Welcome to the movies you liked as an adolescent and are now ashamed of shame cast. I'm Robert Evans and today in the seat of eternal self hatred Jamie Loftus. Jamie, you have just admitted, prior to the show starting that you once loved the Dana Carve Vehicle Master of Disguise. What do you have to say for yourself?
I feel fucking sick with myself, Robert, I haven't been able to sleep in the twenty years since its release. In my defense, it came out on my birthday, which I feel like had a lot to do with why I considered it my favorite movie. I felt a kingship with it.
Yeah, birthdays are like a performance enhancing drug for movies that you see when you're eleven.
Absolutely true, the blood.
Doping of positive movie memories.
And furthermore, it's the most famous children's movie that was shooting on nine to eleven, And so I thank you. I wows felt like it would have been disloyal to my country to say a word against the Master of Disguise, particularly the turtle Turtle scene. However, you know, I think the movie certainly doesn't hold up and I feel fucking sick with myself every single day.
Yeah, I wonder because famously Dana Carvey was dressed as the Turtle Man when those planes hit those towers, and James Cameron was twenty thousand feet below sea level exploring the bottom of the ocean, and I wonder if they ever cross paths at like a Hollywood event and started talking about nine to eleven, So what are you up to on that day?
And then Marlo Alberg just leans in apropos of nothing and is like.
If I was there, I would have stopped it. Oh, Jamie, you know, I can honestly say nine to eleven was the first time I felt like this country let me down because it delayed the release of the seminal Tim Allen film Big Trouble, which it sure it sure did, features a classic Patrick Warburton performance, by the way, it sure do. Goddamn right. You see his ass, everybody, if you want to see Patrick Warburton's ass, it's in that movie.
He is so underrated. I absolutely love love that man.
A total of talent.
Friends, just to say, this is behind the ba this.
Is behind the Bastards. A podcast about none of the things that we were talking about. Uh, and today, actually, Jamie, I've got you back in the hot seat, back in the office, which is more of an ephemeral feeling than a physical space, making.
Me an answer for my sins right off the jump.
Yeah, by talking again about our friend Sam Bankman Freed, who you and I chatted about right after his life collapsed last year, and I like we should do an update.
I think we should too, because I'll be honest, I have done truly everything I can to avoid knowing more about him, so I would say I know basically nothing about him since we last spoke.
Yeah, It's it's amazing because normally, you know, I'm an empathetic being, Like Sam has a face that I've just always wanted to hit from the first time I saw a picture of him. And normally when somebody goes through this much shit, when like their life is this ruined, right, Like I might I feel a little less like hitting them because the world has hit them, but I still kind of want to sock him in the fucking jaw. Every time I see this guy.
Let me just check it has his face changed.
He wears suits sometimes now when he goes to court, He's not wearing the basketball shorts.
Helpful and well, oh that's true. God, yeah, that's like two different versions of an embarrassing, desperate way to present. Okay, he's wearing a he's wearing a suit.
Now, yeah, he's wearing a suit. Now it looks like shit, but whatever. Of course, I try not to judge people on how they look unless that's part of the Cohn and Sam as a guy for whom the dressing like a slab was always part of his his like techbro genius, you know, persona that he was putting on like a fooled every puddy. A mug shot, Oh yeah, yeah, there's got I believe there's a mugshot of him out at
this point, certainly when he went at the Bahamas. So when we last left our buddy Sam in November of twenty twenty two, he had been arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States, where he was charged with so many financial crimes that he might theoretically spend more than one hundred and fifteen years in prison.
Wow.
Now, in the days and months since, a lot has happened, and a lot more has come out about how the former crypto mogul behaved before and after his fall. I want to start with some of the latter information, because by far, the most entertaining story to drop as a result of these serried legal filings against Sam is that he was using the nonprofit arm of FTX to attempt to buy a sovereign name he could use as an
apocalypse shelter. That is by far the funniest story that's dropped about these guys in the days months since.
What was the plan there?
Oh, that's a great question, Jamie. So let's talk about the island of Nauru. It's an island in the southwest Pacific. I think it's about twenty one hundred miles away from the coast of Australia, which, given the fact that Australia is really out in the middle of nowhere, is pretty close to Australia. It is presently the world's smallest island nation.
It's got a population of about twelve thousand or so, not a ton of people, and as an incredibly tiny country, one of its primary assets is simply the fact that it is a sovereign nation. Because there's things that countries can do then nothing else can do, like issue certain kinds like passports and visas and do certain kinds of
things with banking. Right, So, if you're a really tiny country that doesn't have like a shitload of natural resources, one thing you can export is the benefits of your sovereignty. To say, really rich people who who might want certain things that you can do as a country.
Plan is coming to get.
So there's a number of ways in which Naru has kind of taken advantage of this to get by. One of them is that they've sort of sold access to their land to Australia to use, so that Australia has used them for years as an offshore processing center for asylum seekers. I think this stopped most recently in twenty nineteen, but there's been a couple of waves of this and
it was not a pleasant place, right. Conditions were so brutal in sort of the offshore processing center on Nauru from twenty twelve to twenty nineteen that several residents carried out like deadly forms of protests, sowing their own lipshut or lighting themselves on fire as a protest of the conditions they were facing. Pretty ugly scene in the late nineteen nineties. Kind of prior to this period, NARU was the chief money laundering location for the emerging Russian oligarch class.
They helped a lot of these. All the archetypes you've heard about in the context of Putin laund are about seventy billion dollars in the ill gotten funds during the early stages of the Russian Federation.
I have a good bastard's cameo.
Oh yeah, no, Naro's nar who's adjacent to a whole lot of shitty people. Great, yeah, here, it's a lovely place. Narus also designated a money laundering state by the US Treasury in two thousand and two, which led to sanctions, which I think is probably why they moved to like
letting Australia offshore migrants there for a while. And since Australia stopped doing that in twenty nineteen, Sam Bankman, Freed and his fellow effective altruists felt like they might have had an opportunity there, right, Like Naru's kind of looking for some new cash flow. They're looking for a sovereign nation to do some things for.
Well, it's an opportunity to be effective.
Yeah, yeah, to be effectively altruistic towards yourself. Specifically, Sam and his brother Gabriel Bankman Freed is actually the guy sort of like organizing this attempted endeavor using ftx's charitable donation's arm and their goal was to purchase the entire island in order to construct what Gabe called a bunker, shelter that would be used to quote ensure that most effective altruists survive in the event that between fifty percent and ninety nine point nine to nine percent of the
world population perishing a catastrophe.
Jesus, And that's like a pretty common this. I feel like the Gabe of the situation is a very common character in bat like just the devious brother. I mean, I hate the bastard most of all, but I really detest the devious brother as well. There's just it just weeks of insecurity get your own grift man.
Especially since they're framing it not as look, you know, when you got like a guy like Peter teal right, and everybody knows Peter Teel's got like an evil rich guy bunker to wait out the end of the world if it happens, and like, fuck Peter teal but at least that's Peter Tel's not pretending I have a bunker to like, save the world by putting aside just the best people. He's like, no, I'm a giant piece of shit and I'm going to save myself if things go wrong. Okay,
like fucking Peter Teel, but at least it's honest. They're framing it as my blood bunker for just boys. Yeah, it's me and my blood boys. Jabe is like, no, we have to in the event there's an apocalypse, we have to save all the eas because they're the best people, and that's what's best for the world that will do.
We're utilitarians, right, The greatest good for the greatest number of people is to save all of the best people, which is me and my friends, the other finance kids who call themselves effective altruists, so they don't have to feel bad for the fact that all they do is play the stock market like every other piece of shit anyway.
So lucky that they all met each other.
So lucky all the good people I would love, I would love honestly, Like, look, when the strike is over, somebody at a network, bring me on. I will write you a banger fucking script about an apocalypse where just the EA guys are left in their bunker. Trying to figure out society.
Okay, another incentive to end the strike would fucking rip.
Yeah, yeah, we could do. We could do quite a tale. We could have some fun with this one, Jamie.
I don't I think that there would be some effective altruism, uh like ridiculous enough to do cameos.
Oh, I believe we could get We could get fucking William mccaskell in. There no problem bring his Scottish ass on board.
Yeah, vain little perverts.
Oh, and they're all They're all I'm gonna be honest, kind of stupid. So I bet we could trick him, like you don't have journalistic ethics with an HBO show. Yeah, we could just say we're bringing them on for an interview. We could like film around him, liking what was that fucking movie with uh? Oh yeah, Steve Martin where they where they have to film the fake movie around Uh what is it Chris rock Ship.
Oh, it's the It's oh.
See now you're now now now it's I know, it's driving me nuts. We have to figure this out. Uh.
I rewatched it recently.
It holds up.
It does hold up. It's like one of the best movies.
Bofinger fucking dope.
Younger.
We could do a bow Finger with William mccaskell where he thinks he's getting interviewed for a documentary and we're really making him the bad guy off our HBO series, bringing Steve Martin to fuck it. He's still he still got it.
Yeah, he's got good politics. He'd be great.
Yeah. Uh glad, glad we remembered it. Watch Bowfinger, guys.
It holds up truly if you take anything away from today, it really does. I was shocked at how well it helped.
Yeah, startlingly good movie, pretty good, like scientology joke. So, Gabriel Bankman freed ran ftx's charitable donations wing, which included a ton of money, for what many people have characterized as political bribes. I'm not saying that he was bribing politicians for FTX. I'm saying that's what a lot of people have characterized what he was doing as. Now that much has been known for a why, But it was not until the current management of what remains of FTX
sued Sam. Because again there's new management that's trying to recover as much money as possible and they're throwing Sam under the bus. Because why wouldn't they, And that's how all this stuff got revealed because they have all of ftx's internal communications, so they found a bunch of shit like that Sam was having Gabriel try to buy the
island of Nauru. Now it is unclear how serious their attempt to buy this island was a representative of the island's government has been like, no, no, no, we were never putting our island for sale. This was never a thing that was going to happen. And maybe that is the case, maybe they were just being idiots fucking around.
But in a memo between Gabriel and an FTX officer, the discussion was centered around the idea of buying the island, of being in control of it as a sovereign country, not just purchasing land, which is cool.
I mean that's a lot of work for a bit. Not that I put it past him, but I'm just like, it's not sounding like.
Yeah, no, I think I don't put it past It's possible that Naru whatever is telling whatever government officials telling the truth they were never considering selling the island. But it's also possible that Gabe at all believed they could buy the island, right.
Right, they may in fact be that dumb.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now there were discussions between these FDx guys about using Naru as a base for human genetic experimentation. You get the feeling that what their goal was to create modified posthuman godlike bodies for their fellow effective altruists so that they live forever and dominate mankind after the collapse is undying immortals.
That just sent the ugliest photoshopped image like it was involuntary. How quickly the like no neck, huge chest photoshops super.
So absolutely absolutely, Hey yeah, it sounds like a mix between that one video game with the big robot dinosaur and those sci fi books by that guy who wound up being real anti Muslim But yeah, oh yeah.
A lot would be a lot of guys. I wonder which guy.
Oh it's I think Ilium and olympos okay, I forget the name of the author, but the premise of the book is that like in the future, a bunch of rich guys turn themselves into gods and decide to like recreate the Trojan War with themselves as the Greek gods, and they like resurrect a bunch of dead archaeologists to make sure that they get the details right. It's it's fun, it's it's it's quite a series, except for the weird moments of bigotry. Oh that good stuff. Dan Simmons I think,
is the author anyway. So, yeah, they're talking about we want to create a human genetic experimentation base, and they're like, we want to figure out what the sensible regulations around human genetic enhancement are, but we also want to build a lab. And while they're talking about this, Gabriel ads cryptically, probably there are other things it's useful to do with sovereign country. I don't know what he means by that,
but yeah, probably huh. So that could be as banal is just like money laundering, which NARU obviously is quite a history of, or issuing things like passports. But given the fact that all these dummies are permanently poisoned by a mixture of sci fi fandoms and weird futurist cults, I think it's safe to say we all dodged a bullet by the fact that they never got too far in this scheme. Now, my favorite thing about this whole
idea is how dumb it is. On its face, there are some countries that could act as really good apocalypse shelters for the super rich. Right, Switzerland is one. A lot of rich people have their apocalypse shelters in Switzerland. New Zealand is another. But the problem for that is that,
like Switzerland and New Zealand are both functional states. Obviously, if you're a billionaire there, you can have some outsized influence, but you're not just gonna run everything because there's other interests and like a functional system of government in place in all of those places. I think Sam and them were hoping that since Naru's small enough, they could just utterly dominate the government, but they ignored the fact that it's like one of the worst places imaginable to have
as an apocalypse shelter. For one thing, the island does not grow much food, which means it has to import in ninety percent of what it needs to sustain its very small population it has.
It's all good, we have so much money.
It's okay, we'll just keep importing it. Yeah. It also has very little fresh water, and most of its infrastructure is on the coast and vulnerable to both rising sea levels and hurricanes. It is very close to the bottom of places that you would want to have as a shelter. So very funny. All these people are silly, now, Jamie.
The main reason current FTX is revealing all this is that they are suing the old management of the country company, i e. SAM, to try and reclaim a billion or so dollars they argue was funneled illegally into nonsense like this and into the pockets of bankment Freed and his lieutenants in the months before FTX collapsed due to insolvency. Suit against SAM also includes some more confounding lines described in this paragraph from an article on the suit by
crypto news site decrypt. The lawsuit further says that the projects run by the FTX Foundation were frequently misguided and sometimes dystopian. These included a three hundred dollars one thousand dollars grant to an individual to write a book about how to figure out what humans utility function are, as well as a four hundred thousand dollars grant to an entity that posted YouTube videos related to rationalist and effective
altruism material, including videos on grabby aliens. Now does that all seem like nonsense to you, Jamie?
I don't know. Robert let's hear them out about the grabby alien.
Don't worry, I'm going to explain all of this horseshit to you.
Uh my god, what kind of Rick and Morty ass nonsense?
It is some Rick and Morty ass nonsense. It's much dumber than anything in Rick and Morty because at least some of the people there understand story structure.
Unlike the at Please understand that it's a joke.
But it's a bit. Yes, yeah, so if you aren't terminally adhered to one of the stupidest subcultures in the broader tech sphere, that probably does seem like nonsense, and it is. But let's start with the bit about paying someone three hundred grand to write about what a human's utility function is? Now, yes, what is a utility function? Great question? In economics, a utility function is the measure of welfare or satisfaction of a consumer as a function
of the consumption of real goods like food. In simple terms, it's a way of describing the satisfaction or other benefits gained by consuming a specific resource. This is important to rational choice theory, which is a theory that states that individuals use rational calculations to make rational choices to achieve
outcomes aligned with their own objectives. Now, most people who aren't economists think that talking about the economy this way is silly, because people are not in fact rational actors, and in fact, we make shitty decisions all the time, guided by misinformation or pressure that causes us to inaccurately interpret the potential value of something like a college education versus the cost of say, student loans.
Right, one could argue that Sam Bankman, Freed and co. Are a great example of a wonderful example of the IR But that's economics. This is not an economics podcast. I'm not an economist, And the way that Bankman, Freed and his fellow Eas talk about utility functions is not
the same as how economists talk about it. Right, So when economists are talking about this, it's part of how to kind of figure out why people might make rational choices by understanding like the value of sort of the ranked, like preference they give to certain things that they might expend resources on. Broadly speaking, when Bankman, Freed, and Eas talk about utility functions, what they mean is something even
more abstract. And I'm going to quote from a summary from a write up on a effective altruism dot Org, a website you should avoid at all costs.
Quote.
I'm really not looking forward to finding out how this somehow relates to to the grabby aliens.
I'm sorry in a very dumb way, Jamie.
Quote Okay, good eas and rationalists love dropping the term in every conversation. Using the term utility function can be immensely helpful when aiming to maximize positive impact or do the most good. The concept of a utility function provides a systematic way to quantify and compare the potential benefits of different actions, thus helping to guide decision making towards
the most effective outcomes. By representing values, goals, or beneficial outcomes numerically, utility functions allow for a structured comparison and prioritization of actions. If, for example, your goal is to alleviate global suffering, you could assign values to different charitable actions based on their estimated impact, thus creating utility function. This function can then guide you to allocate your resources like time or money, where they will generate the greatest
utility or good. Now, that just seems like you're saying you should try to figure out how your money's gonna be spent best right before you spend it. But that's not actually what they're saying. What they are doing here is they are they are set like a utility function. This context is a way of assigning a number that you have made up. There is no objective value to this number. There's no rigor to this. You are making up a number to determine the value of spending your
money in certain ways. And you are doing this so that whatever it is you want to do with your money, you can justify numerically as the scientifically best way to spend your money. So I see you can. You can argue in this way by assigning these values whenever wonky way you want. Now, me, paying taxes to fund roads and a healthcare system is a shitty use of my money because it doesn't optimize this thing that I consider
to be of higher long term value. And the thing that's of higher long term value to me is spending money on fucking space travel research so that I can be a demigod on Mars. Right, that's best for human beings in the long term. So in utilitarian speak, you know, the greatest good for the greatest number of people is that's getting to Mars as opposed to feeding starving people. Right now, you know the utility function of getting to Mars as much higher, So that's where our money ought to go.
Well, it's all yeah, it just like comes down to like the great the greatest good is me hah smiling a little bit.
Yeah, exactly. There's literally some writing on that in that vein. So it is through math like this that EAS are able to look at it a world where millions face death by famine or disease or rising sea levels and say the best way to help the planet is for us to become finance Bros. And then spend our money
investing in AI companies or whatever. The fundamental selfishness of this whole community is made clear when you read the essays these people write on their websites, like less Wrong, a blog founded by self declared AIX Yeah, Eliza Yidkowski. Yidkowski is a rationalist, which is a related subculture to the EAS. There's a lot of bleed over Sam and a lot of his people were rationalists to rationalists adjacent
and Yeah. To give you an idea of how these people talk about utility functions, I'm going to read an excerpt from an article on this web site titled your utility function is your utility Function? By David Udell. I've been thinking a lot lately about exactly how altruistic I am. The truth is that I'm not sure. I care a lot about not dying, and about my girlfriend and family and friends not dying, and about all of humanity not dying, and about all life on this planet not dying too.
And I care about the glorious transhuman future and all that, and the ten to the fiftieth power or whatever possible good future lives hanging in the balance. And I care about some of these things disproportionately to their apparent moral magnitude. But what I care about is what I care about. Rationality is the art of getting more of what you want, whatever that is, of systematized winning by your own lights.
You will totally fail in that art if you bulldoze your values in a desperate effort to fit in or to be a good person, or to in the way you're a model of society seems to ask you to. So you see what he's saying, if you read between the lines there, what the most rational thing for me to do is whatever makes me feel.
Best, whatever gives me a little smile.
Don't let people shame you for spending your resources, you know, entirely on yourself and your own whims Like you're actually a hero if you do that.
Oh, it is so fascinating to me to watch, like, I don't know. It seems like this like self conscious reflex where they feel the need to define rational by something that is more closely aligned with reality and then immediately be like, but what that actually means is yeah, that's said.
The core of it is always being able to say that, like, well, if you suggest the number one, I have a responsibility to other people, and that that responsibility is to some extent out of my hands, which is what we all say when we're in a society. Right, I don't have kids. I don't have a choice not to spend some of the significant amount of money I pay in taxes educating other people's kids. Now, I'm not a complete piece of shit, so I'm fine with that because like, I've done very
well for myself, and kids need educations. That's just a nice way for the world to work. But these people are more of the feeling that, like, no, I should do whatever is possible to avoid paying for, you know,
a public school system. And in fact, I'm often going to advocate for some sort of like weird voucher based system that allows me to not fund public schools because the greatest good for the greatest number of peoples for me to ensure that like me and my rich kid friends all get to send our kids to special schools where like what, you know, fuck anybody else, Like I don't have any other responsibility for the broader population. All that actually matters is like me maximizing you know, my
own personal happiness. But I still want to feel like like I'm a hero for doing it right if I avoid paying taxes in order to like spend all of my money investing in open AI so that I can like take people's jobs away, Like I want to feel like a hero for doing that, because what I'm arguing is that it's best for you know, the people with five hundred years from now, and there's going to be more of them there than there are today. So I'm a hero for like getting rich off of this company today.
You know, yes, well, because there's, first of all, there's definitely going to be people in five hundred years.
Sure, for sure, definitely, Garrett. If these eas get their way, sure yeah.
Yeah yeah. If we are doing the most good they're that's so fucking exhausting. I mean, it does, like your Peter Teel example. Not that you know, doing evil is good in any capacity, but the most exhausting kind of evil is the one that also insists on you validating that it's not actually evil all that time, that it deserves to cut the fuck up and ruin my life or don't.
It's the same thing with a lot of these fucking right wing media grifters. Were like, it's not enough for them to be rich, it's not enough for them to like get their way politically. They they they feel like they have like an ethical their ode, like being cool and respected, and it's the same good. Like these people
are all finance schools. They are all like actively fighting to avoid paying taxes and to be able to concentrate ever more power in an ever smaller number of people, to destroy the lives of you know, artists and people who are like working folks in order to like make more short term profits. This is all what they actually care about personally, but they want to feel like Gandhi while they do it. Right, because what they're doing is guaranteeing.
What they'll argue Jamie is that like, well, you know this may hurt this company, you know, me getting involved in this company. Sure, we may destroy a lot of jobs in the short term, but by doing so, we'll be able to make sure that the AI we build that eventually becomes our god is one that cares about the future of humanity, and that's better for the most people in long run.
Yes, and history should remember me as the greatest man to ever live. And people will you know, that'll be on television someday when my computer is writing every television show.
Fucking hate these people. So yeah, it's it's cool stuff. And I think the fundamental selfishness of these people because all that effective altruism and rationalism are really about is by is creating a made up system of numbers to justify you pursuing your own benefit as like science, right, as like scientifically rational.
This is really it's not as if that doesn't, you know, like math problems to serve a very small group self interest. It's not as if that doesn't exist outside of this circle. But it's just like bizarre, how uniquely like they lack any sort of self awareness or I don't know, it's just they're so fucking annoying, is what I'm trying to say.
That's very true, Jamie. And yes, this is all really clear when you look at how the movement, the EA movement treated Sam Bankman freed before and after his fall from grace. If effective Altruism can be said to have a pope, and it can, because all of these Silicon Valley philosophical movements are just kirklan Brand Catholicism. Hope is Will mccaskell, an Oxford moral philosopher and co founder for
the Center for Effective Altruism. When FTX collapsed and Sam got arrested, he was quick to put out a statement of outrage. I don't know which emotion is stronger, my other rage at Sam and others for causing such harm to so many people, or my sadness and self hatred for falling for this deception. Now, the only reason I would hesitate to call this horseshit, Jamie, is that horseshit, by virtue of being inanimate waste, possesses a fundamental honesty that mcaskell is incapable of.
Yeah, fuck yeah, Robert, that's the bitchiest thing I've heard you say in a while.
That's thank you, thank you. He and SBF met back at MIT when Sam was an undergrad. Mccaskell convinced him that he could maximize his impact in humanitarian causes by earning to give, you know, making as much money as possible so that he can give it away in a way that presumably will help the world. Now. When Sam ultimately launched Alimeter Research, it was an EA project from the start, staffed by Sam's friends in the community. One software engineer told Time almost everyone who came on in
those early days was an EA. They were there for EA reasons, says Naya Buscal, a former software engineer at Alameda. That was the pitch we gave people. This is an EA thing.
I know, I once again thinking about sports video games, and I know it's not sports video games.
It is it is basically a sports video game.
I just had the flashback to the Yeah interview you did.
I was thinking, Okay, it's true, it's true.
In the early days, Sam's pitch was that fifty percent of the company profits would be donated to EA causes, and the initial round of investing that got the company
off the ground was funded entirely by rich EA types. Publicly, mccaskell asked about talked about Sam like he was the EA messiah, probably because ftx's Future Fund provided a huge amount of support for his movement, and just nine months in twenty twenty two, the Future Fund, run by Nick Bexted, a moral philosopher who used FTX money to support various causes, gave more than one hundred and sixty million dollars in other people's money funneled through FTX too effective altruism, including
thirty three million dollars to organizations that mcaskell had a direct interest in. So that's why mcaskell spoke so positively about Sam, which is is made even more fucked up when you realize that, like other people in the EA movement had started warning mcaskell about Sam Bankman freed and about him being a con man as early as twenty eighteen. And I'm going to quote again from time this is
about from the very start of Alimeter research. Within months, the good karma of the venture dissipated in a series of internal clashes, many details of which have not been previously reported. Some of the issues were personal Bankman Freed could be dictatorial, according to one former colleague. Three former Alameda employees told Time he had inappropriate romantic relationships with
his subordinates. Early Alameda executives also believed he had reneged on an equity arrangement that would have left bankman Freed with forty percent control of the firm, according to a document reviewed by Time. Instead, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, he had registered himself as sole owner of Alameda. So basically, Sam has unethically taken control of the firm and all of the money invested in it. And he is like fucking his subordinates.
Its like, and he's also a sex pest.
He's also a sex.
Surprising And he's I've ever heard in my entire life.
Taking money from people's what are effectively bank accounts and FTX and he's using it to prop up the value of different cryptos tokens on Alameda to make shit look like it which is money laundering, right, that's all. It's like theft and money. It's fraud, you know.
Or is it the future Robert remember that?
I mean, yeah, remember what Larry David taught us all.
I know, there were some really unforgivable.
Uh, it's pretty funny, it is. Of all, it is like I am on team, Like I can't be angry at Larry David because honestly, if Larry David advertises a financial product and you decide, he seems like a good guy to this seems like a credible company to me, I don't know. That's a little bit on you, right, that's a little bit on you.
Oh Els was in that commercial there was that was a that was a damning commercial.
Those Yeah, it is. It is. I still say a restaurant, Larry David. But that's for a variety of reasons.
So I'm curious what your other reasons are. But that's for another day.
Yeah, that's for a different day. So this caused so again all of this shit. That is why this is like everything that was obvious in Alameda in twenty eighteen. This is all the stuff that he gets arrested for in twenty twenty two. And when they become aware of this, of the fact that he's fucking is subordinates and money laundering, a bunch of EA people start raising alarm bells. In twenty eighteen, several Alameda executives try to force him out
of the company and accuse him of gross negligence. Sam wins the power struggle, though, and so most of the EA management team and half of the company resign. Now this might be you could see this as like, well, maybe those effective altruist types were just in it for the altruism and once they saw Sam with Shady, they
packed up. And that's true for those individual people. You know, there's some decent people who just got caught up in the movement, and they clearly had some degree of moral integrity, But the broader effective altruism.
Movement incredibly low there, including unbelievable Will mccaskell.
It's pope never disaffiliated from Sam. Mccaskell was saying talking about Sam like the second fucking coming up until late twenty twenty two. And in exchange for laundering Sam's reputation, Sam sent tens of millions of dollars one hundred and sixty million to EA causes in twenty twenty two alone.
And that's why mccaskell maintained movement ties with Bankment Freed quote in the weeks leading up to that April twenty eighteen confrontation with Bankman Freed and in the months that followed, Maccoley and others, who was one of the executives that left, warned mccaskell, Bexted and Karnofsky about her co founder's alleged
duplicity and unscrupulous business ethics. According to four people with knowledge of those discussions, buscal recalled speaking to McCully immediately after one of McCauley's conversations with mccaskell in late twenty eighteen. Will basically took Sam's side, said Buskal, who recalls waiting with McCauley in the Stockholm airport while she was on
the phone, Will basically threatened her. Buskall recalls, I remember my impression being that Will was taking a pretty hostile stance here and he was just believing Sam side of the story, which made no sense to me. So Will again perfectly willing to like throw down against, you know, the more honest people in his movement and personally threaten them in order to keep the money flowing to his fancy cause so that he can he right.
And then the second that it becomes you know, pr inconvenient to keep the association, there should be some maybe there is like a term for that of just like even the cadence of what you read earlier of just like the disingenuousness of like, oh I had no idea.
Like you're like, Okay, now you knew damn well what was going on, and you knew that that's you were willing to continue pretending he was a good guy and aligned with your movement as long as the money kept flowing.
Right, No, light, Yeah, it no longer serves your best interests to stand by him.
Yeah, so yeah, now you'll yeah anyway, So, Sam, we don't actually know if he's completely bankrupt. We know he took about a billion in payments and loans from FTX. He claims not to really have any of that money, and that he's he's working on getting what assets he does have to like try to make a few more of the investors that they had whole. That said, we know that a big chunk of the money that he made was funneled into real estate in his parents' names.
So that's fun. Speaking of his parents, one of the big early mysteries of his case was that when he gets out on two hundred and fifty million dollar bond, his parents are signed on to the bail agreement with their house as collateral, but there were also two mystery co signers and their house. We'll be talking about this in a second is on the stand for campus. The two mystery co signers were Larry Kramer, a family friend and the former dean of Stanford, and Andreas Popke, who
signed a two hundred thousand dollars bond. Popke is a senior research scientist at Stanford and an advisor to several Valley startups. So Stanford is very invested primarily because of who Sam's parents are in this case, which is interesting to me and.
Okay, because that was I mean, that is my outside of his parents, I guess realistically, what is in it for them by taking that risk.
I think it's actually just that these people are close with his parents, who are professors at Stanford and deeply tied into that community.
I can, I mean, I can very much see like bougie parents with influence, being like, Sam's just a boy. Anyone could have made this mistake. He thought he was doing the right thing. He got mixed in with the rock.
This has to just be like some sort of crazy mistake because they can't imagine he just it's so dumb and blatant, like all he did was rob people in order to like gamble, right, Like, fundamentally, there's not a difference between like him taking people's money, claiming that he's got a sure stock tip and then gambling at Vegas. Like legally, there's no difference between that and what he did.
But they can't because his parents are like ethicists basically at Stanford, and I don't think any of the people they are social with can imagine that his crimes were that venal and foolish. But you know whose crimes are not venal and foolish.
Jamie, Oh, tell me, Robert.
The products and services that support our podcasts.
Uh, never encountered a product I didn't love.
No, that's exactly right. That's exactly right, and we are back. So initially, the reason why these other Stanford people are secret signers on to this bail agreement is because they were afraid that they would be attacked because of how angry people are at Sam And there was a reason for this. Shortly after he was sent to house arrested his parents home, someone drove their car into a barricade
set up outside of their house on the Stanford campus. Now, as I stated earlier, both the elder Bankman Freeds are former Stanford professors and their home is on campus, which has created issues for the school. The university still will not officially acknowledge that one of the world's most famous accused felons currently resides in their prestigious walled academic garden one Washington, Stanford.
Like really fumbleshit constant.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's absurd. It's because they're not really that smart.
But well, yes, this again another great case for it. It's also like, I don't know, just the arguing, like, well, his parents are like ethesis, how could he be fucked up? Have you ever met someone who raised no offense?
People in the people.
Call out any love, but it's like they know, they know the language.
Yeah yeah. So one part Washington Post article I found noted Stanford Law School didn't respond to requests for comment when asked whether they could confirm a rumor that nearby student co op had attacked the Bankman Freed home with eggs. Stanford campus police did not respond. Socially, however, Bankman Freed is a source of deep fascination. There are party flyers with his likeness. He's a punchline. In campus comedy sketches, students ride their bikes by on dates. The campus community
is well aware he's there. An annotated map located the Bankman Freed home was posted on a student only social network.
Okay, I be honest. If someone asked you out and they're like, here's my concept for a first date, We're gonna go watch Sam Samuel Bank We're getting.
We're getting married that night. Jamie, I was.
Like, we're going like, bring a flask, watch one of history's stupidest villains, and then for each other in a parking line.
Absolutely, Jamie, that's that's the dream. That's the dream. None of this. That's effective altruism right there. That's the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Sam could stand to learn a thing or two from these.
These theoretical Stanford students. Yes, so if you so again. Sam's parents are both well respected teachers and experts in different fields of ethics. Both were recruited to the university in the nineteen eighties, and they almost immediately hooked up. Barbara Freed made a name for herself as a She's like a philosopher. Basically. Her big thing was she wrote a paper dissecting the ethics of the trolley problem. Whereas
Joe Bankman is a finance ethics guy. He writes a lot about like again, like not breaking the law with finance shit. It seems to be a big focus of his.
This is a very obvious thing to say, but I do in defense of the Bankman family. I do appreciate when someone really rolls with their last name. I think that that is a very fun quality. This is this is an example of it not working out. I think it's also equally bizarre when someone has a last name where you're like, why are you not doing that job? For example? Yeah, maybe I've told you this before. It's one of my favorite facts I've learned in my life.
My childhood dentist's name was doctor Vagenis and met. Nevertheless, Glorious insisted in going into team. For some reason, I found it infuriating. I'm like, just roll with it, man, that's your last name.
ANOD needs to go after this guy. No, I'm sorry. I know you don't know how to do this job, but that's your life now. People will trust you until you figure it out. I do you you know, are the labydpeaking of nominative determinism. Joe Bankman would be it. I wouldn't trust Joe Bankman as a drug dealer, but I would. I would. I would trust Johnny Cocaine as a financial expert, like like as a stockbroker. Johnny Cocaine, Yeah, let him invest my money. He knows what he's doing.
I just, you know, say what you will about Joe Bankman, and I'm sure you should. I know nothing about this man, but at least he got into the right business.
Yeah he does, he does. Now. I people talk with like awe about this guy, like he's so ethical, he's such like a decent man. He thinks so much about doing the right thing. When the Washington Post is like giving examples of noteworthy things in his past, one of the.
Ones you must talk about Ted Lasso.
In two thousand and two, he wrote a tongue in cheek suggestion on how to avoid a Major League Baseball strike, and his solution in this paper that's supposed to be a joke was to levy taxes on teams and players. Who's ruck that could only be avoided if the players donated money to charity or the teams agreed to sell Nickel hot dogs giants fans. Now, I don't know what the joke is here, but it apparently tore it up
among upper middle class Ivy League finance academics. They all talk about this is very funny.
Wait it comes up again. Is like remember when he said.
It was in the Washington Post article about this guy, as like, look at a look at this. This is like a noteworthy moment from his career. This like bad joke that he made. But I guess that's what fucking Stanford people find funny.
Imagine maybe it's hilarious that Yeah, I don't get it. Christ maybe Stanford people were just like I think it's hilarious, just like the word hot dog. They're like, oh, poor people food. Like I don't know.
Now, everything you find about these people is like, wow, it taught like is their friends talking about Like it's so shocking that this could happen. You know, these were like the best people we knew. They were so concerned about ethics, raised their sons like little adults, and they were always talking about utilitarianism. How could this have gone wrong? I don't know. I feel when I read anecdotes about them,
like it's pretty obvious why it went wrong. And to kind of make that point, Jamie, here's a quote from an excellent write up by Puck News. Quote. Bankman, who once boasted to a friend that his father had dutifully recorded every cash receipt, wrote three case books on tax shelters and tax evasion, becoming one of the country's leading
experts on the subject. One of Bankman's law students in those early years was Peter Teal, who later told Bankman that his tax law class was his most valuable because he was able to put a lot of his Facebook stock in an ira. As Bankman would later recall on a podcast, this modest feed of financial engineering would save Teel more than a billion dollars. So ethics, Jamie. Avoiding a billion dollars in taxes so that Peter Teal can spend it given Joe swastik Oat money to write New
York Times columns on racism. Hooray, I love ethics.
Shit yeah, and I and here I was a clown, a fool about to be like, well, everyone wants to rebel against their parents. That's probably why he's a cartoon villain.
When he talks ethics. It's not getting busted for being a piece of shit with money. That's what it seems like to me. Not an expert on ethics, I am an expert on being a piece of shit though, So yeah, but.
You're a far different piece of shit.
Thank you, Jamie.
Thank Can I celebrate that about you? I like that is, but I mean I'm not. I guess shocked that that is exceedingly ethical to the Stanford crowd. But wow, damning.
So anyway, Barbara Freed, being a good Liberal, was horrified by the Trump election and shows to fight back by founding a political fundright raising group, Mind the Gap, which was extremely successful during the Trump years and is rumored to have acted is the model for ftx's own political donation machine. Both of Sam's parents have seen their reputations suffer with his arrest, and I'm going to continue with
a quote from Puck. Official property records show that Joe Bankman and Barbara Freed were the named owners of a sixteen point four million dollar beachside vacation home in Old Fort Bay, part of a broader real estate portfolio owned by FTX and senior executives totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. They may have stayed there while working with a company
sometime over the last year. Sam said, though he denied knowing any details about the three hundred million dollars worth of real estate that FTX and his parents bought in the Bahamas.
Oh, okay, so they know about absolutely everything in the.
Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like now. Joe and Barbara have said that they've been working to return the property to the company for some time, working too. Joe Bankman, in particular, has hardly been a passive observer in his son's scandal and may now be exposed to some legal risk himself. Bankman interviewed and hired the first lawyers for Alimeter Research back in twenty seventeen, and effectively served as
ftx's first attorney. He handled the inbound that came and made the resulting introduction that helped FTX raise one hundred and thirty million from his former law student. Private equity mogul Orlando Bravo spent his free time on ftx's charitable and regulatory efforts, and was ultimately in the room before Sam made the fateful decision to sign the documents that declared Chapter eleven. So they seem very involved in shady themselves. I don't buy. Oh, they're so innocent. Their son just broke,
you know, made a mistake or whatever. They're all they all just didn't think that this was criminal because the people's money they were taking were poor, and they're fucking Stanford brats, Like I have no respect for them. I hope they lose their fancy Stanford house. They heard a lot of it.
It's like, yeah, particularly because I mean it sounds like this was their mo o from the start anyways, So why would we now think that they would be above this behavior if they're like, oh no, here's a way, Like, I don't know. It seems like their definition of ethics is things you can technically get away with.
Yeah, you think it's not illegal for Peter Teal to get this billion dollars that he doesn't paid taxes on because you know, fuckery anyway, mister Bankman and missus Freed have joined now the expanding cast of disgrace Stanford affiliates. This includes recently university president Mark Tessier Levine, currently accused of manipulating images on research papers in a way that
is equivalent to falsifying lab data for Alzheimer's research. Obviously, there's also Bastard's Pod alumni, the Thernose Lady, another famous Stanford disgrace. And then there's the fact that they're alumni.
King my favorite Stanford disgrace.
Yeah, and then there's all their alumni who have created companies or helped run them that have shattered the foundations of our democracy in pursuit of a quick buck. Stanford's current reputation is so grimy that a Washington Post article on SBF's associations with the school ends with these lines,
and this is very funny. Jamie Adrian Daub, a Stanford professor of comparative literature in German Studies and the author of what Tech Calls Thinking, sees an encouraging sign in Stanford being only peripherally involved in the bankman Freed scandal. That might not have been the case ten years ago. He notes, when the Silicon Valley hepe machine operated at
more of a fever bitch than it does today. Other than his physical location, it's actually not that connected to us for once, Dob said, And that way, it's a sign of progress and also a little bit melancholy. Stanford was a place where the future was shaped, so it's quite possible that's not happening anymore, that it's happening in the Bahamas now and only comes to Palo Alto once it gets indicted. That's so funny.
I'm hug up on other than its physical location.
Yeah, other than the fact that he's here. He's not very involved.
That's a big one, babe, that's a big one.
But it does seem significant to me.
No, if they're happy, I'm happy. That's great.
It's funny.
We have to return to to Elizabeth Holmes at some point because I'm very uniquely interested in her rebranding as Liz.
Yeah, genius, because now I've forgotten her horrible crimes.
Yeah, I forgot about all of her crimes once she had a cool and relatable name and had school relatable babies.
Well, escape hay kiss started going by Alan.
That's true. We can't take away that she's scammed Henry Kissinger. Yeah, scam people out of their lives. But you know, yeah, but the Henry Kissinger thing we cannot forget.
I say, we give her six months off as a result of the Kissinger stick to me. So this brings us to the subject of what precisely Sam Bankman Freed has been up to in the nine months or so since his fall from grace. The short answer is that he has not had a wonderful time. In January, a month or so after he was granted bail under house arrest, the Southern District of New York, accused him of inappropriately contacting former and FTX employees in order to influence their
testimony on his case. Sam tried to frame all of this as part of his ill advised apology tour that he embarked on last year in the lag period between FTX collapsing and his formal charges.
Yeah, did he hit the notes up? What happened?
Oh, he's like calling them. Actually, I'm going to read a quote from Puck in order to describe how he's illegally contacting people. On a simber twelfth, the same day he was rested in the Bahamas, Bankman Freed emailed FDx bankruptcy CEO John Jay Ray the Third, offering potentially pertinent information concerning future opportunities and financing for FDx and its creditors, and asked to work constructively with Ray in the chapter
eleven teen to do what's best for customers. No response Then, after his extradition, the crypto mogul sent another email to Ray on December thirtieth, in which he offered advice accessing Alameda funds. Still no response. Then, while being summoned to court in New York, SBF tried Ray again on January second. Mister Ray, I know things haven't gotten off on the right foot, but I really do want to be helpful. As I'm guessing you've heard, I'm in NYC for the
next day. I'd love to meet up while I'm here, even if just to say hi, Ray, to not take him up on this offer, And.
He has no shit.
He's reached out to several people, and it's always like, I just want to help, you know, get as much money as we can for the customers. I just want to, you know, help you deal with the confusing aspects of this. But it's like, you're not supposed to be talking to people when you're in Sam situation who were involved in the company like this, because they're probably going to testify against you.
I don't feel convinced that he understands that. I don't know, he's talking like a fucking spam email.
Yeah, he really is. And in general, Sam has opted to take all of the actions under house arrests that are likeliest to cause stress ulcers in his lawyers. In addition to repeatedly contacting FTX employees, he decided to start a substack where he planned to explain how fd and it's like, there's that famous line from the wire, are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy? But in this point the case, it's like, are you publishing blog posts about your criminal conspiracy after being indicted?
It's out growing an audience, Robert h Loah, It's all a part of the play.
Yeah, it's like if al Capone had started in New York Times call um on having people machined gun and alleys after he'd gone away to fucking Alcatratz.
Like, hear me out, you guys, It actually makes way more sense when I explain it.
Yeah, uh so neither. He only writes, like I think, two posts before he gives up because they're they're bad. He's bad and blogging. I tried to read them. He's dog shiit writer.
Well can I I mean not to be aggressive, but that's most substacked people.
It's by the way, find my substanct not you, Robert No, I know.
You have more than two, but I'm just saying the average friend of mine that harangues me into you know these damn emails, it's too and and then they're done anyways, but not I'm probably going to start one that I'm just being insecure.
What I wanted to do in a I think you'll beat Sam Bankman Freed, No, no question.
Your substock is great.
Thank you, sir.
Your substack is great.
Thank you, Jamie. This has been wonderful for my ego.
Those are two that I actually read.
So Sam's is bad though, and it's bad like in part of part of what he's doing is like he's been charged with a bunch of specific crimes, right and the posts that he puts up he does not acknowledge any of the charges against him. He doesn't like defend himself from them. Instead, he lays out a bunch of misleading in arcane spreadsheets to try and like argue that the company shouldn't have collapsed the way it did and that he like didn't realize like why he didn't realize
it was so bad he's doing. It's the same thing as like the EA shit we open the episode with right this throwing out like confusing piles of numbers in order to distract people, right, Like, this is just like chaff. You know, that's what he's doing, is he's throwing out chaff in the way of a bunch of poorly formatted spreadsheets. They don't convince anyone that he's innocent.
I was to say, but it sounds like it. Also. It did not work.
It did not work at all. You should not do this if you are being indicted for numerous financial crimes bt dubs. So in early February, the judge overseeing Sam's case forbade him from using encrypted messaging app like Signal because he was so frequently trying to talk to other people who were part of this case with him in secret, which is illegal. He also got in trouble because he was caught using a VPN, which could have potentially allowed
him to hide his communications. Sam argued he was just using a VPN to access his international NFL game pass account.
So I was like, did he just say he was trying to want a Canadian Netflix. Yeah, that would be fucking classical officer.
I just had a lot of shit to torre at homie, Like you get it, my men, he has since been limited to a normal flip phone due to his repeated
inability to abide by his bail conditions. Now, some might note that Sam has already gotten more second chances than most accused criminals get with their bail conditions, it seems accurate to say that the leniency he has received gave him reason to feel as if he could act with impunity, which is why a couple of weeks ago he leaked his ex girlfriend's diary to The New York Times.
Which is take me through the Witch's wi.
That wasn't what I thought you were going to say.
I know, I know, nobody thought it was gonna head here.
You know, I mean, it's although it seemed like we were due for another spiteful action against a woman for seemingly no reason.
Oh, absolutely absolutely. Now I will say I don't like this woman either. Caroline Ellison is I think a pretty shitty person.
She was the we spoke about her last time, right, Yeah, yeah.
She unpleasant lady. She was the former CEO of Alameda. I've been fucking listening to this podcast called Spellcaster, which is like a wondery podcast about Sam Bankman Freed. I don't like it. The woman who does it like was at a was at a bachelorette party with Carolyn Ellison right before the charges dropped and was like, Oh, she's so smart, She's so and she repeats the same bullshit
everyone says about Sam. They were such, they were like geniuses, and it's like, no, they just like blew out a bunch of numbers you didn't understand and convinced you they were smart because they said numbers right, Like, there's nothing these people have done that is smart.
With situations like that, I'm like, I guess I appreciate the disclosure, but like, why the fuck were you hired to do this show?
Well, it's it's because big media is just as tiny and insular a world full of rich people as finance, and in fact, a lot of the same families have people at the times and people and fucking investment banks, which is why here at cool Zone Media we exclusively hire people who used to sell ketamine on their college campuses in order to get by. You know. That's that's that's the Cool Zone guarantee or adderall.
You know, And I appreciate that you made an exception for some of us that you didn't have to be good at it. You just had to truck. No.
In fact, we will not hire you if you were good at selling trump campus. Why did you even apply to this media mediocre part time campus drug dealers. That's our that's our higher ring pool. Yeah, that's our, Like, I don't know whatever, I don't know the names of enough fancy news.
Really not that big of a stretch, Let's be honest.
I'm fucking proud of that.
So Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda and also Sam's on again off again bo she immediately turns.
Like you using the term bo but continue?
Why not?
That's what I should I use boo. I kind of like boo.
I was like, I was like, that doesn't really make sense.
But they were ko boos. So she immediately turned state's witness and admitted guilt for her share of the illegal activities committed by Alameda, and she apparently, as a part as part of immediately rolling handed over her diary. I think that's how they got her diaries was part of the terms of like the Yeah, so it gets introduced into evidence, which obviously Sam I think will get access to as a result to that, because that's the way discovery works. I believe that's how he got her diary.
Was she also a Stanford Head?
I don't think she went to I think she her parents were professors at M I T h Wow.
Yeah, losers over it Yeah yeah.
Yeah, just Hobo University right there.
Until it happens to me. I love when someone's diary is introduced into evidence, and that brings me back to Elizabeth Holmes yet again, when she like her her creepy little sexts with Sunny Belwani ooh.
Some of the worst some of the very worst sex.
That is maybe the moment that I felt closest to her. That's when she That's when Liz almost got me because she was sending walls of text to this guy and then he was sending me back. Okay, and it's like, you.
Know what, brutal. No, No, she deserves she deserved a man like Jeff Bezos, who would call her the most unsettling nickname I've ever heard, you know, but at least he was bonded a live girl.
That's right, that's right. I think we we as we we we we we as a collective blocks that out intentionally.
Yeah, it's very funny. It does make it clear that he's not a robot, because like, nobody, nobody fakes that. That's that's that's evidence that he feels something. What he feels is off putting, it's frightening, it's like profoundly unsettling. But he does feel something.
But unfortunately, yeah, chat GPT could have outdone that in terms of sounding like a person.
Absolutely. Yeah. So anyway, Sam gets access to her diary one way or the other. Uh, and then he hands her diary to the New York Times so that they can write an article about it. Now that is unethical as fuck and possibly illegal. The prosecution has asked that he be jailed, that his bay will be revoked because of what he did. Sam's this is still going on as we talk. I'll record a little update if he
does go to jail as a result of this. Hey everyone, Robert here just wanted to update you that, since we recorded this episode a couple of days before you're hearing it, Sam Bankman freed was remanded to custody. He is incarcerated now and he will remain in jail after violating his bail conditions, until his trial in October at least, and possibly well beyond that, depending on how the charges and
sentencing and all that stuff go. I should note that kind of the most recent story after that is that his lawyers requested that he'd be allowed to have his ADHD medication and depression medication, which he ran out of soon after being taken into custody. The judge has ordered that he'd be given that medication. Obviously, I'm always in favor of people who are incarcerated having access to medication if anyone's interested. I don't actually think putting Sam in
jail's going to do much good. I'm a little bit more mixed on this than I normally am, just because of the case of Adam Newman, the wee work guy who got off Scott free from his giant financial crimes and is now starting another giant grift company. And we'll probably fuck with a bunch of other people's lives. But I do kind of think it's unlikely that we're going to get much benefit out of this. That said, I
don't really feel for Sam. He had many many chances not to be in this situation, and he fucked all of them up. So, you know, fuck the guy. Sam's lauriers have argued he was not attempting to discredit a week a witness, but just to respond to a toxic media environment, which he says unfairly portrays him as a villain. And I guess we're part of that toxic media environment. Although Sam free tip here, handing your ex girlfriend's diary to the New York Times is a bad way to
seem like, not the villain. That's kind of villain behavior, homie. That hate to tell you.
I again, but it's like again you can imagined his like doofy loser fucking logic of like no officer, I was just being a petty bitch. Is that the law? And you're like, yeah, this is, yes.
Yes it is, actually, sir bruh. So humorously enough, that is the legal argument his lawyers are making. And they kind of have a point because they're like, look, if you read the New York Times article based on her diary, he seems like a piece of shit, So clearly we weren't trying to influence the prosecution. And like, they do have a point because he does come across as the bad guy in that article that he made happen. So that's funny he comes up, this.
Is the bad guy in most things.
Yeah, I'm gonna quote from some of that New York Times coverage here. Mister Bankman Freed and Miss Ellison have started an unsteady also started an unsteady romantic relationship, with multiple breakups and reconciliations. At times. Miss Ellison worried that mister Bankman Freed thought she wasn't good enough when he was around. She wrote in February twenty twenty two in a Google document, she had an instinct to shrink and become smaller and quieter and defer to others. After one split,
miss Ellison cut off communication with mister bankmin Freed. I felt pretty hurt rejected, she wrote in the April twenty twenty two Google document. Not giving you the contact you wanted felt like the only way I could regain a sense of power. Miss Ellison was compensated far less generously than other top executives at FTX and Alomedia, though it's unclear whether she was aware of it. According to court filings, the Exchangees, founders and other key employees received three point
two billion dollars in payouts and loans. Of that total, six million went to Miss Ellison, compared with five hundred and eighty seven million for mister Singh ftx's head of engineering, and two hundred and forty six million for mister Wang, one of the founders. Mister Bankman Freed received two point two billion. So's Ellison is definitely not innocent here. She has admitted guilt in this case, but the reporting makes it seem as if her main role was to act
as a patsy. Sam knew she was in love with him and deeply insecure, so he put her in charge of Alameda so that he could use it as part of his grift to manipulate the value of his CRISP crypto empire using customer funds. And this basically the six million he gave her, which is a tiny fraction of like the three billion they funnel to executives. That's like him paying her to be a smoke screen. Right, She's
not an equal partner in this enterprise. And one of the things that had happened right before this fell apart is he had he had stopped paying attention to her in Alameda in order to start throwing money through another crypto exchange run from a woman he was fucking now that he had like, so it seems like this was a path for him.
Stop stop what I'm not doing this. I'm just talking about what he did. I just really just it's well, it's bad. He's a bastard. That's why we're talking about him.
I just really I just really need I don't know who needs to hear this, but we just really need people to stop fucking Sam Pankman.
That's this is very bad, gross behavior.
It's gross and it's bad for the world.
Yeah, yeah, so you know, fuck this guy. One bit of schadenfreude I can give you all is that, according to Puck News, Sam's present situation is so unpleasant that he considers his trips across the country to go to court in New York the highlight of his life now because he gets to like go out in the street. He's surrounded by lawyers in private security, so it's like he's got an entourage again. He gets to travel. This is like the closest he gets to feeling like when
he used to be a billionaire. So that's kind of fun. The downside is from the perspective of an FBF hater, the downside is that recently one of his charges was dismissed. The campaign finance violation. This was not due to him being innocent, but due to some legal weirdness involving the letter of the extradition agreement the US signed with the Bahamas. Basically, when we put together the agreements that they'd extra died him,
that was not on the document. So the FEDS had to like drop the charge in order to not deal with a bunch of other bullshit. It's a technicality, but it means that his brother, Gabe and several members of the philanthropic at FTX probably will not be charged for very likely committing crimes. And I say they likely committed crimes because FTX executive Nashad Singh already pled guilty this
spring to participating in a straw donor scheme. So he is, yeah, and he pled guilty before they dropped this charge, which he's got to feel like an asshole for doing because now he is going to get punished for that, even though SBF is no longer being charged for it.
Wow, that's I mean. Look, sometimes you do the ethical altruistic thing and it comes back to bite you in the ass.
What do you do? Yeah, what are you going to do? Hey? Everyone just wanted to note that since we recorded this, the prosecution has noted that they will be seeking to add those charges back on that were dropped. So it's possible that both Sam and other members of his inner circle will be charged with all that stuff. We just really kind of don't know at this point. But I do want to note that the prosecution is at least saying, hey, like, despite this little mess up, we are not just giving
up on this charge. So heads up about that could change in the future. Well, Jamie, yeah, how you doing.
I really well, I have a question for you.
I have an answer for you.
Well, I sure fucking hope. So no. My question is that I'm curious, what do you see happening here? What feels plausible to you at this time.
You know, I've been seeing a lot of people be like, Oh, he's gonna get off, He's gonna get all he's got too many connections, too many you know, people who he could roll on. I don't think he has many people he could really roll on. I don't think he was like, especially since these finance charges have been dropped. I don't know that I really think he's got the savvy to have like a guy like John McAfee, I believe John McAfee killed himself. I don't believe there's anything shady there.
I know a lot about the guy. It makes sense to me that when his fucking running finally stopped, he would do that. But McAfee probably did have some dirt on some people. He was that kind of cunning, right, I wouldn't be shocked if John McAfee had put together some dirt on some people, right. I don't think Sam Bankman Freed is that cunning. I don't think he was like smart enough to have dirt on anyone who could get him out of this situation. I think there's a
pretty good chance he does hard time. I think he fucked with too many people, he fucked with the money, and he fucked with it in too dumb of a way. So I think he's screwed.
Okay, that was my instinct as well, because I feel like he doesn't even have I mean, he doesn't have any sort of like I think sometimes with these types you get some sort of press narrative that it's like they're playing four D chess, and like, even if that's not entirely true, there's like a median narrative that sticks
to them. That makes them seem more plausible. But I just feel like everything that's, like, all of his actions and all of the media surrounding him, except for a very very small amount, seems to reinforce the fact that he's completely incompetent and malicious in every way.
Yeah, yeah, I would say that, Well, good.
God, I mean not that I you know, I don't know. I mean it seems like he's fucked. I certainly hope he's fucked.
I hope he's fucked. I hate him. I think he's a gross person. I hope Will mccaskell goes away or gets like eaten by eaten by a large fish would be my pick, if I got it. If like God is like, what do you want me to do to Will mccaskal, I'm like, you, you remember that thing he did with a whale back in the day. What if he didn't get out? What if a whale just eats him?
You know?
And then God'd be like, oh, amazing. I love playing the hits.
I love great pitch. You know what, Robert, I'm gonna give you that HBO series you've been asking for.
Robert, you were an amazing collaborator.
Oh yeah, Me and God co creators of my HBO series. I am hoping if the strike goes on, they take my reality show Pitch super Soaker full of Piss, which I really think has some path Jamie, I mean premises.
No, go ahead, tell me the promise of super Soaker full of piss, Robert. I'm ready.
So I'm in a van. I filled a super soaker with my piss, and I drive around like Rodeo drive, and I get out when I see someone who looks famous and I score them with a super soaker full of piss, and then we film it and then I leave very quickly.
Okay, I mean I'm on top with that.
Yeah, I think it's a great I think it's good. You know, I will get you know, I don't know.
I would be kind of pro like if you could get I think the soundtrack is going to be really key there, Like I think if you could give me some like Jock jam situation, like.
This is exciting. All live all live editions of Blink one eighty two songs doues, you know, because they they are one of the worst live bands that ever played. So it's really just upsetting to the to the viewer. That's the goal here, and you know.
Given who blink one eighty two like rolls with these days, you may in fact run into Travis on Rodeo Drive. Oh yeah, utial full.
Poet right in the face, just just a full load of it, you know, just to say.
I hate this idea because it means that some fucking celebrity will murder you and then we'll be gone, and then I'll be sad.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm not great at recognizing celebrities, so I'm anytime I could just see someone in a suit and spray him with the piss. Yeah, Jamie, I know we can sell. No, we just roll down the streets and stick Jonas Roberts spray, pray, spray, get the fuck out of here.
Wow, No Jonas, Robert.
That's right, that's right, that's right. I'm going to rely on Jamie to recognize him though.
Oh my god, I did see that, Jamie.
Yeah, all right, Well the Jonas brothers have their own vanity popcorn brand, now, isn't that something? These are the amazing things I can teach you, Robert.
I've already taught me so much about hot dog through your best selling book Raw Dog.
Wow. Perfect trans pivot.
You're welcome.
Let us spicy plug though gorgeous, gorgeous plug. Hey, it's never too late to start reading about hot dogs. It's never too late, never learning.
Reading about hot dogs and also America fascinating story. Raw Dog find it wherever books are found.
Yeah, well, thank you so much. I truly I was. I mean, as you know, I did a Bastard's episode about hot dogs as I was writing that book so that I would remain focused.
And it's the best way.
And I have heard that the subject of that episode, George, say that the hot dog eating community is actively protecting him from its existence. He does not know it exists. He does not the book. Everyone in his life is really actively try Like every hot dog eater or many gaters I talked to, We're like, yeah, no, we know about the Bastard's episode and we know about the book, but we really don't want George to know about it. I was like, okay, fair.
Enough, beautiful jam. That made me feel great. You can sign up for this show and all other cool Zone shows ad free at cooler Zone Media. That's for Apple subscribers. We are working on the Android option. You can find my novel After the Revolution, by typing After the Revolution into whatever book buying site you use, or just walk into a bookstore and demand it from the manager at sword point. Anyway, Goodbye, Goodbye Bye.
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or where you get your podcasts.