Latest news with #Transhumanism
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Inside Jeffrey Epstein's cozy relationship with Steve Bannon — and what's really on his 15 hrs of tapes interviewing him
By 2017 Jeffrey Epstein was a social pariah. Even his right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, attempted to reinvent herself as a charity boss and was careful to no longer be pictured with the convicted sex offender. But as an avalanche of reports uncovered more lurid details of Epstein's world of questionable financial dealings and proclivities for sex with underage girls, he had one regular visitor at his huge townhouse at East 71st street — Steve Bannon. Conspiracy theorist and media provocateur Bannon felt he could help the disgraced money man improve his image, sources say, despite how laughable that may have seemed. 7 Jeffrey Epstein backed the 'Me Too' movement in a clip from interview footage taken by Steve Bannon in 2019 and obtained by The Post. It certainly didn't hurt that Epstein could add him to his payroll — Bannon had recently fallen foul of President Trump by criticizing his family in a book and abruptly left his position as chief strategist at the White House. This resulted in his deep-pocketed benefactors cutting him off. Bannon ultimately collected some 15 hours of footage of Epstein, to prepare him to go on '60 Minutes' or another prime-time television show to save his reputation in 2018. 'He told me he has like 15 or 16 hours of videotape of Jeff,' said Epstein's brother Mark in an interview with NBC earlier this month, adding he had met with Bannon after Epstein's death and asked to see the tapes. 'He was trying to help Jeff rehabilitate his reputation.' 7 Steve Bannon recorded more than 15 hours of interviews with Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 for a documentary that was never released. Bloomberg via Getty Images Previous reports have confirmed the tapes were of Epstein preparing to bolster his reputation, but in the clamor to release government files on Epstein — who was found hanging in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019 as he awaited trial over sex trafficking charges — many are wondering why Bannon has not been compelled to release the tapes. In a bid to hype up what he has, earlier this year Bannon was hawking the tapes as a documentary, saying he had hoped to get Netflix involved and call the show 'The Monster'. '[Epstein's] a product of the elite,' he said on the Jimmy Dore show in February. 'Everything that's been put out about him is not exactly the truth. I hours of interviews that I think will be pretty shocking, about how this guy came from nowhere to go to the absolute highest levels of global elite and who he knew and who he financed. 'He was one of the leading underwriters of scientific experiments in the world, a lot of that is dealing with a thing called Transhumanism.' 7 Jeffrey Epstein in a clip from Bannon's documentary footage. 7 The interviews that Steve Bannon recorded with Jeffrey Epstein took place at the billionaire pedophile's mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Christopher Sadowski 7 MAGA loyalists are demanding that government files related to Jeffrey Epstein be released by the Trump administration. Epstein partied with numerous bold-face names, including the President Trump in the 1990s and early aughts. Getty Images Bannon did not return The Post's request for comment Friday. Only one clip of the footage has ever been released, which was obtained by The Post. In the video Epstein somewhat unbelievably claimed to be a 'firm believer and supporter' of Time's Up, the anti-sexual harassment organization that emerged during the #MeToo movement. 'I made my living from old thinking. But the future is for the way women think,' says Epstein in the clip. Bannon – apparently playing the role of a hard-nosed interviewer – counters from off-screen that Epstein's claim was just 'a sop' to excuse 'all of the depravity you've done against young women.' 'No, I've been — I've always believed that women will be, in fact, be able to take over,' Epstein responds in the clip, adding 'I'm a firm believer and supporter of 'Time's Up.'' Bannon, a film producer, former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and executive one-time chairman at media company Breitbart, had more in common with Epstein, a former math teacher who also had a brief stint on Wall Street, than most. 7 Another rarely-seen close-up of Epstein from the footage Bannon collected. Victory Films/The Monsters 7 Bannon speaking in New York in 2024 shortly after he was released from prison following his sentence for contempt of Congress. Robert Miller Although the first reports of their association only date back to 2017, it is possible they knew each other much longer. 'The War Room' host Bannon's activities with Epstein have been questioned by other political strategists. 'Why would Bannon meet with Jeffrey Epstein both at his New York home and in Paris after Epstein was convicted on sex crimes in Florida?' said Roger Stone in an X post earlier this month. 'Why would he coach Epstein for his 60 minutes appearance?' Darren Indyke, Epstein's longtime personal attorney and an executor of his estate, did not return a request for comment Friday.
RTÉ News
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
All you need to know about transhumanism - and how it might transform our existence
Analysis: Transhumanism might appear to be the stuff of science fiction but advances in medicine, engineering and bioscience are bringing it closer to reality "Forever young, I want to be forever young": many would agree with those lyrics from Alphaville's 1980s hit song. Indeed, who never wished to retain their youthful traits and vigour through time, defying old age and ultimately death itself? This has been the relentless mission of tech entrepreneur and billionaire Bryan Johnson for the last few years, as portrayed in the Netflix documentary Don't Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever. Johnson has been following a strict daily routine and spent millions of dollars in anti-ageing medicine, food supplements and medical procedures over the last few years with the aim of realising that goal. This in turn has sparked the 'Don't Die' movement, promoting Johnson's lifestyle and ideals, who made a business of sharing his protocol and selling his supplements on the Internet. Trailer for Don't Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever But Johnson is only one of those who have been continually advocating to push the boundaries of human existence using science and technology. Another one is Elon Musk , whose Neuralink company aims to create a brain-computer interface in order to enhance mental and physical abilities in individuals. There is in fact a name for that kind of endeavour and the ideas underpinning it: Transhumanism. It came into being in the 20th century among engineers, scientists and intellectuals like evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley (who first coined the term) and professor of 'futuristic studies' FM-2030 (whose real name was Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, but who renamed himself to suit his belief that the year 2030 would constitute a pivotal moment in human history). Transhumanism see the human being as an 'unfinished' product of evolution. It presents the overcoming of the traditional boundaries of human life—such as death, diseases, as well as other mental and physical limitations linked to our biological existence—as something not only desirable and achievable, but as an imperative per se. It aims to achieve this goal by relying on the progress of human knowledge and accompanying technological and scientific advancements. From RTÉ 2fm's Dave Fanning Show in 2017, interview with author Mark O'Connell about his book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death These ideas are not just the preserve of a few select eccentrics and idealists and have infused popular culture, as seen by a number of recent fictional productions such as Years and Years, Altered Carbon and Black Mirror, or the creation of a Transhumanist political party in the United States. At first glance, Transhumanism's aims might appear to be mostly the stuff of science fiction, such as the integration of technology within human biology or the alteration of the human genome using sophisticated scientific methods. However, advances in the fields of medicine, engineering and bioscience like CRISPR (for which two researchers have recently won a Nobel Prize in chemistry) or nanotechnology have in reality made Transhumanist aspirations closer to reality than ever. Such advances are currently seen as having mainly medical applications. Neuralink's devices are primarily destined for quadriplegics to help them recover a sense of autonomy and CRISPR has been developed as a 'gene therapy' to treat specific diseases. However, there is absolutely no doubt that possible applications go far beyond that, effectively challenging human physical and mental limits in a way never seen before. Google's director of engineering Ray Kurzweil has predicted that humans and machines will eventually merge to create a 'superintelligence' that will bring humanity to the next phase of its evolution, leaving behind its outdated, 'carbon-based' biological existence, what is commonly referred to as the ' technological singularity '. It appears that some people are not been waiting for this event to take place in order to start transforming their own selves. An important part of the Transhumanist movement today consists of so-called ' biohackers ' and ' body hackers ' who are closely monitoring their health and bodily functions (following the example set by Johnson, the ' most measured man in human history '). These people are even implanting technological apparatuses directly into their bodies in an attempt order to extend their lifespan and increase their cognitive and physical abilities. The ethical implications of the technological and scientific transformations advanced by partisans of Transhumanism are also concerning This should come as no surprise therefore that the concept of the cyborg, until now limited to the domain of science-fiction, has come to be widely used by partisans of Transhumanism to promote their mode of life and conception of the human. As one of them, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner tells us 'we have always been cyborgs'. You may think that what Sorgner says is quite outlandish, but remember this the next time you are going on a run using your 'smart watch' to keep track of your progress, or using the AI assistant on your connected device for everyday tasks. Aren't these technologies already an integral part of ourselves, to the point that we cannot conceive our existence without them? At the same time, the increasing pervasiveness of those technologies in our everyday life as it is being promoted by Transhumanists is not without its issues. Serious concerns been raised—and rightly so—around the questions of privacy and the impact of screens and other connected interfaces on our mental health and well-being. The ethical implications of the technological and scientific transformations advanced by partisans of Transhumanism are also an issue, given that those advances could reinforce already existing social inequalities between those who can actually afford them, and those who cannot. Once those issues are taken into consideration, the question becomes not so much 'do you want to live forever?', but rather 'who can actually do so, and at what price exactly?'
