Today we discuss Epstein, Trump, MAGA, and how we know what we think we know. The actual economy exists, as does the attention economy; now Bret introduces a new term: the leverage economy. This implies that there is a commodity that we cannot see, which can be used to coerce players to act in certain ways. We see evidence of this in academia, in the news, and in politics. Discussion includes data mining, conspiracy, and whether Trump will pick up neocons as he loses some of his base.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Goldberg in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/opinion/trump-jeffrey-epstein-files.html
Trump on truth social: https://x.com/chesschick01/status/1945498352507879536
Heinrichs in the Free Press: https://www.thefp.com/p/the-rights-1939-project
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Holding Screen
00:05:36 A Strange Moment Across the Universe
00:19:18 Epstein and An Exercise in Campfire
00:26:15 Trump Reversing His Opinion on Epstein
00:32:56 NY Times Asking Why Epstein is a Line in the Sand Issue for the Coalition
00:37:51 Trump's Vulnerability
00:42:53 The Leverage Economy: A Terrifying Idea if True
01:06:05 What Caused Trump's Epstein Flip: Are There Lies in the Evidence?
01:17:25 Epstein and Trump's Base: Why This Issue is Not Like the Others
01:22:24 The Leverage Economy Offers Certainty
01:25:31 Why The Matrix is Sullied for Heather
01:29:04 Those in the Leverage Economy vs. in Reality
01:31:26 The Group of People Who Might Go to Trump's Side
01:39:20 Closing
We have "cartesian blinders being put on us so that we are trying to make sense out of scraps of information and hints." - @bretweinstein
WEINSTEIN: I mean, even if you have your villains who are engaged in the behavior that motivated this war in Iran, even if that's the story, presumably most of the people in the path of these ferocious bombings that he is describing are not deserving of going back to the Stone Age.
In fact, I distinctly remember him telling us that part of what we were up to was liberating the people of Iran from their tyrannical regime.
So if it's the tyrannical regime that justifies the ferocious bombing, then it's a tragedy that other people are going to be sent back to the Stone Ages with them. Right?
HEYING: It's it's not a narrative. It's an incoherent set of talking points.
WEINSTEIN: Yeah, it's a kind of cheerleading that is completely inappropriate from the perspective of the president.
Bret Weinstein discusses the Trump administrations "back to the stone age" recent remarks in the latest episode of The Evolutionary Lens, Episode 320 "Are we back in the stone age?" on DarkHorse.
Bret Weinstein explains, "If you stop businesses from starting here, and if you drive people so that they move elsewhere—even though it's difficult to do—then the point is the tax base dries up, which then forces you to become even more predatory for the people who stayed.
And that's really the thing, right? They're setting themselves up so that they have to go after more and more people, because the people who are starting new businesses are not going to do it here."
Bret speaks with John Cullen on the subject of the unanswered questions surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.
Youtube: https://youtu.be/7m31LcCTf10
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0LEGBkh2yXDTl3QqU38Qid?si=KtxnJF0IT3i4XGhE_Sm0cg
Locals: https://darkhorse.locals.com/post/8227721/the-drone-hypothesis-john-cullen-on-darkhorse
Rumble: https://rumble.com/v7g2ny2-the-drone-hypothesis-john-cullen-on-darkhorse.html
Bret and Heather discuss new cats, fat bears, and overwhelmed frogs. The tilcayo, a newly named species of cat from Bolivia, is part of a group of New World “tiger cats” that live on the outskirts of the Amazon basin. We discuss Carnivoran relationships, cats more specifically, and what is known about the history and ecology of the tilcayo in particular.
Then: it’s fat bear week at Katmai National Park in Alaska, where grizzlies are fattening themselves on salmon for the Winter ahead; we discuss hibernation, reproductive diapause, and general chonkiness in bears.
Finally: female Cope’s gray treefrogs have a harder time choosing good mates when there’s a lot of noise, and when there are too many suitors—kind of like how women often make bad choices when confronted with chaos and wingmen.
Rumble: ...
