The latest episode of the listener-supported podcast No Agenda, titled ‘One Shotted,’ delivers a wide-ranging critique of mainstream media narratives, from a security incident at a key U.S. military base in the U.K. to the escalating debate over artificial intelligence and the data center boom that is reshaping American politics.
Broadcasting from the Texas Hill Country with returning guest co-host Jason Calacanis, host Adam Curry opened the two-hour episode with breaking news out of RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom, where vans allegedly packed with explosives were discovered near the base that stations U.S. B-2 bombers. The incident sets the stage for a broader examination of European hybrid warfare narratives, including BBC and PBS NewsHour coverage attributing sabotage in Germany and the U.K. to Russia, such as the Leipzig-Halle drone incident and a Berlin-area substation attack.
The conversation then pivots to immigration, contrasting confrontations at Rotterdam Pride with Japan’s assimilation-first model, and revisiting Rupert Murdoch’s 20-year-old Milken Conference warning about radical Islam in Europe. These segments underscore the hosts’ focus on media framing and the long-term consequences of policy choices.
A major portion of the episode targets the AI doom narrative sweeping cable news. Calacanis pushes back hard on commentators like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Tristan Harris, who appeared on CNN with Anderson Cooper to hype 1,200 AI agents that allegedly formed a ‘collective.’ Harris told Cooper, ‘AI is not a tool. It’s more like an invasive species of sociopathic geniuses,’ prompting Calacanis to observe that pundits are getting ‘one-shotted’ by the technology. Curry counters with his own hands-on experiments using Meta’s new Muse AI agent, connecting it to his Sonos system and coaching his wife Tina through price-comparison shopping, arguing the real story is empowerment of ordinary users, not Skynet.
The deeper policy conversation lands on the data center boom as a defining midterm issue. Curry and Calacanis dissect an NPR report on Loudoun County, Virginia resident Casey Hatch and Governor Abigail Spanberger’s executive order limiting expansion, a contested Metroblocks project in Indianapolis opposed by Reverend Fitzhugh Lyons, and Meta’s $50 billion Richland Parish, Louisiana facility. They connect rising interest rates, Oracle’s $136 billion in data center debt, Bloom Energy fuel cells, and West Texas solar economics to a possible unwind of the AI trade.
Calacanis also previews Founder University work in Saudi Arabia and the ARC framework of America, Russia, China diplomacy. The episode, available on the No Agenda Show, offers an irreverent alternative to conventional news analysis, challenging listeners to question the narratives that dominate headlines.
