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.
00:06:14.680Like, I think Lindy West is, like, an interesting person.
00:06:16.580But I think the episodes where Lindy was not a guest and the host had clearly done a deep dive into the book and her work were like meatier for me.
00:06:27.260So if I'm going to say like which style of podcast episode I personally feel like I got more out of and like benefited more from and felt more nourished from, it was the ones that did not include Lindy West.
00:06:44.000So it sounds like maybe that's where you're leaning then.
00:06:46.580I don't know. I genuinely want to hear from the listeners. I am but a humble servant. We'll tally up for the fives of people who wrote in about this. We will count one, two, three, four, five. It's not an even number, so there'll be a clear consensus.
00:07:33.840And if having Lena Dunham on the podcast is what wins, it might take a little bit longer because I actually produced an episode of a podcast that she was a guest on and, like, getting schedules aligned and this and that, like, was a lot.
00:07:47.820And so, you know, it might be, it might take a little bit of time, but I will do my damnedest to make it happen if that's the will of the people.
00:07:55.620Just so responsive to the will of the people.
00:07:59.280All right, Bridget, what have we got for this week's News Roundup?
00:08:02.640Well, speaking of Lena Dunham, remember when she was BFFs with Taylor Swift and was it part of Taylor Swift's girl squad that would come up on stage during concerts?
00:08:11.460Oh, yeah. That was like quite a while ago. There have been so many Taylor Swift and separately Lena Dunham arcs since then.
00:08:19.680That is right. So Taylor Swift, I've said this before, she comes up a lot on the podcast. I don't know what it is about Taylor Swift. There is something where she just intersects with technology quite a bit.
00:08:33.360Y'all might recall that even before Grok was a thing, even before earlier this year when Grok was being used to generate just a flood of non-consensual AI-generated deepfakes, AI-generated images of Taylor Swift went viral on X.
00:08:49.300So it makes sense now that Taylor Swift is taking legal steps to protect herself from this kind of AI exploitation. And for her, that includes filing three trademark applications this week, one covering a recognizable concert photo of her holding a guitar, wearing this, I guess, this like iconic for her, like pink, I don't know, like shimmery rhinestone dress.
00:09:12.180And then two other trademarks for her voice, specifically saying these two phrases, hey, it's Taylor Swift and hey, it's Taylor.
00:09:34.960And the reason that she's trying to do that specifically is to try and combat celebrity AI scams.
00:09:41.280This timing is not a coincidence. According to this new report from the AI detection company CopyLeaks, scammers on TikTok have been running these sponsored ads that use deepfake versions of recognizable celebrities, so Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, to promote fake rewards programs.
00:10:00.800Basically, these ads run AI-generated versions of these celebrities in what look like a talk show or a red carpet setting where these celebrities are supposedly pitching a TikTok pay program that promises anybody can make money just from watching videos and sharing feedback about those videos.
00:11:10.940Like a sucker I'm doing and I'm not even getting paid from Taylor Swift or Rihanna.
00:11:15.360It might be one of those things that once they start paying you, it loses all appeal.
00:11:19.020Maybe that's how we can help people get over social media addiction, if it is real.
00:11:23.460So the thing is, it's not just this like one AI celebrity Taylor Swift scam.
00:11:29.420And it's really not even about Taylor Swift.
00:11:31.020This is all part of a broader and growing problem with these kinds of scams on social media.
00:11:37.100The FTC just reported that these kind of scams are surging right now.
00:11:40.780can you guess which platform is the leader in these kinds of scams does their name rhyme with
00:11:48.060spacebook it does it does wow i can't believe you figured it out they are the leader and just last
00:11:54.960week a consumer non-profit sued meta saying the company has been profiting by letting scam ads the
00:12:01.200kind of thing that we've talked about in a previous news roundup run rampant on its platforms and it
00:12:06.900basically has been. All the reporting is like, yes, Facebook is making money from these ads for
00:12:12.340these kinds of AI-generated scams. They have AI scams where it's like an AI Elon Musk that is
00:12:17.920like, click here for my financial and investing advice. And surprise, surprise, it's not actually
00:12:22.940Elon Musk giving you financial advice, although I would have put it past him.
00:12:27.320So obviously, this move from Taylor Swift is only protective of Taylor Swift's likeness and voice
00:12:34.900And those two phrases that she's trademarking. However, I do think that these scams are kind of using celebrities like Taylor Swift to target regular people who are then getting their personal information stolen by like a fake Taylor Swift or a fake Rihanna.
00:12:49.460And so platforms are not only not doing anything about it or not fixing it, in the case of Meta, they're actually profiting from the ads for these scams. And so I guess I got to say, like, good for Taylor Swift for trying to make it so that people are not just getting scammed by AI Taylor Swift over and over again.
00:13:09.080However, not everybody can file this kind of trademark. This kind of piecemeal solution that is only really accessible to people who have money and time and attorneys doesn't do it for me. Like, we deserve an internet landscape where regular people are not, you know, being served up by our digital platforms to be taken advantage of and exploited by these kinds of scams.
00:13:30.920Totally agree. This kind of solution is not available to normal people, to regular people who don't have teams of lawyers. And it's not like these phrases that she's trademarking, hey, it's Taylor, are some sort of like super special thing. It's just her name, right?
00:13:48.680Like, having to use trademark law to protect her own name from being used in scams, impersonating her, it just seems ridiculous. And like you say, it really highlights the extent to which ordinary, non-famous, non-wealthy people just don't have access to protections against these sort of very basic scams targeting our identity.
00:14:17.120And I guess, you know, nobody is trying to use my identity to sell people on video scams.
00:14:26.460But there are plenty of other types of scams where ordinary people's identities are hijacked every day.
00:14:32.560And wouldn't it be nice if we had some protections that applied to everybody that were available to everyone to not have their identity impersonated?
00:16:20.380definitely without any sort of warrant.
00:16:22.260It blows my mind that people are contributing to this thing.
00:16:26.720So why are they in the news this week, Bridget?
00:16:29.120Well, new reason to hate Flock just dropped, and that is a report from the Institute of Justice.
00:16:33.940They found that there are already 14 cases across the country where cops are alleged to have used camera systems like Flock, automated license plate readers, or ALPR, that's what Flock is, to follow spouses, exes, and even complete strangers.
00:16:53.040Yeah, of course. Why is that not surprising, right?
00:16:55.380Any time there's some sort of surveillance system that people are flagging like, hey, there might be the potential for abuse here, it's almost a sure bet that the first abusive use case is going to be somebody spying on their domestic partners or people in their immediate life.
00:17:14.040Yes, nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs either by resigning or getting fired when their use of this kind of technology to stalk their exes and wives and partners and strangers was revealed.
00:17:28.760And it goes back to what you were saying. Surveillance technology and the creeping rise of this kind of technology being normalized, both by police for law enforcement reasons and by cities and towns and municipalities, is a gendered issue because men are already using it to track and surveil the women in their lives.
00:17:49.720And not even the women in their lives. Some of these women were just strangers that these cops just saw and was like, that girl's pretty. Good thing I have access to this camera that will give me real-time information about her whereabouts as she goes around the city, this stranger. You know how every love story starts that way?0.97
00:18:06.620so as futurism reports that this timing is striking with the majority of stalking cases
00:18:13.360coming after 2024 the year when flock initiated a massive expansion into over 4 000 u.s cities
00:18:19.880side note if you're listening to this and you're like maybe this this story doesn't have anything
00:18:25.760to do with me look up your city because it is entirely possible that your city has some sort
00:18:30.220of a contract with flock though flock claims to have internal safeguards that prevent this kind
00:18:35.100of abuse, the bulk of the 14 cases were uncovered by the victims as opposed to the company or
00:18:41.480internal police investigations. So it's basically like that same thing that we saw in Georgia,
00:18:46.500where a parent had to do a FOIA request on Flock cameras that were in his community while the city
00:18:53.160was deciding whether or not to renew the contract with Flock. That FOIA request showed that Flock
00:18:59.120staff had been accessing these cameras inside places like the gymnastics class and the pool
00:19:04.940But the city ultimately did renew that contract. So, again, it's not like Flock is coming forward or the police are coming forward. These people are just finding out themselves that they have been, you know, stalked or surveilled in this completely fucked up way by law enforcement using Flock cameras. And it is honestly terrifying.
00:19:25.660And if that's the main way that we are learning about these cases, that suggests that there are many other cases that we don't know about, that people don't know about because the people who are the targets of this surveillance haven't done the FOIA request to be able to discover that they were a target.
00:19:47.160Futurism reports about one of these cases in Milwaukee where an eight-year veteran of the police department allegedly used Flock to track not only his romantic partner, but also that romantic partner's ex almost 180 times over just two months.
00:20:02.900And the two victims only became aware of this because they looked up their license plates on the auditing site HaveIBeenFlocked.com.
00:20:10.840Two other Wisconsin officers were accused of using flock in stocking in the past year.
00:20:16.720In Menasha, Wisconsin, an officer was placed on leave and charged with misconduct in office after his ex-girlfriend filed a complaint with another police department.
00:20:25.920In another part of Wisconsin, a sheriff's deputy resigned after internal investigations found that he used an apartment's flock system to keep tabs on a co-worker that he was romantically involved with.
00:20:36.080That sheriff's office, even though he resigned, still gave him severance pay.
00:20:40.360So taxpayers just paying for this guy's severance.
00:20:44.300In at least one instance, an officer used Flock to stalk a stranger that they wanted to pursue romantically.
00:20:50.720And earlier this year in Florida, a sheriff's deputy allegedly used Flock to track and eventually pull over a woman that he met while providing security on a television set.
00:21:02.280I bet that these guys thought that they were doing some kind of a grand romantic gesture and not something incredibly fucking invasive and creepy, right? Like, oh, I was moonlighting on this television set and I met this woman, didn't catch your name, so what did I do?
00:21:20.860I pulled her over a week later using Flock's license plate reading technology.
00:21:27.840I guarantee you he thought she was going to think that was a meet cue.
00:21:31.500The fact that these are the people who are ostensibly meant to be keeping women safe,
00:21:35.280and this is how they're treating women, should really tell you a lot.
00:21:38.320Also, keep in mind that this list does not include the police who use Flock to harass strangers,
00:21:45.860which frankly they also be doing like the georgia police chief who was arrested for using flock data
00:21:51.800to stalk and harass multiple unidentified people basically it's almost like if we give the police
00:21:58.880unlimited access to anyone they want using this technology they can access it without a warrant
00:22:04.400or any kind of meaningful paper trail surely they won't use it to abuse stalk and harass the women
00:22:10.260in their lives yeah it's an absurd proposition that so much power and information could be
00:22:19.460made available to so many people without any meaningful checks on them and of course some
00:22:26.580are going to use it i don't know that we have a whole lot of listeners who work in law enforcement
00:22:31.080but if you know we have a lot of listeners and so maybe there's some and i can imagine they might be
00:22:36.220annoyed and frustrated by this story because I think probably most of them don't do this kind
00:22:43.660of stuff. But when you've got such a huge system at such scale, making it available to so many
00:22:50.460people, of course, like whatever the opposite of cream is, is going to like rise to the top and
00:22:58.400take advantage of it. It's just like too much power to not have meaningful checks on it.
00:24:57.100They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:25:01.560But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:25:05.020They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:25:08.640Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:25:17.080If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:25:23.020This 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.
00:25:35.500I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:25:42.600I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:25:45.740From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:25:52.140It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:26:00.040Whether 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.
00:26:09.220Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:50.760She was a Chinese-American neuroscientist who spent nearly two decades building out a career at Northwestern University,
00:26:58.360where she was a principal investigator on 31 NIH-funded research projects.
00:27:03.340For people who maybe aren't, like, super familiar with the academic research world, 31 is a big number for NIH-funded research projects. That is an impressive career.
00:27:19.120Yes, I'm glad that you added that, since that's sort of the world that you come from.
00:27:23.460Yeah, that's right. You know, I could only aspire to be a principal investigator on 31 NIH-funded research projects. That is a truly impressive CV.
00:27:36.800So in May of 2024, Wu's lab was suddenly shut down in the middle of a federal investigation into her alleged ties to China. She was never charged with anything. She was 60 years old, and a few months later, she died by suicide.
00:27:53.460Now, her family is suing Northwestern University,
00:27:56.540arguing that the university pushed her out,
00:27:59.200had her involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility,
00:28:02.440and kept on punishing her even after investigators found nothing.
00:28:07.560They say all of this contributed directly to her death.
00:28:11.860This week marks one year since she died,
00:28:14.720and her daughter, Elizabeth Rau, is speaking out publicly about this for the first time.
00:28:19.100So here's the background of what happened here.
00:28:21.240So back in 2019, during the first Trump administration, NIH started to look into Wu's international research contacts as part of this sweeping effort to so-called root out foreign influence at American research institutions.
00:28:36.580What I find interesting there is that, you know, today in 2026, we're very used to the idea that the Trump administration is like undergoing these very invasive, over-the-top efforts to root out anything that they deem as like, essentially anything that's like not white men, essentially like white, straight men.
00:28:58.280This kind of thing seems commonplace now.
00:29:00.520I feel like in 2019, it wasn't getting a lot of coverage.
00:29:06.380And they weren't doing it as effectively as they are now.
00:29:10.340It is worth reflecting on how quickly we have come into this new world where the Trump administration and the worst people are controlling things like NIH and NSF.
00:29:27.160And taking all of that apparatus that used to fund some of the best science in the world and are really bending it towards their own political ends and making capricious decisions like this that ruin people's careers just for xenophobic and racist reasons.
00:29:47.620Exactly. So it is xenophobia and racism. Wu's international collaborators were spread out
00:29:55.160across multiple countries. So China was among them, but also Britain, Canada, Argentina, and
00:30:00.540others. So to be clear, nothing ever came of this investigation. She didn't do anything wrong. No
00:30:05.660charges were ever filed. But Northwestern sounds like just like did not let it go. According to
00:30:10.700this lawsuit, the university continued restricting her work even after this probe concluded, limiting
00:30:16.660her lab access, breaking up her research team, and reassigning her grants to white male colleagues.
00:30:23.460Then, in December 2023, Northwestern was formally notified that the investigation
00:30:29.040into Wu had closed. And yet, five months later, they still shut down her lab with no explanation
00:30:36.780given. The dean of the medical school had already cut her salary and added new conditions that she
00:30:42.960was going to have to meet if she wanted to get back to her funded research. So this is where
00:30:47.880stuff really gets, like, if that's not already horrifying, this is where stuff really takes a
00:30:52.120turn. So understandably, the stress of all of this, basically being accused of being like a
00:30:59.440agent of a hostile adversary, was a lot for her. Her health started to take a serious toll. She
00:31:07.240suffered a stroke and was showing signs of depression. The lawsuit says that the university
00:31:11.920used her understandably not great emotional state
00:31:16.760as a justification to have her physically,
00:31:20.460as in people put hands on her and put her in handcuffs,1.00
00:31:23.340removed from her office in handcuffs by law enforcement
00:31:26.820and then had her forcibly admitted to a psychiatric facility
00:32:06.560By 2020, lawmakers were investigating both NIH and the FBI over what critics called the racial profiling of Asian scientists.
00:32:16.100Several of these cases that became pretty high profile ended in acquittals at the time, including Gang Chen at MIT, who was arrested in 2021 and had his case dropped entirely in 2022.
00:32:29.020When Chen was going through this ordeal, MIT provided legal support and financial support, and his colleagues all rallied around him with this now-famous letter that closed with the phrase, we are all gang Chen.
00:32:45.480So, conversely, Wu's lawsuit alleges that she received no such support from Northwestern.
00:32:52.880And the broader academic community is taking notice.
00:32:55.880Earlier this year, more than a thousand academics from across the country signed a letter demanding that Northwestern apologize, accusing the school of disregarding the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty.
00:33:06.800And that letter went to the university president and the dean of the medical school.
00:33:11.280What a terrible story. What has the university had to say about its behavior in this case?
00:33:38.220This was somebody who had 40 years in science.0.67
00:33:41.740As you noted above, she had a kind of the kind of storied career as a scientist that a lot of scientists would hope to have.
00:33:48.600And she's being treated like a suspect, like an adversary, simply because of where she was born and really had all of these things that she spent her life building taken away from her.
00:34:00.120And I yeah, like this is the this is the human cost of what these kinds of racist xenophobic policies actually look like in practice.
00:34:11.740Speaking of terrible people doing terrible things years ago that are still haunting us today, what's new with Peter Thiel?
00:34:22.460Oof, do I have some Peter Thiel tea for you.
00:34:27.480We have talked about Peter Thiel quite a bit on this podcast.
00:34:31.380Billionaire, supervillain, funder of right-wing extremist causes, builder of tech, founder of PayPal.
00:34:39.380Now, great place to mention our old nemesis, the Hallow app.
00:34:46.960Teal is one of the funders of the Hallow prayer app.
00:34:51.180Well, Teal also maintained a closer relationship with convicted child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein than we previously knew, thanks to new reporting from Jacobin.
00:35:03.080Here's how Branko Marchetic put it in his piece.
00:35:06.380Teal's close relationship with J.D. Vance and other young right-wingers all but ensures the tech billionaire will continue to shape politics and policy for many years, decades if his technological plans to extend his lifespan work out.
00:35:20.480And in spite of Jeffrey Epstein's mysterious death seven years ago, it ensures the same for the quiet influence of the billionaire pedophile, who private email show was not only good friends with Thiel, but encouraged Thiel's involvement in right-wing politics.
00:35:36.380So this piece, which it's like very meaty, I definitely recommend folks read it. We'll put it in the show notes, of course. The piece makes it clear that Epstein and Peter Thiel had a mutually beneficial friendship. Epstein handled favors and gave financial guidance and advice.
00:35:53.120It sounds like, reading between the lines of some of their emails, it kind of sounds like maybe some interesting tax-slash-accounting tips were being traded back and forth, while Thiel offered investment knowledge and lent Epstein a degree of legitimacy by association.
00:36:10.640When Thiel started getting interested in global politics, Epstein was really nurturing that by connecting Thiel with influential figures in government, both domestically and internationally.
00:36:22.820Once Thiel got involved in Trump's 2016 campaign,
00:36:26.480Epstein really pushed him to deepen ties with Trump
00:36:29.540and guided him on how to expand his foothold in that particular political circle.
00:36:36.120Oh, that's interesting because I think Trump says that he
00:36:39.520cut Epstein out of his life years before that, right?
00:36:44.260And Epstein says that Trump was, quote, his closest friend.
00:38:11.180It also has so many like sassy parentheticals. So about this new financial, this like scams, crimes, crypto favors, Facebook financial system Epstein wanted to set up. Epstein emailed Thiel and said, quote, the idea is now is the time for a new financial alternative.
00:38:54.780You have this idea of these guys, these, like, billionaire guys as these, like, savvy people who, like, if somebody wants to be financially or business-wise, like, in the mix with them, one false move and they're like, I'm out, I'm scared off.
00:39:09.080No, it doesn't seem like he, like, was, like, not into this.
00:39:12.780It seemed like he was into this, was interested, was curious, kept emailing back and forth.
00:39:16.360I think that's important to note. If anybody sent me an email like this and it was also riddled with typos, I would never want like, you know, I would I would be like, this guy does not seem like he's on the money.
00:39:29.040Yeah. Let alone him already having pled guilty to sex crimes against minors.
00:39:35.280Yeah. It reads like a lunatic ranting on social media.0.99
00:39:39.200exactly the piece also does a very good job of just sort of in the background making it clear
00:39:46.020just how much of the architects of our current tech landscape and political landscape the people
00:39:53.060behind ai and microsoft just how much those people were deeply connected to epstein on stuff mom
00:40:00.500never told you we're actually prepping to do a podcast episode we're taping it tomorrow where
00:40:04.840we rewatched the movie The Social Network with Jesse Eisensberg. So I rewatched that movie this
00:40:10.940morning. In that movie, we've got two different Epstein buddies portrayed in that film. Both Peter
00:40:17.500Thiel, who was portrayed in that film because he comes on as an early investor to Facebook,
00:40:21.460and Larry Summers, who at the time in the film is the president of Harvard University. That's the
00:40:27.580figure the Winklevoss twins complained to when they say that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for
00:40:31.420facebook from them while they were students at harvard crazy that it's like two different epstein0.58
00:40:36.840like larry summers and epstein were like homies like they were like road dogs they they did not0.66
00:40:43.520have a casual relationship they were tight yeah isn't that interesting that this movie about
00:40:51.260super elites so many of them mixed up with epstein another mutual acquaintance computer
00:40:58.840scientist Ben Gortzel, who was an early champion of AI, dangled the prospect of personally
00:41:04.780interacting with Thiel as a way to get Epstein to the Singularity Summit, a yearly gathering of AI
00:41:10.740superintelligence enthusiasts in October of that year. Thiel, quote, wanted to start his own
00:41:17.300currency outside of the scope of nation states, Gortzel told him. So Larry Summers, who we know
00:41:22.580used to be the head of the U.S. Treasury under the Obama administration, is being described here,
00:41:27.620quote, Larry Summers is now on board with rethinking the financial system,
00:41:31.860digital currency, etc. He will join us in concocting a plan. Fun, Gortzel wrote Teal.
00:41:39.020I love that they're just flinging around. Yeah, the former head of the U.S. Treasury
00:41:42.480is on board with rethinking our entire financial system and digital currency because Jeffrey0.99
00:41:48.280fucking Epstein wrote him a typo-laden 3 a.m. like email that's got all kinds of weird fucking1.00
00:41:55.400emojis and shit in it. Yeah, no problem. Cool. Fun. He's going to help concoct a plan. We're1.00
00:42:01.440going to create a new currency outside the scope of nation states. We're going to put it all
00:42:05.640together at the Singularity Summit. It's going to be great. Yes. I mean, like, that's what really
00:42:10.740gets me is that you get to see how much of our current financial technology, political systems
00:42:16.380are just like one old rich creep sending a typo Latin dashed off email to another more rich and
00:42:23.340more powerful creep. And that's our whole fucking system. No wonder it's all built on scams, crimes,1.00
00:42:28.080and fraud. Yeah. And all connected through this maven guy who runs an island designed to traffic
00:42:37.080children. So this line is just, I have to read it. Epstein's interest in Thiel was undeterred
00:42:44.800by the fact that several of his acquaintances were far from impressed by the PayPal founder.
00:42:49.280Brockman warned him that Thiel disliked democracy and considered the granting of voting rights to women and the poor a mistake.
00:42:56.640Another contact told him that while she had once found Thiel interesting, after seeing him speak about singularity, she decided she, quote, didn't think he knew what he was talking about and lost interest.
00:43:08.140Of course, the woman was like, actually, now that now that I see him speak.
00:43:12.380Yeah. Now that he's talking about something I know about, the singularity, I've lost confidence.0.94
00:43:19.340So it sounds like Thiel and Epstein kind of danced around each other for a while. Will they, won't they? But eventually they get connected by Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and among one of the first donors to OpenAI, the company that, of course, makes ChatGPT.
00:43:35.480reed hoffman whom a former british fixer ian osborne who was like pretty well connected and
00:43:41.780well invested in silicon valley had once charmingly described reed hoffman to epstein as quote the
00:43:49.200fatty at linkedin and i wanted to include that because when i first read that line this how0.95
00:43:54.100quick my brain is i was like why is he describing this guy's ass and i was like oh that's not what0.67
00:43:59.160are you saying yeah i don't think it was a compliment so once teal and epstein met through0.98
00:44:05.460Reid Hoffman, they quickly became close. They were in frequent contact through calls, in-person
00:44:11.520meetings, and emails, so there is a paper trail. They collaborated on business deals while ranging
00:44:16.640across topics like business, investment, and science. Bear in mind that at this point, as I
00:44:20.860said, Epstein had already pled guilty to child sex crimes, and it wasn't like this was like an
00:44:25.680under-the-radar thing. These crimes, him pleading guilty to these crimes, had become global news
00:44:31.860at the start of 2015 after Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz were named in a lawsuit against
00:44:37.160Epstein that he had been running a child sex trafficking ring. We talked about this in the
00:44:43.020follow-up to our episode about the Hallow Prayer app, but we know that Peter Thiel just didn't
00:44:49.140really have any kind of problem with the fact that Epstein had pled guilty to sex crimes against
00:44:54.880minors. At one point, Epstein asked him, does my bad press give you pause? Thiel says, if I was
00:45:01.020intimidated by bad press, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere in life. But I do hope that you're
00:45:04.900holding up well and that the cycle won't go much further. I love that this is just like a bad press
00:45:10.300cycle, not crimes against kids that this guy pled guilty to. He did it. He said he did it.
00:45:17.920Yeah, no concern for the kids. No concern that this might be an unscrupulous guy to work with.
00:45:24.040Just really tells you a lot about how Peter Thiel thinks about the world.
00:45:29.540Also, the fact that when they were discussing this, Thiel asked, do you have any sense on whether this press cycle is going to keep escalating?
00:45:37.120I guess he means escalating, but he spelled it wrong.
00:45:39.140It would be good to compare notes at some point on strategies on this sort of stuff.
00:45:42.720So they're just like, what if we just got together and compared notes on how we weather the storm of stuff we actually did?
00:45:50.220Yeah, just comparing notes on how to do unsavory stuff and get away with it.
00:45:54.600But as Thiel got more involved in politics, Epstein was sending him advice on how to basically play Trump and like manipulate Trump. BuzzFeed reported on some unflattering comments that Thiel had made about Trump. And Epstein reached out to Thiel to say, read the article. Be careful. Donald is vindictive, especially when it's pointed out that he is not the smartest person in the room or it is just made obvious.
00:46:20.000So they were sort of like trying to be like, oh, here's how you play Donald Trump.
00:46:24.000Make sure that he feels like he's very smart.
00:47:15.320Also, I don't know if Peter Thiel is autistic. However, I know my fair share of folks who have autism, of all the things that would be disqualifying why Peter Thiel would not be a reasonable, you know, treasury secretary pick, the fact that he's autistic, I don't even, that should not be on the list.
00:47:37.760Yeah, that's a good point. There's so many other things that should be so much more disqualifying.
00:47:43.560So this piece, again, I really think people should read it. It's not just a gossipy, like, who knows who. I think it really is highlighting how much of our current techno-political landscape came to be by this small handful of horrible nightmare humans.
00:48:00.800The ending of the piece, I feel, just really nails it. Thiel's relationship to both Trump and his vice president now leaves the tech billionaire well-positioned to shape the Republican Party and a future GOP presidency.
00:48:13.560and to enact the vision he and Vance planned out many years ago of a political takeover
00:48:18.500by an aristocracy of right-wing business elites.
00:48:22.240Meanwhile, we're seeing in real time what it looks like to have a Peter Thiel
00:48:25.800interested in and able to influence geopolitics,
00:48:29.760with the billionaire supplying and ardently defending the Israeli genocide
00:48:33.380and his firm aligning itself with an interventionalist, pro-war Washington foreign policy.
00:48:40.100For many years, Jeffrey Epstein shaped our world in ways we never knew.
00:48:44.180He may well continue to do so even in death.
00:48:48.240And boy, did that kind of paint a grim portrait.
00:49:20.220And that is not a thing that I have any experience or frame of reference.
00:49:26.020Well, the brand that I was a child model for almost exclusively was Limited 2.
00:49:31.520And The Limited, I don't know if younger folks know what that is. It was like a very popular women and girls clothing brand. That was all Jeffrey Epstein, right? Jeffrey Epstein had financial ties to Les Wexner, who owns Victoria's Secret, The Limited, all of that. Also comes up in the social network, although briefly.
00:49:51.040In 2000, Les Wexner transferred control over the brand Limited Too, which was like exclusively for teenage girls, to Jeffrey Epstein.
00:50:02.640When I was a kid, the look and the feel of teenage girlhood that I was growing up in and steeped in and buying catalogs out and like walking down runways to represent, that was architected by Jeffrey Epstein.
00:50:14.800It's like the various ways that Epstein really had his hands in culture and really kind of designed so much of what we all kind of like lived through, whether it's culture, fashion, politics, tech, finances, education.
00:50:30.360It just it's stunning. And you like it's baked into the infrastructure. You can't throw it away.
00:50:35.040It's like the infrastructure that we have. You have to like tear it down and start over to make a change.
00:50:38.720Jeez, it's really chilly when you talk about it like that
00:50:43.240And think about the influence that he had
00:50:46.000And the people that he was working with
00:58:41.300Our hearts are with everybody who was affected by recent layoffs.
00:58:48.480And yeah, I don't know how to land this.
00:58:51.180If you listen to podcasts, there is a strong possibility that someone who helps make the shows that you like is being laid off. And it's just a reality of our current landscape. I know this sounds very cryptic.
00:59:07.000um it does yeah and we're being cryptic because we don't want to name people if they don't want
00:59:11.740to be named and uh you know that's not our story to tell it's a tough time here we are so privileged
00:59:19.000to have spent the time with everybody that we have and you know we're going to continue making
00:59:25.380this show and i know that people who have recently been laid off are going to be doing incredible
00:59:35.420things yeah and you know i've gone through media layoffs and if you or someone you know someone
00:59:43.580you love has been laid off or is even just doing the thing where you wake up and you don't know if
00:59:48.280today's going to be the day you're hearing news i see you i hear you like it's not a climate that
00:59:55.100anybody should have to show up in and like just trudge through and i know it sounds very cryptic
01:00:02.300but I just wanted to take a moment to say how blessed and lucky I am
01:00:06.440to have everybody who has ever worked on this show be part of the show
01:00:10.920and how much respect I have for everybody and all of their work to make the show work
01:00:15.120because they're all so smart and so talented.
01:00:18.080And I'm just really, I have a lot of gratitude.
01:00:57.800I'll just say, if you have thoughts on the style of Lena Dunham episode you think we should do, whether you want me to try to book Lena Dunham, I will try that.
01:01:07.220If you want it to just be just us friends, that's fine, too.
01:01:11.580Be sure to let me know in the Spotify comments or via email at hello at pangly.com.