00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:04:38.480I am a bit gloomy. So having your perspective, which puts it in such a very factual, but also like realistic, but like here are what could be solutions.
00:04:49.120Here could be like the good possibilities. And here are the realities. It's nice to be given those that kind of news from someone like you.
00:04:56.140So I appreciate that you bring this to us.
00:04:58.220That makes me so happy to hear. I mean, that really is what I try to do there.
00:05:02.780Like, there's no need for panic, even though things are tough and scary, but you still need to know what's going on.
00:05:09.700And also, I think sometimes the conversations that are happening these days are so grim that it's tempting to just sort of check out from them.
00:05:18.500But we really do need to understand how these things impact things like gender and things like identity and who gets to show up as themselves and who doesn't.
00:05:28.320You know, I think it's important. So thank you.
00:05:29.740yes well thank you um you know here's the million dollar question how have you been Bridget
00:05:37.000oh god this is like that broad city meme how am I
00:05:42.600no things are good I actually just came back from a trip to Spain I was there doing a live show for
00:05:51.040this other podcast that I work on called IRL with Mozilla Foundation which was awesome it was my
00:05:55.760first time in spain i went to barcelona which was lovely and wonderful i didn't want to come back
00:06:00.860uh we it was the first time it's ever happened to me we were supposed to land in barcelona
00:06:06.280we tried to land in barcelona through very atypical lightning storms and it was one of
00:06:13.920those situations where you know we everybody on the plane looked out the window and just saw these
00:06:19.940big bolts of lightning and we all just sort of made a quiet peace with our gods then the plane
00:06:25.840went back up in the air and the pilot was like yeah we can't land in barcelona so we're landing
00:06:30.760in madrid so i got to go to a bonus a bonus trip to madrid first time i've ever experienced that
00:06:36.300a plane landing in a different place and where you thought it was gonna land okay i think this
00:06:40.720is the only time that would be warranted for y'all to clap at the end of a flood
00:06:44.120we clap somebody sitting next to me burst into tears like it was like unfair it really was a
00:06:50.660moment of like are we gonna make it right everybody's quiet and eeriness because they're
00:06:55.900like oh god what do we do now that was that was the the creepy part is that people were
00:07:01.760like gasping and a few people like like shrieked or screamed but at a certain point everybody just
00:07:07.500got very quiet and that's when you know you're like oh this we are in a situation it got real
00:07:13.280but it ended up being fine and i got to see madrid for the first time so
00:07:18.260all good nice we love a good twist and happy ending yeah how have you two been
00:07:23.760well samantha's apparently you know my answer was not pretty and for the listeners who have
00:07:30.780listened consistently and have just recently heard my happy hour which was 30 minutes long
00:07:35.080of me and whining about adulthood i think they know but you know what we are together so i am
00:07:42.560doing much better right now than i was 20 minutes ago i will say that more like an unhappy hour
00:07:48.520am i right it really was we named we named that specific session and wine good stuff
00:07:53.320we have some wine and then we and then i say things well there's a power in unloading yourself
00:08:01.260like that i'm okay yeah i'm good i've had a lot of good times with friends lately and i appreciate
00:08:06.460that that's a nice i've gotten to see some people i haven't seen in a while and it's been nice i'm
00:08:21.040I feel like after the holidays is when the real slug begins.
00:08:24.300But holding on to those small comforts, like getting to see friends, you know, I think that really is very important.
00:08:31.640Yeah, and especially given some of the news right now and some of the dark, dark times and dark things we're going to talk about in this episode.
00:08:42.920That is right. Just a content warning up top because we are talking about convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, which I feel like it's everywhere in the news.
00:08:53.840you really kind of can't avoid the conversation around him today is november 20th so by the time
00:09:00.300you hear this there is some chance that things might have changed but here is the latest as of
00:09:06.000today so yesterday the senate almost unanimously voted to release the epstein files with only one
00:09:12.040dissenting vote republican representative clay higgins of louisiana so curious what's going on
00:09:17.680with him i looked at i was like oh you're just a major trumper even for republicans you see he
00:09:23.480seems like a quite extreme fellow so i guess i shouldn't be surprised but it is well to be like
00:09:28.440oh even among republicans just one dissenting vote so that bill then went to trump's desk
00:09:35.300there were some back and forth of whether trump was going to sign it but he did so what happens
00:09:40.120now is the Department of Justice has 30 days to release these files.
00:09:46.100I'm trying not to be a conspiracist, but I swear the more.
00:09:52.500I read, especially in this specific topic, I the 30 days seems too long.
00:09:59.960I know there has to be some like jurisdiction and all of that, but it feels like there's
00:10:04.300too much happening and 30 days is giving them too much time, including the fact that
00:10:10.120are they actually going to release it? That's my question.
00:10:13.780Yeah, that is seems to be the big question. I should say I am no attorney, so this is somewhat
00:10:18.400above my pay grade. But here's a little bit from CNN. Despite Trump signing the bill,
00:10:22.800uncertainty remains. Attorney General Pam Bondi said yesterday that the Department of Justice
00:10:26.800will, quote, follow the law. But some lawmakers and analysts are worried that the Trump administration
00:10:31.920may try to hinder the process by slowing the release or redacting information. So
00:10:36.820I don't know, above my pay grade, but your worries are grounded. You're not the only person with that
00:10:44.760question. That seems to be the question on everybody's mind. And in any event, this is still
00:10:50.140all like a very big reversal of the time very recently when Trump was calling this entire thing
00:10:56.120a Democrat hoax, when Pam Bondi was like, oh, there's not going to be any additional information
00:11:00.860released. We looked into it. We don't need to release any more information. But then Trump was
00:11:04.740also recently vowing to investigate any democrats accused of breaking the law and the epstein files
00:11:11.180which like if the entire thing was just a big democratic hoax why would there be democrats
00:11:16.040in the files i'm not fully sure that he thought this one through but there you have it and i do
00:11:22.540think it's this weird thing where people in an attempt to downplay this entire thing are saying
00:11:28.180well what if this takes down a prominent democrat like bill clinton to which i say great like get
00:11:35.960him out of here if bill clinton committed a crime and that is revealed in the epstein files
00:11:40.640take him to prison right like i don't think anybody is saying no we need to protect prominent
00:11:46.520democrats like bill clinton from accountability if they are named as having committed sex crimes
00:11:51.780in the epstein files and also do people really think that most leftists are like
00:11:57.000clinging to the legacy of bill clinton i saw this great post that was like oh no then i would have
00:12:03.080to take down my bill clinton yard sign burn my bill clinton hat and t-shirt take off my bill
00:12:08.980clinton car wrap like what are these people talking about this is completely like a fiction
00:12:13.760it really does baffle me i guess in the sense of like the people thinking everyone just because
00:12:21.540they have idolized a politician into a way of being like this is God's son literally putting
00:12:27.420pictures of like this he's the new Jesus that we all think of that way for anyone that we voted for
00:12:33.020instead of understanding a lot of the choices that we make is the lesser evil and hoping that
00:12:38.300we can negotiate and hold our people accountable to follow through with the promises they made like
00:12:43.600it's not like this level of like these are people who work for us these are people who we are
00:12:49.360supposed to be able to like count on to protect our rights not people i pray to because i think
00:12:55.220you're going to do something to other people that i don't like or i don't agree with that that's the
00:12:59.880other part to that is like their worship for him is not because they think he's going to do something
00:13:04.080great for them it's that he's going to be mean to other people for them exactly oh this is a bit of
00:13:10.180a non-sequitur but over the summer i was at ocean city maryland which is just like a kind of a
00:13:15.420trashy beach town that I fully love and I go there every summer and they have all these boardwalk
00:13:20.960t-shirt shops and every one of them has such prominent Trump memorabilia Trump hats Trump
00:13:27.620shirts it's like Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump and I remember thinking I want to go into one of
00:13:31.560these stores and be like excuse me where's your Hakeem Jeffries section like there's not you're
00:13:36.300you're so right that there's not an analogous thing on the left where people are buying like
00:13:41.860you know hakeem jeffrey's car wraps and stuff like ocean city boardwalks are not cluttered with
00:13:47.820memorabilia about aoc it's just an interesting level also the again with your non-sequitur i
00:13:56.640love that everyone and i mean everyone takes advantage of that level of consumerism be like
00:14:03.280yeah we'll buy those cheap products and sell it to everybody because they all buy it i'm gonna make
00:14:07.140money you're gonna be that ridiculous i'm gonna sell it to you get your money i'm not even mad at
00:14:12.300it to be honest with you so the thing about whether or not prominent people including democrats like0.97
00:14:17.700bill clinton would be involved in the epstein files is that epstein this is his total mo he
00:14:22.740intentionally had deep ties to all kinds of prominent wealthy powerful people on all sides
00:14:28.260of the aisle this is the same thing we saw from other convicted sex criminal sean diddy combs
00:14:34.760you know, surround yourself with wealthy, prominent, powerful people. And that both
00:14:39.980becomes this shield from accountability for your crimes. And then also you can get dirt on all
00:14:45.620these other powerful people and sort of have an extra layer of power and protection. So it is
00:14:50.600pretty likely that if the entirety of who did what is released, there would be powerful people
00:14:55.840on all sides of the political spectrum and also just like wealthy, famous, non-political people,
00:15:23.720And I'm like, what a way for people to find out who you are.
00:15:26.940Yes, this is why I wanted to make this episode
00:15:29.240So in part, just as an old, these names that come up, you're like, oh, well, if you're under 30, you might not know this name.
00:15:37.060But if you're over 30, you might remember a lot about this person just from being a person who was alive when a lot of this stuff was going on.
00:15:43.480So Larry Summers, he might not be a flashy name that you recognize.
00:15:47.660But if you have any cash dollar bills that were minted from 1999 to 2001, you are carrying around Larry Summers's signature in your wallet because his signature is on the money that was minted then because he was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under former President Bill Clinton.
00:16:08.160And he was also the director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama.
00:16:13.560Basically, that's just a fancy title for the fact that he was the top advisor on economic matters for the president.
00:16:21.140And Annie, you actually, I think we talked about the movie The Social Network one time on here and how much I like it.
00:16:26.560He is actually a fictionalized version of himself is portrayed in the movie The Social Network.
00:16:32.200He's sort of portrayed as like a good guy when the Winklevoss twins set up a meeting with him to complain that Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook while they were students at Harvard.
00:16:42.700of which Larry Summers used to be the president of, which I will come back to.
00:16:46.600But yeah, so you might have seen like a fictionalized version of Larry Summers in that movie.
00:16:51.560I'm going to have to go back and watch it now.
00:17:04.620And now I'm like, oh, why don't I feel like the Winklevoss twins are the kind of the ones that history sort of is like,
00:17:11.140Well, I'm not reading about them, like, having connections with convicted sex criminals and stuff or, you know, disrupting democracy via Facebook and Meta.
00:17:22.420Maybe they turned out to be maybe history will be kinder to the Winklevoss twins, even though they're sort of portrayed as the villains in that movie.
00:22:24.940that you think I don't understand your little play game?
00:22:29.300I just really am trying to set you up for success here.
00:22:32.900Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app,
00:22:35.760Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:38.240so folks have probably seen or heard about some of these emails that were newly released as part
00:22:48.960of the epstein files because last week the house oversight committee released a new round of 20 000
00:22:54.320documents and emails from epstein's estate and that is how we know that larry summers who is
00:22:59.980currently a very big deal professor at harvard university is mentioned as somebody who had a
00:23:05.640documented pretty uncool relationship with convicted pedophile and wealthy financier
00:23:12.820Jeffrey Epstein. And just in the way of disclosures before I talk too much about
00:23:17.220Harvard University, I should disclose that I am currently an affiliate of Harvard University's
00:23:21.620Berkman Klein Center. So I did want to back up and just give a bit of a quick and dirty rundown
00:23:26.680of who Epstein is for folks who are not mired in this like I have been for the last couple of
00:23:31.340months. So Epstein was a wealthy financier who threw his money all over the place. He was convicted
00:23:37.320of sex crimes against a minor in 2008 and famously got off on a very lenient sentence for that crime,
00:23:44.080only 13 months with work release. Importantly, both before this and notably after this
00:23:51.140conviction, a lot of influential people continued to associate with Epstein, who by then was a
00:23:57.860convicted sex criminal. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking
00:24:04.460charges, and the New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide, but conspiracy theories
00:24:09.720claiming that Epstein didn't kill himself began to spread almost immediately in the aftermath.
00:24:15.040The idea here is that Epstein was taken out to avoid details that might incriminate powerful
00:24:20.700people that he associated with, and it's one of those theories that kind of works regardless of
00:24:25.700what side of the aisle you're on, because Epstein had ties with all the political parties.
00:24:31.540And as I said, that ingratiating himself with like wealthy, powerful spaces and people
00:24:37.940was just sort of Epstein's MO, especially in the tech world. He gave donations to a lot of
00:24:44.440influential tech spaces. We did an episode of my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet,
00:24:48.660about the contributions he made to MIT's Media Lab and the Kenyan first year MIT grad student
00:24:54.320who called for Joy Ito, the head of the Media Lab, to step down once this was revealed.
00:24:59.740He also had some kind of a relationship with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
00:25:06.600Bill Gates's ex-wife, Melinda, has given several interviews to the effect that her marriage to Bill Gates
00:25:13.940ended in part because of Bill Gates's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:25:19.500she does this interview with gail king where gail gail is like well what exactly happened like can
00:25:26.260you give us more details about what you know made you want to leave your husband because of epstein
00:25:32.840and she was like you're gonna have to ask bill gates that not me so it's like it's like a very
00:25:36.600it seems to me she's like insinuating something and i'll guess i'll just leave it at that so it's
00:25:42.000one of those things where you have a lot of powerful rich and famous people having this
00:25:48.180connection with Epstein. And that is how he designed it. And so when the House Oversight
00:25:53.500Committee released these emails and these documents, we got a lot more insight into what
00:25:58.580that looked like. And I just have to add as a side note, have you all read any of these emails
00:26:04.000or exchanges? I have not. It makes me sad. I've seen things being posted. So I know of blips.
00:26:11.400Okay. So this is just a side note, I guess. The way they are written is f***ing insane. Like reading these emails that some of the most prominent, wealthy, important people in government tech and media, reading the way that they emailed each other has absolutely cured me of my anxiety around needing to word my emails just so.
00:26:37.520when i'm writing an email i'm trying to gauge the exact right amount of exclamation marks to use to
00:26:43.540sound enthusiastic and easy to work with but not too enthusiastic every email is like no worries
00:26:49.100if not i'm happy to like i go through so i go through so much second guessing this meanwhile
00:26:54.780jeffrey epstein was just like yo what's up want to do some sex crimes later lol like every word
00:27:02.460misspelled every word mistyped every word misspelled like punctuation absent are completely
00:27:08.780inexplicable yes it's kind of like if a boomer was trying to be cool and they're like lols
00:27:16.640like that type of thing no one actually uses yes but they think that's what the kids are doing
00:27:21.060truly it is like up number four sex crime question mark lol with spelled with a z
00:27:29.440punctuated insane like also he put a lot of stuff in writing that I mean I just don't think any of
00:27:37.900this stuff should have been in writing and they're so egregiously mistyped that part of me wonders
00:27:42.060if this was intentional if they were trying to like evade some sort of something I have no idea
00:27:46.980but I want to make it clear that he wasn't writing these in like 1999 or something during a time when
00:27:53.580we didn't really have a concept of what email was or what did or didn't belong in emails and how to
00:27:58.180write them he was writing a lot of these emails in 2018 right at a time when email was commonplace
00:28:05.480the whole thing is just very weird to me yeah it does give to the like plausible deniability i
00:28:11.780would never write it that way that's not how i speak type of thing or just even because they
00:28:16.060tried to index you know you can search how many times a name comes up or whatever and these and
00:28:22.740So if if there's like a misspelling or if there's something that would mess up trying to index something.
00:28:28.940So I also was kind of like. Are you trying to get around something I don't know about?
00:28:35.220Yes, that was my big and I have no idea, but that was my thought because they're so everything is so egregiously misspelled that it almost is like this has to be some rich guy way of not having your crimes getting found out later or something.
00:28:49.260otherwise he just really couldn't type like that's how do you get those bottom
00:28:55.380quotation marks i feel like you have to go out of your way to do that that's what i'm saying
00:29:00.860i mean we know the actual like intelligence is not as intelligent as we think they are when it
00:29:08.400comes to white men so hell no hell no i mean they were putting this stuff in writing anyway so like0.95
00:29:15.460yeah don't put your crimes in writing however i've said this so many times there's nothing0.98
00:29:20.920when when when it's like oh we've released the emails i'm like well i'm gonna read every single
00:29:24.740one i i there's just something about people writing emails that they don't realize are
00:29:29.040going to be read later in a deposition or made public in a deposition or something yeah so i
00:29:33.400should give a big caveat that just because somebody knew epstein and associated with him
00:29:38.520and emailed with him does not necessarily mean that they did something criminal when a lot of
00:29:44.160these people have been asked, people are mostly like, oh, I didn't know him like that. But at the
00:29:49.980same time, it is not like what Epstein was doing was a secret, right? In 2011, mind you, this is
00:29:56.260two years after Epstein was convicted of a sex crime against a minor, Bill Gates told the New
00:30:02.980York Times about Epstein, quote, his lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing, although
00:30:08.740it would never work for me. So you're not going to ever convince me that Bill Gates had no idea
00:30:14.780he was associating with somebody who committed sex crimes against minors when he was saying that
00:30:19.580you're just not going to be able to convince me that he didn't know what was going on, which is
00:30:22.560what he says now. When Epstein was donating money to the MIT Media Lab, for instance, the staff at
00:30:29.200MIT had a whole system for flagging Epstein's donations using the code name Voldemort or he
00:30:37.340who shall not be named specifically to obscure where that money came from because he had already
00:30:42.820been convicted of sex crimes. So, yeah, these people knew this was not a big secret. People
00:30:48.040now who were like, oh, I had no idea. I don't know. I have a hard time believing some of the
00:30:54.260people who are going out of their way to say this now. Yeah. And I also think some of the things
00:31:02.920we're hearing, especially like Megyn Kelly being like, there's a difference between a five year
00:31:07.100old and 15 year old i feel like that we're also having to confront that older men do this and
00:31:18.380have been doing it forever and we've kind of societally been like oh that's his lifestyle
00:31:25.180or yeah that's yeah that's what he's into it's like gross yeah like the way bill gates is like0.65
00:31:33.420his lifestyle is certainly intriguing to me homie those are sex crimes against kids that's not a0.82
00:31:39.380lifestyle choice we're not talking about like being vegan we're talking about a entire network0.91
00:31:46.400designed to traffic children for sex crimes like we i think you're exactly right and i do think we0.60
00:31:55.600should talk about that because i think when we make epstein into a solo monster which she's
00:32:02.920definitely is a monster, but it makes it easy to not look at some of the ways these attitudes0.67
00:32:10.500really do show up all over the place, right? You don't have to be flying in girls on your1.00
00:32:17.020private plane nicknamed the Lolita Express to have really messed up attitudes about young girls.
00:32:25.800I was just reading an article about how a A.I. company was used to deep fake images of girls to make deep fake nudes.
00:32:37.700And they had used specifically yearbook pictures.
00:32:40.480And it was like one of the headlines I'd read was something to the effect of women's yearbook pictures used for deep fakes.
00:36:47.760Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:36:52.300I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:36:56.880I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:37:04.300They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:37:08.260But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:37:11.700They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:37:14.840Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:37:23.800If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:37:29.740This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:37:42.220I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:37:49.320I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:37:52.900From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:37:58.860It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:38:06.320Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:38:15.940Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:39:56.980So in this new drop of emails, we get some more insight into the relationship that Larry Summers had with Jeffrey Epstein, and it's a f***ing weird one.0.98
00:40:06.960So Summers described Epstein as his, quote, wingman.
00:40:11.280So from these emails, we learn that Larry Summers was really hung up on trying to pursue a romantic relationship with a student that he referred to as his mentee.
00:40:21.360And he consistently sought advice from Epstein about how to best do this.
00:40:25.800From November 2018 to July 2019, text messages and emails show that Larry Summers consistently asked Epstein for advice about this relationship.
00:40:35.840Epstein responded eagerly, offering encouragement and tips, even calling himself Summers' wingman in a message from November 2018.
00:40:43.660Maybe don't get a convicted sex criminal against kids.
00:40:48.020maybe don't seek this person out for advice on how to get your mentee who is also a student
00:40:53.780to have sex with you especially when you are married which by the way Larry Summers was when
00:40:59.320all of this was going down yes and also just to note he was contacting Epstein until he went to
00:41:07.700jail yes this is what I find so wild so to make it clear this contact was happening well after
00:41:14.440epstein's initial conviction on sex crimes against kids back in 2008 and you are so right annie the
00:41:21.200back and forth exchanges that larry summers had with jeffrey epstein they only ended the day before
00:41:27.580epstein was arrested again on new federal sex trafficking charges so that means they were like
00:41:32.740bud bud buds like if the back and forth about how to get your mentee to sleep with you only stopped
00:41:38.300because this man got arrested on federal sex trafficking charges y'all were in deep he they
00:41:43.100were they were like thickest thieves as far as i'm concerned literally like because someone was
00:41:48.240looking at the mail and you would have to do it by hand like that is insane that is insane
00:41:53.340i do want to get into the meat of some of these messages because i think they're very revealing
00:41:57.460about what kind of person was actually you know at the helm at harvard so at one point somers
00:42:03.660told epstein that he was worried that maybe his mentee didn't want to pursue a romantic or sexual
00:42:09.760relationship with him because maybe she just wanted to keep things professional. He said,
00:42:14.220quote, think for now I'm going nowhere with her except economics mentor. Boring. Summers wrote
00:42:20.740on November 2018. I think I'm right now in the seem very warmly in the rear view mirror category.
00:42:27.980She must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off, but wants professional connection a lot.
00:42:33.340So she holds to it. Summers wrote in March 2019, basically saying that, like, oh, like, I like her and maybe she likes me, but she just wants to keep me around for professional reasons.
00:42:45.120Mind you, this self-described, he is her mentor. So it's like, oh, she only wants me to, like, give her economics guidance and education.
00:42:54.220a little boring. So who was this student in question? According to the Harvard Crimson,
00:43:00.200in at least some of his exchanges with Epstein on the relationship, Summers appears to refer
00:43:04.860to economist K.U. Jin, a tenured professor at the London School of Economics at the time,
00:43:10.060who was mentioned in a series of late 2018 messages between the two men. So I actually
00:43:15.140knew who she was before this all came to life because she's a pretty prominent person. She
00:43:19.420It goes on all the big podcasts like she has a pretty prominent career and is a I would say a public figure at this point.
00:43:26.740So I mentioned this because look how grossly Larry Summers talks about this person who at the time was his mentor.
00:43:36.400Larry Summers was forwarding academic work that she would send to him to Epstein.
00:43:41.740So like, here's my paper. And then he's like, I got to get I got to get Epstein's eyes on this.
00:43:46.040So Summers forwarded Epstein an email from Jin, which she was asking for feedback on a paper that she had written.
00:43:52.360And then Summers mused to Epstein that it was probably appropriate to hold off on responding.
00:43:57.880So he's really doing that thing of like, ooh, like, when should I text back?
00:44:01.120Like, is it like, should I give her her paper feedback today or does that look too eager?
00:59:28.340So the fallout from Larry Summers' relationship with Epstein being made clear, I actually feel like it's been pretty minimal, honestly.
00:59:39.760Initially, after making that statement, he said that he was going to be stepping back from public roles, but was going to be continuing teaching at Harvard.
00:59:48.700So he is currently like a faculty member at Harvard. There was a video. Maybe I'll put the audio in if I can find it.
00:59:55.060There's a video of him starting his class a couple of days ago, basically with an apology to students being like, oh, I'm sorry that I was friends with Epstein.
01:00:05.060With your permission, I'd like to just like continue talking about economics in class now.
01:00:10.400So after he announced that he was going to be not stepping back from teaching, he eventually did reverse course and said that he was going to be stepping back for the moment.
01:00:20.180He does have tenure, so it's not like he was fired and who knows what will happen next.
01:00:24.600But TAs are going to finish off the rest of his class for the semester.
01:00:28.900He also resigned from the board of OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT.
01:00:33.040And Harvard is launching an investigation into his connections with Epstein, which, yeah, I'll say they f***ing should.
01:00:40.880Elizabeth Warren, who is a law professor at Harvard, has urged the university to cut ties with him.
01:00:45.880And I guess the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because, you know, when I was doing research,
01:00:51.580one of the big pieces that I read to prepare for this conversation was this piece in the Times
01:00:55.560about whether or not Summers could mount a comeback since he's bounced back so many times
01:01:00.840in the past. Now, this piece in the Times was published the day that Summers announced that
01:01:06.880he was going to be temporarily stepping back from his classes. And I just hated that that
01:01:12.220conversation was being framed just a few hours after he announced he was just stepping down
01:01:17.040temporarily as like well can his career be saved he's 70 years old I don't think that him being0.93
01:01:25.660relieved from being in a position to be around young you know co-eds and students and to have
01:01:31.980this this relationship where he is inherently an authority figure to people like that I don't think
01:01:37.620that's like ruining his life you know what I'm saying like like the fact that it was even phrased
01:01:42.700that way really bothered me. And Alejandro Caraballo, who is a clinical instructor at
01:01:47.960Harvard Law Cyber Clinic, commented online, quote, it is not normal for a professor to start a class
01:01:54.500discussing how they regret being best buddies with a child sex trafficker. And honestly,
01:02:00.720I have to agree, right? Like we cannot, this is not an apologize and move on and continue with
01:02:09.200the economics lesson kind of thing, this is a pretty big deal that when we should be treating
01:02:15.380it like it's a pretty big deal. And I think especially someone like Larry Summers, who
01:02:20.240at the very least has over and over again, proven himself to have pretty bad judgment when it comes
01:02:25.560to women, having this person have roles where he is so involved and hands on about shaping what
01:02:33.180the future of technology looks like through things like a board position at OpenAI, I
01:02:38.780just think that we really have to think about what that means and whether or not men like
01:02:45.820this are who we want shaping the future of how technology shows up in all of our lives.
01:02:51.340I certainly do not trust somebody like Larry Summers to be making decisions about what
01:02:56.000our shared future is going to look like.
01:02:58.700I'm honestly so disturbed by the mere fact that people are ignoring the fact that he
01:03:03.180for once, like, I'm sure there's so many other instances of, like, sexual harassment.
01:03:07.060Like, she actually said, I don't want to do this.
01:03:11.800And her life is probably being upended.
01:03:13.340Like, I cannot imagine what she, like, the trauma and the shock she's going through
01:03:18.380seeing these emails of not only that, having the name of Epstein.
01:03:22.260Like, if she didn't know him, she hadn't met him.
01:03:24.660And knowing all the things about him, she, like, oh, I literally was being trafficked,
01:03:29.340like groom trafficked and kind of in a way with this dude who traffics and grooms women
01:03:34.640and like as his profession, like that's what he was doing. And this man who I trusted
01:03:39.400was getting like territorial slash predatorial advice for me when all I'm trying to do is
01:03:48.800survive and get an education and move on in this life. Like there's so much to this.
01:03:53.200Yeah. And it's not like she asked to be involved in this. And I should say, in case it's not clear,
01:03:58.720We don't even know that she had any concept of the fact that this was going on, that her mentor at Harvard was forwarding her perfectly reasonable emails and papers and work to Jeffrey Epstein.
01:04:14.600It just is really, we should be treating it as a shocking and unacceptable thing because it is.
01:04:21.520And I guess where I land is that we really cannot keep acting shocked when powerful institutions protect powerful men who have these like long and well-documented histories of bad judgment, sexist thinking, and frankly, ethically grotesque associations, right?
01:04:39.240It's not like Summers just had one bad quote.
01:04:42.180He had an entire legacy of things like minimizing discrimination, joking about women in the workplace, letting Epstein fund his wife's projects and treating young women like his mentee, like a conquest that he could game theory his way into getting horizontal with and then describing it in the crudest ways possible, right?
01:05:02.580Like and Harvard, the U.S. government, tech companies, the media all kept continuing to give him power.
01:05:09.480The New York Times writing an article the day that it becomes clear that he's going to step back temporarily, temporarily from teaching, asking about the state of his career and whether or not he can come back and bounce back from this is exactly what I mean.
01:05:23.420yeah and that's like one of the memes that i've seen going around is like something that finally
01:05:30.480brings all men of any religion of any together is that they will use young girls this way and one of
01:05:38.620the things that really frustrates me about this conversation is that like even going back to the
01:05:43.080bill clinton thing who do we immediately are like we got to protect bill clinton who are we like oh
01:05:48.040we got to protect larry summers no we're not talking about the people who were hurt by this
01:05:53.600you just want to know that this guy's career is safe and he's fine he's doing fine he is 70
01:06:02.120years old i don't want to sound ageist i just feel like at 70 years old if you're this kind
01:06:07.920of person maybe we don't need you like what i'm you don't say like maybe you living a private life0.98
01:06:12.620with your wife who now knows all about the f***ing emails you were sending about your mentee,0.97
01:06:18.400maybe that is fine. Maybe we don't need to talk about that. Like, it's the biggest tragedy0.98
01:06:22.340that somebody like Larry Summers doesn't get to have this role of authority and this role of
01:06:27.700influential power, both over, you know, Harvard students, but also over all of us, right? Because
01:06:35.720if you're sitting on the board at OpenAI, you do have some power over us. You're making decisions
01:06:40.080And you're putting out technology that is going to go on to shape all of our lives.
01:06:43.740And I completely agree with you, Annie.
01:06:45.380I just really it bothers me that when the conversation is framed about what's going to happen to poor Larry Summers, he's going to be fine.
01:06:55.240Literally, the system was built for him, like for him to be fine.
01:06:58.600The fact that he can really be like, ah, my bad, bro.
01:07:00.720We cool? Like that literally was his apology.
01:07:03.360Like, yeah, not even like conversation about the fact that, yes, he was using his authority and power.
01:07:09.740to go after women that he's like, this is this is definitely normal for me as a professor
01:07:15.460and president of the of a school to try to be like intimidate women into sleeping with
01:07:19.880me. And then, you know. There's so many other things, but like the fact that he can come
01:07:25.620back and be like, my bad. But, you know, we're moving on. Right. Let me talk about economics.
01:07:32.180And everybody seems like, OK, that sounds about right. This is nothing that doesn't
01:07:35.860affect you as a person. So it's fine as a teacher.
01:07:37.600And so when these rules, when people decide that because they are powerful or influential, these rules don't apply to them, I think it's really a problem when you get to say, oh, well, I did this, but I should just go on and continue my lesson for today.
01:07:52.540No, you don't. Right. And I think that they're saying that for a long time, the rules did not apply to powerful people.
01:07:58.940And the question is whether or not we want to live in a world where that is the case, right? Do we want to live in a world where someone like this gets to do things like this and just go on to finish their economics lesson for the day?
01:08:11.400I say no. And so I think as we watch what comes out of this Department of Justice release with the Epstein files, I hope we can like resist this idea of using it to talk about like whether or not someone's career is going to be impacted or or all of that.
01:08:29.640I think truly this will likely touch every corner of power, academia, politics, entertainment, tech, finance.
01:08:36.460And we should be talking about accountability. Right.
01:08:39.220We should be talking about what like centering the people who were harmed, regardless of the resumes and power and influence of the people who were doing the harming.
01:08:49.060I think that is the bare minimum. And ultimately, I don't think the people shaping the future should be taking advice from a convicted child sex predator on how to pursue women half their age.
01:09:02.280I think that is a totally reasonable standard to set. And I will die on this hill.0.94
01:09:07.120I don't know. I don't care if it makes me sound like an extremist. I will die on this hill.0.53
01:09:12.700I mean, I think a lot of pod bros are going to be mad at you about that.0.97
01:09:19.060them and their pizzagate and now they're like this is no information though i know it's why
01:09:26.560because if you if you go back and look at like qanon and pizzagate it's like you have emails that
01:09:32.560hillary clinton wrote to podesta that are like oh should we get some pizza later and people are
01:09:38.680like but if you replaced pizza with children think about it then and then you have epstein
01:09:43.360putting like up for sex crimes later and it's like well no no no no we don't know what that
01:09:48.500means that's not what that means that's out of context yes exactly uh yeah so if the department
01:09:58.500of justice releases these files i'm sure we're gonna have a lot more to discuss but that's where
01:10:04.760we're at for right now whoo yeah bill clinton and hillary clinton are on that list yeah they should
01:10:10.300also be locked up let's go ahead but yeah if anybody who is shown to have committed a crime
01:10:16.180should be locked up that's the thing is like i don't want abusers on my team and i i don't think
01:10:22.220that i think this i i think that we're being sold this idea of tribalism of like oh are you gonna
01:10:29.500care if it's your favorite entertainer or your favorite you know celebrity who gets taken down
01:10:36.660No, because I don't want that. I don't want a person who is a criminal walking free, even if it's somebody who I happen to be politically aligned with or like enjoy their work.
01:10:45.960I mean, I have stopped watching many shows because many of the celebrities have disappointed me and have shown their true color.