Podcast / The Time of Monsters / May 11, 2026

What Jeffrey Epstein Taught Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon

Branko Marcetic on the fake populism of a sordid elite.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

What Jeffrey Epstein Taught Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon w/ Branko Marcetic | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

The late Jeffrey Epstein was friends with all sorts of elite figures in the US and many other countries. This extensive network is now sometimes described as “the Epstein class.” The question is, was this class held together merely by the opportunistic trading of favors or did it have a coherent worldview and agenda?

Branko Marcetic has written a series of articles in Jacobin that clarify this issue by looking at relationships Epstein had with the billionaire Peter Thiel and the political operative Steve Bannon.

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Peter Thiel speaks at The Cambridge Union on May 08, 2024 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

(Nordin Catic / Getty Images)

The late Jeffrey Epstein was friends with all sorts of elite figures in the United States and many other countries. This extensive network is now sometimes described as “the Epstein class.” The question is, was this class held together merely by the opportunistic trading of favors or did it have a coherent worldview and agenda?

Branko Marcetic has written a series of articles in Jacobin that clarify this issue by looking at relationships Epstein had with the billionaire Peter Thiel and the political operative Steve Bannon.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/subscribe.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

The Obama Center as a Tomb of Neoliberalism w/ Kate Wagner / The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
byThe Nation Magazine

My Nation colleague Kate Wagner has written a brilliant critical essay on the Obama Center, which just opened in Chicago. I talk to her about how the history of presidential libraries, a now anachronistic form as well as the controversies surrounding the Obama Center’s displacement of public space and the dissatisfying way it memorializes the Obama presidency.

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Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

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