No Agenda 1893: Dvorak Memorial, Media Deconstruction, and the Fight Over Trump's Ballroom
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In a deeply personal episode of the No Agenda Show, co-host Adam Curry phoned in from a San Francisco hotel room the day after the private memorial for the late John C. Dvorak. With fill-in hosts Darren O'Neill and Larry Bleidner holding down the studio, Curry walked listeners through a weekend of closure, tribute, and community that stretched from Oakland to Tokyo to Fort Lauderdale.
The episode opened with Curry describing the Oakland service, which was attended by roughly 70 people, including Sir Mark and Dame Astrid flying in from Tokyo, Void Zero from the Netherlands, Eric the Shill from South Dakota, and eulogist Marty Higgins. Reflecting on Dvorak's legacy in tech journalism, Curry told listeners: "He wrote about how these products sucked because he felt they could be better. That really was a big part of his role in the world. And I really came to appreciate that hearing that yesterday."
Beyond the memorial, the episode delivered the media deconstruction the show is known for. Threads included:
- A D.C. Circuit Appeals Court 2-1 ruling blocking further construction on President Trump's $400 million White House ballroom, compared across Fox, ABC, and CBS in the signature 3x3 segment.
- A $567 million New Mexico judgment against Meta over child safety on Facebook and Instagram.
- The escalating WNBA controversy after Clay Travis offered $10 million for a game pitting the Las Vegas Aces against a high school boys' team.
- Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed's Medicaid comments alongside reporting on his wife's Ann Arbor practice, MindWorks Psychiatry.
The hosts unpacked the appeals court's use of the term 'en banc' review in the ballroom case, with judges ruling that 'whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide.' Bleidner detailed the strange saga of British academic Jason Arday, whose Simon and Schuster book 'Great and Unfortunate Things' drops August 11 amid allegations of fabricated credentials. O'Neill highlighted Staten Island activist Scott LoBaido, who chartered a banner plane over New York City targeting Zohran Mamdani from his hospital bed days after open-heart surgery.
The episode closed with ten meetup reports from Albany, Austin, Perth, Hamilton, Wilmington, Sonoma, Denver, Snohomish, Memphis, and Central New Jersey.