Part One: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

Summary

Behind the Bastards – “Part One: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World”

Date: February 17, 2026
Host: Robert Evans (Cool Zone Media / iHeartPodcasts)
Guests: Andrew T.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Robert Evans and guest Andrew T. dive into the recently released Epstein files to explore not just Epstein’s notorious criminality, but his surprising influence on the development of modern technology, internet culture, and the contemporary far-right. This is the first installment in a multi-part series tracing how Epstein and his circle—directly and indirectly—helped shape elements of the digital, political, and media environments that define our era.

Main Theme:
How Jeffrey Epstein, through social, financial, and technological networks, shaped key aspects of today’s tech, media, and political landscape—often in ways more far-reaching (and darker) than previously known.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Growing Scope of the Epstein Files

[04:12] Brock Pierce:

• Massive new file dump: In early 2026, the DOJ released three million new Epstein-related pages.
• Ongoing revelations: The files are vast, still being sifted, and regularly reveal new, deeply disturbing details tying influential figures (including Donald Trump) to Epstein’s world.

Notable quote:

• [05:49] “A lot of crazy shit is in these files that literally happened…. And probably the single worst piece of data I have seen from an implicating the president point of view is this paragraph from an FBI interview with a victim of Epstein's.” – Brock Pierce

2. Epstein & Trump: Intersecting Scandals

[06:18] Brock Pierce (quoting FBI interview):

• A newly released FBI account recalls Epstein introducing a 14-year-old girl to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, with disturbing banter between the men.
• The hosts discuss the implications for Trump, public reaction, and the failure (or refusal) of some political and journalistic circles to acknowledge the full scope of complicity.

[07:16] Robert Evans:

• “I'm gonna say ew a lot on these episodes, but ew…”

3. Beyond the Scandal: Epstein’s Structural Impact

[10:25] Brock Pierce:

• While the pedophilic crimes are unspeakable, some of the most surprising revelations are Epstein’s centrality to tech and political events—such as cryptocurrency’s adoption, Gamergate, the 2008 financial crash, rise of right-wing media, and the toxicification of internet culture.

[11:29] Brock Pierce:

• “[Epstein] helped create the modern far right and he helped ruin the Internet in a lot of ways.”

4. “Right Place, Right Time” or Architect?

[12:37] Andrew T.

• Considers whether Epstein’s influence was unique or just a snapshot of how powerful networks function historically.
• The answer seems to be: a mix—Epstein wasn’t always the main domino, but was often an important “early domino,” especially in proto-cryptocurrency and online radicalization.

[13:00] Brock Pierce:

• “There have always been… groups of elites who are all creepy friends… making policy that affects millions of lives.”

5. The Brock Pierce Arc: From “Mighty Ducks” Kid to Crypto Mogul

Who Is Brock Pierce?

• [19:24] Brock Pierce (not the host!) went from child star (“Mighty Ducks”) to ambitious 14-year-old with dreams of Hollywood production power.
• The hosts unpack Pierce’s early urge for dominance and adult status, suggesting a childhood forced to “grow up too fast.”

Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) and Predatory Tech Bros

• [29:51] Brock Pierce: At 17, Pierce cofounds DEN with Mark Collins Rector and Chad Shackley.
  • DEN:
    • Envisioned as YouTube before YouTube (late ’90s)
    • Infamous for wild, abusive parties, and as a vector for sexual abuse of young boys
    • Heavily funded ($88 million) by VC and politicians, with a mission to reach “ignored” Gen Y demographics (notably gay teens)
  • Collins Rector later convicted of trafficking minors and fled the country; Pierce was never convicted but is named in abuse allegations.

[45:22] Brock Pierce:

• After fleeing to Spain with Collins Rector (who is later extradited), Pierce claims ignorance of child abuse material found in their villa (Pierce was not charged).

Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE) & Steve Bannon

[46:32] Brock Pierce:

• Pierce’s next venture was IGE, a company pioneering gold farming in MMOs (notably World of Warcraft).
• [50:23] Steve Bannon enters as an “adult in the room,” bringing in investment but also learning from the gamer communities—especially their anger and susceptibility to manipulation.
• IGE’s gold farming model introduced exploitative labor practices (‘virtual sweatshops’ in Asia) and demonstrated how online populations could be radicalized or weaponized.

[58:24] Brock Pierce and Andrew T.:

• Bannon observes the “monster power” of angry, rootless online males, planting seeds for his later manipulation of online subcultures for far-right politics.

6. Epstein’s Interest in Cryptocurrency and Online Influence

The Mindshift Conference and Crypto Conversion

• After his 2008 conviction, Epstein becomes fixated on online reputation management and the possibilities of digital currencies (especially Bitcoin).
• Through conman/illusionist Alfred Seckel, Epstein organizes the 2011 “Mindshift” conference on his private island; Brock Pierce is a featured participant and impresses Epstein with his talk on crypto.

[66:16] Andrew T.:

• “These people are so dumb… the idea that, like, I need a TED Talk of my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile.”

Epstein’s Bitcoin Networking

• Epstein begins correspondence with Gavin Andresen (successor to “Satoshi Nakamoto”) and other crypto notables.
• Multiple indications (emails, meeting requests) that Epstein sought to influence or at least “monitor” the direction of crypto development—potentially shaping how digital currencies entered mainstream finance and politics.

The Brock Pierce-Epstein Partnership

[72:30] Brock Pierce:

• Mails between Epstein and Pierce indicate Epstein provided Pierce with “girls” in 2012. (Context and wording make it clear these are not adult ‘girlfriends.’)
• Pierce thoroughly enmeshed with major right-wing figures (Bannon, Peter Thiel) and in crypto circles.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Pedestrian Evil Meets Systemic Evil

• [05:48] Brock Pierce (on FBI victim account):
  “Introducing 14 year old DOE to Donald J. Trump, Epstein elbowed Trump playfully, asking him, referring to Doe, and this is a good one, right? Trump smiled and nodded in agreement. They both chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the time was too young to understand why.”
• [07:16] Robert Evans:
  "I'm gonna say ew a lot on these episodes, but ew, the, the big..."

On Elites, Power, and Abuse

• [13:00] Brock Pierce:
  “There have always been... groups of elites who are all creepy friends and are all probably having creepy sex, often with underage people... making policy that affects millions and millions of lives. Right. That's, that's always been the case.”

On Influence versus Responsibility

• [11:29] Brock Pierce:
  “He helped create the modern far right and he helped ruin the Internet in a lot of ways.”

On Bannon’s Gamer Epiphany

• [58:35] Brock Pierce (quoting Bannon):
  “These guys, these rootless white males had monster power.”
• [58:50] Robert Evans:
  “This is where, where Bannon makes that realization, Right?”

On Child Stardom and Predation

• [22:16] Andrew T.:
  "If your dream is to be a producer at 14, something is straight up wrong with you."

• [33:59] Brock Pierce:
  “So at 17, Brock is in business with a 40 year old and a 24 year old. Yeah. Starting this company. And he moves into them. They've got a mansion, as we'll talk about. And he moves in with these guys shortly before DEN seeks its first round of funding.”

On Gold Farming and Exploitation

• [53:33] Brock Pierce:
  “Yeah, it is a digital sweatshop, right? Yeah.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:12] — New Epstein file releases; DOJ’s document dump
• [05:48] — FBI account of Trump/Epstein interaction with a minor
• [11:29] — Epstein’s expansive role: crypto, Gamergate, 2008 crash
• [19:24] — Brock Pierce’s early life; child actor background
• [29:51] — DEN’s rise and fall; Hollywood, exploitation, abuse
• [45:22] — Spain, child abuse material found, criminal fallout
• [46:32] — The founding and reality of IGE (online gold farming)
• [50:23] — Bannon enters; manipulation of online gamer anger
• [58:35] — Bannon realizes the political potential of online “rootless white males”
• [66:11] — Epstein’s Mindshift conference; his new focus on crypto
• [72:30] — Emails confirming Pierce received “girls” from Epstein in 2012
• [73:32] — Preview of Part Two; outlining the road ahead

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Tone and Language

The episode is dark, fast-paced, and often laced with biting sarcasm or gallows humor—a signature of "Behind the Bastards." The hosts maintain a tone that alternates between horror, disbelief, and grim amusement as they chronicle the bizarre and horrifying intersections of tech, power, and predation.

Sample banter and asides:

• [22:27] Brock Pierce: “If you really want the high grade cocaine, you gotta be a big league producer.”
• [66:16] Andrew T.: “These people are so dumb… the idea that, like, I need a TED Talk of my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile.”

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Summary

This episode lays the groundwork for understanding not just what Epstein and his circle did, but how their actions molded the modern world—spanning from online subcultures and gold-farming sweatshops to the crypto economy and far-right movements. It exposes the web of connections, criminality, and privilege that allowed this to happen, setting up deeper dives into the specific mechanisms of influence in subsequent episodes.

Coming Up:

• How Epstein’s power-brokering with figures like Brock Pierce, Steve Bannon, and Peter Thiel set the stage for the digital and ideological landscapes we inhabit today.

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Listen Next:

Stay tuned for Part Two for a deeper exploration into how the seeds sown by these men blossomed into movements (and technologies) that have reshaped our political and online worlds—for the worse.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Call Zone Media.

[Brock Pierce]

What's Jeffrey? My Epstein's. This is behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And as you may have guessed from my completely original introduction that I definitely haven't done before, we are back talking about Jepstein. Oh, Jim. Jeffrey Epstein, the Big Easy. What? As he's not called by anyone. Yes.

[Robert Evans]

I didn't love that.

[Brock Pierce]

We're getting into the Epstein files. That's what these episodes are gonna be with my good friend and colleague, Andrew T. Yay.

[Andrew T]

Thanks for having me.

[Brock Pierce]

Are you a fan of Jeffrey Epstein? How do you feel about the guy?

[Andrew T]

I mean, he's in a photo with so many people. Just he's on the gram with so many of my faves, so you gotta give it up.

[Brock Pierce]

You judge a man by his. I mean, he's got great friends, you know, obviously, like half the New York Times is his buddy, you know, this is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.

[Robert Evans]

You're listening to a podcast, so you're doing something else too. Like maybe scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving places you like without thinking you'll get them, because that's what house hunting has become. But Redfin isn't built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents, which means when you find a place you love, you've got a real shot at getting it. Redfin helps turn saved listings into real addresses. Get [e-mail], own the dream. Hey, this is U.S. olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull.

[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Andrew T]

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[Andrew T]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Andrew T]

Why not you try Odoo for [e-mail].

[Brock Pierce]

That'S odoo.com. I gotta come clean up at the top. I show up many times in the Epstein files. If you search for Robert Evans, you will find my name in there a lot. You know, I have to assume that I was up to no good there, and I apologize. You know, after producing the Godfather, a lot of stuff got to my head. You know, I think I just kind of let fame and money drive me a little crazy. You know, that's.

[Andrew T]

That's the great thing about you, Robert, is somehow you're going to be known as Robert Evans, comma, somehow the lesser scumbag.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, somehow the less evil Robert Evans. Yeah, somehow the Robert Evans who's done the least less drugs too.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

I think we can assume you won't.

[Robert Evans]

Find me in the Epstein files and you won't find me saying anything nice about the guy, so.

[Brock Pierce]

No, it's not about. We're certainly not saying anything nice about the guy. Now the problem is, obviously we've got a shitload more Epstein files. Right. Right at the top, there were a bunch released in 2025. And then right at the top of 2026, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that even more were going to be released. Specifically, he revealed that the justice department was releasing 3 million new pages of files related to the Epstein case. Such a vast quantity of information can't be digested in short order. And we haven't discovered all of the secrets in this tranche of files or in the last. The stuff that came out last year. People are still picking stuff out. Right, which is why, because it's gonna take so much time to find everything that's noteworthy inside these files. Todd Blanche sought to set expectations prior to the file dump. So he insisted to the world that the only hang up in getting these files out, the only thing that had delayed them past the amount of time they were legally supposed to be put up in, uh, was that the Justice Department had to scan them to see if Epstein had said anything that criminally implicated President Trump. Older files certainly had things that could be seen as implicating Trump. Releases in 2025 included a 2020 email from a federal prosecutor stating Trump had been a passenger on the Lolita Express a minimum of eight times between 1993 and 1996. On one trip, the three listed passengers were Trump and Epstein and a 20 year old female, name redacted. So, like, he is certainly implicated in a lot.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

You've seen probably the birthday letter in the shape of a naked woman signed by Trump for Epstein. Right. You've probably seen there's a photo of Epstein and a young girl with a giant check from Donald Trump. You've certainly heard the rumors that he and Bill Clinton may have engaged in some oral sex table together. That was almost certainly Jeffrey Epstein joking around rather than something that literally happened. But a lot of crazy shit is in these files that literally happened. And probably the single worst piece of data I have seen from an implicating the president point of view is this paragraph from an FBI interview with a victim of Epstein's. I'll read it in a second, but it's particularly funny when you pair it with this statement from Todd Blanche. So here's Todd Blanche first. In none of these communications, even when doing his best to disparage President Trump, did Epstein suggest President Trump had done anything criminal or had any inappropriate contact with any of his victims? Now I want to read you a quote from the FBI. During one of Jane Doe's encounters with Epstein, he took her to Mar A Lago where he introduced her to its owner, Donald J. TRUMP. Introducing 14 year old DOE to Donald J. Trump, Epstein elbowed Trump playfully, asking him, referring to Doe, and this is a good one, right? Trump smiled and nodded in agreement. They both chuckled and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the time was too young to understand why. Yeah, that's fucking hideous. Ew, that's just disgusting.

[Robert Evans]

I'm gonna say ew a lot on these episodes, but ew, the, the big.

[Andrew T]

Thing that I don't understand is like, what did Trump think was gonna happen when these came out? Like, was he just riffing? Did he think that some someone was actually going to go and falsify and redact shit?

[Brock Pierce]

So certainly he thought, first off, I can just brute force this not getting released. It hadn't been earlier.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

And I'm sure when it became inevitable, when it became clear that like, they literally could not politically afford not to release these. Like, not even just the legal stuff. Like, their base would have flipped out if they hadn't released this stuff because of how central the Epstein files are to the conspiratorial. Right, too. I think at that point, he just probably and probably was reassured by his people. Look, man, you literally could shoot a guy in Central park and your base will stand behind you. You'll be okay. And maybe he will, you know. Yeah, I guess it's definitely hurting him. But not that we're in the midst.

[Andrew T]

We're in the midst of seeing, but it is like, I'm just like, dog.

[Brock Pierce]

You knew what was to be a passenger, right? Like.

[Andrew T]

Like, why would you stoke this? Cause that's the thing is, he did continue to stoke this fire.

[Brock Pierce]

And it's like, he sure did, because I think he thought he'd be able to have more control. It's also very sloppy. They very sloppily tried. One person that I saw on Bluesky pointed out there's a lot of don'ts that are censored in the files, like the word don't. And the only reason for that is because someone just went through and did, like, automatically any use of, like, dawn T. Like, they just start blanking out that whole thing. Right? So, like, there's stuff, like, there's a lot of really, like, lazy attempts to. And they've uploaded some stuff and then pulled it back down. There's all sorts of stuff like that, Right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

I think in terms of the stuff that is most powerful to me, right. It is that the quote I just read you in part. If you've seen. There's footage. Sophie will play it right now. There's some NBC archival footage of a 1992 party party where Trump and Epstein hung out together. There's a decent chance you've seen it online. And it's just the two. You can't even hear what they're saying, really. But the two are, like, pointing it and talking about women and, like, laughing to each other. And the body language in that scene, which should be playing right now, if you read back over that statement with, like, Epstein elbowing Trump and being like, this is a good one. Right? And Trump smiled and nodding and they're both laughing. It's the same. Like, you can. You can see a moment like that between them in this footage. Like, that's part of why I believe this is literally true. Like, is because we have other evidence of them hanging out together. That sounds exactly like.

[Andrew T]

And doing shit like, well, because it's also just like, it's just a pedophile frat house.

[Brock Pierce]

Right?

[Andrew T]

It's just like when you like kind of get the tenor of it, none of it's like surprising really. You're like, yeah, of course these people act like this. I guess like the, the amount of emails they sent is a little surprising, frankly.

[Brock Pierce]

You get at. Also, by the way, why I have focused the episodes the way I focused them because as you've noted, there's a ton of. I mean there's, there's. There's so much here, right. For one thing like that you could. I could do episodes all year on this and not run out of content. There's so much fucking shit in here. But a lot of it is just okay. Yeah. The pedophiles told another gross pedophile joke. He and his pedophile friends continue to be nasty with each other. That's not surprising. What's really surprising to me is the number of things that Epstein has been revealed to have been central to that created the modern world.

[Robert Evans]

It's everywhere.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah. I made a post earlier that was a little inaccurate. That Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was the first domino for fucking like cryptocurrency for like, for like the modern. Like the cryptocurrency in like it's modern attached to the far right sense. He was like a starting domino for Gamergate.

[Robert Evans]

Gamergate.

[Brock Pierce]

He was a starting domino for the fucking 2008 financial crash. Like there's all sorts of shit. And he's, he's also deeply implicated in like the growth and birth of right wing media. Right. Including sharing a lot of like fucking really kind of fringe at the time. Far right, like podcasts and articles with his, with his friends. Like he was, he helped create the modern far right and he helped ruin the Internet in a lot of ways. And there's a good garbage day column on that. But we're going to be focusing on how Epstein built the modern world or helped to build the modern world. Like his influence on particularly development of the far right and like cryptocurrency and the far. Like the online media ecosystem that has like fed into the far right, particularly 4chan. That's what these episodes are about is like how Jeffrey Epstein built the worst parts of the modern world. Because he was shot. He was even more influential than we knew. There's been a lot of that that surprised me in these files. Like stuff that I just would not have guessed was the case.

[Andrew T]

Do you think though, there's an element of just sort of like, right place, right time. Like, he's talking about these things in a way that is like, but like, kind of like, yes, we're looking at the private communications of billionaires and the far right.

[Brock Pierce]

And I, I, I mean, I'm just.

[Andrew T]

Like, I'm like, there's probably a world where it's all like this. Maybe throughout history, like Reagan's letters.

[Brock Pierce]

I think that you're. Throughout history, there have always been, like, this has always been how a lot of things have gotten done. A lot of the sausage is made, like, politically, like, like this is how in every society you have groups of elites who are all creepy friends and are all probably having creepy sex, often with underage people and, you know, through their, like, petty bigotries and rivalries and whatnot, making policy that affects millions and millions of lives. Right. That's, that's always been the case. And it, you know, when I said that Jeffrey was the first domino, that's not entirely accurate for any of those things, except maybe for Gamergate, but he was like an early domino in all of these things. Sure, sure. And so, yeah, it's one of these. Like, you have to, you have to be. I don't want to frame it as like, Epstein started any of these things or was the only idea. He was the guy who created microtransactions in video games. That's not really accurate, but he heavily influenced the development of microtransactions in video games because he was talking up the idea and pushing it to a lot of influential friends in the industry. And that's generally how stuff worked with Epstein. Right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

I mean, with the exception of the financial crash, stuff is a little wonkier.

[Robert Evans]

It's interesting because, like, when you list those things without knowing that this was the topic, I instantly think, like, Steve Bannon as well.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah. And he was close with Bannon, as we'd be talking about.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And so it's just like, motherfucker was everywhere.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah.

[Andrew T]

And there's sort of just like, the question to me is like, is the causality? Like, does being a pedophile make you more of a make. Turn you into a right wing freak, or does being a right wing freak turn you into a pedophile?

[Brock Pierce]

Well, this is. And we'll talk about this. I kind of think what happened.

[Robert Evans]

What I said chicken or the egg?

[Brock Pierce]

Oh, sorry. Okay. Yeah. I kind of think when it comes to answering that question, I think Epstein, like Trump, like a lot of these guys, was socially someone that you would have pegged as more of like a Liberal or progressive, based on the causes he supported and the people he hung out with most of his life, but is primarily a guy who's interested in his own personal power and wealth. And a lot of his rightward turn came after his conviction and his jail sentence in like 2008, 2009. And after that, he's increasingly angry and increasingly reactionary. And that's a lot of these guys get on the right. He's a big cancel culture guy. He's freaked out by me too. Right. So that's a big factor in why he goes far right. I don't think him being a pedophile has much ideologically other than, unfortunately, as we've seen, a lot of powerful men want to have sex with 15 and 16 year old girls. Right. And that's not a left or a right wing thing. You know, it's not even just a politics thing. Fucking priests and cops and whatnot. All like, you know, powerful people molest kids, you know, sometimes, but in part because if you want to molest kids, getting into a position of power makes it a lot easier to do that.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, yeah. It's one of the incidental, like, yeah, if, if that's your goal, power is a good way to achieve it. Power also achieves other things.

[Brock Pierce]

But.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, right. That's probably the logical funnel.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. Um, and you know, when it comes to. Because we'll be talking a little bit about Trump in these episodes, but he's not. It's more how Epstein helped, like, build and prepare, like, the media ecosystem and the cultural, like, ideological environment to make Trump's presidency possible. Like, his contribution to that is more interesting to me in these episodes than like, what Trump was involved in with Epstein, which is why I kind of started the episode by pointing that out. But I'm not gonna. We're not gonna be covering that heavily because you can find that in a bunch of places. And anyone who's not an idiot knows that Donald Trump was deeply involved in Epstein. And if he didn't have sex with underage girls Epstein was trafficking, then he had sex with adults that Epstein was illegally trafficking. Right. Like, I don't, like, I don't know who he had sex with, but it wasn't good. Right.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

So, yeah, these episodes are going to be about what we've learned about Jeffrey Epstein and everyone else. Because the horrifying truth hidden at the center of the revealed Epstein files is that Jeffrey wasn't just a pedophile financier who knew the secrets of the elite. He was a player himself. And he actively used his influence and clout and money to shift the world in new directions. And despite his public Persona as a philanthropist who hung out with scientists and philosophers and a lot of left coded kinds of people, people, he spent the last decade of his life building support for a global right wing power grab with people like Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon. And this power grab succeeded. It left him behind. But he lived to see it come to fruition, which you can tell was very frustrating to him that, like, I helped make this all possible and yet I'm not going to benefit from the impunity that I can see going to other people. So I went back and forth as to where we were gonna start with these episodes. Which of the reveals do we begin with? Because there's so many players, so many different people who are important and implicated with Epstein that it's impossible to not leave some stuff out. But I think the story I want to tell this week is going to flow best if I start with the tale of a little feller named Brock Pierce. Have you heard of Brock? No. No, no. Okay, good. I. You're going to recognize him in a second here, unfortunately. You really are. You really, really are, buddy. November 14, 1980. Brock Jeffrey Pierce, another Jeffrey, came into this world in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The city even now in the crosshairs of a fascist movement that at least partly exists through the consequences of Brock's actions. There was little sign of this in his early life. However, his parents seemed to want him to have a career in Hollywood. It's unclear to me how much they pushed their son and how much he genuinely wanted that for himself. Pierce has described himself as a simple hockey lovin boy from Minnesota when at age 3, he started acting in commercials. This wound up building to his big shot, a supporting role in the first Mighty Ducks movie. So he was in the Mighty Ducks.

[Robert Evans]

He was in the Mighty Ducks Stars.

[Brock Pierce]

The Mighty Ducks. Yeah. Yeah. You like those movies? As a kid I seemed. I think I did.

[Andrew T]

I think so. Right.

[Brock Pierce]

The second one taught me the difference between Iceland and Greenland. You know.

[Andrew T]

I was probably nitpicking hockey formations a little bit. The Flying V is not so good.

[Brock Pierce]

Mm. I guess. Sure. I don't know much about hockey other than I like fistfights. If you're too young to have seen the Mighty Ducks movies and you don't understand what Andrew and I are talking about, they're a series. I think there's a trilogy, ultimately, probably straight to dvd. There's a bunch. Who knows how many there are, right? Yeah, there's several of these movies, and they're all kind of about a pee wee hockey team from the Twin Cities area that isn't very good. Right. It's a bad team. And then an attorney named no Shit Gordon Bombay gets sentenced to community service and winds up coaching them. And yada, yada, yada. You've seen one underdog sports team movie, you've seen them all, right? You know where this basic goes, right? It's kind of a. This is essentially. It's kind of a hockey ripoff of Bad News Bears a little bit, right?

[Andrew T]

Oh, yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

You know, without the charisma of. The raw, unbridled charisma of Walter Matthau. God, what a champion.

[Andrew T]

I mean, it's Emilio Estevez, I think.

[Brock Pierce]

Right.

[Andrew T]

And also Gordon Bombay, if I recall, he's doing this. He got busted for drunk driving.

[Brock Pierce]

Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

[Andrew T]

He's Gordon's channel.

[Brock Pierce]

He's in trouble when he has. Yeah. Gordon Bombay. Chin. Yeah. So the Mighty Duck's premise was strong enough to sustain a trilogy which no critics consider to be basically the children's hockey equivalent to the Lord of the Rings. Brock's career spanned 13 years as an actor, and it culminated in the 1996 film First Kid, where Pierce played the President's son. During the movie's release, he got to visit the White House and even sit in President Clinton's chair in the Oval Office. Here's a photo with him and comedy legend Sinbad. Look at that. Look at them together. Look at that. Honestly.

[Andrew T]

Honestly. Pretty sick.

[Brock Pierce]

Pretty cool. Pretty cool as a kid to get to take photos in the Oval Office with fucking Sinbad.

[Robert Evans]

I like that color. Blue carpet.

[Brock Pierce]

It's a nice blue carpet. Yeah. If you need a description of this photo, I would say Brock looked sort of like the Sam's Club brand. Macaulay Culkin. And I don't know how to describe Sinbad to you. That would be like extremely explaining the sun to an earthworm. Right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

Anyway, Brock was 14 at the time of this visit, and per an AOL interview by Sean Newman, he was, quote, thinking about leaving acting, determined to carve his own path as a Hollywood producer, which is an ambitious dream to have as a 14 year old.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, no offense, kid. If your dream is to be a producer at 14, something is straight up wrong with you. You can get drugs if you stay an actor.

[Brock Pierce]

Yes, of course. But again, going back to Robert Evans, if you really want the high grade cocaine, you gotta be a big league producer.

[Andrew T]

I'm just saying, recognizing power in that way at 14 and wanting power only is sociopathic.

[Brock Pierce]

I mean, it's like I get producing can be a really cool job and stuff. I get why people want to do it. It's just weird for a 14 year old who's already an actor to be like 14. Producing.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, 14's a time. Cause that means he's met producers and been like, no, that guy.

[Brock Pierce]

And again, it wouldn't be weird if he was like, no, I think I wanna be a director more. It's like, yeah, you've been in a couple of movies. That's enough to know that you wanna be behind the camera or whatever. But producer, that's a weird dream.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

Now, I find this dream noteworthy for a couple of reasons. One, it takes some pretty unmitigated gall to decide at 14, I think I'm done acting, it's time to run shit, right? Yeah, that's a crazy thing. And it's impossible for me to know how accurate Brock's later analysis of his own thinking was, but this sounds to me like a kid who was forced to grow up way too fast. Remember, he's a child actor and I don't have enough detail about his childhood to know did his parents push him? Was it an abusive situation? But it's rarely a good one, especially in the 90s. I think things are a little better now, but it's rarely good. My.

[Andrew T]

The times I've worked with kid actors, I watch it and I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if this is good for them.

[Brock Pierce]

I remember talking to a friend of mine who is like a. He's like a working class director, you know, not like a fucking giant Hollywood guy, but like a buddy of mine who like is a director who said that. No, like you have someone on staff when you have child actors whose job is basically to protect them from their parents, to make sure their parents aren't pushing them too much. Right. Whole thing.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, it's really weird. It's a weird dynamic.

[Brock Pierce]

It's. It's a weird dynamic. It's again, I think a lot better now. In part because of how bad was for a lot of child actors in the 80s and 90s.

[Andrew T]

But even now I'm just like, now that I see this and I've seen it a little bit like when I now I'm like, oh, I get why everyone unsaved by the Bell was like 28, like that's actually better for them as human beings.

[Brock Pierce]

Probably fine. We should just like suspend our disbelief a little bit. And let adults play teenagers because the alternative is fucked.

[Andrew T]

So bad for the people. I think.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, yeah. And for an idea of like how fast Brock has had to grow up, this is him as a talking about himself as a 14 year old and his attitude. I took a look at my life and asked my I asked myself, is this what I want to be doing? Is this my calling? I said no, I don't really want to be reading other people's scripts. I don't want to be a performer. I want to write my own script. I want to be the director of my own life. And I get that. It's also like most 14 year olds aren't in a position where they're like, is this really what I want to be doing with my Life? Because they're 14, you know, so that, that says something just about where this kid's head is. You know whose head is in a good place?

[Robert Evans]

Mine.

[Brock Pierce]

Our Sponsors oh.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this.

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull.

[Brock Pierce]

And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.

[Robert Evans]

As athletes, our lives are about having.

[Brock Pierce]

A clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust.

[Robert Evans]

So when it came to getting the.

[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

Learn more at pennymac.com pennymac loan services llc/housing lender nmls id 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. We're back. You know, to make Sophie happy, I have stopped acc sponsors like the good people at of committing crimes against humanity even though they did murder those kids. So you're welcome, Sophie.

[Andrew T]

In self defense.

[Brock Pierce]

In self defense. Those kids were coming at them. You know, those children were complaining about being forced to pick berries all day. You know, what are we supposed to do?

[Robert Evans]

I simply cannot defend. Which is why this is like an unfair argument.

[Brock Pierce]

I know, I know, I know. And we're still gonna bleep the name out for all of these. It's gonna be great.

[Andrew T]

So quite a choice for old producer Sophie here.

[Brock Pierce]

For old producer Sophie, you've got Brock's dream job, Sophie.

[Robert Evans]

I just want everybody to have like health insurance and like housing and like some form of financial stability.

[Brock Pierce]

That's not what Brock wants at age 14. So Brock has his crisis of confidence at 14, but he keeps working for about a year and a half, almost two years after this point. You know, he films 1997's Legends of the Lost Tomb where an adult apparently pulled a prank on him and told him he had permission to car of his name onto a pyramid while they filmed in Egypt. Brock would later admit it almost feels kind of wrong. And it certainly was. You are not supposed to do that to the pyramids. Did he do it?

[Andrew T]

Jesus Christ.

[Brock Pierce]

Did he do that? Apparently he's 14 again. He's 14. An adult told him he could like it's not his fault. There's a lot that's his fault in this story, but I won't really blame that on him. He filmed his last three movies in 1998. Sixteen year old Brock Pierce left the acting world entirely after this point. Now he had become an early Internet nerd. He loves gaming, he's a big gamer, he's a kid and he's pretty early on the Internet train. And he's got the good sense and intuition to know that the Internet's going to play a major role in the future of entertainment. So he co founds a company, Digital Entertainment Network, or den, with two other founders, Mark Collins Rector and Chad Shackley. DIN as we'll call it, is most often described as a precursor or prelude to YouTube. Brock says it failed because the technology wasn't ready. Basically streaming video, you just couldn't stream video well enough back in the 90s and this is, you know, pretty much true. And that puts Din in. Some people give him too much credit to be like he Knew, he knew YouTube was the future before anyone else did. Now a number of people tried, there were a few different failed YouTube precursors that just didn't quite work because again the tech wasn't there. This was Den was one of a number of dotcom era failures. A number of companies that kind of reached for that brass ring just a few years too early. And it's worth looking at exactly what Brock and his friends wanted to create though how they were like billing this. The company had a 38 page manifesto written by Collins Rector who seems to have been the lead visionary. Part of it read the boob tube Zombie television is dead. Global Entertainment will be delivered over the Internet. Digital Entertainment Network will create the last network. And so you can see this mix of, you could see that as prescient like, but also very wrong because we're still just watching TV over the Internet and it didn't create the last network. There's a shitload of streaming sites. It kind of looked for a while like Netflix was becoming that. But there's so fucking many streaming sites right now, right? Like that's not even what happened. So COLLINS Rector was 40 and the oldest and most experienced of the group of founders@den. And this is where we get into things being very problematic. And this is maybe something that, that Brock has sort of been raised to Nazi is weird. But Collins Rector is 40 years old. Chad, who is Collins Rector's roommate is 24 and the two had met on bulletin boards. Whereas the LA Times writes, quote, he, Collins Rector apparently used to strike up relationships with at least two teenaged boys. Right. Cool. The two moved to get moved in together when Shackley was still 16, and Collins Rector would have been in his mid-30s. Ew. Shackley's parents seem to have thought that this was mostly a business arrangement, that they were just like, you know, founders and starting a company and, well, we don't want to get in the way of our son. This was a sexual relationship. Like this is a parents. There's. What the fuck is. I mean, I say sexual relationship. This is rape. You know, he's 16.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

The parent quote thought it was a business orange. You let your.

[Brock Pierce]

That's all I've read about it.

[Robert Evans]

Move in with a grown man, it.

[Brock Pierce]

Seems like a bad judgment, I'll say that.

[Robert Evans]

Sorry, that's the only thing I could shake.

[Brock Pierce]

So Brock gets involved with these guys when Shackley's 24 and Brock is 17. So at 17, Brock is in business with a 40 year old and a 24 year old. Yeah. Starting this company. And he moves into them. They've got a mansion, as we'll talk about. And he moves in with these guys shortly before DIN seeks its first round of funding. Now, DIN gets a lot of interest again. This is the dot com boom. Venture capitalists are throwing a shitload of money in a bunch of dumb places. It attracts about $88 million in funding, including money from actor Fred Savage and $5 million from former U.S. representative Michael Huffington. What?

[Andrew T]

I mean, they were just. Everyone who had a concept like this gets $5 million and one of them becomes YouTube.

[Brock Pierce]

That's their lot, Right? Exactly, exactly. That is basically what happened. Right. And this was one of the bad bets. Although they got 88 million. Yeah, yeah. So this was enough to pay for this. $88 million pays for about a two year wild ride for Pierce and his co founders. They all live together in a 12,000 square foot mansion in Encino. They all drive six sports cars. They throw these massive parties that celebrities show up to that they bill as work events, basically. No, these parties are part of the business. Right. We've got to build, you know, we got to make ourselves part of the culture in Hollywood. Right. Like that's kind of the argument they're making.

[Robert Evans]

But you're not in Hollywood, you're in Encino.

[Brock Pierce]

You're in Encino. Yeah.

[Andrew T]

To be fair, this is the business model of many businesses.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, Right.

[Andrew T]

So they're not exact. They're not quite outliers really.

[Brock Pierce]

Right. They're not out like this is how Uber starts, right. They're not doing it in Hollywood, they're up in the Valley. But they have like their big party house, mansion, right. And they're arguing that like, well, these wild parties where a lot of people get sexually assaulted are a crucial part of the business.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

Which is prescient.

[Andrew T]

Prescient to their eventual business, I suppose, but.

[Brock Pierce]

Right, yeah, yeah. A warning to us maybe for the LA Times. Quote. In his manifesto crafted to energize early employees, Collins Rector set his sights on segments of, of so called Generation Y that he said were being ignored by mainstream television and movies. He identified punk rockers, extreme skaters and hip hoppers and put gay teenagers at the top of the list. The company would build a huge market by global casting to a narrow cast audience, he vowed. Now here you can see some actual insight, right? I mean it's ridiculous calling them hip hoppers that shows a deep disconnect with at least a chunk of pop culture. But pointing out that like the future is future of media is going to be catering to these like really narrow groups of fandoms, of subcultures is like that is a legitimate insight, right? That did turn out to be a major part of the future of media. Right. And the fact that they seem to know like reach and because he is a 40 year old man who is molesting teenage boys, it's all. It's dark that he's also focusing on gay teenage stories, but it is a lot of very successful media in the 21st century is queer people telling queer stories, right? So there's, there's a degree of understanding of where the media is going that's also mixed with deeply fucked up abusive stuff about this guy Collins. Well, it's like, it's like it's.

[Andrew T]

It just this guy got to where he was because his self serving thing happens to have been profitable.

[Brock Pierce]

Right? Let's talk about how he got to where he was. So Collins rector raises this 88 million because he spends months crisscrossing the country while, while Brock and Shackley are kind of working out of the mansion, college director spends a lot of time drumming up investment money and giving his pitch to anyone who will listen. He brags about the features that Den is going to have. Users are gonna be able to pause shows just as they're watching them. Oh my God. And this is something he points out. You'll be able to if you see an actor wearing a shirt you like, you'll be able to click on the shirt on screen and it'll take you to a website where you can buy it. Right? And that's again, that's a. Oh, yeah, you definitely saw pieces of our horrible future. You know, like, this is. These are real. Both of these are real features that are eventually materialized in various ways. Right.

[Andrew T]

But also, so did a lot of people.

[Brock Pierce]

Yes. And more to the point, these features may as well have been Star Trek bullshit in 1998. Right. Because about 2% of the country had high speed Internet. You know, you're not clicking a fucking T shirt, you're not streaming video.

[Andrew T]

Most people, yeah, you can say a lot of shit. This was a time when it was easy to say a lot of shit, but like, oh, can't build it yet.

[Brock Pierce]

I had dial up in 98. And I will tell you, streaming a video meant pulling up a video, pausing it, letting it fucking buffer for like 45 minutes, and then watching your four minute video, right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

So the company continued to generate buzz and investments through 1999. But one thing was off. No one seemed to know where Mark Collins Rector had come from or who he really was. The LA Times tried to reach out to dozens of his past business associates and even friends, all of whom either denied knowing him or offered conflicting stories about his life. Quote, Collins Rector often claimed to be in his late 20s, and associates and employees say he gave the impression that he had been a computer student at UCLA. But company filings show that he is 40. And officials at UCLA say there is no record he was ever a student. There was. According to records in Los Angeles Superior Court, he changed his name in 1998 from Mark Rector to Mark Collins Rector.

[Robert Evans]

I don't like this man very much.

[Brock Pierce]

He's not a good guy. Not a good guy.

[Robert Evans]

Sims. He's great.

[Brock Pierce]

He's straddling the line between serial entrepreneur and con man. And any, as I say, often any founder, anyone who wants to start a tech company, especially in this period, has some con mantu Jobs. Steve Jobs is part con man, right? Because part of what you're doing is promising and guaranteeing people they will get something that you don't know you can actually make yet. Right. That is a key part of the business and that's a bit of a con Now. Jobs wound up finding people who are able to make the things that he promised happen. Generally, not always.

[Andrew T]

Well, it's the successes are the ones that in hindsight, found the right person. Like Elon Musk is like, we just have the benefit of Elon Musk likes being on Twitter to know he's a moron. If he wasn't on Twitter, we simply wouldn't know this shit.

[Brock Pierce]

If the company was just making products and he was never making promises or any of these. Like, not like he. He would still have a lot of his aura to him if he just kept fucking quiet.

[Sponsor Voice 1]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

Anyway, so Collins Rector, yeah, straddles the line between entrepreneur and con man. 20 years back, he had run. This is because the LA Times looks into him and they found that his first business venture was this telecom company in Florida called Tele Quest that he ran, like, he started, like, 20 years ago. One of his investors described him as a genius who was too much into instant aggrandizement. Right. Basically, he, he. He was great at certain things. He was really smart, he was a visionary. But he also wanted to spend all the money on fun shit like sports cars, as opposed to building a business. That business eventually failed and he started another one called WorldComet, which sold travel packages and reached a peak valuation of about $100 million before crashing so shortly after moving in together. Because when he picks up this kid, Shackley, from a message board when Shackley's like 16, and they move in or younger and they move in together when Shackley 16, and they start a business which they sell for millions of dollars, and they use that to buy the mansion that Dennis operated.

[Robert Evans]

He found this kid, did he, like, on a chatboard. And then like the kid's parents permission and transported him over state lines.

[Brock Pierce]

I think it's within the state of California, but yeah, his parents let him move in with this guy because they think they're starting a bit. I mean, they do start a business and they sell it and they make a lot of money. This is just also an abusive sexual.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I do see where this is going.

[Brock Pierce]

Or probably we don't know exactly what went on, but that's heavily insinuated. Right. So they pay high salaries, dindas and cash bonuses for their employees rather than giving them stock, which is really weird. Most startups are primarily compensating people in stock. And the idea is if the company works out, then you get rich. Right. It's sort of a sign that maybe they knew this wasn't going to work and they were operating a con that they're paying themselves and their friends huge salaries rather than giving a bunch of stock options up. Right. That's kind of a sign they know this isn't gonna work out. In the first six months of 1999 Den made zero revenue and lost $20 million. Most of that money goes to salaries, but some of it is spent on giant parties that brought in an A list guest roster. I want you to guess, just guess, one of the guests, one of the celebrity guests that show up at these parties the Din boys are throwing.

[Andrew T]

What year, what year are we talking?

[Brock Pierce]

This is like 99, 2000, 98, 99, 2000. Like that period.

[Andrew T]

Oh, God. I mean, all of the. Oh, right.

[Brock Pierce]

Huh?

[Robert Evans]

Seinfeld.

[Andrew T]

It's all the friends.

[Brock Pierce]

Every. The Friends. No, it's Bryan Singer. It's Bryan Singer.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

Bryan Singer and Gary Goddard, two of the allegedly sex pestiest sex pests in the history of sex pestitute. Right. Like fucking. You read some of the allegations against Singer, who's not been convicted of anything in a court of law. I have to say, per Hollywood Reporter, and obviously the fact that they're having these parties, the fact that fucking Collins Rector is the guy. He is, there's a lot of bad things happening at these parties. Kind of not unique, but I will say they're bad things happening to young men. Although I say young men, they're bad things happening to young boys, which is different from some of the other guys in Hollywood. To quote from the Hollywood Reporter, a young man sued claiming Collins Rector had started molesting him when he was 13. More litigation followed regarding alleged goings on at the Din Mansion. One alleged victim, Alexander Burton, claimed that Collins Rector, Pierce and Shackley had supplied him with alcohol and drugs even though he was under 21, and that all three men subsequently assaulted him. Another accuser was said to have written a suicide note reading in part, I can't go on. I let them use me as a sex tool. The note was discovered before a suicide attempt could be made. There were also accusations that Collins Rector would intimidate his victims by brandishing a gun. So Jesus bad. And again, to make it very clear, first off, for legal reasons, Brock Pierce has not been convicted of anything. He has not been proven in a court of law to have abused anyone at these parties. He has just been accused of it. There was at least one case where things were settled out of court, but Collins Rector has been convicted of things and Brock Pierce is not. I do want to make that clear. But it's also clear there are allegations against Brock Pierce during this time that he sexually assaulted at least one child that I'm aware of. Right. Or at least one alleged victim. Sorry, yeah. Who was under 21. So, you know, interpret that how you will. I Know how I feel about Brock Pierce. But again, hasn't been convicted of anything. So the resultant lawsuit forced Mark Collins Rector to leave the country before DIN could ipo, and the company collapsed quickly after that. About a third of the employees were laid off and new management struggled to right a sinking ship. Collins Rector, under indictment for transporting minors across state lines for sex, took Shackley and Pierce to Spain with him in August of 2000. So the boys have now fled the country for Spain, where they're living in a nice villa. One has to assume.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

And probably continuing to get up to things we don't want to think about. Yeah, One would assume now, in May of 2022, their home. One may assume because in May of 2022, their home was raided by Interpol. Like not. Not a great sign when your house gets raided by Interpol while you're on.

[Andrew T]

The run from the American feds.

[Brock Pierce]

Right. For transporting minors across state lines. And the search of their home in Spain found weapons and thousands of individual pieces of child sex abuse material. Right. Thousands of photos of like naked kids being abused. Pierce has claimed he was unaware that the photos were in the house. Just thousands of pieces of porn I didn't know about, you know, he and Shackley were released, but their older friend was ultimately extradited to the United States for his many crimes and pled guilty to five counts of trafficking minors. And again, maybe Piers didn't know about the photos legally, I have to say that. Right. Because he and Shackley were released whereas fucking Collins Rector was. Was extradited. Right.

[Robert Evans]

That motherfucker in jail for a long time.

[Brock Pierce]

No, a few months. He does a few months in prison and then he flees the country because he's still rich. And he seems to still reside in Europe today. Last I heard, he was there in like 2014. I don't know what he's up to right now or. I hate it here, but.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I hate it here.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, it's great. It's. It's not great. It's not good. Yeah.

[Andrew T]

Planet Earth in this time.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, that's what I mean.

[Brock Pierce]

After this all kind of blows over, Pierce returns to the us he settles the claims against him. He has never been. He has never acknowledged or been convicted of any wrongdoing during this period of time. But while he was in Spain, before he goes back to the us, he creates his next company, Internet Gaming Entertainment, or ige. You ever heard of this company, Andrew?

[Andrew T]

I thought you were going to say ign. I guess no.

[Brock Pierce]

So did I for a second when I first started Reading this. No, he didn't make ign, right? No, he didn't. Did you ever play World of Warcraft, like, after it came out? Like, right after it came out?

[Andrew T]

Not as much, but like, I've been in the room when people are playing it.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah. I was big into World of Warcraft right after, like the first two years after it came out, like, release the first expansion pack, basically. And if you were playing WOW during that period, there's a good chance. You know what IGE is, because this is the company that made gold farming into a thing. Right? Like that. This is. They're not. There were others, obviously, but IGE was the big gold farming company and they were the company that kind of established gold farming as an industry for the chunk of time that it was right now. The goal with ige, though, this is what's important. The company's goal was not to do what it became, which was it was basically farming gold in video Games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft against the expressed desires and the stated rules of the developers that made those games. Right. Ige's actual goal was to enable and to convince the gaming industry to enable trading of real money for virtual goods, which is the thing that basically all big games do now, right? Yeah. The idea IGE wanted to push, that, that was contra controversial at this point in time. Collins Rector would later claim that he was the shadow founder of the company, that he had the idea and Brock took the credit. Pierce denies this. I don't know the truth, but as the Hollywood Reporter makes clear, quote, what's unclear is when Collins Rector stopped being a part of Pierce's life. In a lawsuit against Pierce, a former partner in IGE claimed that Pierce had told him in 2005 that Collins Rector, then living overseas and according to the Fed, still consorting with teenage boys, had been blackmailing him, threatening to damage IGE in the eyes of investors. Pierce's rep says Collins Rector never threatened to blackmail and denies that Pierce ever made such a statement. Pierce separated. Any business relationship with Den failed and the Internet bubble burst in 2000. Pierce's personal relationship with Collins Rector lasted until 2003. The rep says that's after Collins Rector's indictment in 2000 and after Interpol showed up at the house in Spain in 2002. But Pierce's rep says at the time of his arrest, Collins Rector asserted his innocence. It wasn't until Pierce received additional information concerning Holland Rector's improper actions that he separated entirely. So, you know, I don't. I mean, he's still I don't think. I think he basically knew. He is very young at this point, but he has also been involved in a lot of bad behavior. He is an adult now and he. Right. You know, I. I don't. I don't have a lot of sympathy for him. Now I will say eventually, Collins Rector exits Pierce's life and whatever impact he had on ige. This is Pierce's baby for the majority of the time that the company exists. Right. And once Collins Rector is kind of out of the picture, you see, there's maybe this need in Pierce to have an older man to give him advice and professional assistance. I mean, that's a good idea professionally in cases like this. But also it seems to be something Pierce maybe seeks out kind of pathologically. And in this case, the next older man that he seeks out as a mentor is Steve Bannon. Now, part of the paw. Makes sense.

[Andrew T]

What the fuck?

[Brock Pierce]

It's not great. It's fucked up. Obviously we know who Bannon is and who he becomes. It makes sense, right?

[Andrew T]

At the time, right.

[Brock Pierce]

Steve is a fabulously wealthy producer, Right. He gets his start as like a banker, basically, but he helps make fucking Seinfeld, right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

And Brock had wanted to be a producer himself. He came from Hollywood. So Bannon is the sort of authority figure Pierce had grown up listening to and respecting. Right. Like, he clearly has a lot of respect for the job. So it makes sense that Bannon would be a guy that he'd kind of inherently trust. Yeah. So by the time Bannon came to ige, World of Warcraft was the biggest game in history. And there were millions being made selling easy access to gold and other in game resources that normally you had to grind for dozens of hours to get. IGE had set up gold farms in China using cheap workers who could spend long hours doing that in game grinding for the player. Now, this wasn't illegal, right? This is not a crime to operate a business like this, but it is a gray market. This may seem kind of hard to believe given the present realities of the video game industry, but game developers initially had a big issue with the idea of gamers using real money to buy in game assets. For one thing, if you actually care about making a good game, if that's your interest, is actually making a game that's like a quality game in its construction, letting people buy their way to have better stuff wrecks the game, right? Like it kind of fucks up the whole thing, you know?

[Andrew T]

Well, it's like the two goals. It's like, is your Actual goal as a game studio to make a good game or is it to make money?

[Brock Pierce]

Right.

[Andrew T]

Those are not necessarily consonant and the.

[Brock Pierce]

Studios land on make money. But the game developers themselves often were very hesitant to embrace this kind of thing initially. Right. And so there's also like World of Warcraft has an in game economy that Blizzard spent quite a bit of time trying to set up and make like functional. Right?

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

So they're also upset that this is fucking up the endgame economy. So they sought to ban gold farmers whenever they cropped up. In 2005, Pierce met Bannon and brought him into IGE to act as the adult in the room. The company needed major investment money if it was going to survive and thrive. And Bannon basically Bannon, Piercey's Bannon is the trusted old head who investors would. Because Pierce has a reputation. Right. He's somebody who people have a degree of faith and they also see he's really young. So if they're going to invest serious money in a company he's starting, they want to see there's a guy like Steve Bannon, you know, so that's why Bannon's there. Bannon visits the company's Hong Kong offices and he works out a deal whereby Goldman Sachs, his old employer, invested $60 million and he became the VP of IGE. Now, it's important to note IGE is pretty evil before Bannon comes on board. Not only is it kind of ruining the spirit of the games that its farmers operate in, but the whole business hinges on a lot of questionable activity. As the Washington Boasts summarizes.

[Andrew T]

It's like a digital sweatshop, right?

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah. It is a digital sweatshop, right? Yeah. IGE employees in the Hong Kong office created accounts for the company's delivery avatars using the names and home addresses of unwitting US residents picked at random in a phone directory. The company used dial up phone service that connected to servers in the United States, making it appear that they were using computers there rather than in Hong Kong. We were spending $20,000 a month on dial up service, one employee said. So that's shady as fuck.

[Andrew T]

Web 0.5 version of this business. So insane. Oh my God.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah. Speaking of stealing people's identities for profit, you know who loves to do that besides me? That's right. Is our sponsors killing me.

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Brock Pierce]

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[Robert Evans]

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[Brock Pierce]

Learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. And we're back. So gold farmers working for IGE in China made as little as 25 cents an hour laboring in cramped factories. The New York Times described as virtual sweatshops. Bannon's job then was to convince old money people that this business is a gold mine. And unfortunately he has some success with this initially, but he doesn't succeed enough. He's able to get a lot of money for ige, but the company still doesn't really like work out in the long run because he's not able to convince the people who matter most. Right. The executives running game companies like Blizzard. Because ultimately IGE can only be viable as a business if Blizzard stops banning their farmers and deleting the accounts and stuff that have all of the money that they're trying to transfer to people. And Blizzard refuses to do that. They just do not initially accept. Like obviously Activision Blizzard eventually becomes perfectly fine with in game purchases and all this shit. Right. They have no issue with these Microsoft.

[Andrew T]

I mean on any like even the philosophical people that agree with them. It's not that ig, it's not the what IGE is doing that they don't like. It's that IGE is not in house.

[Brock Pierce]

Right, right, right. I mean I think there is from people who care about the quality of the game. There's people who just have an issue with what they're doing. But. Right. Yeah, you are correct when it comes to the. Yeah.

[Andrew T]

There's certainly plenty of people even at the time at Blizzard that were like, yeah, oh my God, yeah, in game transactions. Amazing.

[Brock Pierce]

And that's why it's dumb that these guys. Yeah. IG was ever hoping the company would like that Blizzard or whoever would accept there being a middleman who makes money off of like their in game world. Like that's nuts. Why would they. Yeah, yeah. Why would they be okay with this? So Blizzard constantly raids ige, Right. They find people's accounts, they delete them, they ban people who are buying gold. There's a bunch of lawsuits from people who bought gold and didn't get it. Yada, yada yada. It causes a bunch of problems for ige. Pierce eventually has to step down as CEO and Bannon replaces him. And it's kind of framed as like Bannon edges Pierce out, but that doesn't. It seems to have been perfectly friendly. Like Pierce seems to have been fine with this and understood that like this is what's, you know, we need to do for the next stage of the business. Right? Yeah. Ultimately, IG stops selling gold entirely and under Bannon the company is renamed Affinity Media holdings and instead makes its money running and operating a series of chat rooms and forums for Gamers. So the company pivots to running places where gamers communicate and socialize. And Bannon, first, he sees how angry these gamers had gotten at gold farming, and he starts paying attention to the social dynamics in these online communities. And it gives him a horrible, awful idea. And I'm going to quote from the Washington Post here. Bannon became fascinated with the collective power of gamers who gathered on these sites. According to journalist Joshua Green, who wrote a book, Devil's Bargain, about Bannon's rise in the Trump administration, selling virtual currency was highly unpopular with many gamers. And they railed against IGE in these chat rooms, putting pressure on the companies that operated the games not to partner with ige. These guys, these rootless white males had monster power. Bannon said, right? So he's, he's starting to realize, okay, this kind of fucked us. The power that these, these inchoate groups of angry white dudes on the Internet, it kind of fucked the business now. But you could manipulate these guys, right? You could tune them up and turn them on an enemy and unleash them as a weapon and they have the ability to do some damage, right? This is where, where Bannon makes that realization, Right? And I know, folks, that we're 55 minutes in and I barely talked about Epstein past the introduction. Trust me, we're coming back to him. This is all necessary groundwork for you to understand Epstein's role in all this. Brock Pierce would later describe Steve Bannon as his right hand man for like seven years, which again suggests there were no hard feelings about Bannon replacing him as CEO of ige. Not long after leaving the company, Brock gets involved in the world of cryptocurrency. That's kind of his next move. After gaming, he founds a company called Blockchain Capital, and he is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative that he founds this under. Right? Well, he's like part of the Clinton Global Initiative as he creates Blockchain Capital, which again, the Clintons are very tied to Epstein, right? And that may be part of how Jeffrey Epstein heard about Brock Pierce for the first time is because Pierce is tied in through the Clinton Global Initiative. Now let's perspective shift back to our old pal Jeffrey. He had served time in 2008 and 2009 for soliciting sex from a minor, right? But he was by 2010, a free man. He was still rich and he was still influential, but he was something of a pariah, at least to normal people. He's not a pariah to the power Elite. He's not a pariah to the people running the New York Times, to a lot of people working at the Times. He's not a pariah to a lot of Harvard professors, to a lot of famous academics and scientists, to a lot of celebrities. But he's like, in public, is a guy who got arrested for fucking a kid, you know? Right. And this aided him. He hates the fact that, like, he had to take an L, right. And that's. He sees it as this kind of petty because his friends are like, man, you kind of got off light. Which he did. But it really bugs him that he had to suffer any consequences at all because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Now. It would take years.

[Andrew T]

Evidence suggests that his peer group will not face consequences for the same behavior.

[Brock Pierce]

So some of them have resigned or whatever, but. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So it's going to take years for the reality of Epstein's conviction and what the scattered stories from his victims meant to coalesce into a widespread understanding of his crimes. Right. In 2010, 2910, not a lot of people are talking about Epstein as, like, this vast child sex trafficker who has this, like, secret empire that all of the world that takes some time to build up as more stories come out, as our understanding gets brought. There's some people who. Who understand that about him from this stage, particularly his victims. But it's not widely known at this point, but he can. He's kind of watching as he's sitting in his Manhattan penthouse or on his private sex island. He's slowly, over the years, watching the story come together, watching people start to become more and more aware of what he'd done. And he seems to. This is, I think, his radicalizing moment because he sees a few different enemies coalescing to ruin his life. Right? And this alliance is roughly a mix between you've got your busy body feminists, right, including a lot of his victims. You've got meddlesome reporters, and of course, you've got, you know, the actual people that he hurt. Right. You've got these, like, feminist activists, you've got these meddlesome journalists, and you've got his former victims, all of whom won't shut up. Right? That's how Epstein sees this. And the answer to all of these problems, he seems to have decided, was to use his position of influence to push for a change in the culture, to a culture where maybe journalists, or at least the kind of journalists who will report on this stuff, have less interest, where maybe women are more frightened to speak up and where maybe victims have fewer rights. You know, I really do think a lot of his.

[Robert Evans]

What a great guy.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, he's a cool dude. Jesus. So his feelings on all of this evolved as he tried to crack down on uncomfortable reporting about his life. In a write up for the website Protos Cas Piance writes, In an effort to halt the decline, Epstein seeks out help from Alfred Seckel, AKA Al Secel, a serial scammer and illusionist who's been dating Gillan Maxwell's sister Isabel for years. Epstein tasks Seckel with what he presumes to be a relatively cheap and easy job. Wipe the Internet of his sins. This proves to be a pipe dream. Whether due to Seckel's own incompetence and greed, or due to Epstein's unrepairable reputation, a $25,000 job becomes a $45,000 job with an added luxury conference called the Mindshift Conference, hosted on Little St. James and to be paid for by the Epstein Foundation. And this is meaningful. That's the most important thing about his connection to this con man, Al Secel, right? Is that Seckel says, hey, you need to hold a conference on your sex island about, like, all of the different shifts that are taking place in technology and like, philosophy and psychology, right? Which is going to include cryptocurrency, which is why Brock Pierce is gonna get invited right now. Alsekle is a con man, and I think kind of similar to Collins rector, perhaps a bit more shameless. So the Mind Shift conference is a massive failure if judged by its stated goals. It is not go over well, Epstein, like, when he starts getting involved in this. Epstein views the Mind Shift conference like, this is gonna be my TED talks. Like, I'm gonna create the new TED talks, right? The new TED talks are on my private child molestation island, right?

[Andrew T]

This is where everything you need to know in all fucking domains is gonna happen. Oh, God.

[Brock Pierce]

God, it's.

[Andrew T]

These people are so dumb.

[Brock Pierce]

They're so dumb and they're all the same fucking sad weirdo, right? Like the idea that, like, I need a TED Talk of my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile. So most of the panels at this conference are a bust, but one of the invited speakers is Brock Pierce. And again, maybe this connection comes because of the Clinton foundation, you know, because Clinton is aware of this guy and Clinton knows Jeffrey. I don't exactly know. But Brock Pierce is invited to this thing and he gives a talk about crypto. And Epstein likes this he later writes to a colleague that he found the young entrepreneur interesting. And Brock is kind of the only good thing about this conference as Epstein's Brock at this time. Brock is in his 20s at this point. Right. So Epstein increasingly finds Brock's pet cause, cryptocurrency, intriguing. This is what gets Epstein interested in crypto. As Piance writes, previously, Jeffrey Epstein had considered bitcoin and its ilk to be only useful for criminals. And it's unclear what about Brock's presentation changed Epstein's mind. But the fact that Jeffrey was himself now a convicted criminal may have played a role. Maybe it's just that, like, this is only for criminals. Oh, but I'm a criminal now.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brock Pierce]

Maybe I gotta get on board. Yeah, right.

[Andrew T]

Yeah. It's so funny that he had the correct, like, point of view on it.

[Brock Pierce]

No, no, you're right.

[Andrew T]

It's for money laundering. It's for money laundering, dude.

[Brock Pierce]

So Epstein's relationship with Al Secel fell apart after the conference. Al tried to sell him a bunch of fake art and antiquities and got himself blacklisted. But Epstein's broader interest in Brock Pierce and cryptocurrency continue after this point. In June of 2007, Epstein starts emailing with Gavin Andresen, the successor to Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. And we don't actually know who Nakamoto really was. This is a big mystery in the world of bitcoin. But he picks Andreeson to be the lead maintainer of bitcoin development after he retires in April of 2011. And we don't know why he retired. Some people suggest that it's because of what Andreessen was talking about doing at this point in time, which is Andreessen, right around the time Nakamoto retires, starts talking about how he's going to give a talk on bitcoin to the CIA, like at CIA headquarters in Langley. And this is, to say the least, controversial among cryptocurrency advocates. Right. The first wave of crypto enthusiasts are libertarian, and they're very anti state people. This is an ideological thing for a lot of them. And they don't like the CIA very much. The fact that Andreessen basically, as soon as he becomes the director of the project after Nakamoto is like, I'm gonna go talk to the CIA about it is kind of giving up the game for the real money people in crypto. Right? Which is, this isn't about escaping the state. You're not freeing yourselves from the shackles of the Government, you're co opting it, right? Crypto is as, as we've seen from the President, right? We're like, no, he's fucking bitcoin. Didn't free people from the clutches of the government and the Federal Reserve. It gave the President a way to take bribes. Yeah, right.

[Andrew T]

Privatized crypto functions, all those fucking horrible functions. So now any rich fool can do it.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, but this is really controversial at the time, right? So Epstein emails Andreessen two days before he talks to the CIA and he seems to have started fishing around. He's asking his contacts for Gavin's phone number. Does anyone know this guy? Does anyone have his number a few weeks earlier? He starts by asking Bay Area socialite and professional hanger on Jason Calacanis, who is also close to Elon Musk. And eventually he gets the info and the two seem to have gotten in touch. On the 12th, he's like emailing and he asks Brock directly for his phone number. We don't know if the two talked on the phone, we don't know what they would have talked about. But on the 14th, two days after he connects directly with Epstein, Andrewson speaks to the CIA at Langley. The next day, Epstein emails Anderson about meeting in person. And we don't know if they did, but we know that he declined several invitations to do so. Right. Like we don't know to what extent these people, we don't know if they talked on the phone. We know they're emailing a bunch. We know Epstein's trying to get in touch with them. We know Epstein talks about meeting him in person. We don't know what actually happens. And as I'll talk about, there's some other times when Epstein will mention Andreessen that make me think he and Gavin had more of a relationship than Gavin wants to admit or that is publicly known. Right. And one of the issues here is that we just have what these people emailed about. And in fact, if you search through variations of like not for email, or like, you know, for phone only or stuff like that, in the Epstein files, you'll find them. Epstein periodically being like, hey, we gotta take this offline, like this is an in person conversation. This is something we gotta talk about on the phone. So the fact that we can't prove via the emails that Epstein and Gavin were connecting or what they were talking about doesn't mean they weren't. Right? Because a lot of this stuff is just kind of off the record. But we know that Epstein was working hard to be in contact with Them and that they had the potential to be in contact and that Epstein talks about Gavin as if they were in contact at other points. Right. So that's what I can say. Whatever the two discussed, if they discussed anything. Epstein plunges ahead into the world of cryptocurrency. After this point, he continues talking with Brock Pierce as well. The two met repeatedly in person in 2001, and Epstein offers Pierce financial advice. Brock eventually comes to him and admits that he hasn't paid his taxes in years, and Epstein helps him sort that out. Their friendship continues into the spring of 2012, which is the first time that we have a record of Epstein providing girls to Brock Pierce. And you can see the email chain up on the website. It starts with Jeffrey Epstein saying, victim name and victim name are alone in la. I had to leave. Please assist. Leave your girlfriend home. And then a large redacted section of the email. And Brock responds, will do. Broke up with the girlfriend last night, so that won't be a problem. Best regards, Brock. To which Epstein responds, call me a little later. And then Brock replies the next day. I had a great time with the girls. Hope they had fun too. So we know at this point, and you know, I might say, if this was any other group of people, well, girls, sometimes people refer to adult women that way. I'm not going to assume that here. I'm not going to assume these are not literal girls because it's Jeffrey Epstein.

[Andrew T]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

You know, ew. And Epstein's relationship with Brock and his interest in Bitcoin are only going to expand from this point on, and both are going to bring him into the orbit of several. Several major figures on the new right, including Steve Bannon. And we'll talk about all that and much more in Part two. I know there wasn't as much Epstein as you may have expected. I mean, we got a bit. A good bit at the beginning and the end. There's a lot you have to hear about Brock Pierce first to understand why all this matters.

[Andrew T]

The reason people tune in is for backstory. You know, you find the shit that I'm like, that's the show. Yeah, that's the pod.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And somehow Seinfeld did in fact come up, which was incredible.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah.

[Andrew T]

Good for him.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Brock Pierce]

Well, you got any pluggables to plug?

[Andrew T]

Oh, I don't know. Making a show called Starter Trek on our premium site suboptimal. Com. I saw you were watching a little bit of Starfleet Academy, Robert.

[Brock Pierce]

Yeah, I've seen the first couple.

[Andrew T]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my. My co host Tawny Newsom's a writer on that and she.

[Brock Pierce]

Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, I love Tawny. Yeah, Beckett.

[Andrew T]

Beckett. Mariner on Lower Deck. So, yeah, we're watching Star Trek episodes and I have seen a bunch, but I don't know nearly as much as her, so I'm fine.

[Brock Pierce]

That's fine. No, no, it's really fun. There's very few people involved in making Star Trek that I feel like really know Star Trek, and Tawny is one of them. Tawny knows. Tawny really knows Star Trek. I've got a thing to plug before we go out here. I met with just somebody last night when I was out at a bar who told me about a local Portland charity called the Artist Mentorship Program, AKA amp, which supports youth experiencing homelessness and has done so for over 30 years. It serves young people aged 15 to 25 and provides essential supplies and job training with music and art programs at the heart of its work. If you'd like to support or learn more about AMP, you can go to amppdx.org that's amppdx.org it's good cause check them out.

[Robert Evans]

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 Basterds are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode 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.

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