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Part Three: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

Summary

This episode, part three of a series on Jeffrey Epstein, delves into his activities after his release from prison, focusing less on the sex crimes and more on his ideological and financial influence. The hosts examine newly released emails and documents that reveal Epstein’s deep fascination with cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin, which he saw as a tool to disrupt U.S. economic dominance and create a new financial system. He actively pitched this idea to powerful figures, including attempting to broker a meeting between Vladimir Putin and a Norwegian former prime minister to advocate for Russia adopting Bitcoin as a national reserve.

The discussion traces Epstein’s connections within academia, notably his funding relationship with MIT’s Media Lab through Joi Ito, which allowed him to influence crypto research and development. The episode reveals how relatively small amounts of money (like $850,000 to MIT) granted him significant access and sway over influential technologists.

A major focus is Epstein’s drift into the right-wing media ecosystem. Evidence shows he was reading and sharing Breitbart articles by 2016, donated $25,000 to a French white nationalist YouTuber, and had a pivotal meeting with 4chan founder Christopher ‘Moot’ Poole the day before Poole created the site’s infamous /pol/ (Politically Incorrect) board. His correspondence with figures like Peter Thiel reveals a shared desire to see the collapse of the liberal democratic order, viewing chaos as a fire-sale opportunity to acquire assets and power. The episode paints a picture of Epstein not just as a predator, but as an active participant in shaping the reactionary, anti-democratic currents that define much of today’s political and technological landscape.

Recommendations

Newsletters

  • Garbage Day by Ryan Broderick — A newsletter cited multiple times in the episode for its analysis of the Epstein files, particularly regarding the connections between Epstein, Peter Thiel, and the creation of 4chan’s /pol/ board.

People

  • Alexander Dugin — A Russian far-right philosopher whose work on a ‘multipolar world’ and the collapse of U.S. hegemony was recommended to Epstein by an associate in a 2014 email. Epstein’s circle saw his ideas as ‘interesting and perhaps quite useful.’
  • Jean-François Gariépy — A French white nationalist YouTuber and influencer. Epstein donated $25,000 to his channel in 2015, which Gariépy announced in an episode featuring Richard Spencer. Gariépi advocates for a white ethnostate and male ownership of wives.

Websites

  • Breitbart.com — The far-right news website taken over by Steve Bannon. By 2016, Epstein was regularly reading and sharing Breitbart articles with his contacts, signaling his absorption into that media ecosystem.
  • 4chan /pol/ board — The ‘Politically Incorrect’ board on 4chan, created by Christopher ‘Moot’ Poole the day after he met with Jeffrey Epstein. It became a central hub for neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda, and Epstein was later a frequent user of the site.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:06:55 — Epstein’s 2013 Pitch to Putin via Bitcoin — The hosts discuss an email from May 2013 where Jeffrey Epstein, through an intermediary, tried to broker a meeting with Vladimir Putin. His pitch framed Bitcoin as the “Sputnik of the 21st century,” arguing that Russia could leapfrog the West by adopting cryptocurrency to reinvent the global financial system. This reveals Epstein’s post-prison mindset: actively seeking to disrupt the U.S.-led economic order and his belief in crypto as a revolutionary tool.
  • 00:14:25 — Epstein’s ‘Social Good Currency’ and Richard Branson — The conversation shifts to Epstein’s 2013 emails with billionaire Richard Branson. Epstein pitched an idea for a “new social good currency” to disrupt finance. In a shocking revelation, Branson later invited Epstein to his private island, telling him to “bring your harem.” This exchange, and Branson’s subsequent weak denial, strongly implicates Branson in Epstein’s world and highlights how Epstein maintained relationships with the ultra-wealthy despite his conviction.
  • 00:22:30 — Epstein’s Funding and Influence at MIT — The hosts detail Epstein’s financial relationship with MIT, facilitated by Joi Ito. Epstein donated at least $850,000 to Ito’s projects from 2002-2017 and likely directed other donations. MIT continued accepting his money for nearly a decade after his sex crime conviction. The discussion underscores how Epstein used relatively modest sums to gain influence over cutting-edge crypto research and headhunt developers, showing how academia was compromised for access to his wealth and network.
  • 00:29:47 — Epstein and Peter Thiel on Bitcoin and Trans Issues — Examining a 2014 email exchange with Peter Thiel about New York’s proposed Bitcoin regulations, Epstein displays a confused understanding of crypto, comparing its ambiguous nature to gender classification. The hosts note the irony, as Epstein would later become a funder of anti-trans rhetoric. This email shows him grappling with—and appropriating—progressive concepts about fluidity to describe a financial scheme, highlighting his incoherent but influential thinking.
  • 00:35:39 — Epstein Admits Crypto is a ‘Ponzi’ in MIT Emails — In a damning 2018 email chain with Joi Ito about a crypto project, Epstein explicitly calls the venture a “mini ponzi” and discusses “gambling manipulation.” He advises that it’s “unlikely to cause trouble except for high value targets.” This is a rare moment where Epstein, the con man, drops the visionary facade and admits the fraudulent nature of the schemes he was helping to shape through prestigious institutions like MIT.
  • 00:51:56 — Epstein Meets 4chan’s Moot Before Creating /pol/ — The hosts reveal a crucial connection: Christopher ‘Moot’ Poole, founder of 4chan, met with Jeffrey Epstein in person on October 24, 2011. The very next day, Poole created 4chan’s /pol/ (Politically Incorrect) board, which quickly became a neo-Nazi hub. While the exact conversation is unknown, the timing is highly suspicious, suggesting Epstein may have encouraged or influenced the creation of a key online pipeline for right-wing radicalization.
  • 01:05:13 — Epstein Shares Breitbart Article with Obama Official — In May 2016, Epstein emailed a Breitbart article to Kathy Ruemmler, White House Counsel to Barack Obama. The article attacked Hillary Clinton using language from Bill Clinton’s accusers. Ruemmler’s response—‘what’s more disturbing is that you are reading Breitbart’—indicates Epstein was newly engrossed in far-right media and didn’t realize how extreme it would seem to his Democratic friend. This marks his organic descent into the right-wing rabbit hole.
  • 01:13:02 — Epstein and Peter Thiel Celebrate Brexit and Collapse — Following the 2016 Brexit vote, Epstein and Peter Thiel exchange celebratory emails. Epstein talks about the ‘amazing new alliances’ forming and references their shared view that ‘zero interest rates were too high.’ Most tellingly, Epstein states, ‘finding things on their way to collapse was much easier than finding the next bargain.’ This crystallizes their shared goal: to profit from the destruction of the liberal democratic order, buying assets at a fire sale during societal collapse.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Behind the Bastards
  • Author: Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
  • Category: Society & Culture History News
  • Published: 2026-02-24T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 01:06:22

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] welcome back to the jeffrey epstein podcast extravaganza uh also known on normal weeks

[00:00:12] as behind the bastards a podcast about bad people for the last two weeks that’s meant

[00:00:19] jeffrey epstein particularly getting into what the new epstein file releases have revealed about

[00:00:25] how jeffrey epstein helped build the modern world speaking of the modern world our guest today is a

[00:00:31] part of it andrew t thanks thanks for having me i uh yeah i guess i i would say a part of the

[00:00:40] modern world under protest at this point yeah under protest isn’t everyone aren’t we all under

[00:00:45] protest i’m only here because i have to be yeah yeah the only part of the modern world i want

[00:00:50] anything to do with is my bed uh and they make me leave that for like 16 hours a day it’s not

[00:00:55] you know what though being one of those i hate the modern world guys i do want to stress i’m not

[00:01:00] one of those it was better in rome what happened to classical architecture either i would have

[00:01:05] hated that too anything where i have to get out of my bed bad society bed only we need to yeah we

[00:01:12] need to rebuild society entirely around naps um that that is my strong opinion unfortunately i

[00:01:19] think jeffrey epstein might have agreed with it at least for himself because he liked to well

[00:01:25] there wasn’t a lot of sleep it’s we yeah anyway andrew where can people find you on the internet

[00:01:30] before we continue oh god thanks thanks for letting me get it in before the fucking real

[00:01:34] crimes start oh yeah the real fucking crimes too i yeah i don’t know andrew t um everywhere i have

[00:01:42] um doing a podcast called starter trek um on suboptimalpods.com my main podcast is yo is

[00:01:48] this racist but we’ve been having a lot of fun doing talking star trek with my co-host tawny

[00:01:52] newsome who is uh i don’t know if you’re i love that

[00:01:55] stuff if you’re star spoiler alert people but um she’s a beloved reveal happens in episode five of

[00:02:03] starfleet academy yeah the new star trek yeah i don’t know star trek is happening that’s all well

[00:02:09] that’s a good thing to be happening we love star trek almost as much as we love the opposite of

[00:02:15] star trek which is about hearing about a wealthy pedophile this yeah yeah um well also wealthy

[00:02:22] technocrat a wealthy technocrat pedophile which is like a wealthy technocrat pedophile which is

[00:02:25] exactly the sort of person star trek got rid of in the in the idealized future in gene roddenberry’s

[00:02:34] beautiful dream no more jeffrey epstein’s because of literally this they got rid of people like this

[00:02:40] and in modern times we’re recording these episodes on the day that glaine maxwell’s lawyer

[00:02:46] uh has said that she will not talk unless she’s given clemency but if given clemency she can prove

[00:02:52] that both donald j trump and

[00:02:55] uh bill clinton are innocent so um that’s that’s cool it’s tough for me because i hate that stuff

[00:03:04] but i also love people pleading the fifth i’m a big fan of the fifth so you know um it’s tough

[00:03:10] it’s tough these are these are the times that try men’s souls but i have to say i have questions

[00:03:15] frankly i have questions it’s the best it’s the best amendment easily yeah the fifth are you

[00:03:21] i mean i’m surprised she didn’t at this point you’re just

[00:03:25] it on a dead man right like this is this is exactly we bay eating up murders once he’s in

[00:03:31] for life yeah i mean we’ll see how it goes but i have some theories that you know yeah i mean i

[00:03:37] don’t anything could happen at this point i we’re not talking a lot about gillen in these episodes

[00:03:41] no just because they’re more focused on jeffrey and the nature of his communication we’re not

[00:03:47] talking really a lot about the sex stuff in this episode because it’s more about all of the

[00:03:51] different i mean we’re talking about to the extent that that’s part of how he influenced people we’re

[00:03:55] like what stuff jeffrey came to believe and how he tried to shift the world using his position of

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[00:06:45] so in may of 2013 jeffrey epstein was actively working through an

[00:06:55] intermediary to broker an in-person meeting with the most obvious it’s a match made in heaven

[00:07:00] russian president vladimir putin and obviously if you’re jeff epstein in 2013 trying to get an

[00:07:07] in-person sit down with vladdy poots what are you wanting to talk about bitcoin of course

[00:07:13] what else could you want to talk about vladimir putin with but bitcoin in 2013

[00:07:18] um his intermediary in these conversations was thorbjorn jaglund uh who was the first person to

[00:07:25] who is a norwegian labor party politician and the former prime minister of norway uh he has been

[00:07:30] he’s not doing well as a result of the revelation that he and epstein were quite close people are

[00:07:36] very unhappy with him over in norway um god what’s that like imagine a leader facing a consequence

[00:07:44] for his association with a pedophile weird yeah yeah for specifically trying to broker a meeting

[00:07:51] with that pedophile and vladimir putin and it’s it’s weird because

[00:07:55] you can tell epstein took this really seriously this is a guy who kind of seems to have i mean

[00:08:01] slept through a lot of the serious parts of his life when he’s emailing with most of his

[00:08:05] rich and famous friends he spells fucking every other word wrong it’s like watching

[00:08:10] i mean it’s like a nine-year-old typing right like it’s it’s he’s not dedicated to sounding good

[00:08:17] it’s giving like bad aol instant messenger messages like it’s giving aol yeah and so as we talked

[00:08:24] about in the last episodes what’s the difference between the two of them what’s the difference between

[00:08:25] the two of them what’s the difference between the two of them what’s the difference between

[00:08:25] jeffrey like has a long multi-paragraph email where everything’s basically spelled right and

[00:08:30] written properly you are like oh he was taking this this was important to him yeah like he was

[00:08:34] this was an all hands on deck situation right and so one of these emails that jeffrey sends to

[00:08:40] the former pm of norway about trying to meet with putin is one of these times where he writes a long

[00:08:46] email with pretty good spelling and grammar so he must have typed this one out somewhere other

[00:08:50] than his ipad here’s a segment from that email this is his pitch to to this guy

[00:08:55] when this is his pitch to this guy to deliver to putin right this is how he’s basically trying

[00:09:00] to convince putin he’s got to get into the bitcoin game quote when spudnik was announced the west was

[00:09:05] caught flat-footed the same can now happen with russia taking the lead in finance instead of

[00:09:10] competing with the west for nanotech copying silicon valley looking for startups playing

[00:09:14] catch-up to microsoft apple google and the like russia can get out in front and leapfrog the

[00:09:19] global community by reinventing the financial system of the 21st century i’m bitcoin i’m

[00:09:25] the sputnik of the 21st century i genuinely have to say it is a little heartening slash

[00:09:32] disheartening that these people genuinely believe their bullshit like this was a private conversation

[00:09:38] he like i’m just yeah like because i i on some level just wish that bitcoin people in private

[00:09:45] when the when the billionaires are talking to each other like oh this is going to be great for

[00:09:49] money laundering and like whatever it’s actually used for it is a little insane to hear him like

[00:09:55] hyping like uh like a like a twitter person right now and it’s hard to say because like

[00:10:01] one of the versions of the story is that epstein was one of the marks right that the bitcoin people

[00:10:06] were willing to talk to him and be friends with him primarily even more than the prostitutions

[00:10:12] the child like sex trafficking stuff because jeffrey could connect him to a lot of people

[00:10:18] with real money to put into the bitcoin system and maybe they never maybe they were just playing

[00:10:21] with jeffrey and maybe he was a fool or maybe jeffrey knows maybe he’s

[00:10:25] in on the con and the idea is if russia back if russia gets a bitcoin reserve a shitload of their

[00:10:31] real currency can flow out to the people like us who have money in crypto and we can get real money

[00:10:36] out of the like i don’t know what the plan was but also like trying to talk to putin like an

[00:10:41] actual bitcoin mark is a it’s fucking nuts is that’s so crazy he’s too smart for that he’s

[00:10:48] way too smart for that like he’s not vladimir putin is not an idiot he’s not at least he’s

[00:10:55] his plenty of mistakes but none of them are like and then he adopted bitcoin as the currency for

[00:11:01] the russian federation that’s a little like that’s just there’s no benefit in that to him

[00:11:07] like it would only benefit these ass it’s always 1d chess it’s 1d like these people are not smarter

[00:11:12] than you they’re actively dumber than you yes and that’s hang on to that yeah hang on to it

[00:11:20] and celebrate it and it’s also funny to me just the idea that like

[00:11:25] sputnik was the soviet union succeeding and doing a thing that honestly before they did it

[00:11:31] was debated by a number of people like can we even do stuff like this like is this fully possible can

[00:11:36] you get a working satellite into orbit there was like debate for quite a while as to how

[00:11:41] possible that was and then they figure it out like ahead of us and it’s this amazing moment

[00:11:46] for all mankind they prove you can do this thing that hadn’t been done before and the difference

[00:11:51] between it and saying yeah this thing that we are already doing if you just

[00:11:55] rip it off you’ll be doing the sputnik of the 20 which really says a lot about the 21st century

[00:12:00] but like our sputnik is ripping off a thing that doesn’t do anything and already exists like

[00:12:06] amazing stuff jeffrey if you have the bold vision to crater your economy and the global economy you

[00:12:12] will be the first to do that you can do it you can do it yeah no one else has made bitcoin their

[00:12:17] national currency yet because it’s a bad idea um epstein goes on to claim that crypto offers the

[00:12:22] potential for a much more advanced disruptive

[00:12:25] securitization scheme than anything previously achievable and that russia was in a unique

[00:12:30] position to execute on a grand vision of a new form of money he insists that thorbjorn needs

[00:12:36] to secure him and putin a minimum two to three hour long meeting to discuss all of this and i

[00:12:41] find that so funny that he’s like begging to set up this meeting with vladimir putin who has no

[00:12:45] interest in him at least no interest in meeting with him it doesn’t seem like uh you know maybe

[00:12:51] he was utilizing him as an asset there’s some evidence of that but that also doesn’t mean

[00:12:55] putin himself was directly involved because he’s got other shit on his plate the idea that that

[00:12:59] jeffrey’s begging for this meeting is but it has to be at least two or three hours i won’t sit down

[00:13:03] for anything less it’s like man if you if you can get you 20 minutes with putin you’d be happy for

[00:13:07] it don’t don’t fucking bullshit of shit like me um and putin’s showing better judgment than anyone

[00:13:13] else in these four episodes declined to meet with jeffrey epstein at least as far as we know

[00:13:18] wow well listen at least being smart enough to not agree to it

[00:13:25] fucking email puts him in a fucking email right yeah why is he’s at least ahead of everyone he’s

[00:13:33] he’s beating bobby kotick of activision blizzard and peter teal that’s for sure yeah so this whole

[00:13:41] dalliance jeffrey has was trying to get russia on the bitcoin train is not influential because

[00:13:47] of the outcome because nothing really happens here but it’s it’s important because of what

[00:13:51] it says about where jeff’s head was in 2013 by this point i just

[00:13:55] really don’t like you calling him jeff i don’t like you don’t i don’t like you calling him jeff

[00:14:02] it’s like too humanizing to call him jeff you gotta do it every now and then jeff don’t jeffy

[00:14:07] no little jeffaroo nope um so by 2013 whether or not he’d ever read dugan’s work he was basically

[00:14:14] pitching putin on bitcoin’s potential to contribute to a multi-polar world by ending u.s economic

[00:14:20] dominance in emails he sent around the same time to billionaire richard branson epstein pitched his

[00:14:25] idea for what he called a new social good currency quote creating a new social good

[00:14:31] currency similar to the creation of airline mile awards special drawing rights etc would be the

[00:14:36] most disruptive of all advances the financial system has outgrown its purpose allowing people

[00:14:40] to conduct exchanges with third-party trust and ease of transaction so what you kind of see is

[00:14:46] there’s this budding interest jeffrey has to disrupt the global order which is a different

[00:14:52] picture of the man than i had when he just seemed to be this guy who was very

[00:14:55] deeply tied to the elite system and seemed to really have all of his power tied to the maintenance

[00:15:03] of that system as opposed to a guy who after he gets out of prison clearly wants to burn stuff

[00:15:08] down to some extent right in a way that’s very familiar with how a lot of right-coded people

[00:15:13] talk today a lot of these influential folks like bannon yeah i i mean yes and no though

[00:15:18] because they don’t really mean burning it down like well they mean burn the fed

[00:15:25] less democracy that kind of stuff right they want to disrupt the system they rose up in right they

[00:15:30] don’t want it to keep working the way it has right but they they want it to they want society to look

[00:15:36] largely they want it to look more like russia which is like yeah they’re in charge but yeah

[00:15:41] it’s basically the same society and i think it’s just a weird yeah i think you can see a lot of

[00:15:47] that here in that okay so he goes to prison for a thing that if you’re a russian oligarch who

[00:15:52] stays in good with putin you don’t go to prison for the stuff jeffrey epstein was

[00:15:55] doing right right so maybe that’s kind of it as he’s like well we ought to be more like we we need

[00:15:59] to be more of an oligarchy of a dictatorial oligarchy because then people me and other

[00:16:05] people like me won’t have consequences to deal with right maybe that’s why he’s like that’s how

[00:16:09] he’s thinking you know right so richard branson and epstein are two more that’s another famed

[00:16:15] epstein friendship right and his his his close relationship with branson was a two-way street

[00:16:20] and a little later that same year 2013 branson offered epstein

[00:16:25] on fixing his public image after the whole registered sex offender thing he assured

[00:16:30] epstein that he could repair jeffrey’s public profile if epstein could just get bill gates

[00:16:36] to vouch for him and this is branson saying like basically this is what you need to get bill gates

[00:16:40] to say about you to fix your image quote you’ve been a brilliant advisor to him that you slipped

[00:16:44] up many years ago by sleeping with a 17 and a half year old woman and were punished for it

[00:16:48] that you’ve more than learned your lesson and have done nothing that’s against the law since

[00:16:52] right if only bill gates would say but can you

[00:16:55] imagine if bill gates in 2014 or so had come up and like look did jeffrey epstein sleep with

[00:17:00] the child yes but he’s learned his lesson and we all need to forgive him none of this would be

[00:17:05] happening god i mean yeah all these men are fucking disgusting they’re disgusting it’s not

[00:17:15] it’s not just disgusting it’s completely out of touch the fact that richard branson it shows you

[00:17:20] how warping the bubble of nothing but other rich guys is yeah that

[00:17:25] richard branson is like who’s someone who all americans love and respect love yeah yeah bill

[00:17:31] gates obviously obviously everyone loves bill i hate all these no we don’t we never did yeah

[00:17:39] i guess it’s just like get the get the nerd to tell to tell everyone you’re you’re not committing

[00:17:46] crimes is yeah they’re they’re just like he’s the squarest one around right right bill gates you know

[00:17:55] it’s a great shooter so on a related note that same year 2013 this is a big year for branson and

[00:18:01] epstein richard branson reversed the normal order of things and he’s this is the only time i found

[00:18:05] this happening although i haven’t been through all of the millions of files released but branson

[00:18:09] invited epstein to his private island you know there we go finally somebody’s willing to pay

[00:18:16] jeff back for his hospitality you know um christ he i mean look branson’s island can’t be i guess

[00:18:24] at the risk of

[00:18:25] it can’t be that good i i don’t know right i i don’t know i would have said before this i would

[00:18:33] have guessed it had it was like a higher age bracket of the yeah people but i don’t actually

[00:18:40] know that that’s true now so yeah right yeah is this just like the fucking cheap version of

[00:18:46] epstein’s island or is epstein’s island the cheap pedophile island right that’s also possible we

[00:18:51] simply don’t know maybe the really good pedophile islands don’t tell

[00:18:55] have emails where they talk about yeah yeah um so branson added to the invite anytime you’re in

[00:19:03] the area would love to see you as long as you bring your harem and all and with a cat exclamation

[00:19:08] point after it so i would say that implicates richard branson in some sex crash yeah christ

[00:19:14] via email now my favorite thing about this my favorite thing about all this is the denials

[00:19:19] all these people have to have their spokespeople issue after this shit comes out and once this

[00:19:25] shit is out branson’s referring to his harem and inviting him to his island i guess he’s probably

[00:19:30] doing some sex crimes branson’s spokesperson told journalists with the independent that no no no no

[00:19:35] the harem he was referring to were just adult members of epstein’s staff obviously jesus

[00:19:42] obviously yeah who were those yeah what are you talking about not named not named which ones right

[00:19:51] can we get a name yeah so the worst and again i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know

[00:19:55] i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know

[00:19:55] does this mean that jeffrey was just bringing bringing children over when branson was there

[00:20:01] was he was branson one of the ones that he plied with teenage girls or was branson one of the ones

[00:20:05] that he plied with adult women right no way to know and honestly i don’t care if you’re jeffrey

[00:20:10] epstein’s friend at this point and inviting him to islands i consider you guilty of everything he was

[00:20:15] you know yeah yeah yeah that i think that’s reasonable if you’re going to islands with him

[00:20:20] right yeah on a regular basis if you’re inviting him to islands and talking about his

[00:20:25] if you’re advising bill gates to be his like no pedophile spokesperson yeah then um

[00:20:33] yeah i’m gonna go with i’m gonna go with uh i’m gonna say no i’m gonna go not a great guy

[00:20:39] yeah just the dumbest frat house shit it’s always it’s it’s never better than that yeah

[00:20:45] yeah well no that’s worse than that when it comes to question of like well why aren’t these guys

[00:20:50] getting charged well because all you have is branson saying bring your harem and that’s not

[00:20:55] branson didn’t say bring specifically the underage members i don’t want anyone older than

[00:20:59] six that’s not in an email right so there’s not i don’t think there’s anything to charge branson

[00:21:04] off of at this point maybe there will be maybe there’s more stuff that that we don’t know i’m

[00:21:08] not against it i’m just like yeah like it i’m not surprised a lot of these guys aren’t getting

[00:21:13] charged yet because that’s not quite enough you know to actually convict someone the worst harms

[00:21:20] epstein committed and the worst crimes his friends are implicated in took place offline

[00:21:25] conversations we have documented are mostly either precursors or adjacent to the really bad

[00:21:30] stuff every now and then you get something truly fucking horrifying like there’s an email chain

[00:21:34] in which one of epstein’s friends is like hey who is that gynecologist you sent your victims to

[00:21:38] and epstein like gives him the name of a gynecologist and they’re like yeah you really

[00:21:42] keep this guy busy right like there’s some horrifying shit like that in there but for the

[00:21:47] most part it’s like quips like this bring your harem and then like one interesting thing to do

[00:21:55] or like not for online right where because there will be points where people will be made and then

[00:22:00] they’ll be like hey let’s take this to a phone call right um so it’s just hard to kind of say

[00:22:05] what the exact extent of a lot of stuff was and because so many follow-up conversations that he

[00:22:10] had not even about the criminal stuff about stuff like crypto um took place in person or over the

[00:22:16] phone and so i can say he was trying to influence the development of bitcoin and crypto he wanted

[00:22:21] and he got that influence what did he do with it not entirely clear to me

[00:22:25] what i can say is that joey ito and epstein’s friendship continued to blossom throughout the

[00:22:30] aughts and this was remember ito is a big wig at mit he’s basically like running the lab that’s

[00:22:36] doing like their crypto development looking at a lot of stuff like that um and he’s the guy who

[00:22:41] plied jeffrey to pay the salaries of those three big bitcoin debts um and this is the friendship

[00:22:46] between ito and epstein is very good for mit the school receives at least 850 000 from the

[00:22:53] foundation

[00:22:55] to ito’s projects from 2002 to 2017 in addition to other donations you also have to keep in mind

[00:23:01] that given how epstein operated he was responsible for an unknowable amount of donations to mit from

[00:23:06] other rich guys and foundations right right he donated 850k to mit over this period who knows

[00:23:13] how much other money he got sent there by being epstein ito and mit continued to accept epstein’s

[00:23:19] money for almost a decade after his conviction for sex crimes and i shouldn’t just limit it

[00:23:25] to ito as the tech.com has summarized in an article on the subject professor of mechanical

[00:23:30] engineering seth lloyd received research funding went to epstein’s private island and visited

[00:23:34] epstein while he was in prison following the investigation lloyd was put on paid administrative

[00:23:39] leave however lloyd retains his tenured professorship former president of mit rafael

[00:23:44] rafe signed a letter thanking epstein for a donation in 2012 just six weeks into his

[00:23:49] presidency in a statement to mit released in 2019 rafe stated that ito asked for permission to

[00:23:55] donate this initial gift and members of my senior team allowed it epstein’s gifts were also

[00:23:59] discussed at at least one of mit’s regular senior team meetings with rafe present so a lot of people

[00:24:05] in mit should have known better right and ito himself is particularly but not the only guy

[00:24:10] who was visiting epstein and probably involved in some criminal stuff right because it’s also like

[00:24:15] like you know adjacent to at least i don’t know eight hundred fifty thousand dollars is a lot of

[00:24:21] money but it’s not actually a lot of money for

[00:24:25] mit like what is its endowment in the billions like the the endowments big but for individual

[00:24:33] and i get you have to assume it’s several million um yeah yeah yeah over the years i’m just i’m just

[00:24:39] saying in the grand scheme of things every kind of financial like some of the biggest malfeasances

[00:24:45] that happen i am a little surprised at the the actual price tag i will just there’s a couple

[00:24:51] of things to get one is first off people get this wrong all the time jeffrey epstein’s

[00:24:55] not a billionaire never was no evidence that he ever was he died when he died his net worth was

[00:25:00] about 600 million dollars right and this is a guy who lied a lot and put and there’s not really much

[00:25:04] practical difference between 600 million and a billion or two in terms of what other people

[00:25:09] would notice about your spending they’re both enough for yachts and private islands right you

[00:25:13] know right um one thing though that as you point out this does review is that how little money it

[00:25:18] really takes to bribe a lot of very influential people like to change the world you know right

[00:25:25] yeah and part of the problem is that for most billionaires in the low billions a lot of their

[00:25:30] money i mean for all billionaires really a lot of and most of their actual assets are tied up in

[00:25:34] things that are not liquid cash right right so even for these guys getting a million dollars or

[00:25:40] something in cash to throw at a single project is a pretty big donation for a lot of people at

[00:25:45] epstein’s level of wealth right yeah um so anyway i would say that like his connection to like

[00:25:51] crypto bros is not that surprising to me but what is surprising is like his connection to like

[00:25:55] the epstein to academia pipeline being oh yeah so massive i mean not to say that there isn’t

[00:26:01] you know anybody who who’s worked in academia can talk about how political and wild it is but it’s

[00:26:07] just there’s his reach is just disgustingly big his part of it is it’s just like venomous

[00:26:17] well yeah part of it is again he’s spreading a lot of money around and part of it is that all

[00:26:21] of these these like the academics he’s going to are guys who are

[00:26:25] a lot of them like ito interest very interested in cryptocurrency very interested in a lot of

[00:26:30] controversial you know stuff that winds up being part of the alt-right and what a lot of these

[00:26:35] academics that he’s friends with in the the early 2000s to the aughts wind up being like weird

[00:26:40] right-wing guys because that’s just kind of the crew that he’s running with and these are kind

[00:26:46] a lot of these are just people that are like addicted to the idea of being smarter than

[00:26:50] everybody else and on the cutting edge of shit and that means they fall for a lot of

[00:26:55] dumb stuff because none of them they’re all phds and shit none of them are as smart as they think

[00:26:59] they are right well there’s just usually true of people even though there’s a stereotype of

[00:27:04] the liberal ivory tower of academia i mean the reality is it’s like especially lately

[00:27:10] so many of these bozos with academic sounding but bad ideas can only exist in an ecosystem

[00:27:16] of academia and tenure and economics professorships and like right-wing philosophy

[00:27:21] professorships because their ideas don’t actually work they actually you know

[00:27:25] by their own petard they couldn’t they could never survive in the free market it’s the huge

[00:27:31] problem we have because you also have a version of this problem when it comes to uh uh like

[00:27:38] copyright and ai right where it’s like well our copyright laws and intellectual property laws are

[00:27:42] a fucking disaster and i had never in my life stood up for that kind of thing up until all of

[00:27:49] these ai companies want to suck up everything that human beings have ever created and remix it and

[00:27:53] then it’s like well maybe it’s it’s just the weapon we have and i don’t really like it and i

[00:27:58] understand there’s a lot of arguments about well this is problematic but what else are we going to

[00:28:02] do at this point right i can see that argument and it’s kind of like with with academia the war

[00:28:08] the right has been waging on college and on the system of tenure and whatnot is disastrous but

[00:28:14] also academia has a lot of problems like the the the fact like the very structure of how higher

[00:28:21] education works is a part of why

[00:28:23] our entire generation owes all of their money to colleges right like there’s a lot of problems

[00:28:28] with the way the system works and so i don’t just because trump’s destroying it and i’m against that

[00:28:33] i don’t want to be like but the system works great before because it didn’t all these guys

[00:28:38] were friends with jeffrey epstein you know um to continue along that line epstein used mit to

[00:28:44] headhunt future influential crypto developers that he wanted on his side people like jeremy

[00:28:49] rubin who is today a noteworthy cryptocurrency researcher

[00:28:52] who is connected to the world of crypto and who is connected to the world of crypto and who is

[00:28:53] connected to epstein by joy ito in 2014 at around the same time epstein was emailing with peter teal

[00:29:00] who was a friend of his and a regular confidant epstein and teal send a lot of emails to each

[00:29:05] other uh jeffrey sends him a link to the new york state department of financial services

[00:29:10] uh which had just announced that they were going to in 2014 had just announced they were going to

[00:29:15] consider proposals for regulating virtual currency exchanges and they published a list of proposed

[00:29:20] rules for the new york-based bitcoin businesses that very month

[00:29:23] epstein sends this email to teal with like a link to this these updated rules and titles it

[00:29:28] as i told you basically saying like hey i told you that new york was going to

[00:29:33] start regulating crypto and teal responded do you think this is the first step in upping the

[00:29:38] anti-bitcoin pressure and here’s epstein basically do you think this is the first step in like the

[00:29:42] state governments and the federal government coming out against crypto and here’s epstein’s

[00:29:47] reply first it appears there is little agreement on what bitcoin is store of intrinsic value is

[00:29:53] value if any currency property architecture payment system etc conflicting goals anonymous

[00:29:58] but transparent public ledger like the continuum now in the gender classification fitting things

[00:30:03] into narrow boxes seems old school man presenting his woman smells like property presenting his

[00:30:07] currency anyway more when i see you this is interesting for a few reasons for one thing

[00:30:12] you have this kind of this acknowledgement from jeffrey that like no one really understands how

[00:30:20] like what bitcoin is like like a like a

[00:30:23] there’s not a widespread understanding about like what it is right because the people who are

[00:30:27] marketing it are saying like it frees you from the government it’s totally anonymous right but also

[00:30:32] it’s transparent because of the public ledger because like the proof of fucking work shit right

[00:30:36] and which is yeah it is like the the different things that have bitcoin has been sold to us as

[00:30:41] it can’t be all of them it literally can’t be they were lying about a bunch of stuff because

[00:30:45] bitcoin was more than anything a con right um but the fact that he then the fact that he pivots to

[00:30:52] comparing it to

[00:30:53] trans people and to the the growing understanding that like which in 2014 was still you know a lot

[00:30:58] more primitive than it is today that like oh gender is not as like much of a binary as people

[00:31:03] like most people had assumed for all like we’re starting to kind of talk about that a lot more

[00:31:09] and jeffrey’s thinking about it and aware of it which is interesting because come the late aughts

[00:31:13] for the last period of his life he’s going to be a big anti-trans rights guy right and he’s going to

[00:31:18] be seeding that world and so it’s really interesting to me that in 2014 he’s thinking about this

[00:31:23] like bitcoin right and it’s kind of incoherent and again not very smart the way he’s thinking about

[00:31:28] it because it’s that’s not really accurate about bitcoin like it’s bitcoins not in fact like gender

[00:31:33] people were just like pretending bitcoin was anonymous to trick criminals into using it so

[00:31:40] that more people would put money into the system that’s different than people understanding that

[00:31:44] gender is not as binary as they thought it was right right there’s a difference um yeah anyway

[00:31:51] for a further summary of teal and epstein’s

[00:31:53] relationship here’s what ryan broderick wrote in an issue of his newsletter garbage day on the

[00:31:57] subject the earliest actual emails between epstein and teal released so far are from 2014 in an email

[00:32:03] in june of 2015 epstein connected teal with sergey belikov russia’s deputy minister of economic

[00:32:09] development an alleged russian intelligence operative in an email to teal a month after

[00:32:13] that epstein alludes to a visit at his zorro ranch in new mexico in 2015 epstein told medical

[00:32:18] researcher and author peter attia who was just named as a new cbs contributor by barry weiss

[00:32:23] whose wife nellie bowles also corresponded with epstein that he was having dinner with musk teal and

[00:32:28] zuckerberg and in 2016 epstein offered to share the expenses for teal’s lawsuit against gawker

[00:32:34] which would eventually bankrupt the outlet we’ll talk more about that dinner so dumb

[00:32:40] oh it’s such a club of the dumbest motherfuckers ever to live well and he’s just he’s he is

[00:32:47] connecting people to spies he’s he is like and that this is why people are like was he literally

[00:32:52] just working for the russian government or was he just working for the russian government or was he

[00:32:53] just working for the russian government because there’s a lot of he may i think it right is likely

[00:32:57] just that he was as dumb as they were but there’s a lot of oh this guy’s the russian deputy minister

[00:33:01] and and probably a smile connecting my friend peter teal um he does a lot of that shit and it’s

[00:33:07] very similar to like robert maxwell gillen maxwell’s dad where people i think wrongly are

[00:33:13] like he was a massad agent and i was like that would imply that like he was hired and trained

[00:33:18] by the massad as opposed to what the massad we know the massad does which is they find like

[00:33:23] rich guys who are sympathetic to israel and make them feel special and feel like they’re

[00:33:27] james bond in exchange for giving them information that’s useful right which is i think what and

[00:33:33] giving them tasks sometimes you know talk to this guy get this guy to say this thing right you know

[00:33:38] give it bring us this information well you know they’re using him just like the russians are

[00:33:42] yeah it’s like agent of but in the way that like so it’s like a chainsaw it doesn’t make it smart

[00:33:50] and i think there’s good evidence that epstein was that kind of a man who was a man who was a

[00:33:53] useful idiot both the russian government and for the massad right um yeah but that’s again an

[00:33:59] episode that’s a subject for another series of episodes that we would have to get into

[00:34:03] um now the tech in their write-up of all this points out one particularly interesting email

[00:34:10] chain from august of 2018 epstein and teal are discussing an accountant named richard who epstein

[00:34:15] connected joy ito with to set up the paperwork for some kind of crypto launch this is likely

[00:34:21] richard khan epstein’s personal accountant

[00:34:23] and it’s a little unclear about why teal needed to be in contact uh with khan other than some

[00:34:31] crypto project and they were talking about layer one and i it’s i i didn’t really know what this

[00:34:37] meant so i looked it up and in networking jargon like the field of like computer networking

[00:34:43] layer one can refer to either data and equipment uh i found a website cbt and nuggets uh that

[00:34:49] describes all this layer one data is simply bits sent across a wire

[00:34:53] many many zeros and ones this is the network layer where that happens so that it can be

[00:34:57] transmitted somewhere else so then layer one equipment is the gear that lets you send data

[00:35:02] and it uses and it’s specifically the gear that used to send data that uses little to no object

[00:35:07] in operating so it’s the most basic equipment for sending data we’re talking like ethernet

[00:35:12] and fiber optic cables as well as physical transmission objects of any over-air technology

[00:35:17] including like electricity so the fact that they were talking with khan about layer one for some

[00:35:22] kind of crypto

[00:35:23] could have meant a wide variety of things but they were definitely talking about like the very

[00:35:28] basic infrastructure that would be needed to make this company function right um so they could have

[00:35:34] been talking about a variety of things but when ito asks jeffrey like how’s khan’s investigation

[00:35:39] doing into this stuff epstein responded so far it’s not good there seems to be a disconnect

[00:35:44] between manipulation currency valuation it’s how to protect ourselves not easy ito then asks if

[00:35:50] he should pass this on to the team which again suggests epstein

[00:35:53] had an influential role shaping crypto projects that were going through mit at the time ito responds

[00:35:59] by asking if there’s any specific regulations he should look at when giving feedback to the team

[00:36:03] and epstein tells ito mini ponzi gambling manipulation unlikely to cause trouble except

[00:36:09] for high value targets so we’ve got here is epstein this is finally a little bit of i talked

[00:36:14] about i’m not sure how much is he conned or a con man this is he’s a con man fully he is talking

[00:36:20] about a crypto project he’s working on with fucking mit

[00:36:23] and being like this is ponzi gambling we’re manipulating people we’re going to steal their

[00:36:27] money but it’s unlikely to cause a trouble unless we take too much money from a high value target

[00:36:32] right that’s what he’s saying here right like whatever this project is you know what jeffrey

[00:36:37] epstein would have loved huh all the super bowl commercials from this year oh yeah he would have

[00:36:44] loved the super bowl commercials for this year it was all all epstein backed companies all ai all

[00:36:53] all uh online gambling it was like his holy trinity yeah it’s never been more apparent

[00:37:01] that the super bowl is just a scam this is the year i it has to be masked off right like this

[00:37:06] is all scams only only scams i guess only scams yeah it was it was all cons i don’t think any of

[00:37:14] them seemed very good but also there was the like the the part that really struck me because the one

[00:37:19] crypto ad i noticed was coinbase where it was just like the fucking

[00:37:23] the backstreet boys like it was everybody was so mad they was like everyone’s singing along

[00:37:28] by the way fuck you coinbase you’re like it’s it actually made me happy because it’s it’s

[00:37:38] desperation it’s pure desperation they’re more done than last year i will say actually

[00:37:43] sophie when you said do you know what jeff ripsey would have loved i thought you were forcing an ad

[00:37:48] read right now yeah so did i oh no i i wasn’t but it is that time

[00:37:53] god yeah

[00:37:56] hi this is joe winterstein host of the spirit daughter podcast where we talk about astrology

[00:38:04] natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life and i just sat down with a mini

[00:38:09] driver the irish traveler said when i was 16 you’re gonna have a terrible time with men

[00:38:13] actor storyteller and unapologetic aquarian visionary aquarius is all about freedom loving

[00:38:22] and different things and i’m not going to lie to you i’m not going to lie to you i’m not going to

[00:38:23] and i find a lot of people with strong placements in aquarius like are misunderstood a sun and venus

[00:38:30] and aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership he really

[00:38:36] has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses in different

[00:38:40] places but just an embracing of the isness of it all if you’re navigating your own transformation

[00:38:45] or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology creativity and real

[00:38:53] estate is a must listen listen to the spirit daughter podcast starting on february 24th on the

[00:38:59] iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast hey i’m jay shetty host

[00:39:05] of the on purpose podcast i’m joined by luke combs award-winning country music artist and one of the

[00:39:11] most authentic voices in music today luke opens up about success self-doubt mental health and what

[00:39:18] it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight

[00:39:23] fame. I hate the word celebrity. I hate those words. They made me uncomfortable. But I think

[00:39:27] when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence, it just accentuates and

[00:39:33] exacerbates the inherent person that you are. The guy that says he’s always going to be there

[00:39:38] and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that’s not there. I’m in Australia when Bo

[00:39:44] was born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I’m going to prioritize my wife and my

[00:39:50] children over my job. I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you’d say?

[00:39:57] Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

[00:40:02] or wherever you get your podcasts. Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[00:40:09] When segregation was the law, one mysterious Black club owner had his own rules.

[00:40:14] We didn’t worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[00:40:20] Instead,

[00:40:20] inside Charlie’s place, Black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about

[00:40:26] it. You saw the KKK? Yeah, they was dressed up in their uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie,

[00:40:35] take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[00:40:44] From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch, and Visit Myrtle Beach comes Charlie’s Place,

[00:40:49] a story that was nearly lost to time. Until now. Listen to Charlie’s Place on the iHeartRadio app,

[00:40:57] Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:41:04] Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[00:41:08] When segregation was the law, one mysterious Black club owner had his own rules.

[00:41:14] We didn’t worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[00:41:19] Inside Charlie’s Place, Black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[00:41:26] You saw the KKK? Yeah, they was dressed up in their uniform.

[00:41:31] The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here.

[00:41:36] Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him.

[00:41:44] From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch, and Visit Myrtle Beach comes Charlie’s Place,

[00:41:49] a story that was nearly lost to time. Until now.

[00:41:54] Listen to Charlie’s Place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:42:06] We’re back. Boy, Jeffrey Epstein would have loved those ads.

[00:42:10] Okay. Robert, I’d like to keep my health insurance. Thanks so much.

[00:42:14] Uh-huh. Yeah.

[00:42:16] I need it. Jeffrey doesn’t, because he’s dead.

[00:42:19] Yeah, he sure doesn’t. Anyway, we’re back. So, so far, we’ve discussed Epstein’s early

[00:42:25] interest in cryptocurrency and his early advocacy for microtransactions in video games.

[00:42:29] Now it’s time to talk about where he starts to veer into the right-wing media game. He starts

[00:42:34] hitting the fever swamps. And to discuss that, I got to introduce a new character,

[00:42:39] Christopher Poole, better known socially as Moot.

[00:42:42] Moot!

[00:42:44] Moot! Born in probably 1987, somewhere near Virginia,

[00:42:48] Chris is early.

[00:42:49] His early life is a black hole until he joined the Something Awful forums.

[00:42:52] He weren’t online during that brief but glorious window. There was a period of somewhat less than

[00:42:56] a decade, from the late 90s to the early to mid-aughts, where that was a, like, the place

[00:43:03] for internet culture. It’s what invented a lot of things that are still foundational to internet

[00:43:07] culture. A lot of, like, you know, the stuff that people hate, like how folks get mobbed when they,

[00:43:12] like, do or say something dumb or fucked up online, the way that, like, the internet will

[00:43:17] just launch mobs after random people.

[00:43:19] For saying the wrong thing, that started on Something Awful. And in fact, in both the good

[00:43:24] and the bad way, right? Like, the Something Awful, there was a big, like, anti-Scientology

[00:43:28] thing where, like, they were basically DDoSing Scientology websites at one point. And also

[00:43:34] a bunch of random people got harassed for being weird on the internet. Likewise, the

[00:43:40] way that, like, memes work, you know, a lot of the basics of that were kind of ironed

[00:43:44] out online on Something Awful. There’s a way in which you can say, oh, I don’t know, I’m

[00:43:49] modern social media is kind of downstream of Something Awful. But Christopher Poole wasn’t

[00:43:55] just spending his time on Something Awful. He also spent a lot of time on Japanese message

[00:44:00] boards, specifically one called 2chan, right? Which is going to be relevant here in a second.

[00:44:05] So Something Awful is basically a dictatorship, which we can say most modern social media,

[00:44:11] but it’s not like a company, really. I mean, they do kind of have a company at one point,

[00:44:15] but it’s not a real functional company. It’s run by one asshole, Richard Kiyanka,

[00:44:19] who takes donations and people have to pay to join the forum. And Richard kind of rules things

[00:44:24] with an iron fist. And because of the way he runs things, whenever there’s something he doesn’t like

[00:44:32] or that endangers the site, he tends to just ban stuff, right? So the fact that Lotax is the single

[00:44:39] guy legally responsible for this website leads him to a couple of conundrums like this, right?

[00:44:44] Because people, once Something Awful attracts tens of thousands, eventually over 100,000 members,

[00:44:49] people start doing all sorts of illegal shit on it, right? One of the forums is just devoted to

[00:44:53] people using illegal drugs. And in fact, when I was a kid on there, watched with a number of

[00:44:58] other goons as a guy overdosed live in a threat and died. Bunch of fucked up stuff happened on

[00:45:03] that site. People also had illegal fire sharing on there. There used to be a subjection of the

[00:45:10] forum where people would put up torrents and whereas, which is like pirated video games back

[00:45:15] in the day, right? That’s very illegal. So that gets banned after a while.

[00:45:19] Because it had to be, right? You can’t have this massive public facing website letting people steal

[00:45:25] shit from every company in the world. You’ll get in trouble. So Lotax bans that. And this happens

[00:45:32] a bunch of different times, right? And particularly, it happens to a group of forum users

[00:45:37] who create a place in the forum to share their weird pornography. And in order to describe this

[00:45:44] chunk of Something Awful history, I’m going to quote from Max Reed’s Substack.

[00:45:49] He banned Lolicon, that is, underage girl hentai. More generally, Lotax hated the anime subforum on

[00:45:55] Something Awful, and the anime fans who populated the subforum hated him back. The subforum was

[00:45:59] called Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse, not because it was devoted to tentacle rape,

[00:46:04] but because Lotax’s contempt for anime nerds meant it thought he would be funny to call the

[00:46:08] general anime board that. One punishment for misbehavior on the forums was to be banned so

[00:46:12] you could only read or post in that subforum. And what’s really funny to me about this is like,

[00:46:19] even though I’m not a fan of Subforum, I’m not a fan of Subforum. I’m not a fan of Subforum.

[00:46:19] Even from that little segment, you can tell Lotax is not a good guy. He’s a terrible, abusive spouse,

[00:46:23] an awful man. The fact that he bans underage, like animated porn from his website makes him

[00:46:31] more responsible than any modern social media CEO. Like he is lapping Elon Musk in terms of

[00:46:37] his level of care for the public good. And he’s a massive piece of shit. It’s so funny to me.

[00:46:43] Yeah. He’s somehow the good guy in this local dip.

[00:46:48] Yeah.

[00:46:48] And I hate him.

[00:46:49] I hate him.

[00:46:49] So Lolicon gets banned and it creates a bunch of people who were on something awful,

[00:46:54] who are into anime, who are angry at Lotax and are finally ready to find another place, right?

[00:46:59] Christopher Poole is one of these people. He had posted on ADTRW, right? And he sees this

[00:47:06] as an opportunity, right? There’s all these guys who are looking for a new place to gather online.

[00:47:10] Maybe I can make a place for them. He’s a fan of 2chan. So he copies the way this Japanese image

[00:47:15] board works and he makes a new website.

[00:47:18] And he calls it 4chan. And all of these guys who had been posting on something awful,

[00:47:23] who were angry at Richard Kiyanka, angry at all of the moderation,

[00:47:26] at the fact that there was stuff like underage girl anime that wasn’t okay,

[00:47:32] they moved to 4chan because nothing’s not okay on it. That’s the idea, right?

[00:47:36] Yeah.

[00:47:37] And so one of the things that happened is basically everyone on something awful is

[00:47:42] pretty toxic at this point. I’d include myself in that. But the most toxic people on something

[00:47:48] awful go over to 4chan where they get to be totally anonymous they don’t have to spend any

[00:47:53] money and they don’t have to abide by most of the same rules so when pool creates 4chan though he’s

[00:48:00] got to deal with ironically the same question that had confronted low tax right which is okay i’m the

[00:48:07] guy whose name is attached to this web community what crosses the line for me what am i not willing

[00:48:14] to have attached to my name right well even if not socially like legally right legally or socially

[00:48:21] right yeah you have to you have to deal with that question when you’re doing this shit um so when

[00:48:27] the site was first created there was a sub forum slash in which meant which it was meant to be like

[00:48:32] slash in for news right this is the news part of the chan the image board um so for reasons that

[00:48:38] are complex and largely irrelevant to our broader discussion though the news board evolves into the

[00:48:43] transportation

[00:48:44] board over time by like 2010 people are using it to discuss transportation issues because as

[00:48:49] much of a hub of like scum and villainy as 4chan is a lot of it’s just people discussing banal shit

[00:48:55] right right yeah so it becomes clear okay we still probably need a news section of the image board

[00:49:03] and the one i initially created is all about fucking buses or whatever so pool elects to

[00:49:08] launch a separate novel news section called slash new now ryan broderick writes that this was quote

[00:49:14] largely as a way to quarantine the overwhelming amount of support on the site for ron paul’s 2008

[00:49:19] campaign this is something that happens on something awful too um but there’s a lot

[00:49:25] basically anywhere people post online is nothing but ron paul guys in 2008 if you let people talk

[00:49:31] about politics it’s all the ron paul revolution yeah um because ron paul’s entire voter base at

[00:49:39] this period of time is guys who live on the internet and use digital currency to buy drugs

[00:49:44] child sex abuse imagery right like that’s that’s the base um so they’re all freedom in a way you

[00:49:51] know and that’s that’s freedom that’s libertarianism in a nutshell um so the first posts to this new

[00:49:58] segment of uh 4chan are really problematic right like he sets this up as a way to quarantine all

[00:50:05] the ron paul people and they immediately start saying shit that even pool has some issues with

[00:50:10] and so in june of 2011 pool deletes

[00:50:14] new posting anybody who used it knows exactly why it was removed when i re-edited the board

[00:50:19] last year i made a note that if it devolved into slash stormfront i’d remove it it did

[00:50:24] ages ago now it’s gone as promised so he by his own discussion removes the the news board

[00:50:31] because it’s all nazi stuff and he doesn’t want that on his site at this stage now at this point

[00:50:36] that makes sense at this stage at this stage it all makes sense right pool’s not a great

[00:50:44] guy but he’s not a nazi it seems like at this point right and he just doesn’t want that on

[00:50:49] his website associated openly with nazis right and that is unfortunately a step yeah he’s fine

[00:50:56] with lolicon but like yeah and it is a step he’s gonna take because a year or so later

[00:51:01] pool creates the poll board for 4chan which stands for politically incorrect and the fact that that’s

[00:51:07] what it stood for might suggest to you that this is meant from the beginning as a hub for right-wing

[00:51:14] news and politics discussion right politically incorrect is not a term that liberals are using

[00:51:20] positively no it is a term that conservatives use right so slash poll almost immediately devolves

[00:51:28] into a hub for neo-nazi and white supremacist propaganda for years no one but pool knew why

[00:51:33] he had decided to open poll after the failure of new and its predecessor then the department of

[00:51:38] justice published this most recent three million pages worth of epstein files which have provided

[00:51:42] us with information

[00:51:44] that may finally solve or at least bring this mystery closer to being solved and here’s the big

[00:51:49] revelation the day before pool created slash poll he met with jeffrey epstein in person

[00:51:56] the day before he makes poll he meets fucking epstein you’re lying what the fuck i mean i guess

[00:52:07] it makes sense yeah but let’s hear a little more about that before we try to puzzle the

[00:52:14] list all out i’m gonna quote from that garbage day newsletter again on october 20th 2011 boris

[00:52:20] nikolic a venture capitalist and former advisor to bill gates sent epstein the wikipedia page for

[00:52:25] writing there is a cool guy kid in all caps and parentheses that you should meet four days later

[00:52:32] nikolic followed up asking epstein how did you like moot he is very sensitive so be gentle

[00:52:36] i liked him a lot i drove him home he is very bright epstein replied nikolic went on to write

[00:52:42] that he will be a friend and that he is one of the greatest hackers now we don’t have enough

[00:52:48] yeah right first off the whole fact that he’s like there’s a cool guy kid is really weird yeah

[00:52:55] yeah that’s really upsetting to me um we simply don’t have enough information to know exactly

[00:53:02] what happened here to write know what the actual dimensions of their relationship were or what they

[00:53:06] even fucking talked about we know that epstein and moot met the day before moot creates poll

[00:53:12] after that we have no clear documentation of their relationship we’ve got some emails of them trying

[00:53:16] to schedule meetings or get togethers and that’s really it perhaps the conversation they had didn’t

[00:53:21] relate at all to poll i can’t ignore the timing of this right yeah knowing that epstein is getting

[00:53:27] increasingly into right-wing media he’s going to fund some of it directly in the in the coming

[00:53:32] years knowing that christopher pool removed the news

[00:53:36] chunk of 4chan because it was basically stormfront and then creates poll making it into basically the

[00:53:43] stormfront section of the site after meeting with eps i can’t not i can’t not think that maybe

[00:53:49] epstein said you got to bring this back i don’t know or or like we’ll never know what a shame or

[00:53:54] like it’s not so bad or like wouldn’t it be great if this existed like it doesn’t even have to be

[00:53:59] like hard pressure yeah it doesn’t have to be hard pressure yeah or maybe maybe pool was

[00:54:06] yeah

[00:54:06] having thinking about this a lot himself because he clearly wanted there to be something like this

[00:54:11] and had tried to get it right and maybe he brought that up to epstein as soon as like i think you

[00:54:14] should just go for it man fuck it you know i don’t know um that said epstein is a regular user

[00:54:22] of 4chan after a semi-regular user of 4chan after this point we don’t know that he was posting

[00:54:27] and in fact i that doesn’t seem very likely based on what he used it for but he’s on there fairly

[00:54:33] regularly right he sends links to 4chan to his friends and to their friends and to his friends

[00:54:36] he sent uh karina shuliek whose girlfriend at the time a 4chan link containing five nights at

[00:54:43] freddy’s porn he sent other fans links to like fucking princess bubblegum porn from adventure

[00:54:49] time all sorts of shit like that jeffrey epstein’s trawling like the porn parts of

[00:54:54] 4chan primarily for like animated porn of animated characters seems to be like

[00:54:59] one of his big things um and i don’t know what to do with that information andrew i don’t know what

[00:55:06] do with the fact that fucking jeffrey epstein is masturbating to princess bubblegum pornography i

[00:55:10] don’t know what to do with that knowledge i think it’s there part of it is like what do you do with

[00:55:19] just i mean i think all of his sexuality is something that is it’s all upsetting yeah

[00:55:25] unknowable to i think normal i mean not even nor i now i’m like what i guess that’s not unknowable

[00:55:32] i’m not like because i know a lot i’ve been on the internet i know a lot of weird people i know

[00:55:35] if there’s a cartoon there’s porn of it yeah right right like i’m aware of that i i didn’t

[00:55:41] i didn’t expect jeffrey epstein knew what adventure time was that’s weird to me although

[00:55:45] it’s it’s just upsetting that a man that was interested in power this much was also such a

[00:55:50] juvenile moron but i guess that is what that is what it’s you know on a sanitized level twitter

[00:55:56] has shown us about billionaires writ large and these emails are interested in kids yeah i uh

[00:56:02] when i brought because i i will say i i was talking to my partner

[00:56:05] about this i was like epstein was sending fucking princess bubble gun

[00:56:09] porn and like other like porn from like animated kids shows i didn’t even know he knew what

[00:56:14] adventure time was and she just looks at me and she says you’re surprised jeffrey epstein knew

[00:56:20] what teenage girls were watching in the 2000s and i was like oh oh yeah you know what that

[00:56:27] actually makes complete sense mystery solved

[00:56:30] okay

[00:56:35] i didn’t assume that one that was me being dumb you’re right yeah 100 now this doesn’t tie into

[00:56:45] the broader themes of these episodes at all andrew but i have to tell you something because it’s in

[00:56:49] my head now and now it’s going to be in everyone else’s head because god damn it i’m not going to

[00:56:54] deal with this alone on thursday july 4th of 2013 while the rest of the country was setting up

[00:57:01] fireworks and day drinking joy ito sent an email to jeffrey epstein that

[00:57:05] best as we can tell was an appendix to an in-person conversation that they’d had a few

[00:57:10] days or hours earlier right they were talking about something over the phone or in person

[00:57:13] and then ito sends him an email about this thing he talked to him about right you know we’ve all

[00:57:18] done this right right sure in this case the email that ito sends epstein is just the wikipedia page

[00:57:24] for daki makura or japanese body pillows that are printed with art depicting an anime wife or waifu

[00:57:30] and he appends a picture of one such pillow to the email which you will all be seeing

[00:57:35] now and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then

[00:57:35] Now, if you’re watching the video version of the show, if not, it’s a pillow with a naked anime girl on it.

[00:57:41] Why did Jeffrey Epstein need to read the Wikipedia page for anime body pillows?

[00:57:45] What was the conversation that inspired this?

[00:57:47] We will never know.

[00:57:48] And none of this is really relevant to the main thesis of these episodes.

[00:57:52] But I felt like, again, you have to know this now.

[00:57:55] Like, you can’t not.

[00:57:57] Jeffrey Epstein knew what Japanese body pillows were.

[00:58:00] That’s just part of life for everyone now.

[00:58:01] Like, the head of the goddamn MIT Media Lab was sending body pillow shit to a pedophile.

[00:58:08] Yeah.

[00:58:08] Which is like, what the fuck is happening?

[00:58:11] Yeah.

[00:58:12] And, like, Ito resigned.

[00:58:14] He should have been fired.

[00:58:17] And I mean in, like, from a cannon.

[00:58:19] Like, out of a cannon into the sea.

[00:58:23] Yeah.

[00:58:24] That should be a crime.

[00:58:25] We just need to make that a sex crime.

[00:58:27] Letting Jeffrey Epstein know about Japanese body pillows is something you should have to register.

[00:58:31] As a sex offender for doing.

[00:58:33] It’s just one of those things where it’s like, it is obviously circumstantial evidence.

[00:58:37] But you can actually walk down every path that leads to that.

[00:58:41] And it is impossible to find one that doesn’t involve a crime.

[00:58:44] Yeah, exactly.

[00:58:45] There’s no way you get to that point having not committed sex crimes.

[00:58:49] It’s simply impossible.

[00:58:51] Yeah.

[00:58:51] Speaking of crimes against humanity.

[00:58:55] What?

[00:58:55] Oh, sorry, Sophie.

[00:58:56] I cut you off.

[00:58:56] I was just doing an ad pivot.

[00:58:59] Yeah.

[00:58:59] I was just going to say that.

[00:59:01] Um, that’s, like, at least tier two sex offender shit.

[00:59:06] At least tier two.

[00:59:07] If not tier three.

[00:59:09] Yeah.

[00:59:09] Yeah.

[00:59:09] Yeah.

[00:59:10] He’s an elite pedophile.

[00:59:11] You got to give him that.

[00:59:13] Yeah.

[00:59:14] Mm-hmm.

[00:59:15] I hate it here.

[00:59:15] Anyway.

[00:59:16] Yeah.

[00:59:17] Probably shouldn’t go to ads right after saying elite pedophile, but.

[00:59:20] What else are we supposed to do?

[00:59:22] It’s Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein Files episodes.

[00:59:26] Yeah.

[00:59:26] Yeah.

[00:59:27] I’m getting frown lines from these episodes.

[00:59:31] Hi, this is Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about

[00:59:39] astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

[00:59:43] And I just sat down with a mini driver.

[00:59:45] The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you’re going to have a terrible time with men.

[00:59:51] Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary.

[00:59:56] Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives.

[01:00:00] And I find a lot of people who are not.

[01:00:01] I find a lot of people who are not.

[01:00:01] I find a lot of people who are not.

[01:00:01] I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius, like, are misunderstood.

[01:00:05] A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to

[01:00:10] partnership.

[01:00:10] He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different

[01:00:15] houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all.

[01:00:19] If you’re navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a

[01:00:24] leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen.

[01:00:31] Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

[01:00:36] Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[01:00:39] Hey, I’m Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast.

[01:00:43] I’m joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic

[01:00:48] voices in music today.

[01:00:49] Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true

[01:00:55] to who you are when your life changes overnight.

[01:00:58] I hate fame.

[01:00:59] I hate the word celebrity.

[01:01:00] I hate those words.

[01:01:01] They make me uncomfortable.

[01:01:02] But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence,

[01:01:07] it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are.

[01:01:12] The guy that says he’s always going to be there and that will do anything to be there

[01:01:16] is the only guy that’s not there.

[01:01:18] I’m in Australia when Bo was born.

[01:01:20] My whole identity is that no matter what, I’m going to prioritize my wife and my children

[01:01:26] over my job.

[01:01:27] I dread the conversation with my son.

[01:01:30] What do you think?

[01:01:30] Thank you today.

[01:01:32] Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

[01:01:38] you get your podcasts.

[01:01:40] Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[01:01:44] When segregation was the law, one mysterious Black club owner had his own rules.

[01:01:50] We didn’t worry about what went on outside.

[01:01:52] It was like stepping in another world.

[01:01:55] Inside Charlie’s Place, Black and white people danced together.

[01:01:59] But not everyone.

[01:02:00] And not everyone was happy about it.

[01:02:02] You saw the KKK?

[01:02:04] Yeah.

[01:02:05] They were dressed up in their uniform.

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[01:02:12] Charlie was an example of power.

[01:02:17] They had to crush him.

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[01:02:25] A story that was nearly lost to time.

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[01:02:29] Listen to Charlie’s Place.

[01:02:30] On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:02:39] This is Ryder Strong with a podcast called The Red Weather.

[01:02:42] In 1995, my neighbor and a trainer disappeared from a commune.

[01:02:46] It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

[01:02:50] So no, I am not your guru.

[01:02:54] Back then, I lied to everybody.

[01:02:56] They have had this case for 30 years.

[01:02:59] I’m going back to my home.

[01:03:00] I’m going back to my hometown to uncover the truth.

[01:03:03] You can now binge all episodes of The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:03:12] We’re back.

[01:03:14] You know, we’re, uh, we’re steening?

[01:03:17] We’re Epstein-ing?

[01:03:18] We’re steening.

[01:03:19] We’re steening.

[01:03:20] You guys like steening?

[01:03:21] Fuck off.

[01:03:21] Read the script.

[01:03:22] You want to steen a little more?

[01:03:23] Okay.

[01:03:23] Read the script.

[01:03:24] So not long after 4chan introduced the poll board, which again stood for politically incorrect,

[01:03:29] Epstein’s friend, Steve,

[01:03:30] Steve Bannon, took over the far, at the far right news website, Breitbart.com.

[01:03:34] These are like within a year of each other that Bannon takes over at Breitbart.

[01:03:38] And Epstein is, again, buddies with Bannon.

[01:03:42] This has been back in 2012.

[01:03:43] And I, I, I hate that we kept a shift in time so much in these episodes, but it’s kind of impossible to cover all this stuff and not do it.

[01:03:50] So in 2012, 4chan’s poll board launches.

[01:03:53] And we know Epstein spends time on 4chan because he sends links to his friends.

[01:03:57] Steve Bannon takes over Breitbart and he starts turning it into the machine.

[01:04:00] That’s going to drive Gamergate, which arises from 4chan, into the mainstream news in 2014.

[01:04:06] These things happen very close to each other.

[01:04:09] Bannon and Epstein were socially adjacent over the years, for years, before we have evidence of them corresponding, right?

[01:04:14] Officially, if you like are reading about this, officially, I believe it’s 2017.

[01:04:20] That is the earliest point we know Bannon and Epstein were connected directly.

[01:04:24] And it was via Michael Wolff, or at least that’s one of the sources I read said that.

[01:04:29] Um, there’s no way that that was the case.

[01:04:31] For one thing, Bannon is working with Brock Pierce, who we started these episodes with, right?

[01:04:35] Much earlier than that.

[01:04:37] And Epstein is friends with Brock Pierce during this period of time, right?

[01:04:40] From 2013 to 2014.

[01:04:42] Um, again, Wolff is kind of our best documentation of like when they started emailing each other.

[01:04:48] But even if, and we don’t have enough of the emails to know if there are earlier emails between Bannon and Epstein.

[01:04:54] But we know they were in touch earlier than that, right?

[01:04:57] Like we just don’t know exactly like when this all happened.

[01:04:59] Um, I don’t know when they were first communicating directly.

[01:05:06] But I know that in May of 2016, Epstein emailed Kathy Rumler, uh, who is the White House counsel to President Barack Obama.

[01:05:13] Or at least who was the White House counsel to President Barack Obama.

[01:05:16] And a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s.

[01:05:18] Kathy and Epstein email, obviously.

[01:05:20] And what’s weird about this is that Kathy’s obviously a Democrat, right?

[01:05:23] Yeah.

[01:05:23] Like these, she’s working for Barack Obama.

[01:05:26] She’s not fans of Steve Bannon.

[01:05:29] And a lot of the people that Epstein keeps in his social orbit.

[01:05:32] On May 8th, Epstein sent her an email that was just a link to a Breitbart article about how Trump was using the same language to attack Hillary that the women who have accused Bill Clinton of rape used to describe Hillary, right?

[01:05:42] The article was saying people are angry at Trump for being mean to Hillary.

[01:05:46] But he’s just mirroring the language that Bill’s victims used to describe how mean Hillary was to them, right?

[01:05:50] That’s the article, you know?

[01:05:52] And Epstein sends this to Kathy Rumler, who’s a Democrat working for Obama.

[01:05:58] And that’s…

[01:05:59] So that’s really weird, right?

[01:06:00] Her sending…

[01:06:01] Him sending her a Breitbart link.

[01:06:02] And Kathy seems confused by this, too.

[01:06:04] She responds, what’s more disturbing is that you are reading Breitbart.

[01:06:08] Like, what’s more disturbing to anything in the article is that you’re reading Breitbart.

[01:06:11] And this…

[01:06:12] I think this is an important exchange because it suggests a few things.

[01:06:15] For one, by 2016, Epstein is pretty new to reading and sharing Breitbart articles.

[01:06:20] And I think he’s pretty new because he found himself surprisingly interested in the content.

[01:06:26] And so it just kind of becomes an increasingly large part of his media.

[01:06:29] And I don’t think he’s thinking about how extreme it is or how weird other people think it is that he’s reading Breitbart articles.

[01:06:36] Because he sends it casually to Kathy.

[01:06:39] The two are good friends and they’re emailing constantly.

[01:06:41] And he doesn’t think twice about sending her a Breitbart article until she’s like, what the fuck, man?

[01:06:47] That’s really weird.

[01:06:48] That says to me that Epstein, however much of this is him being like a master manipulator,

[01:06:54] Epstein’s also organically falling down a right-wing rabbit hole, right?

[01:06:59] That really seems like what this is suggesting to me.

[01:07:02] That like he is legitimately finding himself interested in this stuff.

[01:07:05] In addition to whatever kind of grievances he has that are leading him to support people like Bannon,

[01:07:10] to support this political move that’s going to culminate in the Trump campaign.

[01:07:15] There’s other evidence of this.

[01:07:17] A 2014 email from a redacted sender who had just returned from a visit to Epstein Island.

[01:07:23] The anonymous sender of this email, who signed the email just M, thanked Epstein and offered lots of hugs.

[01:07:28] And then appended this postscript to the email.

[01:07:31] I researched some movie we can watch when you are back.

[01:07:34] Have you ever heard of Alexander Dugin, one of Putin’s advisors?

[01:07:36] If not, reading about him and his views might be interesting and perhaps quite useful.

[01:07:41] And that’s really interesting to me that people in his circle are trying to push him.

[01:07:45] Maybe people who are connected to the Russian government are trying to push him to read Alexander Dugin.

[01:07:50] Dugin is an influential right-wing philosopher and political theorist whose work deals heavily with the concept of a multipolar world.

[01:07:56] A.K.A. one in which the U.S.

[01:07:58] has lost its status as a superpower and the world is divided between competing blocks of hegemonic powers.

[01:08:04] Silicon Valley fascists often find a lot that they like in Dugin because their own goal is to see the collapse of the U.S.

[01:08:09] as a nation state, which will allow CEO kings like Peter Thiel to govern city-states and regions without oversight.

[01:08:16] There’s no other mention of Dugin in the archives yet.

[01:08:18] But as I noted before, Epstein has a number of weird Russian connections.

[01:08:22] And this is all just kind of part of this picture we’re getting of Epstein in 2014.

[01:08:27] In 2014 to 2018, he’s sending Breitbart articles to his friends.

[01:08:32] He’s talking about Alexander Dugin.

[01:08:33] People are suggesting he reads Alexander Dugin.

[01:08:36] And he’s going to increasingly start putting his money towards supporting right-wing content.

[01:08:41] In 2015, Jeffrey Epstein donates $25,000 to the YouTube channel of one Jean-Francois Guéripi,

[01:08:48] a French white nationalist influencer who announced the donation on his channel during an episode with Richard Spencer.

[01:08:55] So Guéripi and Richard Spencer.

[01:08:57] Richard and Richard Spencer are bragging that Jeffrey Epstein donated to support his white supremacist YouTube channel in 2015.

[01:09:07] Oh, right.

[01:09:08] I mean…

[01:09:08] For an idea, yeah, of the kind of shit Guéripi’s saying.

[01:09:11] He calls for a white ethnostate and advocates that men should own their wives.

[01:09:16] This is interesting about Guéripi because his own wife disappeared in 2023.

[01:09:21] Yeah, she fell off the face of the earth in 2023.

[01:09:24] He claims he dropped her off to go camping.

[01:09:27] In the middle of the woods because she was a big fan of off-grid living and had been planning the trip for a while.

[01:09:32] Critics note that he deep-cleaned their whole home right before she allegedly left on this trip.

[01:09:36] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were at one point seeking tips from the public to help find her,

[01:09:40] but they have deleted that website and I don’t know what her status is.

[01:09:45] This segment from a Daily Beast article on the matter does give you a very good idea of who Guéripi is, though.

[01:09:50] During a contentious child custody battle in the U.S.,

[01:09:53] a now ex-wife accused Guéripi of threatening to take their child to Canada.

[01:09:56] During the custody case, an undergraduate Duke University student testified that Guéripi had conducted an inappropriate sexual relationship with her

[01:10:03] when he was employed as a researcher at the school and she was working as his research assistant.

[01:10:08] The student alleged emotional abuse by Guéripi.

[01:10:11] Guéripi had previously told the Daily Beast that the relationship was consensual.

[01:10:14] During that custody case, which he lost, Guéripi also became embroiled in a guardianship battle over a 19-year-old who he described as his fiancée.

[01:10:21] The teenager had autism and had been assessed by a counselor as having the social and mental maturity

[01:10:26] of a 10-to-11-year-old child.

[01:10:29] Cool guy.

[01:10:30] Horrific motherfucker.

[01:10:31] This is who Epstein gives him $25,000.

[01:10:34] And he’s just out here, like, living, right?

[01:10:38] He’s still on the street?

[01:10:39] Yeah, he’s still around, as far as I’m aware, yeah.

[01:10:42] It’s also like, thanks for the donation from Jeffrey E.

[01:10:46] Thanks for the 25,000 coins or whatever.

[01:10:50] 25 big, yeah.

[01:10:51] It’s just like, I mean, there is a certain point where you’re like,

[01:10:56] yeah, all these right-wing people are fucking awful, you know, certainly pedophile-supporting, whatever.

[01:11:02] No, they’re such hypocrites.

[01:11:04] But it is, like, kind of fascinating each time they have no shame.

[01:11:08] I don’t know.

[01:11:10] It’s not a slam dunk, I think.

[01:11:11] But it is just like, yeah, yeah, these people are exactly this.

[01:11:15] Yeah, well, it’s fucking the, this is the side of Jeffrey we didn’t get until there was this release.

[01:11:21] The side where he’s, he’s not just even, you know, there was maybe some evidence he was flirting.

[01:11:26] Certainly with some right-wing ideas over the years.

[01:11:28] He’s putting a lot of money into it.

[01:11:30] No, he’s investing.

[01:11:30] We know about this $25,000 donation.

[01:11:32] We don’t know about the others.

[01:11:33] We don’t know where else he’s sending money.

[01:11:35] We know he’s sending links to, like, the fucking Right Stuff, which is a super fucking fascist podcast.

[01:11:41] Like, to their website.

[01:11:42] While he’s talking about, like, race science.

[01:11:45] In fact, I want to quote, A. Reid Ross wrote a really good column on his Medium page about some of Jeffrey’s right-wing connections.

[01:11:51] That summarizes, like, what happens after this $25,000 donation.

[01:11:56] Because he just gets increasingly pilled after this point.

[01:11:59] The following year, he exchanged emails with tech leader Joshua Bach, revealing racist sentiments.

[01:12:03] By this time, he was supporting the changing politics of the Silicon Valley right-wing,

[01:12:07] including what the Byline Times calls biological hierarchy, racial destiny, gender determinism, genetic optimization, population culling, fascism as efficiency.

[01:12:16] We could call this something like a counter-revolutionary movement, broadly speaking,

[01:12:20] using the strategies and ideas of the revolutionary movement against it.

[01:12:24] So to put all of this together,

[01:12:26] I’m going to give you a couple of examples.

[01:12:27] After getting out of jail in 2010 to about 2016,

[01:12:31] Jeffrey Epstein gets deeply involved in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole

[01:12:35] because he sees it as a way to reinvent the financial system

[01:12:38] and make a new form of money decoupled from democratic Western governance.

[01:12:43] He’d become a believer in biological and racial hierarchy

[01:12:45] and had started funding fascist thinkers who supported using the tactics of left-wing revolutionary movements

[01:12:51] to bring down democratic governments.

[01:12:53] All this comes to a head in 2016,

[01:12:56] after Brexit,

[01:12:57] in a series of celebratory emails between Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein.

[01:13:02] So right after Brexit,

[01:13:04] Epstein sends an email to Peter Thiel,

[01:13:07] June 26, 2016, at 3.17 a.m.,

[01:13:09] and says,

[01:13:10] Thiel responds a couple hours later by asking,

[01:13:15] And Epstein responds,

[01:13:20] Amazing new alliances.

[01:13:22] You and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high.

[01:13:24] And as I said in your office,

[01:13:26] finding things on their way to collapse was much easier than finding the next bargain.

[01:13:31] So Epstein, by this point,

[01:13:33] what he’s talking with Thiel about is,

[01:13:36] you and I have been discussing the fact that, like,

[01:13:39] if we can return to tribalism,

[01:13:41] destroy globalization,

[01:13:42] destroy the order that exists,

[01:13:45] destroy this idea of, like, liberal democracy,

[01:13:49] then we can buy all of the assets,

[01:13:51] the same way these Russian oligarchs did after the Soviet Union collapsed,

[01:13:54] we can buy every public asset that exists,

[01:13:56] and a fire sale.

[01:13:57] We can own everything, right?

[01:13:59] Finding things on their way to collapse is the best bargain that exists.

[01:14:03] And I think that ties all of this together.

[01:14:06] The right-wing politics, the crypto,

[01:14:08] the fucking getting kids addicted to loot boxes and gambling and stuff.

[01:14:12] All of these interests that Jeffrey has in these years

[01:14:15] are all tied to this destruction of the global order,

[01:14:20] which I think to some extent he saw as betraying him, right?

[01:14:22] He was a system guy.

[01:14:24] He was frisbee.

[01:14:26] He was with presidents and kings and other members of royalty.

[01:14:29] And then he gets convicted of sex crimes.

[01:14:32] And that only happened because of these damn women.

[01:14:35] Because of democracy, they got the vote now, you know?

[01:14:38] And so he and Thiel and all these guys, like, he turns in with them.

[01:14:43] And he’s not manipulating Peter Thiel.

[01:14:47] He’s not the guy who made Thiel start thinking about anti-democratic bullshit.

[01:14:51] But he gets on board that fairly early.

[01:14:55] And he,

[01:14:56] he uses his newfound interest in this stuff to work towards the same ends

[01:14:59] that people like Peter Thiel are working towards.

[01:15:02] And he has a lot of influence.

[01:15:03] And so he has a lot of influence on how this whole right-wing ecosystem

[01:15:08] and this whole right-wing populist movement

[01:15:10] that’s going to increasingly be a factor in everyone’s lives develops.

[01:15:14] And that’s where we are at the end of part three.

[01:15:17] Jesus Christ.

[01:15:19] Good.

[01:15:21] Great.

[01:15:22] I love it.

[01:15:23] I mean, to me,

[01:15:24] the overarching thing that’s coalescing,

[01:15:26] is, like,

[01:15:26] why were the,

[01:15:27] why was all the right-wing establishments so confident that,

[01:15:31] like,

[01:15:32] releasing the Epstein files was some kind of slam dunk?

[01:15:35] Like,

[01:15:35] it’s so weird.

[01:15:37] You’re in the files so much,

[01:15:40] right-wing everything.

[01:15:42] Mm-hmm.

[01:15:44] Yep.

[01:15:45] It’s so bizarre.

[01:15:47] Yep.

[01:15:48] I’m in pain.

[01:15:51] Life is good.

[01:15:53] I guess we should do part four, huh?

[01:15:56] Yeah, why not?

[01:15:57] Why not?

[01:15:58] All right.

[01:15:59] We’ll be back Thursday.

[01:16:01] Pain.

[01:16:02] Yeah.

[01:16:03] Bye.

[01:16:05] Bye.

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