SONG: “Social Prosthetic”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Cultivate Famous Scientists?”, Scientific American, 20 Jan 2026, as used in the post “Why did Jeffrey Epstein “collect” so many scientists?”.
ABSTRACT: This is the first original I’ve completed since October. What a strange few months it’s been. This song happened this way because I’ve been listening to shoegaze lately — like, the original, strictly-speaking shoegaze from the 1980s and 90s, Ride and My Bloody Valentine and that. This song started with just the piano bits (there’s a piano bit hidden in there, can you hear it?) and the “Be My Baby” drums, and it was almost a Cigarettes After Sex dream-pop thing, and it was almost a song about cows using tools. (There was a Wired story, but it was paywalled so I didn’t share it here… an Austrian cow named Veronika uses a backscratcher in a scientific first.) Even the structure of the growing choruses, a new line added with every repetition, was already in place.
But then, just a couple days ago, I read the story about Epstein and his scientists, and the phrase “social prosthetic” stuck in my head. In part, it stuck because I am… well, I’ve never been diagnosed as being “on the spectrum,” but I’m relatively awkward and any impression of social adeptness I give comes at the expense of great effort and being reared by British colonials in America. Old World etiquette is in some ways a gift to the awkward. Anyway, the idea of having a prosthesis to aid in socializing, to replace something that might be missing, is immediately appealing … but then also kind of demands interrogation from me.
Because the nature of the story was such that Epstein, a man infamous for his excessive and antisocial id, was keenly interested (obsessed, perhaps?) with social prosthesis research. And one of the first images I got was of Epstein actually connecting himself Matrix-style to an empathy server, a remote facility where “normal” people would be connected to magnetic scanners and their empathic responses to, say, conversations or non-verbal cues, could be instantaneously communicated via some kind of implant or wearable so that the wealthy sociopath could have something resembling a genuine human response. A remote-controlled borrowed empathy, in other words – stolen empathy, even.
Then another meaning of “social prosthetic” struck me, and that was that Epstein was in some way using these scientists as social prostheses. The human researchers were standing in for things like “keen interest in other people’s minds” and “intelligent analysis of human behavior” and “philanthropic interest in humanity.” By sponsoring research, the billionaire was buying scientific credibility. Steering research, deciding the questions that would be asked and the applications that would be pursued, but also… borrowing the reputation and respect that scientists have earned. In this reading, the scientist is like a mask or attachment. Another way of using a person like a prosthetic.
Because, of course, that is the nature of the sociopath: the personality that uses other people as tools for self-gratification.
Once I realized that was what this month’s song had to be about, everything else took shape: wall of noise, blanket of distortion, extra tremolo guitar on the chorus, VU-style chorus backing vocals, all of it. The only organic instrument in here was bass, and it was the very last thing recorded. There are something like 10 vocal tracks, though.
The longer I do this, the more I feel like I need lessons in mastering — but I did my best to avoid ear fatigue despite doing all my mixing and most of my tracking over two days. Shoegaze vocals are typically in that web of reverb, and these I wanted to stand out a bit. Is that how Ride did it?
LYRICS:
V1:
It started with thinking
I thought that thinking was.. thinking about thought was cool
So I went to school, I mastered the tools
Applied for grants, shook all the right hands,
And learnedCH 1:
To make a social prosthetic, a social prosthetic (a wooden leg for the soul)
Let me put magnets, let put magnets on their brains (a wooden leg for the soul)
So everyone will react the same (a wooden leg for the soul)V2:
I never went to his island
I heard the stories but I never paid any heed
…Oxytocin and vasopressin’s not free
But at a party once he told me:CH 2:
Make me a social prosthetic, a social prosthetic (a wooden leg for the soul)
Like shots can make me athletic, like shots can make me athletic (a wooden leg for the soul)
Let me put magnets on their brains / So everyone reacts the same (a wooden leg for the soul)
So we won’t be to blame – we won’t be to blame (a wooden leg for the soul)V3:
It started with volunteers
Students do this for peanuts They’d never do this to me
With my own protocols, I couldn’t see
The puppet strings tying my hands…CH3:
Made me a social prosthetic, a social prosthetic (a wooden leg for the soul)
Like shots can make you athletic, like shots can make you athletic (a wooden leg for the soul)
Like equine anesthetic, like equine anesthetic can be (a wooden leg for the soul)
Let me put magnets on their brains / So everyone reacts the same as me (a wooden leg for the soul)
We can answer to someone else’s name and no one would blame us (a wooden leg for the soul)
And no one could blame us, no one would blame us (a wooden leg for the soul)
No one would blame us… (a wooden leg for the soul)