The Leverage Economy: The 285th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Today we discuss Epstein, Trump, MAGA, and how we know what we think we know. The actual economy exists, as does the attention economy; now Bret introduces a new term: the leverage economy. This implies that there is a commodity that we cannot see, which can be used to coerce players to act in certain ways. We see evidence of this in academia, in the news, and in politics. Discussion includes data mining, conspiracy, and whether Trump will pick up neocons as he loses some of his base.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Goldberg in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/opinion/trump-jeffrey-epstein-files.html

Trump on truth social: https://x.com/chesschick01/status/1945498352507879536

Heinrichs in the Free Press: https://www.thefp.com/p/the-rights-1939-project