My take on the Steve Bannon interview of Jeffrey Epstein is that Epstein isn't simply an amoral schmoozing midwit who somehow got lucky with ingratiating himself. Rather, Epstein was a legitimately very high IQ guy (>140) who
1. 'Dumbs' himself down to an Ivy League college sophomore level where he comes off like a Neil deGrasse Tyson knockoff that impresses people like Joe Rogan. This accomplishes the goal of not being intimidating to the legitimately impressive intelligentsia and businessmen and politicians he was affiliated with (e.g. Chomsky, Hawking, Stern, Clinton). It also makes him seem like an impressively brilliant guy to the relatively uneducated attractive young women and underage girls he would surround himself with.
2. Hasn't dealt with truly rigorous, dense, non-pop-sci, academic subject matter in decades. He had the potential to be a very accomplished mathematician, but diverged at a young age to "live it up", so in his 60s he's a lot more of a pop-sci dilettante philosopher intellectual "lightweight" compared to his peers (e.g. 60something mathematicians) who have been doing serious mathematical research for decades.
You will see a lot of people on the Internet portraying him to be a ~115 IQ midwit pretentiously trying to show himself off as much smarter than he really is, but I think it's much more likely a case of a genuinely very high IQ guy who hasn't dealt with any deep serious academics in decades who also advantageously communicates in a more accessible Carl Sagan / Neil deGrasse Tyson / Joe Rogan podcast guest kind of way because it suits his aims better.
