Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Epstein's funeral

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

A million conspiracy theories are launched when Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his jail cell on August 10th 2019. Your host wonders if this is “the big one.” ToE’s special correspondent Chris attends a secret Coney Island funeral. PLUS: Epstein Brain.

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Epstein's Funeral. A couple of months ago, I was driving through Paris with my sister-in-law. As we passed the Notre Dame Cathedral, I couldn't help but notice, post-fire, there are now even more tourists. I tried to make a joke about how all these pilgrims have come to self-investigate Islam's attack on Europe's Christian landmarks. But my French sister-in-law did not laugh. She just furrowed her brow and let loose.

Apparently, the government released a report stating that it was an accident before she insisted it was forensically possible to do so. And then she lectured me about the many groups of immigrants in Europe who are agitating for cultural jihad. There was a time when I would have wondered just where she was getting this stuff. But not anymore. It's no longer a question of where. This stuff is in the water.

In the trees. in the air. I wanted to include this anecdote in an essay that I was commissioned to write for a special issue of the Journal of Design and Science from MIT's Media Lab, an issue called Unreal. But I couldn't make the anecdote work without painting myself into a corner of self-righteousness and moral superiority. So instead, I wrote up a post-mortem on the False Alarm miniseries we produced last year, my personal attempt to come to terms with the collision of fiction and reality. That's actually what Ethan Zuckerman, the guest editor of Unreal, commissioned me to

write. The complete issue went online last week, at the exact moment The Media Lab made headline news for its relationship with the pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. My friend Ethan Zuckerman had already resigned weeks earlier in protest over these connections, which had been kept hidden from him. In fact, in The New Yorker, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow recounts an incredible story about how when Epstein was brought to visit the Media Lab with his two young Eastern European female assistants, the director of the Media Lab, Joey Ito, instructed his staff to make sure Ethan would be kept away from the main office

should he unexpectedly turn up. But yeah, it's kind of a bizarre moment to be promoting my contribution to this journal from the Media Lab. But I really think you should check it out. I put a link to it on the show page at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. There are some incredible pieces in Unreal, including contributions from Joan Donovan and Masha Gessen. But my favorite essay is Ethan Zuckerman's introduction, in which he examines the QAnon conspiracy theory to advance his thinking on what he calls the Big Tent conspiracy theory. What's maddening about QAnon, well, to the rationally inclined, is exactly what makes it so appealing to its true believers. You see, for the QAnon folks, there's just no such thing as contradictory evidence or cognitive dissonance. Every single breadcrumb leads only to proof of the nefarious cabal of global elites who control everything.

QAnon demonstrates how a big tent conspiracy theory can even reactivate dangerous discredited ideas from the past. A Big Tent Conspiracy Theory, Ethan writes, is a meta-narrative that knits together contemporary politics and racist tropes with centuries of history behind them. Before August 10th, I was emailing Ethan's introductory essay to friends, describing it as the ultimate test prep for those who desire to be ready for the big one. The Big Big Tent conspiracy theory. Perhaps this is why when I saw that headline on August 10th that Jeffrey Epstein had killed himself in his jail cell in Manhattan, I knew right away, I knew instantaneously that this was the big one. And I knew that nothing was going to be the same. At the end of August, just before I left Paris, I met up with my sister-in-law for coffee. She brought up the matter of the two malfunctioning video cameras that were outside of Epstein's jail cell. It was like she was taunting me, daring me to call her a conspiracy theorist. And while I remain unconvinced about her theory

that Epstein was able to use his money and power to put a dead clone of himself in his cell, a dead clone that he'd gotten one of his MIT science buddies to make for him, I definitely felt no moral superiority or self-righteous judgment. We're both now citizens of the unreal. I totally have Epstein burning. I just can't stop thinking about Jeffrey Epstein. Sure, a lot of normies had a conspiracy theory weekend when he died, but if you have Epstein brain, you're still reading about it every day. Because there's new stuff coming out every day.

You know Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman who lured all those girls onto Epstein's sex island? Well, it turns out those new photos of her were fake. Those ones of the In-N-Out in Hollywood, the first photo looks convincingly like she could have been caught off guard. But the second photo that you see, she's resting her hand on her chin, looking straight at the camera, her legs are crossed, and she's reading a book called The Book of Honor, The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives, what people have been discovering is that the pictures were staged by her attorney. See, there's a dog in one of the photos, a little white fluffy dog, and it's her lawyer's dog.

There's two trays, two drinking cups. Supposedly she's dining alone. Also, there's a bus shelter visible in the background, and there's an ad for the new Seth Rogen film, Good Boys, which is about a group of sixth graders invited to their first kissing party. At that bus shelter right now, outside that very In-N-Out in Hollywood, that's not the ad. The ad is for a local hospital.

And there was never, in fact, a Good Boys ad at that location. These doctored photos were originally published in the New York Post. And they were originally credited to an In-N-Out regular and had quotes from people about how lovely she was. The Post quietly deleted all this bullshit and then recredited these Photoshop jobs to the mega agency, who also released photos from inside Epstein's mansion and photos of Epstein's court. And the New York Post, they were the first ones to leak Epstein's quote-unquote suicide.

And it was this one reporter specifically, Larry Salona. This guy has a history of making fake headlines for Hollywood. In fact, for his final and most important film, Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick hired Larry Salona as a journalistic advisor. He wrote a few prop articles that are shown in the film, and his real name is used in the byline of an article, falsely reporting the murder of a sex slave as a quote unquote overdose. And Sidney Pollack, who plays the guy covering up the murder, looks a whole lot like Epstein. Not to mention Epstein's Palm Beach compound, which he bought a few years before Kubrick started on the film, has the same black and white checkerboard floors as Pollack's character does.

Stanley Kubrick had been studying sex trafficking ever since he made Lolita. And he'd always wanted to follow that up with Eyes Wide Shut, but it just ended up on the back burner until Kubrick found out about Epstein. Then he knew he had to make it before he died. Stanley Kubrick definitely had Epstein brain. And here is the kicker. Larry Salona from the New York Post, he didn't just break Epstein's death. He also broke Kubrick's. And remember, this is before Eyes Wide Shut was finished. With Epstein Brain, you can see all these connections. It's just like that John Carpenter movie, They Live, where he puts on the sunglasses and he can see that like half the population are actually evil aliens, except with pedophiles. My boyfriend put on Rush Hour with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker.

Well, I don't know if you know this, but fucking Chris Tucker was on the Lolita Express. You gotta be careful, though. Epstein-Brain is also an addiction. You don't want to OD on it. Or, you know, end up killing yourself. I went to Epstein's funeral. Wait, what? I went to Jeffrey Epstein's funeral last week.

Oh, my God. Epstein's funeral last week. Oh my god it's like there's a new revelation every day now of of someone who was in this fiend's network but Chris no not you. Benjamin relax relax I went for Epstein did have a pretty intricate network. We had Wall Street, princes, presidents, Mossad, CIA, MI5. But still, no one has the whole thing mapped out yet. Ah, so you went to stake it out like the feds do with mafia funerals. Yeah, I guess you could say that. So who showed up? Well, there were like five Uber drivers who dropped off flowers.

A couple of DoorDash guys showed up with cards. And I think I caught at least 10 task rabbits. What? But paying one's respects ain't like the east of the south. Thanks to the gig economy, you can now farm this stuff out. This is also just like a godsend for folks who need to hide their identity. But then what's the point of staking it out? How are you going to know who hired the stand-ins?

Well, we can cross-reference surveillance footage and computer taps, but sometimes it's just obvious. For example, there was this lady who sat down on the boardwalk and started massaging her feet while screeching the lyrics to I Will Always Love You. I think we can safely say she was a task rabbit hired by Prince Andrew. Wait, wait, boardwalk? Where the hell was this funeral?

Coney Island, near the parachute drop. Why there? Jeffrey was born and raised on Coney Island. And it's where he first met Donald Trump. Well, at least that's what Max told me. Who's Max? I wasn't the only guy sent to stake out this funeral. Who's Max? Actually, my cover wasn't so great either, because a few minutes after she was done, this hairy tan guy in a speedo walks up and throws his towel down next to mine. He's like, hey man, if you're using a drone to record this thing, let's make sure our birds don't crash into each other. Capisce? And he opens up his cooler,

which is on wheels, and I see that it's not only a mobile recording studio, but it is also stocked with Tiny Beard. And this is Max? Yeah. And who sent Max to cover this funeral?

I didn't ask. Just like, he didn't ask who sent me to cover this funeral? I didn't ask. Just like he didn't ask who sent me. I just took the tiny Miller highlight he offered me and said, cheers. But he knew about Epstein. Oh, yeah. He's like an Epstein pedo-cyclopedia. He knows everything. Including the name of the first book Epstein checked out of the Coney Island Public Library.

And what was that? Childhood End by Arthur C. Clarke. Jeffrey was a total sci-fi nerd. But this book meant everything to him because it was not only published the year he was born, 1953, but he also identified with the little boy, Jeffrey Gregson, who is the first Earthling in the book who has the drive to transcend the ordinary trappings of conventional human life. The Coney Island Public Library is where most of the sci-fi nerds from Seagate hung out because there was no library in Seagate. So Seagate is the western part of Coney Island, and it's actually one of the country's first gated communities. And that's where Epstein was born. Yep. Yep, he was born there.

And it's also the birthplace of the very first anti-Trump group. When? 1965. Okay. So in the early 1960s, Fred Trump, Donald's father, started buying up land on Coney Island, throwing everyone out on the street so that he could demolish their homes and build towers. There was a spike in crime and homelessness, and in 1965, a group of concerned citizens from Seagate decided to band together in order to stop Fred Trump.

Jeffrey Epstein was a key member of this group. Because he wanted to defend his gated community. No, no, no, no, no, no. In 1965, Fred Trump bought the Steeplechase amusement park. He shut it down and announced he was going to demolish it. This is why young Jeffrey Epstein got involved. He fucking loved Steeplechase. And that's how we know he was involved with these anti-Trumpers

because in 1965 they started using the Steeplechase funny face as their logo. Is that the face that they call Steeplechase Jack? Yeah you got it pal. A lot of folks do call it Steeplechase Jack, or sometimes they call it Tilly, after the owner of Steeplechase Park, George Tilly-oo, but the official correct name was and is The Funny Face. And The Funny Face was painted on the glass windows above the entrance to the amusement park

and it was meant to look like it was leering down on everyone who was walking in and right there underneath the funny face kill you also had a bunch of electric fans hidden under the boardwalk. And the fans would blow girls' skirts up as they walked in. Wow. And there was this clown-faced dwarf who would try to spank the girls with an electric paddle just as their skirts blew up. Wow. I see why Epstein liked this place.

But wait. Wow, I see why Epstein liked this place. But wait, if he was born the same year that Childhood's End came out, that means he was like 13 years old in 1966. That's kind of young for a freedom fighter, no? Yeah, I brought this up to Max as well. And he reached into the bottom of his cooler and pulled out a bottle of old stag whiskey. And he takes a swig and he's like, remember, this kid thought he was better and smarter than everyone else. So he was saying Epstein was like whiskey

and everyone else was like a tiny bottle of Miller Highlights? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as I take a shot from this bottle, he tells me that most people believe it was 13-year-old Epstein who actually came up with the group's daring plan to remove Fred Trump from Coney Island. Say more. Well, around this time, Fred Trump was trying to get his 20-year-old son Donald more interested in the family business. And so he had Donald

working on the steeplechase project. Okay? But Donald, all he wanted to do was use the empty amusement park to throw wild parties for himself and his friends. But

he didn't know many girls outside of his family circle. And so when Epstein shows up to the steeplechase with a bunch of hot local Seagate girls, he was in like Flynn. But what Donald didn't know is that Epstein also snuck in a bunch of the anti-Trumpers too. And they all had secret cameras. And supposedly they got some pretty twisted photos, like of Donald doing stuff that would have made even old George Tilly-you blush. So the daring plan was blackmail. Yeah, yeah. They went to Fred Trump with the photos of Donald So the daring plan was Blackman. Yeah.

Yeah, they went to Fred Trump with the photos of Donald and offered to keep quiet if he promised to get the hell out of Coney Island. So, September 21st, 1966, Fred Trump invited all his fancy friends to steeplechase. All the bigwigs from Coney Island and Brooklyn were there, mafia-wise guys, politicians. It was supposed to be a press event where Fred Trump was going to announce that he would be divesting all of his Coney Island holdings. That is what was supposed to happen. But it wasn't a press conference. It was a demolition party. He hired a bunch of models to be put in bikinis, and he had them pass out gold-painted bricks for the guests to throw through the glass teeth of the funny face. Wow. So what went wrong?

The fact that the Trumps specifically targeted the funny face, that could only really mean one thing. Jeffrey Epstein double-crossed the anti-Trumpers. He sold them out. He was the one who had the photos, and he was the one who promised Fred Trump that they would disappear. Ah, so he sold out his buddies for money. No, no, no. After watching Donald Trump party down,

Epstein realized there was a bigger, sexier, crazier world than anything his sci-fi buddies from the Coney Island Public Library could ever imagine. And he figured Donald could be his entry point into this new world. And he was right. Some of the Trump guys he did the deal with that summer, well, they end up being the same guys who hook him up later when he decides he wants to work in a high school. So what happened to the anti-Trumpers? Most of them were rounded up by the police. But the leader of the gang, the guy who was like Epstein's sci-fi nerd mentor, the guy who had turned Jeffrey on to childhood then, he disappears.

A lot of folks think Fred Trump had the mafia rub him out. But there have always been rumors that this guy is still out there. And that Epstein, who apparently always felt a tiny bit bad about this original betrayal, has always known where he was. Okay. As you may have read,

Jeffrey amassed quite the photographic archives. That's another thing he learned from the summer of 66. The power of incriminating photos. And he's got decades of that stuff.

But no one knows what happened to the archive. Max thinks Epstein might have sent that archive to his old buddy as a last-minute gesture of apology. That's why this funeral

has raised so many eyebrows. Why would he stipulate in his secret will that he wanted his ashes spread on the boardwalk by the parachute drop? It's like Epstein wanted to make a point. Come on. First of all, how does this guy Max know so much? Max is one of the guys chasing down Antifa. That's why he knows so much about this 1965 Coney Island gang.

They were like the original Antifa. Anti-Truth. Or Anti-Trump. But hold on. If this is true. If this is true. anti-true or anti-Trump. But if, hold on, if this is true, if this is true, if Jeffrey Epstein really did turn over

his archive of Compromat, then what? I'll tell you what it means. It means anti-Trump or anti-Fa, whatever, whatever you want to call it, the resistance,

the resistance, the resistance, it's finally going to have a real leader. Who? Bunnyface. You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Epstein's Funeral. special correspondent, Chris. You can find a link to the journal Unreal at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com The Theory of Everything is a

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