In episode 1905 of the No Agenda Show, titled 'Nerdballs,' host Adam Curry welcomed venture capitalist and All In Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis for a critical deconstruction of the AI hype cycle, Silicon Valley power dynamics, and the media forces shaping the 2026 midterms. The conversation, published September 20, 2026, offered a sharp rebuke of what Calacanis sees as a dangerous ideological drift within leading AI labs, particularly Anthropic.
Calacanis, fresh from an All In Summit that drew 3,000 attendees and surprise call-ins from President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, did not mince words on the AI safety debate. 'They actually think that they are creating a god. They're not. They're creating software,' he told Curry, referring to Anthropic's leadership. He compared the company's effective-altruism roots to the doomed engineers in the film Prometheus, suggesting a messianic self-image that distorts their approach to AI development.
The episode also featured clips of University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos describing a reported Anthropic 'funeral' for a retired Claude model, underscoring what Calacanis views as a cult-like culture. But Calacanis argued the real story is regulatory capture: frontier labs lobbying Washington to gate open-source competitors like DeepSeek, GLM, and NeMoTron. This, he warned, could stifle innovation and entrench the power of a few companies.
Other topics included Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's new code of conduct and his public criticism of Anthropic's 'model welfare' doctrine, as well as the reported Hugging Face security incident and calls for an AI 'kill switch.' Curry and Calacanis also discussed the political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Texas Democrat James Talarico, Trump's revocation of press credentials for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, and rising diesel prices tied to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries.
The episode delivered rare backstage detail from the All In Summit. Calacanis recounted Jensen Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when President Trump called mid-panel, and described pressing Meta's Dina about the company's record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment. He shared the origin story of All In as a pandemic-era poker group with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg, and revealed that This Week in Startups sells out its ad inventory a year in advance at $3,000 per spot.
Curry pivoted to Bitcoin, predicting a $430,000 peak, while Calacanis discussed parenting in the smartphone era. The pair also reflected on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show's ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign.
For listeners seeking an irreverent alternative to mainstream tech and political analysis, the full episode is available on the No Agenda Show website and wherever podcasts are heard.
