Speaker 1: Welcome to the movies you liked as an adolescent and
Speaker 1: are now ashamed of shame cast. I'm Robert Evans and
Speaker 1: today in the seat of eternal self hatred Jamie Loftus. Jamie,
Speaker 1: you have just admitted, prior to the show starting that
Speaker 1: you once loved the Dana Carve Vehicle Master of Disguise.
Speaker 1: What do you have to say for yourself?
Speaker 2: I feel fucking sick with myself, Robert, I haven't been
Speaker 2: able to sleep in the twenty years since its release.
Speaker 2: In my defense, it came out on my birthday, which
Speaker 2: I feel like had a lot to do with why
Speaker 2: I considered it my favorite movie. I felt a kingship
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, birthdays are like a performance enhancing drug for movies
Speaker 1: that you see when you're eleven.
Speaker 2: Absolutely true, the blood.
Speaker 1: Doping of positive movie memories.
Speaker 2: And furthermore, it's the most famous children's movie that was
Speaker 2: shooting on nine to eleven, And so I thank you.
Speaker 2: I wows felt like it would have been disloyal to
Speaker 2: my country to say a word against the Master of Disguise,
Speaker 2: particularly the turtle Turtle scene. However, you know, I think
Speaker 2: the movie certainly doesn't hold up and I feel fucking
Speaker 2: sick with myself every single day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder because famously Dana Carvey was dressed as
Speaker 1: the Turtle Man when those planes hit those towers, and
Speaker 1: James Cameron was twenty thousand feet below sea level exploring
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean, and I wonder if they
Speaker 1: ever cross paths at like a Hollywood event and started
Speaker 1: talking about nine to eleven, So what are you up
Speaker 1: to on that day?
Speaker 2: And then Marlo Alberg just leans in apropos of nothing
Speaker 2: and is like.
Speaker 1: If I was there, I would have stopped it. Oh, Jamie,
Speaker 1: you know, I can honestly say nine to eleven was
Speaker 1: the first time I felt like this country let me
Speaker 1: down because it delayed the release of the seminal Tim
Speaker 1: Allen film Big Trouble, which it sure it sure did,
Speaker 1: features a classic Patrick Warburton performance, by the way, it
Speaker 1: sure do. Goddamn right. You see his ass, everybody, if
Speaker 1: you want to see Patrick Warburton's ass, it's in that movie.
Speaker 2: He is so underrated. I absolutely love love that man.
Speaker 1: A total of talent.
Speaker 3: Friends, just to say, this is behind the ba this.
Speaker 1: Is behind the Bastards. A podcast about none of the
Speaker 1: things that we were talking about. Uh, and today, actually, Jamie,
Speaker 1: I've got you back in the hot seat, back in
Speaker 1: the office, which is more of an ephemeral feeling than
Speaker 1: a physical space, making.
Speaker 2: Me an answer for my sins right off the jump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by talking again about our friend Sam Bankman Freed,
Speaker 1: who you and I chatted about right after his life
Speaker 1: collapsed last year, and I like we should do an update.
Speaker 2: I think we should too, because I'll be honest, I
Speaker 2: have done truly everything I can to avoid knowing more
Speaker 2: about him, so I would say I know basically nothing
Speaker 2: about him since we last spoke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's it's amazing because normally, you know, I'm an
Speaker 1: empathetic being, Like Sam has a face that I've just
Speaker 1: always wanted to hit from the first time I saw
Speaker 1: a picture of him. And normally when somebody goes through
Speaker 1: this much shit, when like their life is this ruined, right,
Speaker 1: Like I might I feel a little less like hitting
Speaker 1: them because the world has hit them, but I still
Speaker 1: kind of want to sock him in the fucking jaw.
Speaker 1: Every time I see this guy.
Speaker 2: Let me just check it has his face changed.
Speaker 1: He wears suits sometimes now when he goes to court,
Speaker 1: He's not wearing the basketball shorts.
Speaker 2: Helpful and well, oh that's true. God, yeah, that's like
Speaker 2: two different versions of an embarrassing, desperate way to present. Okay,
Speaker 2: he's wearing a he's wearing a suit.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, he's wearing a suit. Now it looks like shit,
Speaker 1: but whatever. Of course, I try not to judge people
Speaker 1: on how they look unless that's part of the Cohn
Speaker 1: and Sam as a guy for whom the dressing like
Speaker 1: a slab was always part of his his like techbro genius,
Speaker 1: you know, persona that he was putting on like a
Speaker 1: fooled every puddy. A mug shot, Oh yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: got I believe there's a mugshot of him out at
Speaker 1: this point, certainly when he went at the Bahamas. So
Speaker 1: when we last left our buddy Sam in November of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, he had been arrested in the Bahamas
Speaker 1: and extradited to the United States, where he was charged
Speaker 1: with so many financial crimes that he might theoretically spend
Speaker 1: more than one hundred and fifteen years in prison.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, in the days and months since, a lot has happened,
Speaker 1: and a lot more has come out about how the
Speaker 1: former crypto mogul behaved before and after his fall. I
Speaker 1: want to start with some of the latter information, because
Speaker 1: by far, the most entertaining story to drop as a
Speaker 1: result of these serried legal filings against Sam is that
Speaker 1: he was using the nonprofit arm of FTX to attempt
Speaker 1: to buy a sovereign name he could use as an
Speaker 1: apocalypse shelter. That is by far the funniest story that's
Speaker 1: dropped about these guys in the days months since.
Speaker 2: What was the plan there?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question, Jamie. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the island of Nauru. It's an island in the southwest Pacific.
Speaker 1: I think it's about twenty one hundred miles away from
Speaker 1: the coast of Australia, which, given the fact that Australia
Speaker 1: is really out in the middle of nowhere, is pretty
Speaker 1: close to Australia. It is presently the world's smallest island nation.
Speaker 1: It's got a population of about twelve thousand or so,
Speaker 1: not a ton of people, and as an incredibly tiny country,
Speaker 1: one of its primary assets is simply the fact that
Speaker 1: it is a sovereign nation. Because there's things that countries
Speaker 1: can do then nothing else can do, like issue certain
Speaker 1: kinds like passports and visas and do certain kinds of
Speaker 1: things with banking. Right, So, if you're a really tiny
Speaker 1: country that doesn't have like a shitload of natural resources,
Speaker 1: one thing you can export is the benefits of your sovereignty.
Speaker 1: To say, really rich people who who might want certain
Speaker 1: things that you can do as a country.
Speaker 2: Plan is coming to get.
Speaker 1: So there's a number of ways in which Naru has
Speaker 1: kind of taken advantage of this to get by. One
Speaker 1: of them is that they've sort of sold access to
Speaker 1: their land to Australia to use, so that Australia has
Speaker 1: used them for years as an offshore processing center for
Speaker 1: asylum seekers. I think this stopped most recently in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: but there's been a couple of waves of this and
Speaker 1: it was not a pleasant place, right. Conditions were so
Speaker 1: brutal in sort of the offshore processing center on Nauru
Speaker 1: from twenty twelve to twenty nineteen that several residents carried
Speaker 1: out like deadly forms of protests, sowing their own lipshut
Speaker 1: or lighting themselves on fire as a protest of the
Speaker 1: conditions they were facing. Pretty ugly scene in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. Kind of prior to this period, NARU was
Speaker 1: the chief money laundering location for the emerging Russian oligarch class.
Speaker 1: They helped a lot of these. All the archetypes you've
Speaker 1: heard about in the context of Putin laund are about
Speaker 1: seventy billion dollars in the ill gotten funds during the
Speaker 1: early stages of the Russian Federation.
Speaker 2: I have a good bastard's cameo.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, Naro's nar who's adjacent to a whole
Speaker 1: lot of shitty people. Great, yeah, here, it's a lovely place.
Speaker 1: Narus also designated a money laundering state by the US
Speaker 1: Treasury in two thousand and two, which led to sanctions,
Speaker 1: which I think is probably why they moved to like
Speaker 1: letting Australia offshore migrants there for a while. And since
Speaker 1: Australia stopped doing that in twenty nineteen, Sam Bankman, Freed
Speaker 1: and his fellow effective altruists felt like they might have
Speaker 1: had an opportunity there, right, Like Naru's kind of looking
Speaker 1: for some new cash flow. They're looking for a sovereign
Speaker 1: nation to do some things for.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an opportunity to be effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to be effectively altruistic towards yourself. Specifically, Sam
Speaker 1: and his brother Gabriel Bankman Freed is actually the guy
Speaker 1: sort of like organizing this attempted endeavor using ftx's charitable
Speaker 1: donation's arm and their goal was to purchase the entire
Speaker 1: island in order to construct what Gabe called a bunker,
Speaker 1: shelter that would be used to quote ensure that most
Speaker 1: effective altruists survive in the event that between fifty percent
Speaker 1: and ninety nine point nine to nine percent of the
Speaker 1: world population perishing a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Jesus, And that's like a pretty common this. I feel
Speaker 2: like the Gabe of the situation is a very common
Speaker 2: character in bat like just the devious brother. I mean,
Speaker 2: I hate the bastard most of all, but I really
Speaker 2: detest the devious brother as well. There's just it just
Speaker 2: weeks of insecurity get your own grift man.
Speaker 1: Especially since they're framing it not as look, you know,
Speaker 1: when you got like a guy like Peter teal right,
Speaker 1: and everybody knows Peter Teel's got like an evil rich
Speaker 1: guy bunker to wait out the end of the world
Speaker 1: if it happens, and like, fuck Peter teal but at
Speaker 1: least that's Peter Tel's not pretending I have a bunker
Speaker 1: to like, save the world by putting aside just the
Speaker 1: best people. He's like, no, I'm a giant piece of
Speaker 1: shit and I'm going to save myself if things go wrong. Okay,
Speaker 1: like fucking Peter Teel, but at least it's honest. They're
Speaker 1: framing it as my blood bunker for just boys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's me and my blood boys. Jabe is like, no,
Speaker 1: we have to in the event there's an apocalypse, we
Speaker 1: have to save all the eas because they're the best people,
Speaker 1: and that's what's best for the world that will do.
Speaker 1: We're utilitarians, right, The greatest good for the greatest number
Speaker 1: of people is to save all of the best people,
Speaker 1: which is me and my friends, the other finance kids
Speaker 1: who call themselves effective altruists, so they don't have to
Speaker 1: feel bad for the fact that all they do is
Speaker 1: play the stock market like every other piece of shit anyway.
Speaker 2: So lucky that they all met each other.
Speaker 1: So lucky all the good people I would love, I
Speaker 1: would love honestly, Like, look, when the strike is over,
Speaker 1: somebody at a network, bring me on. I will write
Speaker 1: you a banger fucking script about an apocalypse where just
Speaker 1: the EA guys are left in their bunker. Trying to
Speaker 1: figure out society.
Speaker 2: Okay, another incentive to end the strike would fucking rip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we could do. We could do quite a tale.
Speaker 1: We could have some fun with this one, Jamie.
Speaker 2: I don't I think that there would be some effective altruism,
Speaker 2: uh like ridiculous enough to do cameos.
Speaker 1: Oh, I believe we could get We could get fucking
Speaker 1: William mccaskell in. There no problem bring his Scottish ass
Speaker 1: on board.
Speaker 2: Yeah, vain little perverts.
Speaker 1: Oh, and they're all They're all I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 1: kind of stupid. So I bet we could trick him,
Speaker 1: like you don't have journalistic ethics with an HBO show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could just say we're bringing them on for an interview.
Speaker 1: We could like film around him, liking what was that
Speaker 1: fucking movie with uh? Oh yeah, Steve Martin where they
Speaker 1: where they have to film the fake movie around Uh
Speaker 1: what is it Chris rock Ship.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's the It's oh.
Speaker 1: See now you're now now now it's I know, it's
Speaker 1: driving me nuts. We have to figure this out. Uh.
Speaker 2: I rewatched it recently.
Speaker 1: It holds up.
Speaker 2: It does hold up. It's like one of the best movies.
Speaker 1: Bofinger fucking dope.
Speaker 2: Younger.
Speaker 1: We could do a bow Finger with William mccaskell where
Speaker 1: he thinks he's getting interviewed for a documentary and we're
Speaker 1: really making him the bad guy off our HBO series,
Speaker 1: bringing Steve Martin to fuck it. He's still he still
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got good politics. He'd be great.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh glad, glad we remembered it. Watch Bowfinger, guys.
Speaker 2: It holds up truly if you take anything away from today,
Speaker 2: it really does. I was shocked at how well it helped.
Speaker 1: Yeah, startlingly good movie, pretty good, like scientology joke. So,
Speaker 1: Gabriel Bankman freed ran ftx's charitable donations wing, which included
Speaker 1: a ton of money, for what many people have characterized
Speaker 1: as political bribes. I'm not saying that he was bribing
Speaker 1: politicians for FTX. I'm saying that's what a lot of
Speaker 1: people have characterized what he was doing as. Now that
Speaker 1: much has been known for a why, But it was
Speaker 1: not until the current management of what remains of FTX
Speaker 1: sued Sam. Because again there's new management that's trying to
Speaker 1: recover as much money as possible and they're throwing Sam
Speaker 1: under the bus. Because why wouldn't they, And that's how
Speaker 1: all this stuff got revealed because they have all of
Speaker 1: ftx's internal communications, so they found a bunch of shit
Speaker 1: like that Sam was having Gabriel try to buy the
Speaker 1: island of Nauru. Now it is unclear how serious their
Speaker 1: attempt to buy this island was a representative of the
Speaker 1: island's government has been like, no, no, no, we were
Speaker 1: never putting our island for sale. This was never a
Speaker 1: thing that was going to happen. And maybe that is
Speaker 1: the case, maybe they were just being idiots fucking around.
Speaker 1: But in a memo between Gabriel and an FTX officer,
Speaker 1: the discussion was centered around the idea of buying the island,
Speaker 1: of being in control of it as a sovereign country,
Speaker 1: not just purchasing land, which is cool.
Speaker 2: I mean that's a lot of work for a bit.
Speaker 2: Not that I put it past him, but I'm just like,
Speaker 2: it's not sounding like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think I don't put it past It's
Speaker 1: possible that Naru whatever is telling whatever government officials telling
Speaker 1: the truth they were never considering selling the island. But
Speaker 1: it's also possible that Gabe at all believed they could
Speaker 1: buy the island, right.
Speaker 2: Right, they may in fact be that dumb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now there were discussions between these FDx
Speaker 1: guys about using Naru as a base for human genetic experimentation.
Speaker 1: You get the feeling that what their goal was to
Speaker 1: create modified posthuman godlike bodies for their fellow effective altruists
Speaker 1: so that they live forever and dominate mankind after the
Speaker 1: collapse is undying immortals.
Speaker 2: That just sent the ugliest photoshopped image like it was involuntary.
Speaker 2: How quickly the like no neck, huge chest photoshops super.
Speaker 1: So absolutely absolutely, Hey yeah, it sounds like a mix
Speaker 1: between that one video game with the big robot dinosaur
Speaker 1: and those sci fi books by that guy who wound
Speaker 1: up being real anti Muslim But yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot would be a lot of guys. I wonder
Speaker 2: which guy.
Speaker 1: Oh it's I think Ilium and olympos okay, I forget
Speaker 1: the name of the author, but the premise of the
Speaker 1: book is that like in the future, a bunch of
Speaker 1: rich guys turn themselves into gods and decide to like
Speaker 1: recreate the Trojan War with themselves as the Greek gods,
Speaker 1: and they like resurrect a bunch of dead archaeologists to
Speaker 1: make sure that they get the details right. It's it's fun,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's quite a series, except for the weird
Speaker 1: moments of bigotry. Oh that good stuff. Dan Simmons I think,
Speaker 1: is the author anyway. So, yeah, they're talking about we
Speaker 1: want to create a human genetic experimentation base, and they're like,
Speaker 1: we want to figure out what the sensible regulations around
Speaker 1: human genetic enhancement are, but we also want to build
Speaker 1: a lab. And while they're talking about this, Gabriel ads cryptically,
Speaker 1: probably there are other things it's useful to do with
Speaker 1: sovereign country. I don't know what he means by that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, probably huh. So that could be as banal
Speaker 1: is just like money laundering, which NARU obviously is quite
Speaker 1: a history of, or issuing things like passports. But given
Speaker 1: the fact that all these dummies are permanently poisoned by
Speaker 1: a mixture of sci fi fandoms and weird futurist cults,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say we all dodged a
Speaker 1: bullet by the fact that they never got too far
Speaker 1: in this scheme. Now, my favorite thing about this whole
Speaker 1: idea is how dumb it is. On its face, there
Speaker 1: are some countries that could act as really good apocalypse
Speaker 1: shelters for the super rich. Right, Switzerland is one. A
Speaker 1: lot of rich people have their apocalypse shelters in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: New Zealand is another. But the problem for that is that,
Speaker 1: like Switzerland and New Zealand are both functional states. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're a billionaire there, you can have some outsized influence,
Speaker 1: but you're not just gonna run everything because there's other
Speaker 1: interests and like a functional system of government in place
Speaker 1: in all of those places. I think Sam and them
Speaker 1: were hoping that since Naru's small enough, they could just
Speaker 1: utterly dominate the government, but they ignored the fact that
Speaker 1: it's like one of the worst places imaginable to have
Speaker 1: as an apocalypse shelter. For one thing, the island does
Speaker 1: not grow much food, which means it has to import
Speaker 1: in ninety percent of what it needs to sustain its
Speaker 1: very small population it has.
Speaker 2: It's all good, we have so much money.
Speaker 1: It's okay, we'll just keep importing it. Yeah. It also
Speaker 1: has very little fresh water, and most of its infrastructure
Speaker 1: is on the coast and vulnerable to both rising sea
Speaker 1: levels and hurricanes. It is very close to the bottom
Speaker 1: of places that you would want to have as a shelter.
Speaker 1: So very funny. All these people are silly, now, Jamie.
Speaker 1: The main reason current FTX is revealing all this is
Speaker 1: that they are suing the old management of the country company,
Speaker 1: i e. SAM, to try and reclaim a billion or
Speaker 1: so dollars they argue was funneled illegally into nonsense like
Speaker 1: this and into the pockets of bankment Freed and his
Speaker 1: lieutenants in the months before FTX collapsed due to insolvency.
Speaker 1: Suit against SAM also includes some more confounding lines described
Speaker 1: in this paragraph from an article on the suit by
Speaker 1: crypto news site decrypt. The lawsuit further says that the
Speaker 1: projects run by the FTX Foundation were frequently misguided and
Speaker 1: sometimes dystopian. These included a three hundred dollars one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars grant to an individual to write a book about
Speaker 1: how to figure out what humans utility function are, as
Speaker 1: well as a four hundred thousand dollars grant to an
Speaker 1: entity that posted YouTube videos related to rationalist and effective
Speaker 1: altruism material, including videos on grabby aliens. Now does that
Speaker 1: all seem like nonsense to you, Jamie?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Robert let's hear them out about the
Speaker 2: grabby alien.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, I'm going to explain all of this horseshit
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Uh my god, what kind of Rick and Morty ass nonsense?
Speaker 1: It is some Rick and Morty ass nonsense. It's much
Speaker 1: dumber than anything in Rick and Morty because at least
Speaker 1: some of the people there understand story structure.
Speaker 2: Unlike the at Please understand that it's a joke.
Speaker 1: But it's a bit. Yes, yeah, so if you aren't
Speaker 1: terminally adhered to one of the stupidest subcultures in the
Speaker 1: broader tech sphere, that probably does seem like nonsense, and
Speaker 1: it is. But let's start with the bit about paying
Speaker 1: someone three hundred grand to write about what a human's
Speaker 1: utility function is? Now, yes, what is a utility function?
Speaker 1: Great question? In economics, a utility function is the measure
Speaker 1: of welfare or satisfaction of a consumer as a function
Speaker 1: of the consumption of real goods like food. In simple terms,
Speaker 1: it's a way of describing the satisfaction or other benefits
Speaker 1: gained by consuming a specific resource. This is important to
Speaker 1: rational choice theory, which is a theory that states that
Speaker 1: individuals use rational calculations to make rational choices to achieve
Speaker 1: outcomes aligned with their own objectives. Now, most people who
Speaker 1: aren't economists think that talking about the economy this way
Speaker 1: is silly, because people are not in fact rational actors,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we make shitty decisions all the time,
Speaker 1: guided by misinformation or pressure that causes us to inaccurately
Speaker 1: interpret the potential value of something like a college education
Speaker 1: versus the cost of say, student loans.
Speaker 2: Right, one could argue that Sam Bankman, Freed and co.
Speaker 2: Are a great example of a wonderful example of the
Speaker 2: IR But that's economics. This is not an economics podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm not an economist, And the way that Bankman, Freed
Speaker 2: and his fellow Eas talk about utility functions is not
Speaker 2: the same as how economists talk about it. Right, So
Speaker 2: when economists are talking about this, it's part of how
Speaker 2: to kind of figure out why people might make rational
Speaker 2: choices by understanding like the value of sort of the ranked,
Speaker 2: like preference they give to certain things that they might
Speaker 2: expend resources on. Broadly speaking, when Bankman, Freed, and Eas
Speaker 2: talk about utility functions, what they mean is something even
Speaker 2: more abstract. And I'm going to quote from a summary
Speaker 2: from a write up on a effective altruism dot Org,
Speaker 2: a website you should avoid at all costs.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: I'm really not looking forward to finding out how this
Speaker 2: somehow relates to to the grabby aliens.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry in a very dumb way, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Quote Okay, good eas and rationalists love dropping the term
Speaker 1: in every conversation. Using the term utility function can be
Speaker 1: immensely helpful when aiming to maximize positive impact or do
Speaker 1: the most good. The concept of a utility function provides
Speaker 1: a systematic way to quantify and compare the potential benefits
Speaker 1: of different actions, thus helping to guide decision making towards
Speaker 1: the most effective outcomes. By representing values, goals, or beneficial
Speaker 1: outcomes numerically, utility functions allow for a structured comparison and
Speaker 1: prioritization of actions. If, for example, your goal is to
Speaker 1: alleviate global suffering, you could assign values to different charitable
Speaker 1: actions based on their estimated impact, thus creating utility function.
Speaker 1: This function can then guide you to allocate your resources
Speaker 1: like time or money, where they will generate the greatest
Speaker 1: utility or good. Now, that just seems like you're saying
Speaker 1: you should try to figure out how your money's gonna
Speaker 1: be spent best right before you spend it. But that's
Speaker 1: not actually what they're saying. What they are doing here
Speaker 1: is they are they are set like a utility function.
Speaker 1: This context is a way of assigning a number that
Speaker 1: you have made up. There is no objective value to
Speaker 1: this number. There's no rigor to this. You are making
Speaker 1: up a number to determine the value of spending your
Speaker 1: money in certain ways. And you are doing this so
Speaker 1: that whatever it is you want to do with your money,
Speaker 1: you can justify numerically as the scientifically best way to
Speaker 1: spend your money. So I see you can. You can
Speaker 1: argue in this way by assigning these values whenever wonky
Speaker 1: way you want. Now, me, paying taxes to fund roads
Speaker 1: and a healthcare system is a shitty use of my
Speaker 1: money because it doesn't optimize this thing that I consider
Speaker 1: to be of higher long term value. And the thing
Speaker 1: that's of higher long term value to me is spending
Speaker 1: money on fucking space travel research so that I can
Speaker 1: be a demigod on Mars. Right, that's best for human
Speaker 1: beings in the long term. So in utilitarian speak, you know,
Speaker 1: the greatest good for the greatest number of people is
Speaker 1: that's getting to Mars as opposed to feeding starving people.
Speaker 1: Right now, you know the utility function of getting to
Speaker 1: Mars as much higher, So that's where our money ought
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: Well, it's all yeah, it just like comes down to
Speaker 2: like the great the greatest good is me hah smiling
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. There's literally some writing on that in that vein.
Speaker 1: So it is through math like this that EAS are
Speaker 1: able to look at it a world where millions face
Speaker 1: death by famine or disease or rising sea levels and
Speaker 1: say the best way to help the planet is for
Speaker 1: us to become finance Bros. And then spend our money
Speaker 1: investing in AI companies or whatever. The fundamental selfishness of
Speaker 1: this whole community is made clear when you read the
Speaker 1: essays these people write on their websites, like less Wrong,
Speaker 1: a blog founded by self declared AIX Yeah, Eliza Yidkowski.
Speaker 1: Yidkowski is a rationalist, which is a related subculture to
Speaker 1: the EAS. There's a lot of bleed over Sam and
Speaker 1: a lot of his people were rationalists to rationalists adjacent
Speaker 1: and Yeah. To give you an idea of how these
Speaker 1: people talk about utility functions, I'm going to read an
Speaker 1: excerpt from an article on this web site titled your
Speaker 1: utility function is your utility Function? By David Udell. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot lately about exactly how altruistic I am.
Speaker 1: The truth is that I'm not sure. I care a
Speaker 1: lot about not dying, and about my girlfriend and family
Speaker 1: and friends not dying, and about all of humanity not dying,
Speaker 1: and about all life on this planet not dying too.
Speaker 1: And I care about the glorious transhuman future and all that,
Speaker 1: and the ten to the fiftieth power or whatever possible
Speaker 1: good future lives hanging in the balance. And I care
Speaker 1: about some of these things disproportionately to their apparent moral magnitude.
Speaker 1: But what I care about is what I care about.
Speaker 1: Rationality is the art of getting more of what you want,
Speaker 1: whatever that is, of systematized winning by your own lights.
Speaker 1: You will totally fail in that art if you bulldoze
Speaker 1: your values in a desperate effort to fit in or
Speaker 1: to be a good person, or to in the way
Speaker 1: you're a model of society seems to ask you to.
Speaker 1: So you see what he's saying, if you read between
Speaker 1: the lines there, what the most rational thing for me
Speaker 1: to do is whatever makes me feel.
Speaker 2: Best, whatever gives me a little smile.
Speaker 1: Don't let people shame you for spending your resources, you know,
Speaker 1: entirely on yourself and your own whims Like you're actually
Speaker 1: a hero if you do that.
Speaker 2: Oh, it is so fascinating to me to watch, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It seems like this like self conscious
Speaker 2: reflex where they feel the need to define rational by
Speaker 2: something that is more closely aligned with reality and then
Speaker 2: immediately be like, but what that actually means is yeah,
Speaker 2: that's said.
Speaker 1: The core of it is always being able to say that, like, well,
Speaker 1: if you suggest the number one, I have a responsibility
Speaker 1: to other people, and that that responsibility is to some
Speaker 1: extent out of my hands, which is what we all
Speaker 1: say when we're in a society. Right, I don't have kids.
Speaker 1: I don't have a choice not to spend some of
Speaker 1: the significant amount of money I pay in taxes educating
Speaker 1: other people's kids. Now, I'm not a complete piece of shit,
Speaker 1: so I'm fine with that because like, I've done very
Speaker 1: well for myself, and kids need educations. That's just a
Speaker 1: nice way for the world to work. But these people
Speaker 1: are more of the feeling that, like, no, I should
Speaker 1: do whatever is possible to avoid paying for, you know,
Speaker 1: a public school system. And in fact, I'm often going
Speaker 1: to advocate for some sort of like weird voucher based
Speaker 1: system that allows me to not fund public schools because
Speaker 1: the greatest good for the greatest number of peoples for
Speaker 1: me to ensure that like me and my rich kid
Speaker 1: friends all get to send our kids to special schools
Speaker 1: where like what, you know, fuck anybody else, Like I
Speaker 1: don't have any other responsibility for the broader population. All
Speaker 1: that actually matters is like me maximizing you know, my
Speaker 1: own personal happiness. But I still want to feel like
Speaker 1: like I'm a hero for doing it right if I
Speaker 1: avoid paying taxes in order to like spend all of
Speaker 1: my money investing in open AI so that I can
Speaker 1: like take people's jobs away, Like I want to feel
Speaker 1: like a hero for doing that, because what I'm arguing
Speaker 1: is that it's best for you know, the people with
Speaker 1: five hundred years from now, and there's going to be
Speaker 1: more of them there than there are today. So I'm
Speaker 1: a hero for like getting rich off of this company today.
Speaker 2: You know, yes, well, because there's, first of all, there's
Speaker 2: definitely going to be people in five hundred years.
Speaker 1: Sure, for sure, definitely, Garrett. If these eas get their way,
Speaker 1: sure yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. If we are doing the most good they're
Speaker 2: that's so fucking exhausting. I mean, it does, like your
Speaker 2: Peter Teel example. Not that you know, doing evil is
Speaker 2: good in any capacity, but the most exhausting kind of
Speaker 2: evil is the one that also insists on you validating
Speaker 2: that it's not actually evil all that time, that it
Speaker 2: deserves to cut the fuck up and ruin my life
Speaker 2: or don't.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with a lot of these fucking
Speaker 1: right wing media grifters. Were like, it's not enough for
Speaker 1: them to be rich, it's not enough for them to
Speaker 1: like get their way politically. They they they feel like
Speaker 1: they have like an ethical their ode, like being cool
Speaker 1: and respected, and it's the same good. Like these people
Speaker 1: are all finance schools. They are all like actively fighting
Speaker 1: to avoid paying taxes and to be able to concentrate
Speaker 1: ever more power in an ever smaller number of people,
Speaker 1: to destroy the lives of you know, artists and people
Speaker 1: who are like working folks in order to like make
Speaker 1: more short term profits. This is all what they actually
Speaker 1: care about personally, but they want to feel like Gandhi
Speaker 1: while they do it. Right, because what they're doing is guaranteeing.
Speaker 1: What they'll argue Jamie is that like, well, you know
Speaker 1: this may hurt this company, you know, me getting involved
Speaker 1: in this company. Sure, we may destroy a lot of
Speaker 1: jobs in the short term, but by doing so, we'll
Speaker 1: be able to make sure that the AI we build
Speaker 1: that eventually becomes our god is one that cares about
Speaker 1: the future of humanity, and that's better for the most
Speaker 1: people in long run.
Speaker 2: Yes, and history should remember me as the greatest man
Speaker 2: to ever live. And people will you know, that'll be
Speaker 2: on television someday when my computer is writing every television show.
Speaker 1: Fucking hate these people. So yeah, it's it's cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think the fundamental selfishness of these people because
Speaker 1: all that effective altruism and rationalism are really about is
Speaker 1: by is creating a made up system of numbers to
Speaker 1: justify you pursuing your own benefit as like science, right,
Speaker 1: as like scientifically rational.
Speaker 2: This is really it's not as if that doesn't, you know,
Speaker 2: like math problems to serve a very small group self interest.
Speaker 2: It's not as if that doesn't exist outside of this circle.
Speaker 2: But it's just like bizarre, how uniquely like they lack
Speaker 2: any sort of self awareness or I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: just they're so fucking annoying, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: That's very true, Jamie. And yes, this is all really
Speaker 1: clear when you look at how the movement, the EA
Speaker 1: movement treated Sam Bankman freed before and after his fall
Speaker 1: from grace. If effective Altruism can be said to have
Speaker 1: a pope, and it can, because all of these Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley philosophical movements are just kirklan Brand Catholicism. Hope is
Speaker 1: Will mccaskell, an Oxford moral philosopher and co founder for
Speaker 1: the Center for Effective Altruism. When FTX collapsed and Sam
Speaker 1: got arrested, he was quick to put out a statement
Speaker 1: of outrage. I don't know which emotion is stronger, my
Speaker 1: other rage at Sam and others for causing such harm
Speaker 1: to so many people, or my sadness and self hatred
Speaker 1: for falling for this deception. Now, the only reason I
Speaker 1: would hesitate to call this horseshit, Jamie, is that horseshit,
Speaker 1: by virtue of being inanimate waste, possesses a fundamental honesty
Speaker 1: that mcaskell is incapable of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck yeah, Robert, that's the bitchiest thing I've heard
Speaker 2: you say in a while.
Speaker 1: That's thank you, thank you. He and SBF met back
Speaker 1: at MIT when Sam was an undergrad. Mccaskell convinced him
Speaker 1: that he could maximize his impact in humanitarian causes by
Speaker 1: earning to give, you know, making as much money as
Speaker 1: possible so that he can give it away in a
Speaker 1: way that presumably will help the world. Now. When Sam
Speaker 1: ultimately launched Alimeter Research, it was an EA project from
Speaker 1: the start, staffed by Sam's friends in the community. One
Speaker 1: software engineer told Time almost everyone who came on in
Speaker 1: those early days was an EA. They were there for
Speaker 1: EA reasons, says Naya Buscal, a former software engineer at Alameda.
Speaker 1: That was the pitch we gave people. This is an
Speaker 1: EA thing.
Speaker 2: I know, I once again thinking about sports video games,
Speaker 2: and I know it's not sports video games.
Speaker 1: It is it is basically a sports video game.
Speaker 3: I just had the flashback to the Yeah interview you did.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, Okay, it's true, it's true.
Speaker 1: In the early days, Sam's pitch was that fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the company profits would be donated to EA causes,
Speaker 1: and the initial round of investing that got the company
Speaker 1: off the ground was funded entirely by rich EA types. Publicly,
Speaker 1: mccaskell asked about talked about Sam like he was the
Speaker 1: EA messiah, probably because ftx's Future Fund provided a huge
Speaker 1: amount of support for his movement, and just nine months
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, the Future Fund, run by Nick Bexted,
Speaker 1: a moral philosopher who used FTX money to support various causes,
Speaker 1: gave more than one hundred and sixty million dollars in
Speaker 1: other people's money funneled through FTX too effective altruism, including
Speaker 1: thirty three million dollars to organizations that mcaskell had a
Speaker 1: direct interest in. So that's why mcaskell spoke so positively
Speaker 1: about Sam, which is is made even more fucked up
Speaker 1: when you realize that, like other people in the EA
Speaker 1: movement had started warning mcaskell about Sam Bankman freed and
Speaker 1: about him being a con man as early as twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote again from time this is
Speaker 1: about from the very start of Alimeter research. Within months,
Speaker 1: the good karma of the venture dissipated in a series
Speaker 1: of internal clashes, many details of which have not been
Speaker 1: previously reported. Some of the issues were personal Bankman Freed
Speaker 1: could be dictatorial, according to one former colleague. Three former
Speaker 1: Alameda employees told Time he had inappropriate romantic relationships with
Speaker 1: his subordinates. Early Alameda executives also believed he had reneged
Speaker 1: on an equity arrangement that would have left bankman Freed
Speaker 1: with forty percent control of the firm, according to a
Speaker 1: document reviewed by Time. Instead, according to two people with
Speaker 1: knowledge of the situation, he had registered himself as sole
Speaker 1: owner of Alameda. So basically, Sam has unethically taken control
Speaker 1: of the firm and all of the money invested in it.
Speaker 1: And he is like fucking his subordinates.
Speaker 2: Its like, and he's also a sex pest.
Speaker 1: He's also a sex.
Speaker 2: Surprising And he's I've ever heard in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Taking money from people's what are effectively bank accounts and
Speaker 1: FTX and he's using it to prop up the value
Speaker 1: of different cryptos tokens on Alameda to make shit look
Speaker 1: like it which is money laundering, right, that's all. It's
Speaker 1: like theft and money. It's fraud, you know.
Speaker 2: Or is it the future Robert remember that?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, remember what Larry David taught us all.
Speaker 2: I know, there were some really unforgivable.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's pretty funny, it is. Of all, it is
Speaker 1: like I am on team, Like I can't be angry
Speaker 1: at Larry David because honestly, if Larry David advertises a
Speaker 1: financial product and you decide, he seems like a good
Speaker 1: guy to this seems like a credible company to me,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's a little bit on you, right,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit on you.
Speaker 2: Oh Els was in that commercial there was that was
Speaker 2: a that was a damning commercial.
Speaker 1: Those Yeah, it is. It is. I still say a restaurant,
Speaker 1: Larry David. But that's for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious what your other reasons are. But that's
Speaker 2: for another day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's for a different day. So this caused so
Speaker 1: again all of this shit. That is why this is
Speaker 1: like everything that was obvious in Alameda in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: This is all the stuff that he gets arrested for
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. And when they become aware of this,
Speaker 1: of the fact that he's fucking is subordinates and money laundering,
Speaker 1: a bunch of EA people start raising alarm bells. In
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, several Alameda executives try to force him out
Speaker 1: of the company and accuse him of gross negligence. Sam
Speaker 1: wins the power struggle, though, and so most of the
Speaker 1: EA management team and half of the company resign. Now
Speaker 1: this might be you could see this as like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe those effective altruist types were just in it for
Speaker 1: the altruism and once they saw Sam with Shady, they
Speaker 1: packed up. And that's true for those individual people. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some decent people who just got caught up in
Speaker 1: the movement, and they clearly had some degree of moral integrity,
Speaker 1: But the broader effective altruism.
Speaker 2: Movement incredibly low there, including unbelievable Will mccaskell.
Speaker 1: It's pope never disaffiliated from Sam. Mccaskell was saying talking
Speaker 1: about Sam like the second fucking coming up until late
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. And in exchange for laundering Sam's reputation,
Speaker 1: Sam sent tens of millions of dollars one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million to EA causes in twenty twenty two alone.
Speaker 1: And that's why mccaskell maintained movement ties with Bankment Freed
Speaker 1: quote in the weeks leading up to that April twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen confrontation with Bankman Freed and in the months that followed,
Speaker 1: Maccoley and others, who was one of the executives that left,
Speaker 1: warned mccaskell, Bexted and Karnofsky about her co founder's alleged
Speaker 1: duplicity and unscrupulous business ethics. According to four people with
Speaker 1: knowledge of those discussions, buscal recalled speaking to McCully immediately
Speaker 1: after one of McCauley's conversations with mccaskell in late twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Will basically took Sam's side, said Buskal, who recalls waiting
Speaker 1: with McCauley in the Stockholm airport while she was on
Speaker 1: the phone, Will basically threatened her. Buskall recalls, I remember
Speaker 1: my impression being that Will was taking a pretty hostile
Speaker 1: stance here and he was just believing Sam side of
Speaker 1: the story, which made no sense to me. So Will
Speaker 1: again perfectly willing to like throw down against, you know,
Speaker 1: the more honest people in his movement and personally threaten
Speaker 1: them in order to keep the money flowing to his
Speaker 1: fancy cause so that he can he right.
Speaker 2: And then the second that it becomes you know, pr
Speaker 2: inconvenient to keep the association, there should be some maybe
Speaker 2: there is like a term for that of just like
Speaker 2: even the cadence of what you read earlier of just
Speaker 2: like the disingenuousness of like, oh I had no idea.
Speaker 1: Like you're like, Okay, now you knew damn well what
Speaker 1: was going on, and you knew that that's you were
Speaker 1: willing to continue pretending he was a good guy and
Speaker 1: aligned with your movement as long as the money kept flowing.
Speaker 2: Right, No, light, Yeah, it no longer serves your best
Speaker 2: interests to stand by him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, now you'll yeah anyway, So, Sam, we
Speaker 1: don't actually know if he's completely bankrupt. We know he
Speaker 1: took about a billion in payments and loans from FTX.
Speaker 1: He claims not to really have any of that money,
Speaker 1: and that he's he's working on getting what assets he
Speaker 1: does have to like try to make a few more
Speaker 1: of the investors that they had whole. That said, we
Speaker 1: know that a big chunk of the money that he
Speaker 1: made was funneled into real estate in his parents' names.
Speaker 1: So that's fun. Speaking of his parents, one of the
Speaker 1: big early mysteries of his case was that when he
Speaker 1: gets out on two hundred and fifty million dollar bond,
Speaker 1: his parents are signed on to the bail agreement with
Speaker 1: their house as collateral, but there were also two mystery
Speaker 1: co signers and their house. We'll be talking about this
Speaker 1: in a second is on the stand for campus. The
Speaker 1: two mystery co signers were Larry Kramer, a family friend
Speaker 1: and the former dean of Stanford, and Andreas Popke, who
Speaker 1: signed a two hundred thousand dollars bond. Popke is a
Speaker 1: senior research scientist at Stanford and an advisor to several
Speaker 1: Valley startups. So Stanford is very invested primarily because of
Speaker 1: who Sam's parents are in this case, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to me and.
Speaker 2: Okay, because that was I mean, that is my outside
Speaker 2: of his parents, I guess realistically, what is in it
Speaker 2: for them by taking that risk.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually just that these people are close
Speaker 1: with his parents, who are professors at Stanford and deeply
Speaker 1: tied into that community.
Speaker 2: I can, I mean, I can very much see like
Speaker 2: bougie parents with influence, being like, Sam's just a boy.
Speaker 2: Anyone could have made this mistake. He thought he was
Speaker 2: doing the right thing. He got mixed in with the rock.
Speaker 1: This has to just be like some sort of crazy
Speaker 1: mistake because they can't imagine he just it's so dumb
Speaker 1: and blatant, like all he did was rob people in
Speaker 1: order to like gamble, right, Like, fundamentally, there's not a
Speaker 1: difference between like him taking people's money, claiming that he's
Speaker 1: got a sure stock tip and then gambling at Vegas.
Speaker 1: Like legally, there's no difference between that and what he did.
Speaker 1: But they can't because his parents are like ethicists basically
Speaker 1: at Stanford, and I don't think any of the people
Speaker 1: they are social with can imagine that his crimes were
Speaker 1: that venal and foolish. But you know whose crimes are
Speaker 1: not venal and foolish.
Speaker 2: Jamie, Oh, tell me, Robert.
Speaker 1: The products and services that support our podcasts.
Speaker 2: Uh, never encountered a product I didn't love.
Speaker 1: No, that's exactly right. That's exactly right, and we are back.
Speaker 1: So initially, the reason why these other Stanford people are
Speaker 1: secret signers on to this bail agreement is because they
Speaker 1: were afraid that they would be attacked because of how
Speaker 1: angry people are at Sam And there was a reason
Speaker 1: for this. Shortly after he was sent to house arrested
Speaker 1: his parents home, someone drove their car into a barricade
Speaker 1: set up outside of their house on the Stanford campus. Now,
Speaker 1: as I stated earlier, both the elder Bankman Freeds are
Speaker 1: former Stanford professors and their home is on campus, which
Speaker 1: has created issues for the school. The university still will
Speaker 1: not officially acknowledge that one of the world's most famous
Speaker 1: accused felons currently resides in their prestigious walled academic garden
Speaker 1: one Washington, Stanford.
Speaker 2: Like really fumbleshit constant.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's absurd. It's because they're not really
Speaker 1: that smart.
Speaker 2: But well, yes, this again another great case for it.
Speaker 2: It's also like, I don't know, just the arguing, like, well,
Speaker 2: his parents are like ethesis, how could he be fucked up?
Speaker 2: Have you ever met someone who raised no offense?
Speaker 1: People in the people.
Speaker 2: Call out any love, but it's like they know, they
Speaker 2: know the language.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So one part Washington Post article I found
Speaker 1: noted Stanford Law School didn't respond to requests for comment
Speaker 1: when asked whether they could confirm a rumor that nearby
Speaker 1: student co op had attacked the Bankman Freed home with eggs.
Speaker 1: Stanford campus police did not respond. Socially, however, Bankman Freed
Speaker 1: is a source of deep fascination. There are party flyers
Speaker 1: with his likeness. He's a punchline. In campus comedy sketches,
Speaker 1: students ride their bikes by on dates. The campus community
Speaker 1: is well aware he's there. An annotated map located the
Speaker 1: Bankman Freed home was posted on a student only social network.
Speaker 2: Okay, I be honest. If someone asked you out and
Speaker 2: they're like, here's my concept for a first date, We're
Speaker 2: gonna go watch Sam Samuel Bank We're getting.
Speaker 1: We're getting married that night. Jamie, I was.
Speaker 2: Like, we're going like, bring a flask, watch one of
Speaker 2: history's stupidest villains, and then for each other in a
Speaker 2: parking line.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Jamie, that's that's the dream. That's the dream. None
Speaker 1: of this. That's effective altruism right there. That's the greatest
Speaker 1: good for the greatest number of people.
Speaker 2: Sam could stand to learn a thing or two from these.
Speaker 1: These theoretical Stanford students. Yes, so if you so again.
Speaker 1: Sam's parents are both well respected teachers and experts in
Speaker 1: different fields of ethics. Both were recruited to the university
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, and they almost immediately hooked up.
Speaker 1: Barbara Freed made a name for herself as a She's
Speaker 1: like a philosopher. Basically. Her big thing was she wrote
Speaker 1: a paper dissecting the ethics of the trolley problem. Whereas
Speaker 1: Joe Bankman is a finance ethics guy. He writes a
Speaker 1: lot about like again, like not breaking the law with
Speaker 1: finance shit. It seems to be a big focus of his.
Speaker 2: This is a very obvious thing to say, but I
Speaker 2: do in defense of the Bankman family. I do appreciate
Speaker 2: when someone really rolls with their last name. I think
Speaker 2: that that is a very fun quality. This is this
Speaker 2: is an example of it not working out. I think
Speaker 2: it's also equally bizarre when someone has a last name
Speaker 2: where you're like, why are you not doing that job?
Speaker 2: For example? Yeah, maybe I've told you this before. It's
Speaker 2: one of my favorite facts I've learned in my life.
Speaker 2: My childhood dentist's name was doctor Vagenis and met. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: Glorious insisted in going into team. For some reason, I
Speaker 2: found it infuriating. I'm like, just roll with it, man,
Speaker 2: that's your last name.
Speaker 1: ANOD needs to go after this guy. No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I know you don't know how to do this job,
Speaker 1: but that's your life now. People will trust you until
Speaker 1: you figure it out. I do you you know, are
Speaker 1: the labydpeaking of nominative determinism. Joe Bankman would be it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't trust Joe Bankman as a drug dealer, but
Speaker 1: I would. I would. I would trust Johnny Cocaine as
Speaker 1: a financial expert, like like as a stockbroker. Johnny Cocaine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let him invest my money. He knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2: I just, you know, say what you will about Joe Bankman,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you should. I know nothing about this man,
Speaker 2: but at least he got into the right business.
Speaker 1: Yeah he does, he does. Now. I people talk with
Speaker 1: like awe about this guy, like he's so ethical, he's
Speaker 1: such like a decent man. He thinks so much about
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. When the Washington Post is like
Speaker 1: giving examples of noteworthy things in his past, one of the.
Speaker 2: Ones you must talk about Ted Lasso.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and two, he wrote a tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek suggestion on how to avoid a Major League Baseball strike,
Speaker 1: and his solution in this paper that's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a joke was to levy taxes on teams and players.
Speaker 1: Who's ruck that could only be avoided if the players
Speaker 1: donated money to charity or the teams agreed to sell
Speaker 1: Nickel hot dogs giants fans. Now, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the joke is here, but it apparently tore it up
Speaker 1: among upper middle class Ivy League finance academics. They all
Speaker 1: talk about this is very funny.
Speaker 2: Wait it comes up again. Is like remember when he said.
Speaker 1: It was in the Washington Post article about this guy,
Speaker 1: as like, look at a look at this. This is
Speaker 1: like a noteworthy moment from his career. This like bad
Speaker 1: joke that he made. But I guess that's what fucking
Speaker 1: Stanford people find funny.
Speaker 2: Imagine maybe it's hilarious that Yeah, I don't get it.
Speaker 2: Christ maybe Stanford people were just like I think it's hilarious,
Speaker 2: just like the word hot dog. They're like, oh, poor
Speaker 2: people food. Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: Now, everything you find about these people is like, wow,
Speaker 1: it taught like is their friends talking about Like it's
Speaker 1: so shocking that this could happen. You know, these were
Speaker 1: like the best people we knew. They were so concerned
Speaker 1: about ethics, raised their sons like little adults, and they
Speaker 1: were always talking about utilitarianism. How could this have gone wrong?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel when I read anecdotes about them,
Speaker 1: like it's pretty obvious why it went wrong. And to
Speaker 1: kind of make that point, Jamie, here's a quote from
Speaker 1: an excellent write up by Puck News. Quote. Bankman, who
Speaker 1: once boasted to a friend that his father had dutifully
Speaker 1: recorded every cash receipt, wrote three case books on tax
Speaker 1: shelters and tax evasion, becoming one of the country's leading
Speaker 1: experts on the subject. One of Bankman's law students in
Speaker 1: those early years was Peter Teal, who later told Bankman
Speaker 1: that his tax law class was his most valuable because
Speaker 1: he was able to put a lot of his Facebook
Speaker 1: stock in an ira. As Bankman would later recall on
Speaker 1: a podcast, this modest feed of financial engineering would save
Speaker 1: Teel more than a billion dollars. So ethics, Jamie. Avoiding
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in taxes so that Peter Teal can
Speaker 1: spend it given Joe swastik Oat money to write New
Speaker 1: York Times columns on racism. Hooray, I love ethics.
Speaker 2: Shit yeah, and I and here I was a clown,
Speaker 2: a fool about to be like, well, everyone wants to
Speaker 2: rebel against their parents. That's probably why he's a cartoon villain.
Speaker 1: When he talks ethics. It's not getting busted for being
Speaker 1: a piece of shit with money. That's what it seems
Speaker 1: like to me. Not an expert on ethics, I am
Speaker 1: an expert on being a piece of shit though, So yeah, but.
Speaker 2: You're a far different piece of shit.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jamie.
Speaker 2: Thank Can I celebrate that about you? I like that is,
Speaker 2: but I mean I'm not. I guess shocked that that
Speaker 2: is exceedingly ethical to the Stanford crowd. But wow, damning.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Barbara Freed, being a good Liberal, was horrified
Speaker 1: by the Trump election and shows to fight back by
Speaker 1: founding a political fundright raising group, Mind the Gap, which
Speaker 1: was extremely successful during the Trump years and is rumored
Speaker 1: to have acted is the model for ftx's own political
Speaker 1: donation machine. Both of Sam's parents have seen their reputations
Speaker 1: suffer with his arrest, and I'm going to continue with
Speaker 1: a quote from Puck. Official property records show that Joe
Speaker 1: Bankman and Barbara Freed were the named owners of a
Speaker 1: sixteen point four million dollar beachside vacation home in Old
Speaker 1: Fort Bay, part of a broader real estate portfolio owned
Speaker 1: by FTX and senior executives totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: They may have stayed there while working with a company
Speaker 1: sometime over the last year. Sam said, though he denied
Speaker 1: knowing any details about the three hundred million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of real estate that FTX and his parents bought in
Speaker 1: the Bahamas.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, so they know about absolutely everything in the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like now. Joe and
Speaker 1: Barbara have said that they've been working to return the
Speaker 1: property to the company for some time, working too. Joe Bankman,
Speaker 1: in particular, has hardly been a passive observer in his
Speaker 1: son's scandal and may now be exposed to some legal
Speaker 1: risk himself. Bankman interviewed and hired the first lawyers for
Speaker 1: Alimeter Research back in twenty seventeen, and effectively served as
Speaker 1: ftx's first attorney. He handled the inbound that came and
Speaker 1: made the resulting introduction that helped FTX raise one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty million from his former law student. Private equity
Speaker 1: mogul Orlando Bravo spent his free time on ftx's charitable
Speaker 1: and regulatory efforts, and was ultimately in the room before
Speaker 1: Sam made the fateful decision to sign the documents that
Speaker 1: declared Chapter eleven. So they seem very involved in shady themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't buy. Oh, they're so innocent. Their son just broke,
Speaker 1: you know, made a mistake or whatever. They're all they
Speaker 1: all just didn't think that this was criminal because the
Speaker 1: people's money they were taking were poor, and they're fucking
Speaker 1: Stanford brats, Like I have no respect for them. I
Speaker 1: hope they lose their fancy Stanford house. They heard a
Speaker 1: lot of it.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, particularly because I mean it sounds like
Speaker 2: this was their mo o from the start anyways, So
Speaker 2: why would we now think that they would be above
Speaker 2: this behavior if they're like, oh no, here's a way, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It seems like their definition of ethics
Speaker 2: is things you can technically get away with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you think it's not illegal for Peter Teal to
Speaker 1: get this billion dollars that he doesn't paid taxes on
Speaker 1: because you know, fuckery anyway, mister Bankman and missus Freed
Speaker 1: have joined now the expanding cast of disgrace Stanford affiliates.
Speaker 1: This includes recently university president Mark Tessier Levine, currently accused
Speaker 1: of manipulating images on research papers in a way that
Speaker 1: is equivalent to falsifying lab data for Alzheimer's research. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's also Bastard's Pod alumni, the Thernose Lady, another famous
Speaker 1: Stanford disgrace. And then there's the fact that they're alumni.
Speaker 2: King my favorite Stanford disgrace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then there's all their alumni who have created
Speaker 1: companies or helped run them that have shattered the foundations
Speaker 1: of our democracy in pursuit of a quick buck. Stanford's
Speaker 1: current reputation is so grimy that a Washington Post article
Speaker 1: on SBF's associations with the school ends with these lines,
Speaker 1: and this is very funny. Jamie Adrian Daub, a Stanford
Speaker 1: professor of comparative literature in German Studies and the author
Speaker 1: of what Tech Calls Thinking, sees an encouraging sign in
Speaker 1: Stanford being only peripherally involved in the bankman Freed scandal.
Speaker 1: That might not have been the case ten years ago.
Speaker 1: He notes, when the Silicon Valley hepe machine operated at
Speaker 1: more of a fever bitch than it does today. Other
Speaker 1: than his physical location, it's actually not that connected to
Speaker 1: us for once, Dob said, And that way, it's a
Speaker 1: sign of progress and also a little bit melancholy. Stanford
Speaker 1: was a place where the future was shaped, so it's
Speaker 1: quite possible that's not happening anymore, that it's happening in
Speaker 1: the Bahamas now and only comes to Palo Alto once
Speaker 1: it gets indicted. That's so funny.
Speaker 2: I'm hug up on other than its physical location.
Speaker 1: Yeah, other than the fact that he's here. He's not
Speaker 1: very involved.
Speaker 2: That's a big one, babe, that's a big one.
Speaker 1: But it does seem significant to me.
Speaker 2: No, if they're happy, I'm happy. That's great.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 2: We have to return to to Elizabeth Holmes at some
Speaker 2: point because I'm very uniquely interested in her rebranding as Liz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, genius, because now I've forgotten her horrible crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I forgot about all of her crimes once she
Speaker 2: had a cool and relatable name and had school relatable babies.
Speaker 1: Well, escape hay kiss started going by Alan.
Speaker 2: That's true. We can't take away that she's scammed Henry Kissinger. Yeah,
Speaker 2: scam people out of their lives. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: but the Henry Kissinger thing we cannot forget.
Speaker 1: I say, we give her six months off as a
Speaker 1: result of the Kissinger stick to me. So this brings
Speaker 1: us to the subject of what precisely Sam Bankman Freed
Speaker 1: has been up to in the nine months or so
Speaker 1: since his fall from grace. The short answer is that
Speaker 1: he has not had a wonderful time. In January, a
Speaker 1: month or so after he was granted bail under house arrest,
Speaker 1: the Southern District of New York, accused him of inappropriately
Speaker 1: contacting former and FTX employees in order to influence their
Speaker 1: testimony on his case. Sam tried to frame all of
Speaker 1: this as part of his ill advised apology tour that
Speaker 1: he embarked on last year in the lag period between
Speaker 1: FTX collapsing and his formal charges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did he hit the notes up? What happened?
Speaker 1: Oh, he's like calling them. Actually, I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a quote from Puck in order to describe how he's
Speaker 1: illegally contacting people. On a simber twelfth, the same day
Speaker 1: he was rested in the Bahamas, Bankman Freed emailed FDx
Speaker 1: bankruptcy CEO John Jay Ray the Third, offering potentially pertinent
Speaker 1: information concerning future opportunities and financing for FDx and its creditors,
Speaker 1: and asked to work constructively with Ray in the chapter
Speaker 1: eleven teen to do what's best for customers. No response Then,
Speaker 1: after his extradition, the crypto mogul sent another email to
Speaker 1: Ray on December thirtieth, in which he offered advice accessing
Speaker 1: Alameda funds. Still no response. Then, while being summoned to
Speaker 1: court in New York, SBF tried Ray again on January second.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray, I know things haven't gotten off on the
Speaker 1: right foot, but I really do want to be helpful.
Speaker 1: As I'm guessing you've heard, I'm in NYC for the
Speaker 1: next day. I'd love to meet up while I'm here,
Speaker 1: even if just to say hi, Ray, to not take
Speaker 1: him up on this offer, And.
Speaker 2: He has no shit.
Speaker 1: He's reached out to several people, and it's always like,
Speaker 1: I just want to help, you know, get as much
Speaker 1: money as we can for the customers. I just want to,
Speaker 1: you know, help you deal with the confusing aspects of this.
Speaker 1: But it's like, you're not supposed to be talking to
Speaker 1: people when you're in Sam situation who were involved in
Speaker 1: the company like this, because they're probably going to testify
Speaker 1: against you.
Speaker 2: I don't feel convinced that he understands that. I don't know,
Speaker 2: he's talking like a fucking spam email.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really is. And in general, Sam has opted
Speaker 1: to take all of the actions under house arrests that
Speaker 1: are likeliest to cause stress ulcers in his lawyers. In
Speaker 1: addition to repeatedly contacting FTX employees, he decided to start
Speaker 1: a substack where he planned to explain how fd and
Speaker 1: it's like, there's that famous line from the wire, are
Speaker 1: you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? But in this
Speaker 1: point the case, it's like, are you publishing blog posts
Speaker 1: about your criminal conspiracy after being indicted?
Speaker 2: It's out growing an audience, Robert h Loah, It's all
Speaker 2: a part of the play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like if al Capone had started in New
Speaker 1: York Times call um on having people machined gun and
Speaker 1: alleys after he'd gone away to fucking Alcatratz.
Speaker 2: Like, hear me out, you guys, It actually makes way
Speaker 2: more sense when I explain it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh so neither. He only writes, like I think,
Speaker 1: two posts before he gives up because they're they're bad.
Speaker 1: He's bad and blogging. I tried to read them. He's
Speaker 1: dog shiit writer.
Speaker 2: Well can I I mean not to be aggressive, but
Speaker 2: that's most substacked people.
Speaker 1: It's by the way, find my substanct not you, Robert No,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: You have more than two, but I'm just saying the
Speaker 2: average friend of mine that harangues me into you know
Speaker 2: these damn emails, it's too and and then they're done anyways,
Speaker 2: but not I'm probably going to start one that I'm
Speaker 2: just being insecure.
Speaker 1: What I wanted to do in a I think you'll
Speaker 1: beat Sam Bankman Freed, No, no question.
Speaker 2: Your substock is great.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir.
Speaker 2: Your substack is great.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jamie. This has been wonderful for my ego.
Speaker 2: Those are two that I actually read.
Speaker 1: So Sam's is bad though, and it's bad like in
Speaker 1: part of part of what he's doing is like he's
Speaker 1: been charged with a bunch of specific crimes, right and
Speaker 1: the posts that he puts up he does not acknowledge
Speaker 1: any of the charges against him. He doesn't like defend
Speaker 1: himself from them. Instead, he lays out a bunch of
Speaker 1: misleading in arcane spreadsheets to try and like argue that
Speaker 1: the company shouldn't have collapsed the way it did and
Speaker 1: that he like didn't realize like why he didn't realize
Speaker 1: it was so bad he's doing. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: as like the EA shit we open the episode with
Speaker 1: right this throwing out like confusing piles of numbers in
Speaker 1: order to distract people, right, Like, this is just like chaff.
Speaker 1: You know, that's what he's doing, is he's throwing out
Speaker 1: chaff in the way of a bunch of poorly formatted spreadsheets.
Speaker 1: They don't convince anyone that he's innocent.
Speaker 2: I was to say, but it sounds like it. Also.
Speaker 2: It did not work.
Speaker 1: It did not work at all. You should not do
Speaker 1: this if you are being indicted for numerous financial crimes
Speaker 1: bt dubs. So in early February, the judge overseeing Sam's
Speaker 1: case forbade him from using encrypted messaging app like Signal
Speaker 1: because he was so frequently trying to talk to other
Speaker 1: people who were part of this case with him in secret,
Speaker 1: which is illegal. He also got in trouble because he
Speaker 1: was caught using a VPN, which could have potentially allowed
Speaker 1: him to hide his communications. Sam argued he was just
Speaker 1: using a VPN to access his international NFL game pass account.
Speaker 2: So I was like, did he just say he was
Speaker 2: trying to want a Canadian Netflix. Yeah, that would be
Speaker 2: fucking classical officer.
Speaker 1: I just had a lot of shit to torre at homie,
Speaker 1: Like you get it, my men, he has since been
Speaker 1: limited to a normal flip phone due to his repeated
Speaker 1: inability to abide by his bail conditions. Now, some might
Speaker 1: note that Sam has already gotten more second chances than
Speaker 1: most accused criminals get with their bail conditions, it seems
Speaker 1: accurate to say that the leniency he has received gave
Speaker 1: him reason to feel as if he could act with impunity,
Speaker 1: which is why a couple of weeks ago he leaked
Speaker 1: his ex girlfriend's diary to The New York Times.
Speaker 2: Which is take me through the Witch's wi.
Speaker 3: That wasn't what I thought you were going to say.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, nobody thought it was gonna head here.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, it's although it seemed like we
Speaker 2: were due for another spiteful action against a woman for
Speaker 2: seemingly no reason.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely absolutely. Now I will say I don't like
Speaker 1: this woman either. Caroline Ellison is I think a pretty
Speaker 1: shitty person.
Speaker 2: She was the we spoke about her last time, right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: She unpleasant lady. She was the former CEO of Alameda.
Speaker 1: I've been fucking listening to this podcast called Spellcaster, which
Speaker 1: is like a wondery podcast about Sam Bankman Freed. I
Speaker 1: don't like it. The woman who does it like was
Speaker 1: at a was at a bachelorette party with Carolyn Ellison
Speaker 1: right before the charges dropped and was like, Oh, she's
Speaker 1: so smart, She's so and she repeats the same bullshit
Speaker 1: everyone says about Sam. They were such, they were like geniuses,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, they just like blew out a
Speaker 1: bunch of numbers you didn't understand and convinced you they
Speaker 1: were smart because they said numbers right, Like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: these people have done that is smart.
Speaker 2: With situations like that, I'm like, I guess I appreciate
Speaker 2: the disclosure, but like, why the fuck were you hired
Speaker 2: to do this show?
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's because big media is just as tiny
Speaker 1: and insular a world full of rich people as finance,
Speaker 1: and in fact, a lot of the same families have
Speaker 1: people at the times and people and fucking investment banks,
Speaker 1: which is why here at cool Zone Media we exclusively
Speaker 1: hire people who used to sell ketamine on their college
Speaker 1: campuses in order to get by. You know. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's the Cool Zone guarantee or adderall.
Speaker 2: You know, And I appreciate that you made an exception
Speaker 2: for some of us that you didn't have to be
Speaker 2: good at it. You just had to truck. No.
Speaker 1: In fact, we will not hire you if you were
Speaker 1: good at selling trump campus. Why did you even apply
Speaker 1: to this media mediocre part time campus drug dealers. That's
Speaker 1: our that's our higher ring pool. Yeah, that's our, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever, I don't know the names of
Speaker 1: enough fancy news.
Speaker 3: Really not that big of a stretch, Let's be honest.
Speaker 2: I'm fucking proud of that.
Speaker 1: So Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda and also Sam's
Speaker 1: on again off again bo she immediately turns.
Speaker 2: Like you using the term bo but continue?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 2: That's what I should I use boo. I kind of
Speaker 2: like boo.
Speaker 3: I was like, I was like, that doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 1: But they were ko boos. So she immediately turned state's
Speaker 1: witness and admitted guilt for her share of the illegal
Speaker 1: activities committed by Alameda, and she apparently, as a part
Speaker 1: as part of immediately rolling handed over her diary. I
Speaker 1: think that's how they got her diaries was part of
Speaker 1: the terms of like the Yeah, so it gets introduced
Speaker 1: into evidence, which obviously Sam I think will get access
Speaker 1: to as a result to that, because that's the way
Speaker 1: discovery works. I believe that's how he got her diary.
Speaker 2: Was she also a Stanford Head?
Speaker 1: I don't think she went to I think she her
Speaker 1: parents were professors at M I T h Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, losers over it Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just Hobo University right there.
Speaker 2: Until it happens to me. I love when someone's diary
Speaker 2: is introduced into evidence, and that brings me back to
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Holmes yet again, when she like her her creepy
Speaker 2: little sexts with Sunny Belwani ooh.
Speaker 1: Some of the worst some of the very worst sex.
Speaker 2: That is maybe the moment that I felt closest to her.
Speaker 2: That's when she That's when Liz almost got me because
Speaker 2: she was sending walls of text to this guy and
Speaker 2: then he was sending me back. Okay, and it's like, you.
Speaker 1: Know what, brutal. No, No, she deserves she deserved a
Speaker 1: man like Jeff Bezos, who would call her the most
Speaker 1: unsettling nickname I've ever heard, you know, but at least
Speaker 1: he was bonded a live girl.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. I think we we as we
Speaker 3: we we we we as a collective blocks that out intentionally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very funny. It does make it clear that
Speaker 1: he's not a robot, because like, nobody, nobody fakes that.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's evidence that he feels something. What he
Speaker 1: feels is off putting, it's frightening, it's like profoundly unsettling.
Speaker 1: But he does feel something.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately, yeah, chat GPT could have outdone that in
Speaker 2: terms of sounding like a person.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. So anyway, Sam gets access to her diary
Speaker 1: one way or the other. Uh, and then he hands
Speaker 1: her diary to the New York Times so that they
Speaker 1: can write an article about it. Now that is unethical
Speaker 1: as fuck and possibly illegal. The prosecution has asked that
Speaker 1: he be jailed, that his bay will be revoked because
Speaker 1: of what he did. Sam's this is still going on
Speaker 1: as we talk. I'll record a little update if he
Speaker 1: does go to jail as a result of this. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: Robert here just wanted to update you that, since we
Speaker 1: recorded this episode a couple of days before you're hearing it,
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman freed was remanded to custody. He is incarcerated
Speaker 1: now and he will remain in jail after violating his
Speaker 1: bail conditions, until his trial in October at least, and
Speaker 1: possibly well beyond that, depending on how the charges and
Speaker 1: sentencing and all that stuff go. I should note that
Speaker 1: kind of the most recent story after that is that
Speaker 1: his lawyers requested that he'd be allowed to have his
Speaker 1: ADHD medication and depression medication, which he ran out of
Speaker 1: soon after being taken into custody. The judge has ordered
Speaker 1: that he'd be given that medication. Obviously, I'm always in
Speaker 1: favor of people who are incarcerated having access to medication
Speaker 1: if anyone's interested. I don't actually think putting Sam in
Speaker 1: jail's going to do much good. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: more mixed on this than I normally am, just because
Speaker 1: of the case of Adam Newman, the wee work guy
Speaker 1: who got off Scott free from his giant financial crimes
Speaker 1: and is now starting another giant grift company. And we'll
Speaker 1: probably fuck with a bunch of other people's lives. But
Speaker 1: I do kind of think it's unlikely that we're going
Speaker 1: to get much benefit out of this. That said, I
Speaker 1: don't really feel for Sam. He had many many chances
Speaker 1: not to be in this situation, and he fucked all
Speaker 1: of them up. So, you know, fuck the guy. Sam's
Speaker 1: lauriers have argued he was not attempting to discredit a
Speaker 1: week a witness, but just to respond to a toxic
Speaker 1: media environment, which he says unfairly portrays him as a villain.
Speaker 1: And I guess we're part of that toxic media environment.
Speaker 1: Although Sam free tip here, handing your ex girlfriend's diary
Speaker 1: to the New York Times is a bad way to
Speaker 1: seem like, not the villain. That's kind of villain behavior, homie.
Speaker 1: That hate to tell you.
Speaker 2: I again, but it's like again you can imagined his
Speaker 2: like doofy loser fucking logic of like no officer, I
Speaker 2: was just being a petty bitch. Is that the law?
Speaker 2: And you're like, yeah, this is, yes.
Speaker 1: Yes it is, actually, sir bruh. So humorously enough, that
Speaker 1: is the legal argument his lawyers are making. And they
Speaker 1: kind of have a point because they're like, look, if
Speaker 1: you read the New York Times article based on her diary,
Speaker 1: he seems like a piece of shit, So clearly we
Speaker 1: weren't trying to influence the prosecution. And like, they do
Speaker 1: have a point because he does come across as the
Speaker 1: bad guy in that article that he made happen. So
Speaker 1: that's funny he comes up, this.
Speaker 2: Is the bad guy in most things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna quote from some of that New York
Speaker 1: Times coverage here. Mister Bankman Freed and Miss Ellison have
Speaker 1: started an unsteady also started an unsteady romantic relationship, with
Speaker 1: multiple breakups and reconciliations. At times. Miss Ellison worried that
Speaker 1: mister Bankman Freed thought she wasn't good enough when he
Speaker 1: was around. She wrote in February twenty twenty two in
Speaker 1: a Google document, she had an instinct to shrink and
Speaker 1: become smaller and quieter and defer to others. After one split,
Speaker 1: miss Ellison cut off communication with mister bankmin Freed. I
Speaker 1: felt pretty hurt rejected, she wrote in the April twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two Google document. Not giving you the contact you
Speaker 1: wanted felt like the only way I could regain a
Speaker 1: sense of power. Miss Ellison was compensated far less generously
Speaker 1: than other top executives at FTX and Alomedia, though it's
Speaker 1: unclear whether she was aware of it. According to court filings,
Speaker 1: the Exchangees, founders and other key employees received three point
Speaker 1: two billion dollars in payouts and loans. Of that total,
Speaker 1: six million went to Miss Ellison, compared with five hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty seven million for mister Singh ftx's head of engineering,
Speaker 1: and two hundred and forty six million for mister Wang,
Speaker 1: one of the founders. Mister Bankman Freed received two point
Speaker 1: two billion. So's Ellison is definitely not innocent here. She
Speaker 1: has admitted guilt in this case, but the reporting makes
Speaker 1: it seem as if her main role was to act
Speaker 1: as a patsy. Sam knew she was in love with
Speaker 1: him and deeply insecure, so he put her in charge
Speaker 1: of Alameda so that he could use it as part
Speaker 1: of his grift to manipulate the value of his CRISP
Speaker 1: crypto empire using customer funds. And this basically the six
Speaker 1: million he gave her, which is a tiny fraction of
Speaker 1: like the three billion they funnel to executives. That's like
Speaker 1: him paying her to be a smoke screen. Right, She's
Speaker 1: not an equal partner in this enterprise. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that had happened right before this fell apart
Speaker 1: is he had he had stopped paying attention to her
Speaker 1: in Alameda in order to start throwing money through another
Speaker 1: crypto exchange run from a woman he was fucking now
Speaker 1: that he had like, so it seems like this was
Speaker 1: a path for him.
Speaker 4: Stop stop what I'm not doing this. I'm just talking
Speaker 4: about what he did. I just really just it's well,
Speaker 4: it's bad. He's a bastard. That's why we're talking about him.
Speaker 2: I just really I just really need I don't know
Speaker 2: who needs to hear this, but we just really need
Speaker 2: people to stop fucking Sam Pankman.
Speaker 1: That's this is very bad, gross behavior.
Speaker 2: It's gross and it's bad for the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you know, fuck this guy. One bit
Speaker 1: of schadenfreude I can give you all is that, according
Speaker 1: to Puck News, Sam's present situation is so unpleasant that
Speaker 1: he considers his trips across the country to go to
Speaker 1: court in New York the highlight of his life now
Speaker 1: because he gets to like go out in the street.
Speaker 1: He's surrounded by lawyers in private security, so it's like
Speaker 1: he's got an entourage again. He gets to travel. This
Speaker 1: is like the closest he gets to feeling like when
Speaker 1: he used to be a billionaire. So that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: The downside is from the perspective of an FBF hater,
Speaker 1: the downside is that recently one of his charges was dismissed.
Speaker 1: The campaign finance violation. This was not due to him
Speaker 1: being innocent, but due to some legal weirdness involving the
Speaker 1: letter of the extradition agreement the US signed with the Bahamas. Basically,
Speaker 1: when we put together the agreements that they'd extra died him,
Speaker 1: that was not on the document. So the FEDS had
Speaker 1: to like drop the charge in order to not deal
Speaker 1: with a bunch of other bullshit. It's a technicality, but
Speaker 1: it means that his brother, Gabe and several members of
Speaker 1: the philanthropic at FTX probably will not be charged for
Speaker 1: very likely committing crimes. And I say they likely committed
Speaker 1: crimes because FTX executive Nashad Singh already pled guilty this
Speaker 1: spring to participating in a straw donor scheme. So he is, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he pled guilty before they dropped this charge, which
Speaker 1: he's got to feel like an asshole for doing because
Speaker 1: now he is going to get punished for that, even
Speaker 1: though SBF is no longer being charged for it.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's I mean. Look, sometimes you do the ethical
Speaker 2: altruistic thing and it comes back to bite you in
Speaker 2: the ass.
Speaker 1: What do you do? Yeah, what are you going to do? Hey?
Speaker 1: Everyone just wanted to note that since we recorded this,
Speaker 1: the prosecution has noted that they will be seeking to
Speaker 1: add those charges back on that were dropped. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that both Sam and other members of his inner
Speaker 1: circle will be charged with all that stuff. We just
Speaker 1: really kind of don't know at this point. But I
Speaker 1: do want to note that the prosecution is at least saying, hey, like,
Speaker 1: despite this little mess up, we are not just giving
Speaker 1: up on this charge. So heads up about that could
Speaker 1: change in the future. Well, Jamie, yeah, how you doing.
Speaker 2: I really well, I have a question for you.
Speaker 1: I have an answer for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I sure fucking hope. So no. My question is
Speaker 2: that I'm curious, what do you see happening here? What
Speaker 2: feels plausible to you at this time.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been seeing a lot of people be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: he's gonna get off, He's gonna get all he's got
Speaker 1: too many connections, too many you know, people who he
Speaker 1: could roll on. I don't think he has many people
Speaker 1: he could really roll on. I don't think he was like,
Speaker 1: especially since these finance charges have been dropped. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I really think he's got the savvy to
Speaker 1: have like a guy like John McAfee, I believe John
Speaker 1: McAfee killed himself. I don't believe there's anything shady there.
Speaker 1: I know a lot about the guy. It makes sense
Speaker 1: to me that when his fucking running finally stopped, he
Speaker 1: would do that. But McAfee probably did have some dirt
Speaker 1: on some people. He was that kind of cunning, right,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be shocked if John McAfee had put together
Speaker 1: some dirt on some people, right. I don't think Sam
Speaker 1: Bankman Freed is that cunning. I don't think he was
Speaker 1: like smart enough to have dirt on anyone who could
Speaker 1: get him out of this situation. I think there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good chance he does hard time. I think he
Speaker 1: fucked with too many people, he fucked with the money,
Speaker 1: and he fucked with it in too dumb of a way.
Speaker 1: So I think he's screwed.
Speaker 2: Okay, that was my instinct as well, because I feel
Speaker 2: like he doesn't even have I mean, he doesn't have
Speaker 2: any sort of like I think sometimes with these types
Speaker 2: you get some sort of press narrative that it's like
Speaker 2: they're playing four D chess, and like, even if that's
Speaker 2: not entirely true, there's like a median narrative that sticks
Speaker 2: to them. That makes them seem more plausible. But I
Speaker 2: just feel like everything that's, like, all of his actions
Speaker 2: and all of the media surrounding him, except for a
Speaker 2: very very small amount, seems to reinforce the fact that
Speaker 2: he's completely incompetent and malicious in every way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say that, Well, good.
Speaker 2: God, I mean not that I you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean it seems like he's fucked. I certainly hope
Speaker 2: he's fucked.
Speaker 1: I hope he's fucked. I hate him. I think he's
Speaker 1: a gross person. I hope Will mccaskell goes away or
Speaker 1: gets like eaten by eaten by a large fish would
Speaker 1: be my pick, if I got it. If like God
Speaker 1: is like, what do you want me to do to
Speaker 1: Will mccaskal, I'm like, you, you remember that thing he
Speaker 1: did with a whale back in the day. What if
Speaker 1: he didn't get out? What if a whale just eats him?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: And then God'd be like, oh, amazing. I love playing
Speaker 2: the hits.
Speaker 1: I love great pitch. You know what, Robert, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you that HBO series you've been asking for.
Speaker 2: Robert, you were an amazing collaborator.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Me and God co creators of my HBO series.
Speaker 1: I am hoping if the strike goes on, they take
Speaker 1: my reality show Pitch super Soaker full of Piss, which
Speaker 1: I really think has some path Jamie, I mean premises.
Speaker 2: No, go ahead, tell me the promise of super Soaker
Speaker 2: full of piss, Robert. I'm ready.
Speaker 1: So I'm in a van. I filled a super soaker
Speaker 1: with my piss, and I drive around like Rodeo drive,
Speaker 1: and I get out when I see someone who looks
Speaker 1: famous and I score them with a super soaker full
Speaker 1: of piss, and then we film it and then I
Speaker 1: leave very quickly.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean I'm on top with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a great I think it's good.
Speaker 1: You know, I will get you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I would be kind of pro like if you could
Speaker 2: get I think the soundtrack is going to be really
Speaker 2: key there, Like I think if you could give me
Speaker 2: some like Jock jam situation, like.
Speaker 1: This is exciting. All live all live editions of Blink
Speaker 1: one eighty two songs doues, you know, because they they
Speaker 1: are one of the worst live bands that ever played.
Speaker 1: So it's really just upsetting to the to the viewer.
Speaker 1: That's the goal here, and you know.
Speaker 2: Given who blink one eighty two like rolls with these days,
Speaker 2: you may in fact run into Travis on Rodeo Drive.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, utial full.
Speaker 1: Poet right in the face, just just a full load
Speaker 1: of it, you know, just to say.
Speaker 3: I hate this idea because it means that some fucking
Speaker 3: celebrity will murder you and then we'll be gone, and
Speaker 3: then I'll be sad.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, I'm not great at recognizing celebrities,
Speaker 1: so I'm anytime I could just see someone in a
Speaker 1: suit and spray him with the piss. Yeah, Jamie, I
Speaker 1: know we can sell. No, we just roll down the
Speaker 1: streets and stick Jonas Roberts spray, pray, spray, get the
Speaker 1: fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: Wow, No Jonas, Robert.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, that's right. I'm going to rely
Speaker 1: on Jamie to recognize him though.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I did see that, Jamie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well the Jonas brothers have their own
Speaker 2: vanity popcorn brand, now, isn't that something? These are the
Speaker 2: amazing things I can teach you, Robert.
Speaker 1: I've already taught me so much about hot dog through
Speaker 1: your best selling book Raw Dog.
Speaker 2: Wow. Perfect trans pivot.
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Let us spicy plug though gorgeous, gorgeous plug. Hey, it's
Speaker 2: never too late to start reading about hot dogs. It's
Speaker 2: never too late, never learning.
Speaker 1: Reading about hot dogs and also America fascinating story. Raw
Speaker 1: Dog find it wherever books are found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thank you so much. I truly I was.
Speaker 2: I mean, as you know, I did a Bastard's episode
Speaker 2: about hot dogs as I was writing that book so
Speaker 2: that I would remain focused.
Speaker 1: And it's the best way.
Speaker 2: And I have heard that the subject of that episode, George,
Speaker 2: say that the hot dog eating community is actively protecting
Speaker 2: him from its existence. He does not know it exists.
Speaker 2: He does not the book. Everyone in his life is
Speaker 2: really actively try Like every hot dog eater or many
Speaker 2: gaters I talked to, We're like, yeah, no, we know
Speaker 2: about the Bastard's episode and we know about the book,
Speaker 2: but we really don't want George to know about it.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, fair.
Speaker 1: Enough, beautiful jam. That made me feel great. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for this show and all other cool Zone
Speaker 1: shows ad free at cooler Zone Media. That's for Apple subscribers.
Speaker 1: We are working on the Android option. You can find
Speaker 1: my novel After the Revolution, by typing After the Revolution
Speaker 1: into whatever book buying site you use, or just walk
Speaker 1: into a bookstore and demand it from the manager at
Speaker 1: sword point. Anyway, Goodbye, Goodbye Bye.
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia
Speaker 3: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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