Show notes
As I briefly mentioned yesterday, this panel was a real hoot. For context, it took place May 14 in Vancouver, Canada, at something called the “Web Summit,” which I was semi-inexplicably invited to attend. For much of the “summit,” I had to resist letting my eyes glaze over as various participants explained their AI startup to me. I’m sure some of the products are probably useful, but I just can’t bring myself to care enough about the intricacies of AI “innovation” to earnestly follow whatever it is I am being educated about in LinkedIn-speak by these lanyard guys. (Which is not to say they aren’t nice guys. And yes — mostly guys. I even took selfies with a few of them, upon request, though whenever somebody asks me for a selfie, I can’t help but affably scold them for debasing themselves.) A number of times I was asked to “connect” on LinkedIn, only to inform the requestor that I (mercifully) do not use LinkedIn.
Anyway, after the panel, I saw Bret Weinstein sulking around at something called the “Speakers Lounge,” and we had a few sporadic followup chats. He had already tweeted that my behavior on the panel was “pretty despicable,” and accused me of “ambushing” him. He also suggested that I had a hand in orchestrating the panel on false pretenses. I replied that I had simply been invited to attend the Web Summit, and was asked for suggestions on what might make for an interesting panel. So yeah, among my suggestions was something along the lines of, “Should we abolish all podcasts?” I’d been solicited to suggest topics with media or political relevance; obviously I wasn’t being brought there to discuss “tech,” AI, or blockchain. The guy organizing the conference did in fact take one of my suggestions, and formulated a panel premise on that basis. Or at least that’s my understanding of the unremarkable sequence of events. I had no notion that Bret Weinstein would be on the resulting panel. I honestly had little notion of what I would even be doing, or what the Web Summit even was — I’d just never been to Vancouver before, and kinda wanted to visit regardless, so this was as good an excuse as any. Turns out fellas like Aaron Mate (a Vancouver native) were also present, along with various other media types whom it would also not be 100% intuitive might get invited to such an event: Ryan Grim, Chris Hedges, Cenk Uygur, Curtis “Moldbug” Yarvin, Lauren Southern, Nate Fischer, Julius Krein, Eoin Higgins, among others. So, it was worth making the trek. But beyond that, I had no involvement in orchestrating the panel, despite Bret predictably spinning a theory that I had elaborately conspired with the organizers to “sandbag” him.
I want to correct one error I made on the panel. (See, I actually correct stuff where necessary). I incorrectly referred to the March 16, 2026 podcast Bret appeared on as the “Chris Jones Show,” when in actuality it was the “Danny Jones Show.” I regret the error. I’m not sure why I jotted down “Chris” rather than “Danny” in my notes, but I did, and have no problem admitting this error! Here is the exchange I was referring to, at 27:57:
DANNY JONES: And you know, that was also around the time of the George Floyd riots, and all that stuff, where people were burning cities down, and destroying everything in the streets, over one person being murdered. And I can’t help but wonder why we don’t see anything like this, now that this Epstein stuff has come out. When there’s evidence of people eating children, and molesting and trafficking children.
BRET WEINSTEIN: Yeah, it’s unfathomable. Because the implications -- it’s not just that you had this group of monsters apparently engaged in all of this unthinkably evil behavior. But the relationship to power is so clear in the so-called Epstein Files that the question is, you know, we have monsters near power. That’s extremely dangerous.
Bret and Danny then went on to expound a whole master-theory of Pedo Protecting Power on the basis of this totally batshit premise — that the “Epstein Files” had conclusively revealed evidence that scores of children were “eaten” by Epstein and his “monstrous” associates.
Bret apparently thought that my citing this extremely recent example of his podcast oeuvre was a despicably unfair “ambush,” even though it seemed perfectly sensible that if I was going to be on a panel about how we should “abolish podcasts,” I would be well-advised to cite a couple of concrete examples of the larger critique I was making. Which, to be clear, is not that we should literally “abolish all podcasts.” That’s impossible, obviously, and podcasts themselves are a neutral medium. What I am arguing is that we should somehow dislodge the current podcast-dominant online media ecosystem, which has become an engine of lucrative hysteria-fomenting, with zero factual standards, and zero repercussions (socially, reputationally, etc.) for peddling a constant slew of garbage. Because of this warped incentive structure, garbage-peddling is actually rewarded with increased revenue, stature, and political influence. Hence, Bret going on a podcast and doing something as insane as affirming that children have been cannibalized, before an audience of millions, and then facing zero consequence for this whatsoever, is a perfect example of what I’m critiquing when I semi-facetiously proclaim that we should “abolish all podcasts.”
Bear in mind, Bret has also espoused versions of his Epstein master-thesis on the #2 “News” podcast in the United States, the Tucker Carlson program. It was on the March 11, 2026 edition of that illustrious program that Bret spun out a postulation that Trump went to war with Iran because a “hidden power structure” coerced him into doing so, and of course this “hidden power structure” somehow intermingles with Epstein. Bret is so deeply disturbed by Trump attacking Iran — something he never could’ve fathomed Trump possibly doing, back when Bret was holding pro-Trump campaign rallies in 2024 — that he now feels he’s obliged to search for the real truth of how this eventuality could’ve possibly happened. And he’s landed on a hidden Epstein power structure being the real reason. Excerpt from the Tucker podcast:
BRET WEINSTEIN: The reason that the Epstein phenomenon, whatever it was, is so important, is that it suggests a hidden power structure that was there for leverage. It is unfortunate that in the edit that we have been shown, we don’t have conclusive evidence of who, what they were after, or even how the leverage worked. All we can see is strong evidence that there was something. Logically it is implied that it was connected to intelligence services. Ours, likely Israel’s, who knows who else. When you see your government, your president functioning in ways that do not add up, it’s like watching a planet behave oddly because of the gravity of some object you haven’t found yet. There’s the implication that there’s something with power in this system that is undeclared, as far as we know it is unnamed, and the central question is what is it, how does it work, and how much effect is it having on what we do.
Bret has similarly argued (on various podcasts) that the “Epstein Phenomenon,” as he oddly calls it, represents “the most fundamental question in the democratic republic that is the United States.”
But… he thinks it makes me a contemptibly “bad person” to “ambush” him by bringing up these remarks — on a panel expressly devoted to the insanities of the current podcast media environment? OK, lol.
Anyway, I have more to say about the “Web Summit,” and the various hilarities that it spawned on account of my humble presence there, but I gotta go take a ferry. I figured I would spend at least a day viewing some of the “sights” to be seen in Vancouver while I am inexplicably here.
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