Speaker 1: As media.
Speaker 2: Ah, welcome pod to Behind the Bastard Cast episodes Epstein, Jeffrey,
Speaker 2: I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 2: How are you doing? Andrew T?
Speaker 4: Like that you said the last sentence in syntactical order. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's upsetting, isn't it?
Speaker 4: Ever? Robert? Am I?
Speaker 2: What am I up to? What's my plan? You know?
Speaker 2: What's my ultimate goal? What am I working towards here
Speaker 2: by doing this? I don't know, Andrew T. I just
Speaker 2: don't know. How are you okay?
Speaker 4: I just ate the top half of a tomato, and
Speaker 4: I actually feel pretty energized.
Speaker 2: Best half of a tomato, to be honest, like the
Speaker 2: bottom half of a tomato. That's for chumps idiots.
Speaker 4: Really, Yeah, stem side, you gotta nibble around the stem.
Speaker 2: Gotta nibble the stem, baby. I'm always saying that. That's
Speaker 2: that's why, that's my motto, Baby, nibble the stem. You
Speaker 2: know you put it on T shirts? That's right? Wow, Andrew?
Speaker 2: Where can people find you on the internet? Before we
Speaker 2: get into our episodes for Today, where we continue the
Speaker 2: tale of Jeffrey Epstein birthing the modern world, man birthing
Speaker 2: the modern world.
Speaker 4: Thanks, I guess I don't know Andrew on social media.
Speaker 4: But I do you know as this racist the podcast
Speaker 4: and we have our premium shows at Suboptimalpods dot com,
Speaker 4: which are fun. We've been doing one called starter Trek,
Speaker 4: which is really fun, a little how slightly insider look
Speaker 4: at star Trek my lovest Tawny Newsome knows everything about
Speaker 4: Star Trek. She writes on Startrek Academy. She was the
Speaker 4: voice of Beckett Mariner other stuff.
Speaker 2: I think Keeper of the Flame. Well, I also want
Speaker 2: to send people somewhere. The Artist Mentorship Program in Portland
Speaker 2: helps primarily youth experiencing homelessness, get essential supplies and job training,
Speaker 2: and have music and art programs at the heart of
Speaker 2: their work. If you want to support the good things
Speaker 2: that they do and have done for more than thirty years,
Speaker 2: go to AMPPDX dot org. That's AMPPDX dot org. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's all that, Robert.
Speaker 4: I appreciate the chance to before all the Haydes shit
Speaker 4: gets set. Yes, yes, do you like the separation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's important to plug before the Heinus shit gets said,
Speaker 2: because people are going to feel markedly less good about
Speaker 2: the world once we continue talking about Jeffrey Epstein creating
Speaker 2: all of the bullshit that you deal with on a
Speaker 2: daily basis as a person in society. Sorry about that,
Speaker 2: so Part two. One of the frustrating things about delving
Speaker 2: into the Epstein files is that you are repeatedly confronted
Speaker 2: by the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was a person, and
Speaker 2: like any person, he had nicknames for people in words
Speaker 2: that he used in an idiosyncratic fashion that only his
Speaker 2: friends and his social circle fully understood. Everyone's like this,
Speaker 2: but it's weird to be confronted by these very human
Speaker 2: aspects of the life of a monster. It's frustrating because
Speaker 2: it means there's a lot that will never fully understand.
Speaker 2: For example, Epstein started sending girls, and again, since the
Speaker 2: term girls was used in the email, and this is
Speaker 2: Jeffery Epstein, we must assume they were underaged kids to brock,
Speaker 2: or at least there's a good chance they were to brock.
Speaker 2: One of these girls Epstein described as my little Susie
Speaker 2: or Sue in emails he's sent during the spring of
Speaker 2: twenty twelve. Youw, I don't think we have a great
Speaker 2: idea of who this was yet. I haven't figured. At
Speaker 2: least my clumsy searching around did not figure out who
Speaker 2: Sue was, and given that she's probably a victim, I
Speaker 2: don't know that we need to look too hard into this,
Speaker 2: but she grew very close to Brock Pierce, or at
Speaker 2: least that's the way Epstein and Brock's emails portray it.
Speaker 2: And Epstein asked regularly after Brock's relationship with Sue with
Speaker 2: a kind of interest that makes me think that because
Speaker 2: he connected them, maybe Epstein saw Sue as his in
Speaker 2: to Brock, who he considered a valuable contact. Right, Maybe
Speaker 2: it was a situation where Epstein quote unquote discovered this girl,
Speaker 2: however old she actually is, sends her to Brock, They
Speaker 2: become close, and Epstein is curious about this relationship because
Speaker 2: it's his leverage basically, right. Pierce, though, seems to have
Speaker 2: valued Epstein as well. On May first of twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: he messaged Jeffrey saying, I know a girl in New York.
Speaker 2: You may like, how should I introduce you? And then
Speaker 2: at Jeffrey's like, basically, like, you know, you can send
Speaker 2: me her Facebook or whatever, and so he sends her.
Speaker 2: He gives her a name and asks like, hey, can
Speaker 2: you check her out on Facebook? And Jeffrey just replies, cute,
Speaker 2: so great. You know, like this just gives you kind
Speaker 2: of an insight into how things worked, right, this is
Speaker 2: brock Is. It seems graduated from being the kind of
Speaker 2: person that Jeffrey just supplies with girls to being the
Speaker 2: kind of person who is connecting Jeffrey to girl. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: which is an evolution of their relationship. Again, I don't
Speaker 2: know how old this person is, but he does use
Speaker 2: the word girl, so it's not legally he's questionable to wonder.
Speaker 4: Right. It's also like this thing where it's so like
Speaker 4: because you start to also kind of get the sense that,
Speaker 4: I mean, on some level, they knew what they were doing.
Speaker 2: Was wrong, but it doesn't feel like.
Speaker 4: It was illegal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think the knew it was wrong in
Speaker 2: im morals. They certainly don't believe it, but they know
Speaker 2: that if people find out, they could get in trouble.
Speaker 4: Yeah about a lot of what they're doing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: they don't seem to consider what they're doing to be wrong.
Speaker 2: No, they think they treat sex trafficking of underage girls
Speaker 2: the way I think normal people treat like doing drugs, right,
Speaker 2: where like it's illegal. You want to be a little
Speaker 2: careful about it because you could get in trouble if
Speaker 2: you get caught. But you're not judging your friend because
Speaker 2: they do acid once a year or take mushrooms occasionally, right, right,
Speaker 2: That's very much how they treat it, right, right. So
Speaker 2: a month after this email chain where Brock sends Epstein
Speaker 2: this girl's Facebook page, Pierce told Epstein that he was
Speaker 2: taking a trip to Moscow, Kiev and Odessa because that
Speaker 2: was an itinerary you could have back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Epstein asked him to take photos and find me a present,
Speaker 2: and Pierce replied, will do, and then a smiley face,
Speaker 2: and those photos are photos of girls, and the present
Speaker 2: is girls.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Several days later, Pierce replied with more than a dozen
Speaker 2: images of what we have to I believe we're naked
Speaker 2: young women, or at least scantily clad young women. It's
Speaker 2: a little clear to me because of how you know
Speaker 2: the email is preserved. But he sends these photos with
Speaker 2: the sentence the Ukraine is now my favorite country. Smiley face,
Speaker 2: just Ukraine. But I don't know. I feel like when
Speaker 2: you're the sex trafficking is I shouldn't be a pedant
Speaker 2: about language here, No, and again, we don't know that
Speaker 2: this is sex trafficking. I don't know what age these
Speaker 2: these people are. You know, it's just gross. Brock is
Speaker 2: both being provided by Epstein and also providing too at
Speaker 2: this point, right, which gives you an idea of how
Speaker 2: a lot of his relationships ships function. This is we're
Speaker 2: talking about him and Pierce, but he had a number
Speaker 2: of famous dudes who he had similar relationships with where
Speaker 2: it presumably starts with him feeding them women, but they
Speaker 2: also you know, push people his way, right, That's how
Speaker 2: a lot of this certainly funk. Like this like low
Speaker 2: rent frat house shit where you're like, right, right, exactly,
Speaker 2: it's and they talk about it that way, right. They
Speaker 2: don't talk about it like we're doing a secret criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2: They talk about it like dudes talking about a hot
Speaker 2: chick at college, except for the chick is thirty years
Speaker 2: younger than them, right, Yeah, and they met her fucking
Speaker 2: because Gilan Maxwell Spider outside of a high school or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, it's gross. Also in twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: Epstein continued to gather influence in the world of video games.
Speaker 2: He started emailing regularly with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotik.
Speaker 2: Actually it may have been earlier. In this, we don't
Speaker 2: know exactly how long he and Bobby were in regular contact.
Speaker 2: The email show at least as far back as November
Speaker 2: of twenty twelve, which is in that month Kotik visited
Speaker 2: New York, but they had been friends previously, right. We
Speaker 2: know the two planned to meet in person during that
Speaker 2: November twenty twelve trip, and we know that Epstein even
Speaker 2: tempted Kotek to come a day earlier by saying, Hey,
Speaker 2: if you show up early, you can hang out with
Speaker 2: Woody Allen. Ew oh boy is well, yeah, I'm on board.
Speaker 2: You don't want to hang with Woody Allen.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, at least these guys morality is consistent. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 2: The first time I saw Woody in one of these,
Speaker 2: I had a moment of free kunters like, oh god,
Speaker 2: is it Woody Harrelson. That would really bum me out?
Speaker 2: And it's like, oh, no, exists, It's gotta be Woody Allen, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and it is. It is Woody Allen. It's what's interesting
Speaker 2: to me is that Epstein brings up Woody Allen other times, right,
Speaker 2: like when he's talking with Elon Musk and he's trying
Speaker 2: to convince Elon Musk to hang out one Christmas. He
Speaker 2: also brings out like Woody Allen's gonna be there. It
Speaker 2: could be you and me and Woody Allen partying together.
Speaker 2: I mean, he seems to think this is like a
Speaker 2: big get for a lot, like this is maybe if
Speaker 2: I sweeten the pot with Woody Allen, this rich, famous
Speaker 2: guy will want to hang out with me.
Speaker 4: I mean, to be fair, Manhattan is basically what these
Speaker 4: guys are trying to aspire to like at all times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Manhattan or fucking I mean, we don't
Speaker 2: need to talk about Woody Allen movies. So that said Kotech,
Speaker 2: and again we can we know they were emailing regularly
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve. Kotech is connected to Epstein for quite
Speaker 2: a while longer than that. We have a two thousand
Speaker 2: and four April of two thousand and four email between
Speaker 2: him and Gilan Maxwell where he's talking about Gillen's sexy body.
Speaker 2: So they the two of them seem to have had
Speaker 2: an affair of some sort, which at least Gillen's an adult.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, Bobby, you get the maybe had
Speaker 2: sex with an adult while hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein Award,
Speaker 2: which is not much of an award, Bobby Kotick not
Speaker 2: much of an award. The most significant aspect of Kotek
Speaker 2: and Epstein's friendship was that Jeffrey used as an influence
Speaker 2: over Bobby to push for more micro transactions in video games.
Speaker 2: He's really trying to convince Bobby this is the future
Speaker 2: of gaming, right. Bobby's already convinced of this, but Epstein's
Speaker 2: further piling on right and is trying to encourage some
Speaker 2: specific ways that this should develop. I don't mean to
Speaker 2: say that like Epstein introduced the idea to Bobby Kotick.
Speaker 2: He's the kind of soulless school who would always have
Speaker 2: loved this thing and was pushing for it previously, but
Speaker 2: Epstein is trying to shift him in specific directions as
Speaker 2: relates to this stuff. On May second of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: Kotik asked Epstein for advice ahead of a meeting with
Speaker 2: New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein. Specifically,
Speaker 2: he asked if Epstein knew of any Edu tan games
Speaker 2: that we're doing it right, and what I assume was
Speaker 2: happening here is that as CEO of Activision Blizzard, he's
Speaker 2: meeting with the Department of New York City Education Chancellor
Speaker 2: to see if, like, can we make a deal about
Speaker 2: like providing educational games to the school system New York. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's probably the reason for this. And again, because I
Speaker 2: can't say directly, here is how Epstein influenced how Kotik
Speaker 2: felt about micro transactions. Here's what he introduced the industry.
Speaker 2: I don't have a clear thing for that, but what
Speaker 2: I can say is Bobby Kotik valued Epstein's opinions enough
Speaker 2: that he asks him for advice ahead of a meeting
Speaker 2: like this, and he listens when Epstein tells him what
Speaker 2: he thinks should be happening with this stuff, which suggests
Speaker 2: Epstein is influencing the development of micro transactions in gaming
Speaker 2: to some level, right, and not the creed, not the
Speaker 2: main but he's one of the dominoes there.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I'm with Kotik. This is like if we're
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen. He got divorced in twenty twelve, this
Speaker 1: before he starts publicly dating Cheryl Sandberg.
Speaker 4: Yes it is, but this is this is.
Speaker 1: Just like an interesting timeline for this.
Speaker 2: From Gillen Maxwell to Sharon Sandberg. What a what a
Speaker 2: fascinating romantic life this man's had.
Speaker 1: Disturbing weird little guy, was it?
Speaker 4: Listen, did you repost on Blue Sky's something about like,
Speaker 4: all right, maybe you're going to get to this about
Speaker 4: like one of the one of the reasons is to
Speaker 4: like indoctrinate kids into like.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we're talking about all that right now. So
Speaker 2: Kochik emails and being like, do you have any suggestions
Speaker 2: for this meeting with this guy from you know, the
Speaker 2: Department of Education, New York, and Epstein says you should
Speaker 2: play Medal of Honor or Call of Duty and then
Speaker 2: quote you will learn war history, right, basically saying video
Speaker 2: games are already great at teaching kids about war, which
Speaker 2: they're not.
Speaker 4: I don't think people learn a.
Speaker 2: Lot you're at war history from goll of Duty or
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor some stuff.
Speaker 4: Sure well, they certainly learned that their two equal sides
Speaker 4: are Allies and the gervis. It's morally fine to be
Speaker 4: on either, to play either, right now.
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me about this is that Epstein's initial response, like,
Speaker 2: just played either these video games and you can learn
Speaker 2: war history. Games are great at teaching kids stuff. That's
Speaker 2: kind of like the throwaway response you expect from Epstein.
Speaker 2: But what follows is really unique because after that initial line,
Speaker 2: he writes out like a five paragraph essay laying out
Speaker 2: his thoughts on this subject. And this is not a
Speaker 2: normal response for Jeffrey. The biggest difference from his normal
Speaker 2: correspondence is that nearly every word in this essay is
Speaker 2: spelled properly and the grammar is mostly correct. It's very weird,
Speaker 2: Like you see dozens hundreds of emails of him where
Speaker 2: he's just like spelling like a dipshit. And then you
Speaker 2: see this like almost a page of writing that's like
Speaker 2: well formatted and like, I don't know if someone else
Speaker 2: wrote it for him.
Speaker 4: Right, he like copy pasted from a white paper.
Speaker 2: Yes, he clearly had a document, but it sounds like idiosyncratic,
Speaker 2: like it's in his voice. If he had someone else
Speaker 2: type it up, I don't know. It's weird. And in
Speaker 2: this essay, Epstein argues that video games quote already great
Speaker 2: at teaching, and then expresses something almost identical to how
Speaker 2: pro AI people argue chatbots are going to revolutionize education fundamentally.
Speaker 2: The thing that works is a one to one student
Speaker 2: teacher ratio. Even if you have a shitty teacher or tutor,
Speaker 2: you will learn a lot because that person gets to
Speaker 2: know you and challenges you at your level. That doesn't scale,
Speaker 2: but computers do. So we have to use computers to
Speaker 2: replace teachers or at least augment them. Thank you, Jeffrey,
Speaker 2: thanks for seeding that into society.
Speaker 5: No, no, it's interesting to see like this is, you know,
Speaker 5: a deca years later going to be a decade or
Speaker 5: so later, going to be what like all the AI
Speaker 5: bros Are saying about education, And it's interesting to see
Speaker 5: Jeffrey Land of the same spot in like twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: But also because.
Speaker 4: That's largely just the right wing thing is like who cares?
Speaker 2: Got to get rid of teachers?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, get rid of teachers. Give your people the dumbest,
Speaker 4: most uninformative thing. It's fright.
Speaker 2: And he's not talking about this, but you have to
Speaker 2: think again, Epstein's angry. He's been judged by you know,
Speaker 2: what he believes is a prudish society for something that
Speaker 2: he shouldn't be punished for. He's angry, and he probably
Speaker 2: sees to a degree the education system and the things
Speaker 2: it's taught women as being responsible for his woes. So
Speaker 2: I suspect there's more than a little. Well we can
Speaker 2: if we do this, then we have control of the
Speaker 2: computers that are teaching kids and thus the things that
Speaker 2: they learn.
Speaker 4: Right, But do you think it's that in affair, because
Speaker 4: that's the thing that I do is like, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: but it's or I guess what I mean is like
Speaker 4: that not nefarious, but not because they're so dumb and
Speaker 4: not details oriented otherwise that I like have trouble squaring
Speaker 4: like this grand vision and actually pulling it off. I
Speaker 4: guess yeah.
Speaker 2: It's less of a grand because you know, Epstein isn't
Speaker 2: the guy making this stuff. He's just kind of talking
Speaker 2: to people who will be owning the companies that own
Speaker 2: it about what he how he wants to see it
Speaker 2: used right, right, And I don't think Epstein's not engaged
Speaker 2: in a cohesive plot with a bunch of other rich
Speaker 2: guys to destroy education. I think he just sees this
Speaker 2: as beneficial and a better way to do society right.
Speaker 2: And I think part of why he sees it is that,
Speaker 2: like he doesn't like or respect a lot of people
Speaker 2: in this yeah, who are doing this job, right.
Speaker 4: And you know what, and I guess like the vision
Speaker 4: versus the execution is what, right, That's what ice is.
Speaker 4: Ice is the vision and the execution of that vision,
Speaker 4: which is Gooddy.
Speaker 2: And he's he's just kind of got and he's talking
Speaker 2: with his other rich friend because he's he's and he's
Speaker 2: an idea guy. Right, That's Epstein's whole brand. So he
Speaker 2: goes on in this essay to say that the real
Speaker 2: issue is that today's with educational games is that today's
Speaker 2: video games just don't try to teach stuff we care about.
Speaker 2: And it's unclear who we is. I think he's referring
Speaker 2: to we as in like people like you and me, Bobby,
Speaker 2: like smart, rich guys care about quote. Right. The best
Speaker 2: scheme I've come up with so far is to use
Speaker 2: the X Prize or something like it to co opt
Speaker 2: the existing video game industry. You want to skip convincing
Speaker 2: educators and parents about this stuff and just go straight
Speaker 2: for the kids. Ew I mean I can get him
Speaker 2: to be fair.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not not that this is a good use, but
Speaker 4: the probably one of the least sinister uses of go
Speaker 4: straight for the kids. Jeffrey Epstein has ever.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is yeah, right, like grading on a curve
Speaker 2: that continue because as soon as he says, you want
Speaker 2: to skip convincing parents and teach it, just go straight
Speaker 2: for the kids by making a game that gets them addicted.
Speaker 2: Then Epstein provides his own suggestion for like what an
Speaker 2: educational game might look like, and he he suggests a
Speaker 2: game that would teach a player how to read and
Speaker 2: pronounce Japanese kanji. Quote. Imagine you are looking at a
Speaker 2: door in a video game. It has some squiggly symbols
Speaker 2: printed on it. Little munchkins walk up to that door
Speaker 2: and say conichiwa. The door opens, and they are greeted
Speaker 2: by a hot princess with big tits and a thong.
Speaker 2: The door closes in your face. You are going to
Speaker 2: fucking learned to read and pronounce kanji.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm like, they're so dumb. I just can't
Speaker 4: believe we're ruled by these boks.
Speaker 2: There's the there's the the line between. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein controlled all of this as the puppet master,
Speaker 2: but he had a lot of ideas that he helped
Speaker 2: to seed in powerful people who then took those ideas further.
Speaker 2: And also the way he thinks about all This shows
Speaker 2: you how the ruling class thought about and thinks about
Speaker 2: all this stuff and was talking about it, and he
Speaker 2: influenced that, right. I mean to me, it's just.
Speaker 4: Like all these unfuckable dweves finally like forced their way
Speaker 4: into some sex through violence and coercion. Yeah, now they're
Speaker 4: money pressed the man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well and the fucking the whole you see, just
Speaker 2: like the the fact that women don't really matter to
Speaker 2: him is made very evident, just in the fact that
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, hot princess, big tits in a thong,
Speaker 2: that'll teach him how to read kanji, and yeah, the
Speaker 2: little girls kind of being enticed. I have issues believing
Speaker 2: this would work on boys, But like, are they gonna
Speaker 2: want the big titted, hot princess Jeffrey in this game
Speaker 2: for schools that you want to put in school. Epstein
Speaker 2: then concludes edutainment is for pussies because once kids catch
Speaker 2: on you are trying to teach them something, they shut down.
Speaker 2: We have to keep the boobs and guns in profit.
Speaker 2: You see how much money video games are making these days.
Speaker 2: Fuck educational reform, we need educational subversion. And what he's
Speaker 2: saying here is that like this stuff. You don't want
Speaker 2: to make educate. You want to make games that get
Speaker 2: kids addicted and you teach them and push messages through
Speaker 2: the games that they're playing while also profiting off of them.
Speaker 2: And the way to do that is make games that
Speaker 2: they are addicted to playing. They are compulsively like attractive
Speaker 2: to them. Right, your goal is to subvert the educational system.
Speaker 2: You're almost saying, we want these games to teach kids
Speaker 2: a separate set of things that they're learning in school
Speaker 2: and society.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You want to think about, like how gaming culture has
Speaker 2: been used by guys like Bannon who are attached to Epstein.
Speaker 2: You can see some really direct through lines here, right. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 2: after Epstein goes on this very weird rant, Bobby Kotik
Speaker 2: doesn't respond, are you fucking crazy? And Steady responds, X
Speaker 2: prize is a good idea, but key is real world rewards,
Speaker 2: learn to read, earn cell phone minutes, iPhone credits, virtual
Speaker 2: items and games. Eh, that's a funny email in its
Speaker 2: own right. Future ist Pablos Holman, who's looped into Epstein,
Speaker 2: loops Poblos into this conversation, and Pablos responds with just
Speaker 2: a dig at Bobby Kotek, saying I'm all for indoctrinating
Speaker 2: kids into an economy you gotta love who His example
Speaker 2: for real world rewards is virtual items and games, which is,
Speaker 2: I mean, Pablos, you're a You're tied to Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 2: forever and now. So that's shameful, but that is a
Speaker 2: pretty good dig.
Speaker 4: I mean, like every time you don't respond only with
Speaker 4: what the fuck are you guys talking about? With shit?
Speaker 2: Dipshit. Yeah, and Holman is obviously correct that Kotik is
Speaker 2: a visionless slug of a man who ruined at least
Speaker 2: one great company. These amails were sent just a few
Speaker 2: weeks after the launch of Call of Duty Black Ops two,
Speaker 2: the first Call of Duty game to feature micro transactions.
Speaker 2: Per an article in The Gamer by James Lucas, Call
Speaker 2: of Duty Ghosts, which launched later that year, went even
Speaker 2: further with paid special characters, voiceover packs, skins, camo, and
Speaker 2: even weapons. It's not hard to draw line between these
Speaker 2: conversations with Epstein and industry figures and the sudden boom
Speaker 2: and micro transactions that occurred around the same time period,
Speaker 2: but what's most concerning is the apparent interest to normalize
Speaker 2: aggressive monetization strategies towards younger audiences, as suggested in remarks
Speaker 2: made by Epstein's associates and the DOJ documents. And Epstein again,
Speaker 2: he doesn't invent the idea of micro transactions in children's games.
Speaker 2: Bobby's thinking about this before Epstein starts talking about it,
Speaker 2: but Epstein is influencing his thoughts on it. And Epstein
Speaker 2: is talking a lot about how we need to normalize
Speaker 2: using games to deliver propaganda to kids by addicting them.
Speaker 2: Right that, like the fact that the game is addictive
Speaker 2: and has the guns and the tits and you know,
Speaker 2: makes money is part of like what keeps the kid
Speaker 2: paying attention, what allows you to influence them with the
Speaker 2: content and the game. And this is a big part
Speaker 2: of the modern micro transaction industry. Right, Like what we
Speaker 2: ultimately landed on is fuck teaching kids anything. Just get
Speaker 2: them hooked, like get them get them playing games where
Speaker 2: they're going to be sending money regularly and gambling for
Speaker 2: stuff like loot boxes.
Speaker 4: Right. And it's it's also like that most of these
Speaker 4: are built on whales, Like it doesn't broadly the kids.
Speaker 4: It's like the unfortunate I don't know what is it
Speaker 4: like four or five percent somewhere in there who are
Speaker 4: like paying for everything else and more.
Speaker 2: No, but it is I mean the fact that these
Speaker 2: are present in the games. Even though most of the
Speaker 2: money isn't coming from randomly, it still affects them right.
Speaker 2: Researchers from the Australian Consumer Policy Research Center the CPRC
Speaker 2: and Monash University in twenty sixteen identified twenty dark patterns
Speaker 2: of monetization in modern games, the worst of which were
Speaker 2: gambling like features such as paid loot boxes like the
Speaker 2: ones Bobby Kotik helped push at Activision Blizzard. Per an
Speaker 2: investigation by ABC Australia, quote, the design features were not
Speaker 2: in all games, but ninety five percent of adult players
Speaker 2: surveyed had come across them at eighty three percent had
Speaker 2: suffered negative consequences. So this is a harmful industry and
Speaker 2: it's one that you know Jeffrey is a cheerleader for. Again,
Speaker 2: he's not the founder of it, but he's one of
Speaker 2: the He's one of the dominoes here. Today, the global
Speaker 2: online micro transaction market is more than worth more than
Speaker 2: seventy five billion dollars a year, As Epstein said, we
Speaker 2: have to keep the boobs and guns in profit.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: An article into BBC by Catherine Latham makes the end
Speaker 2: result of all this very clear. Gaming companies use behavioral
Speaker 2: psychology to manipulate users into spending, says professor Sarah Mills,
Speaker 2: and the link between gaming and gambling is becoming increasingly blurred,
Speaker 2: she explains. Ms Mills is a profess sort of human
Speaker 2: geography at Loughborough University, where research found gambling techniques make
Speaker 2: gamers play for longer and spend more money and drive
Speaker 2: repeat buying. And we could go on from here to
Speaker 2: discuss the outrageous proliferation of gambling apps for young people
Speaker 2: and how companies like Activision Blizzard paved the way for
Speaker 2: shit like Caushi.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And Epstein is a piece of that story. Right, But
Speaker 2: that's also getting us all away from the Epstein of it,
Speaker 2: because this is stuff that's largely occurred since the end
Speaker 2: of his life.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I think we've done enough to establish how harmful this
Speaker 2: trend is, and that Jeffrey was a prominent voice urging
Speaker 2: developers to go down this road and urging developers at
Speaker 2: a high level talking to the C suites.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I should also note that Epstein and Kote's friendship went
Speaker 2: deeper than just work related conversations. These aren't just guys
Speaker 2: who are talking shop. Per Kotaku article by Ethan Gatsch,
Speaker 2: Emails between the two were allegedly exchanged multiple times in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, as well. A February twenty fourth, twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: emails stated that Epstein was in La planning a visit
Speaker 2: to SpaceX that week and was trying to link up
Speaker 2: with Kotik while in town. Thanks but rather see you,
Speaker 2: Epstein wrote in one email taking girls after to bell Air.
Speaker 2: Ko Tik at one point allegedly wrote back, come with
Speaker 2: your friends to buy house Beverly Hills ten minutes from
Speaker 2: bel Air.
Speaker 4: Great. Also, that's an insane thing to put in an email.
Speaker 2: Down it's crazy. Got to hang out with Elon Musket
Speaker 2: SpaceX before taking my girls to the CEO of Activision
Speaker 2: Blizzard's house.
Speaker 4: And again notably invited.
Speaker 2: Right Elon's Oh, I mean you don't want him at
Speaker 2: at the good parties? You know you don't want You
Speaker 2: don't want him and Bobby Kotik in a room at
Speaker 2: the same time. That's just too much cool. You know
Speaker 2: who else is cool?
Speaker 5: Me?
Speaker 2: Some would say, sure, of course, Sophie, Yes, Andrew T Sure,
Speaker 2: Andrew T. Okay, you know, and also the sponsors of
Speaker 2: this podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Evans, Robert.
Speaker 2: And we're back. You know, we're talking Jepstein, Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2: So Epstein's friendship with Brock Pierce continued along a similar
Speaker 2: tenor to his friendship with Bobby Kotick. In May of
Speaker 2: that year, Pierce told Epstein that he had plans to
Speaker 2: purchase what was at the time the largest bitcoin exchange
Speaker 2: on Earth, Mount Gox. Now this is a side story
Speaker 2: from a larger, much funnier story, because mount gox was
Speaker 2: for years the place to go if you were new
Speaker 2: to crypto and looking to get into it. Right, if
Speaker 2: you wanted to get started with bitcoin or whatever, mount
Speaker 2: gox is probably where you were starting. And mount gox
Speaker 2: got its name from its original purpose, which was it
Speaker 2: was a place to sell and trade magic the gathering cards.
Speaker 2: Mount gox stands for Magic the Gathering online exchange. Right,
Speaker 2: they started going by mount gox when the slightly more
Speaker 2: sensible libertarian crypto enthusiasts pointed out that like, hey, regular
Speaker 2: people don't want to or their life savings at a
Speaker 2: business run by people who sell magic cards for a living. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's not really like a bank. It doesn't give a bank.
Speaker 4: I could have been called the chaos Orb. So I
Speaker 4: guess it could have been called.
Speaker 2: The chaos Orb. Yeah, I mean we're further along on
Speaker 2: our decline now. Per an article on the website protest
Speaker 2: dot com by caspanc quote Epstein, who was unfamiliar with
Speaker 2: the exchange, asked if it had been seized by the
Speaker 2: US government. It hadn't. The purchase had never occurred, and
Speaker 2: in April of twenty fourteen, it was revealed that mount
Speaker 2: gox had lost the majority of its users' money. All
Speaker 2: of the money in mount Gox gets stolen, right, the
Speaker 2: whole bank gets stolen because again the magic the gathering
Speaker 2: online exchange is a bad place to keep your savings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fine though not regulated. No FDI not at
Speaker 4: all regulated.
Speaker 2: Baby, we don't need an FDN. See, we don't need that.
Speaker 2: That's big government. Well we'll talk about why that's fundy.
Speaker 2: But what's really what's funny immediately here is that even
Speaker 2: after the whole bank bank gets stolen, Pierce doesn't give
Speaker 2: up acquiring mount Gox. He tries after it collapses to
Speaker 2: buy it, and he starts his initiative called Gox Rising,
Speaker 2: which like, why are you tied to the magic the
Speaker 2: gathering bank, that god that lost everything? Like why are
Speaker 2: you invested in continuing that journey?
Speaker 4: Brock?
Speaker 2: Is it just the name Mount Gox is so appealing
Speaker 2: to you? I don't get it.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, brand recognition, you know, the.
Speaker 2: Brand recognition is that place that lost everyone's money?
Speaker 4: But yeah, but not anymore. Yeah, we couldn't possibly lose
Speaker 4: it twice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it happened twice. That's crazy, So you should The
Speaker 2: fact that Pierce still thinks this is a good idea
Speaker 2: should tell you something about Pierce, And the fact that
Speaker 2: Epstein continues to treat this kid as genius should let
Speaker 2: you know that Jeffrey Epstein was not nearly as intelligent
Speaker 2: as he gets credited with being. Sometimes the same month
Speaker 2: Brock started trying to buy Mount Gox, Epstein reaches out
Speaker 2: to his friend Bill Gross, who is the co founder
Speaker 2: of a major investment management company Pimco, about an exciting
Speaker 2: new crypto project that Brock was working on. And this
Speaker 2: is the project that he gets involved with really after
Speaker 2: Mount Gox, and it's called Tether Have you ever heard
Speaker 2: of the cryptocurrency Tether.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think I have some. I don't remember why.
Speaker 2: It's prominent people know about it. And the idea behind tether.
Speaker 2: You brought up the FDIC earlier that like, oh, the
Speaker 2: whole bank got stolen. Maybe that's a good idea that
Speaker 2: the regular financial system ad Tether is Brock. I mean,
Speaker 2: Brock is one of the guys behind tether. Tether is
Speaker 2: kind of the attempt to add sort of an FDIC
Speaker 2: type deal to crypto. It doesn't work the way the
Speaker 2: FDIC does, but the idea is it's a way to
Speaker 2: make cryptocurrency less dangerous and volatile. Right, Tether is what's
Speaker 2: supposed to be a stable coin. That's the idea.
Speaker 4: I say, I think the only reason I have any
Speaker 4: cryptocurrency is to play quasi legal international digital poker.
Speaker 2: Of course, Andrew, So the idea behind Tether is that
Speaker 2: it's what's called a stable coin. Normal crypto is way
Speaker 2: too volatile to be a good store of value, right,
Speaker 2: Like you don't want to store your savings something could
Speaker 2: be worth zero tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Tether was ostensibly pegged to the US dollar, and so
Speaker 2: basically the idea is that like it's backed up by
Speaker 2: real money, right, so we can't it can't become worth nothing,
Speaker 2: And as a result, tether is today the most successful
Speaker 2: and the largest stable coin. But the fact that what
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be and what it actually is are
Speaker 2: two different things. Because the idea is that tether is
Speaker 2: pegged to the dollar, but that's not even even on
Speaker 2: its face real, because tether is meant to actually be
Speaker 2: fifty percent backed by cash or cash equivalents. Right now.
Speaker 2: Obviously banks don't have as much cash on hand as
Speaker 2: they have people with money invested in the bank or
Speaker 2: money in the bank, right, and that's why we have
Speaker 2: the FDIC. Right, if your bank goes bust, the FDIC
Speaker 2: will reimburse at least for no, I think it's up
Speaker 2: to a quarter a million dollars in an account or
Speaker 2: something like that, but they'll reimburse your losses.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The government is saying, if the bank fucks up, you're
Speaker 2: not screwed as a regular person because there's an FDIC
Speaker 2: backed bank. Tether doesn't really work that way, but they're
Speaker 2: kind of trying to make people think that it works
Speaker 2: that way. Right that like no, no, no, like this
Speaker 2: is bank banks don't have fifty percent of their assets
Speaker 2: backed by cash er equivalents. Right, So Tether's actually more
Speaker 2: realistic than a bank, right. And the reality is there
Speaker 2: have been like pseudo bank runs on Tether, and at
Speaker 2: times people behind Tether have just refused to redeem the
Speaker 2: cash value of their cryptocurrency because that's what they could do,
Speaker 2: that to stop a bank run, right, which is also
Speaker 2: something they get to do because they're not a bank. Right.
Speaker 2: It's you're just throwing money to some fucking freaks who
Speaker 2: are gonna do what they want with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some racists are holding your money. Right.
Speaker 2: Tether would prove though, to be a very wise financial
Speaker 2: bet for Brock. The company is profitable at this moment, right,
Speaker 2: and it's made lot of money over the course of
Speaker 2: its lifetime. I'm sure he did very well on this.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Brock is not the creator of the idea behind tether.
Speaker 2: That would be a guy named J. R. Willett, but
Speaker 2: he co founds the company and initially calls it real
Speaker 2: Coin when it launches in July of twenty fourteen. In
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, tethers surpassed bitcoin and trading volume, and it
Speaker 2: is currently tied to about half of all bitcoin sales,
Speaker 2: even though The Wall Street Journal has reported on Tether
Speaker 2: increasingly showing up in cases of money laundering and the
Speaker 2: financing of terrorist groups. In twenty twenty one, the Commodity
Speaker 2: Futures Trading Commission announced that Tether was not in fact
Speaker 2: fully backed by real currency, which sparked a sell off.
Speaker 2: The CFTC ordered Tether to pay forty one million dollars
Speaker 2: for violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Now I've left
Speaker 2: into the future, passed the life span of Jeffrey, just
Speaker 2: to make it clear. This was a shady business from
Speaker 2: the beginning, right, This is never a good business.
Speaker 4: Like all this shit, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, like all of this shit. So Epstein leans
Speaker 2: into this fact right in his email to Gross because
Speaker 2: he's trying to talk a finance guy into getting on
Speaker 2: the crypto board.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 2: Gross is the guy who works at PEMCO who's trying
Speaker 2: to get to invest in the idea that becomes Tether,
Speaker 2: and Epstein acknowledges in this email that there are issues
Speaker 2: with cryptocurrency. The good is that bitcoin uses an algorithm
Speaker 2: to limit supply, unlike the variable of gold or other commodities. However,
Speaker 2: two main issues one the government doesn't like it. Money laundering,
Speaker 2: money transmitting, aiding, and abetting all types of crimes too.
Speaker 2: All transactions are arguably taxable and therefore extra tricky. The
Speaker 2: Bitcoin guys came to see me early in the process
Speaker 2: and made it clear they were all willing to go
Speaker 2: to jail for their ideas. I'm not there is a
Speaker 2: way to do it, but it turns the bitcoin model
Speaker 2: on its head. Talk to you soon. This is argument
Speaker 2: for tether, right. But what's interesting to me in that
Speaker 2: is him saying the Bitcoin guys came to see me
Speaker 2: early in the process and made it clear they were
Speaker 2: all willing to go to jail with their ideas. We
Speaker 2: know he's in touch with Gavin. We don't know who
Speaker 2: else necessarily, I mean, we will talk later. There's other
Speaker 2: guys that Bitcoin's attached to. But this is some more evidence,
Speaker 2: at least that he wants other people to think he's
Speaker 2: really maybe he's lying about this, right, But also we
Speaker 2: know he was talking to Gavin, we know he's in
Speaker 2: touch with a number of these guys, and we know
Speaker 2: that they're talking ideologically about what this means to each other.
Speaker 2: So I don't really think this is a lie. This
Speaker 2: seems consistent with other things we have evidence of, right,
Speaker 2: and it's further evidence that Jeffrey is an influential person
Speaker 2: in this period of development for bitcoin and cryptocurrency as
Speaker 2: a whole. Right now, obviously we don't. This doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that he was like making big final decisions on bitcoin,
Speaker 2: but it means that he's he's got some influence with
Speaker 2: the people doing it right, and that there's not no
Speaker 2: reason for that. As we'll talk about in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: Epstein helps brock Pierce in could deal with Noble Bank
Speaker 2: to create a Puerto Rico based company that would act
Speaker 2: as the real money bank for Tether, right like, this
Speaker 2: is the actual bank that's going to provide the cash
Speaker 2: that's supposed to he backs up this stable point. This
Speaker 2: further establishes Epstein as a foundational figure in the history
Speaker 2: of crypto because Tether, as I noted, is a very
Speaker 2: significant cryptocurrency. And Epstein not only is he advising peers
Speaker 2: and the beginning stages of Tether becoming a thing, but
Speaker 2: he helps make a deal with the bank that acts
Speaker 2: as like the the backing for Tether. He's important in
Speaker 2: this right and this is the particularly the stage of
Speaker 2: crypto development he's a part of. Is not the initial
Speaker 2: stage where you have these guys like he talks about,
Speaker 2: who are willing to go to jail for these weird
Speaker 2: libertarian ideas they have. Right, we don't have to You
Speaker 2: don't have to like or respect what they see to
Speaker 2: be Like, oh, a lot of these people will, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they really wanted to weaken the power of the state
Speaker 2: in the Federal Reserve by decoupling currency from the government, right,
Speaker 2: And that's they were willing to go to prison for it.
Speaker 2: There are guys like that in the early history of crypto.
Speaker 2: Epstein comes in and has his influence in the stage
Speaker 2: of crypto in which it starts slowly trying to replicate
Speaker 2: the features of the real financial system in order to
Speaker 2: achieve widespread adoption. Right, Tether is a piece of this.
Speaker 2: It's an acknowledgement that like, this is way too volatile,
Speaker 2: too many people are losing money. We need something that
Speaker 2: we can at least market as a safe cryptocurrency that's
Speaker 2: backed up by cash.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's what Epstein's involvement in cryptos during the period
Speaker 2: in which it's starting to take on, it's at least
Speaker 2: starting to dress up in the drag of a real financial.
Speaker 4: System trappings of actual money, right, exactly, exactly, digital lottery
Speaker 4: ticket right.
Speaker 2: Right, as opposed to the thing my friends used to
Speaker 2: buy drugs in two thousand and nine with Eagle right.
Speaker 2: And again, part of the point the idea behind tether
Speaker 2: is we want to make rich people feel comfortable to
Speaker 2: put their money into crypto, right, so other crypto millionaires
Speaker 2: can cash out using the real money they put in.
Speaker 2: So brock piercingly like, that's that's why you want the
Speaker 2: real money, right, That's why Teather's valuable.
Speaker 4: Pyramid scheme, the puremid needs to be at the base.
Speaker 2: This is safe. Put your money in, then we cash
Speaker 2: out our holdings to get real money.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, Epstein put three million dollars of his
Speaker 2: own money into an investment in a new bitcoin trading exchange, Coinbase,
Speaker 2: founded by the Stevens brothers. Bradford Bart Caspiance writes, perhaps
Speaker 2: most embarrassing about the Epstein Coinbase investment is that they
Speaker 2: knew who had put the money in there to purchase shares.
Speaker 2: As Pierce rushed to get the deal closed, he shared
Speaker 2: one awkward, hurried email with Epstein. I need permission to
Speaker 2: let the founder know who you are.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So Epstein is putting this money into fund Coinbase, which
Speaker 2: is like Pierce is helping to broker this deal to
Speaker 2: provide the basic funding to get Coinbase off the ground.
Speaker 2: And Pierces as he's communicating with the people he's working
Speaker 2: with a Coinbase realizes Epstein is a convicted sex criminal.
Speaker 2: And if I get these people to invest in a
Speaker 2: company that he's a major investor in and I don't
Speaker 2: let them know, that could be fraud.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: You can't convince them to partner with you in a
Speaker 2: major venture and not let them know that one of
Speaker 2: the people funding the company is a convicted pedophile. It's
Speaker 2: kind of important, right, And Epstein gives his permission, So
Speaker 2: Brock lets the Coinbase people know that Jeffrey Epstein, who
Speaker 2: by this point it's been years since his conviction for
Speaker 2: child sex trafficking, is one of the funders. And the
Speaker 2: Coinbase people are like, yeah, that's fine with us, right,
Speaker 2: cool stuff. And Coinbase is the new mount Gox, that's
Speaker 2: the big exchange people get into now when they're starting
Speaker 2: in crypto, right, yeah, yeah, yeah stuff.
Speaker 4: There do they still have Super Bowl ads? I guess
Speaker 4: we'll find out.
Speaker 2: I don't think they're doing Super Bowl that ads anymore,
Speaker 2: but they're still around something. Yeah yeah, that Matt Damon
Speaker 2: run money ran out though. But you know who does
Speaker 2: have the money to hire Matt Damon. Not the sponsors
Speaker 2: of this show. Maybe us. If you buy enough of
Speaker 2: the products that advertise on our show, Sophie and I
Speaker 2: might get the money to bring Matt Damon onto the show.
Speaker 2: And I know that's what all of our listeners have
Speaker 2: been clamoring for all you dame heads out there.
Speaker 4: Oh I'm really mad.
Speaker 1: I really just want to take this as an excuse
Speaker 1: to talking about ben Affleck back tattoo again.
Speaker 2: I'll always talk about ben afflex back tattoo.
Speaker 1: I know it's great.
Speaker 2: Let's all think about that while these ads run. We're
Speaker 2: back and woay, I sure love ben afflex back tattoo
Speaker 2: of Phoenix.
Speaker 1: Ben af Back well done. Yeah yeah, that was relaxing
Speaker 1: for me, to be honest.
Speaker 2: In June of two thousand and four, This part's not
Speaker 2: going to be relaxing, Sophie, because in June of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein asked Brock Pierce if he knew the Winklevoss twins.
Speaker 2: Of course, those weird looking fuckers show up this I
Speaker 2: know now, the winkle Vi, if you're not familiar, were
Speaker 2: the guys who allegedly Mark Zuckerberg maybe stole the Facebook
Speaker 2: idea from and then they get hardcore into crypto after
Speaker 2: suing Mark Zuckerberg, I think several times. So they get
Speaker 2: really into crypto, and like every celebrity who gets really
Speaker 2: into crypto, they're totally not a scam crypto product eventually
Speaker 2: gets sued by the SEC right now. Thankfully, the winkle
Speaker 2: v were intelligent enough to donate heavily to Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: reelection campaign, and per tech Crunch, quote also backed his
Speaker 2: family's business ventures, which means his family's crypto grifts. So
Speaker 2: on January twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, just a few
Speaker 2: days before I started work on these episodes, the SEC
Speaker 2: dropped their lawsuit against Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by
Speaker 2: the Winklevoss twins.
Speaker 4: Right cool, So I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Pierce replies that he does know the Winklevoss twins,
Speaker 2: because of course he does, and Epstein says, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna send Setlana to them to get a download of
Speaker 2: the company that they're planning to launch. Right to get
Speaker 2: a look at the business they're starting, Anna great, great question.
Speaker 2: Sophie as Piance notes this was likely Svetlana Positiva, who
Speaker 2: is a Russian citizen who was the daughter of a
Speaker 2: former colonel in the Red Army. Her family lives in
Speaker 2: an apartment building initially constructed for NKVD staffers, and per
Speaker 2: the News England Herald, attended a Moscow university, once described
Speaker 2: as an incubator for the KGB. She joined a modeling
Speaker 2: agency as a young woman, one run by John Luke Brunell,
Speaker 2: who has been alleged to have recruited girls and women
Speaker 2: for Epstein.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Brunell is one of the people who is funneling young
Speaker 2: models towards Jeffrey Epstein. Svetlana claims that she was just
Speaker 2: a model interested in charitable endeavors and Epstein had a
Speaker 2: lot of connections in that world and so they became friends.
Speaker 2: Since Fetlana is alleged to have spent a lot of
Speaker 2: time with Prince Andrew, which he denies, and Epstein clearly
Speaker 2: connected her to other influential people, a lot of people
Speaker 2: suspect that she was a Russian agent working as a
Speaker 2: part of that government's influence operation to utilize Epstein as
Speaker 2: a clandestine source. And this may have been true. There
Speaker 2: are a number of connections to Epstein and Russian intelligence. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and this this episode isn't primarily about that stuff, but
Speaker 2: this may be one more example of it. We really
Speaker 2: don't know, Like like I don't know, Maybeana was but
Speaker 2: maybe maybe yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But also it is like kind of increasingly clear that
Speaker 4: like no matter what like a foreign government might want
Speaker 4: to do to us, it's pretty clear like our most
Speaker 4: powerful citizens were willing to do it anyway. So it's
Speaker 4: sort of just like like do you think alleged Wendy
Speaker 4: Dang's behavior. She wakes up and he's like, they already
Speaker 4: did everything I was ordered to make them do well.
Speaker 2: And that's the part of the thing is that like this,
Speaker 2: the most effective shit that the Russian government did using
Speaker 2: its influence operations worked because of how fucked up the
Speaker 2: US is. Right, they were they were like in pushing
Speaker 2: and kind of like fanning the flames of like vaccine
Speaker 2: denial and COVID denial and all this stuff. They were
Speaker 2: just standing on the shoulders of American giants who started
Speaker 2: that process here, right, No, you could usually see.
Speaker 4: All of everyone at the whatever the the what is
Speaker 4: whatever the KGB is now is just like it's this
Speaker 4: is easy mode. This is destabilization on cheat codes because
Speaker 4: they simply do it time and.
Speaker 2: You just find the levers like Epstein who have the
Speaker 2: connections you can push people in and you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: good stuff. Now. Another fun thing that's happening at the
Speaker 2: time is that Brock's friends are being sued over the
Speaker 2: massive number of sexual assaults that are alleged to have
Speaker 2: occurred during the parties that they threw. Right, So during
Speaker 2: this period of time, this is like twenty fourteen or so,
Speaker 2: Brock emails Epstein asking if he knows a lawyer named
Speaker 2: Jeff Herman, quote, he is suing four of my friends.
Speaker 2: Any dirt you have could prove helpful. Epstein described Herman as.
Speaker 3: In writing yeah, yeah, yeah, a voice note at least
Speaker 3: in an email, and Epstein responds, Yeah, Herman's a really
Speaker 3: bad guy.
Speaker 2: He represented several of the women who were accusing me
Speaker 2: of six christs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he sounds like a bad guy. Cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like a bad guy, Jeff. So Brock and
Speaker 2: Jeffrey's friendship grows closer and closer over this period of time,
Speaker 2: and Epstein continues to expand his involvement into crypto separate
Speaker 2: from Brock as well, he donates extensively to the MIT
Speaker 2: Media Lab, which was run by a guy named Joi Edo.
Speaker 2: Joichi Joi Edo was born in Kyoto, Japan, on June nineteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six. His family immigrated to Canada when he
Speaker 2: was three, and then the United States, where they ultimately
Speaker 2: settled in a suburb of Detroit. His father was a
Speaker 2: research scientist and his mother was a secretary for an
Speaker 2: early tech company that made photovoltaic products Ovonyx. He became
Speaker 2: Timothy Leary's godson, which should tell you most of what
Speaker 2: you need to know about the social and political dynamics
Speaker 2: with which joy Eto was raised. The company founder huh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: why old shit Right's child went to the company founder.
Speaker 2: Stanford Ofchinsky kind of adopted Itto as a protege when
Speaker 2: he was a little kid. He just sees this kid's
Speaker 2: really into you know, technology and to code, into like
Speaker 2: you know, engineering and stuff, and to the extent that
Speaker 2: like he starts just kind of like talking with him
Speaker 2: and helping him out and coaching him. He eventually hires
Speaker 2: him to do actual work with actual scientists when Itto
Speaker 2: is thirteen years old. Ofshinsky later claimed he was not
Speaker 2: a child in the conventional sense, And the fact that
Speaker 2: that's kind of the story for both brock Pierce and
Speaker 2: joy Eto is kind of interesting to me that like,
Speaker 2: these are both guys are going to be really tied
Speaker 2: to Epstein in some very shady ways involving underage people allegedly,
Speaker 2: and they're also both guys who don't have childhoods themselves. Interesting,
Speaker 2: interesting dynamic, right the family maintained Eto's family maintained strong
Speaker 2: connections to their Japanese and moved back to Japan when
Speaker 2: he was fourteen. He returns to the US after he
Speaker 2: graduates to get his computer science degree from Tufts University,
Speaker 2: which is where he meets future eBay billionaire Pierre oh
Speaker 2: midyar Ito drops out of two different colleges, ultimately because
Speaker 2: he's frustrated with the stupidity of the higher education system.
Speaker 2: Ito also becomes an influential part of the musical counterculture
Speaker 2: in Japan. He runs nightclubs in Japan. He helps to
Speaker 2: bring industrial music to the country, and he's also an
Speaker 2: angel investor in Kickstarter, in Twitter, as well as a
Speaker 2: shitload of other less well known ventures like photopedia.
Speaker 4: He wins, are the only cool person you've talked about
Speaker 4: so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not gonna stay cool for long. He wins
Speaker 2: a twenty eleven Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet
Speaker 2: Institute for his achievements advocating for digital freedom. He writes
Speaker 2: a monthly column for Wired, and he is a visiting
Speaker 2: professor at Harvard. He does a lot of shit, and
Speaker 2: then on April twenty fifth of twenty fifteen, he sends
Speaker 2: an email to Jeffreypp asking for money. Edo is in
Speaker 2: a tight spot. So the Bitcoin Foundation, which is the
Speaker 2: organization that is paying the salaries of three of the
Speaker 2: five developers for bitcoin, had just been declared bankrupt by
Speaker 2: one of its board members. Right, so suddenly three of
Speaker 2: the five people who are actually developing and furthering Bitcoin's
Speaker 2: evolution are no longer getting paid. And here's how Edo,
Speaker 2: in his email describes their importance is He's sending this
Speaker 2: to Epstein. The five core developers are like Linus Torvold's
Speaker 2: of Linux. They decide what changes are made to the
Speaker 2: core code, you know. Further informs Epstein that quote, many
Speaker 2: organizations scramble to step into the vacuum created by the
Speaker 2: Foundation and take control of the developers. He puts take
Speaker 2: control in quotation marks. I don't know who he's quoting,
Speaker 2: but I do know the fact that he puts emphasis
Speaker 2: on this is extremely important because he's framing this as
Speaker 2: whoever is paying these developers has control over these developers,
Speaker 2: who themselves control the future of bitcoin. Ito continues, We
Speaker 2: moved quickly talking to all of the various stakeholders, and
Speaker 2: the three developers decided to join the Media Lab. This
Speaker 2: is a big win for us. And he's sending this
Speaker 2: to Jeffrey. He's talking about this big win because Jeffrey
Speaker 2: made this big win possible because the money that the
Speaker 2: Media Lab uses to pay these developers comes from the
Speaker 2: Epstein Foundation. Ito asks Jeffrey for this money. Jeffrey sends
Speaker 2: him the money, and this email just quoted from is
Speaker 2: Itto celebrating after they basically hire these developers, buy these developers, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: By all the printing, the money printing, they buy like.
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly yeah, or at least yeah, the guys the
Speaker 2: keys to Fort Knox. Maybe yeah, well, or they buy
Speaker 2: like the actual money printing machine and now they can
Speaker 2: be turned to do whatever. And after kind of writing
Speaker 2: everything that I've I've quoted from here, Itto emails Epstein
Speaker 2: saying FYI used gift funds, that the money Epstein sent
Speaker 2: him to underwrite this which allowed us to move quickly
Speaker 2: and win this round.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 2: And Epstein's response to this email is just Gavin is clever.
Speaker 2: This is Gavin Andreson right. Again, very hard to say
Speaker 2: how much contact he had with Epstein, but Epstein is
Speaker 2: here responding to an email with Edo, who would have
Speaker 2: been in contact with Gavin, basically saying Gavin came up
Speaker 2: with the ideas to do that. That's kind of what
Speaker 2: he's insinuating, right, And again it suggests that he and
Speaker 2: Gavin are talking, that he and Gavin are strategizing about
Speaker 2: the future of bitcoin. As he is definitely strategizing about
Speaker 2: the future of bitcoin with joy Edo and providing the
Speaker 2: money to pay for three of these five developers. That
Speaker 2: is significant in the history of the development of bitcoin,
Speaker 2: right yeah now. Patrick Riley a minor aspiring right wing
Speaker 2: influencer who paid for a verified account on Twitter and
Speaker 2: mostly seems to shill a cryptocurrency called XRP is going
Speaker 2: to find I don't know if finally he's the first guy,
Speaker 2: but he finds these documents in the Epstein files and
Speaker 2: he's going to post about them, and that post is
Speaker 2: going to cause some really interesting stuff to happen. Before
Speaker 2: we get into the post he made about this revelation,
Speaker 2: I want to give you a relevant example of the
Speaker 2: previous kind of posts that Patrick L. Riley was making
Speaker 2: on Twitter. Right, you just have an understanding of what
Speaker 2: kind of man this is. Sophie'll have this up on
Speaker 2: video form. This is from August tenth of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: The unvaccinated are to people as XRP holders are to crypto.
Speaker 2: Both are of the highest quality and endured a trial
Speaker 2: that siphoned out the best of humanity. In fact, I
Speaker 2: bet the XRP community has the highest ratio of non
Speaker 2: vaxed in any crypto.
Speaker 4: What a cool guy.
Speaker 2: So that's the kind of thinker Patrick Riley? Yes, God,
Speaker 2: So after the most recent Epstein disclosure, Patrick makes a
Speaker 2: post and he attaches the email chain that I have
Speaker 2: been quoting from earlier to this post, and then he
Speaker 2: writes at the time this letter was written, there were
Speaker 2: around twelve thousand commits to Bitcoin's code. Today there are
Speaker 2: forty seven thousand, five hundred and eighty three commits to
Speaker 2: Bitcoin's code. This means that seventy four point seven nine
Speaker 2: percent of the Bitcoin core development code was committed after
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein took over the de facto senior management role
Speaker 2: as benefactor. He may not have been Setoshi, but he
Speaker 2: was absolutely running the executive direction of Bitcoin on behalf
Speaker 2: of Masad. What are the odds that there are back
Speaker 2: doors built into Bitcoin's code at this point? Porbably about
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, he spells it, Probably horribly these brain geniuses.
Speaker 2: So this sets off a wave of upset that verged
Speaker 2: on nausea from many crypto true believers. For the online right,
Speaker 2: the Epstein case is just about the most important thing
Speaker 2: on earth. But Bitcoin is also hallowed. It's a sacred
Speaker 2: tool for freeing money from the clutches of the state.
Speaker 2: This post from crypto bitloord is a relevant example of
Speaker 2: many such responses to to Patrick's I know, I know
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of Bitcoin's code comes directly from Geoffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein's investments. We've basically funded an elite pedophile ring since
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. I feel sick and like, yeah, you guys did,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like Rightley's wrong about a bunch. For one thing,
Speaker 2: there's there's not evidence that the fucking massa that Epstein
Speaker 2: was running bitcoin on behalf of messade. He was really
Speaker 2: running bitcoin, but he was in a position to influence it.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's not evidence that there's back doors
Speaker 2: in bitcoin's code because you wouldn't need to. It's easy
Speaker 2: to track bitcoin, Like what would the backdoor even be?
Speaker 4: Right? Also, you don't you like you were funding a
Speaker 4: global pedophile ring by participating a bitcoin before Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 4: was involved. That's the only thing it's good for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's its primary purpose. So after these posts
Speaker 2: go viral, Bitcoin friendly press organs have to leap to
Speaker 2: defend their favorite coin, right so that they've got to
Speaker 2: after fucking Patrick post this and people start freaking out
Speaker 2: over like, oh my god, refunding the pedophile cabal. Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein directed seventy five percent a bit, which also isn't
Speaker 2: really accurate, right, Yeah, it's just that seventy five percent
Speaker 2: of it was written after this, These developers are acquired
Speaker 2: by joy Edo's lab, which is and that acquisition is
Speaker 2: fund anyway. Whatever, Here's how the Bitcoin Academy website tried
Speaker 2: to smooth all this over the funded salaries for bitcoin
Speaker 2: core developers like Vladimir Wanderland during a cast strapped period
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen. But here's the kicker. Epstein's
Speaker 2: money flowed through MIT systems directly to developers. As one
Speaker 2: x user bluntly put it, funding a university lab does
Speaker 2: not equal running bitcoin. And this is technically true. But
Speaker 2: when you pay the salary of three out of five
Speaker 2: people whose votes can determine the future of bitcoin, it's
Speaker 2: not unreasonable to say you might kind of run bitcoin, right,
Speaker 2: Like aso, it's not unreasonable to say you have influence
Speaker 2: in it. I'm not even saying he ran it, but
Speaker 2: he's in a position to influence it, right.
Speaker 4: And the technically true of it is like what a
Speaker 4: what a like grasp of that straw, dude, Like that's sure,
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't literally guiding every step bitcoin took, but
Speaker 2: he was in a position to guide the steps he
Speaker 2: wanted to and to make you know, yeah, and again
Speaker 2: The only counter argument here really is you're arguing that, like, well,
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein probably just spent half a million dollars to
Speaker 2: get no benefit. He probably just sent that money out
Speaker 2: because he didn't want any power or influence in bitcoin, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that seems likely for Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 4: But also like like the way power works is like
Speaker 4: simply by not allowing your competitor to exert influence, you
Speaker 4: have exerted influence like her literally done true nothing right
Speaker 4: and as long as someone else that he didn't like
Speaker 4: wasn't doing something something.
Speaker 2: With it, doing a thing, that's doing a thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Now this half assed defense of bitcoin continues. Email show
Speaker 2: Edo thanked Epstein for allowing us to move quickly and
Speaker 2: hiring bitcoin talent. But let's be real, MIT's DCI was
Speaker 2: one of many funders today, groups like Brink and the
Speaker 2: Human Rights Foundation transparently support bitcoin development. Epstein's role a
Speaker 2: shady donor, not a senior manager of bitcoin. And again
Speaker 2: this is true and no one's surprise. Patrick Riley's tweet
Speaker 2: was nonsense. Again, but Epstein is clearly influencing the development
Speaker 2: of bitcoin in the mid odds. I don't see any
Speaker 2: other way of describing this, or at least he has
Speaker 2: influence on the men who decided how bitcoin would develop.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Bitcoin Academy notes that per the structure of the deal,
Speaker 2: developers were unaware of the funding source, and maybe that's true.
Speaker 2: Quick audience pull, How many listeners think Jeffrey Epstein would
Speaker 2: give up a half million dollars if he didn't think
Speaker 2: it would impact what the developers he was paying for
Speaker 2: would do?
Speaker 1: Quick pull?
Speaker 2: Right, Like, do you think that they've never learned where
Speaker 2: the money came from or who they had to keep happy?
Speaker 4: Or they wouldn't. But that's the thing. It's like, like
Speaker 4: I think these people are like, oh, there wasn't like
Speaker 4: a direct like meeting which just did it for He
Speaker 4: just did it for nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like, no, he did it because he
Speaker 2: wanted a benefit to make.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's just ways to communicate what you want.
Speaker 2: I know there's a degree which this is less satisfying
Speaker 2: because I can't say here's what he did specifically to
Speaker 2: influence the development of crypto. I just know that he
Speaker 2: put himself and spent a lot of money to be
Speaker 2: in a position where he could influence the development of crypto,
Speaker 2: which means he was doing fucking something right, and even
Speaker 2: Bitcoin Academy couldn't entirely polish this turd. The file show
Speaker 2: Epstein to cozy up to crypto figures. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: he reportedly invested in Blockstream via joy Itdo's fund, though
Speaker 2: back clarifies Epstein had no direct or indirect ties to
Speaker 2: the company. Emails reveal Epstein pitching digital currency ideas to
Speaker 2: a Saudi advisor in twenty sixteen, but zero evidence exists
Speaker 2: of him touching bitcoin code. His real skill name dropping
Speaker 2: Satoshi's associates at parties, And this is true, his real
Speaker 2: skill is name dropping famous people. But that skill has
Speaker 2: value because people know Jeffrey can connect you to influential
Speaker 2: and wealthy people and to funding, which is what allows
Speaker 2: him to influence people, including the people who guided the
Speaker 2: development of bitcoin. Yeah, it's just there's not a counter argument.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein had the opportunity to significantly influence the development
Speaker 2: of bitcoin and cryptocurrency as all right.
Speaker 4: So fart matters. These two episodes have been weirdly like
Speaker 4: he would be an odious person genuinely without the sex traffic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, like if he was not a pedophile
Speaker 2: he would still be a monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that is kind of the surprising thing to
Speaker 2: me because previously I'd been like, well, obviously he was
Speaker 2: a bad guy because he was a sex trafficker. But
Speaker 2: if he hadn't done any of the sex trafficking, I
Speaker 2: would have assumed he was just another asshole finance bro. No. No,
Speaker 2: he was unfortunately more influential than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Alas anyway, that's uh, that's gonna do it for part
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 4: Wow. I mean, as far as these go, this is
Speaker 4: this has been weirdly less stomach churning than I thought
Speaker 4: when you said we were going to be going through
Speaker 4: the Epstein files. I will say it a weird way
Speaker 4: because you.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not. I'm trying to focus it on
Speaker 2: what I think is an interesting journey, which is how
Speaker 2: Epstein influences the development of micro transactions and video games,
Speaker 2: of cryptocurrency, and of like the burgeoning far right, which
Speaker 2: is more of what we're going to talk about in
Speaker 2: the last two episodes. I think that's really compelling. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the and we've done like four episodes on Nexteine where
Speaker 2: we focus just on the sex crimes we are we do.
Speaker 2: We've talked about a lot of alleged sex crimes in this,
Speaker 2: like he and Brock talking about girls and talking about girls.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's just not as much. You know, it's
Speaker 4: just odd to me that there's so much other stuff.
Speaker 4: I guess I just I don't know. I hadn't occurred
Speaker 4: to me, really.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think it didn't to a lot
Speaker 2: of people. He knew he was influential, but I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have guessed a lot of this stuff was going on, right, Like, no,
Speaker 2: it's not even surprising. It's just I wouldn't have It's
Speaker 2: just weird for him to have had an influence here,
Speaker 2: Like it makes sense, Like, oh, yeah, I get given
Speaker 2: the guy he was, why he got into far right stuff,
Speaker 2: why he was sharing all this racist ship that we'll
Speaker 2: talk about in the next episodes, why he wanted to
Speaker 2: get into bitcoin, all this stuff. It makes sense when
Speaker 2: you say it. But I just would I didn't guess
Speaker 2: it ahead of time, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think I'm not surprised, but I'm like, oh fuck, uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I didn't call that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just an interesting angle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the Where's Waldo of evil villain.
Speaker 2: He's a where's the where's waldough of evil pedophiles?
Speaker 4: Kilroy?
Speaker 2: Yeah he's a Kilroy type dude. Well, no one knows
Speaker 2: Kilroy was here. Was like an early meme, but we
Speaker 2: don't really know, like why, like what it was about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well well well.
Speaker 1: Well more next week for folks.
Speaker 2: Wow. Uh, Sophie, I do have to say, Uh, you've
Speaker 2: been You've been caught by the subreddit why breaking. Sophie
Speaker 2: is not a real person. Sophie is an advanced artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence built to serve the needs of the pod. We
Speaker 2: have this confirmed. It's in the White Papers proof Sophie
Speaker 2: Ray Lichtermann is an anagram for both AI policeman Thresher
Speaker 2: and America's hit Their phone is actually strong evidence. Sophie,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't, I haven't I have a
Speaker 2: double checked. This could just be a lie. Probably is
Speaker 2: a lie.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've done no work.
Speaker 4: That is my favorite part about conspiracy theorists in general
Speaker 4: is the amount of time they think people doing evil
Speaker 4: stuff spent anagramming.
Speaker 2: The amount of importance anagrams have to the global pedophile
Speaker 2: ely is really funny.
Speaker 4: Like, how do we see the actual correspondence of the
Speaker 4: global pedophil. They can't spell.
Speaker 2: They can't fucking spell these words.
Speaker 4: How are they gonna do it? Anagram?
Speaker 1: Ok?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jeffrey Epstein can barely use a keyboard.
Speaker 1: This is actually on the subreddit. I thought you were
Speaker 1: just there's forty three comments.
Speaker 4: Come on, guys, I.
Speaker 2: Know so, I'm sorry. I thought it was funny. God,
Speaker 2: good stuff. Andrew? Did you plug your pluggables yet?
Speaker 4: Sure? Did Starter Trek? I don't know. Thanks, thanks for
Speaker 4: having me. This is I won't. I cannot in good
Speaker 4: conscience say it's fun to be here, but it's not.
Speaker 4: We illuminated, but you are here. I have a pluggable
Speaker 4: touch crap touch crab. You know what I should actually say.
Speaker 4: Solidarity and Snacks is the mutual aid crew that I
Speaker 4: run with out here in Los Angeles. They're great folks.
Speaker 4: Solidarity and Snacks. You can find them.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, everybody, This has been Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 2: a podcast that you just listened to. Shame on you.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website hoole
Speaker 1: Zone Media dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Full video episodes that Behind the Bastards are now streaming
Speaker 1: on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me
Speaker 1: on Netflix you don't miss an episode. For clips in
Speaker 1: our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind the Bastards. We
Speaker 1: love about forty percent of you, statistically speaking,