Ross Douthat

speaker

293 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2025 last heard 2 Dec

Ross Douthat’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.

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The Ezra Klein Show · Interesting Times: She Exposed Epstein and Shares MAGA’s Anger · 2 Dec 2025 podcast

From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times.

Forget about the political drama for a moment. matched

What is the actual truth about Jeffrey Epstein? matched

Are there real secrets that haven't yet been revealed? matched

And what's it like to try to pull back the curtain on one of the 21st century's most mysterious villains? matched

My guest today brought Epstein's story fully into the public eye with her dogged reporting for the Miami Herald in 2018. matched

And she'll be our guide through the big unanswered questions that are still with us today. matched

Before we dive in, I just want to note that we recorded this conversation just before, as in hours before, the Wall Street Journal reported on a birthday letter sent by Donald Trump to Epstein and before the president then authorized the Justice Department to seek the release of grand jury testimony in Epstein's case. matched

So you won't hear us discuss those developments, just everything else. matched

Julie K. Brown, welcome to Interesting Times. matched

So for the last couple of weeks, ever since the Trump administration decided it was a good idea to tell the world that there was nothing more to say about the Jeffrey Epstein story, which has not been true, I feel like we've had a lot of these meta conversations about the case. matched

conversations about Trump administration politics, about MAGA infighting, about sort of theories about conspiracy theories. matched

And I just keep coming back to the man himself and all of the weird questions that, to me – matched

As a journalist and news consumer, still hang over this whole story. matched

So I'm really hoping that together we can sort of walk through the story, the actual story of how Jeffrey Epstein, the man, became Jeffrey Epstein himself. matched

the mythic villain of the early 21st century and i want to start in the middle for him or maybe near the end for him but at the beginning for you how did you first get drawn into this story what prompted you as a journalist to start looking into jeffrey epstein and his crimes matched

And so at that point, the official narrative of Epstein was he had taken a plea deal related to early teenage girls. matched

Right. matched

What was the actual nature of that deal? matched

And so from your perspective as a reporter at that point, as you're digging into the story, what was your theory of why he got this plea deal? matched

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