Speaker 1: Also media, welcome back for the last time today, I
Speaker 1: guess or this week Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 2: We're done with the Epstein Update episodes for now. This
Speaker 2: this episode will be our last. Andrew T welcome back
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, thanks, thanks and scare quotes for having.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks and scare quotes the only thanks we get here.
Speaker 3: I realized what your show is. You're you're sort of
Speaker 3: like just like a low mimetic version of The Ring
Speaker 3: where yeah, after after having been on the show or
Speaker 3: listening to it, you know, in seven days, you will
Speaker 3: want to die. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the That's that's what we go for
Speaker 2: here at Behind the Bastards is to make all of
Speaker 2: our listeners want to die.
Speaker 3: Just the god. Now, you know what, less this has
Speaker 3: been less grim than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 3: I will say not that it's not grim.
Speaker 2: But the nice thing that's weird saying the night Andrew
Speaker 2: doing these Epstein episodes is that we already did the
Speaker 2: ones where we talked there's a lot more detail out now,
Speaker 2: and we probably should at some point go back, but
Speaker 2: we talked at length in the previous like four episodes
Speaker 2: about all of the horrible sex trafficking crimes. So the
Speaker 2: fact that we're just kind of focusing mostly on other
Speaker 2: stuff here makes it less nightmarish than if we're just
Speaker 2: going over all of the evidence of child molestation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not that we don't want to be highlighting that, but
Speaker 2: we did, and everyone knows that stuff, and I think
Speaker 2: this is also important, so we're getting into it.
Speaker 4: Of course, I'm still pretty scow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, there's a lot that makes me sad.
Speaker 3: As I said, I'm still an earlier episode. It's like,
Speaker 3: even without that shit, he would be one of the
Speaker 3: worst people ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And it's one of those things. If it
Speaker 2: weren't for the fact that he was also the giant
Speaker 2: pedophile guy, I probably wouldn't be writing about just Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein's because, for one thing, we just don't know. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of like did he actually get moot to
Speaker 2: create Pole or no? Like right, we just will never know.
Speaker 2: But because of the other stuff, like I feel like
Speaker 2: we do have to talk about how deeply tired he
Speaker 2: is to all of these massively important things that are
Speaker 2: happening in society, that he's talking to the major players
Speaker 2: and trying to convince them of things right. It's weird
Speaker 2: because this is kind of the only behind the bastards
Speaker 2: where for the most part, I'm saying like, well, we
Speaker 2: know he was trying to do something with this bad thing,
Speaker 2: but we don't know how he influenced this bad thing,
Speaker 2: which we don't normally do here. But I don't know
Speaker 2: how else to handle Epstein right now, right.
Speaker 3: We also don't know the history of everything that you know,
Speaker 3: this band thing which is in progress.
Speaker 2: Ryan Brodericks says, you know, Michael Wolfe probably connected Epstein
Speaker 2: and Bannon in twenty seventeen, but there's evidence from earlier
Speaker 2: that they would have known about each other, and we're
Speaker 2: traveling in similar circles, but I can't prove they were
Speaker 2: in contact earlier. But also millions of documents haven't been
Speaker 2: released yet, so like who knows what else there is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right?
Speaker 2: Or did Bannon used to have a different email, right
Speaker 2: and it wasn't under his name? I don't know. There
Speaker 2: may be early emails for them under different emails in
Speaker 2: the files that we just haven't found because it's not
Speaker 2: immediately clear that it's banning yet. There's stuff like that
Speaker 2: people have talked about, like JK Rowling, how like, well,
Speaker 2: she definitely he was on the invite list for you know,
Speaker 2: the Harry Potter play when it opened, but she says
Speaker 2: they had no direct connection. There's not really hard evidence
Speaker 2: of a direct connection. But there is an email with
Speaker 2: a cinder redacted where it signed the way JK. Rowling
Speaker 2: sometimes signs stuff, but that's not conclusive. So I don't know, right,
Speaker 2: And hopefully as more stuff comes out, maybe there is
Speaker 2: even more about her in the current files that just
Speaker 2: haven't been found yet because people we haven't No one
Speaker 2: knows everything that's in these files yet. Stuff's being found
Speaker 2: every day, right, So that's one of the issues with
Speaker 2: this is that I decided there was enough obviously for
Speaker 2: four episodes now, but in a year, people will probably
Speaker 2: be angry at you, Well you left this out well
Speaker 2: because people aren't found yet. I don't know, man like,
Speaker 2: or there's stuff I know I'm leaving out now that
Speaker 2: I did find that was on my research doc that
Speaker 2: I was just like, well, this is forty two pages long.
Speaker 2: We got to call it somewhere, huhh.
Speaker 3: And you know what, that's the beauty of podcasting. There's
Speaker 3: always more podcasts.
Speaker 2: That's the beauty of podcasting. You can always say good enough.
Speaker 2: You know who else said good enough? Nope, that's a
Speaker 2: bad way to talk about the Ferguson.
Speaker 4: You're surely not doing that, Nope.
Speaker 2: But we are starting with Ferguson in this episode. It's
Speaker 2: very relevant to Jeffrey Epstein's intellectual journey because I've been
Speaker 2: talking about ah Well. Obviously, the fact that he got
Speaker 2: arrested in trouble has an impact on him because a
Speaker 2: lot of his behavior seems to shift. He gets born
Speaker 2: too right wing stuff. But that's also happening to his
Speaker 2: whole community. All these tech billionaires and rich finance guys
Speaker 2: are getting more pilled in the two thousands about this
Speaker 2: stuff anyway. So maybe it would have happened if he
Speaker 2: hadn't gotten convicted of anything. But there's a definite moment
Speaker 2: that we can fairly easily say had a big impact
Speaker 2: on how Jeffrey Epstein thought about the world, and it's Ferguson.
Speaker 2: On August tenth, twenty fourteen, Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren
Speaker 2: Wilson shot Michael Brown and killed him. There were protests immediately,
Speaker 2: and some people used the opportunity of the protests to
Speaker 2: loot and engage in other criminal activity. The police are
Speaker 2: included in the criminal activity that occurs after this shooting
Speaker 2: because they're violence. In the fact that they all looked
Speaker 2: like fucking soldiers kicked off further unrest and a national debate.
Speaker 2: You all probably lived through pieces of this. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to re litigate everything that happened in Ferguson, but
Speaker 2: the basics of it are very relevant to the Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein story because Ferguson wasn't just a tragedy in its
Speaker 2: own right. It was a prelude to mass protests in
Speaker 2: the wake of George Floyd's murder in twenty twenty, but
Speaker 2: it also helped to inspire the fascist backlash that first
Speaker 2: made itself obvious when mister Donald Trump announced his presidency
Speaker 2: on June sixteenth, twenty fifteen. I don't think it's focused
Speaker 2: on enough how close Ferguson is in time to Trump
Speaker 2: announcing the start of his campaign, and how many older
Speaker 2: white people with money see the videos from Ferguson of
Speaker 2: the protests of these crowds of mostly black people who
Speaker 2: are very rightfully angry and get fucking terrified, right because
Speaker 2: they see this as stirrings of the kind of race
Speaker 2: riots that they've never stopped fearing. Now we know that
Speaker 2: Epstein began donating to far right content creators and talking
Speaker 2: very openly about race science in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: not long after Ferguson, And we know that he paid
Speaker 2: close attention on what was happening in Ferguson from an
Speaker 2: early point, and that he talked about his predictions for
Speaker 2: what might happen next with one of his good friends,
Speaker 2: former Israeli Prime Minister at Hud Barack fucking well, no,
Speaker 2: fucking it's always and then he talked about it with
Speaker 2: his friend, this influential monster.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, he's the Where's walthough of fat guys.
Speaker 4: He's fucking everywhere.
Speaker 2: He really fucking is now in ways that.
Speaker 3: Don't even always make sense to It's just like it
Speaker 3: feels like they're the writer's just cramming in mon Man.
Speaker 2: I guess he hasn't shown up in the show for
Speaker 2: a while. Bring hood Barack in, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: How'd that friendship start? Do we know?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's there's information about that one, because he's
Speaker 2: one of the guys we knew was an Epstein friend
Speaker 2: way before the releases started, right, they've been very like
Speaker 2: publicly buddies. So what happens here is Michael Brown gets
Speaker 2: shot in Ferguson and protests start, right, Yeah, And Jeffrey
Speaker 2: at some point, probably pretty soon after that, is talking
Speaker 2: with a hood Barack and says, here's what I think's
Speaker 2: going to happen next, right, and like lays out a
Speaker 2: prediction for what's going to happen to Ferguson. And we
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what that prediction was or what he said,
Speaker 2: but we do know that on November twenty fourth, a
Speaker 2: grand jury fails to indict Wilson for killing Michael Brown.
Speaker 2: More protests follow, and some people respond to a man
Speaker 2: getting away with murder by rioting. Police cars are burned.
Speaker 2: There's a murder of a man in a parked car.
Speaker 2: It's really unclear, I think still who does that and
Speaker 2: why that happens, But it's a big deal, right. What
Speaker 2: happens in Ferguson in November of that year is like
Speaker 2: hugely influential all across the country. On November twenty sixth,
Speaker 2: two days after the grand jury fails to indict Wilson,
Speaker 2: a hud Barak sends this email to Jeffrey Epstein that
Speaker 2: you're seeing on your screen right now. Jeff, you've accurately
Speaker 2: predicted the eruption, and together we'd predicted the mistakes which
Speaker 2: will follow. Let's hope it won't get worse. Ari, light
Speaker 2: and strong. I'll call you tomorrow morning. Your time, best,
Speaker 2: eb And then he's linked there a CEE in an
Speaker 2: article called Ferguson braces for more unrest. Right, So, I
Speaker 2: want to really emphasize what's happening here. Jeffrey is concerned
Speaker 2: enough about the potential of race riots in the United
Speaker 2: States that he's like looking for them. So as soon
Speaker 2: as Ferguson happens, he is concerned, and he reaches out
Speaker 2: to his friend, who he thinks would be the best
Speaker 2: friend to talk to about his fear that a racial
Speaker 2: minority in his country is getting violent, the former Prime
Speaker 2: Minister of Israel. Okay, there's a lot, a lot you
Speaker 2: can read into this conversation.
Speaker 4: Right boy, how I hate them all?
Speaker 2: So I think Ferguson has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: why the next year, Epstein sends twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: to a white nationalist YouTube, Right, I think it has
Speaker 2: a lot to do with a lot of shit that follows.
Speaker 2: I think it has a lot to do with why
Speaker 2: he starts reading fucking Breitbart.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I've talked in other episodes. We've known for a while
Speaker 2: that Epstein had a weird obsession with seeding his own
Speaker 2: DNA into the human race, and our previous episodes we
Speaker 2: talked about how he had discussed with his friends that
Speaker 2: he wanted to have a stud ranch where women would
Speaker 2: raise his babies and the babies of other genius men.
Speaker 2: He talked about this, both want to I need to
Speaker 2: have a lot of babies for the good of mankind,
Speaker 2: and also obviously smart people should be the ones having
Speaker 2: basy eugenicist right, he's talking this is Elon Muskshit. He's friends,
Speaker 2: you know, but he's interested in the same kind of
Speaker 2: stuff and absent other informations. When I first cover this,
Speaker 2: I chalked it up as more classic rich guy narcissism.
Speaker 2: My immediate thing was like, oh, this guy wants a
Speaker 2: bunch of kids because he's a narcissist, and I didn't
Speaker 2: really see oh no, no. This guy is also very
Speaker 2: specifically a white nationalist, right, a budding white nationalist at
Speaker 2: the very least which Epstein is. By this point, the
Speaker 2: releases have made this different picture very clear, and I
Speaker 2: think it makes the most sense when you look at
Speaker 2: it through the prism a Ferguson. An article on futurism
Speaker 2: dot com describes how Jeff's interests evolved after Ferguson. In
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, Epstein emailed German cognitive scientist and then MIT
Speaker 2: professor Joshua Bach, indicating that he was interested in the
Speaker 2: idea of genetically modifying black people to make them smarter.
Speaker 2: The Telegraph found Bach had received a roughly four hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars donation from Epstein. Those are tied, that's tied
Speaker 2: to his interpretation of Ferguson. And that's not a small donation.
Speaker 4: It's just a fucking freaking little race science nazi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's just a race scientist. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, but that's like conservatives, right, That is like
Speaker 3: the extent loss is also the other way to look
Speaker 3: at it is this is cutting edge conservative thought and
Speaker 3: it has been from the last however many thousands of years.
Speaker 3: This is as good as it gets for these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you know it's one of those things.
Speaker 2: Obviously he's afraid of Black Americans, and this fear was
Speaker 2: heightened by Ferguson, but also just given a social life.
Speaker 2: He's social a lot with wealthy and influential and famous
Speaker 2: black people, right, So he's not the kind of racist
Speaker 2: who can't be friendly to some black people, right. He
Speaker 2: obviously can. But his conversations with his fellow white intellectuals,
Speaker 2: or at least he saw himself as intellectual, made it
Speaker 2: clear that he saw successful and intelligent black people as outliers.
Speaker 2: And when you really want to get into how racist
Speaker 2: Jeff Epstein is by twenty sixteen, there's no better place
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 4: Huh hey when you call him Jeff Jeffy.
Speaker 2: There's no better way to talk about how fucking racist
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein has become by twenty sixteen than to look
Speaker 2: at his emails with Nom Chomsky. Oh no, oh no.
Speaker 2: On Sunday, February seventh, twenty sixteen, Jeff emailed Nome after
Speaker 2: apparently hanging out together. So he had been hanging out
Speaker 2: with Nome and I guess Nome's partner that night because
Speaker 2: he says thank you both for tonight, and then he
Speaker 2: tells Noam Chomsky that hey, man, if you want I
Speaker 2: can have my private jet, the Lalita Express, pick you
Speaker 2: up in Boston and take you to my private island
Speaker 2: and return whenever you like. Right, and Nome calls this
Speaker 2: invitation eight years after Epstein had been exposed for child
Speaker 2: sex trafficking tempting. Now, maybe he's just blowing Jeffrey off here,
Speaker 2: but Epstein doesn't read it that way. Epstein takes Noam
Speaker 2: Chomsky's response as an invitation to keep chatting, this time
Speaker 2: about racism, so he continues. After inviting him to his
Speaker 2: sex island, he says, on a different note, you have
Speaker 2: encouraged me to look at data, no holds barred mortgages, inequalities, opportunities.
Speaker 2: I have seen some things through your eyes, and for
Speaker 2: that I am grateful. The test score gap amongst African
Speaker 2: Americans is well documented twenty years of and then he
Speaker 2: spells testing testsing many, which might be said to like,
Speaker 2: if you can't spell the word testing right, maybe your
Speaker 2: complaints about other people that are smart issue are kind
Speaker 2: of bullshit. But he continues many countries. James Watson, who's
Speaker 2: the racist guy who helped or arguably helped figure out
Speaker 2: the structure of DNA and was also like a DNA
Speaker 2: show like black people learn as smart as white people. Guy, right,
Speaker 2: James Watson big racist?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So Epstein continues, James Watson had some of his private
Speaker 2: views made public and hints his dismissal from society. He
Speaker 2: told me that after one sentence he became an un
Speaker 2: person making things and he spells the word things wrong.
Speaker 2: Better might require accepting some uncomfortable facts. You told me that.
Speaker 2: So this is Epstein broaching a conversation with Chomsky. Hey,
Speaker 2: you know you told me to look at the data. Well,
Speaker 2: let's convince me that racism's right. How do you think
Speaker 2: about that? Nom Chomsky? And no, and I get is no.
Speaker 4: I'm like you're yeah, yeah, brother, No I No.
Speaker 2: Nome pushes back, I will say that, okay, right. Nome
Speaker 2: pushes back, and he points out that like, obviously, outcomes
Speaker 2: for some a kid like me when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: are going to be different from a kid that quote
Speaker 2: is part of a group that for four hundred years,
Speaker 2: had a chance for about two or three decades to
Speaker 2: enter the mainstream society, and then with a constant legacy
Speaker 2: of miserable racism. He's being like, yeah, of course, skills
Speaker 2: will be lower because like our society hurts these people
Speaker 2: their entire lives, and that impacts test scores. Right, that's
Speaker 2: what Chomsky is saying. Right. He says that Epstein's data
Speaker 2: has no scientific interest, but he also says the greater
Speaker 2: issue is for later discussion, which I find interesting. Chomsky
Speaker 2: knows this is bullshit. He knows what his friend is
Speaker 2: saying is offensive, and he says kind of that. But
Speaker 2: then he's like, but we can talk about this later.
Speaker 2: You know you want to keep talking. I'm always down
Speaker 2: to talk about race science with you. Jeffrey Epstein, though,
Speaker 2: doesn't take the hint, and he keeps the conversation going.
Speaker 2: He admits that he's aware of the potential for abuse
Speaker 2: with genetic engineering and eugenics. However, imagine that a set
Speaker 2: of genes could be used for working memory, like the
Speaker 2: ones for tay Sacks disease could be found and adjusted
Speaker 2: not looking seems cruel. And he's bringing up the argument
Speaker 2: that anyone makes if you're trying to convince a hostile source,
Speaker 2: that you need to accept the initial tenets of eugenesis, thinking, well, look,
Speaker 2: obviously there's problems with this, Yeah, but look at this
Speaker 2: horrible disease that happens to kids when they're in the womb.
Speaker 2: If you could knock that out, wouldn't that be good? Right?
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be good?
Speaker 3: Do you hate kids?
Speaker 2: And like anyone's gonna say, like, yeah, what if we
Speaker 2: could make kids who have their lungs born on the
Speaker 2: outside of their bodies have their lungs on the inside
Speaker 2: of their bodies? Great? But then the conversation goes from
Speaker 2: there to like, what if we want to make sure
Speaker 2: that people aren't born with a certain skin color? And
Speaker 2: one of the things that's interesting to me is that, like,
Speaker 2: if you are at a eugenicist and you're trying to
Speaker 2: like corrupt someone right and get them to agree with you,
Speaker 2: you'll start the way that Jeffrey ends here, which is weird.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You don't start with, Hey, i've been looking at the
Speaker 2: numbers and it looks like black people aren't a smart
Speaker 2: as white people. That's not how you start that conversation.
Speaker 2: And Epstein does, and then Chomsky smacks him down, and
Speaker 2: so Epstein pivots and he ends whe The conversation normally
Speaker 2: starts where he's like, well, what about these kids with
Speaker 2: tas SAXS disease? Should we be fixing that, right, Chomsky
Speaker 2: calls Jeff's proposition almost inconceivable and then says, but if
Speaker 2: it could be done, I think there would be far
Speaker 2: more important uses, like changing the genes for dedicated savagery
Speaker 2: and lack of concern for the welfare or even security
Speaker 2: of the population on the part of that sector of
Speaker 2: educated elites that reaches positions of power. And I'd love
Speaker 2: to appreciate that response more if he wasn't sending it
Speaker 2: to his friend Jeffrey Epstein's who continued to communicate with
Speaker 2: for years after his arrests for sexual trafficking.
Speaker 3: I mean, but I think the thing is in the
Speaker 3: frat house version of it. This is just like ribbing
Speaker 3: because you know, right, Oh, that's Jeff's foible. He's a
Speaker 3: fucking pedophile fascist. We can all joke about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like it's the chumminess.
Speaker 2: That's like, it's the friendliness, but it's the you could, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's the chomp the fact that he's so willing to
Speaker 2: continue this relationship, right, Yeah, I mean you could, I
Speaker 2: guess if you wanted to feel good that. Chomsky pushes back,
Speaker 2: but he keeps hanging out with Epstein repeatedly in person,
Speaker 2: they hang out in person a lot that's fucked up.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's also the like like not a
Speaker 3: real pushback if you're like, it's not a real stone.
Speaker 2: No, And it's what we see here. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why this is really interesting to me not
Speaker 2: just to like shit on no Chompsky. I don't really
Speaker 2: care about that one way or the other. What this
Speaker 2: is evidence of is as an active attempt by Epstein
Speaker 2: to influence Noam Chomsky, who is himself very influential on
Speaker 2: the American left, to try and further mainstream scientific racism.
Speaker 2: That's what he's doing here. He is trying to get
Speaker 2: Chomsky to start going down the road he's going down
Speaker 2: because he knows Chomsky can influence in even a large
Speaker 2: chunk of the country and maybe make them more amenable
Speaker 2: to scientific racism. That's what he's trying to do because
Speaker 2: that's how Jeffrey thinks about everyone who's his quote unquote friend, right.
Speaker 2: He thinks about them in terms of what can I
Speaker 2: get out of them, And that's how he's thinking about
Speaker 2: Chomsky during this convert There's other stuff he gets from Chomsky, obviously,
Speaker 2: but this is one thing he's trying to get and
Speaker 2: that he doesn't seem to get out of him. It's
Speaker 2: the same playbook we saw Epstein to play with Bobby Kotick, right,
Speaker 2: this is how he operates. What these new files reveal
Speaker 2: is that Jeffrey Epstein was an active and influential part
Speaker 2: of the reactionary wave often just called the alt right
Speaker 2: that's struck from twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen and brought
Speaker 2: us all the authoritarian bullshit we're living with today. He's
Speaker 2: a part of that, and he's trying to bring Chomsky
Speaker 2: into it right. A huge part, well, Chomsky does. A
Speaker 2: huge part of the class that he's a part of
Speaker 2: follows him down this road. And part of why they
Speaker 2: do is because Epstein works on them one by one
Speaker 2: to encourage them to think differently and to ask uncomfortable questions.
Speaker 2: He's not the only one doing this, right, He's not
Speaker 2: the leading one doing this. Part of why all of
Speaker 2: these Silicon Valley guys go fash is that a core
Speaker 2: of them start by saying like, well as the brain
Speaker 2: trust in America is is the only ones who are
Speaker 2: really intelligent, I really know what's going on. Because of
Speaker 2: all the money we've made it's incumbent on us to
Speaker 2: ask uncomfortable questions and you know, to consider things that
Speaker 2: that less intelligent people might consider forbidden. You know, so
Speaker 2: let's look into it, right, And that always just means racism.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing that means, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, sometimes it's a little bit of gender science
Speaker 3: and masada and sometimes pedophilia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are, there are. And I can remember as
Speaker 2: a kid there's this big book called Disinfo that I
Speaker 2: read that was like, it was a bunch of essays
Speaker 2: about uncomfortable questions, challenging traditional logic and ethics, right, and
Speaker 2: I found parts of it very interesting, And then I
Speaker 2: got to an essay that was like, oh, this guy's
Speaker 2: just arguing about fucking kids. Oh that's what this is about.
Speaker 3: This is it? Yeah, well but it's the same thing why.
Speaker 3: It's why Anne Rand is appealing when you're like fucking fourteen, right,
Speaker 3: because you don't know anything. But once you learn something,
Speaker 3: most people at least Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's these fuckers talk all the time about uncomfortable
Speaker 2: questions and challenging orthodoxy, and not one of them will
Speaker 2: be like, hey, what if we just didn't have billionaires
Speaker 2: in money, like what we uh, what if we didn't
Speaker 2: do that? What if you couldn't like just throw a
Speaker 2: bunch of money into a thing and then own thousands
Speaker 2: of people's livelihoods because you were born rich. What if
Speaker 2: that was not a thing we could do? Like, that's
Speaker 2: not the dangerous questions. It's all like, what if black
Speaker 2: people aren't people like that's the dangerous question? Or what
Speaker 2: if fifteen year olds are fine to have sex with
Speaker 2: Those are the dangerous questions that the intellectuals are always
Speaker 2: talking about when they say dangerous questions. And Jeffrey Shift
Speaker 2: here his interest in this shit, That's what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say. Like all of he is not novel. He
Speaker 2: has more influence than most, but a lot of these
Speaker 2: guys are thinking the same way, and he's using his
Speaker 2: money to support and encourage them to continue this shift.
Speaker 2: And I want to tell a story that kind of
Speaker 2: makes this point for me. And the story starts with
Speaker 2: the guy named John Brockman. Brockman is a major figure
Speaker 2: in the New York art scenes starting in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: He is a peer of Andy Warhol, and he eventually
Speaker 2: becomes one of the most powerful literary agents in the city.
Speaker 2: His specialty is books about science and futurism, and he
Speaker 2: works with big name academics and thinkers, which means that
Speaker 2: he makes a lot of money. Brockman describes himself as
Speaker 2: a cultural impresario. Right sure man, cool cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah, already don't like you, my guyen ninety.
Speaker 2: He creates the Edge Foundation. This is an informal association
Speaker 2: of intellectuals who meet primarily online, and this is seen
Speaker 2: as a digital evolution from an older similar group that
Speaker 2: met in person called the Reality Club. The Reality Club
Speaker 2: we're getting back in American intellectual tradition by a few
Speaker 2: decades here. But the Reality Club per an article on
Speaker 2: their own website, I'm going to talk about like what
Speaker 2: this group was. Reality Club members presented their work with
Speaker 2: the understanding that they will be challenged. The hallmark of
Speaker 2: the Reality Club has been rigorous and sometimes impolite discourse.
Speaker 2: The motto of the Club was inspired by the late
Speaker 2: artist philosopher James Lee Byers to arrive at the edge
Speaker 2: of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and
Speaker 2: sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have
Speaker 2: him ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.
Speaker 2: And that's a great idea. It's a beautiful idea. We've
Speaker 2: hit the edge of the world's knowledge. Let's get the
Speaker 2: smartest people together to see if we can extend that edge.
Speaker 2: But what happens James Lee byers his whole abilities that
Speaker 2: this will let us accomplish the extraordinary, right, But what
Speaker 2: actually happens is when these guys get together, primarily they
Speaker 2: talk about like what if people couldn't vote if they
Speaker 2: were poor, what if we had more money, what if
Speaker 2: I could fuck teenage girls? Those are like the three
Speaker 2: big issues at the edge of human knowledge that these
Speaker 2: guys are really interested in it.
Speaker 3: It's like, as you said, the idea of the club
Speaker 3: seems cool, like with the additional caveat that, like anytime
Speaker 3: anything like that has ever existed in all of human history,
Speaker 3: it's always self. Self proclaiming that you fit these attributes
Speaker 3: is pretty much the main reason you should not ever
Speaker 3: be part of the discussion like this.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things Einstein would have point
Speaker 2: out to these people is that if you have locked
Speaker 2: yourself out as being the absolute smartest in society and
Speaker 2: are isolating yourself from everybody else, it's probably evidence that
Speaker 2: you're not the smartest people in society. Yeah, but Brockman
Speaker 2: really loves this idea. He considers these.
Speaker 3: People always love this shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's you know, I don't know much about him,
Speaker 2: but he other than that, but he considers these scientists
Speaker 2: and these other thinkers in the empirical space, the guys
Speaker 2: that Epstein is hanging out with, these philosophers and bitcoin
Speaker 2: nerds and whatnot. He calls them the third culture. That's
Speaker 2: his term for these people, right, because they're separate from
Speaker 2: the culture everyone else lives in, because their minds are
Speaker 2: so far ahead of everyone else.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Brockman is close with Jeffrey Epstein, and he considers him
Speaker 2: to be one of these Third Culture members who, through
Speaker 2: their unusual insight and brilliance, are making the future. Brockman
Speaker 2: is such an Epstein believer that he attends a dinner
Speaker 2: at Jeff's mansion after he was released from prison. In
Speaker 2: the New Republic of Ginny Morozov describes Brockman as the
Speaker 2: intellectual enabler of Epstein. Brockman bragged that the edge foundation,
Speaker 2: this salon of his was redefining who and what we are,
Speaker 2: and he connected Epstein to important people because he wanted
Speaker 2: his friend Jeff to have a chance to change the world. Now,
Speaker 2: one of Brockman's clients is joy Edo of MIT and
Speaker 2: in fact, Brockman may have been how Epstein and Itedo met.
Speaker 2: He may have at least helped to encourage them to
Speaker 2: become friends. We know many other prominent intellectuals like Stephen Pinker,
Speaker 2: were first connected to Epstein by Brockman. So in a way,
Speaker 2: Brockman has been with us this whole story, helping to
Speaker 2: put up and coming technologists, thinkers, and researchers in a
Speaker 2: room with a pedophile sex trafficker. When all of this dropped,
Speaker 2: author of Jenny Morozov found himself shocked. His books were
Speaker 2: represented by Brockman's agency, and he decided to look through
Speaker 2: his emails with Brockman to see, like, are there any
Speaker 2: signs that like something bad was going on here? And
Speaker 2: he finds an email from twenty thirteen that really gives
Speaker 2: you an idea of how Brockman and Epstein baited the
Speaker 2: hook when they're trying to get these intellectuals interested in them. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from Morozov's article in the New
Speaker 2: Republic here. It was very laconic. Je Fyi JB followed
Speaker 2: by my short bio and some media clippings. Strangely, it
Speaker 2: was sent to me and had no other contacts in CC.
Speaker 2: Perhaps he wanted toscend it to JE but put my
Speaker 2: email there by mistake. When I commented on the meaning
Speaker 2: of this cryptic message, he responded with the following message,
Speaker 2: reproduced here in full. I missed that one. Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 2: the billionaire scientist philanthropists, showed up at this weekends event
Speaker 2: by helicopter with his beautiful young assistant from Belarus. He'll
Speaker 2: be in Cambridge in a couple of weeks and asked
Speaker 2: me who he should meet. You are one of the
Speaker 2: people I suggested, and I told him I would send
Speaker 2: some links. He's the guy who gave Harvard thirty million
Speaker 2: dollars to set up Martin Oak. He's been incredibly generous
Speaker 2: and funding projects of many of our friends and clients.
Speaker 2: He also got into trouble and spent a year in
Speaker 2: jail in Florida. Crazy way to say he's a registered
Speaker 2: child sex offender. He't got into trouble spend a year
Speaker 2: in jail in Florida.
Speaker 3: I spent a year Jill, Florida.
Speaker 4: We've lost the plot, guys, come on, come on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like mentioning young young assistant is like, I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously that's how they would do it, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like what's wrong with you?
Speaker 4: Like I hate these people.
Speaker 3: If you wrote dialogue this heavy hand, you would absolutely
Speaker 3: be run out of out of Hollywood, absolutely and in
Speaker 3: a heartbeat, yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's all nuts. But Brockman suggests that if Epstein
Speaker 2: reaches reached out to Morozov, it's probably worth your time
Speaker 2: to respond to him, right, so's he's basically being like,
Speaker 2: and I don't even know if this missed email isn't
Speaker 2: intentional or not, if he's like trying to whatever he
Speaker 2: is sending Epstein information about this guy, and he's telling Morozov,
Speaker 2: I know he's you know, he's he's a controversial figure,
Speaker 2: but you should meet with him. He's really interesting and
Speaker 2: obviously he's got a lot of money that he can
Speaker 2: put towards your work.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And then, after saying it's worth probably worth your time,
Speaker 2: Brockman tells this story about Epstein. Last time I visited
Speaker 2: his house, the largest private residence in New York City.
Speaker 2: I walked in to find him in a sweatsuit and
Speaker 2: a British guy in a suit with suspenders getting foot
Speaker 2: massages from two young, well dressed Russian women. After grilling
Speaker 2: me for a while about cybersecurity. The brit named Andy
Speaker 2: was commenting on the Swedish author and the chargers against
Speaker 2: Julian Assange. We think they're liberal in Sweden, but it's
Speaker 2: more like northern England as opposed to southern Europe, he said.
Speaker 2: In Monaco, Albert works twelve hours a day, but at
Speaker 2: nine pm when he goes out, he does whatever he
Speaker 2: wants and nobody cares. But if I do it, I'm
Speaker 2: in big trouble. At that point I realized the recipient
Speaker 2: of Arena's foot massage was his Royal Highness, Prince Andrew,
Speaker 2: the Duke of York. Now Brockman is telling this story
Speaker 2: because he thinks it's cool. He thinks it'll convince Morozov.
Speaker 2: He's just gotta meet Epstein.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 2: I walked in on him and the largest residence in
Speaker 2: New York, and he was getting He was clearly hanging
Speaker 2: out with two prostitutes and the fucking Prince Andrew, the
Speaker 2: Duke of York. That's so I gotta get in on
Speaker 2: that myself, you know, that's what why Brockman tells this story, right, Yes, there.
Speaker 3: Is like a hindsight lens that like, obviously we know,
Speaker 3: but yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean I will see. Yeah, there's a who knows
Speaker 2: what Brockman was entirely aware of, but I will see
Speaker 2: in terms of the people who knew this was fucked
Speaker 2: up at the time. Morizov gets this email and it's
Speaker 2: like absolutely not right, I don't I don't want any
Speaker 2: part of this shit. And he says that five fuck
Speaker 2: that stuff, man, that sounds weird. And then Brockman changes
Speaker 2: his attitude and it's like, yeah, okay. So Morozov's conclusion
Speaker 2: is that Brockman was acted basically as Epstein's pr man,
Speaker 2: and he does this because he needs Epstein. Epstein is
Speaker 2: funding the whole Edge Foundation. Jeffrey's assorted donations provided six
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty eight thousand of the eight hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty seven thousand dollars in funding the organization received from
Speaker 2: two thousand and one to twenty seventeen. Epstein was, per
Speaker 2: BuzzFeed News, by far the largest donor. In fact, one
Speaker 2: could argue the Edge Foundation and all its billionaire dinners
Speaker 2: seem to have existed largely to connect Jeffrey Epstein to
Speaker 2: tech billionaires in public intellectuals right, because one of the
Speaker 2: things they start doing in the aunts is Rockman starts
Speaker 2: putting together dinners with billionaires like that. They call it
Speaker 2: the Billionaire Dinners, and Epstein's nearly always there. Right. Given
Speaker 2: the private nature of these events, we don't fully know
Speaker 2: what he used his influence to do, but he wouldn't
Speaker 2: have put more than six hundred thousand dollars into this
Speaker 2: foundation if it wasn't worth it to him. One regular
Speaker 2: tradition was that Brockman would send out a list of
Speaker 2: questions for the members of the Edge Foundation to answer
Speaker 2: each year, like what is your dangerous idea? The answers
Speaker 2: would be published on their website, which The Guardian called
Speaker 2: the World's Smartest. So again, everyone's sucking these people off
Speaker 2: in the odds. Brockman also used his influence to host
Speaker 2: annual billionaires dinners, as I mentioned, and Epstein was a
Speaker 2: common feature. This is how some major tech billionaires wind
Speaker 2: up connected to Epstein via email via Mandy Castigan's article.
Speaker 2: Quote email threads, which sometimes included Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 2: and Elon Musk, later turned into private conferences at Epstein
Speaker 2: and Brockman's properties, as well as public events and debates.
Speaker 2: Brockman Wants bragged to Epstein that the network of the
Speaker 2: forty guests at my two fourteen Billionaire's dinner was equal
Speaker 2: to the combined wealth of sixty percent of all Americans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, honestly, that seems lower than I thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't the dangerous idea that that's bad?
Speaker 4: I just like to think that they're like, all right, guys,
Speaker 4: let's let's do an icebreak or so everybody gets to
Speaker 4: know each other. What's your dangerous idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dangerous idea is that all of you should
Speaker 2: be fucking taken out by a drone strike like one
Speaker 2: in that dinner would have saved the world some problems.
Speaker 3: My god, so juvenile. It's so juvenile.
Speaker 4: And idea that's like, that's like a bad fucking like
Speaker 4: Tinder message, like.
Speaker 2: Off again, fuck off all the billionaires at these billionaire's
Speaker 2: dinners hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, emailing with Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 2: can see that he's going to be there, can see
Speaker 2: that he's in the email threads, are talking him to
Speaker 2: him sometimes on the email threads, and This is years
Speaker 2: after his arrest and his conviction. Right, for most of
Speaker 2: Jeffrey's donations to EDGE start after his arrest, and he
Speaker 2: attends his first Billionaire's dinner in twenty eleven. Right, But
Speaker 2: we know these dinners go back further, and we know
Speaker 2: that in earlier years, like two thousand and three, his
Speaker 2: close associate Sarah Kellen, was one of the few women
Speaker 2: present at this dinner. To give a brief summary of
Speaker 2: what exactly Sarah's role was in Epstein's operation, here's a
Speaker 2: paragraph from an article about her divorce from NASCAR star
Speaker 2: Brian Vickers. Court documents accused her of helping to arrange
Speaker 2: illegal massage sessions with underage girls. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: a federal judge said she shared criminal responsibility while sentencing
Speaker 2: Gilan Maxwell. However, authorities never filed criminal charges against Kellen. Kellen,
Speaker 2: who worked with Jeffrey connecting people to illegal massage sessions,
Speaker 2: is at the Billionaire's dinner in two thousand and three
Speaker 2: before Jeffrey, as far as we know, is even at
Speaker 2: these huh huh, interesting, I mean interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 3: Imagine some this is somewhat like the rhetorical path you've
Speaker 3: been leading us down. But it is like shocking how
Speaker 3: much pedophilia is like an integral part of this whole
Speaker 3: power structure everything these guys intellectualism, like it's always that,
Speaker 3: it's somehow always that.
Speaker 2: Once you get this kind of rich, the most painful
Speaker 2: and annoying thing in the world is anyone telling you
Speaker 2: you can't do something. And I think that that has
Speaker 2: something to do with it. Some of these guys, I'm
Speaker 2: sure would always have you know, gone after underaged, you know,
Speaker 2: kids and stuff. But I do think some of it
Speaker 2: might just be like the sense of impunity they have
Speaker 2: that like nothing should be illegal for me, nothing should
Speaker 2: be beyond me. Right, I don't know, and I don't
Speaker 2: know who else. Maybe no one made Maybe Sarah didn't
Speaker 2: connect anyone with legal massages at the Billionaire's Dinner. Maybe
Speaker 2: she was just a great conversationalist who happened to as
Speaker 2: a judge, says be deep complicit and Jeffrey Epstein's illegal
Speaker 2: sex trafficking who knows? So that twenty eleven dinner Epstein
Speaker 2: attended feature Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brinn, and Elon Musk, all
Speaker 2: of whom deny doing anything but briefly meeting Epstein at
Speaker 2: this event. This was not the only dinner he had
Speaker 2: with some of these folks, though. In August of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: billionaire Tom Pritzker, cousin of JB. Pritzker, asked Epstein if
Speaker 2: he was available to hang out. Jeff replied, not sure yet.
Speaker 2: I had dinner with Zuckerberg, Musk, Teal Hoffmann wild. And
Speaker 2: then he sends a photo of this event, and it
Speaker 2: looks Sylvie as shady as you'd guess. They're at like
Speaker 2: a dark table. You can see Elon in one corner,
Speaker 2: whoever took the photo is sitting right next to Mark
Speaker 2: fucking Zuckerberg. Like it is just the shadiest looking dinner,
Speaker 2: but it's also like.
Speaker 3: A moron's idea of what power looks like. It's like
Speaker 3: rucking the Doctor Evil set up.
Speaker 2: It's the Doctor Evils? Does it does look like the
Speaker 2: Doctor Evils set up? And Mark Zuckerberg looks like he's
Speaker 2: rethinking being there, like maybe it's just sitting across from
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is annoying as shit. I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh man, the photo that must have been Epstein
Speaker 5: taking it from right.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know, but he's right. If so, then
Speaker 2: he was right next to Mark Zuckerberg. I can't tell it.
Speaker 2: That may be Priscilla Shan right next to him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can't tell, but I can't. I can't tell. I
Speaker 2: don't know everyone in the photo, but you can. I mean,
Speaker 2: he says Bezos is there, and that's definitely Musk and
Speaker 2: and Zuckerberg, right, speaking of people who went to dinners
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein, none of them support
Speaker 2: this podcast. Maybe it's impossible to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is your least accurate ad throw I've heard.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, and we're back. So the Edge Foundation is
Speaker 2: interesting to me because it's of what it is a
Speaker 2: precursor for. This is like the more exclusive version for
Speaker 2: actual powerful people. But the basic idea that like we're
Speaker 2: going to ask hard questions and come up with the
Speaker 2: future is going to come Like that's going to basically
Speaker 2: be the operating principle for another group of annoying rich
Speaker 2: guys who are going to come a few years later. Right.
Speaker 2: In a write up for the trans News Network, Maddie
Speaker 2: cast again more accurately describes the Edge Foundation as quote
Speaker 2: a loose predecessor for the far right intellectual Dark Web.
Speaker 2: And I think she's right on the money there, right,
Speaker 2: or at least I think it's accurate to say the
Speaker 2: intellectual dark web is taking some of these ideas, but
Speaker 2: being like, look, number one billionaires don't have time to
Speaker 2: write this bullshit. They're not thinking up stuff. They're they're
Speaker 2: living out on their yachts, they're surfing. We got to
Speaker 2: find some guys who aren't quite as rich who will
Speaker 2: start thinking dangerous ideas and writing about maybe we should
Speaker 2: be racist, maybe it is okay to have sex with children, right,
Speaker 2: Like we need we need our we need our intellectual
Speaker 2: dark web to get that information out to the PLBs. Right,
Speaker 2: So I think there's some value in sort of looking
Speaker 2: at it that way, right, To continue from her articles.
Speaker 3: A gang of people whose main like main skill is
Speaker 3: somehow convincing at least some number of people that the
Speaker 3: basic pervasive ideas of like your average KKK member is
Speaker 3: somehow interesting and like Foreboden and like worth exploring.
Speaker 2: It's playing on one of the worst things about the
Speaker 2: American psyche, which is our like deeply ingrained sense of
Speaker 2: oppositional defiant disorder. Because if you just say, hey, you
Speaker 2: know the things that everyone else says they're good, what
Speaker 2: if they're bad? And then a bunch of people will
Speaker 2: give you money and let you write for The Atlantic.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, the Atlantic, which is run by a friend of
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein's anyway, whatever, so is the New York Times whatever?
Speaker 2: Yeah so, to continue from Mandy Castigan's article for the
Speaker 2: Trans News Network. During the research for this article, trans
Speaker 2: News Network uncovered at least eight prominent anti transfigures affiliated
Speaker 2: with Edge or with the IDW who received support from
Speaker 2: Epstein or even visited his island, often through connections with
Speaker 2: Brockman or physicist Lawrence Krauss. Now, it's noteworthy that so
Speaker 2: many super smart Edge people as well as the IDW folks,
Speaker 2: picked hating trans people as their dangerous intellectual idea. One
Speaker 2: of the most noteworthy members of this crew is Epstein's
Speaker 2: good friend Lawrence Kraus, As was stated in that quote above,
Speaker 2: Kraus is a famous physicist and right wing crank who
Speaker 2: taught at Arizona State University, where only the best scientists work.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and six, he hosted a conference on
Speaker 2: Epstein's island with Stephen Hawking. So he's responsible for all
Speaker 2: the pictures of hawking that we have to think about now,
Speaker 2: which don't necessarily implicate hawking and hawking. May have just
Speaker 2: heard this is a science conference, because all of these
Speaker 2: scientists are showing up at this island from this guy
Speaker 2: who donates to science. It's two thousand and six. Epstein
Speaker 2: hadn't been arrested yet. That said, for a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys, there's a follow up conference in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: after which point they knew who Epstein was. Kraus is
Speaker 2: so close with Jeffrey that he becomes one of the
Speaker 2: first guys to face public consequences for his relationship with Epstein.
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, Rebecca Watson attacked him for continuing to
Speaker 2: associate with Epstein and justifying it by claiming science. Kraus
Speaker 2: defended his friend and said, I don't feel lowered by
Speaker 2: my association with Jeffrey. I feel raised by my friendship
Speaker 2: with Jeffrey. And also he never raped any kids. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a good call, Kraus.
Speaker 3: Just pr just a pr G. You know, I guess
Speaker 3: what else are you gonna say?
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, yeah. And for that piece in the
Speaker 2: trans News Network, Epstein clearly noticed Kraus's vigorous de and
Speaker 2: rewarded him for his loyalty. He pledged one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars to Kraus's project at ASU between twenty fourteen twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: and Epstein's billionaire benefactor and alleged child rapist, Leon Black,
Speaker 2: subsequently pledged a whopping two million in twenty fifteen. Kraus
Speaker 2: claimed he raised a total of four million dollars for
Speaker 2: the project in twenty eighteen, meaning that a large portion
Speaker 2: of his funding came from billionaires accused of child rape.
Speaker 2: And my only correction that would be that, like again,
Speaker 2: Epstein was really a billionaire now, But this does goes
Speaker 2: to show when I say that, like you can't just
Speaker 2: look at what Epstein gives. You have to look at
Speaker 2: like what Leon Black is giving because Epstein told him to.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, it creates a yeah, like a like a
Speaker 3: culture and some cover and just like a crowd to
Speaker 3: hide yourself in.
Speaker 2: Sure now. Kraus more recently had to step down from
Speaker 2: Arizona State during the Me Too movement after he was
Speaker 2: accused six separate times of sexual misbeaving work. I'm yeah,
Speaker 2: he Lawrence Krauss. Everybody wow, he became and after he
Speaker 2: gets in trouble. He becomes one of the first prompt
Speaker 2: men who were brought low by me too to reach
Speaker 2: out to Jeffrey Epstein for advice. We'll talk a little
Speaker 2: bit more about that later, but jeff goes so far.
Speaker 2: He's not just given Kraus advice. He's helping him like
Speaker 2: craft his response. Like the open letter that he writes
Speaker 2: about the allegations, which Kraus denied, but now we know
Speaker 2: because we have this information, Epstein was giving him like
Speaker 2: notes on it. Nattie cast again continues. While he has
Speaker 2: long denied many of the allegations from his time at ASU,
Speaker 2: Krause admitted to it, even tried to justify gratuitous sexual
Speaker 2: comments about trans women he made around coworkers. In one
Speaker 2: later removed section of his retirement letter. He also helpfully
Speaker 2: included a grade school sketch of a light bulb that
Speaker 2: he drew in front of colleagues. Since Kraus's retirement from
Speaker 2: academia and hopefully sketch art, Epstein continued to advise and
Speaker 2: fund him as he pivoted to building an anti trans
Speaker 2: podcast on his YouTube channel and accompanying substack, where he's
Speaker 2: interviewed a large number of turfs and other anti transfigures,
Speaker 2: including other Epstein associates like Richard Dawkins and for a
Speaker 2: note that light bulb sketch Jeff Drew. I know this
Speaker 2: because of a fucking Dilbert book I read as a kid.
Speaker 2: If you like, draw a light bulb in a certain
Speaker 2: way and turn it upside down, it looks like a
Speaker 2: woman who's bending over with her underpants on. That's what
Speaker 2: Kraus is doing. One of our greatest minds. Truly a
Speaker 2: master of physics, just a genius. All these men just
Speaker 2: the that's they.
Speaker 3: They are good at one thing probably or okay, at
Speaker 3: one thing. Yeah, is the problem?
Speaker 2: Most of them were or not? Is the problem?
Speaker 4: Just hate them all.
Speaker 2: I don't know how good Kraus was, but yeah, so
Speaker 2: we've got Epstein funding a white nationalist YouTuber in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: and then in twenty nineteen, one of his last actions
Speaker 2: is helping to fund Kraus's anti trans propaganda. That's interesting, right,
Speaker 2: and it gets worse. Epstein is also closely tied to
Speaker 2: an evolutionary biologist named Robert Trivers. Now I had not
Speaker 2: heard of this guy, but doctor F. Nichols wrote a
Speaker 2: great piece on this for her website Queer Science Lab.
Speaker 2: She started by just searching the Epstein files for the
Speaker 2: word transsexual. Right now today, that is widely although I
Speaker 2: have known some trans people who still use that term
Speaker 2: for themselves, but it is why. It is an outdated
Speaker 2: and offensive term as a general rule, that's like, you're
Speaker 2: not you shouldn't be using that referring to if someone
Speaker 2: wants to take that whatever, I'm not not for me
Speaker 2: to speak about, right. But the reason why doctor Nichols
Speaker 2: uses that term is because most of the men in
Speaker 2: the Epstein files are older men. They're around Jeffrey's age,
Speaker 2: and that term was even if you weren't trying to
Speaker 2: be offensive, the term you would have used twenty or
Speaker 2: thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's why she's searching for it, because these guys use
Speaker 2: outdated terms for things. You know that. I just needed
Speaker 2: to explain that. So she looks into Jeffrey and his
Speaker 2: friends talking about trans issues, and she points out something
Speaker 2: that gets left out a lot, including in my earlier
Speaker 2: coverage of Epstein, which is that and I should have
Speaker 2: found this information, but I didn't because it was out
Speaker 2: at this point in time. So I want to correct
Speaker 2: that now. The first woman to publicly accuse Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 2: of abuse was a transgender Latina woman named Ava Cordero.
Speaker 2: She sued Epstein in October of two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: claiming that he forced her into bizarre and unnatural sex
Speaker 2: when she was sixteen years old. Per an article in
Speaker 2: LGBTQ Nation Quote. In her lawsuit, Cordero alleged that in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine, Epstein lured her to his mansion undressed
Speaker 2: and requested a massage. Cordero said she felt frightened but agreed,
Speaker 2: at which point Epstein suddenly began violently touching her genitals,
Speaker 2: pushing her head downward, and demanding oral sex. She alleged
Speaker 2: Epstein had lured her to his mansion in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine when she was sixteen. Right, so again, I just
Speaker 2: really need to emphasize that.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: She agrees initially when he asks her to undress because
Speaker 2: she's scared, and once he starts, he begins violently grabbing
Speaker 2: her genitals and then grabs her head and forces her
Speaker 2: to perform oral sex. It's really bad, like this is
Speaker 2: a really child as bad as any of the tales
Speaker 2: of the TSL here, but no one takes this seriously
Speaker 2: because Cordero is a trans woman and her life and
Speaker 2: night well transchild at the time of the abuse. But
Speaker 2: she's nineteen when she anyway whatever, or older than that
Speaker 2: when she makes it. Anyway, This is a trans woman
Speaker 2: and that makes assholes consider her an unsympathetic victim. Another
Speaker 2: thing that is used against her is that she's HIV positive. Right,
Speaker 2: she had admitted that she'd been admitted to a psychiatric
Speaker 2: hospital several times. She's has mental health issues in the past,
Speaker 2: and she's admitted to illegal drug use in the past,
Speaker 2: and all of this makes her a bad victim in
Speaker 2: the eyes of shitty people. I want to emphasize she
Speaker 2: is being judged here. Part of her credibility. Why she's
Speaker 2: judged is not credible is that she's admitted to having
Speaker 2: used drugs in the past. Epstein is perfectly happy to
Speaker 2: use drugs. In fact, we have evidence of this. There's
Speaker 2: a twenty thirteen email exchange between him and his fixer,
Speaker 2: Leslie Groff where Groff is arranging for a friend of so.
Speaker 2: Epstein has an apartment complex that he owns, right, and
Speaker 2: he lets people stay there. Sometimes they're male friends of his.
Speaker 2: They can crash there. Sometimes he lets people live there,
Speaker 2: usually very young women live there for periods of time.
Speaker 2: Right in twenty thirteen, one of these apartments, a woman
Speaker 2: lives there and she asks Leslie Groff, Hey, my friend,
Speaker 2: actor Will Forte is coming into town. Can he crash
Speaker 2: with me for a few nights in this apartment Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein owns Now, I don't know the relationship between Jeffrey
Speaker 2: and this woman. I don't know the age at which
Speaker 2: she starts talking to Jeffrey. I think she's an adult
Speaker 2: at this point from everything that I know. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot that I don't understand here. But Epstein has
Speaker 2: this apartment that he sends women to, and that he
Speaker 2: sends men to, and that there's sub evidence he sends
Speaker 2: men to to have sex with young women, maybe women
Speaker 2: that he's giving a free apartment to. It's a little
Speaker 2: bit unclear. That's not what this is, right, Will Forte
Speaker 2: is not a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. When Epstein is
Speaker 2: asked if he can stay at the apartment, Epstein does
Speaker 2: not appear to know the guy right now. Would will
Speaker 2: have been cool if he knew that he was staying
Speaker 2: in an apartment Jeffrey Epstein owned. I don't know if he
Speaker 2: would have been I don't know if he knew. Right
Speaker 2: does this woman tell her friend Will Forte. By the way,
Speaker 2: this apartment's owned by Jeffrey Epstein. You know this is
Speaker 2: one of those because I'm bringing Will into it as
Speaker 2: a result of something else. I want to make it
Speaker 2: clear there's not evidence he did anything wrong, although maybe
Speaker 2: it should be looked into a little bit right now
Speaker 2: just to make sure, but there's not there's not evidence.
Speaker 2: I want to make that really clear. Anyway. The reason
Speaker 2: why this is relevant is because this woman asks, hey,
Speaker 2: can Will Forte crash with me? And Leslie asks jeff hey,
Speaker 2: is this okay? And Epstein responds yes, but make sure
Speaker 2: there are no drugs or drink in the apartment, which
Speaker 2: means that there's drugs there a lot of the time, right, right, right.
Speaker 2: This isn't the only evidence that Jeffrey Epstein used drugs
Speaker 2: or applied girls with drugs, right. It just makes it
Speaker 2: very clear.
Speaker 3: I guess that's a point in in Will Forte's favor,
Speaker 3: as he's hiding.
Speaker 2: That he has right that he had that Epstein wanted
Speaker 2: to hide stuff from him, right, So again, there's not
Speaker 2: evidence Will did anything wrong. But this is relevant because
Speaker 2: when this case comes out and when she makes claims
Speaker 2: against him, there are like websites put up right, like
Speaker 2: social media sites claiming to be her social media sites
Speaker 2: where she talks about illegal drug use, right the smear campaign.
Speaker 2: Now she denies these are her social media accounts. And
Speaker 2: we know Epstein hired people to fix his Wikipedia for him.
Speaker 2: We know that he hired people to alter website, and
Speaker 2: we know that he hired people to alter like Google
Speaker 2: results so that it wouldn't be obvious that he was
Speaker 2: a sex criminal. He had somebody removing the fact that
Speaker 2: he was a convicted sex offender from his Wikipedia, he
Speaker 2: had people altering Google results. Wouldn't have been weird for
Speaker 2: him to have someone make a fake social media page
Speaker 2: for this woman who has charged him, who is alleged
Speaker 2: that he abused her, right, And I just really wanted
Speaker 2: to emphasize how vile this is really Comprehensively, her case
Speaker 2: is dismissed because it fell outside of the statute of limitations,
Speaker 2: she waited more than five years, and the fact that
Speaker 2: this all happens and that it like it's not not
Speaker 2: only is this dismissed, which maybe they didn't have a
Speaker 2: choice legally. I'm not enough of a law expert to
Speaker 2: say if this is a good ruling or not. You know,
Speaker 2: but statutes of limitation exist, U I mean good in
Speaker 2: the is it illegally consistent ruling that they would have
Speaker 2: applied to anybody. But what you do know here is
Speaker 2: that the media treats this like a joke. These are
Speaker 2: serious allegations that Jeffrey Epstein raped a child that come
Speaker 2: out the year before he gets charged with molesting a
Speaker 2: child and convicted, and it is not It is treated
Speaker 2: like a joke forever up to the present day and
Speaker 2: per an article in LGBTQ Nation, The New York Post's
Speaker 2: October twenty third, two thousand and seven coverage included the
Speaker 2: headline gender bend shocker, kinky sex suit gal is a
Speaker 2: man Like, Yeah, this is a rape allegation by a
Speaker 2: child or somebody was a child at the time. Right,
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's file. It's just like so comprehensively evil. Anyway.
Speaker 2: This is Epstein's first recorded interaction with a trans person,
Speaker 2: but from this point forward, so there's obviously a period
Speaker 2: at which he fetishizes trans people right, and that's deeply
Speaker 2: tied in with his anti transactivism because that becomes an
Speaker 2: increasing thing to him in the odds and one person
Speaker 2: he expresses a lot of this too, is evolutionary biologist
Speaker 2: Robert Trivers. Now. Trivers was famous for back in the
Speaker 2: seventies creating what's called the theory of investment parenting. And
Speaker 2: this theory suggests that parents invest in their kids to
Speaker 2: ensure their own multi generational success. Thus, it's natural for
Speaker 2: women to invest more in parenting because they invest in
Speaker 2: or to create the child, and it's natural for men
Speaker 2: to invest less in parenting because it's easy to come right.
Speaker 2: That's what Nichols is saying, and that this is fine
Speaker 2: and right and good. This theory has been discredited, but
Speaker 2: as doctor Nichols noted in her article, it is still
Speaker 2: widely cited. Travers started corresponding with Epstein in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, again after Epstein's guilty plea per Nichols quote.
Speaker 2: Epstein invited Trivers to his house in Florida to discuss
Speaker 2: his work and paid Trivers's travel into comonations. Trivers, like
Speaker 2: all researchers, needed money. Research is expensive salaries, materials, publishing fees,
Speaker 2: and more. Over the years, Trivers frequented to Epstein's Florida home.
Speaker 2: Triver's is unsure how we're when Epstein began funding his work,
Speaker 2: but by twenty fifteen, Epstein bragged to Nom Chomsky that
Speaker 2: he was Trivers's major funder. Concurrently, Triver's publicly justified Epstein's
Speaker 2: pedophilia in no uncertain terms, and she chooses not to
Speaker 2: reproduce that justification here. I think I will reproduce them
Speaker 2: because it's important for knowing what a piece of shit
Speaker 2: Trivers is. And in twenty fifteen Reuter's article, after a
Speaker 2: lot more stuff about Epstein started coming out, several scientists
Speaker 2: who had received donations from the Epstein Foundation were asked
Speaker 2: why they kept taking his money and associating with him
Speaker 2: after his conviction. Kraus said, I'd be a coward if
Speaker 2: I abandoned Jeffrey over allegations I know nothing about. And
Speaker 2: that's gross. But what Trivers says in this article is
Speaker 2: so much worse. I can't believe he said this to Reuter's.
Speaker 2: Did he get an easy deal? Did he buy himself
Speaker 2: a light sentence? Well? Yes, probably compared to what you
Speaker 2: or I would get but he did get locked up,
Speaker 2: Trivor said. Triver says he also said he believes girls
Speaker 2: mature earlier than in the past. By the time they're
Speaker 2: fourteen or fifteen, they're like grown women were sixty years ago.
Speaker 2: So I don't see these acts. Is so heinous?
Speaker 4: Yeah, is this guy just like walking around still?
Speaker 3: Probably?
Speaker 2: I hope he's dead, but I think he probably is.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also just like like that like branch of
Speaker 3: like bigot science is like you just like find the
Speaker 3: trappings of evolutionary like psychology to like justify what you
Speaker 3: already want to. You know, you can sort of backfill
Speaker 3: anything if you want, ye, and you will get money.
Speaker 3: It's rewarded to be a bigot. It's cool, like your
Speaker 3: fucking racist pedophile whatever.
Speaker 2: So that next year, in twenty sixteen, Trivers thanked Epstein
Speaker 2: for sending him extra money and making him an advisor
Speaker 2: on The Guy. Oh Yeah good. He talked about his
Speaker 2: medical research and added that he was moving forward on
Speaker 2: theoretical work Epstein had asked him to pursue. We don't
Speaker 2: know what that was specifically, but Epstein's response to this was,
Speaker 2: I want to see you your piece on transgender in
Speaker 2: the bio world. Right, So that suggests he wanted Travers
Speaker 2: to write a piece about transgender people and actual and
Speaker 2: like biology, Like this is like a bioessentialist thing, right,
Speaker 2: That's what he wants doctor Travers to write, and that's
Speaker 2: kind of his his priority, right, is getting this guy
Speaker 2: to write about trans people rather than any of the
Speaker 2: other research that he's doing. Doctor Nichols continues. Two months later,
Speaker 2: Trivors contacted Epstein again and communicated that he is getting
Speaker 2: to the end of transsexuality. Trivers goes on to pontificate
Speaker 2: about the benefits of fucking trans women, using the humanizing
Speaker 2: language to refer to transfilms like organism and the new morphs.
Speaker 2: To that end, Trivers asks Epstein for more money to
Speaker 2: finish his research on the proposed topics. So, but first off, Trivers,
Speaker 2: if you read his actual emails, he is a fetishist.
Speaker 2: He fetishizes trans people, and he also does not consider
Speaker 2: them number one to be the gender that they are. Right,
Speaker 2: he's a biological essentialist. But he also and I think
Speaker 2: this is the same with Epstein. They're happy to fetishize
Speaker 2: these people when these people have an identity and are
Speaker 2: trying to get treated as human beings. That makes him
Speaker 2: incredibly angry because they only exist for his sexual gratification.
Speaker 2: I think that's a big thing for both Epstein and
Speaker 2: Trivers here, and why they're both on the anti trans
Speaker 2: stuff right is they're personally offended at the struggle for
Speaker 2: like dignity and civil rights by trans people as a
Speaker 2: community because to them, they're not a community, they're a fetish.
Speaker 2: That's I think what's going on here. That's my interpretation
Speaker 2: based on my reading. In October of that year, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: Trivers held a talk in London titled and Evening on
Speaker 2: Evolutionary Biology, an Overview covering feminism, transgender sexuality, and on
Speaker 2: our Killings. He invited Epstein to the talk, and in
Speaker 2: an email where he laid out the details of the event,
Speaker 2: wrote wrote the title, so as far back as twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: Epstein is trying and giving his money to support the
Speaker 2: creation of an internet wave of coverage critical to transidentity.
Speaker 2: Because Epstein's response is that basically, I think this will
Speaker 2: do a good job of getting in the news, like
Speaker 2: great work on the conference. Hopefully people write about it,
Speaker 2: you know, like he's really trying to get intellectuals to
Speaker 2: put out critical stuff about trans people that he can
Speaker 2: then get to go viral, and he talks about this
Speaker 2: directly in his emails with Trivers. In twenty eighteen, Epstein
Speaker 2: and Trivers again communicate about trans theories. Trivers uses more
Speaker 2: really bad language. He calls trans people novel phenotypes, and
Speaker 2: then he describes an experiment that he wants to do
Speaker 2: to kind of test some of his theories, which and
Speaker 2: this is how doctor Nichols describes it. He reiterates his
Speaker 2: attraction to trans women and explicitly erasist trans men, all
Speaker 2: while using his porn algorithms as evidence. Trivers ends the
Speaker 2: email by claiming that trans three year old's are receiving
Speaker 2: hormone treatments, a false anti trans scare monger. So again,
Speaker 2: this mix of fetishization and scare mongering is really interesting.
Speaker 2: I don't want to include too much of the texts
Speaker 2: of these emails. They're gross enough that I don't really
Speaker 2: want to read them in detail. But his Nichols notes,
Speaker 2: Epstein funds his anti trans work over his other research,
Speaker 2: which is often also racist. For example, Trivors wanted to
Speaker 2: find an evolutionary reason for why basically black people do
Speaker 2: on our killings and Middle Eastern like Arab people do
Speaker 2: want our killings, when the reality is that like on,
Speaker 2: our killings are everywhere. If a man gets angry that
Speaker 2: his wife slept with someone else or doesn't respect him
Speaker 2: enough and murders her, which happens all of the time
Speaker 2: in the US, that right, there's an honor killer, my friend. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's angry because a woman made him in there any
Speaker 2: murderer anyway. What's interesting, though, is that above all this stuff,
Speaker 2: above even the racial stuff, Epstein wants Trigvor's writing anti
Speaker 2: trans propaganda. Here's a March twenty nineteen email where Epstein
Speaker 2: lays out directly that he considers the anti trans stuff
Speaker 2: Trivers's main priority. I can call you today if you
Speaker 2: like My recollection is that we sat together. I thought
Speaker 2: that you might want to focus on transgender biology. People
Speaker 2: would be interested, and I would fund. I am a
Speaker 2: true believer in your talents.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, I mean you know to the extent that
Speaker 3: Epstein had a talent. It was like this, like even
Speaker 3: if it's not like people will be interested, it's that like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the fucking like powerbrokers and information people down to like
Speaker 3: the New York Times and like you know, quote unquote
Speaker 3: liberals or whatever will also buy the shit hook line
Speaker 3: and sinker right well, or at least by the debate,
Speaker 3: perpetuate the debate.
Speaker 2: That's right, And it's the debate he wants to push
Speaker 2: out there first, right, because it starts with the debate.
Speaker 2: It starts with Okay, let's have him have this talk
Speaker 2: and then see if we can get the guardian whoever
Speaker 2: to report on the fact that this biologist is talking
Speaker 2: about you know, this is what he said about trans people.
Speaker 2: People are starting to question, you know, some of the
Speaker 2: things that the community is putting out right. That's he's
Speaker 2: very specific about, Like, I want this to go viral,
Speaker 2: I want this to get news coverage, right, he expresses.
Speaker 2: And when he says in that last email that people
Speaker 2: will be interested about your anti trans research, he's expressing
Speaker 2: confidence that he can brute force the public to care
Speaker 2: about Trivers's research. Right. That's what he's talking about, is
Speaker 2: forcing anti trans talking points into the public sphere. I
Speaker 2: could go on about the other people that may have
Speaker 2: had played a role in this. Epstein is very close
Speaker 2: to the Sulzberger family who own The New York Times,
Speaker 2: who publish a lot of anti trans bullshit. Epstein knew
Speaker 2: them as far back as the seventies. In one email chain,
Speaker 2: he jokes with Michael Wolfe about the fact that former
Speaker 2: publisher Arthur Sulzberger had a sex scandal that could have
Speaker 2: ruined him before he retired. Sulzberger's son now runs The
Speaker 2: New York Times. And you know, obviously I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that Epstein convinced the New York Times to run a
Speaker 2: bunch of anti trans propaganda, but it's interesting that Epstein
Speaker 2: is really pushing that and his friends with the people
Speaker 2: behind the Times and The Atlantic.
Speaker 3: But that is also the thing. It's like he doesn't
Speaker 3: have to that is sort of like the the both
Speaker 3: the useful idiocy of places like the New York Times
Speaker 3: of the Atlantic and like just that I guess class
Speaker 3: of people, which is like he doesn't have to dictate
Speaker 3: how you should do this. He knows that they are
Speaker 3: primed to support these ideas or again, support the debate.
Speaker 2: In this class of people, which includes basically everyone who's
Speaker 2: ever written a pop science book that's been successful, and
Speaker 2: includes a number of actual scientists, most of the billionaires,
Speaker 2: and a whole lot of like hereditary newspaper people, right
Speaker 2: people who get jobs at the Times of the Atlantic
Speaker 2: or The New Yorker because of who their dad or
Speaker 2: mom was. Right, a lot of these all these people
Speaker 2: are desperate money from rich assholes like Jeffrey Epstein and
Speaker 2: are willing, like especially the writers and the academics, to
Speaker 2: kind of say anything if there's money in it. They
Speaker 2: they all of these fucking guys like the the fucking
Speaker 2: Berry Weis's crew or whatever talk about how they're like
Speaker 2: truth tellers, and this is the same as like the
Speaker 2: honestly the New York Times editorial board talk about how
Speaker 2: they care about the truth and good and get information
Speaker 2: to people. They give a shit about money and having
Speaker 2: rich friends and access right and they're so desperate for
Speaker 2: it that the instant someone like Jeffrey Epstein starts saying,
Speaker 2: you know what I found about trans people, they'll start
Speaker 2: green lighting articles because that's what the public wants to hear.
Speaker 3: It's so it's shocking that the truth tellers just all
Speaker 3: in their like vast search for truth just happen to
Speaker 3: coalesce around the opinions of the right wing power structure.
Speaker 2: That it's interesting also that like the most dangerous thing
Speaker 2: to suggest isn't maybe all these assholes with all of
Speaker 2: the money shouldn't have it. It's maybe these people with
Speaker 2: no money at all are bad and dangerous.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe the poorest and most depressed group of people that
Speaker 2: I can think of pretty much here are yeah, secretly.
Speaker 3: In charge intellectual kings and Queen is good stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Ultimately the result of Epstein's investment in Trivers didn't
Speaker 2: reach fruition until two months before his death, and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty Trivers published his Universal Theory of gender identity, which
Speaker 2: argued that the ratio of one's digit lengths like fingers,
Speaker 2: revealed how much testosterone they received as a fetus, and
Speaker 2: thus predicted gender identity and then thus proved gender absolutism basically,
Speaker 2: and he basically said that, like, by the way someone's
Speaker 2: fingers look, I can tell you if they're transgender.
Speaker 3: This is wrong.
Speaker 2: His work has been disproven, but it cited regularly, including
Speaker 2: in a twenty twenty two paper from an anti trans
Speaker 2: group called Sex Matters for doctor Nichols. The group cites
Speaker 2: digit ratios and denying the autonomy of trans adolescents. And
Speaker 2: this next bit that she writes is very important to
Speaker 2: recap Epstein funds Triver's research and suggests specific topics of study.
Speaker 2: Triver's becomes obsessed with trans women as sexual objects and
Speaker 2: see the universal biological explanation of gender identity. He asks
Speaker 2: for more money and publishes his findings. Ultimately, Triver's theory
Speaker 2: is easily falsifiable. Despite this, hate groups pick up on
Speaker 2: the pseudoscience and use it as a justification for their
Speaker 2: regressive policies. That is, in a nutshell, the Jeffrey Epstein story.
Speaker 3: It is telling that like the best, most funded, absolutely
Speaker 3: cutting edge of right wing thought is basically the same
Speaker 3: as on the playground when they said if your hand
Speaker 3: is bigger than your face, your ex you getta yeah
Speaker 3: whatever follows like that is literally the best these people
Speaker 3: can do. And there it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I uh, let's you know, Andrew, here's some ads.
Speaker 5: I don't have a better pivot right now, there's no
Speaker 5: pivot and we're back.
Speaker 2: There's a lot that I feel bad about not including
Speaker 2: in these episodes that I want to. We're not talking
Speaker 2: about Howard Littnik, right, like the fucking cot Trump's Commerce secretary,
Speaker 2: who is also the custodian of like the tether reserves
Speaker 2: and thus very tied to fucking and tied to Jeffrey Epstein. Right,
Speaker 2: we're not talking about a lot of stuff that is
Speaker 2: really important because there's just too much to talk about
Speaker 2: that we already have on these episodes. But I would
Speaker 2: feel bad if I didn't end by coming back to
Speaker 2: the bromance between Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon right now.
Speaker 2: As I said earlier, both are in each other's orbit
Speaker 2: for years before they got connected officially in twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: by Michael wool Through. At least that was, you know,
Speaker 2: the best estimate that I found previously, but there is
Speaker 2: evidence that it goes back earlier. And on Sunday, December
Speaker 2: eighteenth of twenty sixteen, Epstein emails Brock Pierce asking if
Speaker 2: he'd had a chance to meet with Bannon. Right, Epstein's asking, Hey,
Speaker 2: did you meet with Bannon yet? And Brock says yes,
Speaker 2: and Epstein says, Bannon seems like the pretty smart puppet master.
Speaker 2: Brock vouches for Bannon and says like, yeah, I've relied
Speaker 2: on him for years. And it's after this point that
Speaker 2: Steve and Jeffrey talking awful lot, So it may have
Speaker 2: been that, you know, in twenty seventeen, they start talking
Speaker 2: after you know, this conversation December of twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 2: also the fact that Epstein's asking Brock if he'd had
Speaker 2: a chance to meet with Bannon suggests that he's aware
Speaker 2: of Bannon and is interested in what he's doing, and saying,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe because they knew each other, or maybe
Speaker 2: because they were kind of socially distant, but still someone
Speaker 2: I don't exactly know, right, but it's telling that he's like,
Speaker 2: Bannon seems like a pretty good puppet master. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: here's Politico's summary of their relationship. The two texted frequently
Speaker 2: about everything from the TV show Chernoble and a guessing
Speaker 2: game over who pinned the twenty eighteen anonymous New York
Speaker 2: Times op ed to their efforts to influence international geopolitics,
Speaker 2: including shaping Europe's governing coalitions, ramping up pressure on China,
Speaker 2: and forging business ties in the Middle East. At one point,
Speaker 2: took credit for convincing Trump in twenty eighteen to impose
Speaker 2: massive tariffs on China, gabbed with Epstein about his we
Speaker 2: Build the Wall endeavor that would later end in a
Speaker 2: federal indictment and presidential pardon, and gossiped about the latest
Speaker 2: developments in Special Councer Robert Mueller's investigation, in which Bannon
Speaker 2: was a subject. They're talking about everything, especially their crimes.
Speaker 4: Don't forget that HBO limited run show.
Speaker 3: I mean it is like largely an exercise and guilt
Speaker 3: by association, but it is like the most damning.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not damn it.
Speaker 3: It's just like the evidence. It's like the pattern continues
Speaker 3: to build and it is like, you know, again, this
Speaker 3: goes back to My biggest thing has been, like, the
Speaker 3: fuck was Trump thinking with release the Epstein files? Really? Like,
Speaker 3: what do you hope to accomplish?
Speaker 2: Hey, I don't think he had much choice. I don't
Speaker 2: think he's at his full powers, you know. And unfortunately,
Speaker 2: when you get your whole base obsessed with the idea
Speaker 2: that he's explain everything, kind of have to.
Speaker 3: But why start, why start on this? You knew it
Speaker 3: was in this shit man arrogance.
Speaker 2: You know, it was large. I think it was a
Speaker 2: lot of other people, like fucking Trump used it. But
Speaker 2: Trump wasn't the Trump left to his own devices, he
Speaker 2: wouldn't have had the idea to hang Epstein on these
Speaker 2: guys because he talks about Clinton now as a friend right.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: In their private correspondence, Epstein and Bannon are very open
Speaker 2: about their disdain for Donald Trump. Epstein calls him a grifter,
Speaker 2: and Bannon repeatedly uses the term stable genius to mock
Speaker 2: his former boss. The two got along because they both
Speaker 2: had a vested interest in destroying the establishment as it existed.
Speaker 2: Bannon gave Epstein advice on rehabilitating his image after his arrest,
Speaker 2: even as Epstein himself acted as a free advice giver
Speaker 2: to all the famous men impacted by me too. The
Speaker 2: two men were very direct about their plans to subvert democracy.
Speaker 2: In July of twenty eighteen, they talked about hiring hackers
Speaker 2: or otherwise working to get them on our side. Epstein
Speaker 2: included links to the website for hacking convention def con
Speaker 2: as he pondered how they might influence these people. And
Speaker 2: it's very clear for these emails neither of these guys
Speaker 2: know much about hacking, although one reveal from the Epstein
Speaker 2: files is that at least per Epstein's claims. In the files,
Speaker 2: Epstein claims Peter Teel was funding Nazi hacker Weave for years,
Speaker 2: which I do believe so Bannon asks, hey, do you
Speaker 2: know any of these guys, and Epstein responds, some of
Speaker 2: the founders, organizers. They are the most dangerous force in
Speaker 2: today's society by far. Bioweapons pale due to blowback nuclear
Speaker 2: a sixty year old technology. Whether sixty year old tech
Speaker 2: frightens you. Space Frontier can't operate without software, so basically
Speaker 2: saying like hackers are scarier than nukes or bioweapons, which
Speaker 2: is also a dumb thing to say. Cool Bannon asks
Speaker 2: if he thinks these kind of people can be bought,
Speaker 2: and Epstein says yes, and he excitedly explains, you can
Speaker 2: buy hacks, you can buy zero day exploits, right, you
Speaker 2: see that in the email on here too. And he
Speaker 2: says in other emails that he's wrestling with the task
Speaker 2: of getting hackers who would work for Bannon and could
Speaker 2: maybe find a zero data target crypto wallets or voting booths. Right, yeah, now,
Speaker 2: there's no evidence they did this, certainly, and Epstein is
Speaker 2: going to have other concerns very soon after these emails
Speaker 2: get sent. This may have just been another example of himbloviating,
Speaker 2: but it shows how he and Bannon are thinking, right,
Speaker 2: and that's meaningful. At least there's more. At least they're dumb.
Speaker 3: And if people still say script kitty, I can't believe,
Speaker 3: you know, script kitty.
Speaker 2: Oh script. I don't think it's super relevant these days.
Speaker 3: Not anymore. That's Epstein, though I could buy buy an exploit,
Speaker 3: sure man, Carly.
Speaker 2: Ray Epstein, Yeah, good stuff, He's I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is what I've got. There's an interview between him
Speaker 2: and Bannon, but like Bannon was trying to make a
Speaker 2: documentary on his friend. That's really telling that. I may
Speaker 2: break down later for you guys, but I think this
Speaker 2: is enough for now. I'm tired, begs Robert. I'm tapping
Speaker 2: out personally. Yeah, from this, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But I think there's also like the trove is endless.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. The trove is endless, endless content.
Speaker 4: We could do many more parts, and we might end
Speaker 4: up having to.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'd like maybe Apstein really just sacrificed
Speaker 2: himself for the global content minds, you know, be ensure
Speaker 2: that there were plenty of podcasts and YouTube videos.
Speaker 3: Think about it.
Speaker 4: I'd love to be done.
Speaker 3: It hurts. Yeah, this was dayingful.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'm done. Goodbye?
Speaker 3: Are we done, done, done, done, yeah okay.
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