Panic World - How Epstein weaponized the internet

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Did Jeffrey Epstein destroy the internet? Ryan posits his theory, after not going totally insane (we think) reading through hundreds of Epstein files: Epstein was the Forrest Gump of the 21st century and there’s pretty much no major event this century that he didn’t have some sort of weird interaction with. Marcus Parks of Last Podcast on the Left joins us to indulge these conspiracies — and throw in a few more. Our guest Marcus Parks is the co-host of Last Podcast on the Left. Check them out wherever you listen to podcasts, and watch the video versions on Spotify and Netflix. You can also follow Marcus on Instagram @marcusparks and his music history podcast, No Dogs in Space, here. This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile. Get your first three months for $45 by shopping plans at https://www.mintmobile.com/courier Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does y'all read that one that just came out? I did about how they removed and withheld stuff related to Trump. Yep. Yeah. And I was, yeah, from the 2019 interviews and that they took her serious enough to interview her four times. Jesus. Yeah, it never ends. It really doesn't.

So let's kick things off, Marcus. I've seen like bad guy. You think he's like a bad guy? Yeah, I'd say on the scale of a bad guy, I'd say pretty bad guy. bad guy. One might even say greatest villain of the 21st century. Yeah, I've come to call him like the forest gump of the 21st century for sure. Yeah, he seems like he's got his little fingers in every cookie jar imaginable. Yeah, he's a bad guy. For years now, we have known that some of the most powerful people in the world have basically been great friends, acquaintances, email, correspondences

with Jeffrey Epstein, and they likely knew that he was at least some kind of, as we said, bad guy. But thanks to the most recent release of files from the Justice Department, we now have a much bigger, greater, clearer picture of how bad a guy he was and how much people knew about it. And so today we are going to be talking about that. We're going to be talking about Jeffrey Epstein. I'm Ryan Roderick. With me is Grant Irving, who, to the best of my knowledge, has been marked safe from the Epstein files. And this is panic roll to show about how the internet warps our mind, our culture and eventually reality, which is also exactly what Epstein did. And with us today is Marcus Parks from Last Pockets on the Left, your second appearance on the show. How are you doing today?

Thanks so much for having me back as well as I can, you know, as far as where we're at right now. It's a little overwhelming. You know, we're recording this on the day of what it's supposed to be the State of the Union address. And it's overwhelming. And Epstein has made it even more overwhelming. Yeah, I definitely went through like a period of like profound psychic anguish over the course of like two weeks reading all these files where I slowly sort of just like got used to the idea that like the Epstein network runs the world. Do you feel like you've gone through something similar? When the Epstein files came out, we were just about to start. We were just going to do one episode on the DuPont Fox Catcher murder. I remember Foxcatcher. Steve Carrell was in the movie.

this guy John DuPont wanted to be a wrestler so bad that he built a team of wrestlers using his incredible wealth. And when his toys didn't behave the way he wanted them to, he murdered one of them. He murdered one of the wrestlers. But, you know, what we like to do, especially when we're covering, you know, really wealthy people, and we've been doing it recently because we also just recently did a series on Alec Murdoch, is to look at the history of these families, these powerful families in America. because it really does show you, because with last podcast,

the question is always how, how did this happen? And to know the history of these families and to know how these people got to be the way they are, it's edifying. But when we looked into the DePonts and we looked into the history of that family, how much they control,

how much they're responsible for, it was shocking and mind-boggling, and then the next day the Epstein files dropped. I was already in this space, like this one, One family is responsible for napalm, lead, and gasoline, you know, like, which, you know, led to quite a few other things. Forever chemicals. You know, they developed the uranium for the atomic bombs, you know, like there's so many awful things.

And then to see, you know, that not only is it still going on, but to see the world that people like the DuPonts help to create, to see. to see the fruits of that, because that's what Jeffrey I've seen is. He is the fruits of that. These people who live entirely separate lives from us, they don't care about us. They don't even register us as human. I don't even know if they register each other as human. No, there's some other thing. There's some other weird thing.

Some other weird thing. The funny thing is, it finally got to the point where, like, you know, my brother, who leans conservative, I was on the, I was driving to work today, and I was telling them what this podcast was about. And even he is finally like, some people have too much money. It does something. He's like, we did it, Joe. That's great.

No, yeah, I think there's a level of wealth you get to where you start to resemble like one of those purebred show dogs and you're like not really a mammal anymore. You're some other thing, right? Yeah. And like speaking of the history, which we're going to get into, it is astounding how far back this network that for simplicity's sake we'll call the EPSC network today goes. and how far reaching it is. But before we start, I wanted to share my sort of, I think this will help us not spin out into conspiracy tinfoil hatland, although that's pretty much where we're going to be the whole episode.

Yeah, I mean, I can speak about on all of that without a doubt. So I wanted to share my sort of personal theory on like what Epstein was trying to do and accomplish. And I'd love to hear sort of your thoughts on this. my overall kind of most charitable like most reasonable take is that epstein was a pedophile who was running a very extensive elder abuse scheme that made him very valuable to three if not four different intelligence agencies sure my general take is that like he would convince old men to give him money and throw parties for them full of children and created so much blackmail material that at the very least, the CIA, the MI6,

the FSB and Russia and Mossad in Israel, we're all like, you work for us now. That's my, you're our guy. You're our guy. That's basically my take. You're on point. If you really want to boil it down to like brass tax, I think you are on point considering what we know right now. Right.

Because if you'll notice, all of our opinion. on Epstein and what Epstein did and what his game was, they change every time. I've been hearing about Jeffrey Epstein since 2010, 2011. Oh, yeah, he was like a 4chan boogeyman for a long time. Not just 4chan. I remember reading about the Lollity Express and the fucking New York Post, you know, riding the train. You know, like this this stuff was talked to. I mean, of course, they were doing it to try to, you know, smear Bill Clinton because that's,

that was their agenda. But it's been talked about and bandied about. for a very long time. We've been asked, like, you know, why don't you do an Epstein episode or an Epstein series? It's because the story's not over yet. Like, we don't know.

But like, what's the percentage of emails that we've gotten a look at right now, five? 1% of 1%? Yeah, I mean, like, it's the tip of the iceberg. And yeah, that's what we've said on this show as well. Like, it is very hard to talk about these things. And just a little background on myself here for people who might not know, like,

so because I spent, you know, so many years covering radicalization around the world as a reporter. I have mainly focused on that, which I did not even realize Epstein was a part of. Like, I didn't really clock, like, when I was working on those stories about the far right around the world, I didn't realize that, like, Epstein was connected. I can't imagine what this is done to your brain, like, because someone who is a studied radicalization. Like, I can't imagine what this is done.

It has re-activated some, like, very insane, like, brain pathways that I believed I had defeated when I stopped watching the history channel and getting high in college. And now they have totally rewoken. I believe ancient aliens are real. I believe that there is a hollow earth. I, yeah, this is, I mean, yeah, it is crazy. And like, it's not like I'm like kicking myself being like, I can't believe I didn't read like if I had told my editor like, hey, by the way, I think I'm actually covering a pedophile cabal that's orchestrating all this.

Like I would have been laughed at other newsroom. So like, yeah. But let's, let's, as you said, there are so many layers to this. So let's start peeling back the onion that is Jeffrey Epstein. Good title for today's episode, actually. In the mid-70s, he's a teacher at the Dalton School, and he's kicked out. It's kind of debated exactly why he was kicked out, but there are reports that he was a creep there, which makes me think. And I think this is important.

I think this is really important because I think that there is a tendency, particularly in social media, for different users to be like, oh, he was a intelligence asset and he was doing pedophilia as a honeypot for intelligence like networks. I believe it's the opposite, which is think about how dangerous a pedophile would be when he inserted himself into the world of global espionage. Yeah. I think we can say this. Like, pedophiles are attracted to gray areas where there's little oversight, the Catholic Church, organized, or like college sports. Like, they worm them their way into these institutions. And post-Cold War espionage is about as freewheeling and without oversight as you could imagine, I would say. God, yes.

Yeah, and not only that, but one of the things that we've learned is, like, pedophiles, like, need organizations. They cannot exist in a vacuum. And whether it's an organization that they insert themselves into or an organization that they make themselves, they need it. Like, that's what they need to continue. They hunt in packs. And Jeff Ripe seems that, yeah, he's the, yeah, they do hunt in packs, absolutely. And so, yeah, from this, we can basically say, like, the guy is a pedophile and his bed of pedophile since the 70s. Around 1976, this is where, like, his story is a little strange, but I kind of chalk it up to, like, the 70s and New York and all of that, but, you know, who knows.

He becomes a very low-level employee at Bear Stearns. The story that I've heard is that he used connections at the Dalton School to get this job. And this is also, like, not that different, I think, from a lot of pedophiles, like where they find one way to sort of escape the sinking ship and move to the next. Like, this is a pattern, you know, we've seen this. So, 1976, he's working at Bear Stearns. This is where he gets connected to people in academia. So this is where he meets people at MIT, Harvard, the finance world. He starts, like, kind of being a face man for a lot of high-level accounts there, working his way up.

I think this is also arguably probably where he, like, starts to encounter people who are connected to the CIA. Bear Stearns was sort of important in that world in the 70s. You know, Iran-Contra is on the horizon. Like, this stuff is all kind of in the mix. At this point, like the espionage world, especially, you know, that the CIA is a fucking mess in the 60s. Not like now. You know, it's fine now. Yeah, it's fine.

I mean, did we really have back in the day, like, why didn't Jay Edgar Hoover ever go drink with the hockey team? Was he, why didn't, why wasn't he involved with the miracle on ice? I mean, that's what we really need our intelligence. My understanding is the CIA now is mainly producing. Jack Ryan movies for Amazon Studios and pretending to be woke teenagers on Twitter. That is like largely what they're doing and that's fine. Like that seems fun for them. So yeah.

In the 60s and 70s, M.K. Ultra was, I mean, they were doing that you can't even imagine all the things that they were. Yeah. Imagine how sad that must be like, I can't wait to like experiment on prisoners. And then they put you at a desk job where you're like, I'm a non-binary furry. And I think having Tourette's a form of hate speech. Like, like, yeah. Like, yeah, that's, that's the most.

suck. So what's interesting about this is that, like, at the time that Jeffrey Epstein is kind of working his way up this ladder, this sort of like elite financial ladder, Robert Maxwell, a failed UK politician who's also a media mogul and kind of like at the time, the rival to Rupert Murdoch, he is kind of doing a similar thing in a similar way. He's been accused of being like a triple agent, a quadruple agent as well. The Daily Mail in 2026, who I know Daily Mail, they're bad. I get, but at the same time, the Daily Mail is a conservative tabloid, and they do serve a function sometimes in the greater information ecosystem.

So sometimes, especially when it comes to taking down other rich people that a rich person has asked them to take down. So sometimes it is useful to read the Daily Mail. So they write in 2026, security sources say Robert Maxwell was a Russian asset, from the 1970s when he worked to extradite Soviet Jews to Israel with the involvement of Israeli intelligence service Mossad. In return, they say Maxwell laundered Russian money into the West with the help of Epstein. They think the financier was introduced to Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, the New York financier. They think the financier was introduced to Maxwell and the KGB by an

oil tycoon also in the pay of Russian intelligence. Probes into Robert Maxwell's business dealings have uncovered links not only to the KGB Mossad, but also. also MI6. And can I ask possibly a silly question? But I think it might be useful here. Marcus, how would you define like a spy in like post-Cold War or Cold War era? Like,

because I think people kind of don't understand like what these intelligence agencies are really doing a lot of the time. Because like they're largely just like organized crime networks that are trying to raise money for stuff they can't put on the books, right? Yeah. I mean, there is, I mean, we do know that, you know, the government was involved with flooding the inner cities with crack and cocaine in order to fund black ops down in the global south. Like, we, we know that that should happen. You know, we, we know that these people, I mean, if you want to ask me, like, what, what is a spy?

I mean, it's, I would say my definition would be a person who take. orders that he's not allowed to tell his spouse about. You know, that they're not, like, they're not supposed to talk about it. You know, like they, not necessarily things that they are not proud of, but it's just things that would gum up the works if they got out. You know, it's things that were not really supposed to be doing, you know, otherwise, you know, they'd be in the fucking recruitment ads. Yeah, I was having drinks with a friend talking about Jeffrey Epstein as you do now in 2026. a very common occurrence. And he was telling me that, like,

he actually had written a thesis in college on the role of espionage in the nuclear age as a form of data transfer to prevent nuclear apocalypse. And he was saying that, like, a lot of people sort of tend to think of spies as these, you know,

they're sitting on a park bench and they're passing, you know, information around, and they're, like, breaking down doors and running drug friends or whatever. And it's like, they are doing that. But largely, like, these intelligence communities are effectively,

they know that they're being spied on by each other. And oftentimes they're sort of in the same sort of dark, murky gray areas as the other ones. And I find it a fairly convincing argument that Epstein learns of this world through Robert Maxwell, learns sort of the fact that you can easily play these agencies off of each other because they're all kind of aware of each other to a degree and can't really say anything or do anything. And so, yeah, I put that here just because I'm,

I think we tend to think of these sides as being very defined. And it's like nothing is defined in this world on purpose. Absolutely. No, I think with a spy, a spy, you know, I think the phrase that a spy probably comes back to again and again is it's a means to it. Yes, everything is a means to an end. You know, like with even like MK Ultra, there were guys that, you know, even though they did destroy countless minds, you know, there were guys that defended it. You know, and like you say, like, well, we thought that the Russians were working. on mind control technology using LSD.

So we had to do it too. You know, and they don't apologize for it at all. Like they still believe that it was a means to an end just in case. Yeah, that's right. And it's what makes someone a good candidate for espionage. That is, unless it bites them in the ass, which it did for Robert Maxwell and maybe for Epstein too. But in 1991, Maxwell was discovered dead in the Atlantic Ocean

after he, quote unquote, fell overboard from his yacht. Huh. So happens a lot. Who among us? Who among us hasn't tried to play F. Who among us hasn't tried to extort MI6, the KGB and Mossad simultaneously, and then suddenly fallen off their yacht? And then who among us hasn't had a daughter who then immediately becomes the fixer

for the world's most prolific pedophile? Very common story for anyone working in the media. The American Dream. It's how I'm hoping to die. Well, I was going to say the Robert, the Robert Maxwell of the future will be a podcaster. That's, that's absolutely true.

In fact, we, in fact, we know this because it's getting ahead of ourselves. But at one point, Epstein tells Steve Bannon that he would have way less oversight if he created a media company instead of creating what he wanted to create, which was a nonprofit. But we'll get there. So we're going to get to the war. We're going to get to, yeah. I mean, to me, that is like, oh, okay.

So the Robert Maxwell of the 21st century is Steve Bannon. 2003 is when we get our first kind of weird connection to all of the events that have shaped our lives of the 21st century, which is a 2003 email in which Galeigh Maxwell is offered a spot on the 9-11 Shadow Commission. Our next point in the story comes in May 2006. Epstein receives his, oh, yeah. Real quick, what is the 9-11 Shadow Commission? because I've heard this mention, but I don't know exactly what it is. It sounds like a group of powerful wizards who wanted to do a second 9-11.

Yes, the 9-11 Shadow Commission has convened. Sounds like a Bencher Brothers fucking joke. I am also a little unsure what they're referring to because, like, that's not a thing that exists. There obviously was a 9-11 commission report. which was declassified eventually and turned into a very good comic book. I have to recommend that. I don't know what a shadow commission on 9-11 would mean, especially because we don't really use that term in the U.S.

I don't know if like the Epstein network was like wanting to run their own 9-11 commission, but like I can't find any real hard details on like what that is. Yeah. We don't know if it was it was a government appointed. Is it, you know, was. Marcus, I'm sure it's innocuous. I don't think that there's any more questions that need to be asked there.

I think that, like, as we've been told, there's nothing to see here, and we're all just making too big of a deal of what's in these emails. And so, like, you know, whatever. Look, all I know, somebody emailed Clay Maxwell in 2003 and asked her to be on a different 9-11

commission than the one we're aware of. All right. That's not weird at all, actually. That's totally a normal thing. And fine. So we then get to the next important point in our story, May 2006, Epstein receives his first criminal charge related to child trafficking in Palm Beach. After the investigation is kicked up to the FBI, Epstein takes a plea deal.

This is important because he takes out a lot of his money to pay for his court case. And he takes it from Bear Stearns, which then causes the great financial recession. Yep. Marcus, wasn't there something about DuPont starting the Great Depression, too, for the A to B? Yeah. The DuPonts, well, the DuPonts were one of the many families, but they were one of the main families that were involved in stock manipulation in the 1920s that led to the Great Depression because the DuPonts would manipulate stocks in order to make the stock for a certain company go down to near zero so they could pick it up for pennies on the dollar. And that, of course, you know, that manipulation eventually led to the Great Depression. And, you know, FDR tried to prevent that from happening again with the Glass-Steagall Act,

which was a great piece of legislation that we had in place until 1999 when Bill Clinton repealed it. And, of course, the Glass-Steagall Act and the Glass-Steagall Act not being a part of legislation anymore, also greatly contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. So what you're saying is a known member of the EPSY network repealed the one thing stopping the global elites from crashing the financial markets again. I'm saying that with 100% historical accuracy. Yes. So let's like here, every time something like this happens, let's not ask any questions about what that could mean. And let's just move on.

Let's just move on. So, yeah, Epstein goes to jail. He gets probation and ignores that entirely and gets hit with dozens of lawsuits. Most of them anonymizes Jane Do's. And what was interesting about this court case is that there's a bunch of evidence from it that is included in the most recent DOJ drop. And you can see it. They are basically like scanner copies of CD-ROMs that say MySpace on them. Jesus.

Basically, I think it is fairly safe to say that like, I mean, Epstein wasn't the only pedophile in MySpace. By the end, I imagine it was all of them. It's like the dead internet theory, except it's all pedophiles. It's just a, MySpace is just a bunch of pedophiles talking to each other. It's all pedophiles all the way down. What is really interesting, and this is a lead that I cannot figure out an answer to. And so once again, I'm just going to drop it here and like let it sit.

In 2018, it was revealed that all data that was on MySpace was erased by accident in a data transfer to their new owner. And so, yeah, we'll never know what was on there, other than what the FBI already has. My God. Anyways, if you turn this into a drinking game of every time you shouldn't ask a question, you will be dead by the end of this episode. Don't ask questions. Don't ask questions.

Right. So anyways, he comes out of jail, 2008-1909. He's connected in the finance world, the science, Ivy League world, and by all accounts, connected to various foreign governments. But now he's going to turn his attention to the internet. This is really where he starts to become like what you would call like online in a real way, where he is very focused on making sure that Google and Wikipedia do not list him as a sex offender. Yeah, a lot of emails are about that.

Like that's the incredible thing about Jeffrey. He understood the internet before any of us did. Like he understood how it worked. Do you think that? Do you think that? I think so. I think he understood the power of the internet. In as much as it gave him, as much as Jeffrey Epstein understood anything, like, how does this benefit me? How can I use this to further my interests, you know, which his interests were wealth and pedophilia? And he and how to also cover that out.

Like he saw that it was a liability, but he also saw that it was a strength at the same time. Yeah, we should say here that, like, Jeffrey Epstein was a really dumb guy. Sure. Couldn't really write. I found a video in the files of him being shown how to right click and save a file. He had us a whole side quest. Ryan, you can't judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree. You're right, man.

You're right. What was interesting, though, is, like, in this period of time, he gets asked about Silicon Valley. And he says, like, that's not my world. I don't know anything about it, which I think is important because it does show that, like, like all pedophiles, like he is a chameleon. He's like sort of learning on the, you know, as he goes. But yeah, in, in 2010, he's having a guy hack Wikipedia. And there's actually like extensive editor drama pages about him trying to get removed from the sex offender list.

Yeah. Uh, on Wikipedia. And he's also paying for SEO scrubbing services. So he like wants his name removed from Google. I think you're right that he like understood the internet. But I think he understood it like in a very instinctual. way. Once again, we're only seeing the tip of the tip of the iceberg. But yeah, he starts to care about it when it starts to impact his ability to be a pedophile. And continue to be a sex,

predator. So he's also talking to some other people who would become very important in the history of the internet. And we're going to get to that right after a word from our sponsors, Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft. Hi, it's me, Grant, from the show you're listening to. Thank you for listening. If you're watching this, you're like, what's wrong with Grant's face? And if you're listening to this, something's wrong with my face. My lip looks weird. I'll tell you how. I was at BJJ and I was just dominating my friend. Deciding how I was going to finish him and I decided on a knee on belly, head and arm choke. But, you know, a lot of times in BJJ, you're just sparring against your friend. So it's like

not that serious. It should not be that serious. And I was like, this is a perfect opportunity to tell my friend about Mitt Mobile while I have him immobilized. So I said, stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at $15 a month. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and techs, deliver on the nation's largest 5G network, bring your own phone and number, activate with ESIM and minutes, and start saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassle.

Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless services for MintMobile for $15 bucks a month. And he struggled out. That sounds awesome. And then he flipped me because I got too excited talking about Mint Mobile and I wanted to use my arms so he was able to escape. And then on the tussle and elbow hit me in the mouth and here we are. But as I was getting patched up, he said, but Grant, where can I find out more about this Mint Mobile? And I said, if you like money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash courier. That's mintmobile.com. slash courier. Up from payments of $45 for three months, five gigabyte plans required equivalent to $15 a month, new customers offer for first three months only, then full price plans,

options available, taxes and fees, extra. See Mittmobile for details. All right, we're back. Let's talk about Jeffrey Epstein's use of World of Warcraft. Uh, right. God damn it. So, uh, yeah, so Jeffrey Epstein in 2010 makes an account on World Warcraft. He's also in this period of time talking to Bobby Codick, the CEO of Activision, about in-game purchases. And he seems to be very interested in sort of like in-game currency. I've also read a theory that he was probably using video games to talk to people without being monitored. Sure.

Because back in those days, there was no real, you know. Yeah, don't people use Roblox today, like kind of for the same purpose? Yes. Yes. Yes. That is actually true. Yeah, absolutely true. Are you familiar, though, with, like, Steve Bannon's early job as a World Warcraft gold farmer?

I was aware of his failed screenplay, like screenwriting career. Isn't there, like, a Steve Bannon, like, Seinfeld spec script out there somewhere? I thought he was attached to Seinfeld actually, though. I thought he was an actual producer of Seinfeld. I mean, he might be because it's probably pretty likely that Derry Seinfeld was heavily involved with Epstein. Hey, let's just not ask any questions about that and move on. Yeah, let's not ask, but what is it, eliminate is? Yeah.

Don't ask Google about sign fund and prom. That's right. Anyways, yeah, so Steve Bannon, Renaissance Man, actual human cancer. He worked at a job, he worked at a company called Internet Gaming Entertainment. He took over from a man named Brock Pierce, who used to be a child star. He was in the movie Mighty Ducks. Brock Pierce is a close correspondent with Jeffrey Epstein. And he ran IGE before Bannon.

And this company IG was basically experimenting with how do you convert real money into Warcraft Gold and then Warcraft Gold back into real money? Were they looking at this in a like a money laundering sense or are they just looking at this is like how do we make money on this? Unclear. It's the whole, Marcus, what if both? Yeah. I'm sorry, I can't help but ask questions. It's just it's my nature. I always ask questions.

What if both were the same? I sort of see this as like basically people trying to figure out, they're trying to solve the same problem that eventually gets solved by cryptocurrency, which is how do you send large sums of money around the world without anybody noticing? And this will be kind of the main project of Jeffrey Epstein's last decade of his life is trying to create a world where he can. just send and receive money without anybody noticing. In 2011, Boris Nicolik, a venture capitalist, a former advisor to Bill Gates,

sends Epstein the Wikipedia page for Christopher Poole, the founder of Fortunes, tells him that they should meet. They do meet, and Poole launches poll, politically incorrect, the message board that would be home to Gamergate in the far right the next day, Mute or Christopher Poole, has denied that Epstein had anything to do with it and said he regrets ever meeting with him. and we have friends in common and I've kind of asked them like, what's the reading on it? And they think that he, that moot was so stone that he has actually no idea what happened.

But it is weird timing. Okay. All right. Because this for me was sort of the skeleton key of Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and just the history of the 21st century, where we're at, like how we got here. him asking Christopher Poole to bring Paul back online was that showed me like, okay, this guy understands. He knows, like he has, there's a far-reaching plan here. He sees into the future in a way that none of the rest of us can see. Because who would have thought?

I mean, I don't know if you guys were, were y'all on 4chan much like in the mid to late 2000s? Every day. Yeah. You don't need to ask, Ryan, if he was on 4chan. Yeah, I mean, you. I was, I was also on, I was on 4chan a ton. Like, it's like, I remember, yeah, when I first heard that, you know, Christopher Poole is involved with Epstein, the first thing thought that I had was BRB soup.

It's like, how do we go from BRB soup to this? I can add cheeseburger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, all of that shit. And I know the old text. But you'd also remember when 4chan changed, you know, like that, what they said at the time, it's like, don't expect to act like an idiot and be surprised when it. it show up.

Right. But there was this definite sea change, this huge sea change. And of course, that's where GamerGay came from, it's where QAnon came from, all of that shit. And it was wild to see in real time, very wild. Because even like last podcast, some of our very first, like, fans came from the export. Oh, sure.

I was a big fan of the export. Yeah. I'm talking like first, like 20, 30 episodes, you know, we're there. Like some of our first fans were there. And eventually they, Fortchad like totally turned on us completely. Like we didn't change.

Yeah, I'll say what we do now and I'll say what we don't know and I'll say what I think. I'm trying to be responsible about this and not say that I think Jeffrey Epstein did 9-11. But throughout today's episode. What we do know is that Epstein continued to use 4chan. There's a email from 2017 where he emails his girlfriend a link to a 4chan post that contains It's Five Night at Freddy's Porn. We know that he's like aware of the site. We also know that he seemed to think that Mute, Christopher Poole, was a hacker.

That's how he's introduced to him. And I think people, I had forgotten this, that like there's that whole meme of like the hacker known as 4chan. Yeah. Forchan was home base for a lot of Occupy stuff. It was home base for anonymous. It was home base for the anti-Scientology protests. it was a place where you could conceivably go and find a hacker. And Epstein was at this point in his life very interested in cyber extortion, cyber crime hacking.

He becomes increasingly interested in zero-day exploits, which by the way, there's documentary Zero Day. You can find out on Apple TV. I also watch that for this. And it's pretty good. It's all about how the NSA and Mossad accidentally released the Stuxnet virus. But anyways, which Jeffrey Epstein was very interested in. But once again, we're not going to ask any questions about that. Oh, and then the last thing we do know is that both Steve Bannon and Milo unopolis

have done interviews over the years talking about how their big publishing trick for Breitbart was to repackage 4chan chatter into articles that could then be shared on Facebook during peak Facebook article era. So they could get lots and lots of views writing up like this 4chan user says that his girlfriend is trading sexual favors for positive video game reviews, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. It makes sense because 4chan were the master trolls of the internet. That's what they, that's what 4chan was. Like it was, that's where trolling was, you know, basically created. And they were the best. So of course, if you repackage that and feed it into grandma,

grandma's going to get mad. Grandma's going to share it. She doesn't know that it just came from some angry fucker that's just doing it for the lulls. I'm so glad we finally got to answer the question of what would happen to society if everyone's grandmother read Fortunes. It's awesome that we live in this world now. Yeah, so here's where I'll say like what I think, which is I don't think that Epstein probably had much to do with the architecture of Fiorchan. And I sort of tend to think that Gamergate would have happened as it happened even with out Steve Bannon and Breitbart. Sure.

But what I will say is that these men were very interested in weaponizing the internet, mobilizing internet users, figuring out how to make money, how to hijack conversation and discourse, and they will continue to experiment with this throughout the 2010s. And this is how Jeffrey Epstein starts to invade Silicon Valley. in 2012 Epstein asks British investor Ian Osborne to set up a meeting between him Peter Thiel and a quote unquote

Zuckerberg which I think we can we can all agree who that might be I don't know I'm not asking questions Just not going to ask questions although there is I mean actually we can say this because Epstein emailed himself a photo from a dinner and he took like an old man

like side of the table like me and all my friends photo like the way your dad would FaceTime you from a restaurant And it's Teal, Mark Zuckerberg, Joy Edo from the MIT Media Lab, Elon Musk. It's like all the guys. So we have photo evidence that they all want to dinner. And by the way, just to reiterate, Jeffrey Epstein, known pedophile at this point. Yeah. Convicted.

Has been arrested, been convicted pedophile at this point. So he starts to like worm his way around Silicon Valley. And then by 2013, we get a meeting between him and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that I think is sort of the smoking gun for the entire Epstein operation. Have you heard this? Do you know what I'm talking about? I have not. It's why I have been describing Epstein's deal as elder abuse or a type of elder abuse. It's a conversation where Epstein basically tells Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel,

that he's got to check out this Peter Thiel guy who acts crazy and talks like a maniac, but he's got this new company called Palantir. And then you hear Barak go, Palantir. And he's like, Palantir. It's the hot new thing. And he goes, I can put you on the board. You'll make a million dollars a year and you won't have to do anything. I can set up a meeting.

And then Barak asks like, oh, is it like this financial firm or this old financial firm? And then Epstein says, no, it's the new version. And I think that is like a very, very, you know. very useful glimpse into what he's doing, which is going to old billionaires and old heads of state that he has had some kind of, you know, weird party lifestyle with and being like, I'll sell you on a hot new tip. Yeah. I got a hot new tip for you. Well, it's the finance world. I mean, that's just what it is like at the end of the day, he's still a finance guy. Like that's, you know, he still has his connections to, you know, less waxner, you know, out in good old Columbus,

Ohio, you know. Yeah, we forgot. We didn't even mention the fact that Jeffrey Epstein at one point move the ownership of the limited two to his holding company and was the owner of the limited two for a large chunk of the 2000s. Dear God. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, where was that going to go in this outline? You know, just another one of those things to bring up. He is, he's acting like any finance bro on the street.

You know, he's got a hot tip and it all serves his interest. That's what he wants. And his address book is, it's sort of this like perpetual motion machine. because it's like as he connects the worlds of academia and finance and politics together, he's almost like the server that all the traffic is moving through. Yeah. Right? He's the node in the network.

And it's like that joke where it's like, I thought Elon Musk was a genius until he like describes what I do. And I realize that he's an idiot. You know, it's like the engineer that's like when he talks about EVs, I thought he was a genius because I don't know anything about EVs. Yeah. And a lot of these emails, EFSIene is a profoundly stupid person. saying nonsense. Yeah. Like absolute nonsense.

He has a whole misadventure where he tries to genetically engineer kosher pigs. Like he was like, we could make pigs without hooves so that we could have kosher bacon. Like just crazy bullshit, right? But you got to figure if he's talking to the guy at MIT, he can then turn to the guy, apparently in charge of Israel and say, this is what the guy at MIT is saying. Yeah. And the guy who's in charge of the country isn't going to know. that Epstein has no idea what he's talking about. They'll just know, well, he goes to dinner with him all the time.

He must know. Like, you can launder expertise really effectively that way, I think. I don't know. There really is so much power in being the guy. He's the guy. He's my guy. You know, I got a guy for that. You know, like, and everyone's got a guy for.

And of course, if you're wealthy, like, wealthy people got a guy for everything. You know, and for so many people like Jeff Rebstein was their guy. And there's enormous power in that. Because anything you want about Jeffrey Epstein, confident, very confident man. Very, very confident, yeah. And that, I think, is where a lot of his power really lay, was how confident he was in everything he did. You could say he was mugging and and or a maxing if you want. So he's making all these connections with Silicon Valley at the time.

He's, you know, having dinner with the heads of every major. social company, also medical researcher and author, Peter Attia, who just got kicked out of CBS News. He's also, like, very involved with the core software that creates, like, that runs Bitcoin. He's not sure if he actually likes Bitcoin, but he's talking about it along with everybody else who's obsessed with it in Silicon Valley at the time. But he is kind of like working his way through the ideology of Silicon Valley in 2014. There's an email where a redacted correspondent suggests that he reads the work of the far-right Russian philosopher Alexander Dugan.

Are you familiar with him? No. What do you mean? The Dark Enlightenment? Like, what I actually don't have any idea what the fuck the dark enlightenment is. I haven't heard of this. Curtis Jarvin, he's more of a basement troll than he is a philosopher. But he starts blogging about this.

Steve Bannon is talking about this idea of replacing the machinery of democracy. of democracy with the literal machinery of cryptocurrency and building a network state of modern feudalism. Got it. And this idea that you could hollow out democracy and replace it with a new form of authoritarianism. Okay.

Yeah. And so Epstein starts to dabble. So it's just using the future to take us back to the past? Yeah. Basically, what if no one had any rights and we were all debt slaves to some sort of like crypto billionaire, right?

Sure. That's a fun... Yeah, imagine that. Imagine that. Imagine we all had thousands of dollars of debt and we were stuck under the thumb of an insane authoritarian. So in 2015, F-Sinin starts funding a French language white nationalist YouTube channel. He offers to help Peter Thiel with his lawsuit against Gawker. He becomes very revved up about Brexit.

He emails Peter Thiel in 2016, the summer of 2016, Brexit, just the beginning, return to tribalism, counter to globalism, amazing new alliances. You and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high. And as I said in your office, finding things on their way to collapse, so it's much easier than finding the next bargain, like the DuPont family, as you were saying earlier. That's what this was. Yeah. To see it so naked and to see it said so bluntly that we know that these wealthy people, because you see with DuPonts and, you know, in other families, like they weren't the only one of course but you know we could see the consequences of their actions we can see what happened because of the decisions they made but with the epstein files i think what

is really getting to us you know when you when you just look at this stuff like when you look at the stuff like this is the the thing that has an effect on the lives of every single person listening right now and to hear it you know and it's not a TV show it's not a movie like to read the actual correspondence of these people that you know obviously have so much control over our lives to see them planning collapse to see them yearning yeah for collapse you know not just planning for it but trying to make it happen and truly not caring what happens to the rest of us or what happens to anybody else, you know, and in fact, kind of enjoying it, laughing about it. To see it laid out so nakedly, that's one of the things that was so disturbing to me. You don't truly believe it that

that's the way it happened. There's always something in the back of your head, it's like, well, maybe I'm not getting the whole story. Maybe I don't, you know, maybe, you know, I'm confusing correlation of causation. But to see it like, no, it's, it's there. It's planned. They write emails about it and then say, yes, and then say, ha ha. It's unclear exactly like what, how involved they are. Like, are they doing this or are they reacting to it the, the, the rest of us would? But as far as we can tell, there wasn't really a master plan. It's more like they're just musing about various ways to shut down democracy, pressure

the media, attack people financially or even pressure them, you know, through PR and publicity. They're asking each other things like, you know, quote, how do we get rid of the poor, which is something that Epstein sent to Bill Gates in an email at one point. And they're just nudging us towards geopolitical chaos. And we can see this sort of lack of organization and how they respond to Donald Trump becoming president the first time. I mean, I sort of think of it as like, the dumbest guy in your crew is now president. So imagine it. if Tony Soprano found out the Polly Walnuts became president.

On one hand, you'd be like, that's awesome, Polly Walnuts is president, and then you'd sit with it for a second, you'd be like, oh, fuck, Polly Walnuts is president. Yeah, yeah. And that's kind of my read on Epstein's initial reaction, based on the emails I've seen.

What actually sort of radicalizes or revs up Epstein's political project is something else that happens in 2017. which we're going to talk about right after a word from our sponsor's Activision. They definitely didn't get convinced by Jeffrey Epstein to add loop boxes to call of duty. If you had to guess of all the social movements that have happened,

all of the different things, the political events that have happened over the last 30 years, what do you think was the one that finally broke the camel's back with Jeffrey Epstein and sort of made him come out of the shadows to start messing with politics around the world. I'm guessing there was a hashtag involved. I'm guessing it's a hashtag, me too, is what Rod Jeffrey Epstein out in the open. Yes, it was hashtag me too.

You can find emails about this, though, in the archive by searching Times Up, which is the Hollywood adjacent spinoff of Me Too. We have also since learned that Jeffrey Epstein had a close sort of relationship with one of the heads of Times Up because he was extremely interested in co-opting that movement. Did the Head of Times Up Google Jeffrey Epstein at all? Let's name and shame, shall we?

Sure. I'm going to read this verbatim from page 6.com so that I don't have to worry about the legality of it. Founding member of Times Up movement advised Jeffrey Epstein two years before launching the anti-sexual harassment organization. and that founding member was Michelle Kidd. Michelle Kidd was a founding member of Times Up and advised and exchanged emails with Epstein and a whole bunch of other crisis PR people.

He had a team of crisis PR people that he would like to use for certain things. What really kind of changes the way he operates is the New York Times 2017 investigation into Harvey Weinstein. What's interesting is the day after that is published. Michael Wolfe connects Jeffrey Epstein to Steve Bannon by sending him a wired article about Steve Bannon's involvement with World of Warcraft gold farming. Like basically saying like, remember this?

Which I think is incredible. One, okay, there's a couple, incredible things about this. One, it means that up until this point, Jeffrey Epstein, like, did not know who Steve Bannon was. Up until 2017, didn't know who Steve Bannon was. didn't know. Further evidence for the pile that reads

Jeffrey Epstein is a big fucking idiot. And then also, the fact that he had to remind him with Warcraft. Remember this guy I did the stupid fucking thing that we made fun of for a while? Yeah, him. They were on such parallel tracks, too, the entire time. Yeah.

Two ships in the night, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's really a P.D.D.D.E. and L. degenrous situation. Once the two of them connects, you know. That's what everyone's saying. That's what everyone's saying. What's the two of them start cooking?

They're unstoppable. Ellen, come on the show. Ellen, you're invited anytime you want. Yeah. We'll do a dance. Ellen, you can come put me in a cage anytime you want. Wow. Okay.

So, right. Me Too erupts and Epstein is now like locked. into shutting this down and he's basically hitting every lever he has access to. And then he starts a very long text message chain that goes multiple years with Steve Bannon. And the only way I can describe it are two dumb bitches saying exactly to each other for four years straight. I mean, there is like no real evidence that any of, that either of them accomplished what they thought they were accomplishing. Sure. But at the same time, like you said earlier, what is important is the staggering amount of evidence that these people are talking about us the way we fear they might.

Yes, very much. And they do not care about us. They do not care about democracy. What it seems like they were doing in the simplest terms was building a far right coalition of different politicians across the U.S., Europe and South America with the explicit purpose of shutting down cryptocurrency regulation so that they could use cryptocurrency to fund a culture war to kill Me Too. Yeah. Well, I mean, and it makes a total sense that Epstein, that Me Too would be, you know, something that scares the shit out of Epstein because, you know, 2017 Donald Trump just became president. Obviously has many, many, many, many, many, many ties to Donald Trump. And he, he sees where that ladder is heading, right? He sees that if this gets out of control, that it's going to take down Trump. And if it takes down Trump, it's definitely going to take down Epstein.

It's the whole thing's going to come out. Right, right. And Bannon has a very useful way of thinking about this, which comes from this quote. This is sort of the general philosophy of everyone that they work with. The real opposition is the media, Bannon says, in 2018. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit. Which is fascinating also because it means that Epstein is beginning to change tactics. in the early 2010s, he's much more focused on obscuring himself via deletion. And so I am not really willing to go out on the ledge and say that Epstein created QAnon

or Epstein created PizzaGate or people in the Epstein network created PizzaGate or Q&on. But I will say there is an interesting sort of connection there between Epstein meeting up with Bannon and Bannon's philosophy of flooding the zone with shit, being applied to a conspiracy theory involving a global network of pedophiles. Yeah. If Epstein wasn't involved with the creation, he was certainly an inspiration. I think what it does show is that they knew. Like Bannon knew.

He knew what was going on. He knew what was happening. He didn't care. Like, Stephen Bannon, Steve Bannon is one of the most cynical human beings to ever exist. His cynicism is off the charge. I mean, all these people. cynicism is off the charts. I mean, of course, like seeing these people, like this is a new thing to see like these people talking so openly about what they think of us. But you know, you've been in media for a long time. I'm sure in your time you've come across one or two people who are regulars on Fox News and you talk to them, they don't believe what they're saying. Like you know they don't believe what they're saying. Oh, I'm curious conversations with them where they say like, no, of course I don't believe what I'm saying. It's my job. And like they treat us K-Fa.

you know well this is how gray and i talk about our liberal audience yeah like we're secretly conservative and i'm just like oh like the fucking dogs ate from the slot bowl again like eat up pigies as uh as somebody left the comment on youtube that really nailed it we're just two soy boys talking to some woman about something and that's how we approach every episode that's right we are soy boys for pay and yes in seriousness uh i i i would say that there are there are true believers but they are typically not seen at the highest echelons. No, they don't have their own media companies. They don't have one of the most popular podcasts in existence like Steve Bannon does.

Some do. But I would say it's sort of like that graph of like the guy freaking out, you know, the simple caveman, the guy freaking out and then like the dark magician. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So it's like on one side, it's like the guy, the simple caveman is like, I care about conservative values. I'm right wing. Yeah. Or I'm far right or whatever.

And the guy freaking out is like, actually, this is a way that we can mobilize like working class people to vote against their own interests. And then it's like the ultra wealthier on the other side just being like, I'm a far right reactionary. Yeah. Like it's just like one of those. So Epstein writes during Bannon's 2018 tour around Europe, whole South America, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, don't know why they are so dirty given the fact that there are so many maids, soon to be the best investment of a lifetime. and he writes this as the Argentine economy is collapsing. Far-right libertarian Harvey A. Millet, the guy looks like the wolfman who dresses up like an anime cosplayer.

He eventually gets elected president of Argentina with the full backing of Trump and the American conservatives five years later. And then Epstein finishes the same text writing, Venezuela, more oil reserves than Saudi. They were also, we, uh, uh, Jarre Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Brazil, uh, said that he never spoke to Steve Bannon. It would have been illegal in Brazil, actually, if he had. We now know from these text messages that they were in close communication. Sure. With both Epstein, with both Bannon and possibly also Epstein. And then most frighteningly of all, in March 2019, Epstein texts Bannon now at the pyramid,

referring to the Louvre Pyramid with the entire government, what are your plans? That's the Macron government, by the way. Jesus. They do have the extensive texts talking about their connections to Marine Le Pen in France. to Nigel Farage in the UK, to the AFD in Germany, to Mateo Salvini and the Liga, to Victor Orban in Hungary. These guys, at the very least, knew all of these people. And they were willing to compromise democracy to help them get elected.

In July 2018, Epstein tells Bannon that he was wrestling with how to get a team of hackers for Bannon and wanted to use a zero-day exploit. There it is again, to target crypto wallets and voting booths. So all of this kind of craziness comes to an end in July 2019 when Epstein is hit with federal charges of sex trafficking and is arrested again. But right before that, we've talked so much. I can't even keep track of what we've said. Hold on. Epstein did 9-11.

Epstein did the Great Financial Crisis. Epstein only limited to. Oh, there's a Pokemon go stop on Little St. James Islands. Right. Right, Epstein advised Steve Bannon to not create a nonprofit for his like far right political adventures, but to instead create a media company. Yeah, which. Because they'd have far less scrutiny. What's really interesting to note here is for all of their geopolitical dealing, Epstein was eventually arrested and died in prison.

And that is largely thanks to public outrage, public outrage that these guys could. not suppress. And then if you believe the liberal media, Epstein is found dead on August 10th, 2019. And of course, the final punchline to all of this, who tells the world about Epstein's death first? Where do people read about that first, Marcus? Forchan. That's right, baby. It all comes back. And so I think we should end now immediately and not ask any questions about what that means for the world, for democracy. And by the way, I didn't go over every single thing that we could have put here because it gets really confusing and it's really complicated.

But there is evidence that Epstein had possibly connections to Jamal Khashoggi's murder. He's talking to people in Qatar. He's talking to people in Saudi Arabia. he's a real bon vivant of the horrors of the 21st century. I even went down a rabbit hole where it seemed like maybe there was some connection between him and the Las Vegas shooting. Yeah, I read that. You wrote that he owned property right across the street from Mandalay Bay or? He wanted to buy property right across the street from Mandalay Bay.

And like that one gets really thorny. And like the other thing is like there are a million sort of different side avenues that you're probably going to see on social media today for this episode. we've tried to only focus on what we can point to you directly. Oh, also, we didn't use case files from the, from the, from the, from the, the, the, the drop. Do you know about this? No, Marcus. So this is where a lot of the crazier stuff is surfacing on social media.

So the files released by the DOJ are a bunch of evidence, a bunch of emails, a bunch of text messages, different kinds of electronic records, bank statements. But then there's also FBI case reports that are basically just anyone who wanted to call in and tell the FBI anything about Epstein was recorded. Sure. And that's where you're getting a lot of the stuff that's like, Epstein was the personal assistant of Putin and is now living in Tel Aviv and stuff. We can say, though, that, like, he did email someone saying that he wanted to create

a financial revolution that would help Russia. That is true. Sure. But, but, yeah, we've tried to keep today just as focused best we can on what we can look at and point to, uh, and not ask any questions about it. I'd love for you to just connect the dots for people. Why would Epstein, Silicon Valley, and Steve Bannon all be real interested in crypto? How does that serve all of their missions?

And why would the proliferation of Fortune everywhere serve all of their interests? because I think that like the thing I that I've been thinking about this is that like as far as we know so far there isn't a layer of doom it's the banality of mutual mutual self-interest

and I'd love for you to put those strings to one another I mean I don't know as much about crypto as I probably should you know I understand it on a very on a very surface level but you know what from what I understand

And, you know, it does just allow you to hide, you know, where a source of money is coming from. If you don't want any record of your transaction, it's perfect for it, you know. And these people work under, you know, a system where they're doing a lot of illegal shit that is expensive. It's extraordinarily expensive to run a pedophile rank grant. So expensive. Yeah, can I see your shadow tax returns about that, Marcus? I mean, they need to pay for this stuff somehow. You know, so crypto being a part of it.

And in crypto, it's almost essential to, you know, the gross of, you know, the sort of world that they're trying to build. Because they are trying to build a world. They're trying to build a world without accountability. They already live in a world that's mostly free from consequence. They started to feel a couple of consequences. Jeffrey Epstein felt a couple here and there, but for the most part, it just doesn't happen for them. As far as, you know, 4chan being a part of it,

the proliferation of, I guess, you would call like the 4chan vibe, the 4chan style. It's chaos. That's what 4chan was. It was just chaos. That was the whole point of it, is that chaos is that chaos is fun. And if you make the entire, world chaos. If you make everything chaos, as Benin said, flooding the zone with shit, nobody can

agree on anything. And if nobody can agree on anything, you know, nobody can investigate. Nobody can look into what it is that you're actually doing and what it is that you're actually up to. So I think these people work far better in a vacuum than they do in any sort of ordered world or in any sort of like order system. As far as like legal framework. goes. You know, like they work great in organizations because they're able to manipulate those organizations. But if you don't have the chaos, people notice that you're manipulating those organizations. And chaos just makes manipulation that much easier. We've talked about Bannon's infamous line about this strategy. But I should say that Epstein years before Bannon pretty much

said the same thing in a more evil way. Here, let me read it. In 2016, after the WikiLeaks dump, Epstein wrote, the question I have, is imagine Assange releases fake emails, their report to show really bad stuff, but that his team has crafted and they get out in the media. What a trick could be played. I guess the question, if we're allowed to ask questions, is are they behind the pedestrian emails?

Are they behind Pizza Gate? Are they the ones that put all of these, did they insert all these codes to muddy the waters? I mean, hell, I remember when Pizza Gate hit, you know, we, the last podcast, we've been covering this stuff for a long time. But like, we already, we kind of already knew the rumors that have been going on for so long about, you know, Satanism and the government, you know, which, of course, it's not Satanism. It's just, you know, another way to make things weird. They love ways to make it weird and make it feel more evil and make it feel like they're playing a game. They love the pageantry of everything.

But when they started hitting, I remember thinking there was something off about it. You know, the sort of the ways that people were interpreting it. And as PizzaGate turned into Q&ON, that's when I started to see like, oh, this is just every conspiracy mixed together. This is, you know, this is blood liable. This is shadow government. It's all of them. were all mixed together into one big soup, and it was just more chaos. Like, there was never really that much of a narrative to QAnon.

That was another reason why people ask, like, why haven't you ever done Q&ONs? Because it's a fucking mess. Like, there's no story to Q&ON. It's just, they're just making it up. You have to ask the question. Are they making it up as they go along, or were they getting little pieces of information along the way, you know, that we're muddling things up? you know, was Bannon flooding the zone with shit? I can't believe that that is a real question that we all really,

that we actually have to contend with. Oh, my God. I mean, this whole thing, I've been studying conspiracies for decades now. Like conspiracy theory was one of the things that, you know, last podcast kind of started with. And, you know, and we've covered a ton of them over the years. You know, like we, like, I even felt a little bashful because way back in the day, we, you know, had a couple of episodes called the Satanic.

government where you know we talked about like michael o kino being in the government and you know we talked about the franklin cover up you know which is really you know related to the johnny gush and you know and when qanon started you know really becoming popular i felt a little embarrassed about those episodes but i i felt a little embarrassed about your episodes i felt embarrassed about my own coverage about it to be honest yeah yeah no i felt embarrassed about last pot of the last one the left. I refuse to cover QAnon for a while. Yeah. I was I was actually like this is fucking stupid and it's not real and it doesn't matter for a while for probably too long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I also it was like it's just not it's just a you know a bunch of a bunch of a bunch every

conspiracy theory put together. It's all a mess. There's no narrative here. But the thing is like looking back now the Franklin cover up like I've kind of revisited it. I'm not embarrassed anymore. it seems like that there could be something to it. Like there could be something to, you know, these, you know, we now see like there are these rings. There are there, there are these things out there. Like, and we were fooled. Like the, you know, whatever plan that they had, you know, we really are getting into like, we're through the looking glass.

Yeah. It's crazy because you don't know what reality is anymore. Like you don't know what, what to believe, you know, and it's, And I have felt crazy about it. And it also, like, I saw my algorithm changing in real time on Instagram because I was starting to look at more Epstein posts. And I saw, and I can recognize this stuff because I've been studying it for so long. My algorithm, my feed started to turn into a conspiracy theorist feed.

And the type of shit that I was getting was like, oh, I recognize this. I know what this is. This is the real crazy shit. but everyone's being pushed in that direction. We're all being pushed into, you know, if you don't really, like, if you don't study it, if you don't know, like, if you don't know that Alex Jones stole this whole act from a guy named Bill Cooper, you know, way back in the day, you know, like if you don't know that and you don't know how Alex Jones evolved over the years, you can be taken in by this stuff, you know,

really fucking easily. Alex Jones is actually Bill Hicks, though. we all know that Bill Hicks faked his own death and became Alex Jones. Yeah, we all know. Yeah, we all know that. The frogs did it to him. I did want to stop you there for a second because we had a question from a listener and a Patreon member named Lisa. And she writes, at some point, Ryan, I would like to lay out what you think is the relationship between Q and on and the Epstein situation.

Like, is it a total coincidence or is Q&N a correct diagnosis inaccurately placed? was Epstein reverberating through the system in ways that set off people's alarms, but they didn't know why and Q was the result or was QN on a sort of way of talking about all this in public? Or is it just that every single thing Republicans do is ultimately misogyny and misogyny has its most pure form in the abuse of young girls. So it's more like parallel evolution. I would really like to hear a breakdown of Ryan's thinking about this. And yeah, my answer at least is yes. You got it. But I do think this connects to what we were talking about earlier, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Marcus, which is like, we have a, we have a guest come on sometimes, Katie Natopoulos, awful human being.

She has this theory that sometimes, like, the conscious, unconscious or whatever it is, kind of sees the future sometimes. and she got really fixated on like the appearance of things like shark attacks before a major disaster or the killer clowns which predate you know the Trump presidency like these weird moments that kind of tend to happen before and there's plenty of them I could go on and on and I do wonder if it's partly that but I also think that the fact that 4chan plays such a weird role in all of this points to at least sort of that people involved with the Epstein network, I will say had a vested interest in something like Q&N gaining popularity. Very much. That's probably as far as we can go without going off the deep end. If you think about Epstein meeting Bannon, and Bannon's core philosophy being,

I'm going to flood the zone with shit to make it impossible to know what's going on, and then suddenly a man who is completely and totally incapable of even having a Wikipedia article list his public conviction on it, suddenly not having any issue or any angry emails in his inbox about this thing called QAnon appearing, make me think that at the very least, Epstein was totally fine with it and had been convinced by that point that this was a good smoke screen for him. I think at the very least, somebody was feeding information to somebody. Because there does need to be a kernel of truth. Because if it is a smokescreen, there has to be a kernel of truth to it. because we looked at Q&on for so many years like,

this is fucking stupid. There's no way this is true. All these people are getting taken in. They're all being fooled. This is all just a way for politicians to keep doing what they've always done. You know, it's a useful idiot thing. Right. But in order for it to be an actual smokescreen, he did have to let some information out.

He did have to let some people know, like these are the things that we're doing. who knows how he did that, who knows how that was done. Like, I don't know if he was in direct contact with the guy. Like, I don't think he said, like, hi, I'm Jeffrey Epstein. Let me give the guy, you know, the guy behind Q and on some information. I don't think there was that. I think that he put the information out there and other people picked up on it. And there was, when people know shit isn't right, it comes out, hypernormalization, all that.

Like, you know, we're kind of in that right now where we're like, hell yeah. buddy yeah yeah yeah no hyper normalization like if you've never seen it it's fucking incredible but we're there right now in america like we were a hundred percent there everybody knows there's something wrong everyone knows there's something off but nobody can articulate it and not only can nobody articulate it it's hard to even talk about because there is no answer really um we're i mean there is an answer is tax the fucking wealthy that would be a pretty good start you know um but as far as like just the entire you know systemic problem that we've been dealing with for so many years like it's like that's the thing it's not like we've been dealing since the 90s we've been dealing with it since the

fucking you know the 1700s like we've been dealing with it since the fucking you know the french revolution like these things go back centuries and people like geoffrey epstein are the ones that want it to continue being the way that it's always been but the difference now in this moment in history that we've never had before. So we have the correspondence. We have the correspondence. We have the conversations. Right.

We can see it. We can see it. Yeah, we can see it. And it is readily available to anybody on earth. Well, almost anybody, depending on how much your government lets through the internet. But it's still, it is available to many, many people. Now is the question the fuck we're going to do about it. You know, that is the good question I keep asking on last podcast.

What are we going to do about it? What's the plan? It's not Gavin Newsom. What the fuck is it? No, it's Gavin Newsom. I'm pretty short. It's a good clapback. My theory is that we are like way, way closer to a deeply unpredictable and possibly

violent populist uprising than we think we are, a la Occupy Wall Street. Sure. Arab Spring. And it might not happen here. here, but the fact that Europe is still trudging along and dethroning princes and throwing heads of state in jail and all the rest of it. And the fact that the French government has now like revved up their investigation, the UK, Norway, I think it is very likely that this is a global powder keg ready to go off. And I would say that we should not think of it as being inherently liberal or

progressive because there are plenty of far-right reactionaries that are looking at these files as proof of a global Jewish pedophile conspiracy. I've seen it. For all the 4-chan users that say, holy shit, we got duped, there's double-triple the amount that are saying, oh, my God, everything we've said was real. Yeah. And we are at a very unpredictable moment. I think we are not far off from some kind of politician in America running on a pedophile

cabal platform that is indistinguishable from a QAnon candidate 10 years ago. Yeah. And everyone will look at them and say, well, they're real. I've been getting a lot of texts of people being like, so are the Q&N believers right. And I do think that there's a fundamental difference there where people get into conspiracies, not for answers, but because something is shitty in their life. And it is an escapist thing that they can believe. This explains why my life is not the way I wanted to.

And if this was different, my life would be different. Which is very different from a actual invested interest in getting to the bottom of whatever this cabal is. The people obsessed with getting to the bottom of Epstein, it's from a different place. Very much so. then like, I want to play Boomer, this is Boomer ARG. Yeah, because that's exactly what GUNOM was. Yeah. It was a way for people to make themselves the hero in the story.

Like, they could participate, they could follow the drops. They could, you know, feel like they were a character in a story. It made their lives far, far more interesting than they actually were. And that's a different motivation from. you know, I think a lot of people with Epstein say there's a systemic rot and we have to root it out at every turn, like every fucking turn. That wherever he reached his tentacles, it must be rooted out and it must be destroyed. Totally.

There might be some truth to QAnon, but that does not mean that the people who were into QAnon were ever right. That's a distinction. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree. with that. They, it's not that it's, they happen to boost the signal of something that, uh, had some truth to it. Um, but they were doing so for all the wrong reasons and they were doing it at the behest of the very people that they were trying to capture, right? It was, they were helping the people

that they were trying to capture. Like they were, like they were, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like they, they, they, they, they got fooled. They, they, they, they, they got, they, they, they got, tricked. And that's the thing is if we got to we just have to admit when we got tricked. You know, we have to admit. It's like, okay, yeah, I was wrong. Like, I got, I got tricked. Like, there's, we're humans.

Humans get tricked all the time. You know, it just happens. We just have to fucking admit it. Yeah, just because I'm on my third AI girlfriend and, but I, but I think this one's real, you know, and it's, you know, like, like, there's nothing to blame.

I, I'm excited to see what happens. Marcus, I want to thank you for coming on today's show. This was extremely harrowing, and I feel tired and sad. So great. I had a great time. Yeah, I had a great time. Thanks for having me on.

How is he the only one who does this where we feel worse at the end? He's like a power bottom. Yeah, every time you've come on the show, I've felt worse. Yeah, you have you have. You have mocked an ORA Max are at show and throwing it back at me. If you want to follow you on. It's usually your guests that leave feeling worse. Yeah.

That's true. That's the point of the show. If you want to follow you online, where can they do that? You can listen to the last podcast on the left. Anywhere you get your podcast, we're also available on Netflix now. You can watch us on Netflix. You got an account. You can follow me on Instagram at Marcus Parks.

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