
We're just kind of. So let's answer the second part of that question, though. What do you hope to accomplish?
What do you hope to accomplish, John, with this show?
I think at something and this is going to be this sounds really this is not going to sound good because I because it makes you sound there's a kind of a.
Well, you'll see what I eat cake. No, no, I think that we I think honestly believe that we're doing it a serious public service to bring people generally people that are listening to the show.
I've always believed this with me, even when I'm a writer, people always say, well, what do you what when I'm writing like in PC magazine, when I was writing all those years and inside track, I always had a vision of what what was I trying to accomplish and what I was trying to accomplish because I knew it would get me more readers.
It's a selfish reason, by the way, I knew it would get me more readers. My concept was if I could if somebody read my column and they're working in a cubicle and my my column was designed to give them an edge over the guy in the other cubicle who wasn't reading my column.
And I've always believed that this is your value proposition. It's a phrase I hate, but was one of the things I've always it's always in the back of my mind. I'm trying to give people some edge over the people who aren't paying attention to me.
Oh, no, this is basically we want you the audience to be able to get laid because you sound smarter listening to us.
Exactly. I mean, at the end of the day, isn't that it or a job or a promotion or anything it can enrich your life because you had that one little bit of information that someone went, oh, like I said something interesting.
Well, she has an interesting take on stuff that and for me, it's that maybe it's just that this is for you know, I'll tell you what it is for this is I think I was born to do this.
I think everyone is born to do something and it took me a long time with a lot of detours and I've been counting down the hits and I've you know I've pretended to run companies with varying degrees of success but but basically riding off of fame and fortune, which in itself is interesting to have a perspective from from that angle.
But this I love this I so love it and people say man you work really hard you do a lot we have house guests and they'll be like my god Adams always on that thing and he's editing and he's recording stuff I love it and it's not it doesn't even feel like work I love this I love what we do I love what I do.
It is that's also completely selfish but forget your late. Hey, no, no good actually good works generally are selfish at some level because you, you know, if you think you're helping somebody sometimes it's selfish because you get a good feeling from it and that's a selfish thing.
Although it wouldn't be defined as such by anybody in their right mind. So let's talk about the open source model for just a way before we do that since you brought kind of brought it up I want to bring in Simon Smith's question from Twitter which says when you, when you offer relationship
advice on no agenda my wife doesn't react well to the hookers and blow angle.
Really, she should try it.
What does that mean. I don't know some people just.
You know we do get. I hear a certain thing, two things I hear. One is, people don't like the hookers and blow because they put some people off. Okay. That's just who we are I guess and we find it amusing, you know, I don't think, John, I've never done blow, and I certainly have never done the combination
of hookers and blow at the same time.
So you admit to doing hookers. Yeah, absolutely. You like you've never done hookers.
I don't discuss these things in public.
By the way the hooker situation is a cycle.
And the 30s of the 70s, big lots of hookers and so we're going to we're going into a new cycle of hookers in the probably were starting around 2012.
I am not against hookers I think that there's a lot of bad stuff that happens in the sex industry.
But if you know there's a lot of women who support their children and, and themselves and if that's what they want to do and it can be done in a safe manner power to you I grew up in Amsterdam I saw it working quite well thank you.
What's the problem is when it gets driven underground. Yeah, that's a whole separate show. So now what was your right now what was the second one.
Well I try to help people listen to the show but then they hear the opening and the whole in the morning thing I think it's some BS, top 40, you know we need in the butt show and then they don't listen.
And I don't know what we can do about that nothing but I actually like it because you have to once you get over that hump.
And then you can get kind of sucked in so no, that's also a mask that's probably important you imagine like some meeting going on at the NSA or the CIA and they're like, Yeah, we've got to get rid of these guys I hear bad things about that curry and devour actless listen to
the show, and they hear this whole in the morning bit, and like, that can't be anything.
That definitely puts like puts people off maybe echelon you know echelon is is snipping our show and they're like, Oh, this can't be just just what you said the guy goes into a meeting says these guys are there they're subversive these two guys.
And the guy says really well let me hear what let me hear the show and then they start playing it with that opening.
And then they say, Oh, I'm going to get out of my office you crack pot get out of here. By the way, that is, now that you mention it. I purposely love, and I don't know who came up with the moniker but I love being called the crack pot because it is the ultimate shield.
And some of the stuff we say and I think we get pretty close to the truth and a lot of issues. I would rather people say I he's just a conspiracy theories he just a crack pot, because that will save me from getting killed.
Yeah, I think it's a good theory. And it's an unlikable theory but the guy you know we shout to track down the guy who who coin coin crack pot and buzzkill. It was an email I got and we mentioned on the next show we mentioned it and you thought it was great to be called the crack pot.
Yeah, I love it. And so, then we are artwork started to have a crack pot and buzzkill put on it so we just reiterated the whole thing we should. So now please let's move into that open source nature of the show so two amazing things which are a part of the model,
a part of the, the openness and the and the freedom and the and the support through donations is we don't own anything.
We don't. Well, I mean, I guess technically if you really looked at it we do but we don't microphone. Yeah, but the show is whatever it is. And we have people cutting this up splicing it putting it into all kinds of you know making a rants ring tones, making
music out of it. But we also have people who who create things to a lot of our jingles by the way we could use a lot more and we love them but we are very critical we don't just use everything people send in a lot of people send in stuff that we just feel is not good enough.
We have
artwork, and we have two main artists, sir Randy Asher and Sir Paul T. And they, you know, these guys have jobs they do. Who knows what they do.
And, and they, they spend their time they create artwork for us for almost every single show now there's no agenda art.com where people can drop art and we've used the art from different artists.
If anything, we, so after every show people should know we have a discussion. So the first thing we say is what do we think of the show.
And there's been a couple times we said well that sucked and we're pretty brutal with each other although john never agrees with my criticism of him. If I say well you sucked on that it's like no that was really good.
And if you criticize me you're usually right and I just take it like a man.
So we, we talk about that.
And then we talk about what essentially support post mortem that most publications do. Yeah, then we'll say what, what do we call the show.
We think about what will get the best SEO results what will people be searching we want all those accidental hits.
And then we have to choose from the artwork and that is sometimes the hardest part because it's so good we don't want to, you know, have one guy put off over the other guy because they both sent in something great it's that's a hard choice sometimes.
It's amazing we have. And there's other artists waiting in the wings that contribute on an occasional basis. We have some tremendous support from these guys and then you know Asher set up his own t shirt shop and through I don't know what it what mechanism and you know we
have no agenda stuff calm stuff. Yeah, and we have you know all these guys and we've encouraged it and we don't we don't have our name trademark somebody came up with an email the other day that sent it sent it well I think I got a good promotional idea.
And then every time you hear anybody saying it on any show whatsoever, send them a cease and desist order and then they'll vote you, and you'll get free publicity, although it's actually a funny idea but it's not our model at all.
And we hate work. Yeah, we don't we actually don't want to do anything. We just want to do the show. We don't want to have any extra work we don't want to do any, you know, extra promotion stuff that involves leaving a computer.
Yeah, and I had these other guys the guys that mevio say come up, you know that come up to me oh you know why don't you guys, you guys should at least sell some t shirts you should do we tried that once.
And it was like, we can't get it together. We were we stink. Yeah, we suck at that we're absolutely horrible at organization.
People also know the donations come into john's PayPal account.
Actually now and now we do have our own PayPal account no agenda show, you know, there's like, you know, just like, we just you know every month or six weeks or whatever we just split it down the middle and you know there's no accounting there's no spreadsheets is
like we don't need the accounting is done by the banks. Right.
Right. But it's just like, whatever I mean, real work not necessary. In fact, Eric, who you brought in actually does the hardest part which we were starting to really suck at which was a list of donors for each show, because that was, you know, we get people you know people
want to want to hear, hear their name and I think we pretty much have established anything over $50 gets mentioned unless someone puts in expressly that it's anonymous and also that we have to track closely.
And it's a it's a lot of administrative work that we're no good at.
No, we suck. Yeah.
We do Eric. Yeah, we do.
Eric sends us a spreadsheet with the you know the producers and all this stuff so we don't have to do anything. We just go down the list and say well here's the guys that gave us money we do have to mention the, we had a number of people I think we have about 87 to 95 people that
are in the deuce club which by the way closes at midnight even though we're not going to promote it by the time you hear this is probably close time you hear this is going to be over. But, and we have to thank them all and then we did many of them made some comments but we're probably
going to put we're not going to restart reading comments on today's show I just don't want to do want to acknowledge everybody and do you I have an older spreadsheet apparently I have a couple of them here I don't have the I have to go to PayPal to get the latest
Well why don't I start with this with the nights, because it was nice a couple of people became a night through their support for the deuce club, and a couple already were nights and supported this show in addition.
So why don't I start with that and go down the list. All right, well you do that I'll go open the PayPal thing okay Sir William are cancer Troy Walters Sir Tom Derry Sir Todd Simon Sir Stephen Sir Roman Sir Rob C.
Lock Sir Lawrence Royk Sir Jordy Ramirez Sir John Matthews Sir john Kilbum Sir Jeffrey Gerlach Sir Daniel stack China Neils. I don't know if China Neils is that Neils Neils China Neils I think he's a he may not he may be a night and war on the way.
Also, Sir night noir Philip Evans, then we have just running down the list of people by the way most of them I think from the United States. I actually have a want to talk about the breakdown sports show later, and I'll Carlos Quimby Ryan story Brian Kaufman, Andrew black bomb, Jeff Brown Ruben Zhang, Tim.
He, Homer, Adam Birk pile Adam Birk pile is a creator of the pocket no agenda app so he's donating from his proceeds from that, Mike Scalora Aaron Cole Christopher Scalenda, Mark, but afford David overbeck Brian man Q so Randy Asher that's there to be Sir Randy Asher Roy pledge Matthew Walker Robert Johnson
Chris Slovowski, Slovinsky, Fred, Slovinsky, Fred lust Kevin Schneider, Simon Alicia Lee Canyon Bruce Salkovitz Luca Capodoro Matthew Peyton Terry Heyman Eric Thomas and David Rudolph Bucker backer bad Baker Baker no it's from phony so it'd be da for the Rudolph
Bucker. He's from it would be because in though that's interesting because that's pronounced Baker in the United States. Yeah, but we call that Bucker. Okay, Bucker. McTank, Jonas Astrum, Craig Lennox J Brown Joseph ransom Keith Bradshaw Stefan Springer, Nina, Kristin Hetland. Okay, first woman.
This is this. Yeah, but then it follows up with another one. Claudia Gerber. So I will say this is a problem that we have the report the the balance of men to women is really skewed heavily male.
And, although our age ranges I love the demographics of our, our audience. Yeah, we got everybody it's really from 13 to 88.
That would be me. Yeah, but, but women, not so many. Sam Lung Ling.
Edward Hillman David Evans Tommy Horton Matthew Gref Michael stodgy horror.
Stodgy horror. That's a tough one. I don't know stodgy horror starts that you start you. I don't know. Samuel Funderplunk, our buddy. Niven Brooks Cliff Wilson, Charles Anderson, Alan Bose.
Max, LaCret's, Josh Feldman, Jesse, Simone, or Simenon Simone Simone and James Callahan Malcolm Blair James Murray, Matthew Moss, Simon Reed, Adam Colby or Colb I think Colby probably Robert tenant tenant, James Spitzer David Rosa, Eric Bowden stop.
Hunter Hillygus, who sent us number. I know so many of these people feels kind of weird. Michael Snyder Trevor voucher Barry Wilson, Tony Drews Jake Kelly, Andrea Garnier and our favorite name, who was the sexiest woman in Canada.
Dorothy Doring, so that's four women now, Daniel Rudolph and Carrie washamoto. That's what I have on my list. Yeah, and then there's a few that came in late. I mentioned them which is whoops, the right page up here.
We like five monitors.
Okay, slower.
W O U T E R voucher.
SEL J E E.
That's what it says.
SEL J E E maybe no, it'll be gay. Okay, Jim Kaitola, Luke from hold.
Cool man Ray baby. Cool man Ray. I'm cool man Ray Lena no boo hara. That's another woman so it's five. Five. Carlos Quimby Ryan story.
And I think we already have Brian Kaufman and he came in last night.
So, or do we do we have a Roman visiting on there. I did not.
I don't think I read the name. Okay, well then we have Brian Kaufman Roman visiting Andrew Blackburn and Jeff Brown.
So, john, would you, would you, would you like to basically do this full time and quit everything else.
Well, I'm never going to quit being a writer because that's a cross promotional thing and it's something I can just do casually as a form of meditation it's like quitting cooking.
Or breathing or breathing so yeah but I would but you know I don't really have anything else to do but this show.
Oh bull crap.
Seriously, while you're right I got to finish that book.
Yeah.
Yeah, I wish that.
What do you think do we have to quadruple quintuple our.
I think I'd be honest about it I think if we triple if we keep doing the promotions like we do, and we you know there's another one down the road every about once a month we do one and I really by the way we really thank everybody who joins the deuce club we're going to put a
page up with all your names if you didn't get mentioned.
Let us know. And we'll mention you on the on a real show.
And, but I think we got it all.
Yeah, the point is is that we have.
We have people that have been financing the show essentially and a lot of them do you know over the top version of financing by becoming executive producers of individual shows or night but, but the kind of our night.
But this is the kind of thing you know if we if we can triple our audience, we could probably sustain this, even though it will take a lot you know we still have to do the promotions we still have to go to deuce club and these other ideas.
And you know the founding producers and we do we do these things and they're all very valuable and makes people or helps people become more engaged with the show.
They're now part of the show essentially. And I think if we tripled our numbers, which of course would then make it get critical mass it should go even higher.
But we do have a couple of issues with that one is that you're right if we get people can get put off by the beginning of the show I've gotten mail on that.
And we really have a shortage even though you have some good looking women that follow the show because they're on Twitter, and you have their picture there and they're pretty.
So it's not like that it's not like the show is a barrier to women is not a show done for men and by men.
But it's a it is done by men but it's not a show for men.
But we do have an issue there so we losing about half the audience because of that and I blame actually the mechanism of podcasting itself and I could actually blame you.
Oh, I think podcasting they when done right where you actually have the automatic download that puts itself on your iPod or other device and then you take that and you jump in your car to drive to work and you plug the USB into your car which has got a USB port now.
And it plays our show automatically is not being done it enough but people just do wrong.
How is that my fault invented the whole process.
Well, yeah, but so didn't I do everything right. What part that I do wrong. I don't get it.
I was wrong is that you never set up the marketing channel so this became a second name became second nature to everybody is extremely difficult to use iTunes is setting up the automatic mechanism you know with some people like
Jan aleman was talking to me we just got one of those iPads he says he plugs it in. And the next thing you know he's got the cranky geeks and no agenda shows already downloaded on the iPad whether he wanted it or not.
And he's not even sure how that happened.
But that kind of thing is just is vague bullshit of this podcast. Hold on a second. You are not a user of an iPhone.
But if you have an iPhone, and you go to iTunes, and you search for Adam Curry or Dvorak, you can, you don't have to download anything you just you can either click on it it starts playing immediately right from the store, or you click download and it downloads that one episode to
your phone.
I mean, it's not like what what's the mechanism for subscribing.
Well, I, the subscribing thing. It's an it became an issue for a number of reasons. And so you can blame me all you want. But here's the problem here's where it went wrong. When this first started out.
There was not a lot of bandwidth. In fact, I never invented quote this or never came up with it. Really for the subscription model I came up with it because I wanted you to be downloading something when you're remember when you had always on access.
It wasn't like he had a huge bandwidth but you didn't have to dial in your computer was just kind of sitting there. And I wanted this to be triggered at night or whenever, so that, and you wouldn't know about it and then your computer would say oh there's a new show and just click on it
and would play you wouldn't have to play, you know click and wait for something to download before you could play it that was the original idea.
And then it got all messed up with RSS because you would change your feed and then all of a sudden you'd be downloading 100, you know previous episodes and hard drives would fill up and, and I think actually people want for some reason people want to think they need some control
over their computer and they don't just want stuff downloading in the background. So it's more of a cultural problem than anything. And you and this is why I think we, we got the stream going and we have a lot of sustaining and founding producers for that.
And the future of course is going to be you get in your car it flips on a three or four G connection, and you'll be able to get stuff, and it will be either in real time on a stream or it'll be on demand and we'll just start playing for you.
I think that that's where it's going to go we have to get remove the idea from people, you know you don't think about what's happening when you get a movie on demand.
You don't think about it just like oh I'm just clicking some buttons on the remote control. You don't think about all the packet streaming into your into your house and all this digital stuff that's happening in the background.
It's just there. So, you know, but someone's got to make that device and that interface and they're coming and they will happen it by the way if anyone can help us.
One thing was get us in all of the, you know, all the top menus, you know, put us there with the good stuff and by the way we got kind of screwed by Apple, because if you'll recall Apple jumped on board with podcasting early and I'm very happy they did.
And then they started to promote all the NPR national treasure shows like that was the only thing that was worth it and podcasting independent stuff got pushed to the back.
That's what happened there.
Yeah, you still need. And this comes down to the device manufacturers.
You still need them to promote what's on the interface that they have that they control I don't control that I can only make the show.
So, and that's a call out to producers, they need to be doing that. They need to be pushing us into the, into the top selections and the favorites and, you know, have we ever been on the most. What is it the featured selections of Apple's iTunes no.
And will we ever unlikely.
Unlikely
Well, blame me anyway so that's an issue. Yeah, that's a tremendous issue but so tripling the audience yeah yeah I agree and you know what I would pretty much quit everything else I do.
We could double the audience if we had the same number of women that we could have our own health care.
This is the only this is the only thing we ever talked about.
Until the show can actually help us afford health care and a cell phone.
We can't quit our day jobs not until somebody you know people always ask you what do you do with the donations we do we buy equipment and we pay bills.
And it's not just bills related to this show I mean yeah we got some bandwidth bills. Honestly, it's not huge.
You have to you know this is what when what he's like asking the right. So, Mr. Mailer your new best selling novel What do you do with all the money you made from that book.
Exactly.
Does it make. Yeah.
A couple questions here from either way I find it weird that people even ask that question.
By the way, it's very few people that that care, but they're annoying the ones who do because it's like, well, what do you do with your money.
Yeah.
Couple of couple of questions from Sir Troy Walters I just want to go down the list make sure we didn't miss anything.
How did you come up with promotions like the knighthoods.
And although the knighthood thing by the way I will take credit for that and I'll tell you why.
I, although I think we discussed and I think you're the one that probably pushed the idea, probably the name of a knighthood is probably what I might contribution.
Well, the knighthood thing and I'll tell you one of the one day and I said this I've done this with everybody who knows me will have heard this probably one time or another and I know I took random past Adam every time some American and I think it's supposed to be illegal to receive a knighthood from the Queen but they do.
Anyway, every time somebody say why is what's the Queen what's so special about England that they're granting knighthoods. Why don't we grant knighthoods right now I can't we just grant it we can anybody work at Ford Motor Company grant knighthoods what differences in that.
Yeah, that's good. So we so ours are just as good as the Queen's, I think so and I think we have a better group that's for sure that nights that have been on our list or they're fantastic people every one of them.
I have a plan by the way of making a night iPhone app that will only be for nights.
And it'll be limited for a number of reasons but only be for nights. And, and it'll be like our, our communication model, like a network a night network.
Yeah, yeah, I think it'd be kind of fun, and and we did like a bat signal I still want a bat signal we're going to need it one of these days. Oh, we've got a lot of professional people in the knighthoods.
We don't have a doctor we have a dentist, we have a lawyer.
Oh, you know, as we get a lawyer, that's what you need right you need a lawyer, we need a butcher. Yes, a farmer.
Farm.
What drives the new promotions.
That's a good question. Depends on how you interpret it of course.
And I will say, all the emails promotion ideas john does all of that. I do the production of the show. John does all of that stuff.
Yeah, I'm the marketing guy.
Well mainly because I've always admired certain forms of marketing they're never they're very rarely executed by the general public. And by that I mean, or by general companies are little operations like ours. And by that I mean, PBS, and, and religion, churches, because the model is so interesting that you get people that like you so much because you're doing something for them.
And that's what what PBS and churches are perceived as doing they once give you give you helping your spiritually and the other ones educating you out of mainstream media supposedly.
And, and I their model for getting money and by the way I have a background in public radio. I had a couple of shows two different shows that were on public radio for over almost 10 years about computers.
And I saw the mechanism how it works and how much money they get and all the rest of it. And I always said you know why, you know, why does it just have to be those two groups. And then of course the publishing you know the direct payment for a novel is a different kind of a thing.
Why are these the only two groups that are using this model, a, and, and does anyone notice that they're actually pretty successful with this model.
Thank you. There's some churches out there that have, you know, not counting the mega churches but but some decent sized churches and maybe 2000 to 3000 parishioners, and they got the guy with a Cadillac and a big house and they got plenty of money.
And it's only like 2000 people that are supporting this the entire parish. And it's like, does anybody notice that this is looks like a you know these course the tax free thing doesn't hurt the guy.
But it's like obviously it's a model that works and people don't mind the model I mean, we're not getting knighthood donations because people think this is the dumb idea.
So anyway, so I do the promotions I, I come up with them.
You know every once in a while we one comes forward so well here's an idea we this is this people would like. So you know it's kind of like selling the dream kind of thing I'm not sure.
And I do I used to be in direct marketing so I say that you know when people ask me about this or say look you know we have a church, and our religion is the truth, or as close as we can get to it.
There's that element, I think you know we seem to offend a few people if we go over the off the deep end with the church angle but the fact of the matter is we do the thing on Sunday morning.
And I'm sure a lot of people don't go to church and listen to us instead. I just but the or football. It'd be interesting to see what since we're in full tilt here trying to maximize our incomes.
It'll be interesting to see what the drop off is on listenership on the live stream during the football season. Oh, interesting. Yeah, well, and by the way we do look at that kind of stuff.
We look at all the numbers we keep track of stuff Eric likes to dream up weird reports, and we look at them and we know where we're headed and we're doing fine and we're not doing well enough that we can quit and do this full time and, and, you know, that's which is okay being in a struggling situation is not a bad thing.
And the show I think is not sound.
If I can say it harder to be excited for the next show if donations are down on the previous show. It is for Adam.
That's not true. It's not like I'm less excited. You said so once. No, and then you misinterpreted what I said what I what I meant was, first of all, it bums me out because I take that as a, as a direct result of the program of the product that we produced.
It bums me out. Yeah, it bums me out. Does it make me less excited. No, it motivates me. It gets me motivated to do a better show.
And we deconstructed and john by the way you got to know this he's like, like the horrible uncle you never wanted. He'll send you notes like, well that thing you did that made donations drop through the floor as horrible and I know and it took me like two months to figure out that this is bullshit that he's just writing that just to piss me off.
And then all I was writing it for a good reason because I believed it to be true.
It's the way you write it is like, sorry, grandpa. Yeah, sorry, don't be such a dick. I suppose I should put a bunch of smiley faces and that would make you happy. Yeah, good. This is what I love about you.
What is the single most enjoyable element of the show for each of you.
That's a great question and I don't like saying the term a great question.
But it's a thoughtful question makes you think I think we'd like to. I think when the show ends.
I think ours. The world. First of all, there is no element in the show.
I think that's that's the that we have no fixed elements. That's the only thing that's fixed is donations.
We do that about an hour and 45 minutes to an hour. Yes. And we've talked about that because we know it's a donations fall off if we push the thing off to near the end because a lot of people to be honest about do not listen to the entire show.
I agree. I agree. I get a lot of emails from people like we just we just did that two weeks ago.
Like how can you send me this email. And yeah, I agree. A lot of people don't get through the whole show, which by the way is okay.
And and and for people who listen who like oh that was you know there's a fact this is what I love this fast forward. You can fast forward through something you think is boring.
I guarantee you'll be backing up. I think so too.
For me.
Wow, this is going to sound kind of weird.
But most enjoyable personally enjoyable. I like it when I have either an article or a clip and I get praise from you.
Yeah, I'll do that because I actually keep a running score. But it's just for me. But you I know you're paying attention to it.
And I'll and I'll score a goal for you when you hit one that is like completely catches me flat footed. I got nothing on it.
But maybe my take is even wrong because your take is better and it's and it's interesting.
And so you get I so I give you a kudos right on the spot. And it's very innocent.
By the way, and I and you usually only do it when I know I can't top you.
You can actually come up with something that's better than that where you got the kudos something really stunning.
But I know I've got a topper. Yeah. And so I won't give you the kudos then.
So that's kind of interesting. Do we have a weird father son relationship?
No, no, it's not. No, it's a teammate relationship where you're trying to compete for that position of dominance.
OK, yeah, I think it's a team. It's a team orientation where the two guys are working to win.
But you know, but you want to be the guy that did that if you score the goal.
Yeah, you scored the goal. OK, you scored the goal. Next time I'll score the goal.
You prick. Yeah, that's a good analysis.
So now the father is something doesn't work that way because father and son would be it's be more patronizing.
I'm not patronizing him. I'm straightforward. That's true.
That's true. I'll give you that. I know how much you'd like that to be the case.
But no, not going to happen. I don't think so.
I got a little thing here, a little aside. I had Eric run the numbers on which country listens to us and where we get most of our support from.
That's actually that is a question. So and here's the answer.
OK, I'm going to do it because I have the numbers and you don't. So this is my rare opportunity to make you do what we do on the show quite a bit, which is make one the other person guess, knowing full well that they'll never guess it correctly.
And it's just kind of a stalling tactic. But guess who's number one.
Now, is this in total amount of donations? This will be both donors in the amount.
But it's going to go by the total amount. But it's this. But it turns out the numbers match pretty well with the it's one to one pretty much with the donors versus and totals.
I will say that the Netherlands is very high on the list. Who's number one?
Oh, please. Well, number one's got to be America. Of course, by a factor of nine.
Yeah. All right. So now it gets interesting.
Number two, and I before you answer, I'm going to tell you right now, you're not going to get it.
Australia. Oh, jeez, you got it.
Yes, he shoots, he scores. Oh, no, I know. I knew I knew Australia had to be really high.
I shouldn't have given you the tease. No, no, I knew it. I knew this because I mean, we've had to.
I try to kind of in my head and like, man, I get stories.
The Aussies are they're really into us. But don't mess with them, man.
These guys will mess you up. And they don't like what's going on.
And I can almost guess, you know, by which country is is the most suppressed.
So, of course, America wins and then Australia.
And I think the Netherlands has got to be third or fourth on the list.
No, actually, the Netherlands actually comes in sixth.
It goes like this. United States, Australia, Canada, Canada. Right.
I forgot United Kingdom and Netherlands, UK as well. Of course. Yeah.
Yeah, that's that. I actually thought the Netherlands would come in a little higher.
But no. And we have a couple of the guys.
The reason is because the Netherlands, the guys who do contribute to the show from Belgium are very they're they're aggressive.
Right. You know, Pels markers. Oh, he's in Belgium.
Belgium. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Belgium comes in.
Then it comes Germany, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland,
Mexico. And then we have an anomaly with Japan, which has very few people listening,
but they give a lot of money. And so same with Hong Kong. That's where all the money is.
We've got Spain, Italy, France.
Denmark is actually higher, but they don't give any money.
They're like they're cheap, cheap.
Damn Danes. Yeah, they're the Danish are obviously cheap.
And then Poland, Poland, which is like that doesn't count.
They don't even you know, this the non-English speaking countries.
It doesn't bother me. This is very interesting for the amount of that's really interesting for the amount of time we spend on or have spent on stories about Poland.
They're way down on the list. Oh, they're way down.
The amount of time we spend on the UK and Australia. That's about right.
Yeah. And say and and Canada, we probably should do more on Canada.
The Canadians are complex starting to complain about it.
And they're right. And you know, it's easy enough to do.
I mean, it's kind of hard to beat this hour has 22 minutes or whatever the name of the show is that nails them constantly.
We've got some support in Singapore. I mean, almost every country's Estonia, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Qatar, Israel, one person.
Which is that actually is the one that really surprises me the most that we'd have one listener in Israel.
We may be blocked there for all I know. Could be.
And Portugal, we haven't got much.
You think I'd have more from Brazil since I'm a writer there and fairly well known.
But again, it's in translation. They may be writing all kinds of crap.
You don't know what they're translating it to. No, they I know what they're trying to say.
I know a lot of people. I know a lot of Brazilians and they did one guy said to me once.
And I know the translator. He's a great guy. I've sat down with him and PowerPoint like in 10 minutes.
The guy's fantastic. Let me. What was the.
Oh, here's one that I can't answer. What are the current subscriber numbers?
The word subscriber is a misnomer because we really don't know how many people listen to this show by downloading.
We absolutely just don't know. John, how often and by the way, I don't think anyone knows in podcasting what their actual real numbers are.
There is so much smoke about numbers. You have to guess.
And what would you guess? Well, based on normal direct marketing returns and the kind of money we get, it's hard to say.
I mean, it could be anywhere from fifty thousand to four hundred thousand.
Yeah, that's about the same range. I mean, it's impossible to tell from the downloads and the proxies.
And of course, I'm sure there's a small percentage that is maybe not downloading at all.
Listening only to the stream. There's people get a bit torrent because we only have, you know, in terms of pure subscribers that are paying the five dollars, we only have about fifteen hundred of those people.
We have not pushed everybody. That's a very hard to do the five dollar thing.
Some people have done the 30. Some people say I'm not going to do it till you make it 10. And I haven't put that up. So I mean, that's you know, and then they every time they change their credit card or some number, they get bounced by PayPal.
So they don't have the subscription anymore. I get letters saying, well, I'm sorry, but I didn't realize I haven't had a subscription for six months because PayPal bounced it.
And I got to resubscribe. Sorry. You know, they apologize. And some people get bounced for no good reason.
It's you know, we were not that stable that we need more subscribers for sure. We'll push.
They will be pushing that probably on the show more. OK, I have two more things. One more.
One is I actually would like to know how you prep for the show. I think I already explained what I do. I don't do.
I don't generally what I do is I typically take the articles and things that I found and I print them out and pile them up as they as they come because I get most of my stuff online.
And then I'm always making clips because I have an H2 recorder by the by my side at all times.
And I'm constantly jumping up even with the full family can be watching a movie or something.
And I'm jumping up and stopping the movie, backing it up and then getting a clip.
And then, you know, so I collect a lot of I spend most of my time collecting clips and articles and I don't organize them very well.
I because of the nature of the show, I'm always assuming that it's going to go anywhere because you never know what you know, who's going to bring up a topic that gets interesting in the conversation itself.
So I so I'm probably underprepared in terms of pure preparation, not in terms of the work that goes into getting the clips and all and reading a lot.
But in terms of like thinking about what I'm going to do, I do occasionally will take a bunch of notes early if you watch the or listen to the show.
Maybe a year ago, I would have these notes. I used to ridicule myself for having taken terrible notes.
I can't read. And that was a little more preparation.
But I found that it really hasn't that didn't do anything to improve the show. And it also kind of puts you if I prepare too much, I'll try to dominate the show and which kind of ruins the pace and flow.
And the for me, the only thing I do collect everything because I find if you look at the show notes versus what we talk about in the show, I mean, the show notes are often four times as much information.
And I think that is a valuable part of the show for people to be able to go and research stuff and look at things.
And there is a reasonable segment of the audience that really uses that and appreciates it and looks at it.
Some of the iPhone apps give you good access to it and search ability.
But I'm I'm typically always hoping, just hoping that I can find from a radio production perspective.
Here it is. I'm hoping that there's one or two zingers that I have, either it's a clip or it's a story or something.
And I'll work on that. And I cannot go to bed on a Wednesday night or a Saturday night without knowing I have something.
And I sometimes will try out my my rap on Mickey. I'll say, how does this sound? And usually I get shot down.
Yeah, I refuse to do that. I think that's overdoing it. I get shot down.
Good. So here's a question question that somebody has for you.
What happened to the global blank fund? Adam was supposed to have a big report on it.
The what?
Remember that fund you were talking about that that money that was hidden during the Reagan administration or something?
Oh, you know, yeah, the it was a French name.
Yeah, this is from my Monday. OK, wait, we'd not. Now's there's your answer, Brian.
Yeah, no. Well, I hit so many dead ends and I just don't have the time to spend my life.
Yeah. And it's not going to bring anything.
You know what is there's there's I guess the answer is no one has done enough reporting that at least that I could find that makes it believable, believable or credible enough.
And the only way to really get into it is I'd have to do the investigative work myself.
And that's obviously not going to happen.
OK, hugs a lot asks, what's the actual cost of producing the show?
Most podcasts have zero budgets and still produce shows.
DSC is done free. No, no, it's not.
That's not true. DSC is a part of what the founding and sustaining producers of the No Agenda stream donated their money for.
And we'll have to do another drive.
And what is the actual cost?
What does it cost you to go to work?
You know, there's actual cost. This is actual time.
It's the there's preparation money value for value.
That's the way it works. Time is definitely money.
So is there is there actual, you know, would you like me to charge by the hour?
The amount of time it took me to set up the studio?
That's just one little thing. No, you don't.
Not sure what actually the question to me is vague.
I don't know what it means.
DZ picks asks what iPhone iPad app does Adam use for the Jingles Sound Bank?
I use a program called Sound Byte BYTE.
One word sound bite on the Mac.
It is created made by Black Cat Software.
And I've just kind of been they essentially replicated a cart machine.
They look like cart. You can color them like you would color.
And a cart is a cartridge. That's the old school way of putting Jingles into a jingle machine.
And it's pretty customizable.
And what's nice about it is they released an iPhone app, which I can run on the iPad,
although it kind of sucks because it's it runs in iPhone mode and you kind of enlarge it.
And it doesn't work very well. In fact, today I didn't use it at all.
But normally I do.
And it brings up the screen of your cart deck the way it looks on the computer screen.
And the only if I had it, I would prefer to have an extra monitor instead of having the the iPad run that
because I use two monitors because I have a lot of stuff that I have to monitor.
And really what I need is I need to be able to connect a third screen to my laptop.
I don't think that's an easy thing to do, though.
OK, here's an interesting question.
You mean I should be able to answer. I'm going to have you do it if you can.
I bought a Nokia 71 because you said you like it.
How do I get the stream to work on it? Can we do that?
There is actually in the Nokia Ovi store, which is their version of the app store, there is a just released.
If you go there and it's like create your own Nokia app, I think they're actually calling them apps.
You enter the RSS feed for no agenda and it will create an app for your phone.
And then you can put that on your phone.
It does not do the streaming bit, but you can get streaming programs all over the place for for the Nokia.
But I think it's more interesting just to be able to to make your own app for the for the for the episodes.
So that's how you do that.
And Blackberry, by the way, also was coming out.
They called me again. We're going to do podcasting on the Blackberry.
Can you log in and put in your shows for your company?
And I put in no agenda, daily source code, tech five, top five cranky geeks.
And then I got bored.
So apparently there's some podcasting thing on Blackberry.
So, yeah. Anymore from the chat room?
This is actually Twitter and Twitter.
Let me see if there's one more here. There was one.
Hold on one second. Just go to see who's texting me.
Hold on. Keep guy says the show's gone from a show with no jingles and no talent to a glut of both.
I thought that was kind of unique.
It's gone to a what?
And we have a glut of talent, apparently, on the show.
It's just the same two guys.
Somebody else asks, the show's changed a lot since its inception.
It's the same guy, actually.
Opera Now. Do you prefer the new format?
And obviously we do.
Or we wouldn't be doing it.
And the audience does. More importantly.
The audience does, too.
This show has its...
But I've been broadcasting long enough.
You always have people who say, oh, it was much better then.
Oh, it was better then.
Oh, no. I have the same thing as a writer.
You get this. I have people that still say, when you were writing that column for Infoworld, it was much better.
And I looked at those.
I could go back and look at that old crap and it wasn't.
Generally speaking, things improve.
Yeah, I guess it's just the nature of the beast.
That's the nostalgia or people.
At some point, people either like you more in time because they hear you more, they read you more, or they like you less in time.
And then they associate that with maybe you were doing something different before.
Generally speaking, you weren't.
All right. So wrapping this up.
What's the future?
Well, we got another 200 shows to do.
At least? No, we have...
Well, we have at least until episode 333.
Well, before we do another promotion like the Deuce Club.
Well, we got to thank all the Deuce Club members profusely.
We'll do that over time and on the web page.
And I think, you know, we're not showing any indication of slower growth.
People still like the show.
I think they've done a great thing.
And we've talked about this off the air a lot.
There is so much material for us.
Yeah, I think the show, there's only growth because it just comes automatically.
The media is getting worse.
They're laying everybody off.
The Obama administration is getting worse.
They're lying to the public just straight out.
You know, there's these crazy things that Hila Nolten are doing.
I mean, now that I find that they're behind all the global warming stuff,
you know, we're doomed that that's going to go through
because you can't stop Hila Nolten.
I don't know.
Are you worried that the show will ever get, like, taken off the air?
Not seriously, but it could be.
It could be taken off the air. I don't think...
This, by the way, is a huge benefit of our model
because if you have advertisers, that's the attack mechanism.
That's where you're weakest.
The minute someone doesn't like what you say, look at Imus, you know,
and that's just one example.
The minute you go somewhere that they don't like you,
then the audience, for us it's easy.
The audience like what we do, we get no money.
It's like, OK, we can turn that around in one episode.
We can go, OK, we went off the track there.
We can get it back on.
But when your advertisers pull out, then the network goes nuts,
and then you're out of a job.
You're dead. You're gone. You're history. You're out.
In other words, you don't have control from the get-go.
And that's another reason I think the direct support is the way to go.
It's open source. We don't care.
One of the things that's great about it, I always say,
well, if somebody's bootlegs the show,
puts it on their own website, takes credit for it,
say they produce it, I don't care.
The fact is our messages are embedded in the show,
and it goes with us. We don't need to prove numbers.
We don't say, oh, our numbers from Arbitron came in,
and we got a 3-3, and this is here. Look, Mr. Advertiser.
Give us some more money. We have a better CPM.
We have a certain demo. They have to prove our demo,
and we have to prove the CPM and this and that and the other thing.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Remember those days when you'd wait for the Arbitrons to come out,
and the whole station was like tiptoeing around?
Well, we know the trends are down, so how bad will it be?
Oh, man. I hated that.
Yeah, we don't deal with any of that. We don't want to.
It's ridiculous, and we're completely independent.
We don't have anybody telling us what to do.
We don't have advertisers telling us what to do,
which is the real danger here, and without exception,
the only way we would be taken off the air is if the government
or somebody sued us or the government decided to pull the plug.
Who knows? I mean, but that's not going to happen.
We're below the radar. We're crackpots.
We believe it. We're conspiracy theory people.
Ooh, no. Conspiracy.
And maybe we'll get taxed for being conspiracy theory guys.
Yeah, that's the worst thing that could happen.
Well, I can live with that.
It seems to me that Alex Jones will get taken out before we do,
and that would be a nice warning shot.
He's the canary in the cage, as far as I'm concerned,
even though I don't think he does have to do what we do.
I think he has good guests, but that's a different format.
No, that's another thing.
That's the one question we should at least before we finish.
We cannot do two hours.
Yeah, we've done it again.
Before we finish, people say, well, can I be a guest on your show?
How can we not do this? How can we not do that?
We may do some separate interview shows separately that will be on the stream,
that will be part of some other initiative.
This show is what it is.
It's two guys talking to each other about the current events,
just like you do in the coffee shop with your buddies.
There's no guests.
When you're in the coffee shop, you don't say, man, coming in to have a guest doughnut.
Here's a guest.
You know, so-and-so who just finished a book.
So what was your book about?
This is not the Larry King show.
Right.
Well, anyway, so yeah, we were going to do an hour.
We're moving up now on what are we at?
I have the exact recording here.
We are at 1.45.
Good job.
Thank you again to everyone who supports No Agenda, who supported this show,
The Deuce Club.
Thanks to everyone who's out there making websites and crazy ideas
and promoting us.
It is also your show.
So I could just say thank you.
John, thank you.
Thank you.
It's the highlight of my week.
And it happens twice a week.
And we'll try to do these special third shows every so often.
And yeah, what are we going to talk about?
Well, I think we talked out.
If anything is, I'll bet we could do another two hours.
You know, I was just about to say, not a problem.
And our spouses wonder why we don't talk to them at night.
I've got nothing to say to you.
That's the problem right there.
I'm all talked out, baby.
We only have so many words in them.
Exactly.
All right, so on Thursday, we'll be back.
Hope you all enjoyed this special 200.5 episode of No Agenda, the backstage look.
I think we've answered just about everything.
And if not, then, yeah, we'll have topics for another one of these shows.
Yeah.
And I am glad we're winding up right on time so I can watch Twit.
I love Twit.
I love watching it.
Yeah, why don't you go do that?
Yeah.
I wish Leo would have me on.
Well, that's not going to happen.
I know.
That's upsetting to me.
So, OK.
Well, we'll start Thursday.
We got more stuff coming up.
Obviously, it's going to be the same crap coming out of Washington and the crazy news
stories.
And we're going to see what this blowout, this oil thing, we'll be talking about that
for the next month or two.
And trains.
And trains, yeah, the trains thing.
Coming to you from Gitmo Nation West from the Hilltop Watchtower Crackpot Command Center
in the People's Republic of Southern California.
In the morning, I'm Adam Curry.
And from Northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak.
See you again on Thursday, early morning service right here on No Agenda.