Part Four: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

Summary

Podcast Summary: Behind the Bastards

Episode: Part Four: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World
Date: February 26, 2026
Host: Robert Evans (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Guests: Andrew T, Clayton Eckerd
Theme: Exploring Jeffrey Epstein’s influence on the intellectual, technological, and political elite, with a focus on his role in seeding far-right ideology, scientific racism, and anti-transgender sentiment in the modern world.

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Overview of the Episode

This final installment in the Epstein series moves beyond the details of his sex crimes to focus on his broader, less-discussed impact: how his money and connections helped shape reactionary intellectual currents, far-right politics, and the weaponization of “high-minded debate” among tech elites and public intellectuals. The episode uncovers the way Epstein and his circle—comprised of influential billionaires, media tycoons, technologists, and academics—supported the rise of the alt-right, eugenics, and anti-trans propaganda, and explores the ripple effects of that support.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why "Just the Sex Crimes" Isn't the Full Story

• Robert Evans (00:57): Notes that previous episodes covered Epstein’s sexual abuse in detail, allowing this episode to highlight his influence on powerful social, intellectual, and political movements.

2. Ferguson and the Rightward Shift in the Elite

• Ferguson’s Impact: The 2014 Ferguson protests were a turning point for many wealthy elites, including Epstein, pushing them further toward reactionary, race-based politics.
  • Robert Evans (07:05): “A lot of his behavior seems to shift. He gets more into right wing stuff…But there’s a definite moment we can easily say had a big impact…It’s Ferguson.”
  • Epstein, like much of his peer group, reportedly saw Ferguson as evidence of his "fears" about racial unrest, directly influencing his funding of white nationalist and eugenic research.

3. Correspondence with Ehud Barak: Elite Anxiety

• Email Evidence (11:09): In Nov 2014, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak congratulates Epstein on accurately predicting the “eruption” after the Ferguson grand jury decision—demonstrating Epstein’s focus on race and social control.
  • Barak’s Email: “Jeff, you’ve accurately predicted the eruption and together we predicted the mistakes which will follow. Let’s hope it won’t get worse…” (11:09)

4. Epstein's White Nationalism, Eugenics, and “Dangerous Ideas”

• Funding Scientific Racism:
  • Post-Ferguson, Epstein significantly increased his funding of scientific racism and eugenic projects, such as genetically modifying Black people "to make them smarter" (13:14).
  • Robert Evans: “He’s just a race science Nazi.” (13:21)
• Correspondence with Noam Chomsky (14:22):
  • Epstein tries to convince Chomsky of race-based intelligence, invoking discredited ideas and the work of notorious racist geneticist James Watson.
  • Chomsky (16:33): Pushes back, noting the correlation between systemic racism and outcomes for Black Americans, but still maintains a friendly correspondence.
  • Andrew T (19:18): “That’s Jeff’s foible. He’s a fucking pedophile fascist. We can all joke about that.”
• Weaponizing Intellectualism:
  • Epstein and peers frame reactionary ideas as “dangerous questions” at the elite’s edge—actually code for bigoted, exclusionary concepts.
    • Evans (24:02): “What if people couldn’t vote if they were poor? What if I could fuck teenage girls? Those are the three big issues at the edge of human knowledge that these guys are really interested in.”

5. The Edge Foundation: A Petri Dish for Bad Ideas

• Overview:
  • Created by literary agent John Brockman in 1996, the Edge Foundation gathered technologists, billionaires, and intellectuals, positioning itself as the “third culture” guiding the future.
  • Evgeny Morozov’s revelation: Brockman acted as Epstein’s “intellectual enabler,” directly connecting him to luminaries such as Steven Pinker, Joy Ito, and more.
  • Brockman’s Pitch (28:28): “Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire scientist philanthropist, showed up at this weekend’s event by helicopter with his beautiful young assistant from Belarus…he’s the guy who gave Harvard $30 million… he spent a year in jail in Florida. Crazy way to say he’s a registered child sex offender.”
• Billionaires’ Dinners: Regular, exclusive Edge events brought together the ultra-rich (Bezos, Musk, Brin, Zuckerberg, etc.) with Epstein at the center—often even after his conviction.
  • 2011 Dinner Attendees: Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk; 2015: Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others (35:14–37:46).

6. Seeding the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) and Anti-Trans Wave

• Edge as IDW Precursor (42:17):
  • Evans and Castigan: Edge is framed as a predecessor to the Intellectual Dark Web, which popularized right-wing “dangerous ideas,” especially anti-trans content.
• Epstein and Robert Trivers:
  • Trivers’ Role: Evolutionary biologist, openly justified Epstein’s abuse: “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women… so I don’t see these acts as so heinous.” (58:35)
  • Epstein Funding Trivers (59:16): Pushes Trivers to research and publish anti-trans, pseudoscientific theories linking biology and gender, directly funding hate-based “science.”
  • Explicit Emails (63:50): “My recollection is that…you might want to focus on transgender biology. People would be interested and I would fund. I am a true believer in your talents.”

7. Anti-Trans Pseudoscience: From Theory to Policy

• Trivers’ Universal Theory of Gender Identity:
  • Mixed fetishization and scaremongering to push biological essentialism for gender, resulting in research cited by anti-trans groups (67:35).
  • Dr. Nichols’ summary: “Epstein funds Trivers’ research… hate groups pick up on the pseudoscience and use it as a justification for their regressive policy policies.” (68:46)
• Epstein’s Network: Links to the Sulzberger family (NYT), Leonard Black, Steven Pinker, etc. Used his access and funding to push anti-trans narratives in prestigious circles.

8. Epstein, Steve Bannon, and the Alt-Right Ecosystem

• Bannon Relationship (73:26–79:05):
  • Epstein/Bannon Correspondence: Shared disdain for Trump, admiration for each other’s manipulation and subversive tactics (“Bannon seems like the pretty smart puppet master.” – Epstein, 74:17).
  • Collaboration on Influence: Discussions about hiring hackers, influencing policy, and shaping global reactionary politics.
  • Evans: “They’re talking about everything, especially their crimes.” (75:44)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the grimness of the subject:

  • Andrew T (00:27): “You’re just like a low mimetic version of The Ring. Listening to the show—in seven days, you’ll want to die.”
  • Robert Evans (00:40): “That’s what we go for here at Behind the Bastards—make all our listeners want to die just a little.”

• On the edge of knowledge:

  • Robert Evans (24:12): “When these guys get together, primarily they talk about like—what if people couldn’t vote if they were poor? What if we had more money? What if I could fuck teenage girls? Those are the three big issues at the edge of human knowledge.”
  • Andrew T (33:23): “If you wrote dialogue this heavy handed, you’d be run out of Hollywood.”

• On the anti-trans agenda:

  • Dr. Nichols (cited, 68:46): “[Epstein] funds Trivers… hate groups pick up on the pseudoscience and use it as a justification for their regressive policy policies.”

• On the banality and power of evil:

  • Andrew T (68:46): “The best, most funded, absolutely cutting edge of right-wing thought is… the same as on the playground when they said if your hand is bigger than your face, you’re… That is literally the best these people can do.”

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Timeline of Crucial Segments

• Epstein’s post-conviction influence & Ferguson turning point: 07:05 – 11:09
• Ehud Barak email, Ferguson and predictions: 11:09 – 13:21
• Epstein’s white nationalist/eugenics obsession: 13:21 – 19:18
• Chomsky email exchange: 14:22 – 19:45
• Edge Foundation background & role: 24:11 – 31:01
• Billionaires Dinners & their dark significance: 32:00 – 37:46
• Epstein’s anti-trans crusade with Robert Trivers: 48:49 – 68:46
• Trivers’ pseudoscience hatred ramifications: 68:46 – 69:14
• Epstein’s ties to Bannon, alt-right, and hacking: 73:26 – 79:05
• Closure, exhaustion, and the endless trove: 79:26 – end

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Conclusion

Takeaway:
This episode reveals how Jeffrey Epstein operated as more than just a monstrous criminal—he was a vector through which some of the world’s worst and most regressive ideas were cultivated, laundered, and legitimized among the global elite. Via dinners, foundations, email threads, and funding, Epstein played a pivotal but often opaque role in seeding and amplifying reactionary ideologies within the supposedly “forward-thinking” tech and academic communities, particularly around racism, eugenics, and anti-trans hate.

Final Reflections (79:35):

• Andrew T: “The trove is endless. Endless content.”
• Robert Evans: “Maybe Jeffrey Epstein really just sacrificed himself for the global content mines…to ensure that there were plenty of podcasts and YouTube videos.”
• Clayton Eckerd: “I’d love to be done…this was painful.”

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Summary prepared for listeners and researchers wanting to understand Jeffrey Epstein’s wider role as an architect of today’s reactionary culture and the networks that enabled him.

Transcript

[Clayton Eckerd]

Call Zone Media.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome back. For the last time today, I guess, or this week. Behind the Bastards. We're done with the Epstein Update episodes for now. This episode will be our last. Andrew T. Welcome back to the show.

[Andrew T]

Oh, thanks for. Thanks. Thanks in scare quotes for having me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, thanks and scare quotes. The only thanks we get here.

[Andrew T]

I realize what your show is. You're sort of like just like a low mimetic version of the Ring, where after having been on the show or listening to it in seven days, you will want to die.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. That's what we go for here at behind the Bastards is to make all of our listeners want to die just a little.

[Andrew T]

God, you know what?

[Robert Evans]

Less.

[Andrew T]

This has been less grim than I thought it was gonna be, I will say. Not that it's not grim, but the nice thing.

[Robert Evans]

It's weird saying the nice thing. Pretty grim, Andrew, doing these Epstein episodes is that we already did the ones where we talked. There's a lot more detail out now, and we probably should at some point go back, but we talked at length in the previous, like, four episodes about all of the horrible sex trafficking crimes. So the fact that we're just kind of focusing mostly on other stuff here makes it less nightmarish than if we were just going over all of the evidence of child molestation.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Not. But we don't want to be highlighting that. But we did, and everyone knows that stuff. And I think this is also important. So we're getting into it.

[Clayton Eckerd]

I'm still pretty scowly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. There's a lot that makes me sad.

[Andrew T]

As I said in an earlier episode, it's like, even without that shit, he would be one of the worst people ever.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah. And this. It's one of those things. If it weren't for the fact that he was also the giant pedophile guy, I probably wouldn't be writing about just Jeffrey Epstein's because for one thing, we just don't know. There's a lot of, like, did he actually get moot to create pol or. No. Like. Right. We just will never know. But because of the other stuff, like, I feel like we do have to talk about how deeply tied he is to all of these massively important things that are happening in society, that he's talking to the major players and trying to convince them of things. Right. It's weird because this is kind of the only behind the Bastards where for the most part, I'm saying, like, well, we know he was trying to do something with this bad thing, but we don't know how he influenced this bad thing, which we don't normally do here, but I don't know how else to handle Epstein right now. Right.

[Andrew T]

We also don't know the history of everything that, you know. This bad thing, which is in progress.

[Robert Evans]

Ryan Broderick says, you know, Michael Wolfe probably connected Epstein and Bannon in 2017, but there's evidence from earlier that they would have known about each other and were traveling in similar circles. And. But I can't prove they were in contact earlier. But also, millions of documents haven't been released yet, so, like, who knows what else there is? Right, Right. Or did Bannon used to have a different email? Right. It wasn't under his name? I don't know. It may be. There may be early emails for them under different emails in the files that we just haven't found because it's not immediately clear that it's Bannon yet. There's stuff like that people have talked about, like J.K. rowling, how like. Well, she definitely. He was on the invite list for, you know, the Harry Potter play when it opened, but she says they had no direct connection. There's not really hard evidence of a direct connection, but there is an email with a cinder redacted where it's signed the way J.K. rowling sometimes signs stuff, but that's not conclusive. So I don't know. Right. And hopefully, as more stuff comes out, maybe there is even more about her in the current files that just haven't been found yet. Because people, we haven't. No one knows everything that's in these files yet. Stuff's being found every day. Right, Right. So that's one of the issues with this, is that I decided there was enough, obviously, for four episodes now, but in a year, people will probably be angry at the. Well, you left this out. Well, because people hadn't found it yet. I don't know, man. Or there's stuff I know I'm leaving out now that I did find that was on my research doc that I was just like, well, this is 42 pages long. We got to call it somewhere, huh? And you know what?

[Andrew T]

That's the beauty of podcasting. There's always more podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

That's the beauty of podcasting. You can always say, good enough. This is an I heart podcast.

[Jill Winterstein]

Guaranteed human. Hi, it's Jill Interestine, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend Krista Williams.

[Amanda Knox]

It can change you in the Best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns.

[Jill Winterstein]

The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves.

[Amanda Knox]

Just so. I'm like delusionally proud of my chart.

[Jill Winterstein]

Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

This is Special Agent Regal. Special Agent Bradley Hall.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Min Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Amanda Knox]

I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast the Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what? Get the whole story.

[Robert Evans]

Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed.

[Amanda Knox]

What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?

[Jill Winterstein]

Oh my God. I think she might be innocent.

[Amanda Knox]

Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Clayton Eckerd.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's the Bachelor.

[Amanda Knox]

But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him.

[Robert Evans]

If I could press a button and

[Andrew T]

rewind it all, I would.

[Nancy Glass]

That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one night stand would end in a courtroom.

[Amanda Knox]

The media is here.

[Clayton Eckerd]

This case has gone viral.

[Andrew T]

The dating Contract.

[Jill Winterstein]

Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.

[Robert Evans]

This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love trapped on the iHeartRadio

[Amanda Knox]

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

You know who else said good enough? Nope, that's a bad way to talk about the Ferguson tragedy.

[Clayton Eckerd]

You're surely not doing that.

[Robert Evans]

Nope. But we are starting with Ferguson in this episode. It's very relevant to Jeffrey Epstein's intellectual journey. Cause I've been talking about. Ah, well, obviously the fact that he got arrested and in trouble has an impact on him. Cause a lot of his behavior seems to shift. He gets more into right wing stuff, but that's also happening to his whole community. All these tech billionaires and rich finance guys are getting more pilled in the 2000s about this stuff. Anyway, so maybe it would have happened if he hadn't gotten convicted of anything. But there's a definite moment that we can fairly easily say had a big impact on how Jeffrey Epstein thought about the world. And It's Ferguson. On August 10, 2014, Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown and killed him. There were protests immediately, and some people used the opportunity of the protest to loot and engage in other criminal activity. The police are included in the criminal activity that occurs after this shooting because their violence and the fact that they all looked like fucking soldiers kicked off further unrest and a national debate. You all probably lived through pieces of this. I'm not gonna re litigate everything that happened in Ferguson, but the basics of it are very relevant to the Jeffrey Epstein story, because Ferguson wasn't just a tragedy in its own right. It was a prelude to mass protests in the wake George Floyd's murder in 2020. But it also helped to inspire the fascist backlash that first made itself obvious when Mr. Donald Trump announced his presidency on June 16, 2015. I don't think it's focused on enough how close Ferguson is in time to Trump announcing the start of his campaign and how many older white people with money see the videos from Ferguson of the protests of these crowds of mostly black people who are very rightfully angry and get frightened.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

Terrified.

[Robert Evans]

Right. Because they see this as stirrings of the kind of race riots that they've never stopped fearing. Now, we know that Epstein began donating to far right content creators and talking very openly about race science in 2015 and 2016, not long after Ferguson. And we know that he paid close attention on what was happening in Ferguson from an early point, and that he talked about his predictions for what might happen next with one of his good friends, who former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. No fucking way.

[Clayton Eckerd]

No fucking way.

[Robert Evans]

It's always. And then he talked about it with his friend, this influential monster.

[Clayton Eckerd]

I'm just saying he's the Where's Waldo of bad guys. He's fucking everywhere.

[Robert Evans]

He really fucking is now in ways

[Andrew T]

that don't even always make sense, too. It's just like it feels like the writer's just cramming in mont villains at the end.

[Robert Evans]

I guess he hasn't shown up in the show for a while. Bring Ehud Barak in. Right.

[Andrew T]

Ye.

[Clayton Eckerd]

How'd that friendship start? Do we know?

[Robert Evans]

You know, I'm sure it's. There's information about that one. Cause he's one of the guys we knew was an Epstein friend way before the releases started. Right. They've been very like, publicly buddies. So what happens here is Michael Brown gets shot in Ferguson and protests start, right? And Jeffrey, at some point, probably pretty soon after that, is talking with Ehud Barak and says, here's what I think is going to happen next, right? And like, lays out a prediction for what's going to happen to Ferguson. And we don't know exactly what that prediction was or what he said, but we do know that on November 24, a grand jury fails to indict Wilson for killing Michael Brown. More protests follow, and some people respond to a man getting away with murder by rioting. Police cars are burned. There's a murder of a man in a parked car. It's really unclear, I think, still who does that and why that happens. But it's a big deal, right? What happens in Ferguson in November of that year is like hugely influential all across the country. On November 26, two days after the grand jury fails to indict Wilson, Ehud Barak sends this email to Jeffrey Epstein that you're seeing on your screen right now, Jeff. You've accurately predicted the eruption and together we'd predicted the mistakes which will follow. Let's hope it won't get worse. Re light and strong. I'll call you tomorrow morning, your time. Best eb and then he's linked there a CNN article called Ferguson Braces for more unrest. Right. So I want to really emphasize what's happening here. Jeffrey is concerned enough about the potential of like, race riots in the United States that he's like, looking for them. So as soon as Ferguson happens, he is concerned and he reaches out to his friend who he thinks would be the best friend to talk to about his fear that a racial minority in his country is getting violent. The former prime minister of Israel. Okay, there's a lot, a lot you can read into this conversation, right?

[Clayton Eckerd]

Boy howdy, I hate them all.

[Robert Evans]

So I think Ferguson has a lot to do with why the next year Epstein sends $25,000 to a white nationalist YouTuber. Right. I think it has a lot to do with a lot of shit that follows. I think it has a lot to do with why he starts reading fucking Breitbart now. I've talked in other episodes. We've known for a while that Epstein had a weird obsession with seeding his own DNA into the human race. In our previous episodes, we talked about how he had discussed with his friends that he wanted to have a stud ranch where women would raise his babies and the babies of other genius men. He talked about this both. I want to Have. I need to have a lot of babies for the good of mankind. And also, obviously smart people should be the ones having babies. A eugenicist, right? He's talking. This is Elon Musk shit. He. He's friends with Elon Musk, you know, disgusting. But he's interested in the same kind of stuff and absent other informations. When I first covered this, I chalked it up as more classic rich guy narcissism. My immediate thing was like, oh, this guy wants a bunch of kids cause he's a narcissist. And I didn't really see. Oh, no, no. This guy is also very specifically a white nationalist. Right? A budding white nationalist, at the very least, which Epstein is by this point, the releases have made this different picture very clear. And I think it makes the most sense when you look at it through the prism of Ferguson. An article on Futurism.com describes how Jeff's interests evolved after Ferguson. In 2016, Epstein emailed German cognitive scientist and then MIT professor Joshua Bach indicating that he was interested in the idea of genetically modifying black people to make them smarter. The Telegraph found Bach had received a roughly $400,000 donation from Epstein. Those are tied, like, that's tied to his interpretation of Ferguson. That's just a eugenicist, and that's not a small donation.

[Clayton Eckerd]

He's just a fucking freaky little race science Nazi.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just a race scientist. Yeah.

[Andrew T]

I mean, but that's like conservatives, right? That is like the extent of this is also the other way to look at it is this is cutting edge conservative thought, and it has been for the last however many thousands of years. This is as good as it gets for these people.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's one of those things. Obviously he's afraid of black Americans, and this fear was heightened by Ferguson. But also, just given his social life, he's social a lot with wealthy and influential and famous black people. Right. So he's not the kind of racist who can't be friendly to some black people. Right? He obviously can. But his conversations with his fellow white intellectuals, or at least he saw himself as an intellectual, made it clear that he saw successful and intelligent black people as outliers. And when you really want to get into how racist Jeff Epstein is by 2016, there's no better place to go. Huh?

[Clayton Eckerd]

Hate when you call him Jeff.

[Robert Evans]

Jeffy. There's no better way to talk about how fucking racist Jeffrey Epstein has become by 2016 than to look at his emails with Noam Chomsky.

[Andrew T]

Oh, Noam.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, Noam. On Sunday, February 7, 2016, Jeff emailed Noam after apparently hanging out together. So he had been hanging out with Noam and I guess Noam's partner that night because he says, thank you both for tonight. And then he tells Noam Chomsky that, hey, man, if you want, I can have my private jet, the Lolita Express, pick you up in Boston and take you to my private island and return whenever you like. Right? And Noam calls this invitation. Eight years after Epstein had been exposed for child sex trafficking. Tempting. Now, maybe he's just blowing Jeffrey off here, but Epstein doesn't read it that way. Epstein takes Noam Chomsky's response as an invitation to keep chatting, this time about racism. So he continues. After inviting him to his sex island, he says, on a different note, you have encouraged me to look at data. No holds barred mortgages, inequalities, opportunities. I have seen some things through your eyes, and for that I am grateful. The test score gap amongst African Americans is well documented. 20 years of. And then he spells testing, testing many. Which might be said to, like, if you can't spell the word testing right, maybe your complaints about other people on your smart issue are kind of bullshit. But he continues, many countries. James Watson, who's the racist guy who helped or arguably helped figure out the structure of DNA and was also like a DNA show, like, black people aren't as smart as white people guy, right? James Watson, big racist. Right. So Epstein continues, James Watson had some of his made public and hence his dismissal from society. He told me that after one sentence, he became an unperson. Making things. And he spells the word things wrong better might require accepting some uncomfortable facts. You told me that. So this is Epstein broaching a conversation with Chomsky. Hey, you know, you told me to look at the data. Well, it's convinced me that racism's right. How do you think about that, Noam

[Clayton Eckerd]

Chomsky and does Gnome and I get. Is Noam like, you're. Yeah, yeah, brother.

[Robert Evans]

No, I, I. Gnome pushes back. I will say that. Right? Gnome pushes back and he points out that, like, obviously outcomes for a kid like me when I was a kid are going to be different from a kid. That quote is part of a group that for 400 years had a chance for about two or three decades to enter the mainstream society. And then with a constant legacy of miserable racism, he's being like, yeah, of course test score skills will be lower because, like, our society hurts these people their entire lives. And that impacts Test scores, Right? That's what Chomsky's saying, right? He says that Epstein's data has no scientific interest. But he also says the greater issue is for later discussion, which I find interesting. Chomsky knows this is bullshit. He knows what his friend is saying is offensive, and he says kind of that. But then he's like, but we can talk about this later. You know, you wanna keep talking. I'm always down to talk about race science with you. Jeffrey Epstein, though, doesn't take the hint, and he keeps the conversation going. He admits that he's aware of the potential for abuse with genetic engineering and eugenics. However, imagine that a set of genes could be used for working memory, like the ones for Tay Sachs disease could be found and adjusted. Not looking seems cruel. And he's bringing up the argument that anyone makes if you're trying to convince a hostile source that you need to accept the initial tenets of eugenicist thinking. Well, look, obviously there's problems with this, but look at this horrible disease that happens to kids when they're in the womb. If you could knock that out, wouldn't that be good? Right? Wouldn't that be good? You gotta.

[Andrew T]

You gotta ask, do you hate kids?

[Robert Evans]

And like, anyone's gonna say, like, yeah, what if we could make kids who have their lungs born on the outside of their bodies have their lungs on the inside of their bodies? Great. But then the conversation goes from there to like, what if we wanna make sure that people aren't born with a certain skin color? Right? And one of the things that's interesting to me is that, like, if you are a eugenicist and you're trying to corrupt them to agree with you, you'll start the way that Geoffrey ends here, which is weird, right? You don't start with, hey, I've been looking at the numbers, and it looks like black people aren't as smart as white people. That's not how you start that conversation. And Epstein does, and then Chomsky smacks him down. And so Epstein pivots and he ends where the conversation normally starts, where he's like, well, what about these kids with Tay Sachs disease? Shouldn't we be fixing that? Right, yeah. Chomsky calls Jeff's proposition almost inconceivable and then says, but if it could be done, I think there would be far more important uses, like changing the genes for dedicated SA savagery and lack of concern for the welfare or even security of the population on the part of that sector of educated elites that reaches positions of power and I'd love to appreciate that response more if he wasn't sending it to his friend Jeffrey Epstein, who he continued to communicate with for years after his arrest for sexual trafficking.

[Andrew T]

I mean, I. But I think the thing is, in the frat house version of it, this is just like ribbing, because, you know, this. Oh, that's Jeff's foible. He's a fucking pedophile fascist. We can all joke about that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Andrew T]

Like, it's the chumminess. That's like.

[Robert Evans]

It's the friendliness.

[Andrew T]

It's all revolting, I guess. But it's the.

[Robert Evans]

You could. Yeah, it's the Chomsky, the fact that he's so willing to continue this relationship. Right.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, you could, I guess, if you wanted to feel good that Chomsky pushes back, but he keeps hanging out with Epstein repeatedly in person. They hang out in person a lot. That's fucked up.

[Andrew T]

I mean, it's also the, like. Like, not a real pushback. If you're like. It's not a real pushback.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no. And it's what we see here. And one of the reasons why this is really interesting to me. Not just to, like, shit on Noam Chomsky. I don't really care about that one way or the other. What this is evidence of is an active attempt by Epstein to influence Noam Chomsky, who is himself very influential on the American left, to try and further mainstream scientific racism. That's what he's doing here. He is trying to get Chomsky to start going down the road. He's going down because he knows Chomsky can influence even a large chunk of the country and maybe make them more amenable to scientific racism. That's what he's trying to do, because that's how Jeffrey thinks about everyone who's his quote, unquote friend. Right. He thinks about them in terms of, what can I get out of them? And that's how he's thinking about Chomsky during this conversation. There's other stuff he gets from Chomsky, obviously, but this is one thing he's trying to get and that he doesn't seem to. To get out of him. It's the same playbook we saw Epstein deploy with Bobby Kotick. Right. This is how he operates. What these new files reveal is that Jeffrey Epstein was an active and influential part of the reactionary wave often just called the alt right, that struck from 2015 to 2017 and brought us all the authoritarian bullshit we're living with today. He's A part of that. And he's trying to bring Chomsky into it, right? A huge part. Well, Chomsky doesn't. A huge part of the class that he's a part of follows him down this road. And part of why they do is because Epstein works on them one by one to encourage them to think differently and to ask uncomfortable questions. He's not the only one doing this. Right. He's not the leading one doing this. Part of why all of these Silicon Valley guys go fast is that a core of them start by saying, like, well, as the brain trust in America is the really. Is the only ones who are really intelligent, who really know what's going on because of all the money we've made, it's incumbent on us to ask uncomfortable questions and, you know, to consider things that. That less intelligent people might consider forbidden. You know, so let's look into it. Right. And that always just means racism. That's the only thing that means, right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah, well, sometimes it's a little bit

[Robert Evans]

of gender science and misogyny and sometimes pedophilia. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew T]

You know, there's other lines, Robert, come on.

[Robert Evans]

There are, there are. And I can remember as a kid, there was this big book called Disinfo that I read that was like, it was a bunch of. Of essays about uncomfortable questions challenging traditional logic and ethics. Right. And I found parts of it very interesting. And then I got to an essay that was like, oh, this guy's just arguing about fucking kids. Oh, that's what this is about? This is a trick.

[Andrew T]

Well, but it's the same thing. It's why Ayn Rand is appealing when you're like fucking 14, right? Because you don't know anything. But once you learn something, most people at least pull themselves out of it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Silicon Valley people do not. These fuckers talk all the time about uncomfortable questions and challenging orthodoxy, and not one of them will be like, hey, what if we just didn't have billionaires and money? Like, what if we. What if we didn't do that? What if you couldn't, like, just throw a bunch of money into a thing and then own thousands of people's livelihoods because you were born rich? What if that was not a thing we could do? Like, that's not the dangerous questions. It's all like, what if black people aren't people? Like, that's the dangerous question. Or, what if 15 year olds are fine to have sex with? Those are the dangerous questions that the intellectuals are always talking about when they say dangerous questions. And Jeffrey Shift here. His interest in this shit. That's what I'm trying to say. He is not novel. He has more influence than most. But a lot of these guys are thinking the same way. And he's using his money to support and encourage them to continue this shift. And I want to tell a story that kind of makes this point for me. And the story starts with a guy named John Brockman. Brockman is a major figure in the New York art scene starting in the 1960s. He is a peer of Andy Warhol and he eventually becomes one of the most powerful literary agents in the city. His specialty is books about science and futurism and he works with big name academics and thinkers, which means that he makes a lot of money. Brockman describes himself as a cultural impresario. Right? Sure, man. Cool.

[Andrew T]

Cool.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Clayton Eckerd]

I already don't like you, my guy.

[Robert Evans]

In 1996, he creates the Edge Foundation. This is an informal association of intellectuals who meet primarily online. And this is seen as a digital evolution from an older similar group that met in person called the Reality Club. The Reality Club, we're getting back in American intellectual tradition by a few decades here, but the Reality Club, per an article on their own website, I'm gonna talk about like the what this group was. Reality Club members presented their work with the understanding that they will be challenged. The hallmark of the Reality Club has been rigorous and sometimes impolite discourse. The motto of the club was inspired by the late artist philosopher James Lee Byers to arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge. Seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. And that's a great idea. It's a beautiful idea. We've hit the edge of the world's knowledge. Let's get the smartest people together to see if we can extend that edge. But what happens? James Lee buyers his whole abilities that this will let us accomplish the extraordinary. Right? But what actually happens is when these guys get together, primarily they talk about like, what if people couldn't vote if they were poor? What if we had more money? What if I could fuck teenage girls? Those are like the three big issues at the edge of human knowledge that these guys are really interested in. It's.

[Andrew T]

It's that like, as you said, the idea of the club seems cool. Like with the additional caveat that like anytime anything like that has ever existed in all of human history, it's always self. Self proclaiming. That you fit these attributes is pretty much the main reason you should not ever be part of a discussion like this.

[Robert Evans]

I think one of the things Einstein would have pointed out to these people is that if you have locked yourself out as being the absolute smartest in society and are isolating yourself from everybody else, it's probably evidence that you're not the smartest people in society.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, but.

[Robert Evans]

But Brockman really loves this idea. He considers these scientists dumb.

[Andrew T]

People always love this shit.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And, you know, I don't know much about him, but he. Other than that. But he considers these scientists and these other thinkers in the empirical space, the guys that Epstein is hanging out with, these philosophers and Bitcoin nerds and whatnot. He calls them the Third Culture. That's his term for these people. Right. Because they're separate from the culture everyone else lives in. Cause their minds are so far ahead of everyone else. Right. Brockman is close with Jeffrey Epstein, and he considers him to be one of these third Culture members who, through their unusual insight and brilliance, are making the future. Brockman is such an Epstein believer that he attends a dinner at Jeff's mansion after he was released from prison. In the New Republic, Evgeny Morozov describes Brockman as the intellectual enabler of Epstein. Brockman bragged that the Edge foundation, this salon of his, was redefining who and what we are. And he connected Epstein to important people because he wanted his friend Jeff to have a chance to change the world. Now, one of Brockman's clients is Joy Ito of mit, and in fact, Brockman may have been how Epstein and Ito met. He may have at least helped to encourage them to become friends. We know many other prominent intellectuals, like Steven Pinker, were first connected to Epstein by Brockman. So in a way, Brockman has been with us this whole story, helping to put up and coming technologists, thinkers and researchers in a room with a pedophile sex trafficker. When all of this dropped, author Evgeny Morozov found himself shocked. His books were represented by Brockman's agency. And he decided to look through his emails with Brockman to see, like, are there any signs that, like, something bad was going on here? And he finds an email from 2013 that really gives you an idea of how Brockman and Epstein baited the hook when they're trying to get these intellectuals interested in them. Right. And I'm going to quote from Morozov's article in the New Republic here. It was very laconic. Je FYI, jb Followed by my short bio and some media clippings. Strangely, it was sent to me and had no other contacts in cc. Perhaps he wanted to send it to JE but put my email there by mistake. When I commented on the meaning of this cryptic message, he responded with the following message reproduced here in I missed that one. Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire scientist philanthropist, showed up at this weekend's event by helicopter with his beautiful young assistant from Belarus. He'll be in Cambridge in a couple of weeks and asked me who he should meet. You are one of the people I suggested and I told him I would send some links. He's the guy who gave Harvard $30 million to set up Martin Nowak. He's been incredibly generous in funding projects of many of our friends and clients. He also got into trouble and spent a year in jail in Florida. Crazy way to say he's a registered child sex offender. You ain't got into trouble, spent a

[Clayton Eckerd]

year in jail in Florida, but a year, we've, we've lost the plot, guys.

[Robert Evans]

Come on, come on.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, it's also like mentioning young, young assistant is like, I mean, obviously that's how they would do it, but like, yeah, like what's wrong with you?

[Clayton Eckerd]

Like, I hate these people.

[Andrew T]

If you wrote dialogue this heavy handed, you would absolutely be run out of. Out of Hollywood.

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely. In a heartbeat.

[Andrew T]

Or the good part of Hollywood.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Anyway, that's all nuts, but Brockman suggests that if Epstein reaches reached out to Morozov, it's probably worth your time to respond to him. Right. So he's basically being like, and I don't even know if this missed email is intentional or not. If he's like trying to whatever he is sending Epstein information about this guy and he's telling Morozov, I know he's, you know, he's a controversial figure, but you should meet with him. He's really interesting and obviously he's got a lot of money that he can put towards your work. Right. And then after saying it's worth, probably worth your time, Brockman tells this story about Epstein. Last time I visited his house, the largest private residence in New York City, I walked in to find him in a sweatsuit and a British guy in a suit with suspenders getting foot massages from two young, well dressed Russian woman. After grilling me for a while about cybersecurity, the Brit named Andy was commenting on the Swedish authorities and the charges against Julian Assange. We think they're liberal in Sweden, but it's more like northern England as opposed to southern Europe. He said in Monaco, Albert works 12 hours a day, but at 9pm when he goes out he does whatever he wants and nobody cares. But if I do it, I'm in big trouble. At that point, I realized the recipient of Irina's foot massage was His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. Now Brockman is telling this story. Cause he thinks it's cool. He thinks it'll convince Morozov he's just gotta meet Epstein. Whoa. I walked in on him in the largest residence in New York, and he was getting. He was clearly hanging out with two prostitutes and the fucking Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. That's. So I gotta get in on that myself. You know, that's what. Why Brockman tells this story, right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah, he thinks there is like, a hindsight lens that, like, obviously we know.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah, I mean, I will. Yeah, there's a high. Who knows what Brockman was entirely aware of. But I will say in terms of the people who knew this was fucked up at the time. Morozov gets this email and is like, absolutely not right. I don't want any part of this shit. And he says, that vibe is already ripped out. Fuck that stuff, man. That sounds weird. And then Brockman changes his attitude and is like, yeah, okay. So Morozov's conclusion is that Brockman was acted basically as Epstein's PR man. And he does this because he needs Epstein. Epstein is funding the whole Edge Foundation. Jeffrey's assorted donations provided 638,000 of the $857,000 in funding the organization received from 2001 to 2017. Epstein was, per BuzzFeed News, by far the largest donor. In fact, one could argue the Edge foundation and all its billionaire dinners seem to have existed largely to connect Jeffrey Epstein to tech billionaires and public intellectuals. Right. Because one of the things they start doing in the aughts is Brockman starts putting together dinners with billionaires. Like that's. They call it the billionaire dinners. And Epstein's nearly always there. Right. Given the private nature of these events, we don't fully know what he used his influence to do, but he wouldn't have put more than $600,000 into this foundation if it wasn't worth it to him. One regular tradition was that Brockman would send out a list of questions for the members of the Edge foundation to answer each year. Like, what is your dangerous idea? The answers would be published on their website, which the Guardian called the world's smartest. So again, everyone's sucking these people off in the odds. Brockman also used his influence to host annual billionaires dinners, as I mentioned. And Epstein was a common Feature. This is how some major tech billionaires wind up connected to Epstein via email via Mandy Castigan's article. Quote. Email threads, which sometimes included Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, later turned into private conferences at Epstein and Brockman's properties, as well as public events and debates. Brockman once bragged to Epstein that the net worth of the 40 guests at my 2002014 billionaires dinner was equal to the combined wealth of 60% of all Americans.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, honestly, that seems lower than I thought.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Isn't the dangerous idea that that's bad?

[Clayton Eckerd]

I just like to think that they're like, all right, guys, let's do an icebreaker so everybody gets to know each other. What's your dangerous idea?

[Robert Evans]

Mm, yeah, my dangerous idea is that all of you should be fucking taken out by a drone strike. Like, one in that dinner would have saved the world some problems.

[Andrew T]

My God, so juvenile. It's so juvenile.

[Robert Evans]

And what's your.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Dude, it is genuine.

[Robert Evans]

That's like.

[Clayton Eckerd]

That's like a bad fucking, like, Tinder message. Like, fuck off. Fuck off.

[Robert Evans]

All the billionaires at these billionaires dinners hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, emailing with Jeffrey Epstein can see that he's going to be there, can see that he's in the email threads, are talking to him sometimes on the email threads. And this is years after his arrest and his conviction.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Most of Jeffrey's donations to Edge start after his arrest, and he attends his first billionaires dinner in 2011. Right. But we know these. These dinners go back further, and we know that in earlier years, like 2003, his close associate, Sarah Kellen was one of the few women present at this dinner. To give a brief summary of what exactly Sarah's role was in Epstein's operation, here's a paragraph from an article about her divorce from NASCAR star Brian Vickers. Court documents accused her of helping to arrange illegal massage sessions with underage girls. In 2022. A federal judge said she shared criminal responsibility while sentencing Gillan Maxwell. However, authorities never filed criminal charges against Kellan. Kellan, who worked with Jeffrey connecting people to illegal massage sessions is at the billionaires dinner in 2003 before Jeffrey, as far as we know, is even at these. Huh. Huh. Interesting.

[Andrew T]

I mean, interesting.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah,

[Andrew T]

I imagine some. This is somewhat like the rhetorical path you've been leading us down, but it is, like, shocking how much pedophilia is, like, an integral part of this whole power structure. Everything these guys intellectualism, like, it's always that.

[Robert Evans]

It's somehow always that once you get this kind of rich. The most painful and annoying thing in the world is anyone telling you you can't do something. And I think that that has something to do with it. Some of these guys, I'm sure, would always have, you know, gone after underaged, you know, kids and stuff. But I do think some of it might just be, like the sense of impunity they have that, like, nothing should be illegal for me. Nothing should be beyond me. Right? I don't know. And I don't know who else. Maybe no one made. Maybe Sarah didn't connect anyone with illegal massages at the billionaires dinner. Maybe she was just a great conversationalist who happened to, as a judge said, be deeply complicit in Jeffrey Epstein's illegal sex trafficking. Who knows? So that 2011 dinner Epstein attended featured Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, and Elon Musk, all of whom deny doing anything but briefly meeting Epstein at this event. This was not the only dinner he had with some of these folks, though. In August of 2015, billionaire Tom Pritzker, cousin of J.B. pritzker, asked Epstein if he was available to hang out. Jeff replied, not sure yet. I had dinner with Zuckerberg, Musk, Teal Hoffman, Wild. And then he sends a photo of this event. And it looks Sophie, as shady as you'd guess. They're at, like a dark table. You can see Elon in one corner. Whoever took the photo is sitting right next to Mark fucking Zuckerberg. Like, it is just the shadiest looking

[Andrew T]

dinner, but it's also like a moron's idea of what power looks like. It's like fucking the Dr. Evil setup.

[Robert Evans]

It's the Dr.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Evil setup.

[Robert Evans]

It does look like the Dr. Evil setup. And Mark Zuckerberg looks like he's rethinking being there. Like maybe it's just sitting across from Elon Musk is annoying as shit. I don't know. Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, man. The photo. That must have been Epstein taking it from, right? Maybe. I don't know, but he's right. If so, then he was right next to Mark Zuckerberg.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Is that Zuckerberg's wife?

[Robert Evans]

I can't tell. That may be Priscilla Chan right next to him. Yeah, I can't tell, but I can't tell. I don't know everyone in the photo, but you can. I mean, he says Bezos is there.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Elon Musk.

[Robert Evans]

That's definitely Musk and Zuckerberg, right? Speaking of people who went to dinners with Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein, none of them support this podcast, maybe. It's impossible to say.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, this is your least accurate ad throw I've heard.

[Robert Evans]

Yep. Yeah.

[Amanda Knox]

In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

[Robert Evans]

The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

[Amanda Knox]

Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict. A villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

[Robert Evans]

Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

[Amanda Knox]

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

[Robert Evans]

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

[Amanda Knox]

I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was.

[Jill Winterstein]

No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.

[Robert Evans]

It'll cause so much harm at every

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.

[Amanda Knox]

Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jill Winterstein]

Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a

[Robert Evans]

mini driver, the Irish traveler said when I was 16. You're going to have a terrible time with men.

[Jill Winterstein]

Actor, storyteller and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like Are Misunderstood a Sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership.

[Robert Evans]

He really has taught me to embrace people. See sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all.

[Jill Winterstein]

If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life, this episode is a must. Listen Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside.

[Robert Evans]

This is Special Agent Riegel, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

This MSS officer has no idea the US Government is onto him, but the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast.

[Andrew T]

I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer. No doubt, no question of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime.

[Andrew T]

He pulls the guy, tells me to lie down on the ground.

[Nancy Glass]

He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years.

[Robert Evans]

I'm like, lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity.

[Andrew T]

The best lie is partial truth.

[Nancy Glass]

For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a complaint, confession changed everything.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

I was a monster.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to Burden of guilt season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. So the Edge foundation is interesting to me because of what it is a precursor for. This is like the more exclusive version for actual powerful people. But the basic idea that we're gonna ask hard questions and come up with the future is going to come like, that's gonna basically be the operating principle for another group of annoying rich guys who are gonna come a few years later, right? In a write up for the Trans News Network, Maddy Castigan more accurately describes the Edge foundation as, quote, a loose predecessor, right? Intellectual dark web. And I think she's right on the money there, right? Or at least I think it's accurate to say the intellectual dark web is taking some of these ideas with being like, look, number one, billionaires don't have time to write this bullshit. They're not thinking up stuff. They're living out on their yachts, they're surfing. We gotta find some guys who aren't quite as rich, who will start thinking dangerous ideas and writing about, maybe we should be racist. Maybe it is okay to have sex with, with children, right? Like, we need, we need our, we need our intellectual dark web to get that information out to the plebs, right? So I think there's some value in sort of looking at it that way, right? To continue from her article, it's just

[Andrew T]

a gang of people whose main, like, main skill is somehow convincing at least some number of people that the basic pervasive ideas of, like, your average KKK member is somehow interesting and, like, verboten and, like, worth exploring.

[Robert Evans]

It's Playing on one of the worst things about the American psyche, which is our like deeply ingrained sense of oppositional defiant disorder. Because if you just say, hey, you know, the things that everyone else says are good, what if they're bad? And then a bunch of people will give you money and let you write for the Atlantic. Yeah, the Atlantic, which is run by a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Anyway, whatever. So is the New York Times. Whatever. Yeah, yeah. So to continue, from Mandy Castigan's article for the Trans News Network. During the research for this article, Trans News Network uncovered at least eight prominent anti trans figures affiliated with Edge or with the IDW who received support from Epstein or even visited his island, often through connections with Brockman or physicist Lawrence Krauss. Now it's noteworthy that so many super smart Edge people, as well as the IDW folks picked hating trans people as their dangerous intellectual idea. One of the most noteworthy members of this crew is Epstein's good friend Lawrence Krauss. As was stated in that quote above, Krauss is a famous physicist and right wing crank who taught at Arizona State University where only the best scientists work. In 2006 he hosted a conference on Epstein's island with Stephen Hawking. So that's he's responsible for all the pictures of Hawking that we have to think about now, which don't necessarily implicate Hawking any. Again, Hawking may have just heard this is a science conference because all of these scientists are showing up at this island from this guy who donates to science. It's 2006. Epstein hadn't been arrested yet. That said, for a lot of these guys, there's a follow UP conference in 2010, after which point they knew who Epstein was. Kraus is so close with Jeffrey that he becomes one of the first guys to face public consequences for his relationship with Epstein. In 2011, Rebecca Watson attacked him for continuing to associate with Epstein and justifying it by claiming science. Krause defended his friend and said, I don't feel lowered by my association with Jeffrey. I feel raised by my friendship with Jeffrey. And also he never raped any kids. Yeah, good call, Krause.

[Andrew T]

Just pr. Just a PR gene, you know, I guess. What else are you gonna say but yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And per that piece in the Trans News Network, Epstein clearly noticed Kraus vigorous defense and rewarded him for his loyalty. He pledged $100,000 to Kraus Project at ASU between 2014 and 2018. And Epstein's billionaire benefactor and alleged child rapist Leon Black subsequently pledged a whopping 2 million in 2015, Krause claimed he raised a total of $4 million for the project in 2018, meaning that a large portion of his funding came from billionaires acc of child rape. And my only correction that would be that like again, Epstein wasn't really a billionaire.

[Andrew T]

Not a billionaire.

[Robert Evans]

This does goes to show when I say that you can't just look at what Epstein gives. You have to look at what Leon Black is giving. Because Epstein told him to. Right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah. It creates a culture and some cover and just a crowd to hide yourself in. Sure.

[Robert Evans]

Now, Krauss more recently had to step down from Arizona state during the MeToo movement after he was accused of six separate times of sexual misbehavior at work.

[Clayton Eckerd]

I'm so shocked to hear that.

[Robert Evans]

Lawrence Krauss, everybody. Wow. And after he gets in trouble, he becomes one of the first prominent men who were, you know, brought low by MeToo to reach out to Jeffrey Epstein for advice. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. But Jeff goes so far he's not just given Krauss advice, he's helping him like craft his response. Like the open letter that he writes about the allegations which Krauss denied. But now we know because we have this information Epstein was giving him like notes on it. Maddy Castigan continues. While he has long denied many of the allegations from his time at asu, Krause admitted to and even tried to justify gratuitous sexual comments about trans women he made around co workers. In one later removed section of his retirement letter, he also helpfully included a grade school sketch of a light bulb that he drew in front of colleagues. Since Kraus retirement from academia and hopefully sketch art, Epstein continued to advise and fund him him as he pivoted to building an anti trans podcast on his YouTube channel and accompanying substack where he's interviewed a large number of terfs and other anti trans figures, including other Epstein associates like Richard Dawkins. And for a note, that light bulb sketch Jeff drew. I know this because of a fucking Dilbert book I read as a kid. If you like draw a light bulb in a certain way and turn it upside down, it looks like a woman who's bending over with her underpants on. That's what Krauss is doing. One of our greatest minds, truly a master of physics. Just a genius. All these men just the. That's the.

[Andrew T]

They are good at one thing probably. Or okay at one thing. Yeah is the problem.

[Robert Evans]

Most of them were or not is the problem.

[Clayton Eckerd]

But like just hate them all.

[Robert Evans]

I Don't know how good Krause was, but yeah. So we've got Epstein funding a white nationalist YouTuber in 2015, and then in 2019, one of his last actions is helping to fund Krauss's anti trans propaganda. That's interesting. Right? And it gets worse. Epstein is also closely tied to an evolutionary biologist named Robert Trivers. Now, I had not heard of this guy, but Dr. Ev Nichols wrote a great piece on this for her website, Queer Science Lab. She started by just searching the Epstein files for the word transsexual. Right now, today, that is widely. Although I have known some trans people who still use that term for themselves, but it is. It is an outdated and offensive term. As a general rule. That's like, you're not. You shouldn't be using that. Referring to if someone wants to take that. Whatever. I'm not. For me to speak about. Right. But the reason why Dr. Nichols uses that term is because most of the men in the Epstein files are older men. They're around Jeffrey's age. And that term was, even if you weren't trying to be offensive, the term you would have used 20 or 30 years ago. Right. That's why she's searching for it. Because these guys use outdated terms for things. I just needed to explain that. So she looks into Jeffrey and his friends talking about trans issues, and she points out something that gets left out a lot, including in my earlier coverage of Epstein, which is that. And I should have found this information, but I didn't because it was out at this point in time. So I want to correct that. Now, the first woman to publicly accuse Jeffrey Epstein of abuse was a transgender Latina woman named Ava Cordero. She sued Epstein in October of 2007, claiming that he forced her into bizarre and unnatural sex when she was 6, 16 years old, per an article in LGBTQ Nation. Quote. In her lawsuit, Cordero alleged that in 1999, Epstein lured her to his mansion undressed and requested a massage. Cordero said she felt frightened, but agreed, at which point Epstein suddenly began violently touching her genitals, pushing her head downward, and demanding oral sex. She alleged Epstein had lured her to his mansion in 1999 when she was 16. Right. So again, I just really need to emphasize that. Right. She agrees initially when he asks her to undress because she's scared. And once he starts, he begins violently grabbing her genitals and then grabs her head and forces her to perform oral sex. It's really bad. Like, this is a really bad story. As bad as any of the tales. Of the story here, but no one takes this seriously because Cordero is a trans woman and her life. And I. Well, trans child at the time of the abuse. But she's 19 when she. She. Anyway, whatever. Or older than that when she makes it. Anyway. This is a trans woman, and that makes assholes consider her an unsympathetic victim. Another thing that is used against her is that she's HIV positive, right? She had admitted that she'd been admitted to a psychiatric hospital several times. She's has mental health issues in the past, and she's admitted to illegal drug use in the past. And all of this makes her a bad victim in the eyes of shitty people. I want to emphasize she is being judged here. Part of her credibility, why she's judged is not credible, is that she's admitted to having used drugs in the past. Epstein is perfectly happy to use drugs. In fact, we have evidence of this. There's a 2013 email exchange between him and his fixer, Leslie Grof, where Grof is arranging for a friend of. So Epstein has an apartment complex that he owns, right? And he lets people stay there. Sometimes they're male friends of his. They can crash there. Sometimes he lets people live there. Usually very young women live there for periods of time. Right. In 2013, one of these apartments, a woman lives there, and she asks Leslie Groff, hey, my friend, actor Will Forte is coming into town. Can he crash with me for a few nights in this apartment Jeffrey Epstein owns? Now, I don't know the relationship between Jeffrey and this woman. I don't know the age at which she starts talking to Jeffrey. I think she's an adult at this point, from everything that I know. So there's a lot that I don't understand here. But Epstein has this apartment that he sends women to and that he sends men to and that there's some evidence he sends men to. To have sex with young women, maybe young women that he's giving a free apartment to. It's a little bit unclear. That's not what this is. Right. Will Forte is not a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. When Epstein is asked if he can stay at the apartment, Epstein does not appear to know the guy right now. Would Will have been cool if he knew that he was staying in an apartment Jeffrey Epstein owned? I don't know if he would have been. I don't know if he knew. Right. Does this woman tell her friend Will Forte, by the way, this apartment's owned by Jeffrey Epstein. You know, this is one of those, because I'm bringing Will into it as a result of something else. I wanna make it clear there's not evidence he did anything wrong. Although maybe it should be looked into a little bit. Right? Yeah.

[Andrew T]

Who knows?

[Robert Evans]

Just to make sure. But there's not evidence. I wanna make that really clear. Anyway, the reason why this is relevant is because this woman asks, hey, can Will Forte crash with me? And Leslie asks jeff, hey, is this okay? And Epstein responds, yes, but make sure there are no drugs or drink in the apartment, which means that there's drugs there a lot of the time. Right? Right. This isn't the only evidence that Jeffrey Epstein used drugs or plied girls with drugs. Right. It just makes it very clear, for

[Andrew T]

what it's worth, I guess that's a point in Will Forte's favor, is he's hiding that he has.

[Robert Evans]

Right. That Epstein wanted to hide stuff from him. Right. So again, there's not evidence Will did anything wrong. But this is relevant because when this case comes out and when she makes claims against him, there are, like, websites put up. Right. Like social media sites claiming to be her social media sites where she talks about illegal drug use. Right.

[Clayton Eckerd]

The smear campaign.

[Robert Evans]

Now, she denies these are her social media accounts. And we know Epstein hired people to fix his Wikipedia for him. We know that he hired people to alter website, and we know that he hired people to alter, like, Google results so that it wouldn't be obvious that he was a sex criminal. They had somebody removing the fact that he was a convicted sex offender from his Wikipedia. He had people altering Google results. Wouldn't have been weird for him to have someone make a fake social media page for this woman who has charged him, who has alleged that he abused her. Right. And I just really wanted to emphasize how vile this is really comprehensively. Her case is dismissed because it fell outside of the statute of limitation. She waited more than five years. And the fact that this all happens and that it's not. Not only is this dismissed, which maybe they didn't have a choice legally. I'm not enough of a law expert to say if this is a good ruling or not, you know, but statutes of limitation exist. I mean, good in the. Is it a legally consistent ruling that they would have applied to anybody. But what you do know here is that the media treats this like a joke. These are serious allegations that Jeffrey Epstein raped a child that come out the year before he gets charged with molesting a child and convicted. And it is treated like a joke forever up to the present day. And per an article in LGBTQ Nation, the New York Post's October 23, 2007 coverage included the headline gender bend Shocker. Kinky sex suit Gal is a man. Like, yeah, this is a rape allegation by a child or someone who was a child at the time. Right. It's just, it's, it's vile. It's just like so comprehensively evil. Anyway, this is Epstein's first recorded interaction with a trans person, but from this point forward. So there's obviously a period at which he fetishizes trans people, right? And that's deeply tied in with his anti trans activism because that becomes an increasing thing to him in the aughts. And one person he expresses a lot of this to is evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers. Now, Trivers was famous for back in the 70s, creating what's called the theory of investment parenting. And this theory suggests that parents invest in their kids to ensure their own multi generational success. Thus, it's natural for women to invest more in parenting because they invest more to create the child. And it's natural for men to invest less in parenting because it's easy to come. Right. That's what Nichols is saying and that this is fine and right and good. This theory has been discredited, but as Dr. Nichols noted in her article, it is still widely cited, Travers started corresponding with Epstein in 2009 again after Epstein's guilty plea. Per Nichols, quote, Epstein invited Trivers to his house in Florida to discuss his work and paid Trivers travel and accommodations. Trivers, like all researchers, needed money. Research is expensive. Salaries, materials, publishing fees and more. Over the years, Trivers frequented Epstein's Florida home. Trivers is unsure how or when Epstein began funding his work. But by 2015, Epstein bragged to Noam Chomsky that he was Trivers major funder. Concurrently, Trivers publicly justified Epstein's pedophilia in no one's source certain terms. And she chooses not to reproduce that justification here. I think I will reproduce them because it's important for knowing what a piece of shit Trivers is. In a 2015 Reuters article, after a lot more stuff about Epstein started coming out, several scientists who had received donations from the Epstein foundation were asked why they kept taking his money and associating with him. After his conviction, Krauss said, I'd be a coward if I abandoned Jeffrey over allegations I know nothing about, and that's gross. But what Trivers says in this article is so much worse. I can't believe he said this to Reuters. Did he get an easy deal? Did he buy himself a light sentence? Well, yes, probably compared to what you or I would get. But he did get locked up, Trivers said. Trivers says he also said he believes girls mature earlier than in the past. By the time they're 14 or 15, they're like grown women were 60 years ago. So I don't see these acts as so heinous.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Is this guy just, like, walking around still?

[Robert Evans]

Probably. I hope he's dead, but I think he probably is.

[Andrew T]

Well, it's also just like, like that, like, branch of, like, bigot science is like you just, like, find the trappings of evolutionary, like, psychology to like, justify what you already want to you. You know, you can sort of backfill anything if you want.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Andrew T]

And you'll get money. It's rewarding to be a bigot.

[Robert Evans]

It's cool like that.

[Andrew T]

To be a fucking racist pedophile, whatever.

[Robert Evans]

So that next year, in 2016, Trivers thanked Epstein for sending him extra money and making him an advisor on the Epstein.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Oh, that guy's still alive?

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah. Good. He talked about his medical research and added that he was moving forward on theoretical work Epstein had asked him to pursue. We don't know what that was specifically, but Epstein's response to this was, I want to see your piece on transgender in the bio work world. Right. So that suggests he wanted Travers to write a piece about transgender people and actual. And like, biology like his. This is like a bioessentialist thing, right? That's what he wants Dr. Travers to write. And that's kind of his. His. His priority, right, is getting this guy to write about trans people rather than any of the other research that he's doing. Dr. Nichols continues. Two months later, Trivers contacted Epstein again and communicated that he is getting to the end of transsexuality. Trivers goes on to pontificate about the benefits of fucking trans women using dehumanizing language to refer to trans femmes, like organism and the new morphs. To that end, Trivers asks Epstein for more money to finish his research on the proposed topics. So first off, Trivers, if you read his actual emails, he is a fetishist. He fetishizes trans people, and he also does not consider them, number one, to be the gender that they are. Right. He's a biological essentialist, but he also, and I think this is the same with Epstein, they're happy to fetishize these people. When these people have an identity and are trying to get, like, treated as human beings, that makes him incredibly angry because they only exist for his sexual gratification. I Think that's a big thing for both Epstein and Trivers here and why they're both on the anti trans stuff. Right. Is they're personally offended at the struggle for dignity and civil rights by trans people as a community. Because to them, they're not a community, they're a fetish. Right. That's, I think what's going on here. That's my interpretation based on my reading. In October of that year, 2016, Trivers held a talk in London titled An Evening on Evolutionary Biology, an overview covering feminism, transgender, homosexuality and honor killings. He invited Epstein to the talk and in an email where he laid out the details of the event, wrote or wrote the title. So as far back as 2016, Epstein is trying and giving his money to support the creation of an Internet wave of coverage critical to trans identity. Because Epstein's response is that basically I think this will do a good job of getting in the news. Like great work on the conference. Hopefully people write about it. You know, like he's really trying to get intellectuals to put out critical stuff about trans people that he can then get to go viral. And he talks about this directly in his emails. Trivers. In 2018, Epstein and Trivers again communicate about trans theories. Trivers uses more really bad language. He calls trans people novel phenotypes. And then he describes an experiment that he wants to do to kind of test some of his theories, which, and this is how Dr. Nichols describes it, he reiterates his attraction to trans women and explicitly erases trans men, all while using his porn algorithms as evidence. Trivers ends the email by claiming that trans 3 year olds are receiving hormone treatments. A false anti trans scaremonger. So again, this, this mix of fetishization and scaremongering is really interesting.

[Clayton Eckerd]

These people are disgusting.

[Robert Evans]

I, I don't want to include too much of the text of these emails. They're gross enough that I don't really want to read them in detail. But as Nichols notes, Epstein funds his anti trans work over his other research, which is often also racist. For example, Trivers wanted to find an evolutionary reason why basically black people do honor killings and Middle Eastern, like Arab people do honor killings, when the reality is that like, honor killings are everywhere. If a man gets angry that his wife slept with someone else or doesn't respect him enough and murders her, which happens all of the time in the US that right there is an honor killing, my friend. Yeah, he's angry cause a woman made him embarrassed and he murdered her. Yeah. Anyway, what's interesting though is that above all this stuff above even the racial stuff. Epstein wants Trivers writing anti trans propaganda. Here's a March 2019 email where Epstein lays out directly that he considers the anti trans stuff Trivers main priority. I can call you today if you like. My recollection is that we sat together. I thought that you might want to focus on transgender biology. People would be interested and I would fund. I am a true believer in your talents. Yeah, right.

[Andrew T]

I mean, you know, to the extent that Epstein had a talent, it was like this. Like, even if it's not like people will be interested, it's that like the fucking like, like power brokers and information people down to like the New York Times and like, you know, quote unquote liberals or whatever will also buy this shit hook, line and sinker. Yeah. Or at least buy the debate. Perpetuate the debate.

[Robert Evans]

That's right. And it's the debate he wants to push out there first. Right. Because it starts with the debate. It starts with, okay, let's have him have this talk and then see if we can get the Guardian, whoever to report on the fact that this biologist is talking about, you know, this is what he said about trans people. People are starting to question, you know, some of these things that the community is putting out. Right, right. He's very specific about like, I want this to go viral, I want this to get news coverage. Right. He expresses. And when he says in that last email that people will be interested about your anti trans research, he's expressing confidence that he can brute force the public to care about Trivers research. Right. That's what he's talking about is forcing anti trans talking points into the public sphere. I could go on about the other people that may have had played a role in this. Epstein is very close to the Sulzberger family who own the New York Times, who publish a lot of anti trans bullshit. Epstein knew them as far back as the 70s. In one email chain, he jokes with Michael Wolf about the fact that former publisher Arthur Sulzberger had a sex scandal that could have ruined him before he retired. Sulzberger's son now runs the New York Times. And you know, obviously I'm not saying that Epstein convinced the New York Times to run a bunch of anti trans propaganda, but it's interesting that Epstein is really pushing that and is friends with the people behind the Times and the Atlantic.

[Andrew T]

But that is also the thing. It's like he doesn't have to. That is sort of like both the useful idiocy of places like the New York Times and the Atlantic. And like, just that, I guess, class of people, which is like, he doesn't have to dictate, oh, you should do this. He knows that they are primed to support these ideas or again, support the debate.

[Robert Evans]

And this class of people, which includes basically everyone who's ever written a pop science book that's been successful and includes a number of actual scientists, most of the billionaires, and a whole lot of, like, hereditary newspaper people, right? People who get jobs at the Times of the Atlantic or the New Yorker because of who their dad or mom was, right? A lot of these. All these people are desperate for money from rich assholes like Jeffrey Epstein and are willing, like, especially the writers and the academics to kind of say anything if there's money in it. All of these fucking guys, like the fucking Barry Weiss crew or whatever talk about how they're like truth tellers. And this is the same as, like, honestly, the New York Times editorial board talk about how they care about the truth and get information to people they give a shit about money and having rich friends and access, right? And they're so desperate for it that the instant someone like Jeffrey Epstein starts saying, you know what I found about trans people, they'll start green lighting articles, because that's what the public wants to hear.

[Andrew T]

You know, it's so. It's shocking that the truth tellers just all, in their, like, vast search for truth, just happen to coalesce around the opinions of the right wing power structure. That is a coincidence.

[Robert Evans]

It's interesting also that, like, the most dangerous thing to suggest isn't maybe all these assholes with all of the money shouldn't have it. It's maybe these people with no money at all are bad and dangerous.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe the poorest and most depressed group of people that I could think of pretty much here are, yeah.

[Andrew T]

Secretly in charge intellectual kings and queen.

[Robert Evans]

It's good stuff. Yeah. Ultimately, the result of Epstein's investment in Trivers didn't reach fruition until two months before his death. In 2020, Trivers published his Universal Theory of Gender Identity, which argued that the ratio of one's digit lengths, like fingers, revealed how much testosterone they'd received as a fetus and thus predicted gender identity and then proved gender absolutism, basically. And he basically said that, like, by the way, someone's fingers, look, I can tell you if they're transgender. This is wrong. His work has been disproven, but it's cited regularly, including in a 2022 paper from an anti trans group called sex matters. Per Dr. Nichols, the group cites digit ratios in denying the autonomy of trans adolescents, and this next bit that she writes is very important. To recap, Epstein funds Trivers research and suggests specific topics of study. Trivers becomes obsessed with trans women as sexual objects and seeks a universal biological explanation of gender identity. He asks for more money and publishes his findings. Ultimately, Trivers theory is easily falsifiable. Despite this, hate groups pick up on the pseudoscience and use it as a justification for their regressive policy policies. Yeah, that is in a nutshell, the Jeffrey Epstein story.

[Andrew T]

It it is telling that like the best, most funded, absolutely cutting edge of right wing thought is basically the same as on the playground when they said if your hand is bigger than your face, you're exactly yeah. Whatever offensive horrible thing follows like that is literally the best these people can do. And there it is.

[Robert Evans]

Is yeah, I let's you know Andrew, here's some ads. I don't have a better pivot right now.

[Clayton Eckerd]

There's no pivot.

[Jill Winterstein]

Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a

[Robert Evans]

mini driver, the Irish traveler said when I was 16. You're going to have a terrible time with men.

[Jill Winterstein]

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[Robert Evans]

He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all.

[Jill Winterstein]

If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life, this episode is a must. Listen Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside.

[Robert Evans]

This is Special Agent Riegel, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

This MSS officer has no idea the US Government is onto him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the sixth Bureau podcast.

[Andrew T]

I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer. No doubt, no question of his life. And that's the unicorn. No One had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Amanda Knox]

In 2023, a story gripped the UK evoking horror and disbelief.

[Robert Evans]

The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

[Amanda Knox]

Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict. A villain. A nurse named Lucy Letby.

[Robert Evans]

Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

[Amanda Knox]

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

[Robert Evans]

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

[Amanda Knox]

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it. To ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was.

[Jill Winterstein]

No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.

[Robert Evans]

It'll cause so much harm at every

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.

[Amanda Knox]

Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime.

[Andrew T]

He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground.

[Nancy Glass]

He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years.

[Robert Evans]

I'm like, lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity.

[Andrew T]

The best lie is partial truth.

[Nancy Glass]

For 22 years, only two people knew the truth until a confession changed everything.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

I was a monster.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to Burden of guilt season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. There's a lot that I feel bad about not including in these episodes that I want to. We're not talking about Howard Litnick, right? Like, the fucking Trump's commerce Secretary who's also the custodian of, like, the tether reserves and thus very tied to fucking. And tied to Jeffrey Epstein, right? We're not talking about a lot of stuff that is really important because there's just too much to talk about that we already have in these episodes. But I would feel bad if I didn't end by coming back to the bromance between Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon, right? Oh, sure. Now, as I said earlier, both are in each other's orbit for years before they got connected officially in 2017 by Michael Wolf, or at least that was, was, you know, the, the best estimate that I found previously. But there is evidence that it goes back earlier. And on Sunday, December 18th of 2016, Epstein emails Brock Pierce asking if he'd had a chance to meet with Bannon. Right. Epstein's asking, hey, did you meet with Bannon yet? And Brock says, yes. And Epstein says, Bannon seems like the pretty smart puppet master. Brock vouches for Bannon and says, like, yeah, I've relied on him for years. And it's after this point that Steve and Jeffrey talk an awful lot. So. So it may have been that in 2017 they start talking after this conversation, December of 2016. But also the fact that Epstein's asking Brock if he'd had a chance to meet with Bannon suggests that he's aware of Bannon and is interested in what he's doing and saying, maybe because they knew each other, maybe because they were kind of socially distant, but still somewhat, I don't exactly know. Right. But it's telling that he's like, bannon seems like a pretty good puppet master in 2016.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Here's Politico's summary of their relationship. The two texted frequently about everything from the TV show Chernobyl and a guessing game over who pinned the 2018 Anonymous New York Times op ed to their efforts to influence international geopolitics, including shaping Europe's governing coalitions, ramping up pressure on China, and forging business ties in the Middle East. Bannon at one point took credit for convincing Trump in 2018 to impose massive tariffs on China, gabbed with Epstein about his We Build the Wall endeavor that would later end in a federal indictment and presidential pardon, and gossiped about the latest developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation in which Bannon was a subject. They're talking about everything, especially their crimes.

[Clayton Eckerd]

And don't forget that HBO limited run show.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, it is like, largely an

[Andrew T]

exercise in guilt by association, but it is like the most damning.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, it's not even damning.

[Andrew T]

It's just like the evidence. It's like the pattern continues to build. And it is like, you know, again, this goes back to my biggest thing has been like, the. Was Trump thinking with release the Epstein files really? Like, what do you. What did he hope to accomplish?

[Robert Evans]

I. I don't think he had much choice. I don't think he's at his full powers, you know, and unfortunately, when you, you get your whole base obsessed, the idea that these explain everything, you kind of have to.

[Andrew T]

But why start. Why start on this? You knew what was in this shit, man.

[Robert Evans]

Arrogance. I think it was a lot of other people, like fucking Trump used it. But Trump wasn't the Trump left to his own devices. He wouldn't have had the idea to hang Epstein on these guys. Cause he's talking about Clinton now as a friend, right?

[Clayton Eckerd]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So in their private correspondence, Epstein and Bannon are very open about their disdain for Donald Trump. Epstein calls him a grifter. And Bannon repeatedly uses the term stable genius to mock his former boss. The two got along because they both had a vested interest in destroying the establishment as it existed. Bannon gave Epstein advice on rehabilitating his image after his arrest, even as Epstein himself acted as a free advice giver to all the famous men impacted by MeToo. The two men were very direct about their plans to subvert democracy. In July of 2018. They talked about hiring hackers or otherwise working to get them on our side. Epstein included links to the website for hacking convention defcon as he pondered how they might influence these people. And it's very clear for these emails, neither of these guys know much about hacking. Although one reveal from the Epstein files is that at least per Epstein's claims. In the files, Epstein claims Peter Thiel was funding Nazi hacker weave for years, which I do believe. Yeah, yeah. So Bannon asks, hey, do you know any of these guys? And Epstein responds, some of the founders organizers. They are the most dangerous force into society by far. Bioweapons pale due to blowback. Nuclear, a 60 year old technology. What other 60 year old tech frightens you? Space frontier can't operate without software. So basically he's saying like hackers are scarier than nukes or bioweapons. Which is also a dumb thing to say.

[Andrew T]

Cool man.

[Robert Evans]

Bannon asks if he thinks these kind of people can be bought. And Epstein says yes. And he excitedly explains, you can buy hacks, you can buy zero day exploits. Right. You see that in the email on here too. And he says in other emails that he's wrestling with the task of getting hackers who would work for Bannon and could maybe find a zero day to target crypto wallets or voting booths. Right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now there's no evidence they did this, certainly. And Epstein is gonna have other concerns very soon after these emails get sent. This may have just been another example of him bloviating, but it shows how he and Bannon are thinking. Right and that's meaningful. At least they're dumb. At least they're dumb.

[Andrew T]

And I still say script Kitty. I can't believe, you know, FC's out here. Script Kitty.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, script. I don't think it's super relevant these days.

[Andrew T]

Not anymore. That's Epstein, though. Oh, I could buy a via exploit. Sure, man.

[Robert Evans]

Carly Rae Jepstein. Yeah. Good stuff. I don't know if this is what I've got. There's an interview between him and Bannon that, like, Bannon was trying to make a documentary on his friend. That's really telling that. I may break down later for you guys, but I think this is enough for now. I'm tired.

[Andrew T]

Thanks, Robert. I'm tapping out personally.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, let's maybe dead from this.

[Andrew T]

Oh, my God. But I think there's also, like, the trove is endless.

[Robert Evans]

The trove is endless. Endless content.

[Clayton Eckerd]

We could do many more parts and we might end up having to.

[Robert Evans]

But I'd like to. Maybe Jeffrey Epstein really just sacrificed himself for the global content minds, you know, to ensure that there were plenty of podcasts and YouTube videos.

[Andrew T]

Think about it.

[Clayton Eckerd]

I'd love to be done.

[Andrew T]

Think about it.

[Clayton Eckerd]

It hurts. This was painful.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. All right, I'm done. Goodbye. Goodbye. Are we done?

[Clayton Eckerd]

Done, done, done?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Andrew T]

Okay.

[Clayton Eckerd]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia. Com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com behindthebastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. Hi.

[Robert Evans]

Hi.

[Jill Winterstein]

It's Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend Christa Williams.

[Amanda Knox]

It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change. Dance with the breakdowns.

[Jill Winterstein]

The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves.

[Amanda Knox]

Just so. I'm, like, delusionally proud of my chart.

[Jill Winterstein]

Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Amanda Knox]

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, the Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

[Robert Evans]

Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

[Amanda Knox]

What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?

[Jill Winterstein]

Oh my God. I think she might be innocent.

[Amanda Knox]

Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

This is Special Agent Riegel, Special Agent Bradley Hall.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agents agencies in the world.

[Special Agent Bradley Hall]

The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets.

[Narrator (6th Bureau podcast)]

Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nancy Glass]

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumprite became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything.

[Robert Evans]

I was a monster.

[Nancy Glass]

Listen to Burden of guilt season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Jill Winterstein]

Guaranteed Human.