Part One: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

Robert begins to explore the new Epstein files with Andrew Ti and unveils a conspiracy that crosses cryptocurrency, right-wing political power and, believe it or not, video game micro transactions.

(4 Part Series)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
What Jeffrey my Epstein's This is Behind the Bastards, a
podcast about the very worst people in all of history.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And as you may have guessed.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
From my completely original introduction that I definitely haven't done before,
we are back talking about Jepstein. Jeffrey Epstein, the big
ezy what because he's not called by anyone. Yes, I
love that we're getting into the Epstein Files. That's that's

(00:37):
what these episodes are going to be. With my good
friend and colleague Andrew T. Yeah, are you a fan
of Jeffrey Epstein?

Speaker 3 (00:46):
How do you feel about the guy?

Speaker 4 (00:47):
I mean, uh, he's he's in a photo with he
is so many people. Just he's on the ground with
so many of my faves, so right, right, judge a
man by his friends. I mean, he's got great friends,
you know, obviously, like half the New York Times is
his buddy. You know, I got to come clean up

(01:13):
at the top. I show up many times in the
Epstein Files. If you search for Robert Evans, you will
find my name in there a lot. You know, I
have to assume that that I was up to up
to no good there, and I apologize, you know, after
producing the godfather. A lot of stuff got to my head,
you know. I think I just kind of let fame

(01:34):
and money drive me a little crazy. You know. That's
the great thing about you, Robert, is somehow you're going
to be known as Robert Evans Comma, somehow the lesser scumbag. Yeah, somehow,
the less evil Robert Evans. Yeah, somehow, the Robert Evans
who's done the last less drugs too. Yeah. I think

(01:55):
we can't find me in.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
The Epstein files, and you won't find me saying anything
nice about the guy.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
So no, this is not about that. We're certainly not
saying anything nice about the guy. And no, the problem is,
obviously we've got a shitload more Epstein files. Right right
at the top, there were a bunch released in twenty
twenty five, and then right at the top of twenty
twenty six, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that even
more were going.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
To be released.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Specifically, he revealed that the Justice Department was releasing three
million new pages of files related to the Epstein case.
Such a vast quantity of information can't be digested in
short order, and we haven't discovered all of the secrets
in this tranch of files or in the last the
stuff that came out last year. People are still picking
stuff out right, which is why, because it's going to

(02:43):
take so much time to find everything that's noteworthy inside
these files. Todd Blanche sought to set expectations prior to
the file dump, so he insisted to the world that
the only hang up and getting these files out. The
only thing that had delayed them past the amount of
time they were legally supposed to be put up in
was that the Justice Department had to scan them to

(03:05):
see if Epstein had said anything that criminally implicated President Trump.
Older files certainly had things that could be seen as
implicating Trump. Releases in twenty twenty five included a twenty
twenty email from a federal prosecutor stating Trump had been
a passenger on the Lolita Express a minimum of eight
times between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety six. On

(03:26):
one trip, the three listed passengers were Trump, Epstein, and
a twenty year old female name redacted. So like he
is certainly implicated in a lot. You've seen probably the
birthday letter in the shape of a naked woman signed
by Trump for Epstein, right, you've probably seen. There's a
photo of Epstein and a young girl with a giant

(03:49):
check from Donald Trump. You've certainly heard the rumors that
he and Bill Clinton may have engaged in some oral
sex together. That was almost certainly Jeffrey Epstein joking around
rather than something that literally happened. But a lot of
crazy shit is in these files that literally happened. And
probably the single worst piece of data I have seen
from an implicating the president point of view is this

(04:11):
paragraph from an FBI interview with a victim of Epstein's.
I'll read it in a second, but it's particularly funny
when you pair it with this statement from Todd Blanch.
So here's Todd Blanche first. In none of these communications,
even when doing his best disparage President Trump, did Epstein
suggest President Trump had done anything criminal or had any
inappropriate contact with any of his victims. Now, oh, going

(04:35):
to read to you a quote from the FBI. During
one of Jane Doe's encounters with Epstein, he took her
to mar A Lago, where he introduced her to its owner,
Donald J.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Trump.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Introducing fourteen year old dough to Donald J. Trump, Epstein
elbowed Trump playfully, asking him referring to Doe, this is
a good one, right, Trump smiled and nodded an agreement.
They both chuckled, and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the
time was too young to understand why. Yeah, that's hideous. Ew,
that's just disgusting.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I'm gonna say you a lot on these episodes.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
But Ew.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
The thing that I don't understand is, like, what did
Trump think was going to happen when these came out?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Like?

Speaker 4 (05:17):
Was he just riffing? Did he think that someone was
actually going to go and falsify and redact shit? I
think he.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Thought, first off, I can just brute force this not
getting released. It hadn't been earlier. Yeah, And I'm sure
when it became inevident, when it became clear that like
they literally could not politically afford not to release these,
like not even just the legal stuff, Like their base
would have flipped out if they hadn't released this stuff
because of how central the Epstein files are to the

(05:47):
conspiratorial right too. I think at that point he just
probably and probably was reassured by his people. Look, man,
you literally could shoot a guy in Central Park and
your bass will stand behind you.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
You'll be okay.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
And maybe he will, you know, I guess it's definitely
hurting him, but not that we're.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
In the midst we're in the midst of seeing. But
it is like I'm just like, we'll see you knew
what was going to be a passing, right, Like like
what like why would you stoke this? Because because that's
the thing is he did continue to stoke this flyer
and it's like he sure did because.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
He'd be able to have more control. They they it's
also very sloppy. They very sloppily tried. Like one person
that I saw on Blue Sky pointed out there's a
lot of don'ts that are censored in the files, like
the word don't. And the only reason for that is
because like someone just went through and did like automatically
any use of like dawn t like they just starting

(06:46):
right Like there's stuff like there's a lot of really
like lazy attempts to and they've they've uploaded some stuff
and then pulled it back down. There's all sorts of
stuff like that, right I I think in terms of
the stuff that is most powerful to me, right it
is that the quote I just read you in part
if you've seen there's footage, Sophie'll play it right now.

(07:08):
There's some NBC archival footage of a nineteen ninety two
party where Trump and Epstein hung out together. There's a
decent chance you've seen it online, and it's just the two.
You can't even hear what they're saying, really, but the
two are like pointing it and talking about women and
like laughing to each other. And the body language in
that scene, which which should be playing right now, if

(07:30):
you read back over that statement with like Epstein elbowing
Trump and being like this is a good one, right,
and Trump smiled and nodding and they both laughing, it's
the same, Like you can you can see a moment
like that between them in this footage. Like that's part
of why I believe this is literally true, Like is
because we have other evidence of them hanging out together

(07:52):
that sounds exactly like it.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
It's doing shit like that. Well, because it's also just
like it's just a pedophile frat house, right right. It's
just like when you like kind of get the tenor
of it, none of it's like surprising. Really you're like, yeah,
of course these people act like this. I guess, like
the the amount of emails they sent is a little surprising. Frankly.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
You get at also, by the way, why I have
focused the episodes the way I focused them, because as
you've noted, there's a ton of I mean, there's there's
there's so much here, right for one thing like that,
you could I could do episodes all year on this
and not run out of content. There's so much fucking
shit in here, but a lot of it is just okay. Yeah,

(08:36):
the pedophiles told another gross pedophile joke. He and his
pedophile friends continue to be nasty with each other. That's
not surprising. What's really surprising to me is the number
of things that Epstein has been revealed to have been
central to that created the modern world everywhere. Yeah, I
made a post earlier that was a little inaccurate. The

(08:57):
Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein was the first first domino for
fucking uh like cryptocurrency for like for like the modern
like the cryptocurrency in like its modern attached to the
far right sense.

Speaker 4 (09:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
He was like a starting domino for gamer game is
starting domino for the fucking two thousand and eight financial crash. Like,
there's all sorts of shit and he's he's also deeply
implicated in like the growth and birth of right wing media,
right including sharing a lot of like fucking really kind
of fringe at the time far right like podcasts and

(09:36):
articles with his with his friends, like he was he
helped create the modern far right, and he helped ruin
the Internet in a lot of ways. And there's a
good Garbage Day column on that. But we're going to
be focusing on how Epstein built the modern world, or
helped to build the modern world, like his influence on
particularly development of the far right, and like uh cryptocurrency

(10:02):
and the far like the online media ecosystem that has
like fed into the far right, particularly four Chan. That's
what these episodes are about. It's like how Jeffrey Epstein
built the worst parts of the modern world because he
was shut he was even more influential than we knew.
There's been a lot that that surprised me in these files,
like stuff that I just would not have guessed was

(10:24):
the case.

Speaker 4 (10:25):
Do you think though, there's an element of just sort
of like right place, right time, Like he's talking about
these things in a way that is like but like
kind of like, yes, we're looking at the private communications
of billionaires and right far right, and I mean, I'm
just like, I'm like, there's probably a world where it's
all like this. Maybe throughout history, like.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Reagan's letters, I think that you were. Throughout history there
have always been like this has always been how a
lot of things have gotten done. A lot of the
sausage is made like politically, like like this is how
in every society you have groups of elites who are
all creepy friends and are all probably having creepy sex,

(11:08):
often with underage people, and you know, through their like
petty bigotries and rivalries and whatnot, making policy that affects
millions and millions of lives. Right, That's that's always been
the case. And it you know, when I said that
Jeffrey was the first Domino, that's not entirely accurate for

(11:29):
any of those things, except maybe for gamer Gate. But
he was like an early Domino in all of these things.
And so yeah, it's one of these like you have
to you have to be I don't want to frame
it as like Epstein started any of these things, or
was the only idea he was the guy who created

(11:49):
micro transactions in video games.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
That's not really accurate.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
But he heavily influenced the development of micro transactions in
video games because he was talking up the idea and
pushing it to a lot of influential friends in the industry.
And that's generally how stuff worked with Epstein, right, I mean,
with the exception of the financial crash, stuff is is
a little wonk ear.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
It's interesting because like when you list those things that
my my like, without knowing that this was the topic,
I instantly think like Steve Bannon as well.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, he was close with Bannon as talking.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
About Yeah, and so it's just like motherfucker was everywhere.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
Yeah. Just like the question to me is like, is
the causality, like do just being a pedophile make you
more of a make turn you into a right wing
freak or just being a right wing freak turn you
into a pedophile?

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, this is and we'll talk about it. I kind
of what happened what.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I said, chicken or the egg?

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Sorry, okay, Yeah, I kind of think when it comes
to answering that question, I think Epstein, like Trump, like
a lot of these guys, was socially someone that you
would have pegged as more of like a liberal or
progressive based on the causes.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
He's supporting the people he.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Hung out with most of his life, but his primarily
guy who's interested in his own personal power and wealth.
And a lot of his right word turn came after
his conviction and his jail sentence in like two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine, and after that he's
increasingly angry and increasingly reactionary. And that's a lot of
these guys get on the right. He's a big cancel
culture guy. He's freaked out by me too, right, So

(13:29):
that's a big factor in why he goes far right.
I don't think him being a pedophile has much ideologically
other than unfortunately, as we've seen, a lot of powerful
men want to have sex with fifteen and sixteen year
old girls, right, And that's not a left or a
right wing thing, you know, it's not even just a

(13:49):
politics thing. Fucking priests and cops and whatnot, all like
r you know, it is all powerful people or less kids,
you know sometimes but in part because if you want
to molest kids, getting into a position of power makes
it a lot easier to do that.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Way.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's one of the incidental like, yeah, if
that's your goal, power is a good way to achieve it.
Power also achieves other things. But yeah, right, that's probably
the logical funnel.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, and you know when it comes to because we'll
be talking a little bit about Trump in these episodes,
but he's not. It's more how Epstein helped like build
and prepare like the media ecosystem and the cultural like
ideological environment to make Trump's presidency possible. Like his contribution

(14:39):
to that is more interesting to me in these episodes
than like what Trump was involved in with Epstein, which
is why I kind of started the episode by pointing
that out. But I'm not gonna We're not gonna be
covering that heavily because you can find that in a
bunch of places, and anyone who's not an idiot knows
that Donald Trump was deeply involved in Epstein. And if
he didn't have underage girls Epstein was trafficking, then he

(15:03):
had sex with adults that Epstein was illegally trafficking, right,
Like like I don't know who he had sex with,
but it wasn't good, right. Yeah, So yeah, these episodes
are going to be about what we've learned about Jeffrey
Epstein and everyone else, because the horrifying truth hidden at
the center of the revealed Epstein files is that Jeffrey

(15:24):
wasn't just a pedophile financier who knew the secrets of
the elite. He was a player himself, and he actively
used his influence in clout and money to shift the
world in new directions. And despite his public persona as
a philanthropist who hung out with scientists and philosophers and
a lot of left coded kinds of people, he spent
the last decade of his life building support for a
global right wing power grab with people like Peter Teel

(15:45):
and Steve Bannon. And this power grab succeeded. It left
him behind, but he lived to see it come to fruition,
which you can tell was very frustrating to him that
like I helped, I helped make this all possible, and
yet I'm I'm not going to benefit from the impunity
that I can see going to other people. So I

(16:06):
went back and forth as to where we were going
to start with these episodes. Which of the reveals do
we begin with? Because there's so many players, so many
different people who were important and implicated with Epstein, that
it's impossible to not leave some stuff out. But I
think The story I want to tell this week is
going to flow best if I start with the tale
of a little feller named Brock Pierce. Have you heard

(16:28):
of Brock?

Speaker 3 (16:29):
No?

Speaker 4 (16:30):
No, no, okay, good good God, You're gonna You're gonna
recognize him in a second here.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Unfortunately, you really are you really really?

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Born November fourteenth, nineteen eighty, Brock Jeffrey Pierce another Jeffrey
came into this world in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city even
now in the crosshairs of a fascist movement that at
least partly exists through the consequences of Brock's actions. There
was little sign of this in his early life. However,
his parents seem to want him to have a career
in Hollywood. It's a clear to me how much they

(17:01):
pushed their son and how much he genuinely wanted that
for himself. Pierce has described himself as a simple hockey
loving boy from Minnesota. When at age three, he started
acting in commercials. This wound up building to his big shot,
a supporting role in the first Mighty Ducks movie.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
So he was in The.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Mighty Ducks, The Stars the Mighty Ducks. Yeah, yeah, you
like those movies As a kid, I seemed I think
I did.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
I think so right.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
The second one taught me the difference between Iceland and Greenland.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
You know, uh, you know, I was probably nitpicking hockey
formations a little bit. The Flying V is not so good.
I guess sure.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
I don't know much about hockey other than I like
fist fights. If you're too young to have seen the
Mighty Ducks movies and you don't understand what Andrew and
I are talking about, they're a series. I think there's
a trilogy, ultimately.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
Probably straight to DVD. There's a much who.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Knows how many there are, right, Yeah, there's there's several
of these movies, and they're all kind of about a
pee wee hockey team from the Twin Cities area that
isn't very good, right, It's a bad team. And then
an attorney named no Ship Gordon Bombay gets sentenced to
community service and winds up coaching them, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
You've seen one underdog sports team movie. You've seen them all, right,

(18:19):
you know where this basically goes, right, It's kind of
a it's this is essentially it's kind of a hockey
ripoff of Bad News Bears, a little bit right. Oh yeah,
you know, without without the the charisma of the raw,
unbridled charisma of Walter Mathow.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
God but a champion.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
I mean it's it's Emelio Estevez, I think, right. And
also yeah, in Bombay, if I recall, he's doing what
he got. He got busted for trunk driving.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Right right, right right, yeah, Yeah, he's gorgon trouble and
he has to do it.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, couldn't Bombay Chin.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, So the Mighty Ducks premise was strong enough to
Susay in a trilogy which no critics consider to be
basically the Hockey children's hockey equivalent to the Lord of
the Rings. Brock's career spanned thirteen years as an actor,
and it culminated in the nineteen ninety six film First Kid,
where Pierce played the President's son. During the movie's release,

(19:16):
he got to visit the White House and even sit
in President Clinton's chair in the Oval Office. Here's a
photo with him and comedy legend Sindbad. Look at that
pet them together. Look at that?

Speaker 4 (19:26):
Honestly, pretty sick.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Pretty cool, Pretty cool as a kid to get to
take photos in the Oval Office with fucking Sinbad.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah, I like that color blue carpet.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
It's a nice blue carpet. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
If you need a description of this photo, I would
say Brock looked sort of like the Sam's Club brand
Macaulay Culkin. And I don't know how to describe Simbad
to you. That would be like explaining the sun to
an earthworm, right. Anyway, Brock was fourteen at the time
of this visit, and per an AOL interview by Sean Newman,
he was quote thinking about leaving acting, determined to carve

(19:59):
his his own path as a Hollywood producer, which is
an ambitious dream to have as a fourteen year old.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
Yeah, no, no offense. Kid, If your dream is to
be a producer at fourteen, something is straight up wrong
with you. You can get drugs if you stay an actor, yes,
of course, But like you again, going back to Robert Evans,
if you really want.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
The high grade cocaine, you've got to be a a
big league producer.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
Right, saying recognizing power in that way at fourteen and
wanting power only is yeah, les theopathic.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
I mean, it's like, I get, like the producing can
be a really cool job and stuff, Like I get
why people want to do it. It's just weird for
a fourteen year old who's already an actor to be like, no, producing, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
Fourteen some time, because that means he's met producers, right,
But and then like no that guy.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
And again, it wouldn't be weird if he was like, no,
I think I want to be a director more. It's like,
you've been in a couple of movies. That's enough to
know that you want to be behind the camera or whatever. Producer,
that's that's a weird dream.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Now, I find this dream noteworthy for a couple of reasons. One,
it kind of it takes some pretty unmitigated goal to
decide at fourteen, I think I'm done acting. It's time
to run shit.

Speaker 4 (21:11):
Right. Yeah, that's a that's a crazy thing, And it's impossible.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
For me to know how accurate brocks later analysis of
his own thinking was. But this sounds to me like
a kid who was forced to grow up way too fast.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Remember, he's a.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Child actor, and I don't have enough to tail about
his childhood to note that his parents push him. Was
it an abusive situation? But it's rarely a good one,
especially in the nineties. I think things are a little
better now, but it's rarely good.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
The times I've worked with kid actors, I watch it
and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if
this is good for them.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
I remember talking to a friend of mine who was like,
a he's like a working class director, you know, not
like a fucking giant Hollywood guy, but like a buddy
of mine who as a director, who said that, no, like,
you have someone on staff when you have child actors, yeah,
whose job is basically to protect them from their parents,

(22:10):
to make sure their parents.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
Aren't pushing them too much, right, the whole thing, Like, yeah,
it's really weird. It's a weird dynamic.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
It's a weird dynamic. It's again, I think a lot
better now, in part because of how bad shit was
for a lot of child actors in the eighties and nineties.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
But even now, I'm just like, now that I see
this and I've seen it a little bit, like when
I now, I'm like, oh, I get why everyone Unsaved
by the Bell was like twenty eight, Like that's actually.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
It makes sense human, It's probably fine.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
We should just like suspend our disbelief a little bit
and let adult explay teenagers because the alternative.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
Is fuss so bad for the people.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
I think, yeah yeah, and for an idea of like
how fast Brock has had to grow up. This is
him as a talking about himself as a fourteen year
old and his attitude. I took a look at my
life and asked my myself, is this what I want
to be doing? Is this my calling? I said no,
I don't really want to be reading other people's scripts.
I don't want to be a performer. I want to
write my own script. I want to be the director

(23:09):
of my own life.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
And I get that.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
It's also like most fourteen year olds aren't in a
position where they're like, is this really what I want
to be doing with my life? Because they're fourteen, you know,
So that that says something just about where this kid's
head is. You know whose head is in a good
place mine? Our sponsors, Oh we're back, you know. To

(23:38):
make Sophie happy, I have stopped accusing our sponsors, like
the good people, of committing crimes against humanity, even though
they did murder those kids, So you're welcome, Sophie.

Speaker 4 (23:48):
In self defense.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
In self defense, those kids were coming at them. You know,
those children were complaining about being forced to pick berries
all day. You know, I guess I supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
I simply cannot defend, which is like, this.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Is like an unfair I know, I know, I know,
And we're still going to bleep the name out for
all of these it's going to be great. So choice
for old producer, Sophie. Here for old producer Sophie. You've
got Brock's dream job, Sophie.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
I just want everybody to have like health insurance and
like housing and like some form of financial stability.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
That's not what Brock wants at age fourteen. So Brock
has his crisis of confidence at fourteen, but he keeps
working for about a year and a half, almost two
years after this point, you know, he films nineteen ninety
seven's Legends of the Lost Tomb, where an adult apparently
pulled a prank on him and told him he had
permission to carve his name onto a pyramid while they

(24:45):
filmed in Egypt. Brock would later admit, it almost feels
kind of wrong, and it certainly was. You are not
supposed to do that into the pier?

Speaker 4 (24:52):
He do it? Did he do that?

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Apparently fourteen? Again, he's fourteen.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
An adult told him he could, Like, it's not his
there's a lot that's his fault in this story, but
I won't really blame that on him. He filmed his
last three movies in nineteen ninety eight. Sixteen year old
Brock Pierce left the acting world entirely after this point. Now,
he had become an early Internet nerd. He loves gaming.
He's a big gamer as a kid, and he's you know,
pretty early on the Internet train. And he's got the

(25:18):
good sense and intuition to know that the Internet's going
to play a major role in the future of entertainment.
So he co founds a company, Digital Entertainment Network or DEN,
with two other founders, Mark Collins Rector and Chad Shackley. DIN,
as we'll call it, is most often described as a
precursor or prelude to YouTube. Brock says it failed because

(25:41):
the technology wasn't ready basically streaming video. You just couldn't
stream video well enough back in the nineties. And this
is you know, pretty much true, and that puts dinn in.
Some people give him too much credit to be like
he knew YouTube was the future before anyone else did. Now,
a number of people tried. There were a few different
failed YouTube precursors that just didn't quite work because again,

(26:04):
the tech wasn't there. This was dinn was one of
a number of dot com era failures, a number of
companies that kind of reached for that brass ring just
a few years too early. And it's worth looking at
exactly what Brock and his friends wanted to create though,
how they were like billing this. The company had a
thirty eight page manifesto written by Collins Rector, who seems

(26:25):
to have been the lead visionary. Part of it read
the boob tube zombie television is dead. Global entertainment will
be delivered over the Internet. Digital entertainment network will create
the last network. And so you can see this mix
of you could see that as prescient, like but also
very wrong because we're still just watching TV over the

(26:46):
internet and it didn't create the last network. There's a
shitload of streaming sites. It kind of looked for a
while like Netflix was becoming that. But there's so fucking
many streaming sites right now, right Like, that's that's not
even what happened. So Collins Rector was forty and the
oldest and most experienced of the group of founders at
den and this is where we get into things being

(27:07):
very problematic, and this is maybe something that Brock has
sort of been raised to not see as weird. But
Collins Rector is forty years old, Chad, who is Collins
Rector's roommate, is twenty four, and the two had met
on bulletin boards. Whereas the La Times rights quote he

(27:27):
Collins Rector apparently used to strike up relationships with at
least two teenaged boys, right cool. The two move to
get moved in together when Shackley was sixteen and Collin's
Rector would have been in his mid thirties. Ew Shackley's
parents seem to have thought that this was mostly a
business arrangement, that they were just like you know, founders

(27:49):
and starting a company and what we don't want to
get in the way of our son. This was a
sexual relationship, like this is a there's what bad I say,
sexual relationship?

Speaker 3 (28:01):
This is rape? You know he's sixteen.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
The parent they.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Are quote thought it was a business.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Or do let your that's all I've read about it.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
You know, I don't.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
Known with a grown man.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
It seems like a bad judgment. I'll say that. Sorry,
that's still make money. So Brock gets involved with these
guys when Shackley's twenty four and Brock is seventeen. So
it's seventeen. Brock is in business with a forty year
old and a twenty four year old, Yeah, starting this company,
and he moves into them. They've got a mansion, as

(28:35):
we'll talk about, and he moves in with these guys. Oh,
shortly before Den seeks its first round of funding. Now
Den gets a lot of interest.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Again, this is the.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Dot com boom. Venture capitalists are throwing a shitload of
money in a bunch of dumb places. It attracts about
eighty eight million dollars in funding, including money from actor
Fred Savage and five million dollars from former US representative
Michael Huffington.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
What I mean, they were just everyone who had a
concept like this gets five million dollars, and one of
them because YouTube, that's their lot, right, exactly exactly, That
is basically what happened, right, And this was one of
the bad bets, although they got eighty eight million. Yeah,
so this was enough to pay for this. Eighty eight
million dollars pays for about a two year wild ride

(29:22):
for Pearson his co founders. They all live together in
a twelve thousand square foot mansion and Encino. They all
drive sports cars. They threw these massive parties that celebrities
show up to that they bill his work events. Basically, No,
these parties are part of the business, right, We've got
to build, you know, we got to make ourselves part
of the culture in Hollywood, right, Like that's kind of
the argument they're making.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
But you're not in Hollywood, You're in Encino.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
You're in Encino.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
Yeah, fair, this is the business model of many businesses. Yes, right,
So they're not exactly they're not quite outliers really.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Right, they're not.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
They're not out like this is this is how starts.
They're not doing it in Hollywood. They're up in the valley,
but they have like their big party house mansion, right,
and they're arguing that, like, well.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
These wild parties are a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
It's sexually assaulted. Are a crucial part of the business.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, yeah, prescient to their eventual business, I suppose, but right, yeah, yeah,
a warning to us maybe for the La Times quote
in his manifesto, crafted to energize early employees, Collins Rectors
set his sites on segments of so called generation Why
that he said we're being ignored by mainstream television and movies.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
He identified punk rockers, extreme skaters, and hip hoppers and
put gay teenagers at the top of the list. The
company would build a huge market by global casting to
a narrow cast audience. He vowed, now here you can
see some actual insight.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
I mean, it's ridiculous calling them hip hoppers. That shows
a deep disconnect with at least a chunk of pop culture.
But pointing out that like the future is of future
media is going to be catering to these like really
narrow groups of fandoms of subcultures, is like, that is
a legitimate insight, right. That is that did turn out

(31:06):
to be a major part of the future of media. Right,
And the fact that they seem to know like reach
in because he is a forty year old man who
is molesting teenage boys. It's all it's dark that he's
also focusing on gay teenage stories. But it is a
lot of very successful media in the twenty first century

(31:26):
is queer people telling queer stories. Right, So there's there's
a degree of understanding of where the media is going
that's also mixed with deeply fucked up abusive stuff. About
this guy Collins. Right, well, it's like it's it just
this guy got.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
To where it was because his self serving thing happens
to have been profitable.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Right, let's talk about how he got to where he was.
So Collins rector raises this eighty eight million because he
spends months crisscrossing the country while while Brock and Shackley
are kind of working out of the mansion, College Director
spends a lot of time drumming up investment money and
giving his pitch to anyone who will listen. He brags
about the features that den is going to have. Users

(32:04):
are gonna be able to pause shows just as they're
watching them, Oh my god. And this is something he
points out, you'll be able to if you see an
actor wearing a shirt you like, you'll be able to
click on the shirt on screen and it'll take you
to a website where you can buy it.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
And that's again that's a oh yeah, you definitely saw
pieces of our horrible future, you know, like this is
this is these are real. Both of these are real
features that are eventually materialized in various ways. Right, But
also so did a lot of people peop yes, and
more to the point, these features may as well have

(32:40):
been star trek bullshit in nineteen ninety eight, because about
two percent of the country had high speed internet. You
know you're not clicking a fucking T shirt. You're not
streaming video most people.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Yeah, you can say a lot of shit. This was
the time when it was easy to say a lot
of shit. But like, I, oh, can't build it yet.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
I had dial up in ninety eight, And I will
tell you stream a video meant pulling up a video,
pausing it, letting it fucking buffer for like forty five minutes,
and then watching your four minute video. OK. So the
company continued to generate buzz and investments through nineteen ninety nine,
but one thing was off. No one seemed to know

(33:18):
where Mark Collins Rector had come from or who he
really was. The La Times tried to reach out to
dozens of his past business associates and even friends, all
of whom either denied knowing him or aftered conflicting stories
about his life. Quote Collins Rector often claimed to be
in his late twenties, and associates and employees so he
gave the impression that he had been a computer student

(33:39):
at UCLA, but company filing show that he is forty,
and officials at UCLA say there is no record he
was ever a student there. According to records in Los
Angeles Superior Court, he changed his name in nineteen ninety
eight from Mark Rector to Mark Collins Rector.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
I don't like this man very much.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
He's not a good guy.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Not a good guy, and he's great. He's straddling the
line between serial entrepreneur and con man and any as
I say often, any founder, anyone who wants to start
a tech company, especially in this period, has some con
man jobs. Stee jobs is part con man, right, because
part of what you're doing is promising and guaranteeing people

(34:21):
they will get something that you don't know you can
actually make yet Yeah, right, that is a key part
of the business, and that's a bit of a con
Now Jobs wound up finding people who are able to
make the things that he promised happen.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
Generally not always well, it's it's.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
The successes are the ones that in hindsight found the
right person like right, Like, we just have the benefit
of Elon Muskle likes being on Twitter to know he's
if he wasn't on Twitter, we simply wouldn't know this shit.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
If the company was just making products and he was
never making promises or any of these like not like
he would still have a lot of his aura to him.
He just kept fucking quiet anyway. So Collins rector, yes,
straddles the line between entrepreneur and con man. Twenty years
back he had run This is because the La Times
looks into him. They found that his first business venture

(35:11):
was this telecom company in Florida called Telequest that he
ran like he started like twenty years ago. One of
his investors described him as a genius who was too
much into instant aggrandizement. Right, basically, he was great at
certain things. He was really smart, he was a visionary,
but he also wanted to spend all the money on
funshit like sports cars, as opposed to building a business.

(35:34):
That business eventually failed, and he started another one called
world coom Net, which sold travel packages and reached a
peak valuation of about one hundred million dollars before crashing
so shortly after moving in together. Because when he picks
up this kid Shackley from a message board, when Shackli's
like sixteen and they move into or younger, and they
move in together when Shackley's sixteen and they start a

(35:56):
business which they sell for millions of dollars and they
use that to buy the mansion this Din is operated.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
He found this kid, did he like on a chapboard
and then like yeah, yeah, the kid's parents permission and
transported him over state lines.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
I think it's within the state of California. But yeah,
his parents let him move in with this guy because
they think they're starting a bit. I mean, they do
start a business and they sell it and they.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
Make a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
This is just also an abuse of sexual sites.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Yeah, I do see where this is going.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Well, probably we don't know exactly what went on, but
that's heavily insinuated. Right, So, uh, they pay high salaries
Din does, and cash bonuses for their employees rather than
giving them stock, which is really weird. Most startups are
primarily compensating people in stock, and the idea is if
the company works out, then you get rich.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
It's sort of a sign that maybe they knew this
wasn't going to work and they were operating a con
that they're paying themselves in their friends huge salaries rather
than giving a bunch of stock options up right, that's
kind of a sign I know this isn't going to
work out. In the first six months of nineteen ninety nine,
DIN made zero revenue and lost twenty million dollars. Most
of that money goes to salaries, but some of it

(37:10):
is spent on giant parties that brought in an a
list guest roster. I want you to guess, just guessed
one of the guests, one of the celebrity guests that
show up at these parties. The DIN boys are throwing.

Speaker 4 (37:21):
What year? What year are we talking?

Speaker 2 (37:23):
This is like ninety nine, two thousand, ninety eight, ninety nine,
two thousand, like that period.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Oh god, oh right, Seinfeld, it's all the friends, every
the friends.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
No, it's Brian Singer. It's Brian Brian Singer and.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Gary Goddard, two of the allegedly sex pestious sex pests
in the history of sex pestitude, right, like you read
some of the allegations against Singer, who has not been
convicted of anything in a court of law. I have
to say, per Hollywood Reporter. And obviously the fact that
they're having these parties, the fact that fucking Collin's rector
is the guy he is. There's a lot of bad

(38:05):
things happening at these parties, kind of not unique, but
I will say they're bad things happening to young men.
Although I say young men, they're bad things happening to
young boys, which is different from some of the other
guys in Hollywood. To quote from the Hollywood Reporter, A
young man sued, claiming Collin's rector had started molesting him
when he was thirteen. More litigation followed regarding alleged goings

(38:27):
on at the Din mansion. One alleged victim, Alexander Burton,
claimed that Colin's rector, Pierce, and Shackley had supplied him
with alcohol and drugs even though he was under twenty one,
and that all three men subsequently assaulted him. Another accuser
was said to have written a suicide note, reading in
part I can't go on. I let them use me
as a sex tool. The note was discovered before a
suicide attempt could be made. There were also accusations that

(38:48):
Collin's rector would intimidate his victims by brandishing a gun.
So Jesus bad and again to make it very quick.
First off, for legal reasons, brock Pierce has not been
convicted of anything. He has not been proven in a
court of law to have abused anyone at these parties.
He has just been accused of it. There was at
least one case where things were settled out of court,

(39:11):
but Collin's rector has been convicted of things and brock
Pierce is not. I do want to make that clear.
But it's also clear there are allegations against brock Piers
during this time that he sexually assaulted at least one
child that I'm aware of, right, or at least one
alleged victim sorry, yeah, who was under twenty one. So
you know, interpret that how you will. I know how

(39:33):
I feel about brock Pierce, but again, hasn't been convicted
of anything. So the resultant lawsuit forced Mark Collins Rector
to leave the country before Din could ipo, and the
company collapsed quickly after that. About a third of the
employees were laid off and new management struggled to write
a sinking ship. Collins, Rector, under indictment for transporting miners

(39:54):
across state lines for sex, took Shackley and Pierce to
Spain with him in August of two thousands. So the
boys have now fled the country for Spain, where they're
living in an ice villa, one has to assume, yeah,
and probably continuing to get up to things we don't
want to think about. Yeah, one would assume. Now in
May of twenty twenty two their home, one may assume,

(40:16):
because in May of twenty twenty two, their home was
raided by Interpol. Like not a great sign when your
house gets rated by Interpol.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
Wow, while you're on the run from the.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Right for transporting miners across state lines. And the search
of their home in Spain found weapons and thousands of
individual pieces of child sex abuse material, right, thousands of
photos of like naked kids being abused. Pierce has claimed
he was unaware that the photos were in the house.
Thousands of pieces of born I didn't know about, you know.

(40:50):
He and Shackley were released, but their older friend was
ultimately extradited to the United States for his many crimes
and pled guilty to five counts of trafficking miners. And again,
maybe Pierce didn't know about the photos. Legally, I have
to say that, right, because he and Shackley were released,
whereas fucking Collins Rector was extra diitted.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Right, is that motherfucker a jail for a long time?

Speaker 2 (41:14):
No, a few months. He does a few months in prison,
and then he flees the country because he's still rich,
and he seems to still reside in Europe today. Last
I heard he was there in like twenty fourteen. I
don't know what he's up to right now or I hate.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
It, but yeah, I hate it here.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Yeah it's great. It's not great, it's not good. Yeah,
Planet Earth.

Speaker 4 (41:35):
In this time. Yes, that's that's what I mean.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
After this all kind of blows over, Pierce returns to
the US. He settles the claims against him. He has
never been ignowed. He has never acknowledged or been convicted
of any wrongdoing during this period of time. But while
he was in Spain before he goes back to the US,
he creates his next company, Internet Gaming Entertainment or IG.
E heard of this company, Andrew.

Speaker 4 (42:02):
I thought you were gonna say IGN. I guess now this,
so did I for a second when I first started
readings with No, he didn't make ign right, No he didn't.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Did you ever play World of Warcraft like after it
came out, like right after it came out?

Speaker 4 (42:16):
Uh, not as much, but like I've I've been in
the room when people are playing it.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, Yeah, I was big into World of Warcraft right
at for like the first two years after it came out,
like release the first expansion pack basically, and if you
were playing well during that period, there's a good chance
you know what IgE is because this is the company
that made gold farming into a thing, right, Oh, like
that this is They're not. There were others obviously, but

(42:40):
IgE was the big gold farming company, and they were
the company that kind of established gold farming as an
industry for the chunk of time that.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
It was right. Oh god.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Now the goal with IgE, though, this is what's important.
The company's goal was not to do what it became,
which was it was basically farming gold in video games
like EverQuest and World of Warcraft against the express desires
and the stated rules of the developers that made those games.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
IG's actual goal was to enable and to convince the
gaming industry to enable trading of real money for virtual goods,
which is the thing that all basically all big games
do now, right, Yeah, this was the idea IgE wanted
to push. That that was controversial at this point in time.
Collin's rector would later claim that he was the shadow

(43:30):
founder of the company that he had the idea and
Brock took the credit. Pierce denies this. I don't know
the truth, But as the Hollywood Reporter makes clear quote,
what's unclear is when Colin's Rector stopped being a part
of Pierce's life. In a lawsuit against Pierce, a former
partner in IgE claimed that Pierce had told him in
two thousand and five that Colin's rector, then living overseas
and according to the FED, still consorting with teenage boys,

(43:52):
had been blackmailing him, threatening to damage IgE in the
eyes of investors. Pierce's rep says Collin's rector never threatened
to blackmail denies that Pierce ever made such a statement.
Pierce separated in any business relationship with Den failed and
the Internet bubble burst in two thousand. Pierce's personal relationship
with Collin's rector lasted until two thousand and three. The
rep says that's after Collin's Rector's indictment in two thousand

(44:14):
and after interpoll showed up at the house in Spain
in two thousand and two. But Pierce's rep says at
the time of his arrest, collins rector asserted his innocence.
It wasn't until Pierce received additional information concerning Colin's rector's
improper actions that he separated entirely. So, you know, I
don't I mean, he's still I don't think. I think

(44:34):
he basically knew. He is very young at this point,
but he has also been involved in a lot of
bad behavior. He is an adult now and he right,
you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy more now,
I will say, eventually Collin's Rector exits Pierce's life and
whatever impact he had on IgE, this is Pierce's baby

(44:54):
for the majority of the time that the company exists, right,
and once Collin's Rectors kind of out of the picture,
you see, there's maybe this need in Pierce to have
an older man to give him advice and professional assistance.
I mean, that's a good idea professionally in cases like this,
but also it seems to be something Pierce maybe seeks

(45:14):
out kind of pathologically, and in this case, the next
older man that he seeks out as a mentor is
Steve Bannon.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
Now it may said, what the fuck, it's not.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Great, it's fucked up.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Obviously we know who Bannon is, and heywy becomes it
makes sense, right at a time. Steve is a fabulously
wealthy producer. Right, he gets his start as like a
banker basically, but he's he helps like make fucking Seinfeld, right,
And Brock had wanted to be a producer himself. He
came from Hollywood. So Bannon is the sort of authority

(45:53):
figure Pierce had grown up listening to and respecting, right, Like,
he clearly has a lot of respect for the job.
So it makes sense that Bannon would be a guy
that he kind of inherently trust. So by the time
Bannon came to IgE, World of Warcraft was the biggest
game in history, and there were millions being made selling
easy access to gold and other in game resources that

(46:14):
normally you had to grind for dozens of hours to get.
IgE had set up gold farms in China using cheap
workers who could spend long hours doing that in game
grinding for the player. Now, this wasn't illegal, right, This
is not a crime to operate a business like this,
but it is a gray market. This may seem kind
of hard to believe given the present realities of the

(46:35):
video game industry, but game developers initially had a big
issue with the idea of gamers using real money to
buy in game assets. For one thing, if you actually
care about making a good game, if that's your interest,
is actually making a game that's like a quality game
in its construction, letting people buy their way to have
better stuff rex the game, right, Like, it kind of

(46:59):
fucks up the ole thing, you know.

Speaker 4 (47:00):
Well, it's like it's like the two goals. It's like,
is your actual goal as a studo as a game
studio to make a good game or is it to
make money? Right? Those are not necessarily rights in it.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
And the studios land on make money, But the game
developers themselves often were very hesitant to embrace this kind
of thing initially, right. And so there's also like World
of Warcraft has an in game economy that Blizzard spent
quite a bit of time trying to set up and
make like functional. Right, Yeah, So they're also upset that

(47:30):
this is fucking up the end game economy, so they
sought to ban gold Farmers whenever they cropped up. In
two thousand and five, Pierce met Bannon and brought him
into IgE to act as the adult in the room.
The company needed major investment money if it was going
to survive and thrive, and Bannon basically Bannon Pierc's Bannon
is the trusted old head who investors would because Pierce

(47:54):
has a reputation, right, He's somebody who people have a
degree of faith, and they also see really young. So
if they're going to invest serious money in a company
he's starting, they want to see there's a guy like
Steve Bannon, you know. So that's why Bannon's there. Bannon
visits the company's Hong Kong offices and he works out
a deal where by Goldman Sachs, his old employer, invested

(48:15):
sixty million dollars and he became the VP of IgE.
Now it's important to note IG's pretty evil before Bannon
comes on board. Not only is it kind of ruining
the spirit of the games that its farmers operate in,
but the whole business hinges on a lot of questionable activity.
As the Washington Boast summarizes, it's.

Speaker 4 (48:35):
Like a digital sweatshop. Right, yeah, it is a digital sweatshop,
right yeah. IgE employees in the Hong Kong office created
accounts for the company's delivery avatars using the names and
home addresses of unwinning US residents picked at random. In
a phone directory. The company used dial up phone service
that connected to servers in the United States, making it
appear that they were using computers there rather than in

(48:56):
Hong Kong. We were spending twenty thousand dollars a month
on dial up service. One employee said, So that's shady.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Fuck.

Speaker 4 (49:06):
We have zero point five versions business so insane? Oh
my god.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Yeah, speaking of stealing people's identities for profit, you know
who loves to do that besides me?

Speaker 4 (49:20):
That's right?

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Is our sponsors killing me? And we're bad? So uh.
Gold farmers working for IgE in China made as little
as twenty five cents an hour, laboring in cramped factories

(49:42):
the New York Times described as virtual sweatshops. Bannon's job
then was to convince old money people that this business
is a gold mine. And unfortunately he has some success
with this initially, but he doesn't succeed enough. He's able
to get a lot of money for IgE, but the
company still doesn't like work out in the long run,
because he's not able to convince the people who matter most, right,

(50:04):
the executives running game companies like Blizzard, Because ultimately, IgE
can only be viable as a business if Blizzard stops
banning their farmers and deleting the accounts and stuff that
have all of the money that they're trying to transfer
to people, and Blizzard refuses to do that. They just
do not initially accept, like obviously Activision. Blizzard eventually becomes

(50:27):
perfectly fine with in game purchases and all this shit. Right,
they have no issue with these micro.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
I mean on any like even the philosophical people that
agree with them. It's not that IG. It's not the
what Ige's doing that they don't like. It's that IG's
not in house, right like right.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Right, I mean I think there is from people who
care about the quality of the game. There's people who
just shown issue with what they're doing. But right, yeah,
you are correct when it comes to the.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
Yeah, there's certainly plenty of people, even at the time
at Blizzard that were like, yeah, oh my god, yeah
in transections amazing, and.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
That's why it's it's done that these guys.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Yeah, IGU was ever hoping the company would like that
Blizzard or whoever, would would accept there being a middleman
he makes money off of like their in game world,
Like that's what, Yeah, why would they be okay with this?
So Blizzard constantly raids IgE. Right, They they find people's accounts,

(51:22):
they delete them, they ban people who are buying gold.
There's a bunch of lawsuits from people who bought gold
and didn't get it.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
YadA, YadA, YadA. Causes a bunch of problems for IgE.
Pierce eventually has to step down as CEO and Bannon
replaces him, And it's kind of framed as like Bannon
edges Pierce out, but that doesn't It seems to have
been perfectly friendly, like Pierce seems to have been fine
with this and understood that, like this is what's you
know we need to do for the next stage of
the business.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Right Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Ultimately IgE stops selling gold entirely, and under Bannon, the
company is renamed Affinity Media Holdings and instead makes it
its money running and operating a series of chat rooms
and forums for gamers. So the company pivots to running
places where gamers communicate and socialize. And Bannon first he

(52:13):
sees he sees how angry these gamers had gotten at
gold farming, and he starts paying attention to the social
dynamics and these online communities, and it gives him a horrible,
awful idea. And I'm going to quote from the Washington
Post here, Bannon became fascinated with a collective power of
gamers who gathered on these sites. According to journalist Joshua Green,

(52:34):
who wrote a book Devil's Bargain about Bannon's rise in
the Trump administration, selling virtual currency was highly unpopular with
many gamers, and they railed against IgE in these chat rooms,
putting pressure on the companies that operated the games not
to partner with IgE. These guys, these rootless white males,
had monster power, Bannon said, right, so he's he's starting

(52:54):
to realize. Okay, this kind of fucked us, the power
that these these inco eight groups of angry white dudes
on the internet. It kind of fucked the business. Now,
but you could manipulate these guys. You could tune them
up and turn them on an enemy and unleash them
as a weapon, and they have the ability to do
some damage. Right. This is where Bannon makes that realization. Right,

(53:17):
And I know, folks that were fifty five minutes in
and I barely talked about Epstein passed the introduction. Trust me,
we're coming back to him. This is all necessary groundwork
for you to understand Epstein's role in all this. So
Brock Pierce would later describe Steve Bannon as his right
hand man for like seven years, which again suggests there
were no hard feelings about Bannon replacing him a CEO

(53:39):
of IgE. Not long after leaving the company, Brock gets
involved in the world of cryptocurrency. That's kind of his
next move after gaming. He founds a company called Blockchain Capital,
and he is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative
that he found this under right, Well, he's like a
part of the Clinton Global Initiative as he creates Blockchain Capital,

(54:00):
which again, the Clintons are very tied to Epstein, right,
And that maybe part of how Jeffrey Epstein heard about
Brock Pierce for the first time is because Pierce's is
tied in through the Clinton Global Initiative. Now, let's perspective
shift back to our old pal, Jeffrey. He had served
time I'm two thousand and eight and two thousand and
nine for soliciting sex from a minor, right, but he

(54:24):
was by twenty ten a free man. He was still rich,
and he was still influential, but he was something of
a pariah, at least to normal people. He's not a
pariah to the power elite. He's not a parrie to
the people running the New York Times, to a lot
of people working at the Times. He's not a prior
to a lot of Harvard professors, to a lot of
famous academics and scientists, to a lot of celebrities. But

(54:45):
he's like, in public is a guy who got arrested
for fucking a kid, you know, right, and this aid
at him. He hates the fact that, like he had
to take an l right, and that's he sees it
as this kind of petty because his friends are like, man,
you kind of got off light, which he did. But
it really bugs him that he had to suffer any

(55:05):
consequences at all, because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Now,
it would take years.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Evidence suggests that his peer group will not face consequences
for the same behavior, so in a something.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Of resigned or whatever. But yes, yeah, yeah, So it's
going to take years for the reality of Epstein's conviction
and what the scattered stories from his victims meant to
coalesce into a widespread understanding of his crimes. Right in
twenty ten, two nine ten, not a lot of people
are talking about Epstein is like this vast child sex

(55:37):
trafficker who has this like secret empire that all of
the world that takes some time to build up as
more stories come out, as our understanding gains brough are
there's some people who who understand that about him from
this stage, particularly his victims, but it's not widely known
at this point.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
But he can.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
He's kind of watching as he's sitting in his Manhattan
penthouse or on his private sex island's slowly over the years,
watching the story come together, watching people start to become
more and more aware of what he'd done, and he
seems to This is I think his radicalizing the moment,
because he sees a few different enemies coalescing to ruin
his life. Right, and this alliance is roughly a mix

(56:19):
between You've got your busy body feminists, right, including a
lot of his victims. You've got meddlesome reporters, and of
course you've got you know, the actual people that he heard, right,
You've got these like feminist activists, you've got these metalsome journalists,
and you've got his former victims, all of whom won't
shut up.

Speaker 4 (56:35):
Right.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
That's how Epstein sees this, and the answer to all
of these problems, he seems to have decided was to
use his position of influence to push for a change
in the culture, to a culture where maybe journalists, or
at least the kind of journalists who will report on
this stuff, have less interest, where maybe women are more
frightened to speak up, and where maybe victims have fewer rights.

(56:56):
You know, I really do think a lot of his life. Yeah,
he's a cool dude. So his feelings on all of
this evolved as he tried to crack down on uncomfortable
reporting about his life. In a write up for the
website protos cast Piance writes, in an effort to halt
the decline, Epstein seeks out help from Alfred Secl aka

(57:16):
al Scyl, a serial scammer and illusionist who's been dating
Gillan Maxwell's sister Isabelle for years. Epstein tasks Secle with
what he presumes to be a relatively cheap and easy
job wipe the Internet of his sins. This proves to
be a pipe dream, whether due to Secyl's own incompetence
in greed or due to Epstein's unrepaarable reputation A twenty
five thousand dollars job becomes a forty five thousand dollars

(57:39):
job with an added luxury conference called the mind Shift Conference,
hosted on Little Saint James and to be paid for
by the Epstein Foundation. And this is meaningful. That's the
most important thing about his connection to this con man,
al Secyl, right is that Secyl says, Hey, you need
to hold a conference on your Sex island about like

(57:59):
all of the different shifts that are taking place in
technology and like philosophy and psychology, right, which is going
to include cryptocurrency, which is why brock Pierce is gonna
get invited right now. Alsekhel is a con man, and
I think kind of similar to Collins rector perhaps a
bit more shameless. So the mind Shift Conference is a

(58:20):
massive failure if judged by its stated goals. It is
not go over well. Epstein, like when he starts getting
involved in this, Epstein views the Mindshift Conference like, this
is gonna be my TED Talks, Like I'm going to
create the new TED Talks, right, the new the new
TED Talks are on my private child molestation island.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
Right, This is where everything you need to know in
all fucking Domains is gonna happen. Oh god, got It's
people are so dumb.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
They're so dumb, and they're all the same fucking sad weirdo, right,
like the idea that like, I need a Ted talk
on my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile.
So most of the panels at this conference are a bust.
But one of the invited speakers is Brock Pierce. And again,
maybe this connection comes because of the Clinton founday, you know,
because he's Clinton is aware of this guy, and Clinton

(59:12):
knows Jeffrey, I don't exactly know. But Brock Pierce is
invited this thing and he gives a talk about crypto,
and Epstein likes this. He later writes to a colleague
that he found the young entrepreneur interesting, and Brock is
kind of the only good thing about this conference.

Speaker 4 (59:27):
As Epstein is Brockett right time.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Brock is in his twenties at this point, right so
Epstein increasingly finds Brock's pet cause cryptocurrency intriguing. This is
what gets Epstein interested in crypto, As Piance writes, previously,
Jeffrey Epstein had considered bitcoin and its ilk to be
only useful for criminals. And it's unclear what about Brock's

(59:50):
presentation changed Epstein's mind, but the fact that Jeffrey was
himself now a convicted criminal may have played a Well
maybe it's just that like, this is only for criminals.
Oh but I'm a criminal.

Speaker 4 (59:59):
Now, yeah, exactly, yeah, right. It's so funny that he
had the correct no, you're from money lauddering. It's from
money laddering, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
So Epstein's relationship with al Sekel fell apart after the conference.
Al tried to sell a bunch of fake art and
antiquities and got himself blacklisted, but Epstein's broader interest in Brock,
Pierce and cryptocurrency continue after this point. In June of
two thousand and seven, Epstein starts emailing with Gavin Andersson,
the successor to Sushtoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. And

(01:00:35):
we don't actually know who Nakamoto really was. This is
a big mystery in the world of bitcoin. But he
picks Anderson to be the lead maintainer of bitcoin development
after he retires in April of twenty eleven, and we
don't know why he retired. Some people suggest that it's
because of what Andresen was talking about doing at this
point in time, which is Andresen right around the time

(01:00:58):
Nakamoto retires, starts talking about how he's going to give
a talk on bitcoin to the CIA, like at CIA
headquarters in Langley. And this is, to say the least
controversial among cryptocurrency advocates, right. The first wave of crypto
enthusiasts are libertarian and they're very anti state people. This
is an ideological thing for a lot of them, and

(01:01:20):
they don't like the CIA very much. The fact that Andresen,
basically as soon as he becomes the director of the project,
after Nakamoto is like I'm going to go talk to
the CIA about it is kind of giving up the
game for the real money people in crypto, right, which
is this isn't about escaping the state. You're not freeing
yourselves from the shackles of the government. You're co opting it. Right,

(01:01:45):
Crypto is as we've seen from the president. Right, We're like, no,
he's the fucking Bitcoin didn't free people from the clutches
of the government and the Federal Reserve. It gave the
president a way to take bribes. Yeah, right, Like that's
how crypto.

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
All those fucking horrible functions, So any rich fool can
do it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yeah, but this is really controversial at the time, right.
So Epstein emails Andrewson two days before he talks to
the CIA, and he seems to have started phishing around.
He's asking his contacts for Gavin's phone number? Does anyone
know this guy? Does anyone have his number? A few
weeks earlier, he starts by asking Bay Area socialite and

(01:02:25):
professional hanger on Jason Calacanis, who is also close to
Elon Musk, and eventually he gets the info and the
two soon to have gotten in touch. On the twelfth,
he's like emailing and he asks Rock directly for his
phone number. We don't know what the two. If the
two talked on the phone, we don't know what they
would have talked about. But on the fourteenth, two days
after he connects directly with Epstein, Andrewson speaks to the

(01:02:48):
CIA at Langley. The next day, Epstein emails Anderson about
meeting in person, and we don't know if they did,
but we know that he declines several invitations to do so. Right,
we don't know to what extent these people. We don't
know if they talked on the phone. We know they're
emailing a bunch, we know Epstein's trying to get in
touch with them. We know Epstein talks about meeting him
in person. We don't know what actually happens, and we'll

(01:03:10):
talk about there's some other times when Epstein will mention
andresen that make me think he and Gavin had more
of a relationship than Gavin wants to admit or that
is publicly known. Right, And one of the issues here
is that we just have what these people emailed about.
And in fact, if you search through variations of like
not for email or like you know, for phone only

(01:03:34):
or stuff like that in the Epstein files, you'll find
them Epstein periodically being like, hey, we got to take
this offline, Like this isn't in person conversation, this is
something we got to talk about on the phone. So
the fact that we can't prove via the emails that
Epstein and Gavin were connecting or what they were talking about,
doesn't mean they weren't right because a lot of this

(01:03:54):
stuff is just kind of off the record. But we
know that Epstein was working hard to be in contact
with them, and that they had the potential to be
in contact and that Epstein talks about Gavin as if
they were in contact at other points, right, So that's
what I can say, whatever the two discussed, if they
discussed anything. Epstein plunges ahead into the world of cryptocurrency.

(01:04:15):
After this point, he continues talking with Brock Pierce as well.
The two met repeatedly in person in two thousand and one,
and Epstein offers Pierce financial advice. Brock eventually comes to
him and admits that he hasn't paid his taxes in years,
and Epstein helps him sort that out. Their friendship continues
into the spring of twenty twelve, which is the first
time that we have a record of Epstein providing girls

(01:04:36):
to Brock Pierce, and you can see the email Shane
up on the website. It starts with Jeffrey Epstein saying
victim name and victim name are alone in LA. I
had to leave. Please assist leave your girlfriend home, and
then a large redacted section of the email, and Brock responds,
will do broke up with the girlfriend last night, so

(01:04:59):
that won't be a problem, best regards Brock, to which
Epstein responds, call me a little later, and then Brock
replies the next day, I had a great time with
the girls. Hope they had fun too. So we know
at this point, and you know, I might say, if
this was any other group of people, while girls sometimes

(01:05:20):
people refer to adult women that way, I'm not going
to assume that here. I'm not going to assume these
are not literal girls. Because it's Jeffrey Epstein, you know,
youw and Epstein's relationship with Brock and his interest in
bitcoin are only going to expand from this point on,

(01:05:41):
and both are going to bring him to the orbit
of several major figures on the New Right, including Steve Bannon,
and we'll talk about all that and much more in
part two. I know there wasn't as much Epstein as
you may have expected. I mean, we got a bit,
a good bit at the beginning. In the end, there's
a lot you have to hear about Brock Pierce first
to understand why all this matters.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
The reason people tune in is for backstory. You know,
you find the ship that I'm like, yeah, that's the pod.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Yeah, and Somehowell did in fact come up, which was incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Yeah, good for her.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Yeah yeah, well you got any pluggables to plug?

Speaker 4 (01:06:18):
Oh? I don't know, making a show called Starter Trek
on our premium sit suboptimal podcast. I saw you were
watching a little bit of Starfleet Academy Robert Couple. Yeah, yeah,
but my my cost Tony Newsom's a writer on.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
That and Ship right right right, Yeah, I love Tonni Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:06:36):
Beckett Peckett Mariner on lower Decks, so yeah, she's We're
watching Star Trek episodes and I have seen a bunch,
but I don't know nearly as much as hers, so
I'm I'm no.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
There's very few people involved in making Star Trek that
I feel like, really no Star Trek, and Toni is
one of them.

Speaker 3 (01:06:58):
Tony really no Star Trek. Wild.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
I've got a thing to plug before we go out here.
I met with just somebody last night when I was
out at a bar who told me about a local
Portland charity called the Artist Mentorship Program aka AMP, which
supports youth experiencing homelessness and has done so for over
thirty years. It serves young people aged fifteen to twenty
five and provides essential supplies and job training, with music

(01:07:24):
and art programs at the heart of its work. If
you'd like to support or learn more about AMP, you
can go to amppdx dot org. That's amppdx dot org.
It's good cause check them out.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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(01:08:04):
continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel YouTube dot com
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