Corrupt to the core
How Epstein groomed people with no power and people with all the power, and what that reveals: a conversation with Joanna Coles for “The Daily Beast Podcast”
I had a really terrific conversation with Joanna Coles of The Daily Beast yesterday. This is a true deep dive into the inner workings of power in our time, as revealed by the Epstein files. It is neither short nor pleasant. But it was an important conversation. I think we got to some new themes I haven’t thought much about yet. That is what real conversation does.
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People are drawn to stories like this because they’re shocking — but also because they create distance.
It becomes something happening over there, involving people with extreme power or pathology.
But the more uncomfortable question is what allows these systems to exist in the first place.
Not just at the top — but in everyday human behaviour.
Compliance. Silence. The pull toward proximity to power. The ability to override instinct.
Those patterns don’t begin in elite circles. They scale up from something much more common.
If we only consume the story, we stay spectators.
If we start looking at the conditions that make it possible — including where we place our own attention — we move a little closer to actual agency.
https://whereattentiongoes.substack.com/p/the-cult-that-believed-sin-was-the?r=7vrhym&utm_medium=ios