Name: Andrew Huberman Explains Why Scientists Hung Around Jeffrey Epstein
Uploaded: 2023-03-21T17:03:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Andrew Huberman Explains Why Scientists Hung Around Jeffrey Epstein' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-21. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Andrew Huberman Explains Why Scientists Hung Around Jeffrey Epstein' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-21. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- I guess this is an opportunity
to bring up Jeff Epstein.
So, you know, people sometimes wonder,
you know, like we're scientists, you know,
hanging out with him to get, you know,
to get with these young women or something.
I know scientists.
There are some scientists like that.
They were spending time with him
because he was giving their laboratories money
that they didn't have to write grants for.
- Why was he doing that though?
- Oh, there are very strong opinions.
He under, I never met him.
I know people who knew him,
but he clearly understood social engineering.
He understood that rich people have,
they can get anything they want, anything they want,
except the one thing they can't easily control
is their reputation.
'Cause that requires other people's perceptions
and just being rich doesn't make you necessarily respected.
By certain people, yes, by certain people, no.
So he understood that very wealthy people feel more important
and can derive more sense of self-respect
when they're surrounded by brilliant people.
And he was very good at bringing truly brilliant people
into that mix.
People like Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark, right?
He's a particle physicist.
I mean, head of the Santa Fe Institute, Nobel Prize.
I mean, he used, Gell-Mann used to pick on Richard Feynman.
He was one of the few people who could,
maybe not verbally joust with him,
but at a scientific level, could pin that guy.
So they were on more or less equal tier,
but Gell-Mann was right up there.
So Epstein understood, like, bring around the Gell-Manns,
bring around the top genetic researchers from Harvard.
By doing that, he made these rich people feel like
they were in the company of interesting, important people.
- Interesting.
- And why would scientists spend time with rich people?
I'll be really honest.
I do a lot of work for these days for talking about science
and trying to generate science philanthropy.
That's a big part of my life now,
trying to generate money to give to studies
that are really interesting and valid.
We could talk about that if you like.
Scientists will show up to dinners
that normally they'd rather be in their labs
or writing grants or with their families, frankly,
if there's the possibility of money
being given to their laboratory,
because then they can hire more people and do more science.
Money alone doesn't drive good science,
but the more money you have,
the bigger margin of error you have.
So if Epstein offered laboratories,
you know, a million dollars a year for four years,
to a guy of that wealth as trivial,
to a laboratory,
that is four national institutes of health grants per year.
And the workload to maintain those four grants is immense.
So they'd show up with the possibility of getting money.
That's where they were hanging out with a dirt bag like him.
And they had blinders on.
Either they knew or they didn't know what he was up to,
but they had blinders on
because they weren't thinking about the implications.
- Well, it was also,
one of the things about something like that must be
that if you go there and you see Steven Pinker
and you see Lawrence Krauss and you see Bill Gates,
it seems like you should be there.
It seems fine to be there.
- Also on, you know, sinister, diabolical,
narcissistic and sociopathic,
but brilliant social engineering on the part of it.
Epstein understood that they felt comfortable in the room
because of who else was there.
- Yeah.
- Rich people like will show up to a place for who's not there,
as we know, they like to have space, right?
And scientists generally don't like to hobnob.
It's not really their thing.
What they like to do is work on their pet projects.
They're a little bit like comedians in the sense
that they have a craft they want to be working on.
They're only going to do things like go out and get money
if they have to get money.
And they do a lot to get money.
- Well, I'm sure there's a lot of social aspect of it
and hang around with other brilliant scientists
at a wonderful place.
You have good food and drink
and there's pretty girls around.
It's probably exciting.
- It's probably exciting,
although I think that at some level,
scientists, real scientists,
dyed-in-the-wool scientists,
would rather just be doing science
and living their lives. - I'm sure.
I mean, this is a very rare occasion.
I'm sure that they're doing this.
- So he had the whole thing.
The Harvard shirt.
I mean, he kind of,
he ingratiated himself in this community.
He just understood.
It was sort of like,
I do some work with some professional sports teams, right?
And the only people that they look up to
are tier one special operators.
You tell a pro NBA player like,
oh, in the NFL, they do this.
They're like, whatever.
You tell them that, you know,
this will increase your output by 10%.
They're like, whatever.
They don't care.
They want to play video games.
They do not care.
They want to hang out with their girlfriend
or their four girlfriends, whatever it is.
You tell them tier one operators
who do high risk, high consequence work
and are on deployment schedules that would dissolve you
into a puddle of your own tears
because it's a vampire schedule.
You don't get to sleep when you want to
and you get, you potentially die.
You potentially all die
and their running times are faster.
Their recovery times are faster.
Their shooting accuracy is far better
than your shooting accuracy.
And that's with a gun and getting shot at.
And they go, okay, I'll listen.
They look up to tier one operators.
That's a fact.
And so if you want them to listen,
you understand that fact.
You look at what tier one operators are doing.
That's what professional sports teams are trying
to glean that information.
Billionaires, they have different interests, obviously.
Some race yachts, some want to start new projects,
but they want to be around really innovative,
interesting people.
And in academia, there are a very small subset of those
running big laboratories.
And Epstein just got that down to the detail.
And then he understood, I think, with politicians,
they can, their reputations are everything.
And so he gave them a vaulted world
where they could behave how they wanted.
I mean, in some sense, I mean, his story is one
of multiple psychologies, not just his.
- Yeah, that's why people that have studied him
and the whole case believe that,
and from other evidence and information as well,
that he was part of some sort of an intelligence operation
and there was compromising these people.
- Oh, I'm sure that at some point he had information
on other people and he just used it as, and it doesn't
have to be stronghand blackmail, right?
He could just say, you know, we've got information,
we'll hold it secure.
- Well, you would just, you don't even have
to blackmail someone.
If you know they have information on you
and they have not used it, you will act in their best interest
to try to get them on your good side.
- Well, I mean, in the unraveling of all the dark,
sordid shit around Weinstein,
it was discovered, I think, in New York,
like near that avenue, down in Alphabet City Police Precinct,
it turns out that there were, you know,
a boatload of files that date back ages.
And, you know, it's not that cops are corrupt,
it's that they're incentivized by certain things too.
And their bosses were telling them you gotta do certain things,
you gotta put away certain files.
And, you know, people are trying to make careers.
I think that's why that show, it's a little outdated now,
but from technology standpoint,
but The Wire was so brilliant,
is that every aspect of that was a human endeavor.
And science is a human endeavor.
And we're kind of paying attention
to the darker, unfortunate side.
They're also, again, I always feel like
I gotta shine light where it belongs to,
which is that a lot of amazing science is happening
because of excellent philanthropy of people
that are not pedophiles.
- Yes, yes, of course.
- And those people, you know, and,
but let's be honest, walk onto any university campus,
look at the names on the sides of the building,
do you think they're there to honor those people
because those were great people?
Sometimes they're great people.
They're there because those people donated
50 to a hundred million dollars.
- Right.
- I mean, and this has been known in law schools
and business schools for a long time
because you'd see it on the,
that was kind of more accepted there
'cause it's business and law.
- Right, right.
- But if you walk onto any campus,
I don't care if it's UT Austin or it's Stanford
or it's Harvard, the names on those sides of buildings,
sometimes it's the Kennedy Building,
sometimes it's the Rockefeller Building.
More often than not, these are names of people
you don't recognize anymore
and names of people don't even live in the United States.
They gave a hundred million dollars
for a building that trains medical students.
Universities are a business too, 100%.
And it doesn't mean that they're trying to corrupt anybody,
but they have to survive.
You have to get to pay the janitor.
- Yeah.
- You got to pay the cops, you get on the campus.
I mean, so it is a business.
And I think you, the human side actually,
to your credit, I learned from you.
I think you may or may not remember,
but a few years ago we were talking about everything
that was going on in the public health thing.
And you're like, the reason I'm curious about this,
and I don't trust this,
these were your words more or less,
was because I know about people.
And that's, at the end of the day,
it's all about people and their psychology.
- Well that.