Hey, everyone. Welcome to Becoming the People. I'm Prentice and Pill. This episode is a really timely one. The last couple weeks, we have all been perhaps inundated or overwhelmed with the news of the release of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case and cases.

It's been a trying week. I mean, the things that we've seen, the stories that we've heard, the images that were shared, it's been really overwhelming.

I know a lot of survivors are reeling from that and feeling triggered by that, and that

makes so much sense. You know, I think for me, one of the things that I've been sitting with

this week was how casual people spoke about the abuse, how casual people treated the abuse

that was happening. And we see in the documents that it is high-profile people, people who are moneyed, people

who are entertainers, people who are spiritual leaders that are in these documents, kind of

casually referring to sexual abuse of children. And that was really shocking

for me, the kind of pedestrian way people talked about. Attending parties, what had happened at

parties. It's been really, really shocking. And I think the other thing that's been sitting

with me in that, in that reflection, is how casual and how central, how central abuse

was to this class of people and how they related to each other.

That it was one of the ways they organized their years, like when is the party going to happen

this year.

It was a reference point, a kind of social reference point.

What brought people together across political lines, across fields, was the abuse of children.

And that has really upset me this week.

It's been like shocking and disturbing to think

about the centrality of abuse of children. And it's not that I hadn't thought that before or didn't

think that that was possible, but feeling the ritual nature of it, the unrepentant nature of it, the casual way

that people talked about it, just really, really sickened me. And it just really, really sickened

me. And I guess what I want to offer all of us in a week that might have been incredibly

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