Understanding No Agenda

00:00 So, yeah, but you know we still have to start, you know, the way that what people never hear on the show. Oh yeah, yeah, whatever that means, hit it. Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak. It's Thursday, July 12, 2012, time for a media assassination of the No Agenda Show, episode 425. This is No Agenda. Pretending to So finally people on the podcast heard hit it that was my that was my hope. Don't they hear hit it normally? No, thanks for listening to the show

00:51 Usually starts off with me saying something stupid that you found in the show and then you run run the yeah, yeah, believe me It's not hard to find that So we're doing show 200.6. Yeah, which is also show 425. Mm-hmm, which is ironic which is actually show 200.5 with addendum. Yes, and So, what we're going to do for anyone listening, we're going to play a show, 204, 205 was an introductory show that we gave to people that were members of the Deuce Club. And we are going to play, not the whole thing because there's some stuff in there that just was, is not important. So we took a little chunk out and we do some questions and answers and we're going to do some questions. We'll interrupt it right in the middle and

01:37 We're gonna talk about how the show has changed since our analysis which was almost two years ago. Yes, was it really two years? Yeah, I guess it was two years ago. What was the date on that actually? Did you look at that? Because I got the... I had the date. I have it on the other computer. It's like July 2009 or 10 or something like that. So for anyone who's been pointed to this by someone else saying, well, if you want to know what these guys are all about, then you need to listen to this show, which I hope it'll work for you. Well, maybe we can. I took a lot of notes on the show, on the 200.5 show, so we can talk about what's changed and a lot of things have changed. It was especially the noise factor.

02:27 Are you complaining about something? It was showing shows no easier than it's ever been. May 17th, 2010. Yeah. So more than two years ago. Yeah, you're a little over. Yeah, wow, okay. Alright, so we're gonna play that because it does explain a lot about the history of the show, why it's so hard for people who just give it a one-off casual listen to get into it immediately because there is definitely some, you know, stuff like jingles and some Top 40 radio type stuff which seems a little bit out of place. What we do, how we do it, and it definitely needs updating because a lot has changed in my life since May 17th, 2010.

03:08 Think you for you probably nothing has changed. It's just no Sam's got the same sitting in the same chair All right, so we'll be back No, no skipping ahead now. You'll enjoy listening to it again. Yeah, we'll be back right in the middle of it Yep, here is no agenda episode 200 point five Adam Curry John C. Dvorak It's May 16 2010 time for your get my nation media assassination episode 200 point five 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. Dvorek. It's Crackpot and Buzzkill. In the morning. We still get to say in the morning.

04:03 Yeah, definitely. In the morning never goes away. You know, the thing is we should tell people, 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 that we actually had a 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,

04:40 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 I sent out a message on Twitter to get some questions and we also got a couple 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,

05:18 Actually, I used to be a typesetter part-time when I was in college. See, it 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 unhirable by mainstream media. In fact the last... Especially after you did that CFTC 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. uh... but in the last radio station i was on which was around the time we started the show actually in fact no you were doing this that show while we're doing this show here but i think we started this show yeah but i don't we've done a couple like a week or two and then we started doing this show right i was doing that first was not right now i think you were fired during the i was fired during a we were doing no agenda when i was fired by only just started that show yeah i know i think we did for about a month

06:23 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. 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 from stop, 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.

07:05 But yeah, I do remember that but the personality well 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 that we in there now at the end there we had we had a pretty good setup it sounded okay But this is the best one I have to say this is definitely the best one so now we met in At, I guess, where did we meet, John? Was I in Cranky Geeks? Tangents.com on Twitter asked the question. DeVril, Dvorak and Curry have a unique relationship. How did you guys meet? And did you hit it off right away? I'll tell you something. I found in my crap that arrived from the UK, I found a videotape

07:52 of the CNET pilots where we actually first met for the very first time although I think that was in 1993 three or four maybe I think was three yeah, and I and I'm gonna get one of those VHS to DVR thingies to transcode all of this stuff, but this was when CNET did not have a website in fact I registered CNET.com 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 alright, they paid me like 20 grand to do that pilot

08:28 uh... which was nice and you were doing kind of a mclaughlin group type roundtable as the pilot for that show yeah they died that that's kinda interesting because we've seen that they actually uh... 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 actually be asked by never wanted to work for cnet uh... but i did like the idea of uh... of watching kevin wendell at work was they brought him and i was a little more he was a 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. Early days. Early days. I don't remember that.

09:07 whatever the case was he was a slick operator it was fun to watch him work and uh... but they first one of the old report to be that mclaughlin guy and leo wanted to do it uh... badly he was always wanted that that sort of gig and because buskers very serious and to know this and that hence but they had me do it uh... but did that never got off the ground it just wasn't gonna work and then so then they gave me some other job uh... being a uh... but uh... kind of a clown ish co-host With the 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 That was an error. Well who knows what you know I was like well. Yeah, I know it's a crapshoot. I did the same thing I screwed up

09:56 I said, how many shares outstanding? Well, it's vague, right? I was like, you know what? I got a pretty good thing here at MTV. I'm good. So anyway, so we met in 93 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 papers, I think it was a Dutch story somewhere. And it had a picture of you and you're some superstar in Holland and it was just unbelievable. So how did this guy make so much money? And so then you showed up in town again and so then we just kind of forced myself on you. But wasn't it a... Yes, and that was nice. But wasn't it a... Wasn't I on Cranky Geeks when we connected?

10:43 No, I think we met up first and then I put you on Cranky Geeks. Well, where the hell was it, John? Because... Well, we did an email exchange and I said, let's go have lunch or something. We had our lunch, our initial re-meeting lunch at the Fringal and we talked about, you know, getting a daily news show, the Tech 5 thing, ideas like that. And then we went and had a big meeting with Ron in the office. Yeah, Ron Blum. 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 in Gmail? Do you do date 2007? I don't know. Anyway, that's the basically the story and then we

11:32 We, uh, I don't know, but then we, I just, we just kind of naturally got along. We 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, they're, 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 they go off their separate ways But instead of going off our separate way since we were both the game at MeVeo We decided to start doing a show and that now it's debatable is that you know how it got named when we started I think I came up with a name

12:18 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, I mean 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. And it was just like a casual conversation. Yeah, just like a conversation. Yeah. And this was, in my opinion,

13:13 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 had with my wife and I always felt that a good conversational show where there's not a lot of uh... rehearsal or per preparation which is guys who just talking about stuff that they know a lot about and coincidentally because the two of us are so extremely well-traveled and i mean pretty much been everywhere and and uh... and observant because you know we're generally floating around looking at stuff uh... it turns out we have a enough life experience to uh...

13:51 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 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.

14:28 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 we'll listen to some of the... Because I think I was... 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 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

15:07 mainly because of my natural cynicism. I took a test, it was a computer software program some years ago, I've always found it fascinating, that was a career guidance, it was almost like a very elaborate computer test. You'd answer a million questions, it was like an MMPI or Minnesota Multi-Faculty 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 to determine 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. Critic. Really?

15:50 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 reproduce it 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.

16:48 There was some reason because I think we're starting the show is starting to get long get long. Yeah, we said well Why don't we why don't we do two show 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 and But I think we were going for a good year there just on one show. We probably went a year building an audience and we had kind of a weird audience because they were really your fans separate from my fans and my fans would say you should do the show by yourself, you should get rid of Curry. and I give that motherfucker two to the head, man. We don't need that bastard. And I can't believe that you would 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 guy talking solid. By the way, I have never... No conversation, no pace and flow. I have 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 and I've seen it here and there. I've never seen it.

17:50 I'm never seen it nice then well, then your fans are less less style yeah, I style 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 you know and I know I am and I've grew up in radio television was more like a sidetrack for me. I never felt I Too tall I'm too lanky. I'm too geeky I have Tourette's there's 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 no You gotta have a huge not not metaphorically speaking but physically a huge head that makes you successful on TV We've already established that

18:36 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 ramp uh... more than that is theater of the mind is what i like about it right and you can also be right with you in my part which uh... is extremely valuable uh... and i mean my first broadcasting uh... but training was in reiwa to foothill college for a while and when i was on the radio station

19:22 and I just loved it. I produced a radio play and I did a lot of radio. I got a third class license which you had to have at one time. 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 um, Silicon spin at a tech TV. Uh, sound sound is always forgotten on television. Don't get me. Yes. And so, but as, but I made a big stink about it because it sounded so bad and, and two of the sound engineers that were working there were, 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, and, and they weren't doing notching or anything. Right. And so the sound, it sounded like a cheap ass production.

20:18 Now the thing that's interesting is that MIT during the Negroponte era when they had the media lab, they had studied this to death and they had done 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 5 channel. They watch longer. No, it's not just that. When they do an analysis, they claim the picture's better. That's fantastic Yeah, makes sense and 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 okay. 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 their record button pushed Oh, yes, I do

21:15 So, you know we have compression I put noise gates on because I I don't want to heat when I'm when either I'm talking or where there's 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 rustling of papers and that's a to me an important part of our sound and I love it 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, it does work, and we have a moment of silence every so often

22:03 But anyway, so the two of us are kind of have a, we have amenable personalities. So we're complementary. We're not, you know, people say, well, you work because you're the opposite. No, we're hardly the opposite. No, not at all. We're just complementary. We have different kind of needs and issues, perspectives, but they're not opposite they're just different and it's all worked out so we have a show that works very rare to do you know these kind of partnership somebody else asked the question uh... we go to this one uh... who is the star of the show and of course that's would be me exactly right on

22:48 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. Like, nah, it'll never work on Skype. We'll never hit that at the same moment. No, but that would have been funny on stage. So, um, 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 the right to add a produces the show so he picks up uh... the dominant side of the production because he's the one who hits the buttons it says in the morning he's the one who opens the show cuz he's got all that gear but it's uh... it's just happens to be what you have to do if you're producing because if i was producing a you know i thought in the clips on my pet story and i think myself but so it's not somebody has to produce you can have to producers now uh... suck but

23:37 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, it used to be, in fact we used to say the show that has, 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 the kind of guy, and 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 lit you know as 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 it's documentaries. It's different shows that he's seen and you handed me a copy of the family guy and

24:39 with the episode Weenie and the Butt. And that really got the g- 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 would be fun- that's also where In the Morning came from by the way. And it's such a take off 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. It's two minutes this. Oh, that's the Hulu pre-roll. Watch your favorites anytime for free. Hulu. Hey everybody, it's Weenie and the Butt here live at the Quahog Airshow. 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 no funny.

25:31 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 bot! Weenie and the bot! Cool weekends in the morning, 97.1 FM. Cool weekends in the morning with Weenie and the bot. WQHG, 97.1. 97.1! Wee-wee-wee-wee at the Butt! In the morning, cool weekends, FM. Wee-dee! Wee-dee! And the Butt! And welcome back! Uh, excuse me, I-I gotta find a lost kid. Can I use your mic? That's what she said! Whoa! You got butt-slam! And the- Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! Listen, I could really use a hand here. That's what he said! Butt-slam!

26:14 That's Manic Monkey on 97.1. 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, uh, 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, okay, we've got our first contestant. Let's hear Weenie's catchphrase. Dan O'Farney.

26:54 I think we have a wiener! And that's Dicky the Punchline Donkey on 97.1. Dicky the Punchline Donkey on Cool 97.1. Cool Weekends. On the radio. In the morning! FM. Cool. WQHG! Cool Weekends. In the morning. On 97.1. 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 and the 90s. Radio was absolutely in the morning. Zero content. All filler. And I used to hate it. We'd have to do liner cards. Here read this hit the jingle.

27:43 All right, 100.1 dollars 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 ask all these questions, it's really an evolution. Yeah. There's no meeting. We don't have meetings, we don't read documents. No, we, in fact, if there's a rule We generally agree not to talk about what we're gonna talk about because we know that what'll happen is we'll start talking about it and then we bring it up on the show and then It'll always suck. There's like It's like it's been rehearsed. Yeah, there's no tension there right and you know, so So anyway, so this evolved but what happened with the then of course you rented it Jeff Smith

28:31 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 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. So we have a bunch of these things which we use and now we had a couple questions. By the way, that's an old radio trick for a segue. It's really

29:15 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. He kept talking. It was way at least two, three minutes overdue to stop it. And I told him to play the Adam Curry's Pet Peeve of the Day jingle, which I knew would transition. It would, you know, stop him in his tracks. 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.

29:57 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 or you're planning more changes? The show just evolves 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 find something, and by the way we'll get into this, but a lot of people send me stuff. That's how I get a lot of good information. Either that's good or I'll find something else that is good that relates to it. I'm thinking, ah man, I'm going to blow John away with this. Ah, 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.

30:44 Yeah, there's that and there's the other time they did 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 they 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 and 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 sometime we might send each other a link from time to time and and even then usually the link doesn't get discussed because I always saw well, whatever, you know is over but

31:35 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 the most fun is when we rag on mainstream media and pull it apart and simultaneously open people's eyes as to what's really going on on television. You know, that may have been triggered by the weenie in the bud episode of The Family Guy because once we started mocking that model, we started looking at the media bitching about it generally on a higher plane I believe 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.

32:22 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's about. And watch 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

31:35 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 the most fun is when we rag on mainstream media and pull it apart and simultaneously open people's eyes as to what's really going on on television. You know, that may have been triggered by the weenie in the bud episode of The Family Guy because once we started mocking that model, we started looking at the media bitching about it generally on a higher plane I believe 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.

32:22 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's about. And watch 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

33:17 I even recall you saying, okay, 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 every single day, here's my system. 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

34:06 investigation then you know I sit down and I start to start to Assemble everything into a huge outline of stuff and then I have to read everything, you know look at all the YouTube clips and in the meantime whenever I can without Destroying my relationship. I'm 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...

34:43 Just I love it so much it 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.

35:32 And they talk to him for an hour or more, usually an hour, and it's like a whole hour and it's basically 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. Yeah, and what's nice about that is 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, 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 the guys from the Muppets.

36:25 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 were 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 was a lot of moments and we still discuss wine and food occasionally when it comes up. But instead of sitting around talking about our meal, that people can live vicariously through our steaks and cabernet, that pretty much kind of just went by the wayside. The audience also drove that and 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

37:27 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, 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 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 that the people that really got jacked up and the ones that are

38:08 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 I'm being led astray. 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 the only reason 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 had a little more than I did, because I've always felt there was a model

39:05 of direct support. And I was thinking about this, I have to keep thinking of different arguments because you know 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

39:52 We found about you know them admitting that there's no under 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. Okay, 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.

40:40 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 were like, wow, you know Monsanto sponsors this, Archer Daniel Midland sponsors that and we're like, well okay, so how about the objective reporting about those companies? Well, there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot of it. And I think a lot of people, this is maybe how it really started John and I'm just vague on it but, is people started 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 the problem with answering questions like this,

41:21 We don't do it. We're brain dead. Yeah, we're idiots. No, it's 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 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.

42:19 I would love to do nothing else but this. I enjoy it so much. 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 admired the fact that you can get, if you give people what they want, You know, essentially, 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 could see it in real time. You can see if we're doing the right thing, if we're doing a good job. uh... it directly it's not as if that is value for value you can't go off the deep and we can turn the show into like an analysis of the sixties music and that's all we talk about for two hours and expect to get any money from anyone so we're only did doing it at the same time we don't obviously don't want to uh... be pushed around by the audience we have to lead them uh... as a as opposed to just doing whatever they want

43:16 So you have to have some leadership. This is like a company that 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 gonna get a pushback saying, no, 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 I have to spend $100 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, there's this 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. It's 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.

44:19 And then I started thinking about... We're also competing with radio, but you know radio you get 22 minutes an hour of action, well less. Radio is terrible. 17 minutes of programming and 13 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 do this production, well it costs a lot of money to make a movie. What about a novel? Novels are 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 already paid your money, although of course unlike our show, the book you pay in advance for the book.

45:02 and you pay in advance 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. Books are user-supported. There's no ads in a book. 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 where the DVR is such a godsend. No, but I mean just even as a creative as a creator of content I'm like, oh, you know, I got it. I got it hit the commercial break. I gotta wait for the commercial. Yeah, no, they're terrible You got us 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 and the president and

45:55 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 Yeah, 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 and but once you're over that that is not over pretty quickly as easy sailing as like a i a i had a little bit i had some for pushback from the family so i got i want to say who but they know who they are and i don't know how you can you bring yourself to begging for money for this how can you do that is beneath you can she 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 is not about the product

46:48 it just ruins the product. I mean there's nobody and the thing is that most the people have not we've taken it to you 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 is because it gets us closer to the audience was 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 makes you feel more honest. And there's another thing we did, which I know was my initiative, and I think it helped us in a number of ways, is we decided to stream it live when we do the show. And that did a number of things. One, it gave, at least me, I appreciate the instant feedback loop of the chatroom. Now, I can't watch it all the time, but sometimes a punchline will come through, and they're always on a 20, 5-second delay, so it's interesting how that works.

47:45 But a punchline will come through or someone might drop a link in there. But I personally, 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, although that's streamed live as well now. I just want it live, live, live because then you can leave all the warts in there and 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, 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, I get up at the same 6.30,

48:35 I get up and from then on out it's no agenda. Sunday morning, 6.30, I get up, from then on out it's no agenda. Yeah, I know I had the same thing. Occasionally we've had to move the show to Wednesday night. We haven't had that in a long time. No, but we're going to have it next month because I have a travel thing that's interrupting both shows. Which brings me to... 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

49:23 And I believe me, I haven't seen anything close and there may be some religious programming that I'm not aware of. But nobody doing podcasting, professional level, good quality podcasting as we're doing, has taken it serious. We are seriously, you know, we have programs, we came up 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. That's bullshit. 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 gonna be a lot better. The product you're gonna get's a lot better if you get anything out of it, you get something out of it, you know, contribute. I mean, just the way, this is 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

50:16 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. There has to be a moment where... And entertainment comes 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? I remember somebody sent us a link, said well there's a couple 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 not to have our perspectives but they did a fairly decent job and it was so dull.

51:00 they had no it was just like this academic drew you can't get you know it it's just that the modern audience is the modern audience and in 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 are the entertainment Well, also, and I've only had this one... Well, and my humor, of course. Yes, 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.

51:46 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. I'll give you ten years at least. And you're afraid that I'm going to go crazy and leave Mickey and go off the deep end. I mean, I know what your fear is. That's my 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. Hey! 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 when we're done with it. Next time maybe we can do something more for them. This show is the first one in 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?

52:47 I think, and this is not going to sound good, because it makes you sound... Well, you'll see. Let them eat cake. No, no, I think honestly believe that we're doing a serious public service. to bring people, generally people that are listening to the show. I've always believed this, even when I'm a writer, people always say, well, what do you, 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 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

53:34 and they're working in a cubicle and 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, a phrase I hate. But it's 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 well that guy said something interesting, well she has an interesting take on stuff. And for me it's that, maybe it's just that.

54:28 This is for you. No, 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 writing off of fame and fortune which in itself is interesting to have a perspective from from that angle and uh... but this i love this i'd i'd so love it and people say man you work really hard to do a lot and we have house guests and the like my god and so is on a thing is editing anys recording stuff is i'd love it and it's not it doesn't even feel like work i'd love this i'd love what we do i'd love what i do but and that's also completely selfish but to get you laid they know they're good actually good uh... works generally are selfish at some level because you are

55:24 you know if you think you're helping somebody sometimes it's selfish to get a good feeling from it 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 little way before you do that since you brought can abroad upon a to bring in Simon Smith's question from Twitter which is when you we offer relationship advice on the 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, it puts some people off.

56:05 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 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 and uh... the thirties of the seventies uh... big who lots of workers and so we're going to we're going into a new cycle of hookers In the you probably were starting around 2012. Let me put it this way. 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

57:08 So now what was your right now? What was the second one? People say well I try to help people listen to this show But then they hear the opening and the whole in the morning thing and I think it's some BS Top 40, you know weenie-in-the-butt show and then they don't listen And I 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 then then you can get kind of sucked in so No, that's also a mask. That's probably important. Can 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 Kareem Dabour act. Let's listen to the show. And they hear this whole in the morning bit and like, no, that can't be anything.

57:52 definitely puts it puts people are maybe echelon you know echelon is is that i show and the like all this can't be a better way to be just this is what you said the guy goes into a means of these guys are there there's a burst of these two guys and the gas is really well let me hear what did let me hear the show and then they start playing it with their opening Get the hell out of my office you crackpot. 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 crackpot because it is the ultimate shield. The ultimate. Because some of the stuff we say, and I think we get pretty close to the truth on a lot of issues, I would rather people say, ah, he's just a conspiracy theorist, he's just a crackpot, because that will save me from getting killed.

58:45 We've talked about this. I think it's a good theory. And a likable theory. We shot to track down the guy who coined crackpot and buzzkill. It was an email I got. We mentioned on the next show, we'd mentioned it and you thought it was great to be called the crackpot. Yeah, I love it. And so then our artwork started to have a crackpot 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 openness and the freedom and the support through donations is we don't own anything.

59:25 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 Rance ringtones Making trance music out of it, but we also have people who create things So a lot of our jingles by the way, we could use a lot more and we'd 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 uh... artwork and we have two main artists uh... saran the assurance or paul t and they didn't know these guys have jobs they do so what it would know is what they do and uh... and they they spend their time they could they create artwork for us for most every single show now there's no agenda art dot com where people can drop art we've used to art from different artists if anything we had to after every show people should know we have a discussion so the first thing we say is what we think of the show

1:00:29 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. Ha! So we talk about that. And then we talk about what we'll say what what do we call the show so 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 have one guy put off over the other guy because they both sent in something great. That's a hard choice sometimes. Yeah, 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

1:01:28 from these guys and then you know Asher set up his own t-shirt shop and through I don't know what mechanism and you know we helped him out. Noagendershuff.com 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 trademarked. Somebody came up with an email the other day that said, I think I got a good promotional idea. Why don't you trademark in the morning and then every time you hear anybody saying it on any show whatsoever, send them a cease and desist order and then they'll promote you and you'll get free publicity. Although funny. It's actually a funny idea but it's not our model at all. It sounds like work and that's one thing we hate.

1:02:06 We don't want to do any work. Yeah, we actually don't want to do anything. We just want to do this show. We don't want to have any extra work. We don't want to do any extra promotion stuff that involves leaving a computer. Yeah, and I had these other guys, the guys at Mevio, come up to me. That's one of the things that's changed. We're back live as it were. We have exuded from show 200.5 and now we're back in the show 425. Yes, indeed. In retrospect, if anyone wants to know. And I think the shut up slave thing gave it away. Well there's a lot of stuff that is new jingle wise, obviously. And by the way, people can find these if you go to nashownotes.com

1:02:54 There is a, the top link is all the NOAgenda sites, I think. That's what it's called and you tap on that you'll find an actual link to all the jingles which is updated on the fly so it's automatically updated on that website if you're looking for any of the stuff that we used being part of our open source model as you heard. And you can also go to the wiki page, no agenda wiki pages which we usually don't mention that much but it's... Why are you sending people there? It's not quite up to full... quite contemporary but it's got enough stuff that it's I think a good intro to the show. I tell people to go there. Really? This is like, really you tell people to go there? Oh yeah, for the background. I see influences. Okay, that makes sense. But what I'm missing here is our height.

1:03:44 Let me see. I know we bitch and moan. No, actually, actually, no, no. If you click through to my wiki page, height 5'17", I love it. Oh, somebody's up. You have a fan. You are 5'13 on your website, on your wiki page. That's cool. We do want to remind people by the way that we have we don't we don't we're not thanking anybody We're gonna thank all their executive producers and associate executive producers when Adam gets back from his wedding, which will be the Sunday What is the date on that? Next live show that yeah, good question. Hold on a second. No, so We the wedding is on Monday

1:04:28 And then we fly back on Wednesday July 18th and Thursday I'll be back in the saddle so it'll be so the 19th will be the yeah one short We want to remind people that just because we're doing we're doing we actually doing this show above and beyond the call of duty We just take off the week but we want to remind people that we still need support because the same bills come up every And the same problems come up that require some financing. So please go to Dvorak.org. Listening to, well let me kick off with the first question. We asked people to send in emails to either John or myself or both of us and we were very specific about how to address your email, what you had to put in the subject line.

1:05:13 And not everyone did it so if you didn't know why you got to that three guys did it on mine everyone else has questions show question I got a show 200.6. You know yeah, I got the show question pound hashtag pound number sign pound second half Simple no one can do it, but Elliot Gardner asked right off the back right off the bat two questions I'll do them out of order question two first. Why did you choose Dvorak dot org slash na? Well, when we started off I quickly put up a site to collect some sponsor, not sponsorships but producer donations and contributions. And I have this access to my own site so I just put it there.

1:05:58 And it became branding. It was easy. And then I was... We've had other alternative sites. And then somebody came up with this damn jingle. Which became like it stuck me with this... I mean we cannot leave... Because the jingle is so good. Play it. And people have said, oh, it's stuck in my brain, I have to go there. So we've kept it as kind of just a throwback. Of course it's not the easiest spelling thing to remember. Right, Dvorak is hard to spell. It would be better if we did something. It's kind of one of those, it's kind of like too late now. I do have to say, listening to show 200.5 there,

1:06:42 So a lot of big things changed in my life since we did that show. The number one thing is I left my day job, I left my paycheck since then and have been living solely off of my half of the no agenda support that we get from our producers, executive producers and our monthly donors. That that of course led immediately to me moving out of the state of California to the cheaper state of Texas wisely. Yeah Because it was a little the variables are a bit too much to be to be perfectly honest You know, you use no way, no way you can live in California doing this, you know, and then think, well, maybe I'll make rent this month. Maybe I'll make the damn water bill, electricity bill, which is really the worst. And the personal income tax. And percent off the top. Yeah. Which is going to 13.5 or whatever. Yeah. So all of that was. And besides the fact that we really, you know, after our Hot Pockets tour,

1:07:42 Which was another another new initiative that took place after show 200.5 You know we wound up in Austin saying well wow you know this this is so much nicer as a place to live but really I mean I dad there's just financially it made a lot of sense and and I think it's also in many ways helped the show By being in a different milieu. Yeah, no, you have to be. I think that's important that the two of us are not right, you know, living in the same building kind of thing. Well, also not just not living in the same building, but you know, what kind of culture does Hollywood give you really? I mean, it's just, you know, yeah, you might have a few extra celebrity show business like stories, but there's no, it's otherwise. Who needs it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh,

1:08:31 So that's one of the main things. The other main thing is I was going through this explaining how I did my show prep. Wow, that has changed dramatically in two years time. It went from tagging messages in Gmail Which was a good idea at the time to and yeah, I think we have a pretty kick-ass system You know, we have show notes that are very expanded. We've got the no agenda news network. No agenda news network calm Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff that supports the show which a lot of people contribute to actually a lot of and I'd like to thank those producers who are continuously dropping in interesting story leads from around the world, which is really the critical

1:09:17 the critical nature of what the network does because you can start to see the similarities between a story that's being posted from Australia to Gitmo Nation Deutschland to something that's happening in the in the in the States and then you can really you get an overview if you will of how we're being managed as human resources Yeah, no, I think it's a we were our audience is great And if it wasn't for the audience and the producers we the show we wouldn't have a show I mean obviously wouldn't have a show, but I mean we really wouldn't have a show well Also, the length of the show has changed. I think it when we were doing 200.5. We were trying to stick to an hour and a half and would usually go over and these days were never shy of two and a half hours which we do twice a week and

1:10:07 Right, which is five hours a week, which is I think valuable to commuters because a typical commute is about a half hour. You can do the whole show, the whole two shows in a week of driving. And a lot of people, I still believe most of our audience are commuters. Well, interestingly, where did you listen to 200.5? I listened to it on the computer. Oh, I listened to it in the car. I tried to really do it. Well, I had to do it on a computer for one reason. I wanted to take notes on it. And I do have some notes. Okay. You know, opening jingle, we make it look easy. That was something in there. A lot of self-reflection, which is, some of it's gone away. We did talk about the No Agenda name, but we don't really know the absolute perfect genesis.

1:10:53 Noise gate silence there. I noticed this you mentioned about it about the noise gate We had and then you said we have a moment of silence every so often you're talking about the noise gate And I put my note says missed get egg Yes, when you said we have a moment of silence. I sure said yeah after that last joke you know there's just opportunities in the yeah, I also I also heard you know in comparison You know we've we've Gelled even more as a team Because you know the the oh here it comes the fact of the blather is that this is on Skype so there's a delay.

1:11:32 And at that point, we know we're pretty well accustomed to it. But you know, when when there's something when John says something and I got to hit a button or if we're going back and forth in a dialogue, there is a delay to be reckoned with. So not stepping on each other all the time. And I think we're doing better. You tend to hit the cues pretty well, except as I've noticed that over the last couple of weeks with this wedding hanging over your head. Oh, it's gotten worse. And it's the wedding this is the problem. This is this is like sports you know if you have the emotional state of the of the participants really makes a difference in the quality of the timing mostly the show

1:12:17 In other notes, I've also noticed I put down no longer handing you DVDs. You made some freedom of that. Oh yeah, that's a good point. You used to hand me DVD. Well, we used to... Well, I had just left San Francisco at that point. or not long before. So we kind of saw each other, which of course also plays into the reason why, you know, there's where there was less and less food and wine talk of us having a dinner, a meal together and talking about it. There's none because we virtually have not seen each other for, I've seen you maybe once in two years in person, twice, twice, maybe. Right. And I never managed, you didn't stay in Los Angeles long enough for me to get down there.

1:13:03 And, in other words, you're only there for two years. And I also noticed the three shows a week talk disappeared. Well, yeah, because we're covering... We're doing three shows a week in two shows, we're doing five hours. We were talking three shows a week, we're doing an hour and a half, and it would have been an hour and a half, three hours, 4.5 hours. We actually do more. We do not clue each other so much on C-SPAN like we used to and you mentioned that on the 200.5 where I'd send you an email or a text message, hey go turn on C-SPAN right now, blah blah blah. We don't do that. We stop doing that. I read your columns, most of them. I see your

1:13:52 The X3 show I don't catch all the time. I have the RSS feed for Dvorak.org. Do you ever follow any of what I'm tweeting or linking to? I follow everything you tweet. Really? Yeah. But you don't follow... Actually, I go on Twitter about four times a day. Yeah, I've seen you active. You don't how about knowage in the news network are you there? I go on it every so when I remember to go on it for some reason I've not made a habit. I think it's a terrific resource though because every time I go on it There's a lot of good stuff, but I fear you're gonna pick the you know cherry pick it anyway So that's true, and I'd rather be kind of fun to get caught by surprise also The production values of the show I think have improved a little bit did you get some outstanding well-produced one of the best produced shows I think we deserve an award or you do and

1:14:43 Paul T and Randy Asher are gone. Yeah, that was gonna I had that written down to is like There's a lot of names that I do recognize, but there's some names that are definitely out And it's okay. I mean, and I hope they're listening. I have no idea We just haven't heard they both have real jobs now and they were doing the art when they were between work I believe but we have a list so many good artists that you know It's they're missed but you know, they're not completely missed and we have and I have to say, you know We we've we started for the past month or so, which is really way too late But now I'm just writing it down and you know, therefore it's harder for me to forget that

1:15:20 To thank the artists as a credit on the show, but we're thanking the artist who did the previous episodes work because they are really the artists are the unsung heroes and And this is your theory how important the art is. I mean it really is incredibly important Particularly if you look at iTunes, a lot of people listen to the show on iTunes or on their iPhone or some kind of iOS device. It just looks beautiful. You look down on artists... Art adds a dimensionality to everything and I think it's very important. And artists, the reason we get the art the way we do, we get so much of it because most artists, people with the soul of an artist, they tend to appreciate being appreciated.

1:16:03 Because nobody appreciates them, generally speaking. What do you do? Oh, you do the... You know, nobody realizes how important it is. Seriously, I mean, it's shameful, shameful I say. One question that came in quite a bit is What is your problem with the chat room? Me? Yeah, a lot of people wanted to know. Why is John such a dick about the chat room? I think I'm paraphrasing here, but I think that's the general consensus of the question. Think is a distraction for me personally I think it should be dogged, and I'm glad you do it because the chat room is a good feedback mechanism It's kind of like the Greek chorus You know somebody's in the background saying stuff that you need to hear and somebody needs to listen But I don't think we both need to be listening because it's very distracting and when I'm on Leo show I'm on the chat. I'm in the chat room and often I get a loose a complete

1:17:02 lose myself into the chat room and and then at the chat room that we have is a mean spirited group and not a mean spirit no that's not true maybe I'm wrong I should go back revisit and I got kicked out one that's the there it is ladies and gentlemen he got kicked out that's the problem That's from my own chair it is that's the problem and I just want to take the opportunity to thank mr. Oil sir get most slave and void zero who are always keeping I mean the chat room that's never gone down as far as I know They also keep the stream going and that is all highly appreciated what those guys do for us a couple other things

1:17:48 Oh, let's see. We have some failed efforts we should probably mention once in a while. Nap for Humanity was one of them that came and went. The Red Book is new. Oh, that's right. It is new. You're right. The Red Book is new and the Red Book is real. We still don't... you know, the guy who told me... it was one of our listeners, our producers that gave us Crackpot and Buzzkill and it was like way early. And I, because it was so long ago and I have so much email in my archives I can't find the reference to it. I don't even remember who did that first. Yeah, it was a guy I wrote in and I brought it up on the show and we thought it was hilarious and then the artist immediately put it up and that was the rest of the history. It's the template now, yeah.

1:18:30 Here Adam given the technology background of both you and John would you guys ever consider a tech podcast? I miss John's cranky geeks and would gladly be a founding producer for a weekly tech show Twitter's great But you guys are better and then that's not I'm not reading this out gloating. Um, I think it's a valid question and before you answer I would say that I, we rarely bring up tech, or I rarely bring up tech related discussions because I know typically that you're going to be on, you know, Twit two to three times out of the month. And, you know, I don't want, you know, I don't want to detract from what you're doing there.

1:19:09 But sometimes we do bring something up if it's kind of relevant, but I think most of it just doesn't really matter to everyone's life. That's not to say that I wouldn't love doing that with you. I just don't know if we could actually do it. I have a feeling something would suck if we did another show. Yeah, I agree. I think what we, people, if they like what we're doing with this show, which is very unique, very unique, nobody really is doing anything quite like this. The tech thing, everybody's doing one. And it's like, oh, let's jump in on the tech thing and do another tech show. And it's like, ah, I'm not, you know, I've done tech shows. I'll do some more tech, you know, some more video tech shows maybe. I mean, the X3 show's over. Generation X3's still going on, but that's not even tech anymore. So essentially the only tech show I do, I write about tech every day. I don't really need to be doing more tech than I do

1:20:07 And it's not that enjoyable and it's not that interesting. What we're doing is extremely unique and often fascinating. And also, yeah. You know, tech is what it is. It's tech, you know, Intel's got a new chip. Oh, stop the presses. And also another thing is that, you know, and we've always adhered to this model, which, you know, we've discussed many times is We really try to converse as little as possible and that's not even email, certainly no phone calls at all in between shows. And even before we hit the record button on today's show, we're like, yeah, so it's Saturday, just so you know, tomorrow is Sunday when we're doing the actual episode 424. We're like, it's going to fuck up tomorrow's show.

1:20:51 Because you just know it isn't the rhythms off. It's like now we've already we're talking to each other. Yeah, but you're also Packing to go to Holland to get married tomorrow. We're gonna do a show with that hanging over your head I have the automatic self packing suitcase that part is good But I there were like I was out all day running errands believe me of course. Yeah. Yeah, it's a no It's what it is, but you know what I'm happy. I'm marrying the woman I love come on Give me a break and by the way when discussed pre discussing the show With Miss Mickey which I often do I'll try I'll try like I couldn't do this in my previous life. With Miss Mickey, I could say, let me run this by you, see what you think. And if she starts to roll her eyes or, okay, she was very specific. The only thing she really wanted to convey is that she really, really loves you. She means it. And she's bummed that you're not at the wedding. And I told her, did you tell her that you told me not to go? It's exactly what I said. I said, I don't go as a pain in the ass. I didn't tell her how adamantly you agreed.

1:21:55 I was ready to go In fact, you said, oh yeah man, you know how many times I've canceled a trip? You went into this whole thing about how you've canceled trips like as you were on the way to the airport. Come on. Come on. That's true. I will cancel a trip on the way to the airport. Molly Wood's coming though. I've done it so many times. When, you know, Mimi will say, well, I got to get out of here and then I'd say, screw it, I'm not going, I'm going to go back to bed. uh... it's like a routine yeah such as that that nobody that knows me is ever surprised and if i'm booked for a speech someplace and i'm getting paid money no i'm going but some of the law for you that happens and i don't have to go to our generally not go anyway uh... molly would have to know what time the flight is to have it's like a new flight and take it or leave it but at seven in the morning sometimes i'll talk myself out of it i'll say it again molly wood is coming

1:22:53 Oh, well that's nice. She'll have fun. She looks Dutch. Another thing I was gonna mention that... A lot of the, I recognize a lot of the donor names from 200.5 and a lot of them are still donors. And as I was kind of reminiscing, driving around Austin here, thinking about, you know, how's the show grown? And you probably didn't, we had Eric doing numbers for us. I presume you don't have numbers like we had on the last show about, you know, where the most donations come in from what countries.

1:23:31 You know, we've probably so we've increased the the length of the show the amount of the show by Probably close to 30% on a weekly base or just in general 30% But the people who listen to the show and the percentage of them who are donors or not as they have themselves have self-imposed Boners, I don't think has increased that much. I mean still a lot of the same people which is of course super appreciated But I don't know, did you get that feeling at all? That it was like, hmm, have we really... that was the moment where I'm like, we've grown in so many areas, but it seems like a lot of the same people are still dominating. Yeah, we are on it. It just needs to be growed. We talk about this, I actually cut that part out of the show. It's not the growing of the audience. About bitching and moaning about the fact that we don't have enough listeners, but we

1:24:20 We have a lot of loyal listeners, but we also have some people that bail. I get that from the mail chimp does a lot of stats when I send out the mailings every week. And they tell you how many people drop from the mailing list and they sometimes put a snide remark in. It's still a very small number compared to most mailings. We probably lose 10 people a week. Well, picking up 20 or 30 or 40 or 50. But I think my point is that there's still a lot of people who we haven't done a good enough job for, I guess, that they are donating. Yeah, yeah, that is a problem. Or they feel this. Or they're just freeloaders. I mean, there are people that don't get it. They don't want to donate because it's just against their religion. I have no idea.

1:25:12 Let's see, do you have any more questions? Yeah, I got one here. This is from Lori in Kansas. Like to know how long John and Mimi homeschooled their kids. Yeah. Was the primary motivation because this public school, even though we're in good public schools in Albany and Port Angeles, the kids were amenable. So we homeschooled Jay for Five years. Jay happens to be listening. She just put up the big five and then she decided that she was sick of this. Well, at least she can count. That's good. The homeschooling is good for something.

1:25:49 Yeah, homeschoolers win all the awards by the way for these competitions. Any regrets? No, none whatsoever. And she's a straight-A student, got into college no problem and you know, can't ask for much more than that. And the thing about private schooling, I tell everyone who's interested in thinking about it, the child has to sign up. In other words, they have to be on board. If they're not on board, You know, so you can throw it in their face. You said you wanted to do this. Not that I do that, would ever do that. But they have to be on board. Once they're on board, then it's easy. If they don't want to be homeschooled and they want to go to school, it's a different story. I have a question. Are you still doing the show there without headphones? Are you still listening to me on the speaker? Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing to me.

1:26:33 I first worked at, one time I was up in Vancouver on a radio show, Bill Good, he was the big talk show guy in Vancouver, Canada and I was writing for the Vancouver Sun. And you go in there and he was, this is the way it was, he had no headphones, he was the host. You know, most of these radio guys, they like to modulate their voice so they put the headphones on and they can hear themselves. Yeah, that would be me, exactly. You know, and, but he was, no, it was all free air and I was thinking, And it worked pretty well, it sounded good, and then I over time, I just got sick of having those headphones on. And so I put, even when I started doing Leo's Twitch show, I had, I used headphones at first because these Heil mics, really, you can really modulate the heck out of it, you can really sound great with a Heil mic. And then I gave up, I just gave up.

1:27:29 Now that's interesting. I can't do it really because I need to hear the exact mix that's going out, you know, and just everything because you have a large You know the high percentage that I'd screw it up. Yeah, well when I do the Horowitz show I have to wear head right I'm running everything through the I have to I just have to do you another question Do you have like the is it really light in your room? I've never seen your your studio slash You know I turn off all the lights I got a little you know like dimly lit lighting above the the desk area and everything else is off I like it really dark

1:28:07 Ah, interesting. Yeah, no, I'm I try. I don't like it dark at all. Huh? Hi, John. Since the beginning, this is from Greg S. Since the beginning of no agenda. Have you changed your mind on any of Adams crackpot topics in the second half of the show, such as 9-11 UFOs, moon bases, Stargate's vaccines and other conspiracies? Well, I don't know. Let me finish. I know it's not a great question, but I think listeners would like to know the answer. I've CC'd Adam just in case he wants to chime in on this one. Greg Stierle. I'm a little more liberal on some of the things, namely the 9-11 thing because the World Trade Center is 7. And other things that I've seen, read and heard. So there's something fishy going on. So I'm a little more amenable to that. The flying saucer thing, not really. Stargate, no way. In Leicester, on the other side, I do believe it's possible there's a Stargate. And on the other side are more fish. So except for that, the fish. I got a lot of...

1:29:06 I got a lot of questions about the so-called, you know, second half of the show. You know, where's all the crazy second half of the show stuff? And, and, you know, I generally don't report on things that I don't believe in myself. And, you know, sometimes you can't just go making it up like, oh, it's second half of the show. I need some bullshit item to throw at people. I don't, I don't do that. But also as I was thinking about it, The world has gone so crazy since our 200.5 episode that the second half of the show starts at the opening of the show. Things are so nuts sometimes. It's just I sit here and go like I can't believe this is actually taking place. Yeah, the second half of the show is essentially the Homeland Security. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I yeah, no, I've noticed this too, but I

1:29:59 It's there's not that much to me once in a while maybe once every couple of months there'll be some sighting or there'll be some really good video on YouTube of a thing flying across the sky in China that can't be verified or unverified and it is an interesting point of information but there's no real story there. The second half of the show is not what it used to be. Well no but this you know it's like no. But that's where the stuff belongs. If we go, you know, but a lot of that some couple of days, a lot of, you know, we've probably, there's been an increase in, uh, thanks to YouTube UFO videos and crop circles and strange stuff. But you know, hello, this is a radio slash audio. It just doesn't work. You know what I'm going to do? Hey, listen to this, this audio of people going home on the convoluted.

1:30:49 You don't want to hear that. I was going to play the guy who saw the double rainbow. We played that. That was worth it. That was a good one. Oh man. Oh yeah. What other... do you have any questions? Any more questions? Yeah, whatever happened to the no agenda library which is Gardner's other question. I don't know. Well see we don't maintain this stuff. Yeah a lot of this stuff is not for us. How many people have screwed up the subject line? Most of them, okay. Yeah, yeah, I fear you only wonder where you guys did it. Oh, here's one Yeah, there's a good one if the donor gave you guys a large amount $100,000 would you realistically let him or her have any fluent any influence on the show? What about naming rights if I signed a contract to pay you guys? X hundred thousand dollars a year would you rename the show no agenda presented by vaginal for example hmm

1:31:51 I think we did have a thing that we will give naming rights to Monsanto for five million. Well, you know, here's the bottom line. The only way, first of all, not having advertisements is not because we just can't get advertisers or that most advertisers would shy away from many of the topics that we discuss. But it's really about influence and the automatic compromise that you make. So regardless of who, what, where, whatever, you know, I would not put in a contract saying, I won't speak badly of Vaginelle. You know, that wouldn't go. So, you know, probably the question is moot. Yeah, but that's usually not in the contract. That's always assumed. Well, then we'd have to have our money up front.

1:32:38 We're not doing it. Let's face reality. There's two things. One, it's not going to happen. That's why we need individual donors. Right. Org.org slash NA. And two, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. Those are the two main reasons. Really not going to happen. The main reason we're not going to do it is because it's just not going to happen. We've set up the show so it won't happen. It's actually predestined to happen. Nobody could possibly deal with sponsoring the show. If somebody really liked the show, And they felt obliged to produce it. They would they would know enough about the show to just give us the money Exactly hundred thousand dollars. We take that and we'd give an executive producer. We'll give you more we'd give you like a Barony for sure sure definitely definitely I for one personally I there's there's not a day. I think that doesn't go man probably no once in a while, but I

1:33:34 So often I think wow how awesome is this that we're doing you know I'm I'm always on because I can't disappoint you know we've got to continuously do a good show because if we phone it in so to speak or if we just start to suck then you know I'll be out of a you know I'll be looking for a job. Clayton Mehring asks how did the two of you come together and start this show that is explained in the 200.5 you should be listening to that so that's in already been explained. Chad Johnson says hi Adam Leo and I would love to have you on the show this weekend. Are you available at 3 p.m. Pacific on Sunday? It's bad timing. It's bad timing. I'm getting married. I'm leaving Second time. I don't know who's on the show this and I'm not gonna be on it. That's what I'm going next week I'll be on it. Duh, that's why they're this way. They're doing a Hail Mary. Hey, it's Saturday. Who can we find? Pink curry

1:34:35 Yeah, but yeah, well tell me getting married and that'll be that you got any others or we'll get back to the show and then wrap it up for yeah, I think we yeah, we do five. Yeah, we drop back into the show There's another What is there probably like another half hour left or so? I think about 40 minutes Okay, and we'll be back to wrap it up. So back to May 17th 2010 with the continuation of episode 200.5 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

1:35:18 I, I, although I think we discussed it, I think you're the one that probably pushed the idea. Probably the name of a knighthood is probably what I, my contribution. Well, the knighthood thing, I'll tell you, one of the, one day, and I've said this, I've done this with everybody who knows me will have heard this probably at one time or another, and I know I ran it 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 says, what's so special about England that they're granting knighthoods? Why don't we grant knighthoods? Right. I do recall that. Why can't we just grant? Why can't Ford Motor Company grant knighthoods? What difference does it make? Yeah, that's good. 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. The knights that have been on our list, they're fantastic people, every one of them. I have a plan, by the way.

1:36:09 of making a night iPhone app that will only be for nights. And it'll be limited for a number of reasons, but it'll only be for nights. And it'll be like our communication model. Like a network, a night network. No, that's a good idea. Yeah, I think it'd be kind of fun. And like a bat signal. I still want a bat signal. We're gonna need it one of these days. Well, we've got a lot of professional people in the night hoods. We don't have a doctor, we have a dentist. Do we have a lawyer? Oh, you know, that's a good question. We need a lawyer. That's what you need, right? You need a doctor. We need a lawyer. We need a butcher. Yes, hell yeah. A farmer. We need someone to farm. What drives the new promotions? That's a good question. It 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.

1:37:10 Yeah, I'm the marketing guy. Mainly because I've always admired certain forms of marketing that are very rarely executed by the general public. And by that I mean, or by general companies or little operations like ours. And by that I mean PBS 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 PBS and churches are perceived as doing. One's giving you, helping you spiritually and the other one's educating you out of mainstream media supposedly.

1:37:51 and i didn't 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 ten 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 those direct payment from 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 know is that they're actually pretty successful with this mileage it working here there's some churches out there that have you know it not counting the mega churches but but some decent size churches maybe two thousand to three thousand parishioners and they got the guy who with a cadillac in a big house and they got plenty of money and it's only like two thousand people that are supporting this the entire parish and it's like uh...

1:38:47 Does anybody notice that this looks like, of 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 a dumb idea. So anyway, so I do the promotions. I come up with them every once in a while. one comes forward and says, well here's an idea, this is what people would like. It's kind of like selling the dream kind of thing, I'm not sure. I used to be in direct marketing. I say that when people ask me about this, I say, look, we have a church and our religion is the truth, or as close as we can get to it.

1:39:28 There's that element. I think, you know, we seem to offend a few people if we go 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. uh... that is the but or football and the interest in c what since we're in full tilt here trying to did maximize or incomes uh... it'll be interesting to see what the drop-off is on listenership on the live stream during the football season oh interesting at what the what and we and by the way we do look at that that kind of you look at all the numbers we keep track of stuff eric likes him dream up weird reports and uh... we look at them and we know where we're headed to were doing fine and we're not

1:40:09 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 sound if I can say it. Is 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 doesn't make me less excited. No it motivates me it gets me motivated to do a better show

1:40:55 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 You know I was writing it for a good reason because I believed it to be true It's the way you write it. It's like, oh, sorry, 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? Hmm. That's a great question. And I don't like saying the term the great question, but it's a thoughtful question. Maybe you should think, what do we like to, I think when the show ends,

1:41:54 I think... Ours. First of all, there is no element in the show. I think that's... we have no fixed elements. The only thing that's fixed is donations. And we do that about an hour in 45 minutes to an hour Yes and we've talked about that because we know as the 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 yeah I agree I agree I get a lot of emails from people I'm like can 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

1:42:30 It's okay. And for people who listen, who are like, oh, that was, you know, this is what I love. There's 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. 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 I know you're paying attention to it. 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, maybe my take is even wrong because your take is better.

1:43:20 and it's interesting. So I give you a kudo right on the spot, and it's sincere by the way, and I usually only do it when I know I can't top you. You can actually come up with something that's better than where you got the kudo, 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, you know, dominance. Okay. Yeah. I think 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 the best. But it's okay if you score the goal.

1:44:00 Yeah, you scored the goal, okay, you scored the goal, next time I'll score the goal, you prick. Yeah, that's a good analysis. The father and son thing doesn't work that way because father and son would be more patronizing. I'm not patronizing, I'm straightforward about it. 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 gonna happen. I don't think so. 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 is a question.

1:44:37 and here's the answer. 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 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 and amount but it's going to go by the total amount but it turns out the numbers match pretty well with the It's one to one pretty much with the donors 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. Alright, so now it gets interesting. Number two, and before you answer, I'm going to tell you right now, you're not going to get it.

1:45:36 Australia? Oh, jeez, you got it! Yes! He shoots, he scores! Oh, man. No, I knew Australia had to be really high. Oh, I shouldn't have given you the tease. No, no, I knew it. I knew this because, I mean, we've had to... I track it kind of in my head. I'm 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 by which country 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.

1:46:22 It goes like this United States Australia Canada, right? Yeah, I forgot United Kingdom and Netherlands a UK as well. Of course. Yeah Yeah, I actually thought the Netherlands would come in a little higher. So did I but no and We have the guys who 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 Pell's mockers all he's in Belgium Belgium. Yeah. Yeah. Well Belgian comes in did then it comes Germany Belgium Norway Sweden Finland Switzerland Mexico

1:47:01 And then we have an anomaly with Japan, which has very few people listening, but they give a lot of money. And same with Hong Kong, that's where all the money is. Then we got Spain, Italy, France, Denmark is actually higher, but they don't give any money. They're like, they're cheap. Cheap. The damn Danes. Yeah, the Danish are obviously cheap. And then Poland, which is like, that doesn't count. They don't even, you know, the non-English speaking countries, it doesn't bother me. So this is very interesting for the amount of, uh, 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.

1:47:45 Yeah. And Canada, we probably should do more on Canada. Yeah, the Canadians are starting to complain about it. and the right and you know it's easy enough to do i mean it's kinda hard to beat this hour has twenty two minutes or the name of the show is that uh... nails and constantly we got some support in singapore i'm almost every country's estonia dominican republic malaysia qatar israel one person but bura which is i that actually is the one that really surprises me the most that we'd have one listener in israel you may be blocked there for all i know could be and uh... Portugal, we haven't got much. You'd 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, I know what they're translating. I've had a lot of people, I know a lot of Brazilians and one guy said to me once, and I know the translator, he's a great guy, I've sat down with him.

1:48:45 PowerPoint like in 10 minutes the guy's fantastic. Let me uh What was the? Oh, here's one that I can't answer. What are the current subscriber numbers? so first of all subscriber numbers of the word subscriber is a misnomer because We really don't know how many people listen to the show by downloading we absolutely just don't know john how often and by the way i don't think anyone knows in podcasting with their actual real numbers are there is so much smoke about numbers you have to guess and uh... would you guess well based on normal direct marketing returns uh... and the kind of money we get uh...

1:49:35 It's hard to say. I mean it could be anywhere from 50,000 to 400,000. Yeah, that's about the same range I'm in. And it's impossible to tell from the downloads and you know 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 getting a bit torrent. Because we only have you know in terms of pure subscribers that are paying the $5 we only have about 1,500 of those people we have not pushed everybody very hard to do the five dollar thing. Some people have done the thirty. Some people say I'm not going to do it until you make it ten 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.

1:50:35 and some people get bounced for no good reason. We're not that stable. We need more subscribers for sure. We'll be pushing that probably on the show more. I have two more things. 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 come, because I get most of my stuff online. And then I'm always making clips, because I have an H2 recorder by my side at all times, and I'm constantly jumping up, even with the full family could be watching a movie or something, I'm jumping up and stopping the movie, backing it up and then getting a clip. So I collect a lot of, I spend most of my time collecting clips and articles.

1:49:35 It's hard to say. I mean it could be anywhere from 50,000 to 400,000. Yeah, that's about the same range I'm in. And it's impossible to tell from the downloads and you know 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 getting a bit torrent. Because we only have you know in terms of pure subscribers that are paying the $5 we only have about 1,500 of those people we have not pushed everybody very hard to do the five dollar thing. Some people have done the thirty. Some people say I'm not going to do it until you make it ten 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.

1:50:35 and some people get bounced for no good reason. We're not that stable. We need more subscribers for sure. We'll be pushing that probably on the show more. I have two more things. 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 come, because I get most of my stuff online. And then I'm always making clips, because I have an H2 recorder by my side at all times, and I'm constantly jumping up, even with the full family could be watching a movie or something, I'm jumping up and stopping the movie, backing it up and then getting a clip. So I collect a lot of, I spend most of my time collecting clips and articles.

1:51:31 and i don't organize in very well i a s because of the nature of the show i'm always assuming that is going to go anywhere cuz you never know what what you know who's gonna bring up a topic that gets interesting that in the conversation itself so i'd so i'm i'm probably under prepared uh... in terms of pure preparation, not in terms of the work that goes into getting the clips and all that, I'm reading a lot, but in terms of like thinking about what I'm gonna do. Occasionally we'll take a bunch of notes, or 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, taking terrible notes I can't read.

1:52:06 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 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 even 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 searchability. But I'm typically always hoping, just hoping, that I can find

1:52:59 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 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. Yeah, I get shot down. Good. So here's a 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?

1:53:40 Remember that fund you were talking about that that money that was hidden that during the Reagan administration or something. Oh, you know Yeah, the It was a French name. Yeah, this is from Brian Monday. Okay. Wait, we'd not now 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 on Yeah, and it's not going to bring anything to the party. I guess the answer is no one has done enough reporting, at least that I could find, that makes it 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. Okay, 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.

1:54:33 DSE is a part of what the founding and sustaining producers of the NOAA Gender Stream donated their money for, and will have to do another drive. And you know, what is the actual cost? I mean, what does it cost you to go to work? You know, there's actual cost. This is actual time. It's, it's, there's preparation. Time is 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 want to. Not sure what, actually the question to me is vague. I don't know what it means. DZPix asks, what iPhone, iPad app does Adam use for the Jingles Sound Bank?

1:55:18 I use a program called Soundbyte, B-Y-T-E, one word, Soundbyte, 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 carts, 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 release an iPhone app which I can run on the iPad although it kind of sucks because It's it runs an 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

1:56:07 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. Okay, I Here's an interesting question. I should be able to answer it, but I'm going to have you do it if you can. I bought a Nokia E71 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 OV store...

1:56:52 which is their version of the App Store, there is a, it just released. If you go there and it's like create your own Nokia app, I think they're actually calling them apps, you can 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 is coming out They called me like yeah, we're gonna do podcasting on the BlackBerry where you log in and put in your shows for your company and I put in No agenda daily source code tech 5 top 5 cranky geeks and then I got bored

1:57:51 So apparently there's some podcasting thing on Blackberry. So yeah. Any more from the chat room? This is Alex from Twitter. Let me see if there's one more here. There was one. Hold on one second. Just got to see who's texting me. Hold on. 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? We have a glut of talent apparently on the show. It's just the same two guys. Somebody else asks, the show has changed a lot since its inception. It's the same guy actually, Opera Now. Do you prefer the new format? And you know, obviously we do.

1:58:33 Or wouldn't be doing it and the audience does more the audience does to I mean, you know, this show is you know It's a you know, you know, I've been broadcasting long enough. You always have people who say oh it was much better than oh, it was better though Oh, no, I have the same thing as a writer you get this I have people that still say when you are writing that column for info world. It was much better Yeah, and I looked at those I can go back and look at that old crap and it wasn't Generally speaking things improve. Yeah, I guess it's just it's just the nature of the beast. That's this in the nostalgia or you know 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?

1:59:25 Well, we got another 200 shows to do at least no we have what we have at least until episode 333 Well before you do another Promotion like the deuce club. Well, we got to thank all the deuce club members profusely and we'll do that over time and in the on the web page and I think you know, we're not showing any indication of slower growth and where people still like the show I think that the great thing and we talked about this off of the air a lot there's a there's so much material for us yeah I think the show there's only there's only growth because it just comes automatically it's the media is getting worse yeah they're laying everybody off the the the Obama administration is getting worse they're lying to the public just straight out

2:00:16 You know, there's these crazy things that Hill and Knowlton 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 Hill and Knowlton. 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 take be taken off the air. I don't think this by the way is a huge benefit of Of our model because if you have advertisers, that's the attack mechanism That's where you're weakest when the minute someone doesn't like what you say look at look at I miss you know and that's just one example the minute you go somewhere that they don't like you then then the audience is

2:00:56 For us it's easy the audience like what we do we get no money. It's like okay We can turn that around in one episode we can go okay. We went off the track there We couldn't get it back on But when your advertisers pull out then the network goes nuts, and then you're then you're out of a job You're dead you're gone your history your and you lost you've in other words. You don't have control from the get-go yeah, and 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 bootlegs a 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.

2:01:33 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 a 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 and well, we know the trends are down so we're how bad would it be here uh... yeah we don't have a deal with any of that we don't want to assist ridiculous and it will be completely independent we don't have anybody telling us what to do we don't have uh... advertisers telling us what to do which is the d real danger here and i did without exception the only way we would be taken off the airs of the government or somebody sued us

2:02:25 or the government decided to pull the plug, who knows? But that's not gonna happen. We're below the radar, we're crackpots, we believe in conspiracy theory people, 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 half the work we do. I think he has good guests, but that's a different format. No, we can't. 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.

2:03:06 Before we finish, people say, well, can I be a guest on your show? How come you don't do this? How come you don't 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 current events just like you do in the coffee shop with your buddies. is no guess. When you're in the coffee shop you don't say, man, coming in to have a guest's doughnut. 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 gonna do an hour. We're moving up now on What are we at to have the exact recording here? We are at 145 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 and crazy ideas and and promoting us It is also your show

2:04:07 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. Yeah, what are we going to talk about? Well, I think we talked out. The funny thing is, I'll bet we could do another two hours. You know, I was just about to say, not a problem. And our spouse... Why do you think it's so weird that I don't use headphones? It's atypical for radio guys. Totally atypical, but I've managed to, because I use the

2:04:50 the pop screen as my point of departure. And so if I keep my lips within a quarter inch of the pop screen, I'm within range of this microphone. We're back by the way with the last bit of this special episode. And this is, you can tell that we speak exactly the same way off air as we do on air. Why do you think that's so weird? That's you know it reminds me of like I tell people this when you give them try to give people teleprompter training that and it and the funny thing is when I remember years and years ago is doing some some audio radio thing of some sort and I was reading advertising copy and there was just a moment where the read became my actual voice oh and that's when you get the gig obviously and you go oh my god that sounds so cool yes I'm actually natural

2:05:41 Hmm now by the way, there's one thing I did want to mention that in the first half is this stammering I do all the time. I think it's annoying Thank God people don't bitch about it. I don't notice it at all. Yeah. Well, I do when I hear myself well You know everyone has there's a lot of stuff. I don't like about how I talk and You know you sound a lot better than I do anyway, so I think this is pretty much wraps this show up. Well. I just wanted to say there are The format well not the format if anything the show has kind of developed a format For me you know there there there is a change which was driven more by

2:06:25 The world around us and when I say the world, I mean the media world is that now that there's less and less news actually being presented in, you know, in on in in the mainstream media. I think that both of us have taken it upon ourselves to work much harder at actually finding, you know, new doors. I mean, we're doing more uncovering and I mean, I jokingly call myself a government legislation analyst. Did you get the email from the guy who says that was redundant? No, I don't or I haven't seen it yet. Oh, yeah. Well guy says what could you call yourself that all? Legislation is government legislation or it can't be called legislation. So you're being redundant You should be calling yourself an independent legislation analyst. No, that's something that doesn't sound good at cocktail parties when you say I know I'm just telling you need to realize it's redundant

2:07:22 Yeah, I think that way. You've done a lot more reading of deep reading and gotten into reading legislation. I had not gone that way. I have I'm more I'm still floundering in some of this stuff. I disagree because you're doing something interesting you especially the last couple of shows you've been tuning into a lot of foreign media sources as still English spoken in general Yeah, I have gone to the foreign sources and then because that's the only thing I've been able to do where I'll bring these stories up and you haven't heard them which proves my point that these stories are not getting out there. And some of these stories are interesting like the Cambodian child death. It hits CNN now actually. Finally. Yeah. That's another thing we've done since the Red Book began and actually even before that.

2:08:09 People are finally realizing that we're way ahead of the curve on some of these stories. Yeah way ahead of the curve Well, yeah, just look at drones I mean, I think I don't think it was in 205 that I can remember but I know we were talking about drones as far back as 2010 and And you know, it kind of creeps up on you and sometimes just got to remind myself like man We've been talking about this for so long and we were joking about drones overhead now. It's mainstream conversation just mainstream conversation So let's wrap this one up give people a heads up on the next show and then We hope they'll keep helping us here. Yes with the donations even though we're not live Well, we are live to tape but it's kind of and we're gonna be back for a brief intro live to tape for Sunday show which will be a compilation of

2:09:00 of episodes 381 through 84, through 384, a lot about pipelines, which is kind of good because our general theory has not changed that the world is pretty much about oil and drugs. And that's, if it fits, you know, all the stories... Arms get some play. Yeah, yeah. Oil, drugs, and arms. Then there's that. Yeah, so tomorrow I will be a married man. Congratulations. Thank you so much. And as always, we appreciate all the support from all of our producers around Gitmo Nation. We'll be back with, as I said, with the special, the pipeline special on Sunday. Until then, in the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry. And from Northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak.

2:10:13 Dvorak.org slash N-A-V-O-R-A-K