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Speaker 1: Also media.

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Speaker 2: What Jeffrey my Epstein's This is Behind the Bastards, a

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Speaker 2: podcast about the very worst people in all of history.

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Speaker 3: And as you may have guessed.

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Speaker 2: From my completely original introduction that I definitely haven't done before,

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Speaker 2: we are back talking about Jepstein. Jeffrey Epstein, the big

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Speaker 2: ezy what because he's not called by anyone. Yes, I

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Speaker 2: love that we're getting into the Epstein Files. That's that's

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Speaker 2: what these episodes are going to be. With my good

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Speaker 2: friend and colleague Andrew T. Yeah, are you a fan

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Speaker 2: of Jeffrey Epstein?

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Speaker 3: How do you feel about the guy?

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Speaker 4: I mean, uh, he's he's in a photo with he

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Speaker 4: is so many people. Just he's on the ground with

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Speaker 4: so many of my faves, so right, right, judge a

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Speaker 4: man by his friends. I mean, he's got great friends,

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Speaker 4: you know, obviously, like half the New York Times is

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Speaker 4: his buddy. You know, I got to come clean up

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Speaker 4: at the top. I show up many times in the

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Speaker 4: Epstein Files. If you search for Robert Evans, you will

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Speaker 4: find my name in there a lot. You know, I

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Speaker 4: have to assume that that I was up to up

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Speaker 4: to no good there, and I apologize, you know, after

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Speaker 4: producing the godfather. A lot of stuff got to my head,

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Speaker 4: you know. I think I just kind of let fame

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Speaker 4: and money drive me a little crazy. You know. That's

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Speaker 4: the great thing about you, Robert, is somehow you're going

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Speaker 4: to be known as Robert Evans Comma, somehow the lesser scumbag. Yeah, somehow,

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Speaker 4: the less evil Robert Evans. Yeah, somehow, the Robert Evans

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Speaker 4: who's done the last less drugs too. Yeah. I think

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Speaker 4: we can't find me in.

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Speaker 1: The Epstein files, and you won't find me saying anything

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Speaker 1: nice about the guy.

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Speaker 2: So no, this is not about that. We're certainly not

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Speaker 2: saying anything nice about the guy. And no, the problem is,

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Speaker 2: obviously we've got a shitload more Epstein files. Right right

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Speaker 2: at the top, there were a bunch released in twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty five, and then right at the top of twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty six, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that even

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Speaker 2: more were going.

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Speaker 3: To be released.

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Speaker 2: Specifically, he revealed that the Justice Department was releasing three

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Speaker 2: million new pages of files related to the Epstein case.

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Speaker 2: Such a vast quantity of information can't be digested in

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Speaker 2: short order, and we haven't discovered all of the secrets

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Speaker 2: in this tranch of files or in the last the

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Speaker 2: stuff that came out last year. People are still picking

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Speaker 2: stuff out right, which is why, because it's going to

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Speaker 2: take so much time to find everything that's noteworthy inside

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Speaker 2: these files. Todd Blanche sought to set expectations prior to

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Speaker 2: the file dump, so he insisted to the world that

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Speaker 2: the only hang up and getting these files out. The

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Speaker 2: only thing that had delayed them past the amount of

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Speaker 2: time they were legally supposed to be put up in

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Speaker 2: was that the Justice Department had to scan them to

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Speaker 2: see if Epstein had said anything that criminally implicated President Trump.

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Speaker 2: Older files certainly had things that could be seen as

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Speaker 2: implicating Trump. Releases in twenty twenty five included a twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty email from a federal prosecutor stating Trump had been

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Speaker 2: a passenger on the Lolita Express a minimum of eight

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Speaker 2: times between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety six. On

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Speaker 2: one trip, the three listed passengers were Trump, Epstein, and

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Speaker 2: a twenty year old female name redacted. So like he

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Speaker 2: is certainly implicated in a lot. You've seen probably the

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Speaker 2: birthday letter in the shape of a naked woman signed

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Speaker 2: by Trump for Epstein, right, you've probably seen. There's a

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Speaker 2: photo of Epstein and a young girl with a giant

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Speaker 2: check from Donald Trump. You've certainly heard the rumors that

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Speaker 2: he and Bill Clinton may have engaged in some oral

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Speaker 2: sex together. That was almost certainly Jeffrey Epstein joking around

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Speaker 2: rather than something that literally happened. But a lot of

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Speaker 2: crazy shit is in these files that literally happened. And

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Speaker 2: probably the single worst piece of data I have seen

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Speaker 2: from an implicating the president point of view is this

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Speaker 2: paragraph from an FBI interview with a victim of Epstein's.

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Speaker 2: I'll read it in a second, but it's particularly funny

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Speaker 2: when you pair it with this statement from Todd Blanch.

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Speaker 2: So here's Todd Blanche first. In none of these communications,

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Speaker 2: even when doing his best disparage President Trump, did Epstein

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Speaker 2: suggest President Trump had done anything criminal or had any

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Speaker 2: inappropriate contact with any of his victims. Now, oh, going

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Speaker 2: to read to you a quote from the FBI. During

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Speaker 2: one of Jane Doe's encounters with Epstein, he took her

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Speaker 2: to mar A Lago, where he introduced her to its owner,

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Speaker 2: Donald J.

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Speaker 3: Trump.

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Speaker 2: Introducing fourteen year old dough to Donald J. Trump, Epstein

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Speaker 2: elbowed Trump playfully, asking him referring to Doe, this is

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Speaker 2: a good one, right, Trump smiled and nodded an agreement.

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Speaker 2: They both chuckled, and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the

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Speaker 2: time was too young to understand why. Yeah, that's hideous. Ew,

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Speaker 2: that's just disgusting.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna say you a lot on these episodes.

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Speaker 2: But Ew.

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Speaker 4: The thing that I don't understand is, like, what did

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Speaker 4: Trump think was going to happen when these came out?

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Speaker 2: Like?

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Speaker 4: Was he just riffing? Did he think that someone was

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Speaker 4: actually going to go and falsify and redact shit? I

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Speaker 4: think he.

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Speaker 2: Thought, first off, I can just brute force this not

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Speaker 2: getting released. It hadn't been earlier. Yeah, And I'm sure

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Speaker 2: when it became inevident, when it became clear that like

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Speaker 2: they literally could not politically afford not to release these,

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Speaker 2: like not even just the legal stuff, Like their base

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Speaker 2: would have flipped out if they hadn't released this stuff

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Speaker 2: because of how central the Epstein files are to the

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Speaker 2: conspiratorial right too. I think at that point he just

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Speaker 2: probably and probably was reassured by his people. Look, man,

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Speaker 2: you literally could shoot a guy in Central Park and

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Speaker 2: your bass will stand behind you.

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Speaker 3: You'll be okay.

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Speaker 2: And maybe he will, you know, I guess it's definitely

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Speaker 2: hurting him, but not that we're.

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Speaker 4: In the midst we're in the midst of seeing. But

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Speaker 4: it is like I'm just like, we'll see you knew

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Speaker 4: what was going to be a passing, right, Like like

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Speaker 4: what like why would you stoke this? Because because that's

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Speaker 4: the thing is he did continue to stoke this flyer

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Speaker 4: and it's like he sure did because.

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Speaker 2: He'd be able to have more control. They they it's

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Speaker 2: also very sloppy. They very sloppily tried. Like one person

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Speaker 2: that I saw on Blue Sky pointed out there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of don'ts that are censored in the files, like

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Speaker 2: the word don't. And the only reason for that is

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Speaker 2: because like someone just went through and did like automatically

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Speaker 2: any use of like dawn t like they just starting

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Speaker 2: right Like there's stuff like there's a lot of really

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Speaker 2: like lazy attempts to and they've they've uploaded some stuff

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Speaker 2: and then pulled it back down. There's all sorts of

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Speaker 2: stuff like that, right I I think in terms of

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Speaker 2: the stuff that is most powerful to me, right it

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Speaker 2: is that the quote I just read you in part

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Speaker 2: if you've seen there's footage, Sophie'll play it right now.

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Speaker 2: There's some NBC archival footage of a nineteen ninety two

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Speaker 2: party where Trump and Epstein hung out together. There's a

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Speaker 2: decent chance you've seen it online, and it's just the two.

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Speaker 2: You can't even hear what they're saying, really, but the

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Speaker 2: two are like pointing it and talking about women and

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Speaker 2: like laughing to each other. And the body language in

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Speaker 2: that scene, which which should be playing right now, if

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Speaker 2: you read back over that statement with like Epstein elbowing

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Speaker 2: Trump and being like this is a good one, right,

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Speaker 2: and Trump smiled and nodding and they both laughing, it's

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Speaker 2: the same, Like you can you can see a moment

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Speaker 2: like that between them in this footage. Like that's part

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Speaker 2: of why I believe this is literally true, Like is

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Speaker 2: because we have other evidence of them hanging out together

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Speaker 2: that sounds exactly like it.

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Speaker 4: It's doing shit like that. Well, because it's also just

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Speaker 4: like it's just a pedophile frat house, right right. It's

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Speaker 4: just like when you like kind of get the tenor

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Speaker 4: of it, none of it's like surprising. Really you're like, yeah,

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Speaker 4: of course these people act like this. I guess, like

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Speaker 4: the the amount of emails they sent is a little surprising. Frankly.

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Speaker 2: You get at also, by the way, why I have

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Speaker 2: focused the episodes the way I focused them, because as

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Speaker 2: you've noted, there's a ton of I mean, there's there's

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Speaker 2: there's so much here, right for one thing like that,

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Speaker 2: you could I could do episodes all year on this

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Speaker 2: and not run out of content. There's so much fucking

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Speaker 2: shit in here, but a lot of it is just okay. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: the pedophiles told another gross pedophile joke. He and his

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Speaker 2: pedophile friends continue to be nasty with each other. That's

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Speaker 2: not surprising. What's really surprising to me is the number

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Speaker 2: of things that Epstein has been revealed to have been

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Speaker 2: central to that created the modern world everywhere. Yeah, I

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Speaker 2: made a post earlier that was a little inaccurate. The

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Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein was the first first domino for

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Speaker 2: fucking uh like cryptocurrency for like for like the modern

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Speaker 2: like the cryptocurrency in like its modern attached to the

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Speaker 2: far right sense.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 2: He was like a starting domino for gamer game is

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Speaker 2: starting domino for the fucking two thousand and eight financial crash. Like,

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Speaker 2: there's all sorts of shit and he's he's also deeply

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Speaker 2: implicated in like the growth and birth of right wing media,

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Speaker 2: right including sharing a lot of like fucking really kind

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Speaker 2: of fringe at the time far right like podcasts and

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Speaker 2: articles with his with his friends, like he was he

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Speaker 2: helped create the modern far right, and he helped ruin

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Speaker 2: the Internet in a lot of ways. And there's a

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Speaker 2: good Garbage Day column on that. But we're going to

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Speaker 2: be focusing on how Epstein built the modern world, or

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Speaker 2: helped to build the modern world, like his influence on

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Speaker 2: particularly development of the far right, and like uh cryptocurrency

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Speaker 2: and the far like the online media ecosystem that has

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Speaker 2: like fed into the far right, particularly four Chan. That's

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Speaker 2: what these episodes are about. It's like how Jeffrey Epstein

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Speaker 2: built the worst parts of the modern world because he

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Speaker 2: was shut he was even more influential than we knew.

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Speaker 2: There's been a lot that that surprised me in these files,

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Speaker 2: like stuff that I just would not have guessed was

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Speaker 2: the case.

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Speaker 4: Do you think though, there's an element of just sort

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Speaker 4: of like right place, right time, Like he's talking about

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Speaker 4: these things in a way that is like but like

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Speaker 4: kind of like, yes, we're looking at the private communications

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Speaker 4: of billionaires and right far right, and I mean, I'm

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Speaker 4: just like, I'm like, there's probably a world where it's

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Speaker 4: all like this. Maybe throughout history, like.

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Speaker 2: Reagan's letters, I think that you were. Throughout history there

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Speaker 2: have always been like this has always been how a

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Speaker 2: lot of things have gotten done. A lot of the

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Speaker 2: sausage is made like politically, like like this is how

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Speaker 2: in every society you have groups of elites who are

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Speaker 2: all creepy friends and are all probably having creepy sex,

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Speaker 2: often with underage people, and you know, through their like

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Speaker 2: petty bigotries and rivalries and whatnot, making policy that affects

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Speaker 2: millions and millions of lives. Right, That's that's always been

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Speaker 2: the case. And it you know, when I said that

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Speaker 2: Jeffrey was the first Domino, that's not entirely accurate for

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Speaker 2: any of those things, except maybe for gamer Gate. But

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Speaker 2: he was like an early Domino in all of these things.

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Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's one of these like you have

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Speaker 2: to you have to be I don't want to frame

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Speaker 2: it as like Epstein started any of these things, or

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Speaker 2: was the only idea he was the guy who created

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Speaker 2: micro transactions in video games.

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Speaker 3: That's not really accurate.

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Speaker 2: But he heavily influenced the development of micro transactions in

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Speaker 2: video games because he was talking up the idea and

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Speaker 2: pushing it to a lot of influential friends in the industry.

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Speaker 2: And that's generally how stuff worked with Epstein, right, I mean,

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Speaker 2: with the exception of the financial crash, stuff is is

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Speaker 2: a little wonk ear.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting because like when you list those things that

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Speaker 1: my my like, without knowing that this was the topic,

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Speaker 1: I instantly think like Steve Bannon as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he was close with Bannon as talking.

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Speaker 1: About Yeah, and so it's just like motherfucker was everywhere.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Just like the question to me is like, is

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Speaker 4: the causality, like do just being a pedophile make you

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Speaker 4: more of a make turn you into a right wing

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Speaker 4: freak or just being a right wing freak turn you

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Speaker 4: into a pedophile?

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Speaker 2: Well, this is and we'll talk about it. I kind

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Speaker 2: of what happened what.

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Speaker 1: I said, chicken or the egg?

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Speaker 2: Sorry, okay, Yeah, I kind of think when it comes

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Speaker 2: to answering that question, I think Epstein, like Trump, like

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Speaker 2: a lot of these guys, was socially someone that you

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Speaker 2: would have pegged as more of like a liberal or

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Speaker 2: progressive based on the causes.

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Speaker 3: He's supporting the people he.

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Speaker 2: Hung out with most of his life, but his primarily

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Speaker 2: guy who's interested in his own personal power and wealth.

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Speaker 2: And a lot of his right word turn came after

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Speaker 2: his conviction and his jail sentence in like two thousand

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Speaker 2: and eight, two thousand and nine, and after that he's

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Speaker 2: increasingly angry and increasingly reactionary. And that's a lot of

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Speaker 2: these guys get on the right. He's a big cancel

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Speaker 2: culture guy. He's freaked out by me too, right, So

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Speaker 2: that's a big factor in why he goes far right.

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Speaker 2: I don't think him being a pedophile has much ideologically

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Speaker 2: other than unfortunately, as we've seen, a lot of powerful

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Speaker 2: men want to have sex with fifteen and sixteen year

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Speaker 2: old girls, right, And that's not a left or a

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Speaker 2: right wing thing, you know, it's not even just a

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Speaker 2: politics thing. Fucking priests and cops and whatnot, all like

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Speaker 2: r you know, it is all powerful people or less kids,

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Speaker 2: you know sometimes but in part because if you want

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Speaker 2: to molest kids, getting into a position of power makes

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Speaker 2: it a lot easier to do that.

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Speaker 3: Way.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's one of the incidental like, yeah, if

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Speaker 4: that's your goal, power is a good way to achieve it.

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Speaker 4: Power also achieves other things. But yeah, right, that's probably

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Speaker 4: the logical funnel.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know when it comes to because we'll

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Speaker 2: be talking a little bit about Trump in these episodes,

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Speaker 2: but he's not. It's more how Epstein helped like build

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Speaker 2: and prepare like the media ecosystem and the cultural like

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Speaker 2: ideological environment to make Trump's presidency possible. Like his contribution

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Speaker 2: to that is more interesting to me in these episodes

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Speaker 2: than like what Trump was involved in with Epstein, which

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Speaker 2: is why I kind of started the episode by pointing

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Speaker 2: that out. But I'm not gonna We're not gonna be

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Speaker 2: covering that heavily because you can find that in a

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Speaker 2: bunch of places, and anyone who's not an idiot knows

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Speaker 2: that Donald Trump was deeply involved in Epstein. And if

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Speaker 2: he didn't have underage girls Epstein was trafficking, then he

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Speaker 2: had sex with adults that Epstein was illegally trafficking, right,

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Speaker 2: Like like I don't know who he had sex with,

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Speaker 2: but it wasn't good, right. Yeah, So yeah, these episodes

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Speaker 2: are going to be about what we've learned about Jeffrey

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Speaker 2: Epstein and everyone else, because the horrifying truth hidden at

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Speaker 2: the center of the revealed Epstein files is that Jeffrey

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Speaker 2: wasn't just a pedophile financier who knew the secrets of

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Speaker 2: the elite. He was a player himself, and he actively

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Speaker 2: used his influence in clout and money to shift the

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Speaker 2: world in new directions. And despite his public persona as

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Speaker 2: a philanthropist who hung out with scientists and philosophers and

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Speaker 2: a lot of left coded kinds of people, he spent

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Speaker 2: the last decade of his life building support for a

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Speaker 2: global right wing power grab with people like Peter Teel

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Speaker 2: and Steve Bannon. And this power grab succeeded. It left

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Speaker 2: him behind, but he lived to see it come to fruition,

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Speaker 2: which you can tell was very frustrating to him that

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Speaker 2: like I helped, I helped make this all possible, and

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Speaker 2: yet I'm I'm not going to benefit from the impunity

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Speaker 2: that I can see going to other people. So I

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Speaker 2: went back and forth as to where we were going

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Speaker 2: to start with these episodes. Which of the reveals do

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Speaker 2: we begin with? Because there's so many players, so many

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Speaker 2: different people who were important and implicated with Epstein, that

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Speaker 2: it's impossible to not leave some stuff out. But I

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Speaker 2: think The story I want to tell this week is

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Speaker 2: going to flow best if I start with the tale

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Speaker 2: of a little feller named Brock Pierce. Have you heard

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Speaker 2: of Brock?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 4: No, no, okay, good good God, You're gonna You're gonna

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Speaker 4: recognize him in a second here.

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Speaker 1: Unfortunately, you really are you really really?

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Speaker 2: Born November fourteenth, nineteen eighty, Brock Jeffrey Pierce another Jeffrey

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Speaker 2: came into this world in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city even

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Speaker 2: now in the crosshairs of a fascist movement that at

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Speaker 2: least partly exists through the consequences of Brock's actions. There

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Speaker 2: was little sign of this in his early life. However,

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Speaker 2: his parents seem to want him to have a career

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Speaker 2: in Hollywood. It's a clear to me how much they

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Speaker 2: pushed their son and how much he genuinely wanted that

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Speaker 2: for himself. Pierce has described himself as a simple hockey

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Speaker 2: loving boy from Minnesota. When at age three, he started

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Speaker 2: acting in commercials. This wound up building to his big shot,

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Speaker 2: a supporting role in the first Mighty Ducks movie.

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Speaker 3: So he was in The.

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Speaker 2: Mighty Ducks, The Stars the Mighty Ducks. Yeah, yeah, you

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Speaker 2: like those movies As a kid, I seemed I think

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Speaker 2: I did.

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Speaker 4: I think so right.

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Speaker 2: The second one taught me the difference between Iceland and Greenland.

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Speaker 4: You know, uh, you know, I was probably nitpicking hockey

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Speaker 4: formations a little bit. The Flying V is not so good.

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Speaker 4: I guess sure.

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Speaker 2: I don't know much about hockey other than I like

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Speaker 2: fist fights. If you're too young to have seen the

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Speaker 2: Mighty Ducks movies and you don't understand what Andrew and

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Speaker 2: I are talking about, they're a series. I think there's

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Speaker 2: a trilogy, ultimately.

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Speaker 4: Probably straight to DVD. There's a much who.

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Speaker 2: Knows how many there are, right, Yeah, there's there's several

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Speaker 2: of these movies, and they're all kind of about a

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Speaker 2: pee wee hockey team from the Twin Cities area that

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Speaker 2: isn't very good, right, It's a bad team. And then

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Speaker 2: an attorney named no Ship Gordon Bombay gets sentenced to

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Speaker 2: community service and winds up coaching them, and YadA, YadA, YadA.

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Speaker 2: You've seen one underdog sports team movie. You've seen them all, right,

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Speaker 2: you know where this basically goes, right, It's kind of

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Speaker 2: a it's this is essentially it's kind of a hockey

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Speaker 2: ripoff of Bad News Bears, a little bit right. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 2: you know, without without the the charisma of the raw,

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Speaker 2: unbridled charisma of Walter Mathow.

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Speaker 3: God but a champion.

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Speaker 4: I mean it's it's Emelio Estevez, I think, right. And

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Speaker 4: also yeah, in Bombay, if I recall, he's doing what

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Speaker 4: he got. He got busted for trunk driving.

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Speaker 2: Right right, right right, yeah, Yeah, he's gorgon trouble and

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Speaker 2: he has to do it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, couldn't Bombay Chin.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Mighty Ducks premise was strong enough to

364
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Speaker 2: Susay in a trilogy which no critics consider to be

365
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Speaker 2: basically the Hockey children's hockey equivalent to the Lord of

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Speaker 2: the Rings. Brock's career spanned thirteen years as an actor,

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Speaker 2: and it culminated in the nineteen ninety six film First Kid,

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Speaker 2: where Pierce played the President's son. During the movie's release,

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Speaker 2: he got to visit the White House and even sit

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Speaker 2: in President Clinton's chair in the Oval Office. Here's a

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Speaker 2: photo with him and comedy legend Sindbad. Look at that

372
00:19:24,640 --> 00:19:26,360
Speaker 2: pet them together. Look at that?

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Speaker 4: Honestly, pretty sick.

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Speaker 2: Pretty cool, Pretty cool as a kid to get to

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Speaker 2: take photos in the Oval Office with fucking Sinbad.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that color blue carpet.

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Speaker 3: It's a nice blue carpet. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: If you need a description of this photo, I would

379
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Speaker 2: say Brock looked sort of like the Sam's Club brand

380
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Speaker 2: Macaulay Culkin. And I don't know how to describe Simbad

381
00:19:46,560 --> 00:19:48,600
Speaker 2: to you. That would be like explaining the sun to

382
00:19:48,680 --> 00:19:53,040
Speaker 2: an earthworm, right. Anyway, Brock was fourteen at the time

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Speaker 2: of this visit, and per an AOL interview by Sean Newman,

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Speaker 2: he was quote thinking about leaving acting, determined to carve

385
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Speaker 2: his his own path as a Hollywood producer, which is

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Speaker 2: an ambitious dream to have as a fourteen year old.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no offense. Kid, If your dream is to

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Speaker 4: be a producer at fourteen, something is straight up wrong

389
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Speaker 4: with you. You can get drugs if you stay an actor, yes,

390
00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:21,120
Speaker 4: of course, But like you again, going back to Robert Evans,

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Speaker 4: if you really want.

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Speaker 2: The high grade cocaine, you've got to be a a

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Speaker 2: big league producer.

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Speaker 4: Right, saying recognizing power in that way at fourteen and

395
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Speaker 4: wanting power only is yeah, les theopathic.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, I get, like the producing can

397
00:20:37,520 --> 00:20:39,720
Speaker 2: be a really cool job and stuff, Like I get

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Speaker 2: why people want to do it. It's just weird for

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Speaker 2: a fourteen year old who's already an actor to be like, no, producing, Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Fourteen some time, because that means he's met producers, right,

401
00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:50,160
Speaker 4: But and then like no that guy.

402
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Speaker 2: And again, it wouldn't be weird if he was like, no,

403
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Speaker 2: I think I want to be a director more. It's like,

404
00:20:53,760 --> 00:20:55,720
Speaker 2: you've been in a couple of movies. That's enough to

405
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Speaker 2: know that you want to be behind the camera or whatever. Producer,

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Speaker 2: that's that's a weird dream.

407
00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:00,480
Speaker 4: Yeah.

408
00:21:00,560 --> 00:21:04,560
Speaker 2: Now, I find this dream noteworthy for a couple of reasons. One,

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Speaker 2: it kind of it takes some pretty unmitigated goal to

410
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Speaker 2: decide at fourteen, I think I'm done acting. It's time

411
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Speaker 2: to run shit.

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Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, that's a that's a crazy thing, And it's impossible.

413
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Speaker 2: For me to know how accurate brocks later analysis of

414
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Speaker 2: his own thinking was. But this sounds to me like

415
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Speaker 2: a kid who was forced to grow up way too fast.

416
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Speaker 3: Remember, he's a.

417
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Speaker 2: Child actor, and I don't have enough to tail about

418
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Speaker 2: his childhood to note that his parents push him. Was

419
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 2: it an abusive situation? But it's rarely a good one,

420
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Speaker 2: especially in the nineties. I think things are a little

421
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:39,639
Speaker 2: better now, but it's rarely good.

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Speaker 4: The times I've worked with kid actors, I watch it

423
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Speaker 4: and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if

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Speaker 4: this is good for them.

425
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Speaker 2: I remember talking to a friend of mine who was like,

426
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Speaker 2: a he's like a working class director, you know, not

427
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Speaker 2: like a fucking giant Hollywood guy, but like a buddy

428
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Speaker 2: of mine who as a director, who said that, no, like,

429
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Speaker 2: you have someone on staff when you have child actors, yeah,

430
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Speaker 2: whose job is basically to protect them from their parents,

431
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Speaker 2: to make sure their parents.

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Speaker 4: Aren't pushing them too much, right, the whole thing, Like, yeah,

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Speaker 4: it's really weird. It's a weird dynamic.

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Speaker 2: It's a weird dynamic. It's again, I think a lot

435
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:22,800
Speaker 2: better now, in part because of how bad shit was

436
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:25,560
Speaker 2: for a lot of child actors in the eighties and nineties.

437
00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 4: But even now, I'm just like, now that I see

438
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:32,280
Speaker 4: this and I've seen it a little bit, like when

439
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:35,240
Speaker 4: I now, I'm like, oh, I get why everyone Unsaved

440
00:22:35,240 --> 00:22:37,800
Speaker 4: by the Bell was like twenty eight, Like that's actually.

441
00:22:37,840 --> 00:22:39,919
Speaker 3: It makes sense human, It's probably fine.

442
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 2: We should just like suspend our disbelief a little bit

443
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:46,320
Speaker 2: and let adult explay teenagers because the alternative.

444
00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:47,879
Speaker 4: Is fuss so bad for the people.

445
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:50,879
Speaker 2: I think, yeah yeah, and for an idea of like

446
00:22:51,040 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 2: how fast Brock has had to grow up. This is

447
00:22:54,080 --> 00:22:56,560
Speaker 2: him as a talking about himself as a fourteen year

448
00:22:56,600 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 2: old and his attitude. I took a look at my

449
00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:01,200
Speaker 2: life and asked my myself, is this what I want

450
00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:03,400
Speaker 2: to be doing? Is this my calling? I said no,

451
00:23:03,560 --> 00:23:05,760
Speaker 2: I don't really want to be reading other people's scripts.

452
00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:07,520
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a performer. I want to

453
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:09,360
Speaker 2: write my own script. I want to be the director

454
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:10,920
Speaker 2: of my own life.

455
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:11,720
Speaker 3: And I get that.

456
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,320
Speaker 2: It's also like most fourteen year olds aren't in a

457
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 2: position where they're like, is this really what I want

458
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 2: to be doing with my life? Because they're fourteen, you know,

459
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:22,320
Speaker 2: So that that says something just about where this kid's

460
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:25,520
Speaker 2: head is. You know whose head is in a good

461
00:23:25,560 --> 00:23:38,240
Speaker 2: place mine? Our sponsors, Oh we're back, you know. To

462
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 2: make Sophie happy, I have stopped accusing our sponsors, like

463
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 2: the good people, of committing crimes against humanity, even though

464
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:49,280
Speaker 2: they did murder those kids, So you're welcome, Sophie.

465
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:49,880
Speaker 4: In self defense.

466
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:52,720
Speaker 2: In self defense, those kids were coming at them. You know,

467
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:56,400
Speaker 2: those children were complaining about being forced to pick berries

468
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:58,760
Speaker 2: all day. You know, I guess I supposed to do.

469
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:03,600
Speaker 1: I simply cannot defend, which is like, this.

470
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 2: Is like an unfair I know, I know, I know,

471
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:07,240
Speaker 2: And we're still going to bleep the name out for

472
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 2: all of these it's going to be great. So choice

473
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:13,200
Speaker 2: for old producer, Sophie. Here for old producer Sophie. You've

474
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 2: got Brock's dream job, Sophie.

475
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 1: I just want everybody to have like health insurance and

476
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:23,640
Speaker 1: like housing and like some form of financial stability.

477
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 2: That's not what Brock wants at age fourteen. So Brock

478
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 2: has his crisis of confidence at fourteen, but he keeps

479
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:35,360
Speaker 2: working for about a year and a half, almost two

480
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:37,879
Speaker 2: years after this point, you know, he films nineteen ninety

481
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:41,080
Speaker 2: seven's Legends of the Lost Tomb, where an adult apparently

482
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:42,719
Speaker 2: pulled a prank on him and told him he had

483
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,159
Speaker 2: permission to carve his name onto a pyramid while they

484
00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:48,240
Speaker 2: filmed in Egypt. Brock would later admit, it almost feels

485
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:50,840
Speaker 2: kind of wrong, and it certainly was. You are not

486
00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 2: supposed to do that into the pier?

487
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 4: He do it? Did he do that?

488
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 3: Apparently fourteen? Again, he's fourteen.

489
00:24:57,560 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 2: An adult told him he could, Like, it's not his

490
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 2: there's a lot that's his fault in this story, but

491
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 2: I won't really blame that on him. He filmed his

492
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,920
Speaker 2: last three movies in nineteen ninety eight. Sixteen year old

493
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce left the acting world entirely after this point. Now,

494
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 2: he had become an early Internet nerd. He loves gaming.

495
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 2: He's a big gamer as a kid, and he's you know,

496
00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:18,720
Speaker 2: pretty early on the Internet train. And he's got the

497
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,480
Speaker 2: good sense and intuition to know that the Internet's going

498
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:23,760
Speaker 2: to play a major role in the future of entertainment.

499
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 2: So he co founds a company, Digital Entertainment Network or DEN,

500
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 2: with two other founders, Mark Collins Rector and Chad Shackley. DIN,

501
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:37,399
Speaker 2: as we'll call it, is most often described as a

502
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 2: precursor or prelude to YouTube. Brock says it failed because

503
00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 2: the technology wasn't ready basically streaming video. You just couldn't

504
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:46,879
Speaker 2: stream video well enough back in the nineties. And this

505
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 2: is you know, pretty much true, and that puts dinn in.

506
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 2: Some people give him too much credit to be like

507
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:57,119
Speaker 2: he knew YouTube was the future before anyone else did. Now,

508
00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:00,879
Speaker 2: a number of people tried. There were a few different

509
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 2: failed YouTube precursors that just didn't quite work because again,

510
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 2: the tech wasn't there. This was dinn was one of

511
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 2: a number of dot com era failures, a number of

512
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 2: companies that kind of reached for that brass ring just

513
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:16,120
Speaker 2: a few years too early. And it's worth looking at

514
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 2: exactly what Brock and his friends wanted to create though,

515
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:21,959
Speaker 2: how they were like billing this. The company had a

516
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,560
Speaker 2: thirty eight page manifesto written by Collins Rector, who seems

517
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 2: to have been the lead visionary. Part of it read

518
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:32,120
Speaker 2: the boob tube zombie television is dead. Global entertainment will

519
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 2: be delivered over the Internet. Digital entertainment network will create

520
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 2: the last network. And so you can see this mix

521
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:42,119
Speaker 2: of you could see that as prescient, like but also

522
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 2: very wrong because we're still just watching TV over the

523
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 2: internet and it didn't create the last network. There's a

524
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,119
Speaker 2: shitload of streaming sites. It kind of looked for a

525
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 2: while like Netflix was becoming that. But there's so fucking

526
00:26:55,119 --> 00:26:58,439
Speaker 2: many streaming sites right now, right Like, that's that's not

527
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 2: even what happened. So Collins Rector was forty and the

528
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,199
Speaker 2: oldest and most experienced of the group of founders at

529
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:07,400
Speaker 2: den and this is where we get into things being

530
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 2: very problematic, and this is maybe something that Brock has

531
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:14,960
Speaker 2: sort of been raised to not see as weird. But

532
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 2: Collins Rector is forty years old, Chad, who is Collins

533
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:23,840
Speaker 2: Rector's roommate, is twenty four, and the two had met

534
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:27,679
Speaker 2: on bulletin boards. Whereas the La Times rights quote he

535
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 2: Collins Rector apparently used to strike up relationships with at

536
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:36,280
Speaker 2: least two teenaged boys, right cool. The two move to

537
00:27:36,320 --> 00:27:39,959
Speaker 2: get moved in together when Shackley was sixteen and Collin's

538
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 2: Rector would have been in his mid thirties. Ew Shackley's

539
00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 2: parents seem to have thought that this was mostly a

540
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 2: business arrangement, that they were just like you know, founders

541
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:51,399
Speaker 2: and starting a company and what we don't want to

542
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 2: get in the way of our son. This was a

543
00:27:54,119 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 2: sexual relationship, like this is a there's what bad I say,

544
00:28:00,520 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 2: sexual relationship?

545
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 3: This is rape? You know he's sixteen.

546
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 4: The parent they.

547
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: Are quote thought it was a business.

548
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 2: Or do let your that's all I've read about it.

549
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:11,439
Speaker 3: You know, I don't.

550
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 4: Known with a grown man.

551
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:17,919
Speaker 2: It seems like a bad judgment. I'll say that. Sorry,

552
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 2: that's still make money. So Brock gets involved with these

553
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 2: guys when Shackley's twenty four and Brock is seventeen. So

554
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 2: it's seventeen. Brock is in business with a forty year

555
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:33,120
Speaker 2: old and a twenty four year old, Yeah, starting this company,

556
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,920
Speaker 2: and he moves into them. They've got a mansion, as

557
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 2: we'll talk about, and he moves in with these guys. Oh,

558
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 2: shortly before Den seeks its first round of funding. Now

559
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 2: Den gets a lot of interest.

560
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 3: Again, this is the.

561
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 2: Dot com boom. Venture capitalists are throwing a shitload of

562
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 2: money in a bunch of dumb places. It attracts about

563
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 2: eighty eight million dollars in funding, including money from actor

564
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 2: Fred Savage and five million dollars from former US representative

565
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 2: Michael Huffington.

566
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 4: What I mean, they were just everyone who had a

567
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 4: concept like this gets five million dollars, and one of

568
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 4: them because YouTube, that's their lot, right, exactly exactly, That

569
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 4: is basically what happened, right, And this was one of

570
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 4: the bad bets, although they got eighty eight million. Yeah,

571
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 4: so this was enough to pay for this. Eighty eight

572
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 4: million dollars pays for about a two year wild ride

573
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 4: for Pearson his co founders. They all live together in

574
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 4: a twelve thousand square foot mansion and Encino. They all

575
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 4: drive sports cars. They threw these massive parties that celebrities

576
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 4: show up to that they bill his work events. Basically, No,

577
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 4: these parties are part of the business, right, We've got

578
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 4: to build, you know, we got to make ourselves part

579
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 4: of the culture in Hollywood, right, Like that's kind of

580
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 4: the argument they're making.

581
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: But you're not in Hollywood, You're in Encino.

582
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 2: You're in Encino.

583
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 4: Yeah, fair, this is the business model of many businesses. Yes, right,

584
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 4: So they're not exactly they're not quite outliers really.

585
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 3: Right, they're not.

586
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:00,719
Speaker 2: They're not out like this is this is how starts.

587
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 2: They're not doing it in Hollywood. They're up in the valley,

588
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 2: but they have like their big party house mansion, right,

589
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 2: and they're arguing that, like, well.

590
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 4: These wild parties are a lot of people.

591
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:11,040
Speaker 2: It's sexually assaulted. Are a crucial part of the business.

592
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:17,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, prescient to their eventual business, I suppose, but right, yeah, yeah,

593
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 4: a warning to us maybe for the La Times quote

594
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 4: in his manifesto, crafted to energize early employees, Collins Rectors

595
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 4: set his sites on segments of so called generation Why

596
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 4: that he said we're being ignored by mainstream television and movies.

597
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 2: He identified punk rockers, extreme skaters, and hip hoppers and

598
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 2: put gay teenagers at the top of the list. The

599
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:39,560
Speaker 2: company would build a huge market by global casting to

600
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 2: a narrow cast audience. He vowed, now here you can

601
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 2: see some actual insight.

602
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 3: Right.

603
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,760
Speaker 2: I mean, it's ridiculous calling them hip hoppers. That shows

604
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 2: a deep disconnect with at least a chunk of pop culture.

605
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 2: But pointing out that like the future is of future

606
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 2: media is going to be catering to these like really

607
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 2: narrow groups of fandoms of subcultures, is like, that is

608
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 2: a legitimate insight, right. That is that did turn out

609
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 2: to be a major part of the future of media. Right,

610
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 2: And the fact that they seem to know like reach

611
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 2: in because he is a forty year old man who

612
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 2: is molesting teenage boys. It's all it's dark that he's

613
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 2: also focusing on gay teenage stories. But it is a

614
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 2: lot of very successful media in the twenty first century

615
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 2: is queer people telling queer stories. Right, So there's there's

616
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 2: a degree of understanding of where the media is going

617
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: that's also mixed with deeply fucked up abusive stuff. About

618
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 2: this guy Collins. Right, well, it's like it's it just

619
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 2: this guy got.

620
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 4: To where it was because his self serving thing happens

621
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:43,800
Speaker 4: to have been profitable.

622
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 2: Right, let's talk about how he got to where he was.

623
00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 2: So Collins rector raises this eighty eight million because he

624
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 2: spends months crisscrossing the country while while Brock and Shackley

625
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 2: are kind of working out of the mansion, College Director

626
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 2: spends a lot of time drumming up investment money and

627
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:01,959
Speaker 2: giving his pitch to anyone who will listen. He brags

628
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 2: about the features that den is going to have. Users

629
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 2: are gonna be able to pause shows just as they're

630
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 2: watching them, Oh my god. And this is something he

631
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:12,440
Speaker 2: points out, you'll be able to if you see an

632
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 2: actor wearing a shirt you like, you'll be able to

633
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 2: click on the shirt on screen and it'll take you

634
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 2: to a website where you can buy it.

635
00:32:18,840 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 3: Right.

636
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 2: And that's again that's a oh yeah, you definitely saw

637
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 2: pieces of our horrible future, you know, like this is

638
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 2: this is these are real. Both of these are real

639
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 2: features that are eventually materialized in various ways. Right, But

640
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 2: also so did a lot of people peop yes, and

641
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 2: more to the point, these features may as well have

642
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 2: been star trek bullshit in nineteen ninety eight, because about

643
00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 2: two percent of the country had high speed internet. You

644
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 2: know you're not clicking a fucking T shirt. You're not

645
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:50,600
Speaker 2: streaming video most people.

646
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:52,800
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can say a lot of shit. This was

647
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 4: the time when it was easy to say a lot

648
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 4: of shit. But like, I, oh, can't build it yet.

649
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 2: I had dial up in ninety eight, And I will

650
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 2: tell you stream a video meant pulling up a video,

651
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 2: pausing it, letting it fucking buffer for like forty five minutes,

652
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 2: and then watching your four minute video. OK. So the

653
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 2: company continued to generate buzz and investments through nineteen ninety nine,

654
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 2: but one thing was off. No one seemed to know

655
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 2: where Mark Collins Rector had come from or who he

656
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:24,600
Speaker 2: really was. The La Times tried to reach out to

657
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 2: dozens of his past business associates and even friends, all

658
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 2: of whom either denied knowing him or aftered conflicting stories

659
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 2: about his life. Quote Collins Rector often claimed to be

660
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 2: in his late twenties, and associates and employees so he

661
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 2: gave the impression that he had been a computer student

662
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 2: at UCLA, but company filing show that he is forty,

663
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 2: and officials at UCLA say there is no record he

664
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 2: was ever a student there. According to records in Los

665
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 2: Angeles Superior Court, he changed his name in nineteen ninety

666
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 2: eight from Mark Rector to Mark Collins Rector.

667
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: I don't like this man very much.

668
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 3: He's not a good guy.

669
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 2: Not a good guy, and he's great. He's straddling the

670
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:07,480
Speaker 2: line between serial entrepreneur and con man and any as

671
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:11,720
Speaker 2: I say often, any founder, anyone who wants to start

672
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:15,439
Speaker 2: a tech company, especially in this period, has some con

673
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,560
Speaker 2: man jobs. Stee jobs is part con man, right, because

674
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:21,280
Speaker 2: part of what you're doing is promising and guaranteeing people

675
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 2: they will get something that you don't know you can

676
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 2: actually make yet Yeah, right, that is a key part

677
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 2: of the business, and that's a bit of a con

678
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 2: Now Jobs wound up finding people who are able to

679
00:34:31,760 --> 00:34:33,239
Speaker 2: make the things that he promised happen.

680
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 3: Generally not always well, it's it's.

681
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 4: The successes are the ones that in hindsight found the

682
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:43,360
Speaker 4: right person like right, Like, we just have the benefit

683
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 4: of Elon Muskle likes being on Twitter to know he's

684
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:49,200
Speaker 4: if he wasn't on Twitter, we simply wouldn't know this shit.

685
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:52,319
Speaker 2: If the company was just making products and he was

686
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 2: never making promises or any of these like not like

687
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 2: he would still have a lot of his aura to him.

688
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 2: He just kept fucking quiet anyway. So Collins rector, yes,

689
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:07,239
Speaker 2: straddles the line between entrepreneur and con man. Twenty years

690
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,439
Speaker 2: back he had run This is because the La Times

691
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 2: looks into him. They found that his first business venture

692
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:14,880
Speaker 2: was this telecom company in Florida called Telequest that he

693
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,480
Speaker 2: ran like he started like twenty years ago. One of

694
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 2: his investors described him as a genius who was too

695
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 2: much into instant aggrandizement. Right, basically, he was great at

696
00:35:25,960 --> 00:35:28,280
Speaker 2: certain things. He was really smart, he was a visionary,

697
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 2: but he also wanted to spend all the money on

698
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 2: funshit like sports cars, as opposed to building a business.

699
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:37,200
Speaker 2: That business eventually failed, and he started another one called

700
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 2: world coom Net, which sold travel packages and reached a

701
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 2: peak valuation of about one hundred million dollars before crashing

702
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 2: so shortly after moving in together. Because when he picks

703
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 2: up this kid Shackley from a message board, when Shackli's

704
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,879
Speaker 2: like sixteen and they move into or younger, and they

705
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 2: move in together when Shackley's sixteen and they start a

706
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 2: business which they sell for millions of dollars and they

707
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 2: use that to buy the mansion this Din is operated.

708
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: He found this kid, did he like on a chapboard

709
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 1: and then like yeah, yeah, the kid's parents permission and

710
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,320
Speaker 1: transported him over state lines.

711
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 2: I think it's within the state of California. But yeah,

712
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 2: his parents let him move in with this guy because

713
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 2: they think they're starting a bit. I mean, they do

714
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 2: start a business and they sell it and they.

715
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 4: Make a lot of money.

716
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 2: This is just also an abuse of sexual sites.

717
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:25,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do see where this is going.

718
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 2: Well, probably we don't know exactly what went on, but

719
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:35,360
Speaker 2: that's heavily insinuated. Right, So, uh, they pay high salaries

720
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:38,520
Speaker 2: Din does, and cash bonuses for their employees rather than

721
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 2: giving them stock, which is really weird. Most startups are

722
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 2: primarily compensating people in stock, and the idea is if

723
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:47,439
Speaker 2: the company works out, then you get rich.

724
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 3: Right.

725
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 2: It's sort of a sign that maybe they knew this

726
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: wasn't going to work and they were operating a con

727
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 2: that they're paying themselves in their friends huge salaries rather

728
00:36:57,080 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 2: than giving a bunch of stock options up right, that's

729
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 2: kind of a sign I know this isn't going to

730
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:03,799
Speaker 2: work out. In the first six months of nineteen ninety nine,

731
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 2: DIN made zero revenue and lost twenty million dollars. Most

732
00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 2: of that money goes to salaries, but some of it

733
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:12,839
Speaker 2: is spent on giant parties that brought in an a

734
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 2: list guest roster. I want you to guess, just guessed

735
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 2: one of the guests, one of the celebrity guests that

736
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 2: show up at these parties. The DIN boys are throwing.

737
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 4: What year? What year are we talking?

738
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:27,359
Speaker 2: This is like ninety nine, two thousand, ninety eight, ninety nine,

739
00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:28,720
Speaker 2: two thousand, like that period.

740
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh right, Seinfeld, it's all the friends, every

741
00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:38,720
Speaker 1: the friends.

742
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 3: No, it's Brian Singer. It's Brian Brian Singer and.

743
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:47,840
Speaker 2: Gary Goddard, two of the allegedly sex pestious sex pests

744
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 2: in the history of sex pestitude, right, like you read

745
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:54,200
Speaker 2: some of the allegations against Singer, who has not been

746
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:56,359
Speaker 2: convicted of anything in a court of law. I have

747
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 2: to say, per Hollywood Reporter. And obviously the fact that

748
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 2: they're having these parties, the fact that fucking Collin's rector

749
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:05,720
Speaker 2: is the guy he is. There's a lot of bad

750
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:09,759
Speaker 2: things happening at these parties, kind of not unique, but

751
00:38:10,040 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 2: I will say they're bad things happening to young men.

752
00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 2: Although I say young men, they're bad things happening to

753
00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:17,839
Speaker 2: young boys, which is different from some of the other

754
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 2: guys in Hollywood. To quote from the Hollywood Reporter, A

755
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 2: young man sued, claiming Collin's rector had started molesting him

756
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 2: when he was thirteen. More litigation followed regarding alleged goings

757
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 2: on at the Din mansion. One alleged victim, Alexander Burton,

758
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 2: claimed that Colin's rector, Pierce, and Shackley had supplied him

759
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 2: with alcohol and drugs even though he was under twenty one,

760
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,920
Speaker 2: and that all three men subsequently assaulted him. Another accuser

761
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 2: was said to have written a suicide note, reading in

762
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,200
Speaker 2: part I can't go on. I let them use me

763
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 2: as a sex tool. The note was discovered before a

764
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 2: suicide attempt could be made. There were also accusations that

765
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 2: Collin's rector would intimidate his victims by brandishing a gun.

766
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:57,799
Speaker 2: So Jesus bad and again to make it very quick.

767
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 2: First off, for legal reasons, brock Pierce has not been

768
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 2: convicted of anything. He has not been proven in a

769
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:05,800
Speaker 2: court of law to have abused anyone at these parties.

770
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 2: He has just been accused of it. There was at

771
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 2: least one case where things were settled out of court,

772
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,760
Speaker 2: but Collin's rector has been convicted of things and brock

773
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 2: Pierce is not. I do want to make that clear.

774
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 2: But it's also clear there are allegations against brock Piers

775
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:22,879
Speaker 2: during this time that he sexually assaulted at least one

776
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 2: child that I'm aware of, right, or at least one

777
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:29,839
Speaker 2: alleged victim sorry, yeah, who was under twenty one. So

778
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 2: you know, interpret that how you will. I know how

779
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 2: I feel about brock Pierce, but again, hasn't been convicted

780
00:39:37,480 --> 00:39:41,280
Speaker 2: of anything. So the resultant lawsuit forced Mark Collins Rector

781
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 2: to leave the country before Din could ipo, and the

782
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 2: company collapsed quickly after that. About a third of the

783
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:50,359
Speaker 2: employees were laid off and new management struggled to write

784
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 2: a sinking ship. Collins, Rector, under indictment for transporting miners

785
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 2: across state lines for sex, took Shackley and Pierce to

786
00:39:57,320 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 2: Spain with him in August of two thousands. So the

787
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 2: boys have now fled the country for Spain, where they're

788
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 2: living in an ice villa, one has to assume, yeah,

789
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 2: and probably continuing to get up to things we don't

790
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 2: want to think about. Yeah, one would assume. Now in

791
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:16,200
Speaker 2: May of twenty twenty two their home, one may assume,

792
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:18,160
Speaker 2: because in May of twenty twenty two, their home was

793
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:22,759
Speaker 2: raided by Interpol. Like not a great sign when your

794
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:24,280
Speaker 2: house gets rated by Interpol.

795
00:40:24,640 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 4: Wow, while you're on the run from the.

796
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 2: Right for transporting miners across state lines. And the search

797
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 2: of their home in Spain found weapons and thousands of

798
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 2: individual pieces of child sex abuse material, right, thousands of

799
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:43,920
Speaker 2: photos of like naked kids being abused. Pierce has claimed

800
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,360
Speaker 2: he was unaware that the photos were in the house.

801
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:49,799
Speaker 2: Thousands of pieces of born I didn't know about, you know.

802
00:40:50,680 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 2: He and Shackley were released, but their older friend was

803
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 2: ultimately extradited to the United States for his many crimes

804
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 2: and pled guilty to five counts of trafficking miners. And again,

805
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 2: maybe Pierce didn't know about the photos. Legally, I have

806
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 2: to say that, right, because he and Shackley were released,

807
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 2: whereas fucking Collins Rector was extra diitted.

808
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:13,239
Speaker 1: Right, is that motherfucker a jail for a long time?

809
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 2: No, a few months. He does a few months in prison,

810
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:19,839
Speaker 2: and then he flees the country because he's still rich,

811
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 2: and he seems to still reside in Europe today. Last

812
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 2: I heard he was there in like twenty fourteen. I

813
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 2: don't know what he's up to right now or I hate.

814
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:30,760
Speaker 1: It, but yeah, I hate it here.

815
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:34,359
Speaker 2: Yeah it's great. It's not great, it's not good. Yeah,

816
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 2: Planet Earth.

817
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 4: In this time. Yes, that's that's what I mean.

818
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 2: After this all kind of blows over, Pierce returns to

819
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 2: the US. He settles the claims against him. He has

820
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:47,920
Speaker 2: never been ignowed. He has never acknowledged or been convicted

821
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:51,080
Speaker 2: of any wrongdoing during this period of time. But while

822
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 2: he was in Spain before he goes back to the US,

823
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:58,040
Speaker 2: he creates his next company, Internet Gaming Entertainment or IG.

824
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 2: E heard of this company, Andrew.

825
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 4: I thought you were gonna say IGN. I guess now this,

826
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 4: so did I for a second when I first started

827
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 4: readings with No, he didn't make ign right, No he didn't.

828
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 2: Did you ever play World of Warcraft like after it

829
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 2: came out, like right after it came out?

830
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 4: Uh, not as much, but like I've I've been in

831
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 4: the room when people are playing it.

832
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I was big into World of Warcraft right

833
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,439
Speaker 2: at for like the first two years after it came out,

834
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,880
Speaker 2: like release the first expansion pack basically, and if you

835
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 2: were playing well during that period, there's a good chance

836
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,720
Speaker 2: you know what IgE is because this is the company

837
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 2: that made gold farming into a thing, right, Oh, like

838
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:40,360
Speaker 2: that this is They're not. There were others obviously, but

839
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:43,480
Speaker 2: IgE was the big gold farming company, and they were

840
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:46,839
Speaker 2: the company that kind of established gold farming as an

841
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,040
Speaker 2: industry for the chunk of time that.

842
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:50,399
Speaker 4: It was right. Oh god.

843
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 2: Now the goal with IgE, though, this is what's important.

844
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:57,280
Speaker 2: The company's goal was not to do what it became,

845
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 2: which was it was basically farming gold in video games

846
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 2: like EverQuest and World of Warcraft against the express desires

847
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 2: and the stated rules of the developers that made those games.

848
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:07,839
Speaker 3: Right.

849
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 2: IG's actual goal was to enable and to convince the

850
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 2: gaming industry to enable trading of real money for virtual goods,

851
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:20,400
Speaker 2: which is the thing that all basically all big games

852
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 2: do now, right, Yeah, this was the idea IgE wanted

853
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:26,919
Speaker 2: to push. That that was controversial at this point in time.

854
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 2: Collin's rector would later claim that he was the shadow

855
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 2: founder of the company that he had the idea and

856
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 2: Brock took the credit. Pierce denies this. I don't know

857
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 2: the truth, But as the Hollywood Reporter makes clear quote,

858
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:41,839
Speaker 2: what's unclear is when Colin's Rector stopped being a part

859
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 2: of Pierce's life. In a lawsuit against Pierce, a former

860
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 2: partner in IgE claimed that Pierce had told him in

861
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 2: two thousand and five that Colin's rector, then living overseas

862
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 2: and according to the FED, still consorting with teenage boys,

863
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 2: had been blackmailing him, threatening to damage IgE in the

864
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 2: eyes of investors. Pierce's rep says Collin's rector never threatened

865
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 2: to blackmail denies that Pierce ever made such a statement.

866
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 2: Pierce separated in any business relationship with Den failed and

867
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 2: the Internet bubble burst in two thousand. Pierce's personal relationship

868
00:44:08,640 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 2: with Collin's rector lasted until two thousand and three. The

869
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 2: rep says that's after Collin's Rector's indictment in two thousand

870
00:44:14,120 --> 00:44:16,000
Speaker 2: and after interpoll showed up at the house in Spain

871
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:18,359
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two. But Pierce's rep says at

872
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:21,400
Speaker 2: the time of his arrest, collins rector asserted his innocence.

873
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 2: It wasn't until Pierce received additional information concerning Colin's rector's

874
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 2: improper actions that he separated entirely. So, you know, I

875
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 2: don't I mean, he's still I don't think. I think

876
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 2: he basically knew. He is very young at this point,

877
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 2: but he has also been involved in a lot of

878
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 2: bad behavior. He is an adult now and he right,

879
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:46,160
Speaker 2: you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy more now,

880
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:49,759
Speaker 2: I will say, eventually Collin's Rector exits Pierce's life and

881
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 2: whatever impact he had on IgE, this is Pierce's baby

882
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:57,319
Speaker 2: for the majority of the time that the company exists, right,

883
00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:00,720
Speaker 2: and once Collin's Rectors kind of out of the picture,

884
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 2: you see, there's maybe this need in Pierce to have

885
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:07,280
Speaker 2: an older man to give him advice and professional assistance.

886
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:10,759
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good idea professionally in cases like this,

887
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 2: but also it seems to be something Pierce maybe seeks

888
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 2: out kind of pathologically, and in this case, the next

889
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 2: older man that he seeks out as a mentor is

890
00:45:21,719 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon.

891
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:28,600
Speaker 4: Now it may said, what the fuck, it's not.

892
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 3: Great, it's fucked up.

893
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 2: Obviously we know who Bannon is, and heywy becomes it

894
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 2: makes sense, right at a time. Steve is a fabulously

895
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 2: wealthy producer. Right, he gets his start as like a

896
00:45:40,880 --> 00:45:45,879
Speaker 2: banker basically, but he's he helps like make fucking Seinfeld, right,

897
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 2: And Brock had wanted to be a producer himself. He

898
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 2: came from Hollywood. So Bannon is the sort of authority

899
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:57,040
Speaker 2: figure Pierce had grown up listening to and respecting, right, Like,

900
00:45:57,120 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 2: he clearly has a lot of respect for the job.

901
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 2: So it makes sense that Bannon would be a guy

902
00:46:02,239 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 2: that he kind of inherently trust. So by the time

903
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 2: Bannon came to IgE, World of Warcraft was the biggest

904
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 2: game in history, and there were millions being made selling

905
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 2: easy access to gold and other in game resources that

906
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 2: normally you had to grind for dozens of hours to get.

907
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:21,040
Speaker 2: IgE had set up gold farms in China using cheap

908
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:23,799
Speaker 2: workers who could spend long hours doing that in game

909
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 2: grinding for the player. Now, this wasn't illegal, right, This

910
00:46:27,600 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 2: is not a crime to operate a business like this,

911
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:32,560
Speaker 2: but it is a gray market. This may seem kind

912
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 2: of hard to believe given the present realities of the

913
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:38,560
Speaker 2: video game industry, but game developers initially had a big

914
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 2: issue with the idea of gamers using real money to

915
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 2: buy in game assets. For one thing, if you actually

916
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 2: care about making a good game, if that's your interest,

917
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:50,840
Speaker 2: is actually making a game that's like a quality game

918
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 2: in its construction, letting people buy their way to have

919
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 2: better stuff rex the game, right, Like, it kind of

920
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 2: fucks up the ole thing, you know.

921
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 4: Well, it's like it's like the two goals. It's like,

922
00:47:02,960 --> 00:47:04,839
Speaker 4: is your actual goal as a studo as a game

923
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:06,759
Speaker 4: studio to make a good game or is it to

924
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 4: make money? Right? Those are not necessarily rights in it.

925
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:13,280
Speaker 2: And the studios land on make money, But the game

926
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 2: developers themselves often were very hesitant to embrace this kind

927
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 2: of thing initially, right. And so there's also like World

928
00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 2: of Warcraft has an in game economy that Blizzard spent

929
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:26,920
Speaker 2: quite a bit of time trying to set up and

930
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,840
Speaker 2: make like functional. Right, Yeah, So they're also upset that

931
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 2: this is fucking up the end game economy, so they

932
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 2: sought to ban gold Farmers whenever they cropped up. In

933
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,440
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, Pierce met Bannon and brought him

934
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,239
Speaker 2: into IgE to act as the adult in the room.

935
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 2: The company needed major investment money if it was going

936
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:49,479
Speaker 2: to survive and thrive, and Bannon basically Bannon Pierc's Bannon

937
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:53,880
Speaker 2: is the trusted old head who investors would because Pierce

938
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 2: has a reputation, right, He's somebody who people have a

939
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 2: degree of faith, and they also see really young. So

940
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 2: if they're going to invest serious money in a company

941
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 2: he's starting, they want to see there's a guy like

942
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:09,600
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon, you know. So that's why Bannon's there. Bannon

943
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 2: visits the company's Hong Kong offices and he works out

944
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,280
Speaker 2: a deal where by Goldman Sachs, his old employer, invested

945
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 2: sixty million dollars and he became the VP of IgE.

946
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 2: Now it's important to note IG's pretty evil before Bannon

947
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 2: comes on board. Not only is it kind of ruining

948
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 2: the spirit of the games that its farmers operate in,

949
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 2: but the whole business hinges on a lot of questionable activity.

950
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 2: As the Washington Boast summarizes, it's.

951
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 4: Like a digital sweatshop. Right, yeah, it is a digital sweatshop,

952
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:42,440
Speaker 4: right yeah. IgE employees in the Hong Kong office created

953
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 4: accounts for the company's delivery avatars using the names and

954
00:48:45,239 --> 00:48:48,400
Speaker 4: home addresses of unwinning US residents picked at random. In

955
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:51,720
Speaker 4: a phone directory. The company used dial up phone service

956
00:48:51,719 --> 00:48:53,840
Speaker 4: that connected to servers in the United States, making it

957
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,319
Speaker 4: appear that they were using computers there rather than in

958
00:48:56,360 --> 00:48:59,399
Speaker 4: Hong Kong. We were spending twenty thousand dollars a month

959
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 4: on dial up service. One employee said, So that's shady.

960
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:06,080
Speaker 3: Fuck.

961
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:10,359
Speaker 4: We have zero point five versions business so insane? Oh

962
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 4: my god.

963
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of stealing people's identities for profit, you know

964
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:19,520
Speaker 2: who loves to do that besides me?

965
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 4: That's right?

966
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:35,279
Speaker 2: Is our sponsors killing me? And we're bad? So uh.

967
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 2: Gold farmers working for IgE in China made as little

968
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 2: as twenty five cents an hour, laboring in cramped factories

969
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:46,399
Speaker 2: the New York Times described as virtual sweatshops. Bannon's job

970
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 2: then was to convince old money people that this business

971
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:53,840
Speaker 2: is a gold mine. And unfortunately he has some success

972
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 2: with this initially, but he doesn't succeed enough. He's able

973
00:49:57,120 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 2: to get a lot of money for IgE, but the

974
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:01,399
Speaker 2: company still doesn't like work out in the long run,

975
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 2: because he's not able to convince the people who matter most, right,

976
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 2: the executives running game companies like Blizzard, Because ultimately, IgE

977
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 2: can only be viable as a business if Blizzard stops

978
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:16,920
Speaker 2: banning their farmers and deleting the accounts and stuff that

979
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 2: have all of the money that they're trying to transfer

980
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:22,360
Speaker 2: to people, and Blizzard refuses to do that. They just

981
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 2: do not initially accept, like obviously Activision. Blizzard eventually becomes

982
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:31,080
Speaker 2: perfectly fine with in game purchases and all this shit. Right,

983
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 2: they have no issue with these micro.

984
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 4: I mean on any like even the philosophical people that

985
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:38,960
Speaker 4: agree with them. It's not that IG. It's not the

986
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:42,120
Speaker 4: what Ige's doing that they don't like. It's that IG's

987
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:44,120
Speaker 4: not in house, right like right.

988
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:46,879
Speaker 2: Right, I mean I think there is from people who

989
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:49,319
Speaker 2: care about the quality of the game. There's people who

990
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 2: just shown issue with what they're doing. But right, yeah,

991
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:52,879
Speaker 2: you are correct when it comes to the.

992
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's certainly plenty of people, even at the time

993
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 4: at Blizzard that were like, yeah, oh my god, yeah

994
00:50:58,040 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 4: in transections amazing, and.

995
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:01,800
Speaker 3: That's why it's it's done that these guys.

996
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, IGU was ever hoping the company would like that

997
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 2: Blizzard or whoever, would would accept there being a middleman

998
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 2: he makes money off of like their in game world,

999
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:16,239
Speaker 2: Like that's what, Yeah, why would they be okay with this?

1000
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 2: So Blizzard constantly raids IgE. Right, They they find people's accounts,

1001
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,840
Speaker 2: they delete them, they ban people who are buying gold.

1002
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:28,720
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of lawsuits from people who bought gold

1003
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 2: and didn't get it.

1004
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 4: YadA, YadA, YadA. Causes a bunch of problems for IgE.

1005
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:36,120
Speaker 4: Pierce eventually has to step down as CEO and Bannon

1006
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 4: replaces him, And it's kind of framed as like Bannon

1007
00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:42,400
Speaker 4: edges Pierce out, but that doesn't It seems to have

1008
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,160
Speaker 4: been perfectly friendly, like Pierce seems to have been fine

1009
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 4: with this and understood that, like this is what's you

1010
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:49,400
Speaker 4: know we need to do for the next stage of

1011
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:49,880
Speaker 4: the business.

1012
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:50,680
Speaker 3: Right Yeah.

1013
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 2: Ultimately IgE stops selling gold entirely, and under Bannon, the

1014
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 2: company is renamed Affinity Media Holdings and instead makes it

1015
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:02,839
Speaker 2: its money running and operating a series of chat rooms

1016
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:08,720
Speaker 2: and forums for gamers. So the company pivots to running

1017
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 2: places where gamers communicate and socialize. And Bannon first he

1018
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 2: sees he sees how angry these gamers had gotten at

1019
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 2: gold farming, and he starts paying attention to the social

1020
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 2: dynamics and these online communities, and it gives him a horrible,

1021
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,880
Speaker 2: awful idea. And I'm going to quote from the Washington

1022
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 2: Post here, Bannon became fascinated with a collective power of

1023
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 2: gamers who gathered on these sites. According to journalist Joshua Green,

1024
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 2: who wrote a book Devil's Bargain about Bannon's rise in

1025
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 2: the Trump administration, selling virtual currency was highly unpopular with

1026
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,320
Speaker 2: many gamers, and they railed against IgE in these chat rooms,

1027
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 2: putting pressure on the companies that operated the games not

1028
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:49,800
Speaker 2: to partner with IgE. These guys, these rootless white males,

1029
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:54,760
Speaker 2: had monster power, Bannon said, right, so he's he's starting

1030
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 2: to realize. Okay, this kind of fucked us, the power

1031
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 2: that these these inco eight groups of angry white dudes

1032
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:03,600
Speaker 2: on the internet. It kind of fucked the business. Now,

1033
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:07,359
Speaker 2: but you could manipulate these guys. You could tune them

1034
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 2: up and turn them on an enemy and unleash them

1035
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 2: as a weapon, and they have the ability to do

1036
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 2: some damage. Right. This is where Bannon makes that realization. Right,

1037
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,440
Speaker 2: And I know, folks that were fifty five minutes in

1038
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 2: and I barely talked about Epstein passed the introduction. Trust me,

1039
00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:26,440
Speaker 2: we're coming back to him. This is all necessary groundwork

1040
00:53:26,520 --> 00:53:29,800
Speaker 2: for you to understand Epstein's role in all this. So

1041
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce would later describe Steve Bannon as his right

1042
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,839
Speaker 2: hand man for like seven years, which again suggests there

1043
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 2: were no hard feelings about Bannon replacing him a CEO

1044
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:43,040
Speaker 2: of IgE. Not long after leaving the company, Brock gets

1045
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 2: involved in the world of cryptocurrency. That's kind of his

1046
00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:50,680
Speaker 2: next move after gaming. He founds a company called Blockchain Capital,

1047
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:54,240
Speaker 2: and he is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative

1048
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 2: that he found this under right, Well, he's like a

1049
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:00,440
Speaker 2: part of the Clinton Global Initiative as he creates Blockchain Capital,

1050
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 2: which again, the Clintons are very tied to Epstein, right,

1051
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:06,439
Speaker 2: And that maybe part of how Jeffrey Epstein heard about

1052
00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce for the first time is because Pierce's is

1053
00:54:10,120 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 2: tied in through the Clinton Global Initiative. Now, let's perspective

1054
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:17,920
Speaker 2: shift back to our old pal, Jeffrey. He had served

1055
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:19,880
Speaker 2: time I'm two thousand and eight and two thousand and

1056
00:54:20,000 --> 00:54:24,880
Speaker 2: nine for soliciting sex from a minor, right, but he

1057
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:27,359
Speaker 2: was by twenty ten a free man. He was still rich,

1058
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 2: and he was still influential, but he was something of

1059
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 2: a pariah, at least to normal people. He's not a

1060
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:34,840
Speaker 2: pariah to the power elite. He's not a parrie to

1061
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:36,880
Speaker 2: the people running the New York Times, to a lot

1062
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 2: of people working at the Times. He's not a prior

1063
00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 2: to a lot of Harvard professors, to a lot of

1064
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 2: famous academics and scientists, to a lot of celebrities. But

1065
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 2: he's like, in public is a guy who got arrested

1066
00:54:49,719 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 2: for fucking a kid, you know, right, and this aid

1067
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:56,399
Speaker 2: at him. He hates the fact that, like he had

1068
00:54:56,440 --> 00:54:58,480
Speaker 2: to take an l right, and that's he sees it

1069
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:00,359
Speaker 2: as this kind of petty because his friends are like, man,

1070
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:02,719
Speaker 2: you kind of got off light, which he did. But

1071
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:05,640
Speaker 2: it really bugs him that he had to suffer any

1072
00:55:05,680 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 2: consequences at all, because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Now,

1073
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:10,240
Speaker 2: it would take years.

1074
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:13,959
Speaker 4: Evidence suggests that his peer group will not face consequences

1075
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:17,319
Speaker 4: for the same behavior, so in a something.

1076
00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:20,839
Speaker 2: Of resigned or whatever. But yes, yeah, yeah, So it's

1077
00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:23,760
Speaker 2: going to take years for the reality of Epstein's conviction

1078
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:27,239
Speaker 2: and what the scattered stories from his victims meant to

1079
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:31,160
Speaker 2: coalesce into a widespread understanding of his crimes. Right in

1080
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:33,919
Speaker 2: twenty ten, two nine ten, not a lot of people

1081
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:37,320
Speaker 2: are talking about Epstein is like this vast child sex

1082
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:40,319
Speaker 2: trafficker who has this like secret empire that all of

1083
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:43,640
Speaker 2: the world that takes some time to build up as

1084
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 2: more stories come out, as our understanding gains brough are

1085
00:55:46,160 --> 00:55:49,319
Speaker 2: there's some people who who understand that about him from

1086
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:53,120
Speaker 2: this stage, particularly his victims, but it's not widely known

1087
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 2: at this point.

1088
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:55,399
Speaker 3: But he can.

1089
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:57,880
Speaker 2: He's kind of watching as he's sitting in his Manhattan

1090
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,839
Speaker 2: penthouse or on his private sex island's slowly over the years,

1091
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:04,520
Speaker 2: watching the story come together, watching people start to become

1092
00:56:04,560 --> 00:56:07,080
Speaker 2: more and more aware of what he'd done, and he

1093
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 2: seems to This is I think his radicalizing the moment,

1094
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:13,920
Speaker 2: because he sees a few different enemies coalescing to ruin

1095
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:18,919
Speaker 2: his life. Right, and this alliance is roughly a mix

1096
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:22,239
Speaker 2: between You've got your busy body feminists, right, including a

1097
00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:25,840
Speaker 2: lot of his victims. You've got meddlesome reporters, and of

1098
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:29,560
Speaker 2: course you've got you know, the actual people that he heard, right,

1099
00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:32,640
Speaker 2: You've got these like feminist activists, you've got these metalsome journalists,

1100
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:34,960
Speaker 2: and you've got his former victims, all of whom won't

1101
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:35,520
Speaker 2: shut up.

1102
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 4: Right.

1103
00:56:36,080 --> 00:56:38,960
Speaker 2: That's how Epstein sees this, and the answer to all

1104
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 2: of these problems, he seems to have decided was to

1105
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:44,640
Speaker 2: use his position of influence to push for a change

1106
00:56:44,680 --> 00:56:48,200
Speaker 2: in the culture, to a culture where maybe journalists, or

1107
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:50,120
Speaker 2: at least the kind of journalists who will report on

1108
00:56:50,160 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 2: this stuff, have less interest, where maybe women are more

1109
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 2: frightened to speak up, and where maybe victims have fewer rights.

1110
00:56:56,200 --> 00:57:01,400
Speaker 2: You know, I really do think a lot of his life. Yeah,

1111
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:04,239
Speaker 2: he's a cool dude. So his feelings on all of

1112
00:57:04,280 --> 00:57:07,359
Speaker 2: this evolved as he tried to crack down on uncomfortable

1113
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:09,480
Speaker 2: reporting about his life. In a write up for the

1114
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 2: website protos cast Piance writes, in an effort to halt

1115
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:16,600
Speaker 2: the decline, Epstein seeks out help from Alfred Secl aka

1116
00:57:16,720 --> 00:57:20,160
Speaker 2: al Scyl, a serial scammer and illusionist who's been dating

1117
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 2: Gillan Maxwell's sister Isabelle for years. Epstein tasks Secle with

1118
00:57:24,560 --> 00:57:26,840
Speaker 2: what he presumes to be a relatively cheap and easy

1119
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 2: job wipe the Internet of his sins. This proves to

1120
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,520
Speaker 2: be a pipe dream, whether due to Secyl's own incompetence

1121
00:57:33,520 --> 00:57:36,520
Speaker 2: in greed or due to Epstein's unrepaarable reputation A twenty

1122
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:39,080
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars job becomes a forty five thousand dollars

1123
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 2: job with an added luxury conference called the mind Shift Conference,

1124
00:57:43,440 --> 00:57:45,760
Speaker 2: hosted on Little Saint James and to be paid for

1125
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:50,160
Speaker 2: by the Epstein Foundation. And this is meaningful. That's the

1126
00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:52,160
Speaker 2: most important thing about his connection to this con man,

1127
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 2: al Secyl, right is that Secyl says, Hey, you need

1128
00:57:55,360 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 2: to hold a conference on your Sex island about like

1129
00:57:59,600 --> 00:58:02,080
Speaker 2: all of the different shifts that are taking place in

1130
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:07,280
Speaker 2: technology and like philosophy and psychology, right, which is going

1131
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 2: to include cryptocurrency, which is why brock Pierce is gonna

1132
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 2: get invited right now. Alsekhel is a con man, and

1133
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 2: I think kind of similar to Collins rector perhaps a

1134
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 2: bit more shameless. So the mind Shift Conference is a

1135
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 2: massive failure if judged by its stated goals. It is

1136
00:58:23,720 --> 00:58:27,760
Speaker 2: not go over well. Epstein, like when he starts getting

1137
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:30,720
Speaker 2: involved in this, Epstein views the Mindshift Conference like, this

1138
00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:32,680
Speaker 2: is gonna be my TED Talks, Like I'm going to

1139
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:35,560
Speaker 2: create the new TED Talks, right, the new the new

1140
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:39,000
Speaker 2: TED Talks are on my private child molestation island.

1141
00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 4: Right, This is where everything you need to know in

1142
00:58:43,040 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 4: all fucking Domains is gonna happen. Oh god, got It's

1143
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:48,520
Speaker 4: people are so dumb.

1144
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 2: They're so dumb, and they're all the same fucking sad weirdo, right,

1145
00:58:53,880 --> 00:58:55,720
Speaker 2: like the idea that like, I need a Ted talk

1146
00:58:55,760 --> 00:58:58,320
Speaker 2: on my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile.

1147
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:02,480
Speaker 2: So most of the panels at this conference are a bust.

1148
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 2: But one of the invited speakers is Brock Pierce. And again,

1149
00:59:05,480 --> 00:59:08,600
Speaker 2: maybe this connection comes because of the Clinton founday, you know,

1150
00:59:08,960 --> 00:59:12,000
Speaker 2: because he's Clinton is aware of this guy, and Clinton

1151
00:59:12,040 --> 00:59:15,840
Speaker 2: knows Jeffrey, I don't exactly know. But Brock Pierce is

1152
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 2: invited this thing and he gives a talk about crypto,

1153
00:59:18,560 --> 00:59:21,200
Speaker 2: and Epstein likes this. He later writes to a colleague

1154
00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:24,280
Speaker 2: that he found the young entrepreneur interesting, and Brock is

1155
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:27,520
Speaker 2: kind of the only good thing about this conference.

1156
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:28,920
Speaker 4: As Epstein is Brockett right time.

1157
00:59:30,000 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 2: Brock is in his twenties at this point, right so

1158
00:59:33,600 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 2: Epstein increasingly finds Brock's pet cause cryptocurrency intriguing. This is

1159
00:59:38,760 --> 00:59:43,280
Speaker 2: what gets Epstein interested in crypto, As Piance writes, previously,

1160
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein had considered bitcoin and its ilk to be

1161
00:59:46,760 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 2: only useful for criminals. And it's unclear what about Brock's

1162
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 2: presentation changed Epstein's mind, but the fact that Jeffrey was

1163
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:56,520
Speaker 2: himself now a convicted criminal may have played a Well

1164
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:58,600
Speaker 2: maybe it's just that like, this is only for criminals.

1165
00:59:58,640 --> 00:59:59,919
Speaker 2: Oh but I'm a criminal.

1166
00:59:59,600 --> 01:00:05,960
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, exactly, yeah, right. It's so funny that he

1167
01:00:06,080 --> 01:00:10,960
Speaker 4: had the correct no, you're from money lauddering. It's from

1168
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:12,040
Speaker 4: money laddering, dude.

1169
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:17,520
Speaker 2: So Epstein's relationship with al Sekel fell apart after the conference.

1170
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:19,440
Speaker 2: Al tried to sell a bunch of fake art and

1171
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:23,800
Speaker 2: antiquities and got himself blacklisted, but Epstein's broader interest in Brock,

1172
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:27,520
Speaker 2: Pierce and cryptocurrency continue after this point. In June of

1173
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:31,400
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, Epstein starts emailing with Gavin Andersson,

1174
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:35,800
Speaker 2: the successor to Sushtoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. And

1175
01:00:35,880 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 2: we don't actually know who Nakamoto really was. This is

1176
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:41,440
Speaker 2: a big mystery in the world of bitcoin. But he

1177
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:45,200
Speaker 2: picks Anderson to be the lead maintainer of bitcoin development

1178
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:48,760
Speaker 2: after he retires in April of twenty eleven, and we

1179
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:52,640
Speaker 2: don't know why he retired. Some people suggest that it's

1180
01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:55,680
Speaker 2: because of what Andresen was talking about doing at this

1181
01:00:55,760 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 2: point in time, which is Andresen right around the time

1182
01:00:58,360 --> 01:01:01,240
Speaker 2: Nakamoto retires, starts talking about how he's going to give

1183
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 2: a talk on bitcoin to the CIA, like at CIA

1184
01:01:04,640 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 2: headquarters in Langley. And this is, to say the least

1185
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:13,040
Speaker 2: controversial among cryptocurrency advocates, right. The first wave of crypto

1186
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:17,240
Speaker 2: enthusiasts are libertarian and they're very anti state people. This

1187
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:20,000
Speaker 2: is an ideological thing for a lot of them, and

1188
01:01:20,040 --> 01:01:23,760
Speaker 2: they don't like the CIA very much. The fact that Andresen,

1189
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 2: basically as soon as he becomes the director of the project,

1190
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:29,360
Speaker 2: after Nakamoto is like I'm going to go talk to

1191
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:31,760
Speaker 2: the CIA about it is kind of giving up the

1192
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:35,520
Speaker 2: game for the real money people in crypto, right, which

1193
01:01:35,560 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 2: is this isn't about escaping the state. You're not freeing

1194
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:44,680
Speaker 2: yourselves from the shackles of the government. You're co opting it. Right,

1195
01:01:45,160 --> 01:01:47,960
Speaker 2: Crypto is as we've seen from the president. Right, We're like, no,

1196
01:01:48,880 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 2: he's the fucking Bitcoin didn't free people from the clutches

1197
01:01:52,640 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 2: of the government and the Federal Reserve. It gave the

1198
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:58,400
Speaker 2: president a way to take bribes. Yeah, right, Like that's

1199
01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:00,240
Speaker 2: how crypto.

1200
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:04,640
Speaker 4: All those fucking horrible functions, So any rich fool can

1201
01:02:04,720 --> 01:02:04,960
Speaker 4: do it.

1202
01:02:05,640 --> 01:02:10,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is really controversial at the time, right.

1203
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 2: So Epstein emails Andrewson two days before he talks to

1204
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 2: the CIA, and he seems to have started phishing around.

1205
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:20,320
Speaker 2: He's asking his contacts for Gavin's phone number? Does anyone

1206
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:22,760
Speaker 2: know this guy? Does anyone have his number? A few

1207
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:25,840
Speaker 2: weeks earlier, he starts by asking Bay Area socialite and

1208
01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:29,240
Speaker 2: professional hanger on Jason Calacanis, who is also close to

1209
01:02:29,240 --> 01:02:32,280
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, and eventually he gets the info and the

1210
01:02:32,320 --> 01:02:34,680
Speaker 2: two soon to have gotten in touch. On the twelfth,

1211
01:02:35,320 --> 01:02:37,840
Speaker 2: he's like emailing and he asks Rock directly for his

1212
01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 2: phone number. We don't know what the two. If the

1213
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 2: two talked on the phone, we don't know what they

1214
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:45,479
Speaker 2: would have talked about. But on the fourteenth, two days

1215
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:48,920
Speaker 2: after he connects directly with Epstein, Andrewson speaks to the

1216
01:02:48,960 --> 01:02:53,240
Speaker 2: CIA at Langley. The next day, Epstein emails Anderson about

1217
01:02:53,320 --> 01:02:55,800
Speaker 2: meeting in person, and we don't know if they did,

1218
01:02:55,840 --> 01:02:59,280
Speaker 2: but we know that he declines several invitations to do so. Right,

1219
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:02,880
Speaker 2: we don't know to what extent these people. We don't

1220
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:04,160
Speaker 2: know if they talked on the phone. We know they're

1221
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:06,080
Speaker 2: emailing a bunch, we know Epstein's trying to get in

1222
01:03:06,120 --> 01:03:08,080
Speaker 2: touch with them. We know Epstein talks about meeting him

1223
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:10,960
Speaker 2: in person. We don't know what actually happens, and we'll

1224
01:03:10,960 --> 01:03:14,439
Speaker 2: talk about there's some other times when Epstein will mention

1225
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 2: andresen that make me think he and Gavin had more

1226
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,160
Speaker 2: of a relationship than Gavin wants to admit or that

1227
01:03:21,360 --> 01:03:23,360
Speaker 2: is publicly known. Right, And one of the issues here

1228
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:26,840
Speaker 2: is that we just have what these people emailed about.

1229
01:03:26,920 --> 01:03:29,520
Speaker 2: And in fact, if you search through variations of like

1230
01:03:30,080 --> 01:03:34,000
Speaker 2: not for email or like you know, for phone only

1231
01:03:34,120 --> 01:03:36,439
Speaker 2: or stuff like that in the Epstein files, you'll find

1232
01:03:36,480 --> 01:03:39,160
Speaker 2: them Epstein periodically being like, hey, we got to take

1233
01:03:39,200 --> 01:03:41,840
Speaker 2: this offline, Like this isn't in person conversation, this is

1234
01:03:41,840 --> 01:03:43,760
Speaker 2: something we got to talk about on the phone. So

1235
01:03:44,360 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 2: the fact that we can't prove via the emails that

1236
01:03:47,480 --> 01:03:50,840
Speaker 2: Epstein and Gavin were connecting or what they were talking about,

1237
01:03:51,280 --> 01:03:54,080
Speaker 2: doesn't mean they weren't right because a lot of this

1238
01:03:54,160 --> 01:03:56,880
Speaker 2: stuff is just kind of off the record. But we

1239
01:03:56,960 --> 01:04:00,160
Speaker 2: know that Epstein was working hard to be in contact

1240
01:04:00,200 --> 01:04:01,960
Speaker 2: with them, and that they had the potential to be

1241
01:04:02,080 --> 01:04:05,680
Speaker 2: in contact and that Epstein talks about Gavin as if

1242
01:04:05,680 --> 01:04:08,760
Speaker 2: they were in contact at other points, right, So that's

1243
01:04:08,800 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 2: what I can say, whatever the two discussed, if they

1244
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:15,520
Speaker 2: discussed anything. Epstein plunges ahead into the world of cryptocurrency.

1245
01:04:15,560 --> 01:04:18,760
Speaker 2: After this point, he continues talking with Brock Pierce as well.

1246
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:21,840
Speaker 2: The two met repeatedly in person in two thousand and one,

1247
01:04:22,080 --> 01:04:26,120
Speaker 2: and Epstein offers Pierce financial advice. Brock eventually comes to

1248
01:04:26,200 --> 01:04:28,360
Speaker 2: him and admits that he hasn't paid his taxes in years,

1249
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:31,520
Speaker 2: and Epstein helps him sort that out. Their friendship continues

1250
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:34,080
Speaker 2: into the spring of twenty twelve, which is the first

1251
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 2: time that we have a record of Epstein providing girls

1252
01:04:36,680 --> 01:04:40,200
Speaker 2: to Brock Pierce, and you can see the email Shane

1253
01:04:40,280 --> 01:04:44,160
Speaker 2: up on the website. It starts with Jeffrey Epstein saying

1254
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:47,360
Speaker 2: victim name and victim name are alone in LA. I

1255
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:51,360
Speaker 2: had to leave. Please assist leave your girlfriend home, and

1256
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:56,240
Speaker 2: then a large redacted section of the email, and Brock responds,

1257
01:04:56,400 --> 01:04:58,960
Speaker 2: will do broke up with the girlfriend last night, so

1258
01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:03,080
Speaker 2: that won't be a problem, best regards Brock, to which

1259
01:05:03,120 --> 01:05:07,800
Speaker 2: Epstein responds, call me a little later, and then Brock

1260
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:10,040
Speaker 2: replies the next day, I had a great time with

1261
01:05:10,160 --> 01:05:14,480
Speaker 2: the girls. Hope they had fun too. So we know

1262
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:17,440
Speaker 2: at this point, and you know, I might say, if

1263
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:20,280
Speaker 2: this was any other group of people, while girls sometimes

1264
01:05:20,320 --> 01:05:24,560
Speaker 2: people refer to adult women that way, I'm not going

1265
01:05:24,600 --> 01:05:28,160
Speaker 2: to assume that here. I'm not going to assume these

1266
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:32,840
Speaker 2: are not literal girls. Because it's Jeffrey Epstein, you know,

1267
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:38,320
Speaker 2: youw and Epstein's relationship with Brock and his interest in

1268
01:05:38,360 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 2: bitcoin are only going to expand from this point on,

1269
01:05:41,720 --> 01:05:43,480
Speaker 2: and both are going to bring him to the orbit

1270
01:05:43,520 --> 01:05:46,720
Speaker 2: of several major figures on the New Right, including Steve Bannon,

1271
01:05:46,920 --> 01:05:49,360
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about all that and much more in

1272
01:05:49,440 --> 01:05:52,160
Speaker 2: part two. I know there wasn't as much Epstein as

1273
01:05:52,160 --> 01:05:53,800
Speaker 2: you may have expected. I mean, we got a bit,

1274
01:05:54,200 --> 01:05:56,720
Speaker 2: a good bit at the beginning. In the end, there's

1275
01:05:56,720 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 2: a lot you have to hear about Brock Pierce first

1276
01:05:59,200 --> 01:06:01,000
Speaker 2: to understand why all this matters.

1277
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:04,600
Speaker 4: The reason people tune in is for backstory. You know,

1278
01:06:04,880 --> 01:06:07,640
Speaker 4: you find the ship that I'm like, yeah, that's the pod.

1279
01:06:07,800 --> 01:06:12,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Somehowell did in fact come up, which was incredible.

1280
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:14,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, good for her.

1281
01:06:14,160 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well you got any pluggables to plug?

1282
01:06:18,480 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 4: Oh? I don't know, making a show called Starter Trek

1283
01:06:21,400 --> 01:06:26,040
Speaker 4: on our premium sit suboptimal podcast. I saw you were

1284
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:31,200
Speaker 4: watching a little bit of Starfleet Academy Robert Couple. Yeah, yeah,

1285
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:33,760
Speaker 4: but my my cost Tony Newsom's a writer on.

1286
01:06:33,720 --> 01:06:36,520
Speaker 2: That and Ship right right right, Yeah, I love Tonni Yeah.

1287
01:06:36,320 --> 01:06:41,640
Speaker 4: Beckett Peckett Mariner on lower Decks, so yeah, she's We're

1288
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 4: watching Star Trek episodes and I have seen a bunch,

1289
01:06:45,840 --> 01:06:47,480
Speaker 4: but I don't know nearly as much as hers, so

1290
01:06:47,600 --> 01:06:48,720
Speaker 4: I'm I'm no.

1291
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:53,480
Speaker 2: There's very few people involved in making Star Trek that

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01:06:53,520 --> 01:06:56,760
Speaker 2: I feel like, really no Star Trek, and Toni is

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01:06:57,000 --> 01:06:57,440
Speaker 2: one of them.

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01:06:58,480 --> 01:07:00,600
Speaker 3: Tony really no Star Trek. Wild.

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Speaker 2: I've got a thing to plug before we go out here.

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01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:06,800
Speaker 2: I met with just somebody last night when I was

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01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 2: out at a bar who told me about a local

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01:07:10,040 --> 01:07:14,600
Speaker 2: Portland charity called the Artist Mentorship Program aka AMP, which

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01:07:14,640 --> 01:07:18,080
Speaker 2: supports youth experiencing homelessness and has done so for over

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01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:20,600
Speaker 2: thirty years. It serves young people aged fifteen to twenty

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01:07:20,600 --> 01:07:24,000
Speaker 2: five and provides essential supplies and job training, with music

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01:07:24,040 --> 01:07:27,200
Speaker 2: and art programs at the heart of its work. If

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01:07:27,240 --> 01:07:29,680
Speaker 2: you'd like to support or learn more about AMP, you

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01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:35,480
Speaker 2: can go to amppdx dot org. That's amppdx dot org.

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01:07:36,280 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 2: It's good cause check them out.

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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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01:07:50,920 --> 01:07:54,800
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video

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Speaker 1: episodes but Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix,

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01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:00,880
Speaker 1: dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Remind me on Netflix you

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01:08:00,880 --> 01:08:04,360
Speaker 1: don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog,

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01:08:04,480 --> 01:08:07,680
Speaker 1: continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel YouTube dot com

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01:08:07,720 --> 01:08:11,680
Speaker 1: slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about forty percent

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Speaker 1: of you, statistically speaking,