Ghislaine speaks! And as it turns out, there is still nothing to the Epstein conspiracies. Michael Tracey has a nice breakdown of how it went, pointing out that there is no indication she is lying, even when you might expect to see signs of her doing so. He joins me to discuss.

I went into this conversation thinking I had learned almost everything important about the Epstein saga. I was wrong. There are so many threads to pull here. But they’re not the ones people expect. The whole case against Ghislaine appears to have been drummed up by trial lawyers who recruited the “victims,” conducted the PR campaign, got journalists on board, and, according to Ghislaine and evidence presented by Alan Dershowitz, were engaging in a blackmail ring that involved threatening to drag more people into the story.

It’s all rotten from top to bottom. It’s always easy to see a moral panic in retrospect. A hallmark of moral panics is that groups normally at odds unite to condemn a target. As Michael alludes to, podcast bros, CNN, and Fox are all on the same side here, making him a rare beacon of truth. They’re still wrong.

We also talk about the role that taking high doses of testosterone might have played in Epstein’s behavior, something that came out during the Ghislaine interviews. He was clearly acting recklessly, which led to his downfall, and we now finally have an explanation of why.

There are some video and audio problems near the middle of the conversation, and Michael disconnects at one point, but he comes back on and we finish the discussion.

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