Behind the Bastards · Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

Part One: How Jeffrey Epstein Helped Build the Modern World

February 17, 2026·1 hr 8 min·4 clips

The DOJ released three million new Epstein pages — and the Mar-a-Lago elbow detail stood out.

Jeffrey Epstein enters through jokes, not reverence. The cold open leans on fake familiarity, awkward nicknames, and file-search paranoia, because the scandal feels too huge and too weirdly connected to treat cleanly. Andrew T. is the person reacting in real time while the host keeps returning to the ugly part: Epstein's orbit looks less like one monster and more like a contact list full of famous and connected people. Then the excerpt takes a hard turn into Brock Pierce and the dot-com boom, and somehow the rhythm still matches. The mood drops fast. A relationship involving a 16-year-old is called rape, and the parents' reported response gets treated as a moral collapse, not a misunderstanding. Someone on mic clearly cannot get past that detail. The host follows Brock, still 17, into business with older men before a company goes looking for funding. Then the money arrives. Din attracts about $88 million, with Fred Savage and Michael Huffington used as examples of celebrity and political capital chasing internet lottery tickets. The thinking is familiar and stupid in the way boom logic often is: throw cash at odd ideas because one of them might become YouTube. After that comes the mansion: sports cars, celebrity parties, and work events sold as company culture in Encino. The bit is funny until it curdles. Calling it Hollywood glamour gets harder once the host points out where they actually are. Under the jokes, the episode is about abuse, hype, access, and business incentives letting adults excuse bad judgment until someone else pays for it. The closing stays loud, with plugs for AMP, Cool Zone Media, Netflix video episodes, YouTube clips, and the show's statistical audience joke.

As heard by us

Behind the Bastards traces how dot-com excess produced a world Epstein didn't have to build, just exploit.

Behind the Bastards makes a specific case here: Epstein didn't create the culture around him, he just knew how to use it. The dot-com era carries the argument -- Robert Evans and Andrew T.

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Why you'd press play

You want to understand not just what Epstein did, but why so many handed him the keys.

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