Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - It Seems Unfair To Call This a Cabal | Quick Question Ep. 308

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Interesting day to debut a mustache as the guys dig in to the newly released Epstein emails, but first Daniel takes us through the big midpoint ultrasound and the creeping realization that doctors are still just tired guys with bad phrasing and weekend plans. Then Soren takes the darkest possible left turn into Jeffrey Epstein’s newly released emails, dissecting his unhinged notes-to-self, what they reveal about power, and why real-life monsters are so much dumber and more boring than any movie villain you’ve ever seen.-Thanks to DripDrop for sponsoring this episode. Get 20% off your first order: dripdrop.com and use promo code qq.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts on what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remember.

What's it out? Word it all. Oh, forget it. I saw a movie down you were Brian. Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're going to find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here

It's the podcast It's Quick Question with Soren and Daniel I'm Daniel talking with Soren Soren, my buddy how's it going oh man so so hot it's going so hot yeah that's really really good i uh you know future dad to to present and past dad i got to i got to get into it right away okay let's do an ebenezer scrooge sure i uh i i this kid is not born and it is humiliating us already.

Uh-oh. And I don't know what to do about it. We went to, we had like our, our big halfway important ultrasound scan thing where they're looking for a lot of stuff. And you just get a lot of time looking at the computer pictures of your baby. And it's all very, very precious and moving. And it's like, this is the feet and we're counting toes. And, like, got the hand on the head in a very thoughtful pose.

And, like, here's the spine, which is, like, crazy because so much of the stuff is, blobs and then the spine is like and here's a whole fucking skeleton pointy sharp hard dinosaur bone as as shay was calling it and it's like it's so crystal clear the spine of a person growing inside um but we're seeing all that we're seeing the spine and we're seeing like here's like like this is some some blood and stuff pumping through we could see all that stuff going on here's a heartbeat uh our wonderful baby who kicks like crazy at night and is having a fun time dancing and listens to our music in the morning was not showing its face on this ultrasound.

It was just tucking the face away. And we were having fun. We're just like, oh, yeah, this is very shy baby. Camera shy baby. And we were killing time with the ultrasound tech and we're like, yeah, our, interestingly enough, our dog does this too. Our dog Jackson, when you take out a camera to take his picture, he like turns his. head doesn't want just stops doing whatever he's doing stops being cute and just becomes a pain in the ass and we're like ah maybe the baby got it from the dog we're all joking we're all laughing

we're having a good time time continues to pass and the ultrasound tech is like wobbling shay's belly a little bit and like bouncing the ultrasound wand on it and just like tapping the glass the yeah just trying to do anything to get this baby to move hey hey you and then like the tech would take a break and like let's uh here's the foot again here's the arm again just like we can't move on until the face is shown because they're they are testing for like like does the baby have a face and all the things in the right places kind of thing uh and also yeah there's the doctors in the wing is doing this like yeah stretch it out yeah yeah we need to buy time it's we reach a turning point where we're not all we are no longer all charmed by the fact that the baby is not showing its face now shea and i are like a little bored we're kind of over the miracle of the spine that we saw you know we saw the toes and we we we wept but now it's getting close to lunchtime and this is not the amount of time that we've budgeted to be here and so we're bored and the tech is like very clearly

unhappy with us because she was very chatty in the beginning. And now she is just like dicking around. You know, it's, you know, you can't do anything until you get a phone call. And so you're just sitting there with a stranger waiting for your phone to ring and it's not ringing. And you don't like the stranger because you didn't pick the stranger. That's the vibe that we're getting from this ultrasound tech who is, you know, shaking again and prodding and poking again. Is she mad at Shay for hiding the baby? Seems pretty mad at both of us.

It's definitely, there was no, there was no, not even a tiny bit of this happens all the time. Yeah. Babies are like this. We were prepared for this. It was just like, well, I need to see the face. And then like, pointedly looking at the two of us.

And we are now like, oh, we're. We're not in control. We're so sorry. No, we're like, we're cowards. So we're both like, yeah, we're sorry. the baby never does this we're really really sorry

I don't know if there was something we should have done differently and then the tech very surprisingly puts the wand down and the tech says I'm going to go outside for a minute so you you know

she wants to go cool off do whatever you she's so angry she needs to go how a cigarette cool off and then is like sort this out by the time I get back. That was the vibe for that. I was like, I'm going to go and I'm going to give you guys some time. And we don't know how weird

it is yet. We're in the present of this moment. And we feel like we're in trouble. And we both hate being in trouble. So as soon as she's gone, She gets up and starts lunging. She just starts doing lunges because we're like, we've got to get this baby to turn or the ultrasound tech's not going to let us leave. Or she's going to give us it to marry it I don't know it's gonna go on our permanent record so she's doing

probably that loosens me up when I don't want to be in front of camera absolutely oh my god get the baby singing get the baby still a little bit of rum what's that gonna hurt she's doing lunges and I said what are you doing she goes I don't know

and then I get up to be in the room with her and I walk towards her and she goes what are you doing like I don't know hoping I think just like just standing and like bouncing at each other and and shaking both of our bodies until we feel we've done enough of that and then sit down and the tech comes back in scans and the text like there's an ear I guess you're going to have to come back we're like yep totally we're so

sorry we're gonna we'll do that and and and next time we're we'll have this sort we'll do it We will talk to, I swear we will talk to this baby. Yeah. And this won't happen again. When the tech was gone, I can't tell how serious and how Jokia was, speaking into Shea's belly is going like, I'm your father. You got to start off respecting me. You'll lose it at some point. But like there's, I need a bit of time to be the top dog.

So you got to just like, please. do what we're asking you to do while you live under my uterine wall you will live by my rules very uncooperative baby other than possibly not having a face everything was 10 out of 10 doctor now our interaction with the doctor who goes over the results with us afterwards was also um i briefly want to say insane the moment will not be felt by you or our audience because I've already told you that everything's fine. But we sit down with the doctor, and he says, now there are two things that we look at when we're doing these scans.

The health of the baby, the health of the mother. And we're going to start with the health of the baby because that's the easy part. And Shay and I are frozen at that's the easy part. And he's going through it's like, this is healthy. This is all of this is good. 50 second percentile. Everything's on track. Whatever you do and keep doing it, it's great.

and then we're like okay and now so the law of words is that there's a hard part so what's the hard part like oh the mother's fine too I'm like this fucking guy I don't think he was trying

to do a joke I think he's just a bad speaker to patients yeah well didn't understand that they're what follows that like he's like let's make this as easy as possible the baby's healthy yeah so that's easy

right? Okay. Now the mother also healthy. This is this is harder to say but to be clear just because mother's like a harder word than baby it's bigger. Everything is fine

it's just like a longer struggle. A combination when you get two words together they make a different sound. That's confusing. I had a similar experience with we had somebody who had zero bedside manner and was telling us some what the time was very hard news when we were having Ronan which was about his NT cord like not being the right length and how that was indicative of

like three things and they were all pretty pretty bad there's like a heart failure there's like another thing where like they basically things where they don't make it past maybe six months and she's like telling us this as she's just like doing the as she's like scanning around looking at other stuff so she's like yeah the NT cable is small um so I'm going to catch you up with a Janice counselor and you can talk about what you want to do is your next moves. There's hands. There's hands. And we were like, what is going on? We had to, like, even meet with a Janice counselor about it and talk about whether we wanted to terminate the pregnancy and everything. And then he's like, we're going to like, we wanted more tests.

And the next test was like a way more invasive one where a needle goes up through the vagina. into the embryo and into the embryonic fluid and pull some out and you get a better indication of how well the baby's doing. Before we do this, another doctor is like, well, I just want to do an ultrasound real quick to see kind of where the baby is so that we know where we're poking them, basically. And as he's doing, he's like, this antique cord looks fine. And we're like, what the fuck? And so like we waited basically a week of us thinking, oh, all these whole. hopes and dreams that we'd had of this child or now, like, is this something we should give up on? Should I start divorcing myself emotionally from this?

Right. Your life is about to be very new and different than the one that you were planning. Yeah. And then it ended up being totally fine. But there are, it's these people who, obviously, you know, they're doing this for a living. So it is not magical for them each time. They really can put on a good show and be like, isn't that wonderful? You hear the heartbeat. You hear that, like, it basically sounds like a machine gun when their babies. It's like, do, do, do, do. But they're like, they try to really get in it with you in the spirit of it. But I imagine it's the same as people who work as like in Santa's workshop trying to like be really excited about Christmas. It's like, I do this every fucking day, man.

Just get on Santa's lap and let's move on. Do you go back to the first doctor who got everything wrong and kill him? Do you beat him up? Oh, yeah, okay. So the answer to this riddle is that it was a woman. Oh, so the baby was the doctors? This woman, no, it was, it was, we were so angry that we were like, we would like to never see that doctor again, like asking other people, like, make sure that we are not ever, we never even interact with her. Like, we don't, we don't want to be crossing her in the hallways or anything like that because we were so angry about it.

And it wasn't just that she got it wrong. I understand the mistakes like that can happen. And it's like her attitude surrounding it was like, what the fuck? Like giving us this terrible information and being like, I'm going to set you up with the geneticist, essentially saying, I'm going to set you up with the genetic counselor. So you can decide if you want to terminate this pregnancy. And she's like, and now look, there's there's feet. There's feet. Yeah.

See them now? Hey, everybody. I want to encourage you to do something really quickly. Just check in with your body. How are you feeling right now? I would guess the answer is not super good. I mean, maybe you're okay on a lot of fronts, but you kind of got a little bit of a headache. You're feeling lethargic.

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3D model of your baby? No. Did you ask for it or were they like, I mean, at that point, they didn't bring it up. They, um, I, I felt cheapish asking for a picture after we've, we ruined the tech, the ultrasound tech's day by, with our, with our camera shy baby. And I, and this information isn't not relevant. It was the ultrasound text birthday.

so I'm sure I'm going to come back to that When she's outside having her smoke break She's like Fucking of course it had to be today Throws off my whole day So they do do a 3D version Like a 3D rendering basically of your baby

It's not a full scale one You can't see it like a 3D model or anything But they get in there and they got some sort of It's like their map view Like street view They could just push a button And all of a sudden you see like Whatever they're their

over with the ultrasound you get now like a topography of it you get like that real lay of the land with what your baby looks like now it is an additional cost right it's not like they threw it on for us that's not what i heard oh really yeah oh they were just like now do you want to see your baby really um i'm gonna encourage you to not do it okay so the extra cost is not worth it here's why at this stage even if you let's say your baby's face is out there that's where they really want to that's the money shot and they want to do that with like their new technology The problem is that a baby at that age At that stage

Skin is translucent, right? Well, you wouldn't see that either You're not really getting that But you are getting The baby has no fat on its face And you don't realize how important fat Is to making a human face Look like not a skull

Yeah And so you basically get this image Of what is a baby skeleton You have just like the spine Like you're getting You see the face And it's like Your first instinct is to go

Oh God Oh no Yeah, because the nose is like missing, basically, and you've got these hollow eyes and like cheekbones, but it's like there are, you are looking at essentially skeletor in there. Yeah. And it's not pleasant. It's not fun to think about. So it's good that you didn't do it. Yeah, we're good to pass on that.

I think maybe it's possible they didn't offer it because we are going to be surprised to find out. the baby sex on day of. And I don't know if the 3D makes it like unavoidable because as of now when we're doing like the ultrasound pictures and they're doing feet and hands, the text says look away while I check out some other stuff and then you can look back. Yeah. Because they're going to put something on the screen and they don't want us to be able to know. But I think with a 3D thing, it's pretty, they're not going to put like a sensor bar or anything.

Right. Yeah. And it's going to be a big. dip. I think it's going to be big. If it's a dick, it's going to... And if it's a vagina, it's going to be a big vagina. It's going to be so huge. We did have a couple of appointments back.

A different tech was doing the scan and wanted to make sure the relevant part of the screen was covered while she was doing the scan. And she picked up a Manila folder and covered like the entire bottom half of the screen. And we're always like, it's... it does not get old to see pictures of your alien baby skeleton freak inside. We're always very present and very just like, there it is again.

There's the heart again. All of it's very exciting. It's very bonding. But as I'm looking at this, also in the back of my head, when the nurse is covering half the screen with a folder, I'm like, that's got to be some hog. A whole half the screen. You know, manila folders are bigger than just in order to eight and a half by 11 piece of paper. she needed something bigger I think it's actually where they type it in

most likely because there's all those words on the screen too where they're taking pictures and they're like saying certain things I think that she's basically shielding you from seeing male or female or written down yeah so I wanted I said I want to talk about this earlier but the fact that it was the technician's birthday I think is like it's funny and silly now

that you ruined her day this becomes a legitimate problem on the day of the birth because again doctors are they're people and they have lives outside of the hospital and if you go into a hospital on a Friday with your baby there's like a way higher chance that they will induce you and try to get you they get through this delivery as fast as possible because they've got a heart out they've got like things that they're planning on doing and for the week weekend or like if you get the end of a technician or the end of a doctor's shift or whatever like sometimes you get induced when you don't need to be induced but it's because it streamlines

it streamlines their work like their office day right and so there's all these things that you wouldn't necessarily want and aren't necessarily good for your child but you have to have some advocate on your side who's seen this kind of thing before who could be like uh no we're not doing that like we're going to let this happen the way that it's supposed to happen it's It's important to remember that doctors are smarter than me and more dedicated to what they're doing just by sheer fact of how much schooling they went through and how expensive it was and how much you need to stay up to date to continue practicing and you're always learning and always testing. That makes them different from me. And they have to take an oath. I've never done that.

Which is very different from me and Mo's job. There are so few oaths in our lives. And that's a different thing. But they don't, the oath and the training doesn't suddenly make them not a human being. It is still at the end of the day, like, a fucking guy or a fucking girl who, you know, gets tired and gets diarrhea and wants to hit a quota of babies. I don't know how it works, but. They want to leave. They want to go.

It's like, let's wrap this up. It's like turning over tables on a Friday night. When you're a waiter, you're like, that's really been a pleasure. Like, I want to continue to share this night with you that you're having a really magical time with one another in. But you got to fucking go. I understand it's your anniversary, but it's also my Friday. Yeah. Bars are closing.

And I'm so miserable. Yeah. So it does become like a real, you'll go to classes, I'm sure, because you guys are. are over-prepared. But in those classes, like, they warn you about that kind of thing where they're like, you have to be advocating on your own behalf there in the hospital or you have a doula or whatever it is because these are humans. These are people who are like going to, they're going to try and get through this if they

need, wherever their heart out is, they're like, I'm going to meet that. So we're going to see what it takes to get there. We're going to do a C-section? Are we going to do it? Like, the baby's not progressing. And you're like, their first instinct is like, well, let's get the baby. out and you have to be like let's that wasn't our plan let's give it a little bit of time and like it's it's really crazy it's crazy how rough it is for you yeah um well daniel uh aside from your baby

which i'm very happy for you i'm happy that you got to see the spine i'm happy that's so fun yeah i'm happy that your everything is progressing exactly as it should and 50 percentile is exactly where you want to be that's what we have to do some sort of searching on that too because they're going through it in their 52nd percentile and they say that's good and I have to trust them that they say it's good but we're also like not 100 aren't we want 100 like what do we know what's the deal here absolutely not that's you get harder to squeeze out at 100 yeah you get a tub that baby has to come out a different way we are when they say 50 and 50 second percentile what we're aiming for is the middle we want average sized is what we learned in the car in the talking about Googling. Yeah, and also because on each end, you stand more risk of other things, like other things, other complications. So, yeah, like, right, you want to, it's just, you want to be right there at zero. Right there in the middle of, like, neither negative nor positive.

That's great. Congratulations. Thank you. I want to talk about something completely different. Okay. Now, this is going to sound like something we don't ordinarily talk about at first, but I'm, that's not the direction I really want to go. Are you familiar with the Epstein emails of the event? been released? Here's

an interesting thing about me as someone who works in a late night political comedy space I have just decided to sit this one out. It doesn't seem super actionable. I'm

you know in part a little bit still jaded politically lately and I guess societally that like the the only way for things to change meaningfully on a very grand level is for shit to start mattering again because shit doesn't matter currently and so this Epstein thing I just can't I I see people getting excited and thinking about this is going to be the thing and that the cynic in me is just like

yeah but for this to like do anything shit would have to matter and shit doesn't matter right now and i don't know if shit's ever going to matter again but this is this falls under the category of shit and i'm i i'm not going to allow myself uh any kind of joy of pouring through the emails and like seeing if it's going to have any consequences because i've seen this happen before yes yes you have now uh the i'll give you like broad strokes as far as like tangibly why it matters at all Trump is mentioned an awful lot in there. There's a lot of stuff in there where he's like, I could easily take him down. It's more indictments of other people because he's like emailing the editor of the New York Times and stuff being like, do you want this information? And the editor being like, no, let's pass on it. And then the other stuff you have is Galane Maxwell had done a set a lot of things in her most recent testimony that are now negated by the stuff that are in the emails. So she's like, it's clear that she was lying. sure but I mean but didn't we know she was lying yes but I mean now there's proof that

she was lying okay and also during all of this you've got stuff like Trump pulling people into the situation room and being like don't fucking vote to release these files okay so that's none of that is what I want to talk about I want to talk about these are all emails from Epstein or two other people. Horrible mispellings, terrible. Like, it's clear, like, how fucking bad this guy is. Basically, borderline illiterate. And it's, it's sort of funny, like, how illiterate he is.

But he does have, he is sending himself emails occasionally. And these, what I want to, like, drill down on is that he is got shorthand, obviously, for his own notes, the same way you would. sure and his notes look very similar to something you might like make notes of for yourself like in your notes app or whatever where you're like I want to remember this me Daniel or me the doubt hope so oh boy I mean I mean me like even me like I and I want to parse some of his notes with you to himself and get like a sense of like what he might be saying yeah okay he has one very long email that's bullet pointed it's got well he's he gives up after a while on bullet points, but he's got like 33 points that he wants to get through to himself. And this feels like it's just like a mental download of like all the things he's been thinking about lately. This is number one. Beards and long hair are meant to catch and hold smells, question mark. Okay. He's asked himself, uh, He starts getting philosophical, too.

I love this one. He says, writing is unnatural, asymmetric, speed, not good for everyone, linear, slow, rule-based. And never has that been clearer than reading his emails that he does not like writing in any capacity. And I love that he's like coming up with reasons for the type of person that he is. But it's not just like he's a numbers guy either because later he says something that is very close to my. heart. Number 31 on his list is numbers, not good for many things. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, I also think that. Yeah. I agree with the pedophile. Does he mean that it's like ruining the baseball or what is his problem with numbers? Well, it's not clear. I think that he doesn't like writing and he doesn't like numbers. So there's not a lot left. But he is, I think, I think, in love with his own thoughts and maybe that's where like he's trying to justify is that I'm thinking so many good things. I'm going a million miles an hour. You know what? Words are just slowing me down

and so are numbers. Yeah. They're keeping me back. There's all these rules. It's very and I'm not like meaningfully trying to draw a comparison, but it's very Elon Musk. It's incredibly like the my brain works in an unconventional way, which is fine, but he takes it an extra step, which is my brain works in an unconventional and, in fact, superior way. And in fact, other ways of thinking are bad for culture and bad for society. Yeah. So now, I'm glad you brought up brain, Dan, because number seven on here is skin as part of the brain, question mark. And then he makes this great connection when he spells it wrong but he says membrane that which I think as soon as you write you realize it's a different brain you realize it means a different thing than the brain

in your head spelled differently he's written it as meme brain which I think is nice I think that's like more accurate but like skin is part of the brain and then he's like membrane. And then he really falls in love with that idea of the membrane and like how the skin of the brain is super important. He wants to know if the if thought and like how much intellect is dependent on surface area. Yeah. And and then but then it's like takes this weird tangent that I don't totally understand and I want your input on it. Hold, please, for a second while I find it.

Okay. He says, intelligence on the surface needs a larger surface area, hence replication. And so like, I'm kind of on the surface. Yeah. Needs larger surface area. For more intelligence. I get that. Hence, replication.

Yeah. That's a, that word really threw me. Yeah. And then I started looking at this from a different angle, which was, these feel very much like notes from Victor Frankenstein to himself. Yeah. As he's like deciding, could I make another person? Like, what would it take? And when you read his notes with that in mind, it's like, oh, yeah, he's building a person.

He's building a person for sure. Because he says things like that intelligence on the surface thing. He says, does the eye transmit information? Music is horizontal and vertical information, melody, prognosis, harmony, maybe, all amials. He means animals, I think. Can it be looked at to re-engineer the brain? Harmony, FFT, symphonic learning. Like, he's deciding what a brain is capable of.

Uh-huh. And if you could teach a brain via music? Yeah, I guess so. But he creates like a sense calculation matrix, which feels very much like a, um, You go through it and you're like, oh, this is trying to decide if somebody is alive. Like, he talks about smell, transmit, receive, volatile, amplitude. Disgust? Is location a sense near food?

Question mark. Direction to food? Hmm. I mean, broken clock and all that. That's a good thought. Is location a sense? Proximity to food. Yeah.

I mean, I think we could probably knock it down pretty easily. But he sounds like a dummy. I'm a dummy. And I'm like, that's like I would, I would grant that conversation starter at a dinner table for sure. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for in him like my, where do we connect? Like where are our streams cross here? And like immediately as someone who's my notes are very disjointed and I try to keep them organized.

But I'm also prone to jumping to. the the closest possible writable surface and so I will have things on my notes app where it was like inclined bench press three sets 12 to 15 45 pounds tough at this weight ancho chili pepper almost out

the challenges of raising a child who is not cynical but also won't be destroyed by this world yeah pull-ups max out at 10 Just like everything that's happened that week. It's the thought process on some of these where I'm like, I'm with you here. Like I get how we got here.

It's not a good thought. This is somebody who has never, I would say, thought things through. It's somebody who has a lot of thoughts, but follows none of them because he doesn't see any value in that. He's just having the thoughts and thinking, ah, I'm an idea, man. My question, and you might not know this,

uh um apart from the main thing i know that he liked to spend his time doing uh-huh what is what was where do you make his what i know financier yeah a vague nothing job something something real estate new york a vague nothing job i mean like the we're playing the hits of Robert Durst, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein as real estate. And I guess Robert Moses as real estate moguls. Maybe he's an architecture guy. So like broadly speaking, a field that is 100% monsters. I know that he was very rich.

But I, the bits and pieces that I hear about him on like the New York Times, the daily podcast. They talk about how untrustworthy a lot of what he writes and his emails are because they're like, he is famously a liar and a manipulator. And I'm like, but that sounds like an unpleasant person to spend time with. He's not, what is he? Who is this real estate finance? Like, is it just, do you let the weed dealer in your house because he's the only one with weed? Is that truly it? Yes. That's it. And it's because, yeah, you've forced your, I think that's, but that's not just true of, like, illicit crimes.

That's true of power. I think that you think, look at somebody like Ted Cruz or Mark Rubio, Marco Rubio, who are, they just seem like intolerable human beings to spend any bit of time with. Yeah. And the reason that you can get to that point where you are surrounded by people who are willing to spend time with you is that you have this, you have some sort of resource that. is very rare and they want it. And so, like, you can work your way up because you have this power. And everybody wants to be close to that power.

Donald Trump is like a great example. Like, you want to be close to this power and you're at every single turn, you're deciding what you're willing to deal with from that person to get it. And they, maybe subconsciously, are learning the same lesson. What can I get away with?

And people still have people around me. Like, people still want to be around me enough that I don't... I'm still a functional psychopath, you know? But at some point there had to be like initial... Oh, you have to meet this Jeffrey Epstein guy. Yeah. But if you can't lead with the island and the plane

and the sex trafficking and the crimes, you've got to work your way into that. And what is the... What is the dip in your toe? You got to meet this Jeffrey Epstein guy. He's dumb. He's a dumb asshole and a piece of shit. You really got to talk to him.

It was just money, I think. It's just money. It's just going to room with this. Here's a room full of rich people. Yeah. Finally, people that are like me is like the idea is that I, this is the club I belong in. And if that's enough, in the same way where like somebody approaches you on the street and they're like, hey, I'm a writer too. Your first instinct is like, I have.

have to get away. I have to move away from the situation until they're like for television. And then you're like, oh, somebody who actually is writing and doing something similar to me and might have similar shared experiences with me and I can actually connect with them on some level. Like there's money just is just like a threshold, I think, for them. And if you're above that threshold, anybody else who has that money is like, okay, well, then we can be friends. And I think that a lot of times, probably after a certain point, like, once he was really well established as a pedophile with an island and everything, that's how he was being introduced to people. Sure.

It was like, somebody else was doing that back channeling and they're like, hey, I can sense that you're into young girls. You should meet my friend. And then you're like, and then that's how you, that's how he gains his influence and his web of connections. Man. I assume. Sure.

Now, speaking of webs, this is the thought that I were, where I was like, man, you were, you were on the right track here and then you, it's clear like your brain is broken, you went the wrong way. He says, plants. This is number 19. Plants period. Communication. Surface area. Very obsessed with surface area. Similar to humanas.

He means humans. What he's talking about here, I think, is that singular neural neural. network that plants share through fungi under the ground and based on like large swaths of area you have plants when grass gets mowed in one yard the grass and another yard knows

that the grass is and like that's all really interesting and smart stuff where I'm like they just discovered this within our lifetime like how the fungus is keep plants connected and also like share resources with one another through these pathways of fungus underneath

the ground and for like a tree that's not doing particularly well, like another tree is passing at nutrients. Fascinating stuff. I feel like he's been watching the same documentary as I watch. And then he says, he says, the similar to humans, because he can't help bring it back to himself. Then he goes, his next thought is, do we get plant diseases? Where I'm sure. I see, like, the thought process is so clear to me where I'm like, well, we.

We are a line, pedophile, and then he gets to that. And I'm like, oh, no, you're just as, I don't know what you are. You're not, you cannot help but bring it back to yourself. But he finds out that there are these neural pathways of plants, that they share what is essentially a telepathic connection or feels like to us because it's all underground. And then he's like, can humans do that? Do humans do that? Oh, fuck, am I going to get a tree disease?

Right. certainly i've been we're in a cold front so i've been closing my garden because it's time to close the garden anyway and as i'm going through and like seeing what is salvageable our basal plants are like covered in this black these spots that are like clearly running it away and i understand the impulse of looking at the basil plant and going oh i hope that never happens to me yeah right yeah i i think that that's exactly what what he's doing here. Anyway, they're all,

the thoughts are very funny. This one is also a train of thought where I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? He gets to number 26 and he goes, taste, question mark, because now he's decided he wants to think about taste. Oh, taste and smell, by the way, very prominent throughout this thought process,

like where he's writing it back to himself where I think that this is like the undercurrent of this is sexuality, where he's thinking about sex and he's thinking about the visceral nature sex, and he keeps bringing up, like, body odor and smell and stuff like that. Whatever, whatever, like, the ketamine that you're on, it's not a good, it's not going great.

That was going to be one of my questions. Another one of my questions was going to be in your research. Is he like a big drug guy? Because this all seems like big drug guy stuff. Right. In the emails, no. There's no mention. And this is like, this would be the only indication.

But he's got, question. He's got taste. question mark. And then he's got food, question mark. And then he's got kissing, question mark. And so it's all in the same bullet point, taste food and kissing. And he's like, these things are related. I know they are. And he's like, do they, does kissing not taste good? Like, wondering about his own, I think his own just like corporeal frame and like how other people relate to it. And there's a. like some real concern that people aren't alluring he's not alluring

to people because he's not food it seems like they like food and they don't like bad smells why then

are everybody having sex he's so close to realizing he has nothing to offer anyone I mean he was so close

now he's now he fucking he's much closer I'm surely you get all the answer You get to turn the puzzle upside down, see the answers written down when you're done. It always, it continues to, I guess, surprised a little bit, but, but continues to bring me joy how this idea gets reinforced that fiction has done a much better job creating interesting villain types than are born out in reality.

We have so many legends and like a Jeffrey Epstein figure in Chinatown or in some other book would be like there would be a lot said about how this unspeakably evil yet powerful person is disarming and charming in some way. You know, all of the bond villains are these well-spoken monsters. and the reality just never competes with it. Epstein as a fucking rich manipulative lying Gadsby figure is just a drugged out rich asshole who hasn't been told no enough times, who is just some like it's the fantasy of the evil monsters as being the bond villains

and these suave debonair erudite urbane monsters and it's just like Jeffrey Epstein and Ted Cruz these weird hunched monsters we're like we really are the best of the best. Well the fact that what made the monsters and stories

is like their priorities are just different like they're doing something that they think is good for humanity generally like they're doing they're taking it to it's logical not logical it's illogical conclusion but like they're They were on the right path at some point. And then, like, in their altruism of whatever they were trying to do, like, Thanos, like, you're like, oh, you had, you think that it came up with an actionable plan to deal with what was a legitimate problem.

It's just your actual plan is too far. Right. It's Thanos who's like, this is, there's, our way of life is not sustainable. We need to wipe out half the population and start over again. And it breaks my heart to do it. And I feel every death. But I feel burdened with this responsibility. and Jeffrey Epstein, real-life monster, is like,

is it possible that the booby is a hand? What if the boob grabs you back? What if that? And, yeah, they're so much worse that, like, they wouldn't even be, you couldn't, you couldn't just sell somebody that kind of villain. Yeah. You're like, it's so unbelievable. Even the bond villains who are inherently evil guys are like,

some of them are doing it for vengeance, where like their wife was killed unfairly or whatever it was. They have a plan that is actionable and has it either is creating some sort of justice or it's making the world better in their mind. And these guys not doing that. They can't conceive of that. I mean, Musk has some sense of what a movie villain is and is trying to like find his like grasp it like, all right, well, what am I? How can I convince everyone that my greed is me trying to make the world better? Me trying to get off.

to Mars so that I don't have to go to the hell, which is in the middle of the earth, and I'm scared of that. I have to go live on Mars, and then I will be beyond hell's reach. Yeah. And what's crucial about Mars is there are no federal regulations. So all the stuff that I want to do now for business, which is the only thing that's real, I can do on Mars. Anything I want, oh, I'm going to give away so many horses on Mars. that's I wanted to take you through it because I like started putting it my notes at and I was like hmm this looks like all my other notes yeah his shorthand is like yeah this is like

the sloppy bullshit shorthand and it makes it very easy I think probably for writers to follow his train of thought till the moment where you're like oh and here's where you are a different monster here's where you're a different human being. The thing that I don't understand, and I'm sure this has been brought up a lot, too, for people who are following more closely, is it seems like he and his other criminals email about their crimes a lot. Oh, boy. It's as someone who has done crimes. Yeah. I almost never talk about it into a microphone.

and I certainly never write it down to my crime buddies. And I don't do any of the crimes that Epstein has like 100,000% done. It's not like those kind of crimes, but like normal, cool crimes that I have done. You're not even going to catch me emailing someone about cheating on a test in high school. They are, yeah, it seems unfair to call this a cabal because a cabal would be like under the surface. and like covert and clandestine and none of this is that this is just a bunch of people who have always gotten away with everything their entire lives and are like the things that I get away with must be fine I will at first I will be maybe very quiet about it but at the

minute that like I can see that I'm not in any trouble for this I'm just going to do it out in the open and they've that this is like the logical progression of all that is that they're at this point where they're emailing Epstein where they're like nothing can fucking touch me so they They don't see any reason to be clandestine about it. I feel like at some point that the first time someone would have made the news over an email hacking scandal with an email getting leaked and made public. I feel like the people in this Epstein ring would have been like, ooh, got to find another way to talk. I hadn't realized that emails could be seen on other computers than mine. Yeah, like, we got to do something else.

Chris Delia moment he realized like oh stuff can be saved oh I don't realize that they he it is also the context of the time in which he's doing a lot of this a lot of these emails like the flurry of the emails about where he seems more panicked is like

I was like trying to figure out what was going on but it's around January of 2018 and so this is like right around the time I think when there was an award show where every single person wore black in honor of me too in January of 2018

and it was like I think that was right around like the height of me too and boy that would be a terrifying time if you are anyone associated with Jeffrey Epstein and you're probably get your if you're Jeffrey Epstein you're fielding a lot of film calls from people who are being like delete everything

yeah we are not friends take care of everything I can't be caught up in this like now I didn't realize we weren't allowed to be raping kids I now know that yeah now that I've seen January 2018 now that I've seen the golden globes

yeah now my well I'm giving like a that's like a that's a heat check for the time because that's clearly like if the golden gloves

has caught on to me too then me too is at it's like the crest of the wave and I think that you're probably I think there's a lot of people around him getting scared around that time and so that's when you just have this like flurry of emails

with Jeffrey Epstein also I'm not even totally sure I didn't check in on whether these are like just a selected batch, whether they just decide to send some, because these surely are not all of the emails from his files. I don't know how they were allowed to send these or like get away with these or what the circumstances were, these were chosen. But there's got it.

There's more. I mean, I say this as someone who has not followed this Epstein stuff closely, as I said in the beginning. But Democrats leaked three emails earlier this week and then. Republicans leaked 20 to 22,000 in response to that in retaliation, which is, you know, really cool. It's another to go back to feeling cynical and feeling like nothing like shit needs to matter if anything's ever going to change again in our lives. There's the big scandal, which is all the stuff that we're learning from these emails right

now and a lot of the stuff that we already knew that we now have proof of. That's the big headline thing. and there's also the mini smaller but still very important scandals of like what the times editors knew and what michael wolf knew what these journalists knew and sat on uh and that's all very bad and also just like current politicians just hanging on to these emails and waiting for what seemed like the most opportune time to drop them and it's just like we're all we're all just trying to fucking live in this stupid world and the politicians are hanging on to these like they all have them they all they all know the whole story already and they're just like doling them out in

politically strategic moments right which means that you're allowing some yeah I understand that that totally I understand there's like that they they don't see us as equals by any means that we are also people like them. There is the Wad. There's like this general writhing group of people. And then there's like the people who are making the decisions that are on the best behalf.

They know what's best. They know it's best for the general population. And like, well, we got to do this right so that we don't fall into that Wad. So like we got to do it so that we maintain where we are and that that we can stay in this position. but also, like, they can't handle all this. Like, we will give it to them in small, small drips. Yeah, it's gross and weird, and it's from both sides. I'll let me see if I believe that.

Yeah, I do. I believe that it's from both sides, and it's rough that we sit at the bottom of it. Well, this has been a good podcast. Thank you for joining us. I can't imagine this is going to be. title of anything other than Epstein. Maybe how Soren relates to Epstein?

This This was my joyful baby ultrasound episode, guys. What the fuck happened? There's going to be Epstein hashtags on it? This sucks. Yeah, not awesome. Well, if you like this podcast

and you want to see a video version of it, you can find that on YouTube. Also, if you're listening, if you want more, just more, Sorin and Dan, we do every other week we do a version of this for Patreon it's a little bit shorter and a little bit looser than if you can imagine than what we just did

and it's fun it's fun for the members and if you liked our theme song that's by me Rex a big shout out as always to our editor sound engineer producer Gabe Harder and I don't think I need to mention anything else goodbye bye

I'm going to quick quick question for you all right i want to hear your thoughts or know what's on your mind i've got a quick quick question for you all right the answer's not important i'm just glad that we could talk tonight so what's your favorite who did you get when will i be remember what's it out there were it all right oh forget it saw a movie daniel o'brien two best friends and comedy writers There's an answer they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.