Hey, Josh.

Hi, Tyler.

So I want to start by asking why you pick this subject.

I mean, you write this column every week for the website called Open Questions, where,

true to the title, you are often posing a question, like just to take a random smattering of headlines from the time that you've done the column, are grown-ups just giant kids? Are you overreacting? Why can't you pack a bag?

I guess I'm wondering with this most recent column, which is about the Epstein Files and kind of our conspiracy, obsessed, paranoid nation. What question were you trying to

pose with this column or answer? Yeah, I mean, I think it started with the realization that

not only was I becoming deeply fascinated by the Epstein story and spending a lot of time looking at the files and actually

engaging with it as a primary source thing, but also just every single person I know is talking

about it. Every single parent at my kids' sports events. Everyone is talking about it, and the

wide range of things that people think is fascinating and alarming and crazy too.

So you mentioned that, you know, parents at your kids' sporting events are talking about the Epstein

files. What are they saying? Like, what is like the tenor of those conversations?

Well, it seems to me like a lot of times there's a spectrum where, like, no one is minimizing

the scandal. No one is saying, like, it's a nothing burger. like, no one is minimizing the scandal.

No one is saying, like, it's a nothing burger.

I think we're all well past that at this point.

But what you'll find is that there's a sort of epistemically conservative perspective,

which is sort of like there's a lot of bad stuff that seems to have happened,

but we don't know what it is.

And then that goes through a sort of a spectrum. And then on the far end, there's, you know,

extreme certainty about, you know, cannibalism happened on Epstein's Island. And I've had a lot of

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