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- [00:00]
A
I think what President Trump said this week objectively qualifies as not only the worst thing he's ever said, but possibly the worst thing any American leader has said in modern memory. We're gonna murder a whole civilization. No one will forget that. No one in that part of the world will forget that for generations. It will always have been true that the leader of the United States said that. He is someone with a kind of emotional intelligence to understand what will hurt, what will provoke. He has the abuser's psyche to know what exact thing to say will most cause you pain.
- [00:45]
B
I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And while everyone is exhaling with relief that the end of civilization has not yet rained down upon Iran, we haven't forgotten part of the reason for this war to distract from the Epstein files. So we're going back into them today with Anand Girderas and looking at what he says is the most overlooked Epstein exchange of emails with a German philosopher called Jos Ka Bach. I hadn't come across these emails before and what they reveal about Epstein and his network is remarkable. But just before we get to the conversation, please smash the subscription button on your podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. We really appreciate your support because we are independent media, so we can bring you these conversations, but your subscribing really helps us. Okay, Anant, let's get into it. Anand, we are back. Donald Trump may think he's distracting from the Epstein files, but we're going to do a deep dive into what you say is the most overlooked Epstein e book.
- [01:59]
A
We won't be distracted.
- [02:00]
B
We will not be distracted. But just before we do, you had a very interesting analysis in your substack, the Ink, which I encourage everybody to read. I find it really, really compelling reading and you always have an interesting take on what's going on. But you had specific observations about the two crazy truths that you that he posted one on Easter Sunday saying, you crazy bastards open the strait.
- [02:26]
A
And then classic Easter style message for those who celebrate.
- [02:31]
B
Yeah. And then on Monday where he said it's gonna be the end of civilization for Iran. So what did you find specifically Trumponian in those truth socials?
- [02:46]
A
I mean, I think one of the things we've all learned over the last decade is to temper superlatives and to avoid saying something is the worst depravity because there will always be others and it's often not true. I think what President Trump said this week objectively qualifies as not only the worst thing he's ever said, but possibly the worst thing any American leader has said in modern memory, and consequentially so. I'm gonna read the exact language. Yeah, this was just yesterday morning now,
- [03:27]
B
so we're recording this on Wednesday morning.
- [03:29]
A
This was fast moving development. The President of the United States wrote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. And it goes on from there. And there's so many things going on here. And we did a close read at the ink of this entire passage because I think it's important. As idiotic and facile and dangerous as his language is, language is always revealing as a language person. There's always clues in it. There's always. And there's a lot happening here. So first of all, the American policy, bipartisan policy going back decades on Iran has been good people, good civilization. One of the great cultures of the world hijacked by a bad regime. An unfortunate 50 year blip in a glorious millennia old culture that has given the world beautiful music and art and food and much besides language, poetry, architecture. And that has been the American policy. Right. When you think about a hijacking of a plane, you're not blaming the passengers, you're saying the plane should be going on its normal destination. These are decent people in the plane. Couple hijackers have unfortunately taken over the plane. That has been the American view, consensus view on Iran. A great civilization being hijacked by a regime. And with this post, the President of the United States completely departed from that policy and basically impugned first of all, what he calls a whole civilization, which will, he said, will die tonight. Now, of course we know Taco Trump always chickens out. He didn't end up going through with that, thank God the heavens. But to, but to say we're not going after a regime, we're not going after regime change, we're not going after a leader, we're not going after an ayatollah, we're not going after our government. We're going after. We're gonna, we're gonna murder a whole civilization. No one will forget that. No one in that part of the world will forget that. For generations, it will always have been true that the leader of the United States said that.
- [05:51]
B
Do you think that Donald Trump actually knows what he's saying when he throws these things out, often clearly typed with great ferocity and fury and fastness, great speed? Do you think he actually even knows what he's saying when he says something
- [06:07]
A
like that on this kind of thing? Yes. You know, I don't think he knows what he's saying when he gets into, you know, when he may tweet about finer points of policy or this and that. But he is someone with a kind of emotional intelligence to understand what will hurt, what will provoke. He has the abuser's psyche to know what exact thing to say will most cause you pain, what will most cause flattery. He knows, by the way, when he's dealing with a Zoran whose own popularity he sort of has some awe for. He knows how to suddenly dial it in. So Trump is very capable of calibration. I find it very hard to believe he doesn't know the difference between a regime and a civilization. And I think he knows exactly what he is doing there, because he hasn't said this before. This was a new thing. And then the second half of that sentence, never to be brought back again, this was a less analyzed part of the sentence. Everyone focus on this whole civilization will die tonight. Well, the again is very important because, as you know, again, ism is a crucial part of Trump's worldview. The idea of lost greatness. What was great shall be made great
- [07:20]
B
again, like America, make America great again.
- [07:23]
A
And of course, what he's really offering is for white people and men, often the restoration of lost privileges. What was once yours then unfortunately got shared. You had to be shared, will be yours again. White guys will be able to have what they once had. Men will be able to behave with the impunity that they once behaved in the office. You know, white people will be able to have, you know, unfettered dominion that they once had.
- [07:50]
B
That's such a good line. They want the rest. Or he's promising the restoration of white men's privileges.
- [07:57]
A
That's the whole movement. And so, again, is crucial. So when he says a whole civilization will die tonight, never be brought back again, what he's against doing is saying, and this is a really important policy departure to understand, he's moving away from the hijacking idea, which is good civilization, great civilization, hijack, bad leaders, and saying, actually, even if these leaders are gone and removed, one of them's already dead. Even if this entire government were to be gone, even if we're projecting when he said never to be brought back in 50 years in the future, when all of this is swept away, there is nothing in this civilization. There's no seeds, no potentialities, no buried ideas, no suppressed ideas, nothing in kind of in aspic that is waiting, that can rise again, that is worthy of rising again. In other words, the President of the United States is more clearly and starkly than maybe any time in our lifetimes calling for genocide and the genocide of people. But civilization is also a culture, a set of ideas, a history, a physical landscape. The UN has a very elaborate description of the law of genocide. And as you know, it's a very difficult area of the law, even though we all know it when we see it. We know when entire places are being razed and bombed. Proving genocide is not as simple as seeing those images, because genocide requires the proof of intent. And one thing that people who do that kind of thing are good at is concealing proof of intent, which is not that hard to conceal if you're a powerful leader. So it's extraordinary that Donald Trump actually, without ending up doing the thing, and hopefully it stays that way, did the thing that is so hard in prosecuting genocide, crimes against humanity. Normally, he declared the intent to eradicate a civilization in public.
- [10:14]
B
He provides the Hague with evidence of what he plans to do.
- [10:19]
A
Yeah, this is like when people surrender to the police in order to spare them the investigation.
- [10:26]
B
Wow. Okay. So a lot of people are saying this war is just a distraction. It's wag the dog from the thing that we know keeps coming back to haunt Donald Trump, which is his very close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. Something that you have been digging into relentlessly. And you've used the Epstein files as a prism through which to understand the elite, how they operate, how they operate outside of the normal rules. And you had a fascinating piece in the Ink about an academic at mit, a German academic who is offered a job by Joey Ito, who's then head of MIT Media Lab, later gets brought down by his association with Epstein. But it's a fascinating exchange between how do I pronounce his first name? Joshka Bach, on how MIT isn't going to pay him enough money. He's written to Joey Ito and said, I can't come with my family. It's a family of four from Berlin. I can't move to Boston for. I think they're offering him $60,000, which seems very little, I agree. For a family of four. And he's coming from Berlin. So Joey Ito connects him with Jeffrey Epstein. And Jeffrey Epstein basically says, ok, going to pick up your bills. And they then enter into a fascinating email exchange. Can you pick it up from there? And then I want to read some of the email exchanges, because they're kind of extraordinary.
- [12:11]
A
They are. I mean, first of all, just on your point on distraction, it strikes me when you were saying that that Donald Trump is killing Iranian Schoolgirls to silence American schoolgirls.
- [12:27]
B
That's fascinating. Yeah,
- [12:32]
A
just that's, that's what he's doing. He's bombing an entire country, threatening an entire civilization, and killing Iranian schoolgirls, among many others, to keep girls of that age, or who were that age in this country. Now, women, in many cases, from telling their stories of what they experienced at the hands of men in the Epstein circle, a circle that included him. I've spent, as, you know, months now in the kind of deep text of the Epstein files and trying to really understand what I think is this glimpse of an operating system of power. As we talked about last time for this Epstein class series. And, you know, I have read as many emails as I can. At some point, you know, you get to a point where you feel like you've seen most of what really needs to be seen. There's diminishing returns. And then not long ago, a few weeks ago, I came upon an email. And so there's a kind of boredom that settles in a little bit. Yeah, I got that, I got that, I got that. And then I saw this email a few weeks ago. And you. As if a caffeine jolt, it was like a quadruple espresso reading this email, Whoa, what is this? And you don't have help processing it in real time. Kind of looking around at nobody in my office being like, am I reading this? Is this? And we ended up calling this the most overlooked Epstein email. And I believe it is. And I really encourage people, read the piece, read the underlying email. So Yascha Bach, as you say, considered an incredibly bright mind in the field of kind of philosophy AI, like a kind of philosopher of computation and cognitive science and these kinds of things, and one of these kind of roving intellects of the kind that many people in the Epstein circle were. They had one field, but they kind of, you know, were like cross pollinating thinkers and is recruited by mit. First of all, just those initial emails, not, not the dramatic one that I'm talking about, but just the initial ones are so striking. MIT is offering money, as you say, it's not enough for his family. And then Joey Ito's like, but don't worry, there's a solution to bridge the gap between the amount of money you need, which he claimed is $100,000 a year, and what MIT can pay you. And that's some random rich guy. Pedophile, right?
- [15:15]
B
Well, he doesn't say pedophile. He says there's a random rich guy that can help. I'm Gonna connect.
- [15:21]
A
Yeah, but it's just like, people at home may not realize that these august academic institutions are deciding whom to hire. And they just have, like, random. Forget it's Epstein. Even just with. Even if it was just another random rich guy. Such a strange arrangement.
- [15:40]
B
Well, it's a weird arrangement because you would think that they would actually have some kind of fund where they have done a background check on the people who are paying into the fund and that there would be some way of applying to the fund, and they would say, yes, you're going to do something that we haven't done before. This is really valuable. Of course, 60,000 isn't enough for a leading academic from Germany to bring his family over and live here. And instead, Joey Ito tosses it to Epstein, who's like, yeah, yeah, I'll pick it up. I'll pick up the excess.
- [16:11]
A
And so what that then sets up is, you know, we all know Jeffrey Epstein kept around a kind of harem of young women and girls, many of whom he abused and trafficked and raped. I think what's less well known that I tried to highlight in this piece is he also kept around a kind of mental harem of, like, academic bros who were kind of like, you talk about kept women. These are like, kept scholars.
- [16:43]
B
Oh, that's interesting. What a great take on it. Kept Scholars.
- [16:46]
A
And so, you know, if I'm paying the extra 40 grand that you're not getting from MIT, you kind of become my scholar a little. And so I started reading the emails between Bach and Epstein before the really. In fact, I had noticed their correspondence before the really dramatic one, which I'll share about in a moment. I'd noticed that a while ago, and it was mostly requests for money. It was two kinds of things. So when you become so with that kind of MIT transaction, Buck becomes one of these kept academics in Epstein's mind, harem. So now there's two kinds of emails that you really see between them before the dramatic one.
- [17:28]
B
Okay. And can I just point out. So we've actually got. You put in your note or in your essay about this. Ito wrote to Bach telling him that Jeffrey said he'll figure out a way to cover the difference outside of the MIT relationship. Can you talk to him directly about that, which is also MIT sort of stepping back and then Bach having to pick up the relationship on his own. So to your point, there's no institution actually organizing this. And to your point about kept Scholar, it's Bach having to reach out to Epstein, and then he's much More vulnerable to what Epstein wants, although
- [18:10]
A
that was what was said in the emails. But then, interestingly, what ended up happening, and I don't know why the discrepancy, Epstein did end up donating, as it says there, 300,000 to MIT, right, that were specifically for the hiring of Bach. And the MIT report by Goodwin Proctor said that, quote, the Media Lab hired Bach in large part because Epstein subsidized the cost. Right. So by the way, you're sending your kid to college, you may not realize that some of the academics at that college are not being retained because the university has objectively decided that they're the best person and they're worth whatever, that it's because a certain rich guy, in this case a pedophile, happens to be personally willing to foot 40% of a bill for a guy, that that person is now in a university where your child may be attending, by the way,
- [19:12]
B
they may be your child's advisor or your child's.
- [19:15]
A
We should just be aware that apparently this is how some of the best universities in the world make decisions about who to expose your children to.
- [19:23]
B
And also the shocking thing for me is this is mit. It's not some university nobody's heard of in a state that isn't thought of as leading in education.
- [19:33]
A
And it's not poor.
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B
And it's not poor. It's not poor.
- [19:37]
A
So two kinds of emails. One is. So the ones from Epstein Tabak kind of follow a form that is common between Epstein and many others in his mind Harem, which is kind of like hasty as Bach describes it, like dyslexic queries. And as I was reading them, I realized these are the same kinds of emails that Epstein would send to his Centurion Amex, Centurion travel concierge, or the same kind of email he might send to a hotel concierge. So I realized these were kind of mind concierges, right? So just the same way like you and I, if we have to book a flight, we gotta go on Expedia or Trivago and search things and whatever, right? And look at different options. But people in this world can send like a one line thing, I gotta be in Paris in April, and then they have concierges. Well, it turns out they use mind concierges also. So an Epstein might write to him. Have you heard much about the new idea and linguistics of blah, blah, blah. And then Abak would just, you know, write like a thousand word rigorous, like a paper, but it's like a personal paper just for you, Right?
- [20:55]
B
Right. It's a brilliant description. And then you know that Epstein is reading that, assuming he's not dyslexic or he's having it read to him by Apple. And then he is performing that smartness at his next dinner party.
- [21:08]
A
Exactly.
- [21:09]
B
And he's saying, hey, he's calling Ehud Barak.
- [21:11]
A
Right?
- [21:11]
B
Yeah.
- [21:11]
A
I have this new thought on linguistics. Right?
- [21:13]
B
Yeah.
- [21:14]
A
It's very important for these guys in this world to feel the more grotesque they are, the more important it is for them to seem smart. I think smart feels like the penance for grotesqueness.
- [21:23]
B
Well, and it's also the COVID that we don't think smart people do this. We think smart people are not going to have an industrial sized network of underage girls they are raping. That's not what smart people do. And he uses the badge of MIT and of Harvard. Remember, he's always wearing the Harvard sweatshirt, which is such a tell for someone who didn't even go to college to indicate, hey, I'm top of the league. I'm top of the league here. I'm top of the league up here. And then meanwhile, there's all this kind of unpleasant business going on down here.
- [21:55]
A
So Bach becomes kind of one of these mind concierges for Epstein. Hey, what are you hearing about this? Sometimes Epstein will literally be like, any new thoughts? Any new thoughts? But by the way, by the way, if I had a kept scholar, that's how I would email them too. It's an amazing thing. A personal scholar, right? No, no.
- [22:16]
B
I'm always asking our interns and the young people in the office what's new? What's new? What are you reading? What are you watching? Tell me about it. Because you're, you know, you're a whale sucking up plankton.
- [22:26]
A
So that was from Epstein to Bach. That was the thing. And then from Bach back to Epstein. What do you think that half of the emails were requests for money?
- [22:38]
B
Requests for money.
- [22:39]
A
It wasn't just the subsidizing this MIT thing then. It's. By the way, my kid's private school tuition bill came. Can I forward you that? Just like straightforwarding private school bills, rent bills. Right. Very transactional in Silicon Valley. Um, you know, so. So the harem was kind of in. In the mental harem was in. Was in full effect. You're. You're one of my kept scholars. I can kind of, you know, ping you for new thoughts whenever I want that I can then repurpose for Ehud Barak or whatever.
- [23:10]
B
It's almost like he wants mental Adderall
- [23:13]
A
Yeah, that's a very good way to put it, right?
- [23:15]
B
Because he didn't take drugs, he didn't drink as far as I know. And so he needs stimulants.
- [23:21]
A
Also, like I've made this point last time and I'm going to use this display again. There's a really good technology out there available for people who want new thoughts, right? And it's called books. It's a, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's maybe unimpeached as a, as a way if you want new thoughts. Have I got, have I got an invention for you? Right, but that's not how these people get new thoughts. Because actually what they want is not new thoughts. They want the kind of thoughts that are, as you said, currency to be. As soon as I get it from Bach, I can retrade it in this network to get clout. Books don't do that. Books actually just grow. You Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for
- [24:24]
B
3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com well, and also the other thing about books is they take silence and they take time and you have to sit with it. Whereas someone firing you back an email or even better, getting on the phone and saying, hey, do you know about this? It's faster and you can translate it. And also the other thing about a book is I might be reading a book. And actually I remember this. When Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs came out, almost everybody I knew working in tech would memorize some of the phrases that Steve Jobs had and then weave them into their ordinary conversation as if other people wouldn't realize, oh, you've been reading the Steve Jobs book. And the problem with books is everybody's got access to a book. Whereas if you've got a mind hareem, and I love the description of it, they're giving you thoughts that Erhud Barak or Bill Clinton or whoever else you have around your table isn't gonna come up with the same thought. Cause they don't have access to it. Again, it's about access.
- [25:32]
A
It's about access, it's about exclusivity. And it's about. It's like podcasts with one.
- [25:39]
B
With one listener.
- [25:40]
A
Yeah, right. That's what he wants, by the way. I mean, you think about all the things rich people spend their money on, like that's comparatively one of the better things that they spend their money on.
- [25:51]
B
For sure. For sure.
- [25:51]
A
Trying to understand what people do, telling you interesting things about the world, like on the spectrum, it's not the worst thing they spend money on. But it was this kind of toxic relationship. So that was the general exchange between Bach and Epstein. And I had seen that actually going back to November and had sort of made note of it. And I think I mentioned it in my New York Times piece in November, just in passing. And so I actually just went back in JMail, which is this incredible platform that has organized all the Epstein emails to search for that correspondence that I had basically already seen to dig it up. And. And then I realized there's actually thousands of emails between them, I think. So I started, you know, and then I realized, oh, I actually have not seen all of this. I thought I'd seen much more than I had. So I started through all of it and that's when I came upon the truly dramatic kind of Motherlode email between them.
- [26:42]
B
And this is where Jeffrey Epstein asks Bach for his opinion of Jeffrey Epstein. And Bach, in a very Germanic way, I think it's fair to say, gives it to him.
- [26:56]
A
It's a very striking thing. So it starts with a conversation and I don't know if they had had an offline conversation that that kind of led to. It seemed a little bit like maybe they had, where Bach actually says, I'm not particularly good at sensing how people see me. And by the way, this is a world in which a lot of guys, you know, Virginia Giuffre and Nobody's Girl, the Epstein survivor, wrote an incredible book called Nobody's Girl, describes a lot of these guys as being kind of socially obtuse, unable to talk to women. They couldn't do the old fashioned thing, which is like chatting up a lady.
- [27:32]
B
Right. And so we think of Larry Summers, who's. Who is both arguably brilliant but also socially awkward. Bill Gates, exactly the same. Leon Black, exactly the same. Elon Musk, although was Elon Musk hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein?
- [27:48]
A
Trying.
- [27:48]
B
Well, trying to. That's right. There was the whole thing about when can I come to the island? Which day will be the best party?
- [27:53]
A
These are not men who have ever left anyone feeling better after a conversation with them. Right, right.
- [27:59]
B
You're like, how can I get eye contact? Because they can't do that.
- [28:02]
A
So Virginia Giuffre was very clear that the value you could think about guys for whom the provision of young women or girls is just not a. You know, they might be appetitive guys but like they got it, they can do it themselves. Right? Right.
- [28:20]
B
They don't need jeffree to money.
- [28:22]
A
Like there's, let's just say a lot of men who are interested in this kind of thing are able to take care of this themselves. Right. With the money they have, with the places they're able to go, a lot of men are able to take care of these needs consensually. So this group that was interested in hanging around Epstein and in some cases partaking were a particular kind of men who probably were not able to, as she writes, access this the old fashioned way. Which is like figuring out things to say to someone that maybe lead to more an age old technology that I highly, highly recommend to people. So they needed non consensual serving up on a platter. And she writes very movingly and powerfully about this in her book. So Joske Bak starts with this kind of idea, this kind of shared understanding they have that I'm not really good at knowing how people see me. He says to Epstein, you have helped me grow in my understanding of myself over these years through our friendship and relationship. I've become better at it. But I'm curious if you are aware of how people see you or do you care? How do you think about it? And Epstein writes back, I'm not particularly good at sensing it. I don't really care. And anytime I do try to care, it often backfires, which then segues into a weird story about hitting on a college student who doesn't.
- [29:52]
B
Who she's a woman. And she says, I don't want your money, I can't be bought.
- [29:55]
A
Which turns into a. Which turns into a thing about like his good intentions backfiring, which is a strange interpretation of that story. And then Epstein says, and this is really unusual territory, having spent a lot of time in these emails, these are not introspective people. To be introspective as these kind of people would be to have to sit with what you've allowed yourself to become. And I don't think that's in anybody's interest in this world. But he says, I have thick skin, I'm tough, I can hear it if you. He says to Epstein says To Josh Gabak, if you have a perspective on how you think people see me, what you think they see in me, what you see in me, how others see me that maybe I'm unaware of, tell me, hit me with it. And I can tell you, having read these emails, again, I have not read every email, but I've read enough to say I doubt there's another moment in these emails where there is such an invitation that was really not generally what was going on here. That kind of male vulnerability is scarce in general in the world. And it was scarce coming from. It was scarcer still coming from Epstein. So he asked bachelor, like, hit me up with your diagnosis. Now, Bach, being a kept scholar in the Epstein mind harem, being like, on the Epstein payroll, as it were, being, you know, this very Germanic philosopher man who is constantly being told in these circles how bright he is, being a kind of scientist of the mind and these kinds of things, and being, yes, socially obtuse in the way where, you know, there's a kind of literalism to him that may be part how his brain works, maybe part of a Germanic culture thing. A lot of people responded to this piece being like, this is like a very German, blunt German email. Yoshka Bach answers him with an email that is longer than Declaration of Independence, more words than the Declaration of Independence. That I think is the. Not just the most overlooked Epstein email, but the most breathtaking because it starts from the premise of. He says, and you're welcome to quote at any point.
- [32:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, I will.
- [32:20]
A
I will quote characterizing it. But he basically says at the outset, I don't have the, like, huge secret and proprietary knowledge. They're not. These guys are not especially close. It was like a patron thing. They don't live in the same place, as far as I know. This was a relatively distant relationship, right? Epstein had.
- [32:39]
B
But it was a very transactional relationship.
- [32:40]
A
Transactional, but it's not intimate. Right. There's also a big status difference between them. Right. He was a servant in the kind of Epstein orbit. He wasn't a peer the way a Leon Black was or something like that. Right? And so he says very clearly, what I'm about to tell you about my assessment of you is not based on some deep personal proprietary knowledge. It's sort of like what's around. It's based on the common sense of what I hear, what I sense. Right? And so this is very important because in the Epstein circle, as we talked about last time we spoke, the general defense has been, well, I knew this part of him, but I didn't know that.
- [33:17]
B
Right. I had no idea what he was.
- [33:19]
A
I had no idea. Right. I knew about the academic pretensions. Didn't know about the raping. I knew about the, you know, like, braggadocious whatever, but I didn't know about the trafficking. I knew about the, you know, financial, like, shenanigans, but I didn't know that he had, like, a rape island. What Bach basically says is, I'm gonna tell you not what I know exclusively because I have some deep well of knowledge about you. I'm gonna tell you, like, what's in the air. Great.
- [33:48]
B
Can I read part of it? Then? We discussed beforehand, and we decided I would read it in a German accent,
- [33:54]
A
which is a terrible term, accent. I think it's for all the viewers when I say we need it, we need it.
- [33:59]
B
Well, I think it's the first sentence of your Wikipedia entry introduces you as sex offender, which, due to contemporary America's fascinating difficulty of dealing with all things sex, really establishes a strong prior on you being a pariah. It is also pretty much the only thing people outside of your circles know you for.
- [34:23]
A
So we're starting with these guys have been now associates or whatever you'd call it for some time. And he's saying, you know, you're quite known as a sex offender. Like, no secrets here. And then very quickly, and this is such a fascinating move for a guy who, you know, has a reputation as a brilliant thinker.
- [34:47]
B
Yep.
- [34:48]
A
This. This being a sex offender becomes evidence of America's fascinating difficulty of dealing with all things sex related, as opposed to, like, an objectively terrible thing. In other words, the problem here quickly goes from being a sex offender to, like, America is so weird about sex.
- [35:12]
B
Can I then read the next bit of the.
- [35:14]
A
By the way, I really appreciated how you, in a German accent, made prior and pariah rhyme. I don't think. I don't think that should be ignored or forgotten.
- [35:25]
B
Okay, so. Because this is the most fascinating email in terms of how he. I mean, it really reminded me of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, where he's trying to become. He's looking at it from 30,000ft above, because obviously he's having to wrestle with the fact this is the guy who pays me to be in America. He's a sex offender, while other people compartmentalize it and put it somewhere else. And so I'm trying to do that, too. And it's that sense of morality doesn't apply to them, which I think is also part of what you have written about in terms of the Epstein circle, once people get to know you in person.
- [36:04]
A
So good. So good.
- [36:06]
B
I don't mean to make light of it, but how else does one deal with aura in these things, right?
- [36:11]
A
Plus there's a special rule for Germany. You can do the accent history.
- [36:15]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [36:16]
A
You don't get to complain.
- [36:17]
B
Yeah, okay. Once people get to know you in person and are interested in you, they tend to compartmentalize the topic as a somewhat difficult to accept aspect of an important friend or treat it as somehow interestingly dark and edgy. It seemed to never have been without right approval and very rarely not been an issue at all, even when it is balanced against your sharp, original and interesting mind.
- [36:46]
A
So what's happening here is a shattering of this defense that all these people have made that no one knew. Oh, I'm so sorry. No one knew.
- [36:58]
B
It's the first line of his Wikipedia
- [37:00]
A
entry, and he's basically saying he's describing mental processes he has seen people engage in to confront, deal with, rationalize, process, metabolize their knowledge of who Epstein was. So the idea they didn't have this process, he's describing of some compartmentalize it, some view it as an edgy thing. He's describing, let's just be clear, real mental processes that he has evidently seen and experienced. People go through other people besides himself, other friends, other associates, other MIT people, whoever he knew and encountered. He is describing an actual phenomenon that he has observed happen in the world in which people are in this circle and find ways of justifying it to themselves.
- [37:51]
B
Well, and these are leaders in the world. These aren't just rando people. This is the president or former president of Harvard, Larry Said Summers. It's the film director Woody Allen, who is, you know, beloved by a whole liberal elite of moviegoers. It's Leon Black, who co founded Apollo, one of the biggest private equity companies globally. These are not people who. Who are excited to meet a rich person, who don't meet any other rich people. Their lives are awash with rich people.
- [38:25]
A
That's what's so striking. And yet what Bach is describing is the way that Epstein somewhat uniquely pulled these people and people who, as you and I both know as journalists, when you're trying to get interviews with people like this, when you're trying to get act, it's hard. These are people who are very guarded, normally very protected. You gotta go through eight layers. Even at your level of seniority in the profession, it's not right. Except apparently with this guy, that this guy found his way in to the inner sanctum of these people's lives. And Bach is describing the process of compartmentalization or in some cases, a kind of sense of, you know, you're my edgy friend. As Larry Summers, you know, wrote to him, to Epstein once, how is life among the lucrative and louche?
- [39:12]
B
Well, and Peter Atir writing to him, the longevity expert, you know, oh, your life is so outrageous. I want to tell people the worst
- [39:21]
A
thing about being friends with you is, is that I can't tell people how
- [39:25]
B
because it's so outrageous. And this is the line that made me think of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment where he's thinking about murdering the old woman because he wants to sort of push the morality boundaries and they don't apply to him. And he says if people are able to think outside of moralistic terms, they may simply mark you down as an effeba. I didn't know this word ephebhile, but are bound to notice a few quirks.
- [39:58]
A
So this is. We gotta pause on this.
- [40:00]
B
This is completely. Can we just discuss this word ephebophile.
- [40:03]
A
I didn't know this word until I saw it there. But I have since learned that in those obscure corners of our society and of the Internet where people find it important to be defenders of Jeffrey Epstein, a lonely. A lonely position, there is this distinction that Josh Gabak, one of the premier thinkers in the world, we are told, makes here. Right. So if people are able to think outside of moralistic terms.
- [40:37]
B
Right. Very important line, first of all, very important line.
- [40:43]
A
I don't know. I don't like to be lectured by Germans to think outside of moralistic terms. Things always get hairy when you're told to. When Germans are like, we don't need to worry about morality for a second. Gotta be a little worried. What he's saying there, essentially, without using the other word, is maybe you're not a pedophile, you're an ephebophile. Now, if you at home, don't spend too much time on Reddit or 4chan or whatever, let me bring you up to date on what I had to come up to date with. Ephebophile is this term for people who are not into children per se. They're not pedophiles.
- [41:27]
B
They're not in. They're not into five year olds.
- [41:29]
A
They're into like geriatric children. They're into like teenage girls above, I don't know, 15, 16, 17, 18. They're into. In their telling. And the telling of it's an inherently defensive term where people are saying, this is not. I'm not into 6 year olds.
- [41:46]
B
Right.
- [41:47]
A
I'm into 16 year olds who seem like women.
- [41:52]
B
And by the way, I'm 55 or I'm 60.
- [41:56]
A
And it's this distinction, this completely. Just to be for the record, if you're under 18, you're a child. If you're 17¾, you're a child. You can't vote just because you've hit puberty. Like 18 in our system matters. And by the way, it correlates with a lot of biological and brain development things. It's not an arbitrary number. Our entire society is sort of based on that number. But in the telling of some of these kind of defenders of Epstein and others, there's a distinction between, like, the truly grotesque people who, you know, want to rape 6 year olds and people who, you know, are interested in, like, high school girls. So now you have this German philosopher and like, supposedly brilliant thinker who is providing, I guess, what a kept scholar like Joskebach is expected to produce, which is ideas that might be soothing to a man like Epstein, which is, you know, you're not a pedophile, you're an ephemeral. If we can think outside of moralistic terms.
- [43:12]
B
Right.
- [43:13]
A
Big if. Right.
- [43:15]
B
So compartmentalizing and comparative shopping. Underage girls.
- [43:23]
A
Yeah, you're not into kids, you're just in the geriatric teens.
- [43:29]
B
It is an astonishing correspondence. And it goes on. There's a line here which I just was laughing out loud at in terms of their exchange, where Epstein says to him, give me some new ideas, give me some new ideas. And one of the ways that Bach responds is a lot of people are coherentists instead of funding foundationalists. And you're just like, what, what are you talking about? And you can imagine Epstein saying at one of his dinners, oh, a lot of people are coherentists. You know, we're not all foundationalists. And everybody else around the table going, oh, God, God, I'm not very smart. I'm not smart enough to be here. I need to earn my place to be here. We've all been at dinners like that where people are being pretentious, but you can see where Epstein is being fed from. And as you say, his. His kept scholar who is soothing him about his behavior, which he hasn't even had to tell Bach about. Bach's read about it on Wikipedia.
- [44:34]
A
Yeah. And based on what he's saying in the email, as I, as I read it, is also describing a process he has seen Other of rationalization that he has witnessed other people going through. To be able to put play it back to Epstein of, you know, this email is fundamentally about, here's the common sense about you, right? It's not like, here's my take on you. It's, here's my take of how the world sees you, how other people we know in common see you. And then it lands, you know, in this place that I think is so striking. So he's now laying out, because everybody knows about you. Here's how they process you. And then he says, here's how I think. Here's the problem you have. And I don't know if you can read that part where he says, at the end of the day, you have, you know, you're this unrepentant and unevolving connoisseur of immature girls, right?
- [45:39]
B
And he gives them an excuse, and
- [45:41]
A
he says, if you just continue to be known as that. And he says, if you continue to be known as an unrepentant and unevolving connoisseur of immature girls. Now, Bach, in his public statement since has said, well, I didn't know any of this was ongoing. I thought it was all in the past. So then why are you saying all these years later, towards the end of Epstein's life, that he's unrepentant and unevolving if you thought it was all in the past? I put this question, I should say, to Jos Kabak. I reached out to him. He refused to respond to any of my questions. But he did write back to me, taking a swipe at my kind of work, suggesting it was kind of below the quality of the kind of serious thinking that he does. He said, you know, I don't. I'm not interested in, like, culture war topics and judging people from near and afar, which seems to be the main area of your reporting. If the charge against me is that I have written about things in the territory of the culture war that is American politics and life, which is to say the war over who we are in this country and the war over our culture and the war over what America is going to become between people who have different kind of cultural affiliations and views, I plead guilty to that. I've written about that extensively, unevolvingly and unrepentantly myself, right. For two decades. And if the charges that I. That I judge people, I do. That's my job. I don't do it fast, sightly. I do it, you know, generally after talking to them. But yoshka, Bach was not. Was not man enough to show up for an interview, but.
- [47:30]
B
Well, and that's interesting in itself. And also what you're doing here is using the evidence. I mean, you're close, reading a long, explicit email exchange. And we have here, your relationships to young women appear not to be on equal footing, but dominating and submissive with little apparent regard for hurt feelings. Now I'm sounding like Melania, which was not my intention.
- [47:56]
A
And then I think it goes gone from there. This is a shocking, amazing, powerful, and devastating insight.
- [48:03]
B
While you are direct, while you are brutally honest and direct with men, too, you don't come across as reveling in the power difference, interacting with men or making an example of their intellectual and personal limitation in front of others.
- [48:17]
A
It is as if, I think, he
- [48:19]
B
says, it is as if you are attracted to women as long as they are not too womenly, but you don't like them very much. While individual women gain your respect, it seems to be much harder for them than for men. It is as if they are inherently less trustworthy.
- [48:36]
A
You are attracted to women, but you
- [48:39]
B
don't like them, and you're attracted to girls, not women.
- [48:44]
A
And when I wrote this, so many. I got so many comments on this piece from women whose reaction to that passage was, that's my experience of a lot of men. A lot of this does not apply to all men or a lot of men, but that part, the feeling of men want you around for one set of things, but fundamentally don't like you, not interested in you as a person or as an equal. The number of women who responded that, yeah, that's kind of my experience of men in general was very sobering, jolting, sad.
- [49:30]
B
Yeah, that is sad. That is very sad. So let's move to the bit where Bach pivots to giving him advice, the redemption advice, the redemption advice, because this also is shocking.
- [49:43]
A
So he says, you know, right now, basically, the status quo is you're known as an unrepentant and unevolving connoisseur of immature girls. I mean, what a phrase. First of all, as a writer, I say hats off, I guess. And he says, there may be some path to redemption for you here, but it would have to be quite specific. And one of the paths he lays out. And here I should say, Joanna, that it's not clear to me whether he is inventing the kind of narrative, the kind of story that may not be true, but that if it were true, it would help Epstein, or it's not clear if he's Actually referring to some kind of backstory that Epstein confided in him that he is now erring. It's really. It's not obvious. He says, given American. Bach says, given kind of American mores culture, whatever. If you were to have a kind of backstory and share a backstory where you were yourself abused by an adult female caregiver when you were a child in the current kind of American, like trauma informed and trauma obsessed culture,
- [51:04]
B
you
- [51:04]
A
might be able to pull your way out of this hole by having a kind of story that would make people more sympathetic to you. Again, I'm not sure whether that is referring to an actual thing that happened to Epstein, that Epstein or claimed happened to him, that he told Bach, or he's just inventing, like algorithmically, like, here's the kind of story that would seem to work in this culture.
- [51:22]
B
Well. And we also don't know if there were telephone calls. So if you're Epstein and you receive an email from Bach saying, hey, dude, everybody says you're a pedophile is the first line of your Wikipedia page. But if you think about it and break it down, you're not really a pedophile, you're a kind of geriatric pedophile, which is slightly different. You might pick up the phone and go, hey, I love this kind of thing, or hey, how's it going? So we don't know what other correspondence is going on in between.
- [51:51]
A
As far as I can tell, this big email that you and I are parsing did not get responded to by email. Again, I could be wrong. There's a lot of things in there. But as far as I can tell, this was the end of the thread. So I don't know if it continued in person or on the phone or. But they had exchanges afterwards, so it was not like it ended the relationship. Right? Right.
- [52:11]
B
The easiest explanation for your unusual choice of partners and the nature of your relationships to them is obviously childhood abuse. If most of these people suspected you suffered something unspeakable at the hands of an adult female careg and it took you decades to work through it, understanding that someone likely abused her so turned against you, they would be able to feel they understand you and you would feel more acceptance. Some people might even realize that you paid a much higher price than your purported victims.
- [52:51]
A
Think about this. So whether, again, this is a real story, not a real story, we don't know. But the move here is to say, given Bach's kind of, he's giving, in a way, a cultural read. Right? Here's how the Machinery of American Society Works. And it seems like an insightful read, by the way. You could imagine The Jeffrey Epstein, 60 Minutes. I was abused.
- [53:17]
B
Well. And in fact, Steve Bannon sat down and they talked through, what would it be like? And Steve Bannon pretended to be the 60 Minutes interviewer. Do you remember that?
- [53:26]
A
I didn't see that one.
- [53:27]
B
Yeah. There's a whole thing about how Bannon went in. Erhud Barak was there. You know where it is? It's in Michael Wolf's book Too Famous. There's a specific chapter on Bannon sitting there and giving him advice on how to behave in front of the media because he's hoping to do a 60 Minutes interview where he then rehabilitates himself.
- [53:50]
A
So part of what's going on there is based on Bach's analysis of America Loves a Good Trauma Story. Right. Now, here's how you could get in there. But then the move at the end of that passage is to say, if you do what I'm saying, you could end up framing yourself as more of a victim, suffered more than the women.
- [54:15]
B
Right, Right.
- [54:16]
A
You trafficked and raped.
- [54:17]
B
Yeah. And the industrial nature of it.
- [54:20]
A
And again, I'm sure a lot of people watching this at home do not have Yosh Kabak's degrees and credentials. Maybe not his iq, his accolades, appointments at all these fancy places. He's a fancy guy. But I imagine almost everybody watching this somehow would have the sense not only to not send an email like that, but to not have thoughts like that, to not think, even in the deepest recesses of your mind, that Jeffrey Epstein blaming a nanny would somehow turn him into someone who had suffered more than the legions of girls and women who were trafficked and raped by him. But in this circle that he maintained, I guess this is how people thought he was. Jeffrey Epstein was the real victim. This is where this email lands. You could be the real victim here. You could frame yourself as having suffered more than these girls and women. And so at some level, I understand the reactions I got to the piece from so many women who were like, this is not just an Epstein thing. It's not just the Yosh Kabak thing. There is a way that so many men view us every day at work, every day at home, in some cases, every day on the street, walking down the street, in which we are eye candy, in which we're fun to keep around, but at some deep level, we are not liked and not valued.
- [56:08]
B
Where is Yosh Kaba now?
- [56:11]
A
Hiding from my questions.
- [56:14]
B
Hiding from your questions.
- [56:15]
A
I Sent him a detailed list of questions. I even sent him a question that I thought a conscientious person would feel like answering because it could help others. I said, if there was a young, you know, young person, as you were when you first made contact with Epstein, who was sort of being offered this bargain, what advice would you have for them in terms of getting into such a relationship or not? I don't know. I think it could be public serving to answer questions like that. Even if you have to come off a little worse, you might help actual people who are in their own versions of whatever these dilemmas are today. But again, Joska Bach chose to impugn my reporting and journalism. I apparently write too much about culture wars and make judgments about people. Again, I'm not going to stop doing that because some German scholar who likes to think outside of moral terms, moralistic terms, and thinks there's a difference between liking teens and liking kids, thinks I should not do the kind of work I do.
- [57:27]
B
Is he still teaching at mit?
- [57:30]
A
I don't think he's at MIT anymore. I think he moved to Silicon Valley, which is where Epstein was getting these rent requests from, and the private school requests. I don't know if he's now affiliated. You know, he's very AI. He's kind of a philosopher of AI and these kinds of things. So this was, you know, some of These emails were 10, 10, 11 years ago. Obviously, the field that he was in, AI, he was only getting $60,000 from MIT to study those things back then. One would imagine that he's getting much more lucrative. Like, the thing that he has set his life to study has now become the biggest topic in the world. He did write, we should note, although he didn't answer my questions, he did write on his own substack, a kind of, you know, about the Epstein affair kind of, you know, and he just sort of claimed, like, I knew that he'd had a conviction, but I was told he was reformed, and I had no reason to believe that any of this was ongoing. Maybe I'm not a brilliant German academic with that kind of, you know, brilliant training that he has. So I'm maybe like, you know, incompetent at squaring the distinction between I knew of no ongoing. I just thought this was a thing in the past, any ongoing thing. And then privately telling Epstein, you are an unevolving and unrepentant connoisseur of immature girls.
- [58:57]
B
And we have no idea if he was introducing Epstein to students at mit.
- [59:02]
A
Right. Would you consider having Yosh Kabak on the.
- [59:06]
B
Oh, I was just, I was just going to look directly at the camera and invite him on. I'd love to talk to Mr. To Herr Bach. We should find him. Professor Bach.
- [59:16]
A
Don't they, don't they layer, don't they layer the titles?
- [59:19]
B
Professor Dr. Bach? Yeah. If you know him or you know where he is or you work at a company with him, please let us know because we would love to interview. We should have the two of you on child.
- [59:30]
A
You know, like, well, he has a family.
- [59:32]
B
He has a family that's having a child.
- [59:34]
A
Having a child is such a. Hopefully one is against these terrible things even without having to have a child. But I know for myself, having children, such a radicalizing experience about just the fragility and delicacy and beauty and immaculacy
- [59:52]
B
and innocence, innocence, innocence children.
- [59:55]
A
And so I would hope that someone like Josh Kabak would say, look, I'm willing to damage my own career prospects and reputation to come forward and share my mistakes and what I knew in the hope that it would save one future child. If you're not able to do that, what is the value of all your German philosophizing?
- [60:15]
B
Oh, it's. I don't mean to laugh, but it's such a good line. What is the value of your German philosophizing if you're not prepared to.
- [60:23]
A
I didn't study as far as him, but philosophy is about the love of knowledge. It's about getting to the truth.
- [60:34]
B
Well, I think there was a lot of, as you say, he was a thinker for hire. He was a thinker for hire. Anand excellent having you on. A really fascinating read in your substack the ink and I highly recommend it. And you have to come back when you've gone into even more Epstein files. On a quick note, Joshua Back has not been accused of sexual abuse or misconduct. He also told a German newspaper this February. The grave accusations that Epstein was confronted with after his second arrest were very shocking to me. I had never observed any hint of such crimes or legally questionable behavior. And I would have broken off all contact had I done so. I found it absolutely fascinating the idea of having brains on call an intellectual harem, so that whenever you knew you were having Bill Gates come around or Herhud Barak, you had people that you could call up and say, hey, what's new? What's the latest thinking? And then just spout it out, repeat it it to people coming and then they just think you're brilliant. Because how many times have you heard people say about Jeffrey Epstein, oh, he was so smart, he was so entertaining. He was so up to date on the current thinking. Well, that's how he did it, by having intellectuals on tap and he was paying for them. So, Joshua back, if you're out there, please get in touch, come on the podcast and tell us what it was like being supportive of by Jeffrey Epstein. If you have been, thank you for watching, please don't forget to press the subscription button. We are independent media, which is how we can bring you conversations like this, which I think is a unique conversation. Actually, I don't think anybody else had that and definitely not with my really bad German accent. You don't need to comment on that. But do tell us what parts of the conversation you responded to the most. We love reading the comments comments and I know Anand did very much last time he was on. So the good news is we have so many bebeast tier members now there are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support. Thanks to our production team. Devon Rogerino, Ryan Murray, Rachel Passer, Heather Passaro, Neil Rosenhaus.