Trump-Epstein: Jason Pack on the Axis of Disorder

[00:00] Andrew Keen: Hello. My name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the daily interview show about the United States.

[00:20] Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. It’s not even the end of February 2026 and we already have a winner for the most prescient vision of 2026. Late last year, we did all sorts of conversations about what was going to happen in 2026, and my conversation with my old friend Jason Pack from the Disorder podcast was particularly prescient. Jason predicted that Mark Carney was the man of the year of 2025 and that Jeffrey Epstein would be, so to speak, the man of the year in 2026. Jason, congratulations—although you may have got it the wrong way around. You talked about Carney as the man of the year for 2025 and you said that before Carney’s Davos speech of January.

[01:12] Jason Pack: I used slightly different terms, Andrew. I said that Carney would be the "orderer" of 2025 and 2026, and that Epstein would be the "disorderer-in-chief" of 2026, even from beyond the grave. And you know me quite well by now; you know how much I hate being right. So, what can I say? I just hate being right.

[01:34] Andrew Keen: You don’t really hate being right, Jason. You're secretly thrilled that you got it right. So, let’s talk—we haven't talked for a couple of months. Let’s talk about the Carney speech. How impressed were you? How important a speech was it, not just in week-to-week or month-to-month issues, but in terms of a broader history of the early part of the 21st century? Is it as significant as some people suggest?

[02:04] Jason Pack: Interesting point. I mean, actions, not words, change the world. But as we know from Churchill and FDR, sometimes words are actions. And I think that if Carney’s speech is followed up by actions to create an alternative to American extraction hegemony, then yes, it could be one of the more significant turning points in 21st-century economic history. There really haven't been many actions to follow it up, so although it was a great nucleus, it would require European powers to say, "Great, we’re establishing this democracy fund," or, "We’re doing something with the European Central Bank to allow certain kinds of payments which are not the Swift code system." And if Carney’s speech led to those things, then yes, it would be one of the more significant turning points. But heretofore, it was just a really great speech calling a spade a spade, and there has not been much follow-up.

[03:00] Andrew Keen: And of course, one of the ironies is he gave it at Davos, supposedly the center of the old ordered world. And the fact that he... I’m not sure what to make of the Davos angle here, given that most people don’t much care for Davos, or "Davos Man," or the Davos world.

[03:18] Jason Pack: That’s an important point. I mean, Carney is a Davos man. He was the Bank Governor of the Bank of England, and he was the Governor of the Canadian Central Bank as well. And he's a Davos guy, but he also understands the way in which that system has been constructed around the US dollar, the US import surplus and trade deficit, and the exorbitant privilege that the US has to print more dollars and to suck in wealth from around the world seeking returns in US capital markets. So, again, I think that he diagnosed the disease and the mercantilism of Trump, but the solutions have been thin on the ground. I would like to see the conference in Ottawa or Wilton Park here in the UK or elsewhere where they talk about the mega-defense industry that they're going to launch without the US, or something like a "Board of Democratic Peace," whereby only democratic countries would actually pay money and try to make peace, rather than Trump’s "Board of Peace" where the Russians and Qataris are given such a prominent role. You know what I mean? Where are the actions on the other side?

[04:32] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and would the Americans be allowed in this, do you think? If you were running the show, Jason? I mean, in terms of only accepting money from democratic countries, would you let the Yanks in? You’re an American in London; you might make yourself unpopular either in the UK or the US, whatever you choose.

[04:52] Jason Pack: I think that it would be pendent on good behavior. There needs to be a one-size-fits-all rule, not a rule that the powerful can ignore. And that's the connection to Epstein and Carney: making rules that are enforced equally to the weak, the powerful, the connected, and the not-connected. So, maybe America right now would be failing some of the transparency and democratic conditions, but an America in the future would be let in. It’s to create those just, neutral processes. And back to Carney, I think and hope he will do some things in response to developments in Ukraine where he’s going to say, "This is enough of the shambles already; I have spoken with my French and German colleagues and we put forth this alternative plan." But, you know, again, that hasn't happened heretofore.

[05:44] Andrew Keen: Yeah, it’d be interesting. A Canadian-led initiative on Ukraine bringing the Russians, the Germans, and the French—and perhaps the British—together to fight the Russians. That would be a first.

[05:58] Andrew Keen: Jason, I did a show a couple of days ago with Peter Bell. You may know him; he lived in London many years. He was very senior at CNN—I knew him at CNN—at News Corp; worked everywhere and for everyone, knows everyone. I brought up your thesis that—and this is what I want to talk to you about today—that there’s a still kind of ongoing conspiracy in the Anglo-American journalist world about keeping some of the Epstein stuff quiet. And Peter was rather resistant in his own New Zealand understated kind of way, dismissed it. But I know you really believe that there is, if not a formal conspiracy, certainly when it comes to Epstein, there is a degree of accountability in the Anglo-American press. Tell me why.

[06:55] Jason Pack: Well, I think there’s been a real cover-up, not only in the mainstream Anglo-American press but in our governments, right? So, before we get to the press, I want to point out: it was known Mandelson’s ties to Epstein. New York gynecologists knew that they had a stream of sometimes three to seven young women a week going for gynecological services in the Upper East Side and, you know, asking for every kind of smear and antibiotic and whatever. This stuff was known; it was too large to be kept secret. There are lots of indications that Epstein had a tip-off when he was going to be raided down in Palm Beach, and he moved certain files to other places in homes in Ohio and elsewhere. I am not a conspiracist; I don’t know how deep this goes and I can direct the listeners and you to lots of links and articles. But when it gets to the press—New York Post, New York Times—journalists rubbed shoulders with Epstein and Epstein's circle. David Brooks is a great example; Brooks was at his place a lot. And no questions were asked. He knew what was up.

[08:11] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and there’s a book on that one. I mean, there’s something particularly hypocritical about David Brooks, given that he’s made a career out of writing about ethics and doesn’t seem to live a particularly ethical life on lots of fronts.

[08:24] Jason Pack: And what do you know? He happened to convert to be an evangelical Protestant. You know, I mean, the irony of ironies, right? There was a cover-up because people who were close to this knew, but anyone who was allowed to meet Epstein was then either entrapped, found Epstein charismatic, or wanted to have more access because it’s like, "Well, I have a charity, and if I can hang out with Epstein more maybe I can meet the Clintons or the Gates." Or, "I’m a heterosexual guy who likes to cheat on his wife," and there were many, as have come out. "Maybe I don’t want to rat this guy out; it would be nice to get invited to the party at the island." And of course, we all know now that Musk claimed to have had no involvement, but he was dying to be involved and sending missives demanding...

[09:16] Andrew Keen: Although, the one thing about Musk is I don’t think he’s married, so I think he can if he wants to play around as much... You said—I’m quoting you, Jason—I was going to call you Jeffrey, you would have sued me for that one—I’m quoting you just, Jason: "There was a cover-up." That sounds conspiratorial to me. Who’s covering up? Is it the government?

[09:42] Jason Pack: There was a cover-up. And I am as anti-conspiratorial as anyone. I thought QAnon is a complete hoax; I saw to the what I thought is deep-seated antisemitism inside the QAnon conspiracy theories; I thought that the anti-vax stuff was the extreme right trying to get racist white nationalist neo-populist stuff into the mainstream, and those are conspiracies, and the anti-vax things, as it aligns with RFK, it’s a conspiracy. The problem is that just because there are 97 conspiracy theories that are false, doesn't mean that there was one actual conspiracy which was true. And we just have to accept that Epstein was doing a lot of illegal things, and those illegal things were connected to powerful people either in government or adjacent to government who occasionally gave privileged information in exchange either for bribes or access to...

[10:43] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and this is Mandelson, and of course it’s also the former Prince Andrew. You know, Andrew was born I think 14 days after me. I always used to think that I was named after him, but I think he was named after me. So... although I certainly don't look like him, fortunately.

[11:04] Jason Pack: Oh god. I mean, what a...

[11:05] Andrew Keen: ...Or behave, of course, like him. Jason, let me defend the mainstream media, because someone needs to defend it. I thought the New York Times, for example, did a wonderful job reporting on back in December, a week before...

[11:18] Jason Pack: Yeah, but that's late in the game! This stuff was known 20 years ago!

[11:21] Andrew Keen: Hold on, let me... wait! Stop shouting! This is serious stuff, this is not the internet. They did a very good job, "The Origins of Jeffrey Epstein," a massively researched piece about how he got his money, how he got his initial connections. It was late in the game, but it's only late in the game that he's become so important. I mean, 10 years ago no one realized how important he was. Go on.

[11:53] Jason Pack: That is a mainstream narrative on this point and you've put it forward well, and I apologize for shouting. I just felt that for the opportunity of making good radio I wanted to vociferously disagree and state that it was known in the New York Times journalist circle and Wall Street Journal circle, not just 10 years ago but 20 years ago that this was going on. Not just Trumps and Clintons, but random Upper East Side gynecologists who were writing to the New York Post and talking to people, and they didn’t run with it then. Some independent journalists have been on the...

[12:31] Andrew Keen: Yeah, there was one in Florida; there’s a woman in Florida who again in retrospect looks very good on this.

[12:37] Jason Pack: But a cover-up is not the most sinister or impossible thing. I am alleging that government officials, be they in the Southern District of New York or in the Florida Attorney General and prosecutorial offices, had cases in front of them, and then they were like, "Uh oh, we don’t want to go after these powerful people because they're going to lawyer up, it’s going to be a scandal, and some of my friends are connected to this." I’m really thrilled to say that last week on my Disorder podcast, I had on Epstein survivor Rina Oh, and the...

[13:21] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and that was a very... it was your episode 167 last week, "Epstein Survivor Rina Oh on Getting Justice." I know it’s had a lot of clicks, a lot of downloads; essential reading. Go on, Jason.

[13:35] Jason Pack: Thank you so much. And then episode 168 I would say is even more biting: that’s Lisa Bloom, who's represented more than nine Epstein victims.

[13:45] Andrew Keen: Yeah, I have that linked in; I’m advertising the show, Jason: "How Can Epstein's Victims Get Closure? with Civil Rights Attorney Lisa Bloom."

[13:54] Jason Pack: I am not the one who said that this is a cover-up; I took it from an established lawyer and a survivor and her lawyer-vetted comments. Do you know what I mean? I came up with this idea speaking to people who have lived it, right? And if you listen to Lisa Bloom, she says, "It’s a cover-up because there were cases on the desk of prosecutors in Florida in like 2003, and what do you know? They didn't try them, they didn't file them up. There were tip-offs to journalists both in New York and Florida in the early 2000s." I could say that you don’t have to be super conspiratorial; it’s not that the CIA told people to not, you know, pursue this. It’s just that, "Oh, those are powerful billionaires, we don’t want to go after them, it’s a pain in the ass." And you and I should call a spade a spade and say too much wealth and power and privilege has accrued to too narrow a tranche of—for lack of a better term—global elites, and then they're able to cow many journalists and prosecutors into silence.

[15:06] Andrew Keen: How much, Jason, of this story is currently unknown? How many more shoes, in your view, are there to fall here? I mean, we know that Andrew, the former Prince Andrew, is guilty. I mean, he’s clearly going nowhere. Maxwell’s in jail. What else is not known, in your view? I mean, obviously, if it’s not known you probably don’t know it, but in your sense, when it comes to the information about the crimes that Epstein committed, are there still many that are uncovered?

[15:43] Jason Pack: Yes. So, you're right, I’m not an expert. I would like to direct people to Bobby Capucci and his podcast, Jeffrey Epstein: The Cover-Up Chronicles.

[15:55] Andrew Keen: I’m going to look that up. Bobby Capucci?

[15:58] Jason Pack: Bobby Capucci. And he's got a brother probably called Jeffrey. I would also direct people to the just very general overviews such as Vox Media’s "Today Explained: What is Unknown About Epstein," which is with absolutely mainstream journalists. If you're interested in the Jewish Currents podcast, which is a left-wing Jewish treatment of Epstein, it gets into a non-antisemitic treatment of Epstein’s connection with the Mossad and Ehud Barak, and I think it is useful to use a Jewish source for those.

[16:42] Andrew Keen: What do you make, Jason, of the fact that some people at least are suggesting that many of the participants in this sex ring—whatever you call it—not just Jeffrey Epstein, were New York Jews? There weren’t, it doesn’t seem at least at this point, many—certainly there are very few women, very few people of dark, black, brown skin—that many of them were Jews?

[17:09] Jason Pack: Yes, it’s an unavoidable and tragic fact that 60-plus percent of the high-level people who were dealing with Epstein were Jews in finance, from how he got started with Les Wexner to his relationships at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs, his connection to Bobby Carp. Obviously, if we think about Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, and his dealings in ripping off pension funds, we are speaking of a certain kind of elite Jewish financial background. And I can understand why conspiratorialists are going crazy on this angle, and I want to get my information from Jewish or Jewish-friendly sources who are also saying similar things so that I know that it’s not being...

[18:05] Andrew Keen: Yeah, remind me, what was the left-wing Jewish network you mentioned?

[18:09] Jason Pack: It's called Jewish Currents. It’s a fairly non-Zionist podcast, and they’ve done two episodes on Epstein which I would strongly recommend. About... one is the "Epstein and Ehud Barak angle," and then the other is "Is Capitalism the Conspiracy?", where they point out about how neoliberal capitalism itself is to some extent, you know, indicted in the commodification of everything from women’s bodies to networks, and I thought it was reasonably compelling. Yes, this is it, the Jewish Currents podcast. And back to the point about it being Jews: what we see here is that a lot of the tropes from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to every kind of discredited antisemitic conspiracy theory under Hitler to now is about Jews having cross-border connections and working with each other preferentially. And that it happens to be the case in Epstein doesn't mean that there is a larger conspiracy to dominate the world, which is ridiculous. But Epstein, of course, did do banking for the Rothschilds, and he does have other connections in Israel. And it’s something which I don’t find comfortable, but we can't deny. In other words, it wouldn’t be appropriate for us as commentators to say, "This is really inconvenient that the Rothschilds happened to allow Epstein to bank with them and give money to his foundations." You know, we have to be honest about this and call a spade a spade, and then it’s critical to point out that he had probably deeper connections with the CIA and maybe even with Russian intelligence than with the Mossad. It’s not to say that he wasn't helping Ehud Barak in many ways—he was, this is all out in the open now, and Barak doesn't deny it—but he wasn't a Mossad agent. You know, it’s that the whole thing stinks and reeks to high heaven, and again, as someone who’s non-conspiratorial, we still need to say that when this could have been known 15 years ago, it wasn't in any powerful person’s interest for it all to come out. And Biden could have brought out all these files, but he probably didn’t want to because Bill Clinton and others of the top Democratic brass are impugned in them, so it just was covered up.

[21:03] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and I wonder whether—I mean, we all know the criminality, you’ve covered that with some of your shows, with survivors and with the attorney representing those survivors—but I wonder whether the most damning aspect of this whole Epstein thing is the stuff kind of on the boundaries of law and disorder, to borrow words from your podcast. You know, the emails, for example, from Epstein to Woody Allen and his wife, and Leon Botstein, a university president, about how this world operates. It’s all favors, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. It suggests something really rotten, Jason, doesn’t it, about the world that we live in, this globalized world?

[22:00] Jason Pack: It sickens me. I was on vacation last week in Barcelona. Twice I woke up at like 3:00 or 4:00 AM with a nightmare about Epstein. Because I grew up in a Central Jersey in the 1980s where I thought that the world mostly ran on reasonable principles. And to find out that Noam Chomsky and Leon Black...

[22:30] Andrew Keen: Yeah, Chomsky of all people!

[22:31] Jason Pack: ...that these guys were busy trading favors for intro... for what is worse than bunga bunga parties? I mean, whatever you might think about Silvio Berlusconi, this is so much worse. And when you peel back the curtain, I don’t know, I feel like we’ve all lost a lot of naïveté, those of us who, you know, are willing to really face what this all means.

[23:00] Andrew Keen: Yeah, it’s interesting. You wake up at 3:00 in the morning with Epstein nightmares; Peter Bell said that he wakes up every morning at 3:00 AM with Trump nightmares. How bound up is the narrative on Epstein and Trump? You’re not a great friend of Trump or MAGA. Leaving alone Trump’s own tangled relationships with Epstein, which are so complex and will take years to work out, how symbolic is the MAGA age with the Epstein age? How bound up are they together? Are they in parallel or are they linked?

[23:44] Jason Pack: I love how you’ve worded that. They are fundamentally bound at the hip, because the Trump age is a conspiratorial age and a backlash against global wealth inequality, the lack of transparency, and the political change in the wake of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. And Epstein’s heyday has coincided with that. From about 1991 until when he was killed in 2019, it would seem that wealth inequality has increased every year, and global elites have accrued more and more power, leaving behind their national boundaries and moral codes. And that framing I would have said is too conspiratorial, but Trump has come to power despite being exactly one of those elites who's benefited from those networks, but by saying he’s the one who is going to tackle those networks and fight up for the common man. Which you and I both know that he isn’t; he has decreased taxes on the wealthy and hasn't really been a friend of women seeking justice. But ironically, it is this outrage and this vengeance on the loss of manufacturing and coal worker jobs and on just overall injustice which has brought him to power. So, Epstein facilitated the rise of Trump.

[25:17] Andrew Keen: And vice-versa, I guess, in a way. I mean, it’s a different read on Fukuyama’s notion of the "end of history." And I wonder, in terms of Trump, I mean, his model, his argument for having power is his connectivity, the fact that he's the heart of this Trumpian political, economic, cultural web. So, on the one hand, his political appeal is as a kind of legal version of Epstein, of getting stuff done. I mean, whatever one says about Epstein, I mean, millions of emails—he certainly got stuff done. I’m not quite sure how he had time in the day; clearly, like Trump, he probably didn’t sleep.

[26:01] Jason Pack: I mean, I’m astounded that he not only sent six million emails with bad punctuation, but there are probably secret files—I mentioned Bobby Capucci—he had hard drives of other files on other emails, and who knows how many millions of documents and illicit child pornography are on those things? When did he have the time for all of this?

[26:30] Andrew Keen: And this is without the phone as well! I mean, when he really wanted to talk dirty or evil or... he went on the phone.

[26:38] Jason Pack: I don’t have a wife, but I would struggle to have a wife and one mistress. Could you imagine a man who had a thousand mistresses? Who has time for any of this?

[26:54] Andrew Keen: And not only that, but run a business empire and a networking empire all at the same time and have a degree of interest in science? Yeah, I...

[27:03] Jason Pack: I want to get back to the "Trump as legal Epstein." You’re really onto something here. When Keir Starmer was convinced by McSweeney, the Chief of Staff—the former Chief of Staff of the British Prime Minister—to select Lord Peter Mandelson as his ambassador to Washington, the argument was: "Well, Mandelson is a bit of a shady character and he’s been forced to resign from government twice before, but he really knows everyone and he’s extremely well-connected." And we have to give Keir credit: Keir said, "No, I’d rather not; I want to consider one of these other candidates." And McSweeney said, "No, no, no, you don’t understand how Washington works. Given how Trump is, given this, you need someone that has the back channels. You really should choose Lord Mandelson." And then because Keir is not a strong person and McSweeney seemed to be able to twist his arm so easily, he said, "Yes." So, the argument that Trump can just get a deal done is probably true in certain limited contexts. But the problem is that the Mandelsons and Trumps of this world aren't doing insider deals on benefit of their nation; they're doing insider deals so that Jared can get a billion in crypto into his private account or so that Mandelson’s then-boyfriend can get his osteopath course funded via a bribe. It’s an embarrassment.

[28:43] Andrew Keen: I don’t know why I’m laughing. I should be crying. It is, but the thing that is so odd is that Trump doesn’t hide how he operates, and yet the people who are supporting him are the outsiders, the people who don’t like Epstein, who don’t like neoliberalism, who don’t like these elites. They still vote for him.

[29:07] Jason Pack: That’s the genius, isn’t it? The man has managed to make such a cult of personality that to an elite Wall Street type he can be the most elite Wall Street type and to a West Virginian who’s lost his coal job he’s the most political outsider, most common man type. That is just what a genius of doppelgängerism, right?

[29:33] Andrew Keen: Your podcast, Jason, as I said, excellent podcast, is called Disorder. But the world that the Epstein files revealed is not a disordered one. It’s a very ordered one, isn’t it? It’s a world that worked; it had its own symmetries, its own centers of power, its own language.

[30:00] Jason Pack: I’ve thought about this. Is what they represented "order"? I would say no, because it didn’t actually interoperate with national laws and national interests. Yes, it had an internal logic, but that’s the "logic of the jungle." Do you know what I mean? "How much compromat can I get on Bill Clinton or Bill Gates so that then I can twist his arm to donate to my foundation, because otherwise I can release a sex video?" There is an order, but is that order, or is that the law of the jungle? It’s come out that Epstein’s pilot helped him source cameras before iPhones and stuff that fit inside tissue boxes. Nowadays, we all know that there could be hidden cameras in tissue boxes. But people didn’t know in 2003 or 2004 that when they were sleeping with an underage woman that Epstein would later come to them and say, "Hey, would you like to donate to my foundation?" If you call that order, then it was order. I call that the absolute disorder of the law of the jungle. It was Russian intelligence running a financial sex trafficking influence scheme at the heart of the Anglo-American establishment. And literally no one was beyond its reach. In other words, I don’t think that there was a person or a player that they needed that they didn't try to get. So that if you throw out a name who was really important either in law or media, the only reason he wasn't invited to the island is they didn't need him. When they needed a service, they got the service.

[31:48] Andrew Keen: Right, so the fact that you and I didn't get the invitation to the island doesn't speak of our morality; it simply speaks of our relative powerlessness.

[31:58] Jason Pack: Oh, I’m a nobody relative to these people. These are the people who fly on private jets and have hundreds of millions or billions and do everything. You know, who... we're such small-time.

[32:13] Andrew Keen: We are, we’re very small-time. But we can still talk about it, Jason. Does this offer an alternative—implicit in some of your critiques, I think, is support for, and I know you got to run in a minute, couple more questions—implicit in, I think, in your Disorder podcast and in lots of other commentary is the ideal of an alternative system. Maybe a Northern European one—Danish, German, Scandinavian—of more public power and authority and credibility. Is this the final nail in the coffin of the neoliberal order where the state became increasingly distant and where charities replaced the state in terms of making the world a better place? Are... I mean, I don’t know many Danes or Germans who’ve been sucked into this; maybe Epstein wasn’t very interested in Denmark or Germany. But does this underline the viability of their alternative model to the Anglo-American neoliberal model?

[33:28] Jason Pack: Great question. Firstly, the Norwegian Royal Family is deeply involved with Epstein. I forgot about that, actually. The Queen and Epstein were great friends; the Queen's son, who is not King Haakon’s son but a son from a previous marriage, is on trial for raping six women. So, I don’t think the Scandis get off here, right?

[34:02] Andrew Keen: Well, one Norwegian Royal Family does not implicate an entire subcontinent.

[34:08] Jason Pack: No, no, no, no, no. There were Swedish billionaires also involved. I mean, just... yes, their social models and their governments may get off lighter than ours, but I don’t think we can play favorites and say, "Oh well, the Danes were not participating." I am just interested in a model whereby law and principles apply equally if you're the "Lord of X, Y, and Z" as if you're a son of a carpenter in Ohio. And I know that that’s unrealistic, but I do think that we can at least aspire to that. And if we go back to the past, there was a religious view that that was what was just. And now I think that we saw a picture of elites—no one believes in anything. Not Christianity, not Judaism, not Buddhism, not Islam. We saw completely amoral elites, and that’s why they didn't think, "If I do this thing, I’m going to have to pay justice in the next life," or whatever. They didn't have a moral compunction about harming more and more young women or stealing more and more pensioners' money or screwing the British exchequer. So, that really worries me, and the order that I want is one where trust is restored. And now I’m pivoting to Scandinavia. I think that the Scandinavians have done a good job of maintaining social trust. So yes, there have been some bad apples and the Royals in Norway will probably suffer and get thrown out or, like the former Prince Andrew, go to jail. They have social trust where people are willing to not only keep their money in banks but do what institutions tell them because they think that the institutions do have their interests at heart and their versions of the National Health Service and things work. And we don’t have that in the Anglo-American world right now. People don’t think that the NHS or your Obamacare or whatever is really using your dollars effectively or you can just trust the police. I was burgled recently. Do you actually think that the police in North London are going to...

[36:51] Andrew Keen: I didn’t know you had burglars, Jason, in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

[36:55] Jason Pack: No, it’s very depressing. But I want to be a high-trust person who thinks these lovely police officers that I trust are going to help get my stolen stuff back. But the reality that we know is they're not going to do anything. And this is all tied into the Epstein problem is that...

[37:16] Andrew Keen: We can’t blame Jeffrey Epstein for the fact that your house in Hampstead Garden Suburb was burgled, can we?

[37:21] Jason Pack: No, but I’m saying it’s all part of a low-trust problem. We have so much crime and a lack of public services, whereas I think if you would compare it to Scandinavia, what they have that we don't is health services and police that may work, and people are not as terrified that you'll call the person in charge and they won't even do anything for you. And Epstein has shown this: women called the police and people tipped off things and the people who were responsible for helping them did nothing.

[38:05] Andrew Keen: Yeah, and the BBC reports that many of Epstein’s victims—or most of Epstein’s victims—in spite of all the millions of documents, they say they're no closer to justice. It is particularly... I mean, sometimes one jokes about some of this stuff, but it is particularly gross and disgusting. Final, one last thought—I know you got to run, Jason—we can think of Epstein as this climax, moral climax or immoral climax of the crisis of neoliberalism. But I wonder whether it could conceivably still be one of the minor quakes before the big one, and that will come with some sort of massive crypto meltdown or some other major financial crisis that will affect all of us? Because for whatever we say about Epstein, I mean, it’s clearly a catastrophe for the women who were raped by Epstein, but most of us are just titillated by this; it hasn't actually affected us. Is it conceivable—final comment, Jason, and we’ll talk about this over the years—is it conceivable that this is still a relatively small tremor before the big one when it comes to a moral and economic, legal, political crisis of neoliberal capitalism?

[39:27] Jason Pack: Sure, I agree with that analysis. Epstein isn't going to bring down neoliberal capitalism, but AI making five families wealthier than the rest of the world put together would, or crypto all of a sudden going to zero and, you know, 200 or 300,000 people realize that their life savings are gone. Yes, we could have a huge financial crisis connected to either AI or crypto. And yes, the Epstein just is important for taking away the dimension that "Oh, the institutions and the elites are working on our behalf." And that's why I’m the one having the nightmares, because I’d like to think as bad as Trump is, as bad as those bankers who gave out those subprime mortgages for their higher bonuses are, oh but there are so many good-intentioned people who are trying to make sure that we're all safe. And I’ve had to face that no, I think actually a lot of people were involved in this cover-up.

[40:40] Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it; rather depressing. But Jason’s been prescient in the past and I fear he’s prescient about the future. Jason Pack, host of the excellent Disorder podcast. Jason, this is certainly not the last word on this subject; we will talk again in the not-too-distant future. Thank you so much.

[41:00] Jason Pack: Always great to be on, Andrew.

[41:05] Andrew Keen: Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening or watching the show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe. We’re on Substack, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the platforms. And I’d be very curious as to your comments as well on what you think of the show, how it can be improved, and the kinds of guests that you would enjoy hearing or listening to in future. Thank you again.