Why you can’t find a thing about Jeffrey Epstein on Fox News
And why Biden was sharp as a tack, until he suddenly wasn’t
In this issue
• Why America’s two-party system is functioning exactly as designed, to serve itself
• How unresolved hot-button issues are features, not bugs, of modern politics
• Why “your team” doesn’t actually want to win the fight you think they’re fighting
• And our summer-refer-a-thon continues, with the most referrals winning a pack of Neuro Gum blessed by the founders themselves in our upcoming podcast (Naz, you're still crushing it)
The United States is (in) a funny place.
Few things remind you that you’re a foreigner in a foreign land quite like an American election season, and the impact that reverberates therefrom.
First of all, when you can’t vote you’re simply doomed to observe the madness around you, watching cable news anchors shout over polls, TikTokers weaponizing vibes and conspiracy theories, and the candidates themselves pulling off feats of mental and verbal acrobatics that could place them in right at the big top at Cirque du Soleil. Sometimes you might just find yourself feeling smugly relieved that you’re not part of it. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Most of you know I come from Finland, a country that has topped the global happiness rankings eight years running (after I left, mind you) and somehow manages to have more active political parties than I can name off the top of my head.
Now, I’m not a political scientist which explains me failing the Finnish Civics 101 quiz here, but as time goes on I’ve become more convinced that the main reason US politics is so inefficient in producing outcomes the population wants is something that is entirely missing in Finland.
And once you’ve seen it in action, you can’t unsee it here in the United States. What I’m referring to is so pervasive that most people here are like fish in water, blissfully unaware of the liquid surrounding them.
I’m talking about the concept of capturenomics.
It’s the best word I’ve got for how I see things really working here: a system in which power, policy, media, and public opinion are all shaped not by a collective will of the people but by the interests of a political system that is set up to capture value, instead of creating it.
It runs through most everything we see, and it’s also responsible for why you won’t find a single mention of Trump’s Epstein postcard on Fox News. May every day be another wonderful secret indeed.
In America, people don’t get what they want
One of the clearest signs a country isn’t exactly acing its governance is when policies routinely diverge from the clearly expressed will of its people.
Now, I’m entirely aware of Condorcet’s paradox and the basic impossibility of creating a perfect voting system that represents everyone’s preferences all the time. Add to that the fact that most people struggle to articulate their views in a consistent way, and that surveys are only so reliable, and yes: democracy is a messy, imperfect art.
But sometimes, people are really clear about what they want, and their system ignores them anyway.
Gun rights are one example. Year after year, polling shows that most Americans support stronger gun control. And yet? Nothing.
Another example: Americans broadly support Roe v. Wade-style protections for abortion. Good night, and good luck with trying to have those broadly shared views represented.
And now we have the Epstein files.
The Republican base, and the American public more broadly, has shown a clear, sustained interest in exposing the full extent of Epstein’s network, especially given the repeated links to high-ranking officials and campaign donors. There were clear campaign promises made, followed by silence.
Fox News, once the beating heart of Epstein-fueled conspiracism, now offers next to nothing on the topic. It’s as if the topic never existed, which is where we return to capturenomics.
Let’s drop this piece of 2004 research in for the record:
“Most Americans think that public officials don't care much about the preferences of 'people like me.' Sadly, the results presented above suggest they may be right… Influence over actual policy outcomes appears to be reserved almost exclusively for those at the top of the income distribution.”
Gilens & Page, Princeton University
The about-face on Epstein is sure to delight Democrats, who smell a midterm opening. A part of me is delighted too, but for an entirely different reason.
Mainly, I’m excited to observe a real-life human experiment going on here that I have been obsessing with since moving to the US years ago: How far can you push your own constituents in a two-party, entirely captured political system, before the camel’s back breaks?
Why Fox News won’t touch Epstein is the same reason Biden was “sharp as a tack”
Every spring, I teach an undergraduate course that sits at the intersection of business, ethics, and society. It’s one of the few chances we have to rewire some of the bright minds coming into finance before they’re swallowed whole by the cult of private equity.
One of my favourite rituals in that class is a simple morning scan. We pull up the front pages of The New York Times, NPR, and Fox News, and compare what’s being covered, and more importantly, what’s being conveniently ignored.
The point isn’t to dunk on any one outlet. In fact, I encourage reading all of them routinely just to cover our own blind spots.
The point of the exercise is to show that each one is playing its own game. Each outlet serves a particular narrative, and sadly each are more or less politically captured by 2025.
If we did that exercise today, here’s what we’d see: NYT leading with the Epstein files, while Fox News emphasizes Kohberger’s sentencing. Had I had the prescience of taking my screenshot a day before, you would have seen a chevron-filling headline on Hillary Clinton, who was last relevant as a political opponent 9 years ago.
I’m sure the deeper irony here isn’t lost on any of us. Not long ago, Epstein was the deep-state conspiracy for the right-wing blogosphere. NYT wouldn’t have gone near it, at least not with the fervor it is today.
There are many ways to explain this, and one that I’ve been playing around builds on the capturenomics argument that goes something like this: in the absence of systems that enforce effective competition, stores of value (like the government, media, universities, trust funds, you name it) tend towards being captured by special interest groups.
The US media isn’t some neutral arbiter of facts, and hasn’t been that for decades. Instead, it’s a tool used by each side to fortify their capture of power and shape public perception. The more valuable the institution, the more aggressively it gets captured.
Let’s lay out the foundational logic behind capturenomics in more detail:
Certain systems, like governments, accumulate what we can call excess value
The value can be anything from tax revenues to rule-making authority and prestige. The more value these systems centralize, the more they attract groups of individuals to capture them.These systems are ultimately governed by people or groups of them, and those with the stronger coalitions behind them win
The more powerful or resource-rich the coalition, the more likely it is to succeed in gaining access to the levers of value.
The more the coalition spends in its attempt at capture, the more it needs to recover in return
What begins as a political campaign ends as a return-on-investment calculation, which is how politics becomes a business, not a matter of representation.
In systems that enforce effective competition, capture tends to be temporary
The tug-of-war keeps any single group from extracting unchecked value for too long. Elections, transparency, and institutional friction act as circuit breakers that call the game off before it goes too far.But when competition weakens, capture can become durable
In fact, it very quickly hardens into duopolies, oligarchy or autocracy. The CCP in China or Putin’s United Russia serve as examples: once competition is effectively eliminated, capture calcifies.In binary systems like the U.S. two-party structure, the game becomes one of short-term capture at all costs
When power predictably oscillates between just two teams, the incentives shift subtly, but by no means to the public’s advantage. Instead of governing with long-term vision, parties race to extract maximum value while they hold the flag—treating public office like a depletable resource.
What we’re seeing is no longer politics like the Greeks intended. It’s pure strip-mining.
And this right here is why Fox News won’t touch Epstein.
He’s a liability to the capture the coalition has worked so very hard to pull off. And it’s also why everyone on the blue side was insistent, sometimes hysterically so, that Biden was “sharp as a tack” up until about five minutes before he handed the baton over to Harris.
In a capturenomics frame, Biden wasn’t just the incumbent president running for election. He was the keystone of the capture process, and admitting he was slipping, even if everyone of us could see it, would have risked the whole structure.
What if we tried politics instead?
There’s a version of the world where Democrats allowed for real debate about who should carry their torch in 2024. There’s also a version where Republicans released the Epstein files as promised. There’s a version where media outlets actually competed over truth, rather than reinforcing partisan grip, if only you can imagine it.
Instead, what we have today is short-term optimization that inevitably leads to long-term erosion.
So what comes next, one might rightfully wonder?
That depends on how long Americans are willing to put up with a system that keeps treating them like pawns in someone else’s endgame.
I keep thinking about Andrew Yang’s Forward Party, and the faint flicker of what might have been had he pulled it off. I bought my Forward Party t-shirt once I was allowed to make political donations because of my support for nascent pluralism and capture-defying-competition instead of the underlying politics.
Sadly, the Yang Gang wasn’t the ticket, and I fear Musk’s musketeers aren’t going to be it either. Instead, what we have to brace for is another round of the same two-player capture game for as far ahead as we can see.
And in this game, it’s the house that always wins.
A book to read
If you’ve ever looked at the U.S. political landscape and thought, “This can’t be the best we can do,” this book is for you.
Gillespie lays out the long, strange history of third-party movements in America and explains why they matter more than we think, even when they lose. Especially when they lose. It’s not a hopeful book, but it’s an honest one. And don’t get me started on how sad it is that the book is still so very relevant even though it was was launched in 2012.
A thing to do
Read outside your political bubble
You already know your own side’s talking points. Try reading the ones that make you uncomfortable, if for no other reason than to see how the same facts become different stories depending on who’s telling them.
Get started right here: Fox News; NYT.
A thought to have
Your party doesn’t represent your interests, and that’s by design
Ask yourself: Why didn’t Democrats codify Roe when they had the chance? Why don’t Republicans actually pass sweeping gun reforms even when they dominate all three branches?
Because not acting is also part of the capturenomics playbook. These hot-button political issues are simply too politically valuable to solve. If you did, how would you reliably mobilize voters?
Each party benefits more from outrage than resolution. So they keep the fire simmering, cycle after cycle, dragging your rights and fears along for the ride. That’s not dysfunction. That’s strategy.
A product to love
Your favorite third party’s merch
Maybe it’s the Forward Party. Maybe it’s the Libertarians (at least they have cool flags). Maybe it’s the Greens, or something even weirder.
I invite you to buy the hoodie and to proudly stash the pin even if you never wear it.
Quite frankly, the duopoly’s got enough swag already.
Recent writings on Forbes and beyond
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Where and how to get involved
A book is coming.
The Curiosity Code (yes, the book) is officially in motion. I’ll be drafting chapters this fall, weaving together insights from CEO interviews, classroom sessions, and conversations like the one we’re having here. If you have stories about range, curiosity, or unorthodox paths. I’d love to hear them in the chat or comments.
A podcast is brewing
We’ve started taping episodes for the first season of The Curiosity Code podcast. Early guests include the CEOs of Turnitin, Lovesac, Grindr, NOVOS, Front, and Aampe. Can’t wait to launch the season in late 2025.
I am currently conducting a study on range and how it impacts people’s career trajectories. Ten questions and a name will get you on the hall of fame as we pump up the n on the study. Link below - thanks for considering it!
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Curiosity is best when enjoyed in great company.
Refer this issue and grab a chance to get a tester package of Neuro blessed by the founders themselves (randomly selected from all referrals made). I’m connecting with the duo for a longer chat, recorded for the upcoming Curiosity Code podcast, and will be grilling them on their curious path to setting up the company. If you want your question included in the mix, hit me up via the Substack chat or email.
