Host of The Adam Friedland Show Adam Friedland joins us to catch up on today’s news and discuss his new season. We look at the return of Matt Miller, Jake Tapper’s take on Israel/Palestine discourse, the kidnapping of a crypto whale in Manhattan, and new reports of Elon Musk’s rampant drug use. Adam also gives us his takes on engaging with the new right-coded online content sphere through TAFS, teases some guests for the coming season, and generally annoys Felix with delays and requests for refreshments.

Find The Adam Friedland Show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAdamFriedlandShow
New merch for the summer up at https://chapotraphouse.store/


939 - Boom Times For Goons feat. Adam Friedland (6/2/25)

"Facebook’s Zuckerberg backs online political ad regulations forwarded by Sen. Amy Klobuchar," reported the Associated Press in 2018. "CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says crypto needs to embrace regulation," announced Business Insider in 2021. "AI leaders: Please regulate us," read an Axios headline in 2023.

In recent years, major U.S. companies, especially in the tech industry, have given new life to a longstanding corporate PR strategy: self-regulation. It's a common tactic. After a scandal — say, revelations about pollution, rampant scams, or large-scale invasions of privacy — corporations rebrand as repentant and disciplined, ready to pay their debts to society and embrace the public good. "No need for oppressive and overly burdensome regulation", they insist, "we can handle it ourselves."

This, of course, isn't the real intention. Historically, this corporate voluntarism has generated little more than a few cosmetic reforms, if that, and allowed the continuation of business as usual in every industry from slavery to oil to tobacco to crypto, save for the occasional sacrificial lamb. So why, and how, do media keep assuring their audiences that, This Time, It's Different? That this time corporate America has learned its lesson and can be trusted to regulate itself?

On this episode, we examine the centuries-old damage-control strategy of industry self-regulation, looking at how corporate claims of self-policing, aided by news media, buy time and goodwill while concealing an agenda of weakening pre-existing regulations, manipulating new laws to the benefit of the private sector, or, often, preventing regulation altogether. Our guest is the Revolving Door Project's assistant director Timi Iwayemi.

Episode 224: Corporate Self-Regulation and the Fine Art of 'Preempting" Public Outrage

Ep 226: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part I)

"Exclusive Look at Life in War-Ravaged Gaza," reads the title for a CNN interview with correspondent Clarissa Ward. "'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid," report Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg for Ha'aretz. "I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It," argues Omer Bartov in The New York Times.

These stories have something in common: they’re vital pieces of journalism about Gaza, or Palestine more broadly, published in Western and Western-aligned outlets. This is, obviously, important. Reporting like this keeps Western audiences informed about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, fortifies sympathetic Westerners’ solidarity with Palestine, and serves as an essential counter to the pro-Israel PR machine powering so much other Western media coverage.

But while these pieces have made a splash among their audiences, in many cases, they’re building upon points that Palestinian journalists, writers, and activists had been making weeks, months, even years before. So why is the reporting of Palestinian journalists–especially their reporting on what’s happening within their own country and cities–so often ignored, only to be heeded after it gets the Western stamp of approval?

On this episode — our Season 8 finale and also the second part of our two-part series on “The Importance of Seriousness, or Why Palestinians Can’t Be Witness to Their Own Genocide” — we explore the discrepancies in the alleged credibility between Western and Israeli journalists and Palestinian and other Arab journalists, especially when it comes to reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We’ll look at how, by Western standards, journalists don’t build legitimacy by being correct, so much as by being in close proximity to the political and media establishments.

Our guest is writer and organizer Kaleem Hawa.

Ep 227: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part II)

Ep 228 - Billionaires as Insta-Experts: How Our Media Conflates Extreme Wealth with Expertise

We cover Petro, Netanyahu, and the UN; then we talk to David Adler from the Sumud Flotilla about breaking the naval blockade, international incidents, and drone attacks on civilian vessels. 

Hit the tip line: (646) 801-1129 | tips@trueanon.com

Discover more episodes at podcast.trueanon.com

Episode 492: Sumud Flotilla

In this News Brief, we detail how the AP, Atlantic, Washington Post and New York Times are accepting Trump's framing that his attacks on Venezuela and Colombia are about "going after drug cartels" when it's clear they are—based on Trump's own words—about controlling Venezuela's oil.

News Brief: As Trump Attacks Venezuela, Media Takes His Absurd “Drug War” Pretext at Face Value

Have you been having fun with the newest slate of AI tools? Have you been doing research with GPT-5? Coding your projects with Claude? Turning pictures of your friends into cartoon characters from the Fairly Odd Parents using the image editing tool Nano Banana? 

Are you impressed with what they can do? Well guess what? You’re only impressed with them because you’re basically a naive child. You’re like a little child with an etch a sketch who is amazed that they can make crude images by turning the knobs, oblivious to greater possibilities. At least, that’s the impression you get when listening to tech leaders, philosophers, and even governments. According to them, soon the most impressive of AI tools will look as cheap and primitive as Netflix’s recommendation algorithm in 2007. Soon the world will have to reckon with the power of Artificial General Intelligence, or “AGI.”

What is AGI? Definitions vary. When will it come? Perhaps months. Perhaps years. Perhaps decades. But definitely soon enough for you to worry about. What will it mean for humanity once it's here? Perhaps a techno utopia. Perhaps extinction. No one is sure. But what they are sure of is that AGI is definitely coming and it’s definitely going to be a big deal. A mystical event. A turning point in history, after which nothing will ever be the same.

However, some are more skeptical, like our guest today Will Douglas Heaven. Will has a PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College London and is the senior editor for AI at MIT Technology review. He recently published an article, based on his conversations with AI researchers, which provocatively calls AGI “the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time.”

Jake and Travis chat with Will about the conspiracy theory-like talk from the AI industry, whether AGI is just “vibes and snake oil,” and how to distinguish between tech breakthroughs and Silicon Valley hyperbole. 

Will Douglas Heaven
https://bsky.app/profile/willdouglasheaven.bsky.social

How AGI became the consequential conspiracy theory of our time
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/30/1127057/agi-conspiracy-theory-artifcial-general-intelligence/


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Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

The first three episodes of Annie Kelly’s new 6-part podcast miniseries “Truly Tradly Deeply” are available to Cursed Media subscribers, with new episodes released weekly.

www.cursedmedia.net/

Cursed Media subscribers also get access to every episode of every QAA miniseries we produced, including Manclan by Julian Feeld and Annie Kelly, Trickle Down by Travis View, The Spectral Voyager by Jake Rockatansky and Brad Abrahams, and Perverts by Julian Feeld and Liv Agar. Plus, Cursed Media subscribers will get access to at least three new exclusive podcast miniseries every year.

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REFERENCES

Debates on the nature of artificial general intelligence
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado7069?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Why AI Is Harder Than We Think
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.12871

AI Capabilities May Be Overhyped on Bogus Benchmarks, Study Finds
https://gizmodo.com/ai-capabilities-may-be-overhyped-on-bogus-benchmarks-study-finds-2000682577

Examining the geographic concentration of VC investment in AI
https://ssti.org/blog/examining-geographic-concentration-vc-investment-ai

Margaret Mitchell: artificial general intelligence is ‘just vibes and snake oil’
https://www.ft.com/content/7089bff2-25fc-4a25-98bf-8828ab24f48e



AGI Is a Conspiracy Theory (E347)

This week we talk the recently released Epstein emails and interview journalist Thomas Birmingham about his piece in The Nation "The Eviction Kings" (linked below).

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-landmark-evictions-israel-electra/

Episode 418: The Eviction Kings (w/ Special Guest: Thomas Birmingham)

There's two types of people in this world: those who will let their backyards be disintegrated into rubble and those who won't.

Support us on patreon:
patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 422: Bargain Bin Futures

The show receives another celebrity call as a prominent broadcaster sets the record straight about the globalist demon media. 

The lads then discuss Mike Pence’s Rules For Dating Mother, the sad sacks at the DNC, why American health care sucks (more on that next week) and a magical reading series from National Review’s Jay Nerdlinger about his field trip to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He did not like it.

Special thanks to Tim Heidecker

Here’s the Museum Nerdlinger: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/445336/permanent-february-some-personal-notes-blacksonian-national-african-american-museum

Episode 96 - Night At The Museum feat. Alex Jones (4/2/17)

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Ep 228 - Billionaires as Insta-Experts: How Our Media Conflates Extreme Wealth with Expertise

Citations Needed Podcast

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