This week on What Rough Beast, Stephen and Virginia go deep on the Epstein conspiracy. Here's what we covered:

* How Epstein represented a new class of ultra-wealthy who exempt themselves from democratic norms and why this scandal has traction when Trump seemed "Teflon"

* Virginia's first-hand experience with John Brockman's Epstein-funded EDGE organization and the "intellectual dark web"

* The physics envy pipeline from quantum mechanics to finance via IQ fetishism

* How neo-Darwinism provided intellectual cover for predatory behavior

* Why Trump supporters care more about "cover-ups" than actual crimes and whether cognitive fatigue could provide an off-ramp from Trump loyalty

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In this episode of What Rough Beast, we talk to David Rees, host of Election Profit Makers and creator of the legendary post-9/11 comic strip "Get Your War On," which skewered the Bush administration's War on Terror through the voices of office workers having profane conversations about cluster bombs and nation-building. We discuss:

* Iraq vs. Iran rhetoric: How the arguments for bombing Iran compare to the "extremely stupid" discourse that justified the 2003 Iraq invasion, and why Trump's impulsive approach differs from Bush's ideological war machine

* The evolution of American freakiness: How the cultural currency of being anti-establishment has flipped from the counterculture left to Trump's depraved right, making figures like Stephen Miller the new Rumsfeld

* Clip art as social commentary: Why Rees chose anonymous office workers to represent Americans during the War on Terror

* Protesting in the Trump era: Why young people aren't motivated by "orange man bad" protests but are energized by direct action against ICE, and what this means for anti-establishment politics

* The Zohran Mamdani moment: How NYC's presumptive next mayor represents a new generation of unapologetically progressive politicians who terrify billionaires—and why that's exactly the point

This episode is free to all listeners, but please consider becoming a paid Magic + Loss subscriber. Every dollar goes to the continued fight against fascism.

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Today on What Rough Beast, we talk to Jon Ronson, the masterful narrative storyteller behind the podcast "Things Fell Apart" and author of numerous acclaimed books. Jon has spent decades chronicling how America came unraveled, with particular expertise in tracking the origins of conspiracy theories and culture wars.

In this episode, we discuss:

* The extraordinary coincidence of timing: How virtually every major culture war that has engulfed America since 2020 erupted within just 20 days of each other in late May/early June 2020, right after George Floyd's murder

* The deadly origins of "excited delirium": Jon traces how a bogus medical diagnosis created in 1980s Miami to cover up the murders of 32 Black sex workers became the justification police officers used while standing over George Floyd's body

* Why pandemics make people go insane: Drawing on historical accounts from ancient Rome to medieval plagues, we explore why viral outbreaks reliably trigger mass delusions and conspiracy thinking

* The future of American conflict: As culture wars potentially wind down, Jon predicts the next battleground will be "the war on institutions" - and discusses why Luigi Mangione might signal a shift from cultural to class warfare

This episode is free to all listeners, but please consider becoming a paid Magic + Loss subscriber. Every dollar goes to the continued fight against fascism.

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We’re talking with Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, which works to protect and expand the First Amendment freedoms of expression, association, and inquiry, and ensure that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology.

In this episode, we discuss:

* The strategic theater behind ICE arrests - How dramatic detentions of elected officials like NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander are designed as performances for an audience of one: Donald Trump

* Why litigation is winning but can't solve Trumpism - Wizner explains how civil rights lawyers have filed 53 lawsuits in 100 days, winning many, but why legal victories alone won't address the deeper political crisis

* The cases of detained activists - Updates on Rumeysa Ozturk (released from detention) and Mahmoud Khalil (still detained in Louisiana), and what their cases reveal about the administration's tactics

* Terror tactics vs. autocratic control - Why the current approach resembles a protection racket more than systematic authoritarianism, using fear and spectacle rather than total surveillance

* The limits and power of resistance - How 5 million people in the streets for the "No Kings" protest shows Americans aren't too afraid to mobilize, and why our response determines what kind of crisis we're actually in

* The multipolar world after Trump - How three consecutive elections featuring Trump have permanently changed America's global standing, regardless of future election outcomes

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Last week, I spoke with human rights researcher and advocate Yaqiu Wang, whose recent NYT piece draws on the lessons of her childhood in authoritarian China. We talked about her detention in China when she was a student posting on an anonymous Twitter account, the capitulation of the elites, and how to resist obeying the regime. Watch our convo here, and or listen on Substack and anywhere you get your podcasts.

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Today we're talking with Benjamin Teitelbaum, author of "War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right," who studies traditionalist movements and far-right ideology. We explore why these ideas have such allure in America today, using JD Vance as our lens to examine his conversion t…

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Today we’re talking with Rich Logis, a former Trump and MAGA supporter and pundit, who is now the founder of Leaving MAGA, an organization helping others break free from the movement.

In this episode, we talk about:

* Rich Logis's personal journey from dedicated MAGA supporter to founding Leaving MAGA

* How information bubbles and community identity can lead people to reject contradictory evidence and view those outside their group as existential threats

* The psychological process of doubting, leaving, and publicly renouncing a political movement that had become central to one's identity

* How people seeking to help loved ones still in MAGA can approach conversations with empathy and understanding

* The importance of creating new communities for those experiencing doubt, as Leaving MAGA offers an "exit ramp" for people questioning their support

This episode is free to all listeners, but please consider becoming a paid Magic + Loss subscriber. Every dollar goes to the continued fight against fascism.

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We are Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf, and today we’re talking with the great writer and reporter John Jeremiah Sullivan. We discuss:

* John’s forthcoming book "The Prime Minister of Paradise" about Christian Gottlieb Priber, a radical Enlightenment thinker who established a utopian experiment among the Cherokee in 1730s America

* How Priber's vision for "Paradise" included revolutionary principles that were ahead of their time: religious tolerance, racial equality, democratic governance, and rejection of slavery

* The forgotten history of radical Enlightenment ideas in early America and how they influenced (but weren't fully embraced by) the founding fathers

* The parallel between today's political threats to democracy and the tension between enlightenment and anti-enlightenment forces that has existed throughout American history

* The importance of identifying and defending the core enlightenment principles that make the American experiment worth fighting for

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We are Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf, and today we’re talking with the great Ben Meiselas, co-host (and -founder) of the chart-busting MeidasTouch, and USC Law Professor. Virginia also recently profiled Meiselas for The New Republic.

In this episode, we talk about:

* How politics has become "gamified" like sports entertainment, with people choosing political figures like they'd pick fighters in a video game rather than focusing on underlying issues and values

* The contrast between Meidas Touch Network's approach (focused on empathy, compassion, and data-driven analysis) versus rage-driven media algorithms

* How sports and entertainment are being used as tools for political messaging; think of UFC, WWE figures, and sports teams visiting the White House

* The concerning overlap between entertainment spectacle and serious governance, with political conversations being treated like debates about reality TV

* Meidas Touch Network's stunning growth metrics, now generating more views than Fox News and more podcast downloads than Joe Rogan

This episode is free to all listeners, but please consider becoming a paid Magic + Loss subscriber. Every dollar goes to the continued fight against fascism.

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