Epstein’s connections to Musk, Gates, Brin, and more, plus the battle over ads in AI bots, Netflix’s supposed wokeism, and more, on The Vergecast.
There are bold-faced tech names all over the Epstein files. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Reid Hoffman, Steven Sinofsky, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, on and on and on.
These men had wildly varying degrees of interaction with Epstein, and the details matter a great deal. But so does the totality of it: you spend long enough in these files, and you start to get a sense of the way the world works for a particular kind of extremely rich and extremely powerful businessman. And it starts to feel pretty bad. --- Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Vergecast wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here. --- On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay start the show by talking about the latest tranche of emails from the Epstein files, both what we’ve learned and the deeply strange way in which they’re being disseminated. There are interesting business stories in here; there are shocking plots to change the world. We’re still not sure how to talk about any of it, except to keep showing what we find. After that, it’s time for the other thing capturing tech minds this week: Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads, which isn’t explicitly a shot at OpenAI’s plan to introduce ads to ChatGPT but is also very clearly exactly that. The ads started a debate about both how we use AI and how we pay for it and also made it a little clearer how precarious OpenAI’s position is right now. They’re also just very good ads. Then it’s time for some streaming talk, including the utterly bizarre conversation about Netflix’s supposed wokeness and the hit new streaming box you can buy at a farmers market. Finally, in the lightning round, we do a round of Brendan Carr is a Dummy, celebrate Google Home’s button support, and wonder when we’ll ever be able to buy gadgets again. Subscribe: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Overcast | Pocket Casts | More If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on the Epstein files: * The Epstein files * How the men in the Epstein files defeated #MeToo * From Garbage Day: Here’s how Epstein broke the internet * Former Windows 8 boss recruited Epstein to help negotiate his messy Microsoft exit * Bill Gates says accusations contained in Epstein files are ‘absolutely absurd’ * It turns out Elon Musk didn’t exactly ‘refuse’ the invite to Jeffrey Epstein’s island. * Will Elon Musk’s emails with Jeffrey Epstein derail his very important year? * Google co-founder Sergey Brin visited Epstein’s private island and traded emails with Ghislaine Maxwell. * From The New York Times: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich * From The New York Times: What Jeffrey Epstein Did to Earn $158 Million From Leon Black And in AI ads spats: * Anthropic says ‘Claude will remain ad-free,’ unlike an unnamed rival * Anthropic’s blog post: Claude is a space to think * Sam Altman responds to Anthropic’s ‘funny’ Super Bowl ads * From TechCrunch: Nvidia CEO pushes back against report that his company’s $100B OpenAI investment has stalled And in streaming: * Netflix lands in the middle of a culture war during Senate hearing * Everyone is stealing TV * Disney says Josh D’Amaro will replace Bob Iger as CEO And in the lightning round: * From Ars Technica: FCC aims to ensure “only living and lawful Americans” get Lifeline benefits * Raspberry Pi is raising prices again as memory shortages continue * Valve’s Steam Machine has been delayed, and the RAM crisis will impact pricing * Peloton’s gamble on expensive new hardware has yet to pay off * The price of Bitcoin drops below $65,000 * Google Home finally adds support for buttons
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