Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ
Aired: 2025-11-06
Duration: 01:31:18


=== Peter Thiel and the Antichrist (07:16) ===

[00:00:01]  Cold Zone Media.
[00:00:06]  Welcome Behind the Bastards back to podcast people bad about tell all them you.
[00:00:14]  I'm Robert Evans.
[00:00:16]  And yeah, with me again for part two of our episode on what Peter Thiel thinks about the Antichrist.
[00:00:24]  I'm just, I'm sorry that that's what we're talking about, right?
[00:00:29]  I love it.
[00:00:29]  We're getting right to the heart of the matter, you know, because people are like, do you want to talk about the economy?
[00:00:35]  And I'm like, no, no.
[00:00:37]  No, I don't want to talk about the economy.
[00:00:39]  I'm tired of talking about the economy.
[00:00:41]  Tell me about what these idiots think.
[00:00:44]  Tell me what they believe.
[00:00:46]  Absolutely.
[00:00:46]  So here we are.
[00:00:47]  Sarah Marshall.
[00:00:49]  You got anything you want to plug here at the start before we dive back into it?
[00:00:52]  Yeah.
[00:00:53]  I have a new podcast about the satanic panic and the wackadoo, horrible things that the fear of a Satan who never showed up to the party caused self-described good and law-abiding people to bring about.
[00:01:10]  And it's a sad show.
[00:01:13]  It's a fun show.
[00:01:14]  It's a show about history.
[00:01:15]  It's a show about today.
[00:01:16]  It's called The Devil You Know.
[00:01:18]  It's all right now with CBC podcasts.
[00:01:20]  And of course, I also host a show called You're Wrong About.
[00:01:23]  And you can listen to that too.
[00:01:25]  And it's, you know, we have fun while trying to get to the bottom of things, much like you do.
[00:01:31]  Right.
[00:01:31]  Right.
[00:01:32]  We're talking today about Peter Thiel being wrong about something important.
[00:01:35]  And we're also talking about the devil he knows, or at least who he thinks the devil might be.
[00:01:41]  Yes.
[00:01:41]  His fantasy devil, perhaps.
[00:01:44]  His fantasy devil.
[00:01:45]  I guarantee you're not going to see where this is building to.
[00:01:49]  My question is, Sarah, who is your fantasy devil?
[00:01:53]  Oh, there you go.
[00:01:56]  Peter Cook and Bedazzled, of course.
[00:01:58]  Oh, you know, Sarah, you could not have said anything that would have gotten me more on your side than that.
[00:02:06]  I love the original Bedazzled.
[00:02:08]  Right?
[00:02:09]  He's the best Satan, easily by a mile.
[00:02:12]  Tell me why you think that is.
[00:02:13]  And people haven't seen this movie enough.
[00:02:15]  It's a delight.
[00:02:16]  It's Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
[00:02:18]  I respect both from a theological standpoint and from just an entertainment standpoint, the idea of a devil whose primary focus is not on acts of grand evil, but on acts of like petty annoyance.
[00:02:31]  Like that scene where he's just like casually scratching records and then putting them in the mail.
[00:02:35]  It's so funny to me.
[00:02:37]  And there's a scene where he's ripping the last pages out of novels.
[00:02:41]  Yes, yes.
[00:02:42]  And there's that, there's that, I mean, my favorite part, I guess, spoilers for the film Bedazzled, which is half a century old.
[00:02:48]  Yeah, you've had that.
[00:02:48]  But there's a great scene.
[00:02:51]  There's a great scene where the guy whose soul, he's the devil is trying to win and he are talking.
[00:02:56]  And the guy, the human asks him, like, why did you rebel against God in the first place?
[00:03:00]  It seems like he had a pretty sweet deal.
[00:03:02]  And the devil, the devil, like, gets up on top of, I think it's a mailbox or something.
[00:03:07]  And he's like, okay, I'm going to walk you through what it was like, you know, back then.
[00:03:11]  I'm God.
[00:03:11]  Start praising me.
[00:03:12]  And the guy's like, goes around like, I praise you.
[00:03:14]  Keep going.
[00:03:15]  Keep praising me.
[00:03:15]  Keep praising me.
[00:03:16]  And he goes on like this for a while.
[00:03:18]  And eventually the guy's like, hey, can we take a break?
[00:03:20]  And maybe I get up there for a minute.
[00:03:22]  And the devil's like, that's exactly what I thought.
[00:03:24]  Yeah.
[00:03:25]  Exactly.
[00:03:26]  Right.
[00:03:26]  And it plays on the feeling that a lot of us have in Sunday school or equivalent that like, you know, that the character of God in the Bible is insufferable, you know?
[00:03:40]  And I don't know if that plays into our topic today, but I have always noticed it.
[00:03:45]  And especially, and I also really love the Cartman Land episode of South Park where Kyle's faith is challenged.
[00:03:51]  And so his parents tell him the story of Job.
[00:03:53]  That's a funny thing.
[00:03:54]  He's like, why would God do that to a good and it's like, why would God do that?
[00:04:02]  Because, like, Satan, you expect to like try and be a trickster, but the fact that God is like, hey, yeah, I should ruin this guy's life and see if he still praises me, that's a good use of my time.
[00:04:14]  You're like, hmm, yeah.
[00:04:16]  The date, the devil comes out looking comparatively good in that story because it's less of a betrayal from him.
[00:04:22]  He's just an asshole.
[00:04:24]  Yeah.
[00:04:26]  Yeah.
[00:04:26]  Anyway, watch the original Bedazzled.
[00:04:28]  You don't need to watch it.
[00:04:29]  The original Bedazzled.
[00:04:30]  The one made Brendan Frazier and Elizabeth Harley.
[00:04:33]  Yeah, you can watch that one.
[00:04:35]  It's cute.
[00:04:36]  It's fun.
[00:04:36]  If you want.
[00:04:37]  But yeah, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are one of the great comedy duos.
[00:04:40]  And I do feel like the idea of just the trickster devil is so beautifully embodied there.
[00:04:46]  And it's interesting to me that the devil is kind of the trickster character.
[00:04:49]  And we took the trickster who's necessary in most cosmologies and made him evil, which is a very different role to play.
[00:05:00]  Yeah.
[00:05:01]  So, I don't know, folks, watch Bedazzled.
[00:05:03]  It's more biblically accurate than Peter Thiel's lecture on the Antichrist.
[00:05:07]  I'll say that.
[00:05:08]  There you go.
[00:05:09]  Yeah.
[00:05:09]  That feels so true.
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=== The Disconnect in His Mind (15:50) ===

[00:07:18]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:07:20]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:07:21]  There's a lot of life.
[00:07:23]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:07:33]  So I had planned, Sarah, for us to get through the first one of Peter's, like the notes on his first lecture faster than we did because we didn't get through that even.
[00:07:43]  We might have to do like a day-long staged event doing that, like when D.D. Kaufman read The Great Gatsby.
[00:07:50]  Yeah, I'm ready.
[00:07:52]  Yeah.
[00:07:52]  Or, I could just get this the Embarcadero to host me while I talk for four days about Peter Thiel's lectures on the Antichrist and why they're very silly.
[00:08:01]  But we're going to have to cut through the remainder of that first lecture before we get into who he thinks might be the Antichrist.
[00:08:08]  And so, when we left off, I do feel like you've given me a pretty clear sense of how unhinged this.
[00:08:13]  Thank you.
[00:08:14]  Good.
[00:08:14]  Theology is.
[00:08:16]  Yeah.
[00:08:16]  I'm glad we at least landed on that.
[00:08:18]  So, when we last left off with Peter, he was complaining that science promised to make us immortal and it failed to deliver, which it didn't, but nonetheless.
[00:08:28]  Next, Peter says that after the development of the atom bomb, quote, technology itself became apocalyptic.
[00:08:34]  And in 1945, the National Committee on Atomic Information published One World or None, which is generally agreed to have been like the first atomic scare movie.
[00:08:44]  Like, this is the first, like, what if a nuclear war movie, right?
[00:08:47]  Oh, boy.
[00:08:48]  And the gist of this is that nukes were really dangerous.
[00:08:52]  And the only rational solution to a world in which everyone has nukes is a strong United Nations that can put an end to war and ensure nuclear weapons are never used and MAS, right?
[00:09:02]  Yep.
[00:09:03]  I would say, I think most people would say, like, yeah, it's a pretty reasonable reaction to nukes.
[00:09:07]  Kind of the theme of a lot of Twilight Zone episodes as well.
[00:09:11]  Pretty reasonable.
[00:09:12]  Yeah.
[00:09:13]  Fairly middle of the road concept.
[00:09:15]  It's also, yeah, it's also, this is also like a reaction to World War II, where it's like, we should probably have some sort of like international law.
[00:09:21]  So like if a country's doing war crimes, there's some sort of mechanism in the United States from doing the things that we will choose to do again.
[00:09:30]  Yeah, I mean, we don't really do this.
[00:09:32]  The IC, I mean, we, we briefly Serbia, we punish briefly, but that's kind of it, you know, in terms of international law.
[00:09:40]  I'm cutting things down a little bit, but we never, yeah, this is not a thing that ever really happens, but it is a thing.
[00:09:46]  Peter Thiel is in a lot of ways a very old-fashioned kind of paranoid.
[00:09:51]  The UN is the devil, the Antichrist wants the UN to take over the world kind of guy.
[00:09:56]  He's the Sterling Hayden and Dr. Strangelove kind of a role that's so crucial in American politics.
[00:10:02]  And Dr. Strangelove is going to come up in a little bit here.
[00:10:04]  You're going to hear what Peter thinks about that movie.
[00:10:06]  Oh, no.
[00:10:07]  But it's not, it is, he tries to dress it up because he knows that, like, well, cranks are the guys who think that any reasonable person can be like, well, the UN never came even anywhere close to being a one-world government.
[00:10:19]  Like, at no point did it have even a fraction of that much power, obviously.
[00:10:25]  And if it did, then, you know, they would have solved more problems, you would think.
[00:10:29]  Maybe things would be better.
[00:10:30]  Peter is that kind of a crank, but he doesn't want you to think about that.
[00:10:34]  So he has to dress this up in like theological terms and shit.
[00:10:38]  He can't just be the guy down at the feed store because really he's like, you know, Dale from King of the Hill, but he has to make it seem important.
[00:10:47]  Right.
[00:10:47]  And so he says that, you know, this movie, One World or None, was the birth of when we started seeing technology itself as like apocalyptic, right?
[00:10:54]  And this is bad because it that this is Peter is blaming basically the fact that we don't make scientific advancements anymore on this train of thinking that starts Starts, you know, with this nuclear paranoia of this idea that, like, well, technology is bad, and that's why we're not progressing technologically.
[00:11:11]  Of course.
[00:11:12]  And I feel like I've explained enough why this is all nonsense.
[00:11:15]  Yeah.
[00:11:16]  Also, from a film history perspective, that's even wrong.
[00:11:19]  Because, like, what do you call Metropolis, baby?
[00:11:22]  Frankenstein.
[00:11:23]  Yeah.
[00:11:24]  Sure.
[00:11:24]  Seriously.
[00:11:26]  I mean, the movie and the book, but yeah, there's all there's so much we could critique about this, but I need to read you this next line.
[00:11:34]  Coincidentally, this is also when the Catholic Church stopped giving apocalyptic sermons.
[00:11:39]  Did it?
[00:11:40]  Is that true?
[00:11:41]  I don't know what the fuck you're talking about because I went to, I like my dad was Catholic.
[00:11:46]  I didn't only go to Catholic church, but I went to Catholic Church a good amount as a little kid.
[00:11:50]  And I remember the priest talking about the end times and the second coming.
[00:11:55]  It wasn't the only thing.
[00:11:56]  Certainly not as much of a focus in Catholicism as it is in a lot of like evangelical Christian sects, but it's not talked about.
[00:12:04]  He's like, Catholics aren't talking about it constantly and therefore they're not doing it at all.
[00:12:09]  Yeah.
[00:12:10]  And like, I guess my citation here is like, I went to church as a kid.
[00:12:14]  What the fuck are you basing this on, Peter?
[00:12:17]  Like, that's just not true.
[00:12:20]  And it's also like, well, Catholicism's just one chunk of Christianity.
[00:12:24]  And a lot of Christian faiths and priests and pastors over the last 75, 80 years have talked about the apocalypse in different ways.
[00:12:34]  It's a common subject.
[00:12:35]  I don't, this whole, this whole pillar of his belief system, which is that people don't really talk about the Antichrist or the apocalypse anymore outside of technology causing it.
[00:12:44]  Right.
[00:12:44]  It's like, no.
[00:12:46]  It's like in the late 20th century, people talked about it, you know, an unbelievable amount and like pretty consistently.
[00:12:54]  And, you know, it's right.
[00:12:57]  It just feels like he's arguing whatever he feels like he needs to in order to justify his the point he wants to make thing by thing.
[00:13:04]  Yeah.
[00:13:05]  His issue is that like all of the people who are pushing these secular apocalyptic fears about like fertility collapsing or bioweapons or AI are kind of playing into the real Antichrist because the Antichrist wants to stop technological progress, right?
[00:13:21]  That's the argument he's making.
[00:13:23]  Yes.
[00:13:23]  Fascinating.
[00:13:25]  The Antichrist is Amish.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:29]  Or a Luddite, right?
[00:13:31]  Now, Peter, the other thing, I mean, and that's really what he believes.
[00:13:35]  He does believe the Antichrist is a Luddite, and he also misunderstands Luddites, whatever.
[00:13:38]  Of course.
[00:13:40]  He also, he goes on, he's angry that he doesn't like secular apocalyptic fears because and he complains, he lists that like, oh, regular people, when they talk about the apocalypse, they're always worried about like nukes or biological weapons or AI or, you know, the children of men fertility collapse.
[00:13:55]  And that's really incomplete.
[00:13:57]  Quote, we should add the risk of the biblical Antichrist manifesting as a one world government.
[00:14:02]  Here, the secular maps neatly onto the theological, the one world state of the Antichrist, on the other hand, and the no world of Armageddon.
[00:14:10]  And like, first off, that's not really a risk because like no reasonable person thinks a one world government is anywhere close to a reality.
[00:14:20]  Like, it's just not a realistic fear.
[00:14:23]  Like, even if that was a bad thing, it's not a realistic fear looking at the world today.
[00:14:27]  Yeah.
[00:14:28]  And the whole this idea that like, oh, the secular maps onto the theological.
[00:14:32]  You've got the one world state of the Antichrist and then the no world of the of Armageddon.
[00:14:36]  And like those things are only mapped neatly if you're an idiot.
[00:14:40]  One world or none is arguing in favor of a strong UN and a strong international criminal court to stop world leaders from doing crimes against humanity.
[00:14:50]  That's not a one world state.
[00:14:52]  Like the movie that he argues for is not advocating a one world state.
[00:14:56]  And neither are most people who want a stronger UN or ICC.
[00:14:59]  Basically, 0% of people, including me, who support a stronger ICC, want to one world state.
[00:15:05]  You just want there to be punishments for genocide, right?
[00:15:10]  Right.
[00:15:10]  And in this case, it feels like people, including Peter Thiel in this case, are betting themselves into pretzels to justify their desire to get to kill whoever they want and call it morally good.
[00:15:23]  Yeah.
[00:15:23]  And I think with Peter, because I don't think Peter's specifically all that motivated to kill specific groups of people, but I think Peter sees if there's an international criminal court, if there's a higher international law of any kind, then that means I'm bound by law somewhere.
[00:15:39]  And that's wrong.
[00:15:40]  That's fundamentally wrong for anyone to be able to punish me, Peter Thiel, or hold me accountable for any of my actions whatsoever.
[00:15:47]  That's the worst thing that can happen.
[00:15:49]  Because I'm baby, but I'm also the most powerful person in the world, or I should be.
[00:15:54]  And I should be because of how smart I am.
[00:15:56]  But also, who will stop me?
[00:15:58]  Someone, please stop me.
[00:15:59]  No, no one stop me.
[00:16:01]  Yeah.
[00:16:02]  Fucking Peter.
[00:16:03]  So this next paragraph is, I've said this several times.
[00:16:06]  This is where things get really crazy, but this is where things get really crazy.
[00:16:09]  This is where things get really crazy.
[00:16:11]  It's been really crazy.
[00:16:12]  It's been pretty crazy, but it's about to be crazier.
[00:16:16]  We should at least suspect that the apocalypse in our newspaper headlines is the apocalypse of the Bible.
[00:16:21]  This is not mysticism, but simple extrapolation of human nature.
[00:16:25]  Wisdom has not increased, even if information has.
[00:16:28]  The one point on which the atheist and fundamentalist agree is that violence comes from God.
[00:16:33]  The Christian, however, knows it comes from man.
[00:16:36]  I know, right?
[00:16:37]  What the fuck are you?
[00:16:38]  Wait, Peter, what?
[00:16:40]  What are we saying?
[00:16:42]  I think, let me tell you what I think he's arguing here.
[00:16:45]  I think he's saying that atheists, obviously fundamentalists believe that all everything comes from God.
[00:16:51]  So that includes all violence.
[00:16:53]  Atheists blame all violence on religion.
[00:16:56]  Yeah, that makes sense when you put it that way.
[00:17:00]  I was an angry atheist.
[00:17:02]  I'm not an angry atheist anymore.
[00:17:04]  I'm still more or less an atheist.
[00:17:06]  I've never met an atheist who thinks all violence is caused by religion.
[00:17:10]  Right.
[00:17:11]  I've never met a one.
[00:17:12]  That's a crazy thing to believe.
[00:17:14]  There's certainly capitalism looking at you, kid, and a lot of other stuff.
[00:17:18]  Yeah, some dude like murdering his wife because he doesn't want to pay alimony.
[00:17:22]  That's not God.
[00:17:24]  That kind of stuff happens.
[00:17:25]  Like a fucking, a rapist committing rape isn't like God didn't make him do that, right?
[00:17:30]  Like obviously there's rapists who do it through just sort of male entitlement.
[00:17:35]  And just, you know, yeah, there's anyway.
[00:17:38]  But it's like, this is the kind of writing where it's like, you have to kind of simplify everything into an either or, it feels like.
[00:17:44]  Right.
[00:17:44]  Which again is very eighth grade.
[00:17:46]  And it's, it is very like, it's like how a 12-year-old debate bro Christian kid talks about like when I was a 12-year-old right-wing debate bro, this is how I thought about atheism, right?
[00:17:58]  But it's like a straw man that an adult wouldn't have.
[00:18:01]  You would hope that's such an absurd idea.
[00:18:05]  But both the atheist and the fundamentalists believe all violence comes from God.
[00:18:08]  Counterpoint.
[00:18:10]  No?
[00:18:11]  It's like you've never talked to an atheist.
[00:18:14]  I mean, yeah.
[00:18:15]  No one thinks that.
[00:18:16]  I don't even think, I guess like fundamentalists would argue that everything comes from God or whatever.
[00:18:21]  So yeah, but like even then, I think most very few of them would phrase it that way, even of the religious fundamentalists that I know.
[00:18:28]  That's just a weird way to phrase anything.
[00:18:30]  Like you're, you're.
[00:18:32]  Well, on any argument based on there being like a few key groups of people who all think the same thing as each other.
[00:18:38]  They all think never, yeah.
[00:18:40]  Exactly.
[00:18:41]  And it's this, weirdly enough, this sentence of all of the reading I've done on Peter Thiel, and I have read extensively.
[00:18:48]  I've read a lot of most of the interviews he's done over the years.
[00:18:51]  I've read a lot of his own writing.
[00:18:52]  We've been through a lot.
[00:18:53]  This is the thing that scares me most.
[00:18:55]  This scares me more than any of his anti-democratic polemics where he's talking about the need for a dictatorship, because the fact that he would think this and say this is evidence that there is a disconnect in his mind between what he thinks people believe and actual humanity.
[00:19:12]  And that disconnect is so, it's very upsetting to me.
[00:19:16]  Like that's scary how disconnected he is from reality, I would say.
[00:19:21]  I am upset by this.
[00:19:23]  Yeah.
[00:19:25]  Now, from here, Peter argues that if we're heading for war or Armageddon, then it's not, if it's reasonable to think that there might be an apocalyptic war, right?
[00:19:35]  Then it's not unreasonable to worry that an Antichrist might rise to power, promising to end wars and bring stability back, right?
[00:19:42]  If it's reasonable to say we might have a war that ends humanity, it's got to be reasonable also to say that the Antichrist might rise to power, promising to stop that war, right?
[00:19:50]  Both of those are logical things.
[00:19:52]  And let's give him that.
[00:19:55]  That's a nonsense point in and of itself, but let's pretend that makes sense.
[00:19:59]  Sure, whatever.
[00:20:00]  Peter somehow doesn't draw a connection from that to like, well, an Antichrist might rise to power, promising to stop World War III, to the fact that Donald Trump, who he supported, got elected promising to stop, like literally saying, I will avoid World War III.
[00:20:13]  If you vote for me, we'll stop having a, we won't have World War III, but Kamala will lead us there or Biden will lead us there.
[00:20:20]  Like that literally is directly what Trump said.
[00:20:23]  I'm not editorializing in any way.
[00:20:25]  Oh, I know.
[00:20:26]  You know this, Peter, right?
[00:20:27]  Like, anyway, Peter just doesn't deal with this.
[00:20:31]  Instead, he focuses, right?
[00:20:33]  Who's to say this thing that actually happened obviously isn't relevant.
[00:20:37]  But let's talk about how scary it would be if it happened in an imaginary way so we can ignore the real way that it did just happen.
[00:20:43]  Yeah.
[00:20:44]  Wouldn't that be fun?
[00:20:45]  The Bible literally says that many Christians, many believers will be tricked by the Antichrist when he rises to power, promising to fix a lot of this shit.
[00:20:55]  And Donald, I, Peter, literally believe the Antichrist will rise to power, promising to stop World War III.
[00:21:00]  Donald Trump rose to power promising to stop World War III.
[00:21:04]  Obviously, none of this is worth talking about.
[00:21:06]  Completely irrelevant.
[00:21:07]  Instead, Peter now talks about two different like 80-year-old novels about the Antichrist from like the early 20th century, both of which he brings these.
[00:21:20]  He summarizes them.
[00:21:21]  I don't think we even need to talk about the novels because what he's pointing out is that both of these novels about the Antichrist and most Antichrist narratives all have a plot hole, which is that they don't explain how the Antichrist will actually seize power.
[00:21:35]  Quote.
[00:21:36]  Which is like a weird thing to care about.
[00:21:38]  Anyway, whatever.
[00:21:39]  In late modernity, we finally have the answer to how the Antichrist will rise to power by talking constantly of Armageddon or in secular terms of existential risk.
[00:21:48]  He, the Antichrist, rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety.
[00:21:52]  Oppenheimer limited, we need new knowledge, like we need a hole in the head.
[00:21:56]  Nick Bostrom has proposed preventative policing and global compute governance in his vulnerable world hypothesis.
[00:22:02]  Eliza Yudkowski's latest book is If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.
[00:22:07]  And Peter is saying all three of these guys are potential Antichrists or servants of the Antichrist, right?
[00:22:15]  Because they're spreading.
[00:22:17]  As he gives this lecture series that's entirely about his apocalyptic beliefs, he's saying these guys who are talking about Armageddon are all clearly agents of the Antichrist, if not the Antichrist themselves, because no one else would talk about the Antichrist and the apocalypse or the apocalypse so much.
[00:22:34]  Except him.
[00:22:34]  As he talks about the apocalypse.
[00:22:36]  Except him.
[00:22:36]  It's fine with him.
[00:22:37]  And this whole thing is built on paradoxes because it's like, we have to avoid a one-world government by giving all of our power to a dictator who will protect us from basic another dictator question mark, you know?
[00:22:52]  Yeah.
[00:22:52]  Yeah.
[00:22:53]  And it's the funniest thing to me, we'll get to his other Antichrist, the fact that he's like Elizer Yudkowski, maybe an Antichrist, right?
[00:23:02]  Certainly an agent of the Antichrist.
[00:23:05]  Certainly, we've made fun of him on this show a lot, right?

=== Cult Leader of Deranged Ideas (07:36) ===

[00:23:09]  Like he's an AI risk dude.
[00:23:12]  And obviously, I don't like AI.
[00:23:15]  But not because Yudkowski is like a rationalist who believes.
[00:23:21]  He's like a member of a cult, kind of the leader of a cult based on these like deranged ideas of rationality.
[00:23:27]  And he thinks AI is dangerous because AI will become a god that and it will any AI God we create will inevitably want to kill us all, right?
[00:23:35]  I mean, it's dangerous enough in terms of taking all our jobs.
[00:23:38]  You know, we can just start with that.
[00:23:40]  Yeah.
[00:23:40]  No, he's not one of the it'll take our jobs thing.
[00:23:43]  He doesn't care about artists making a living.
[00:23:46]  Yudkowski cares about like he believes that the Harlan Ellison short story, I have no mouth and I must but I must scream.
[00:23:52]  That's what he literally thinks AI will do, right?
[00:23:55]  But before that, it'll take our jobs.
[00:23:58]  It'll take our jobs.
[00:23:59]  Exactly.
[00:24:01]  And it's fun because like Peter Thiel funded Yudkowski in his early career, his like rationalism and stuff.
[00:24:08]  Like Peter gave this guy money and supported the growth of like the rationalist subculture in the Bay Area.
[00:24:15]  And then he was like, wait, no, not that.
[00:24:18]  No.
[00:24:18]  Yeah.
[00:24:18]  He's literally, he says in this lecture that he thinks Yudkowski is deranged now because Yudkowski's anti-AI.
[00:24:24]  So he has a former mentee who then takes his ideas in a direction he doesn't like.
[00:24:29]  And he's like, that guy could be the Antichrist.
[00:24:32]  I mean, if nothing else, doesn't this story make you feel better about your own beefs, you know?
[00:24:38]  Yeah, I do kind of think Garrison might be the Antichrist, you know, my protege, one-time protege.
[00:24:44]  But yeah, that's separate.
[00:24:46]  One's protege could always be the Antichrist.
[00:24:48]  I mean, Sophie.
[00:24:49]  It's certainly not impossible.
[00:24:52]  Garrison is a perfect angel.
[00:24:54]  Sophie is the one you least suspect, you know, when you think about it.
[00:24:59]  So yeah, it could be Sophie.
[00:25:02]  It could be Sophie.
[00:25:03]  I've accepted that a while ago.
[00:25:05]  I think it's Paul Pierce, anyways.
[00:25:07]  You think it's Paul Pierce?
[00:25:09]  Okay, sure.
[00:25:09]  Why not?
[00:25:11]  So this is kind of where I've decided to get into the most publicized feature of Peter's Antichrist lectures, which is his predictions as to what modern people might be the Antichrist in disguise.
[00:25:22]  So obviously Yudkowsky, you know, is at least in consideration.
[00:25:28]  Guy I've never heard of, obviously.
[00:25:30]  Right.
[00:25:32]  This guy must be it.
[00:25:33]  And Peter not only hates Yudkowsky, he feels the need to analyze him as a possible Antichrist because Yudkowski's main claim to fame now is he's trying to like warn people about AI and stop AI development.
[00:25:44]  And AI is the only thing that could give Peter a return on his financial investment commensurate to what he thinks he deserves.
[00:25:51]  So obviously Yudkowsky is evil for trying to stop this stuff.
[00:25:55]  We also appreciate that like even if you're, you know, like I don't think that the kind of person who wants to go to a four-part lecture series on the Antichrist is like my kind of person.
[00:26:06]  But even so, I do feel like you would assume you were in for something different than a guy being like, here are people I don't like personally and why I think they're the Antichrist.
[00:26:17]  Like that's taking it to another level.
[00:26:20]  You're like, oh, gee, I just expected a PowerPoint.
[00:26:23]  That's what we're doing.
[00:26:24]  Yeah.
[00:26:25]  And it's, it's, because basically Peter's primary claim here is that the Antichrist is anyone warning people about the apocalypse and trying to save the world.
[00:26:33]  That's, if that's not the Antichrist, that's an agent of the Antichrist.
[00:26:37]  Except for me.
[00:26:38]  Except for me, obviously.
[00:26:40]  And Donald Trump, you know?
[00:26:42]  So here's a quote from his first lecture.
[00:26:45]  My thesis is that in the 17th and 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangeloof, a scientist who did all this sort of crazy evil science.
[00:26:54]  In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science.
[00:26:59]  It's someone like Greta or Elizer Yedkowski.
[00:27:01]  He's Greta Tunberg.
[00:27:03]  He says he specifically, and he'll go in later and be like, I don't think Yedkowski is.
[00:27:07]  He definitely thinks Greta Tunberg might be the Antichrist.
[00:27:10]  He very directly is clear about that.
[00:27:13]  He thinks Greta Tunberg could be the Antichrist.
[00:27:18]  What is it about her that so unnerves tyrants?
[00:27:21]  I mean, I guess the fact that she's, you know, very smart and impossible to corrupt.
[00:27:27]  Yeah, the truth is.
[00:27:28]  She's speaking the truth to power.
[00:27:30]  She's proved to, I mean, honestly, like I've been just shocked at how continually good her takes have been, just because like anytime someone gets famous, that famous, that young, like you expect, okay, at some point, they're going to like either buy into a conspiracy theory or get something, get something weird.
[00:27:53]  And she's just like really consistently got a great head on her shoulders.
[00:27:57]  Yeah.
[00:27:59]  And so that scares the hell out of them.
[00:28:01]  Yeah.
[00:28:02]  Right.
[00:28:02]  And can't be convinced to look away, which I do feel like, you know, everything you've been talking about, I mean, we've been joking about it, but so much of it is like, what in the world is that thing?
[00:28:14]  Look away.
[00:28:14]  Let me do a little sleight of hand over here.
[00:28:17]  It's just parlor tricks.
[00:28:18]  I think fundamentally why he hates her and why she is hated by a lot of these guys so much is not that they're scared of the damn, because obviously she doesn't have any power.
[00:28:31]  She's like somewhat influential, but she can't, she's not going to throw Peter Thiel in prison or destroy thought.
[00:28:38]  She simply does not have the power.
[00:28:40]  She's not a corporation.
[00:28:42]  She's just a person with morals.
[00:28:43]  Yeah.
[00:28:44]  She's just a person with morals and basically zero real world power.
[00:28:48]  Yeah.
[00:28:49]  But she is emblematic and embodies a fact, which is that I'm not a believer in, oh, justice will win out, the bark, the arc of history bends towards.
[00:28:59]  Like, I don't, I think that's a silly stance.
[00:29:02]  But inevitably, in the future, if there are people, they will realize that Peter Thiel and all of his ilk during this period of time were deranged monsters who destroyed the environment and who allow and who fought viciously against any attempts to reduce the harm humanity was doing to the biosphere in order to make themselves wealthier.
[00:29:25]  And they will be hated as a result.
[00:29:27]  That's just a fact.
[00:29:29]  But not based on people, because so many people will have died as a direct result of their actions and inactions.
[00:29:35]  Yeah.
[00:29:36]  Like, I think Greta represents the reality that in the future, these people, they won't be able to, after, especially after they're dead, keep up the lie that they were fighting against all this disinformation from the left and pretend the climate change fake.
[00:29:53]  Like that lie won't hold up at a certain point.
[00:29:56]  Well, and that they're working so hard to create a mythology where like the story changes every day based on what needs to be true for them to be right and that that kind of mythology won't perpetuate itself forever and keep protecting them.
[00:30:08]  Yeah.
[00:30:09]  Exactly.
[00:30:09]  Like there will be a future in which the bullshit that they have spent their lives propping up is not widely believed.
[00:30:18]  And that doesn't mean it'll be a perfect future or even a more just future.
[00:30:22]  It just means that in the future, people will know what a scumbag Peter was.
[00:30:26]  And that's why he is so scared and hateful of her, right?
[00:30:29]  I think that's it.
[00:30:30]  Yeah.
[00:30:31]  And also that he's going to die and other people will live and sail around.
[00:30:36]  Yep.
[00:30:36]  He's going to die probably sooner than he expects, like most people.
[00:30:41]  And a lot of folks are going to be happy because it'll be good when he dies.

=== Building a Shifting Mythology (04:28) ===

[00:30:45]  Anyway, speaking of death, advertisements are a kind of death.
[00:30:50]  That's what in French, the word for advertisement means the little death.
[00:31:02]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:31:06]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:31:09]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:31:12]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:31:16]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:31:19]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:31:23]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:31:25]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:31:30]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:31:32]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:31:34]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:31:36]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:31:39]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:31:40]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:31:43]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:31:47]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:31:49]  Trust me, babe.
[00:31:50]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:32:00]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:32:05]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:32:10]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:32:16]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:32:25]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:32:30]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:32:33]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:32:36]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:32:38]  That's so funny.
[00:32:40]  Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:32:48]  Say you love me.
[00:32:51]  You know I.
[00:32:53]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:33:00]  What's up, everyone?
[00:33:01]  I'm Ago Modern.
[00:33:02]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:33:10]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:33:13]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:33:16]  I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:33:21]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:33:24]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place to come look for up and coming talent.
[00:33:28]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:33:33]  Yeah.
[00:33:33]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:33:36]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:33:37]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:33:46]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:33:48]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:33:56]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:33:58]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:33:59]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:34:00]  Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:34:08]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[00:34:12]  Hi, Dad.
[00:34:13]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[00:34:20]  This is badass convict.
[00:34:22]  Right.
[00:34:23]  Just finished five years.
[00:34:25]  I'm going to have cookies and milk.
[00:34:27]  Yeah, mom.
[00:34:29]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[00:34:37]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[00:34:45]  The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[00:34:54]  I'm an alcoholic.
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[00:35:00]  Open your free iHeart radio app, search the CDO show, and listen now.
[00:35:10]  And we're back.
[00:35:12]  Yes.

=== Why Stopping AI Is Evil (14:02) ===

[00:35:14]  Talking about my flawless knowledge of French and talking about Peter Thiel's belief that fucking Credit Tunberg is the Antichrist.
[00:35:20]  So let's talk about this from a theological standpoint.
[00:35:24]  Because one thing the book of Daniel is pretty clear about vis-a-vis the Antichrist is that the Antichrist is a political leader of some sort.
[00:35:33]  He is described repeatedly as a prince or a king.
[00:35:36]  Now, I could see being like, well, obviously, that's if we're going with the Bible is true, but not always literally.
[00:35:44]  You know, these are apocryphal stories.
[00:35:45]  Okay, a king could be a stand-in for a president or a senator, sure.
[00:35:49]  But a young lady who sometimes tries to deliver food on a boat, there's no, that's not a, there's no way to like describe her Greta Tunberg as a king or a prince.
[00:36:02]  Yeah.
[00:36:02]  Same with Eliza Yudkowski.
[00:36:03]  Like they're not political leaders.
[00:36:05]  And the Antichrist definitely is.
[00:36:06]  Like, again, Peter's selective embrace of literal readings of the Bible here really biting him in the ass.
[00:36:14]  You're like, it's all very literal, unless I need it to be so figurative that it completely goes in a new direction.
[00:36:20]  Thank you.
[00:36:21]  I also love his fundamental, like, oh, you don't understand Dr. Strangelove, like the movie at all.
[00:36:27]  Because the idea that, like, well, in the 17th or 18th century, the Antichrist would have been Dr. Strangelove, right?
[00:36:31]  I know.
[00:36:32]  Well, no.
[00:36:33]  Such a random rush.
[00:36:34]  Dr. Strangelove.
[00:36:35]  Yeah.
[00:36:36]  Right.
[00:36:37]  For one thing, like in the movie of the same name, he's not a political leader.
[00:36:42]  He's the president's scientific advisor.
[00:36:44]  And he's not responsible for the apocalypse.
[00:36:48]  Right.
[00:36:48]  At least not primarily, right?
[00:36:50]  Now, the same act.
[00:36:51]  He's mainly delivering exposition.
[00:36:53]  Right.
[00:36:54]  Exactly.
[00:36:55]  Yes.
[00:36:55]  And like, it is true.
[00:36:56]  Peter Sellers also plays the president, right?
[00:36:58]  He plays.
[00:36:59]  He plays Dr. Strangelove and the president that Strangelove is advising.
[00:37:03]  But even if you're saying, well, that means they're the same person, that does Peter Sellers as the president being the Antichrist doesn't make sense in that movie.
[00:37:12]  It's just embarrassing to misremember a movie in your big speech.
[00:37:15]  It's so bad.
[00:37:16]  Like you could rewatch it.
[00:37:18]  You're writing a four-part lecture series, man.
[00:37:20]  Also, in the 17th century, the Antichrist would not have been a character from a 1960s movie, but it would have been the Antichrist, just like the, you know, the devil's kid or whatever.
[00:37:32]  Yeah, it would have been a king or something.
[00:37:34]  Like in the Bible, a text people knew better than a movie that wouldn't come out for 300 years.
[00:37:39]  I also think, again, I don't, maybe he hasn't even seen the movie because it sounds like Peter thinks Dr. Strangelove causes the apocalypse in the movie Doctor Strangelove.
[00:37:48]  He's like, well, you know, it's about, it's about an atomic bomb and it's called Doctor Strangelove.
[00:37:53]  So probably Dr. Strangelove made the bomb, obviously.
[00:37:56]  I mean, I didn't have time to watch it, but I deduced it because I'm so smart.
[00:37:59]  That must be what happens.
[00:38:01]  And like, no, for the record, if you haven't seen it, Dr. Strangelove is a mad scientist and a Nazi, but he doesn't, there's a crazed U.S. general who launches the initial nuclear strike.
[00:38:13]  Who's as American as can be.
[00:38:15]  Right.
[00:38:15]  And like the government, like we try to reach out to the USSR in our bunker and are like, these are where their missiles are coming in.
[00:38:21]  You know, you can shoot them out of the sky.
[00:38:23]  Like, please, we don't want to actually have a nuclear war.
[00:38:26]  This is a fuck-up.
[00:38:26]  Yeah.
[00:38:27]  And the USSR is like, oh, well, we actually built a doomsday device that will go off automatically and we can't stop it.
[00:38:33]  Right.
[00:38:34]  Right.
[00:38:35]  And the premise is like, what if an American general lost his mind and there weren't adequate safeguards in place before he could cause mutually assured destruction?
[00:38:44]  And it's like, oh, yeah, I guess, I mean, that's certainly not a problem we're having now.
[00:38:49]  Right, exactly.
[00:38:50]  Certainly no more relevant now than it was back then.
[00:38:53]  But it's like neither the president nor Dr. Strangelove are antichrist figures.
[00:38:59]  No one really is in the movie Doctor Strangelove, actually.
[00:39:02]  No, they're not.
[00:39:05]  But it's particularly weird to say Dr. Strangelove is the Antichrist because he doesn't incite the action.
[00:39:12]  Like, that just isn't accurate.
[00:39:15]  Have you ever seen, because, you know, The Omen has two sequels and they're not that good.
[00:39:20]  Oh, God.
[00:39:21]  The second one has Sam Neal in it, and he plays the adult Damien and he's like taking over the world and he's all charismatic and I think in politics and dating a newscaster lady.
[00:39:31]  Yeah.
[00:39:32]  But the movie like doesn't really know what to have him be doing because it is like, what would the Antichrist believe?
[00:39:39]  Like, what would his whole deal be?
[00:39:41]  You know, like people are kind of like reluctant to state that.
[00:39:46]  Yeah.
[00:39:47]  And so it's like you get to sort of align it with whatever you know people already find threatening at that time, which, you know, hence all the Obama stuff.
[00:39:55]  Right, right, right.
[00:39:56]  Exactly.
[00:39:58]  So the fact that, you know, he's listed Greta Tunberg and Elisa Yudkowski as possible Antichrist.
[00:40:04]  Both of those things are insane.
[00:40:06]  At least Tunberg, she is like popular.
[00:40:08]  She has a lot of like followers and people who care about what she says.
[00:40:11]  Elisa Yudkowski, he's got his little cult, but he's not.
[00:40:16]  You really, you think he's got the juice to even be on the list of potential Antichrists?
[00:40:21]  You're vastly overestimating this man's charisma.
[00:40:24]  Just weirdos charisma.
[00:40:25]  He's not even in the top thousand.
[00:40:27]  No, no.
[00:40:28]  I am a more realistic Antichrist than fucking Eliza Yudkowski.
[00:40:32]  Jeb Bush, way ahead of him, honestly.
[00:40:34]  Yes, Jeb is much closer.
[00:40:38]  So after this, in the second lecture, Peter apparently goes into more detail about his beliefs on the Antichrist per The Guardian.
[00:40:45]  Quote, Teal goes on to identify the legionnaires of the Antichrist as people like Eliza Yudkowski, Nick Bostrom, and Greta Tunberg, who argue for world government to stop science.
[00:40:55]  So that's at least a little more realistic.
[00:40:57]  He's like, well, maybe they're not the Antichrist, but they're at least his legionnaires.
[00:41:00]  Oh, my God.
[00:41:01]  Okay, man.
[00:41:03]  And again, I shouldn't have to say neither Yedkowski nor Tunberg nor Bostrom want to stop all science, right?
[00:41:09]  They're both specific issues.
[00:41:13]  Exactly.
[00:41:13]  They're very specific issues with specific technologies.
[00:41:16]  But Peter can't stand that because, again, they'll get in the way of his profit, right?
[00:41:20]  Like, that's really what this comes down to.
[00:41:22]  It's very banal, but that is the truth of it.
[00:41:26]  Peter goes on to say, the legionaries of the Antichrist, like Elisa Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, and Greta Tunberg, argue for world government to stop science.
[00:41:34]  The Antichrist has somehow become anti-science.
[00:41:37]  And no, they just don't.
[00:41:38]  When the Washington Post reached out to Yedkowski for a statement, he replied, My understanding is that authorities from multiple Christian denominations have stated that Thiel's views, identifying the Antichrist with proposals to regulate the AI industry, are not deemed by them to be compatible with conventional Christian belief.
[00:41:55]  And it's one of his few statements that I'm like, yeah, that's a good response.
[00:41:58]  Yeah.
[00:41:59]  I mean, that's the nice thing about standing next to someone who's completely off their cracker.
[00:42:04]  You get to seem a little bit more normal.
[00:42:06]  Very, seem much more reasonable.
[00:42:08]  Now, I will say Greta's response was much better because her spokespeople, whoever the post reached out to on her team, didn't comment, which is the best response to Peter Thiel declaring you the Antichrist or one of his legionaries.
[00:42:22]  It's just don't.
[00:42:24]  What are you going to say?
[00:42:25]  You really shouldn't have to issue a statement saying you're not the Antichrist whenever someone accuses you of it, or else, you know, no one would ever get anything done in this country.
[00:42:33]  I guess I feel like if I was in that boat, I would be like, yes, Peter, I am the Antichrist and I'm coming for your soul, buddy.
[00:42:41]  Like, I talked with the devil and we have a plan for you.
[00:42:46]  You don't even know how we're how we're ensnaring you.
[00:42:49]  We got you, baby.
[00:42:50]  Yeah.
[00:42:50]  We got you.
[00:42:51]  Now, at the same time, in his second lecture, Peter talks about his Luddite Antichrist candidates.
[00:42:58]  Like, right while he's doing that, he floats another name as a potential Antichrist briefly before kind of explaining why he doesn't think this guy's the Antichrist.
[00:43:06]  And that name is Mark Andreessen.
[00:43:08]  Now, Mark Andreessen is the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz.
[00:43:12]  He is a fellow big tech AI venture capitalist ghoul.
[00:43:15]  And actually, I'd be like, yeah, Mark Andreessen, not a bad Antichrist candidate.
[00:43:20]  He is evil.
[00:43:21]  But Peter hates him, not because he's a monster trying to destroy all art and human culture and replace it with AI slop, which is literally what Mark Andreessen wants, right?
[00:43:31]  That's his stated goal.
[00:43:34]  Mark is the author of something called the Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which argues that AI will solve all problems, including like climate change.
[00:43:42]  All of our serious life-threatening issues will be solved by a super intelligent AI.
[00:43:46]  Therefore, anyone who tries to slow or stop AI development is evil and needs to be destroyed, killed if necessary, is the, is what you're, it is insinuated heavily, not directly stated, but like anything you can do to stop the people who are anti-AI is justified because they're trying to kill God, you know?
[00:44:05]  That's Mark Andreessen.
[00:44:07]  Great.
[00:44:07]  And all the really well-balanced people with a lot of power in this world is what I'm learning more and more.
[00:44:13]  Sane billionaires, all of them, all of them sane.
[00:44:16]  And it's funny to me that as nuts as he is about this, Peter recognizes how crazy Mark is because his issue with Mark Andreessen is that he's putting out gobbledygook AI propaganda.
[00:44:27]  Fair enough.
[00:44:28]  And this is, I mean, he is, because, yeah, I think his issue is Yudkowski's anti-AI stuff is that it will inevitably become a god that's evil.
[00:44:37]  And Andreessen is just like the opposite, where he's like, it will inevitably become a god, but good.
[00:44:42]  Right.
[00:44:43]  And so I guess Peter rejects both of them.
[00:44:46]  But he says this when he brings up Mark in the context of the Antichrist.
[00:44:50]  It's not Andreessen, by the way.
[00:44:51]  I think Andreessen is not the Antichrist because, you know, the Antichrist is popular.
[00:44:56]  Oh, that's fair.
[00:44:57]  That's all funny shit.
[00:44:58]  But I thought I'd say his name and the word Antichrist in the same sentence several times.
[00:45:03]  Several times.
[00:45:04]  I didn't need to bring it up.
[00:45:05]  Right.
[00:45:06]  Next, he goes on to Bill Gates, who he notes, you know, it's reasonable to put him on the list, but he thinks Gates is ultimately unlikely to be the Antichrist, even though he describes him as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type character whose positive public face is just a mask.
[00:45:21]  Quoth Peter, I saw the Mr. Hyde version about a year ago where it was just a non-stop Tourette's yelling swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on.
[00:45:30]  And I don't have trouble believing that Bill Gates is a dick.
[00:45:33]  Yeah.
[00:45:34]  I'll give you that, Peter.
[00:45:35]  I'll give you that.
[00:45:36]  I'll give you that.
[00:45:36]  I don't have trouble believing he's a Jekyll and Hyde.
[00:45:38]  Clearly, his wife left after the Epstein stuff for a good reason, you know?
[00:45:44]  Now, as I noted, reporters with The Guardian, namely Joanna Boyan, Derek Kerr, and Nick Robbins Early, actually got trans like all seven hours of Peter's Antichrist lectures and listened to them, which I have not been able to do yet.
[00:45:59]  Maybe one day.
[00:46:01]  And on the subject of Bill Gates in their article, they write something very funny.
[00:46:06]  Ultimately, Thiel concedes Gates cannot be the Antichrist, bringing up the topic more than once.
[00:46:12]  He's not a, and here's, that's so funny.
[00:46:14]  He really is stuck on that.
[00:46:16]  He's not a political leader.
[00:46:17]  He's not broadly popular.
[00:46:18]  And again, perhaps to Gates' credit, he's still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins, who believe that science and atheism are compatible.
[00:46:27]  What?
[00:46:28]  And that's fundamentally, he believes, well, because being anti-science is what makes you the antichrist.
[00:46:33]  So that must mean that you can't be pro-science and not Christian.
[00:46:36]  Okay.
[00:46:37]  It's actually possible.
[00:46:38]  Walk it up.
[00:46:39]  This is where we can walk it off, Peter.
[00:46:41]  This is disordered thinking.
[00:46:42]  This is like, there's something actually wrong here.
[00:46:45]  This is like if he weren't a billionaire, his family would be like, hey, buddy, do you want to try a new medication for you, bud?
[00:46:54]  Yeah.
[00:46:54]  You want to go feed some squirrels?
[00:46:56]  Yeah.
[00:46:57]  Something to take your mind off the crazy.
[00:47:00]  Why don't we put this manifesto in the drawer?
[00:47:04]  Yeah, we'll come back to this tomorrow, Peter.
[00:47:06]  Maybe we'll keep working on this.
[00:47:08]  Yeah.
[00:47:09]  Why don't we have some hot soup?
[00:47:11]  Yeah, some soup, maybe a cup of coffee, you know, maybe some tea.
[00:47:15]  Caffeine's probably bad for you right now.
[00:47:17]  Let's get off this Antichrist thing for a while.
[00:47:20]  You've been screaming about Bill Gates for 45 minutes.
[00:47:24]  Yeah, but I guess like part of the great American dream of becoming a billionaire is that no one can tell you how crazy you sound.
[00:47:30]  You know?
[00:47:31]  That's the whole, and that, yeah, that's part of why they're angry at the people they're angry at.
[00:47:36]  Yeah.
[00:47:36]  They're doing a bit more research around this area makes it very clear why Peter Thiel hates Bill Gates so much, aside from the fact that Gates seems to annoy a lot of people in general by being a dick.
[00:47:45]  You know, Microsoft Word had some, you know, some tricky areas, let's say.
[00:47:50]  Sure, yeah.
[00:47:52]  But it can't just be that because Thiel is friends with Elon Musk.
[00:47:55]  So the fact that Bill Gates is just an asshole can't explain it, right?
[00:47:58]  Yeah.
[00:47:58]  So, and I think I figured out what it is, which is that Bill Gates has made a big public show of wanting to give away and convince other billionaires to give away most of their fortunes before they die, right?
[00:48:08]  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, without which I would not have probably gotten to hear Morning Edition for many years.
[00:48:15]  There you go.
[00:48:15]  Yeah.
[00:48:16]  My ex-wife wouldn't have had a laptop in elementary school, you know?
[00:48:22]  So I think that's really his issue with Gates.
[00:48:27]  And I think that in part because of what I found in a Washington Post article, because the Post also got access to the tapes and an article by Natasha Tiki, Elizabeth Dwashkin, and Garrett DeVink, they wrote this.
[00:48:40]  The investor, Thiel, said he recently encouraged Musk to renege on his 2012 commitment to the giving pledge movement co-founded by Gates, which asks wealthy people to commit the majority of their fortune to charitable causes, according to the recordings.
[00:48:51]  And this is Thiel here.
[00:48:52]  200 billion, if you're not going to be careful, is going to left-wing nonprofits that are going to be chosen by Bill Gates.
[00:48:57]  Thiel said he warned Musk, according to the recording, painting the philanthropist as among the malevolent forces besetting technologists.
[00:49:05]  That's his hatred of Gates.
[00:49:07]  Gates wants billionaires to give away their money to these evil left-wing causes.
[00:49:11]  And he convinces Musk to stop.
[00:49:12]  He funded too many modern dance troops, therefore Antichrist.

=== Ross's Over-the-Top Beliefs (13:59) ===

[00:49:17]  It's like you need to have higher standards for your Antichrist behavior, I gotta say.
[00:49:22]  Yeah.
[00:49:23]  And it does, you know, Thiel's positive on Musk now, I think, because Musk is useful.
[00:49:28]  He also in this lecture series has nice things to say about JD Vance, whose political career he paid to get off the ground.
[00:49:33]  Yeah.
[00:49:34]  Per Maggie Dupree, writing for Futurism, Thiel, quote, described himself as very pro-vice president JD Vance, to whom Thiel has given millions in campaign funds.
[00:49:43]  He did express that he's concerned.
[00:49:45]  Yeah.
[00:49:46]  He did express that he's concerned the VP, who's Catholic, might give too much credence to the Pope.
[00:49:52]  The place that I would worry about is that he's too close to the Pope, said Teal, per The Guardian.
[00:49:56]  And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the Pope.
[00:49:59]  I hope there are a lot more.
[00:50:01]  And that's like, God.
[00:50:02]  My issue with JD Vance is that he might be a papist.
[00:50:06]  Okay.
[00:50:06]  Great.
[00:50:07]  Well, we've gone back to Puritanism in this country.
[00:50:10]  We have to worry about papistry now on top of everything else.
[00:50:13]  It's also like, I mean, look, I don't believe in Antichrist stuff.
[00:50:20]  I never have.
[00:50:21]  I'm not a devil believer, but you know, which is part of my interest in the satanic panic, which seems like extra wild when you're not afraid of Satan yourself.
[00:50:31]  I grew up afraid of a lot of things.
[00:50:33]  I was afraid of the Bermuda Triangle, but I wasn't afraid of Satan because that just didn't seem relevant to my life.
[00:50:40]  Which is not a real thing.
[00:50:41]  But if I were to pick an Antichrist today, it would obviously be Trump.
[00:50:46]  Like, he's really behaving very antichristy.
[00:50:49]  And it's just so funny to have him leading a party that has become so much about, you know, this kind of death cult and Armageddonism.
[00:50:59]  And they're like, but not you, sir.
[00:51:01]  And it's like, but just look at it.
[00:51:03]  Not the obvious guy.
[00:51:05]  Yeah.
[00:51:05]  Like, and it's again, like, even the things you name in this are clearly more relevant to Trump than Greta Dunberg or whatever.
[00:51:13]  I mean, now, outside of this Frankly Unhinged lecture series, back in June, Peter gave an interview to Ross Duthat, Dalthat, whatever his name is fucking last name at the New York Times.
[00:51:24]  And Ross is one of the worst writers alive.
[00:51:28]  He used to be the senior editor of The Atlantic, and I think he might be the most up-his-own-ass conservative writer in the country.
[00:51:34]  He was Bill Crystal's replacement and massive downgrade from Bill Crystal, even.
[00:51:40]  He's both entirely uncritical of big tech and pro everyone should be religious.
[00:51:45]  And so he and Peter Thiel are peas in a pod.
[00:51:48]  And during that interview, Ross asks what Peter thinks about the techno optimist manifesto that Mark Andreessen self-published in 2023.
[00:51:57]  And again, that's basically saying we have to accelerate at all costs the growth of AI because it will solve all of our problems.
[00:52:03]  So slowing things down is AI down is the same as committing mass murder.
[00:52:07]  Oh my God.
[00:52:09]  Yeah.
[00:52:09]  And think of all those studio Ghibli-esque portraits of your husband that will never be drawn.
[00:52:15]  Exactly, exactly.
[00:52:17]  It's a fate worse than death for all of us.
[00:52:19]  And the fact that the document is generally considered to be a foundational text for effective accelerationism.
[00:52:25]  You know, that's kind of the thought, the philosophical name for what Andreessen is preaching.
[00:52:30]  And that's close to what Peter Thiel advocates because he's literally arguing that Greta Tunberg might be the Antichrist or is at least furthering the Antichrist agenda because she's skeptical about AI and fossil fuels and shit.
[00:52:41]  Then I'm the Antichrist too.
[00:52:43]  Congratulations to me.
[00:52:46]  Thiel definitely thinks the same way, but I think he's incapable.
[00:52:50]  I think why he has to reject Andreessen is that he can't speak positively about a peer with the same ideas if they had, if they put those ideas down first.
[00:53:00]  And so he says this about the essay.
[00:53:02]  It represents a kind of corporate utopianism.
[00:53:04]  In the 1990s, there was a broad cultural optimism that technology would solve everything.
[00:53:09]  But by 2025, that optimism has shrunk.
[00:53:11]  Today's visions are narrower, less inclusive, and less confident.
[00:53:14]  The grand utopian projects have given away to incremental gains, overshadowed by fears of collapse.
[00:53:19]  Oh.
[00:53:20]  And that's accurate, but like the problem, again, he's not capable of like looking at what he's literally saying.
[00:53:28]  The visions are narrower.
[00:53:30]  The optimism has shrunk.
[00:53:32]  That doesn't mean that like we're not making technological progress, but it does mean that like there's a problem in how people are visualizing progress.
[00:53:43]  Right.
[00:53:43]  Yes.
[00:53:44]  Yeah.
[00:53:45]  And it's like, perhaps people are more pessimistic and perhaps even more reasonable because of how horrible everything's been for the last 30 years.
[00:53:54]  Exactly.
[00:53:55]  I realize that in the 90s, it was a utopian time when Starbucks had like big upholstered chairs in them and you could sit there for a long time and you could bother Norris Jones CDs.
[00:54:04]  But that's over, man.
[00:54:06]  Yeah.
[00:54:06]  Right.
[00:54:07]  And the article is just a great example.
[00:54:09]  There's so much.
[00:54:10]  Ross just lets Peter say nonsense without ever questioning him.
[00:54:14]  It's like, it's one of the worst interviews I've ever read.
[00:54:16]  It's like he's accidentally a great interviewer by being a terrible interviewer because he just lets him say stupid stuff.
[00:54:22]  You do, yeah, you do get more out.
[00:54:24]  There's no, like, Peter drops the line again.
[00:54:26]  He makes the claim that, like, after 1945, churches stopped preaching end times sermons.
[00:54:31]  And, like, question, Peter.
[00:54:33]  No, they didn't.
[00:54:33]  Really?
[00:54:34]  Where did all those left behind movies come from?
[00:54:37]  The left behind books, massively popular, Peter.
[00:54:40]  Like, and had nothing to do with technology, by the way.
[00:54:43]  That's not how the anti-like, I mean, surveillance tech, I guess, but the Antichrist doesn't rise to power on the back of fears about fucking AI or whatever.
[00:54:52]  Anyway, I don't know how Peter can think this true.
[00:54:55]  I don't know how Ross can't question any of this other than Ross is just like the fucking bootlickeriest bootlicker who ever looked at goddamn boots.
[00:55:02]  He's like, I hear you got some good blood for me later on.
[00:55:05]  Right.
[00:55:06]  One of the weirdest things to me here is that like Ross is theoretically a Christian.
[00:55:11]  He's a big C.S. Lewis fan.
[00:55:13]  And Peter is theoretically a Christian.
[00:55:16]  But then in this interview, Peter describes the choice presented by the Bible in the book of Revelations as Antichrist or Armageddon.
[00:55:26]  And that this is unacceptable.
[00:55:27]  And thus, quote, we must find a third path, right?
[00:55:30]  It's me, which is like, no, it doesn't.
[00:55:34]  That's not.
[00:55:34]  Like, for one thing, the Bible doesn't present a choice.
[00:55:38]  It just says there's an Antichrist and that leads to the second coming and an Armageddon.
[00:55:44]  And everything's going to get all weird.
[00:55:45]  And then people are going to get up out of their graves.
[00:55:47]  It's going to be wacky, you guys.
[00:55:50]  Yeah.
[00:55:50]  Yeah.
[00:55:51]  It's not like you have an option to change that if you're going to believe it.
[00:55:54]  You have to just like, you know, God knows no one has ever been selective about their beliefs as a Christian.
[00:56:00]  Yeah.
[00:56:01]  It's this both that like Ross doesn't question Peter on this.
[00:56:05]  Yeah.
[00:56:05]  And also this is so heretical.
[00:56:09]  Like I'm not a, right?
[00:56:10]  I don't care personally, but like you should.
[00:56:14]  But don't you think that it's like weirdly become like a tenet of modern sort of American, I don't know, like political Protestantism, I guess, that like we allow people a much freer hand in terms of doing their own interpretations than absolutely.
[00:56:33]  Yeah, it seems like things have gotten a little bit over the top.
[00:56:37]  I mean, and that's, that is definitely true that like we like that's that's a major factor in like the birth of Protestantism, right?
[00:56:44]  Is this idea, this, this, this ongoing thing that like, well, anyone can be a priest or a pastor.
[00:56:50]  Anyone can speak the word, right?
[00:56:51]  And like, why?
[00:56:52]  Anyone can speak in tongues at a certain point if they feel like it.
[00:56:56]  Anyone can interpret the Bible, sure.
[00:56:59]  But even so, I, it is kind of very fundamentally heretical to be like, the Bible says there's, we have to choose between, you know, the Antichrist, the apocalypse.
[00:57:09]  But I think there's a third way because Peter is literally saying, I think we can avoid the biblical apocalypse by getting our politics right.
[00:57:18]  Actually, we're kind of getting into Joseph Smith's territory, right?
[00:57:21]  Where you're like, I believe in the Bible, but also I'm adding stuff.
[00:57:26]  Yeah, I think we can rewrite the ending of the Bible.
[00:57:30]  And also, I need to have sex with your wife.
[00:57:35]  Yeah.
[00:57:35]  Yeah.
[00:57:37]  It's, it's weird, right?
[00:57:39]  And especially because Peter describes himself as a little orthodox Christian, which, like, this is not anywhere close to orthodoxy, right?
[00:57:46]  The idea that you're arguing God might let us avoid having an Antichrist and an Armageddon and still live forever.
[00:57:52]  That's not Christian theology.
[00:57:54]  That's Peter theology.
[00:57:57]  You're right.
[00:57:57]  That's like getting into, you're starting to found your own religion at that point, which he certainly has resources to do.
[00:58:04]  That's, I would argue, what Acts 17 is doing is they are not spreading Christianity to Silicon Valley elites.
[00:58:10]  They are creating a new, like a, like a Mormonism for rich people.
[00:58:16]  They're hybridizing Christianity with like silicon belly billionaire culture.
[00:58:20]  Exactly.
[00:58:20]  Oh, no.
[00:58:21]  No, that's the Antichrist.
[00:58:23]  The cursed child of two evil parents.
[00:58:26]  Anteest of Christ.
[00:58:31]  And it is kind of weird to me.
[00:58:33]  Part of what's strange is that like he wants to avoid the biblical apocalypse.
[00:58:38]  And I think what that means is that Peter Thiel is so clearly scared of death that he can't even embrace everlasting life.
[00:58:46]  Like he would prefer, he vastly would prefer some scientist keeps his body alive than like Jesus ensures him eternal life and has.
[00:58:56]  He's like, I believe in you, God, but stay the fuck away.
[00:58:59]  Yeah.
[00:59:00]  That's fascinating.
[00:59:01]  That's the most reasonable thing that I've, you know, theorized him thinking this whole time in a way.
[00:59:07]  Yeah.
[00:59:07]  Yeah.
[00:59:07]  And also it's like, it's this thing of like, you know, because I do feel like if you look at sort of the sum of human experience, it's like, organized religion facilitates a lot of horror and a lot of evil.
[00:59:22]  And it also facilitates a lot of structure and a lot of just a lot of stability in people's lives.
[00:59:27]  And I think one of the positive elements of it is the feeling of allowing yourself to not be in control and sort of believing in something not, you know, not even necessarily a higher power, like it's a 12 steps kind of a thing.
[00:59:41]  Although that certainly is helpful for a lot of people too, because the sort of like the ability to believe in something beyond yourself and to sort of maybe use religion to get out of the human urge towards solipsism.
[00:59:56]  Yeah.
[00:59:57]  Appeals like this is like, no, I'm actually using religion to become more self-centered than ever.
[01:00:03]  Isn't that great?
[01:00:04]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:05]  And it's, it's just like the idea that, yeah, you're, you're so scared of death that you can't even, even the idea of heaven.
[01:00:13]  You can't even.
[01:00:14]  Like you have to be avoidable.
[01:00:15]  You have to find a fix for that.
[01:00:17]  Yeah.
[01:00:17]  Right.
[01:00:18]  You'd rather be like a death becomes her person just walking around getting hairline fractures and gluing himself back together.
[01:00:26]  And again, Ross, who is a useless thinker and a useless writer and a waste of column inches for the New York Times, can't even question that.
[01:00:35]  There's only one really valuable thing about the article that he writes interviewing Teal, which is that it includes a fascinating segment where Peter talks about his early attempts to secure eternal life for himself.
[01:00:46]  And I'm just going to read, I'm going to read a long quote from the interview here.
[01:00:49]  Please do.
[01:00:50]  Peter, I remember 1999 or 2000 when we were running PayPal.
[01:00:54]  One of my co-founders, Luke Nocek, he was into Alcor and cryonics and that people should freeze themselves.
[01:01:00]  And we had one day where we took the whole company to a freezing party.
[01:01:03]  You know what Tupperware party?
[01:01:04]  People sell Tupperware policies.
[01:01:06]  At a freezing party, they sell, and Ross butts in here, was it just your heads?
[01:01:10]  What was going to be frozen?
[01:01:12]  Teal, you could get a full body or just a head.
[01:01:14]  Ross, the just a head option was cheaper.
[01:01:16]  Teal, it was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn't quite work.
[01:01:20]  And so the freezing policies couldn't be printed out.
[01:01:25]  Okay.
[01:01:26]  I missed dot matrix printers.
[01:01:29]  I think a critical and thoughtful interviewer might have said something like, hey, it kind of seems like a lot of companies in the life extension space, like the guys who were selling you youthful blood to inject into your body, are like questionable and sketchy and maybe con men.
[01:01:44]  Has repeatedly encountering stuff that doesn't work or is sketchy, like Alcor not being able to make a printer work, has any of that made you reevaluate whether or not you're just falling for a series of cons, like the old pharaohs of Egypt taking fucking strychnine or whatever to make themselves live forever?
[01:02:00]  Or like, are you still good?
[01:02:01]  You still, you still following all that?
[01:02:03]  Like, Ross doesn't ask this at all.
[01:02:07]  No.
[01:02:07]  Instead, when Peter talks about how this cryanics company couldn't even get a printer to work, Ross nonsensically adds, technological stagnation once again, right?
[01:02:17]  No.
[01:02:18]  Which is like, no, that's not what that's an example of at all.
[01:02:21]  Yeah.
[01:02:21]  Period.
[01:02:22]  But Peter responds, but in re he kind of ignores Ross.
[01:02:25]  But in retrospect, it's also a symptom of the decline because in 1999, this was not a mainstream view, but there was still a fringe boomer view where they still believed that they could live forever.
[01:02:34]  And that was the last generation.
[01:02:35]  So I'm always anti-boomer.
[01:02:36]  But maybe there's something we've lost even with this fringe boomer narcissism, where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure all their diseases.
[01:02:44]  No one who's a millennial believes that anymore.
[01:02:47]  I don't even know what that aside was about.
[01:02:49]  What is that even about?
[01:02:50]  So you're anti-boomer because they thought they could live forever, but you can.
[01:02:55]  Yeah.
[01:02:55]  Or just like, you know, say more about what did it feel like to think about getting your head sawn off by these people.
[01:03:02]  How much did just the head cost versus the body?
[01:03:05]  Say more about that.
[01:03:07]  Exactly.
[01:03:08]  Would they give you someone else's limbs or put you on a big robot body like RoboCop?
[01:03:13]  Right.
[01:03:14]  Yeah.

=== Anti-Boomer Narcissism Explained (04:13) ===

[01:03:16]  So we're almost done here.
[01:03:18]  I want to end by talking a little bit more about Renee Girard and Schmidt and some of Thiel's philosophical beliefs.
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[01:05:47]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:05:50]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[01:05:55]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[01:05:58]  I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place they come.
[01:06:00]  Look for up and coming talent.
[01:06:02]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[01:06:07]  Yeah.
[01:06:07]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[01:06:10]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[01:06:11]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:06:20]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:06:22]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[01:06:29]  Yeah, it would not be right.
[01:06:32]  It wouldn't be that.
[01:06:33]  There's a lot of luck.
[01:06:34]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:06:42]  I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.
[01:06:45]  Hi, Dad.
[01:06:47]  And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk.
[01:06:54]  There's this badass convict.
[01:06:56]  Right.
[01:06:57]  Just finished five years.
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[01:07:03]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
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[01:07:28]  I'm an alcoholic.

=== Embracing Authoritarian Scapegoating (15:04) ===

[01:07:30]  And without this program, I'm a guy.
[01:07:34]  Open your free iHeartRadio app, search the Ceno Show, and listen now.
[01:07:45]  All right, so we're back.
[01:07:47]  And I talked up at the start about Carl Schmidt, who's the Nazi philosopher who discussed how to destroy democracies in a way that Peter Thiel followed, and Rene Girard, who is this, he's this big belief in sort of like this mimetic theory of like, uh, like mimetic rivalry, right?
[01:08:05]  Where like people, once they cover their basic needs, still want things.
[01:08:09]  And so they kind of pick, well, what is this other guy who seems to be doing better than me have?
[01:08:14]  And they that like that's kind of mimetic rivalry, uh, but it doesn't make people happy.
[01:08:19]  So they need scapegoats, you know?
[01:08:21]  And Girard's attitude was like, Christianity brought an, it should have brought an end to that.
[01:08:26]  It's certainly evidence that we need to bring an end to that.
[01:08:29]  It's bad to scapegoat groups of people.
[01:08:32]  And Christ was kind of like, that's why he was killed, right?
[01:08:35]  He was made into a scapegoat.
[01:08:37]  And that's like the final evidence that it's wrong to do that.
[01:08:41]  You know, that's Girard's attitude.
[01:08:43]  Peter claims to be a major follower of Girard's, and he's gone to a bunch of gatherings.
[01:08:48]  And in fact, in 2004, he and one of his mentors organized a week-long seminar on Rene Girard at Stanford.
[01:08:56]  And they invited Girard, who was alive at the time, and they also invited a scholar of Carl Schmidt, who was also like a peer of Rene Girard named Wolfgang Palaver, who is Palaver is one of Peter Thiel's favorite intellectuals.
[01:09:09]  That is a hell of a name.
[01:09:11]  It's quite a name.
[01:09:12]  And Thiel is very like is a huge, big fan of this guy and a major like cites him quite frequently and has invited him to a number of these different events, right?
[01:09:22]  This 2004 seminar on Girard is right after Peter Thiel got rich after he like sold PayPal.
[01:09:28]  So he he funds this thing and the theme of the conference is politics and the apocalypse.
[01:09:33]  And the title, like that theme was suggested by Wolfgang Palaver while they were planning the event.
[01:09:40]  So this is obviously, it's a couple of years after 9-11.
[01:09:43]  And people who are, you know, what you'd call mimetic theorists, these folks who like buy into a lot of Girard's beliefs about mimetic rivalry are trying to figure out like, did the, was 9-11 like an example of like planetary memetic rivalry?
[01:09:58]  Like, was it, did it come out of anger from one part of the world at like all of the things that the West has that they don't have, which is very much kind of in line with like a lot of what Bush was saying, you know, not exactly, but that you can see some people, they're jealous of our freedoms, right?
[01:10:13]  So, kind of one of the questions that these Girard fans, these mimetic, you know, theoreticians are talking about is like, is that kind of X, does that explain what was going on there?
[01:10:26]  Or is there something else for us to take out of this?
[01:10:30]  And Thiel's attitude was that the primary thing that 9-11 showed us is that the West can't protect itself.
[01:10:37]  He wrote a paper right before this event in which he stated, the brute facts of September 11th demand a re-examination of the foundations of modern politics.
[01:10:45]  Today, mere self-preservation forces all of us to look at the world anew, to think strange new thoughts, and thereby to awaken from that long and profitable period of intellectual slumber and amnesia that is so misleadingly called the Enlightenment.
[01:10:57]  And his big attitude here is that, like, Osama bin Laden is thinking rationally in a modern political sense, but the West is not, right?
[01:11:07]  And we haven't realized the actual nature of the fight.
[01:11:10]  And if Carl Schmidt were in charge of things, our response to 9-11, the just response, would be to call for a crusade against Islam, right?
[01:11:19]  Of course.
[01:11:19]  Like, that's the rational response.
[01:11:21]  Yeah, it's very rational to try and eradicate a religion, I find generally.
[01:11:26]  I mean, yeah, and that is like literally like Thiel's argument is that like, this is where this is like the fundamental irrationality that the West indulged in is not seeing it as a holy war, is not seeing it as a fundamental clash of civilizations.
[01:11:39]  We didn't do that enough, which like, I mean, we did the people you would have supported then, George W. Bush.
[01:11:46]  Like, that is how they framed it, and it failed.
[01:11:49]  That's very much how Alan Jackson was describing the situation.
[01:11:53]  Again, he's like, really recommending antichrist-y behavior.
[01:11:57]  We must say, I also realize I keep saying it like anti-pasto, but you know, what if it was delicious?
[01:12:04]  Yeah, what if the antichrist tasted better?
[01:12:06]  Yeah, what if there were some olives, but was less filling at the same time-just a nice cold snack on a summer's day, right?
[01:12:14]  You know, when you've got pasta coming later, yeah, like a Montucky cold snack.
[01:12:18]  Yes, exactly.
[01:12:20]  Um, so Wolfgang, like, Peter is a huge fan of him, specifically because of how Wolfgang interpreted a lot of Carl Schmidt's writing and like some essays that he wrote on like what Carl Schmidt meant and kind of his, like, how his concept of the political functioned.
[01:12:38]  Um, and that's what he bases a lot of his, like, well, we're doing the wrong things after 9-11 on, is his ideas of like how Schmidt would have handled things instead.
[01:12:45]  And I want to quote from an article in Wired kind of summarizing this journey.
[01:12:51]  Um, it would quickly become apparent that Thiel had spent some time considering the paper Palaver presented the day the two men met in 1998.
[01:12:58]  The strange new thoughts Thiel wanted his audience to entertain were, it turned out, largely those of Carl Schmidt.
[01:13:04]  But where Palaver had been repulsed, Thiel extolled Schmidt's robust conception of the political in which humans are forced to choose between friends and enemies, and everything else is delusion.
[01:13:13]  The high point of politics, Palaver quotes Schmidt as saying, are the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy.
[01:13:21]  In Thiel's mind, Osama bin Laden was capable of this kind of politics.
[01:13:24]  The West, with its fetish for individual rights and procedures, was not.
[01:13:28]  So Palaver is quoting Schmidt as being like, this guy believed that the high point in politics was the defining of an enemy, right?
[01:13:36]  And getting a group of people, getting a community to recognize an enemy.
[01:13:40]  And that's a lot of, I mean, that's where Schmidt kind of goes in with Girard is they both had this concept of like scapegoating as being important.
[01:13:47]  But Schmidt is like, this is how you gain power.
[01:13:50]  This is actually how you destroy democracy is by finding an enemy, defining them as not part of the community and excising them.
[01:13:58]  And then you continually push that barrier.
[01:14:00]  And if you don't do that, you're a moron.
[01:14:03]  Right.
[01:14:03]  Yeah.
[01:14:03]  And Palaver is saying that's what Schmidt believed because he was bad, right?
[01:14:08]  And that's like a like that's an awful thing to believe, but like this is what Schmidt was advocating.
[01:14:15]  And Thiel is like, no, that's awesome.
[01:14:18]  And Palaver, like their relationship over the last 20 years has been Palaver gradually realizing Peter Thiel likes him because he describes accurately what a monster believed.
[01:14:28]  And Peter Thiel is the same kind of monster.
[01:14:32]  Yeah.
[01:14:32]  What a fun day at Stanford.
[01:14:35]  It's awesome.
[01:14:36]  To continue from that wired article, Schmidt, Thiel conjectured, would have responded to 9-11 by calling for a holy crusade against Islam, but the West was instead slipping beyond politics altogether.
[01:14:46]  Thiel seemed to fear towards the creation of a bland, world-embracing economic and technical organization.
[01:14:52]  This was Schmidt's nightmare scenario.
[01:14:54]  In such a world, Thiel said, a representation of reality might appear to replace reality.
[01:14:59]  Instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games.
[01:15:02]  Instead of heroic feats, there could be thrilling amusement park rides.
[01:15:05]  Instead of serious thought, there could be intrigues of all sort, as in a soap opera.
[01:15:08]  But that counterfeit reality, Thiel argued, would be just the brief harmony that prefigures the final catastrophe of the apocalypse, the harmony in Schmidt's telling of the Antichrist.
[01:15:18]  Thiel's discussion of Schmidt didn't mention the Hitler or the Nazis once.
[01:15:23]  Irrelevant.
[01:15:24]  Who cares?
[01:15:24]  Great.
[01:15:25]  Yeah.
[01:15:25]  Why does it matter that this guy was a Nazi and arguing for Nazis?
[01:15:28]  And what matters is that we need to take his idea about picking an enemy.
[01:15:32]  And it's actually a really bad thing if like people are playing video games instead of fighting in real wars.
[01:15:38]  That like that is the path to the Antichrist.
[01:15:41]  Like we're replacing the real heroism with fictional hero.
[01:15:46]  It's a very fascist idea.
[01:15:47]  It's fundamentally a very fascist idea.
[01:15:49]  So basically he's like, yeah, like if we don't become fascists, we're going to, we have to become fascist to protect ourselves from the Antichrist, sweetie.
[01:15:59]  Yeah.
[01:16:00]  And kind of the conclusion Thiel draws from Palaver's writing about Schmidt is that, because Schmidt's fundamentally suggested, like we have to have these dramatic solutions to the problem of like to deal with the enemy.
[01:16:14]  Like final solution.
[01:16:17]  He's a Nazi, right?
[01:16:19]  Thiel pulls back from that, but his solution is you have to fortify the modern West.
[01:16:26]  And you can't do that through democracy, right?
[01:16:29]  So you have to, you have to hide.
[01:16:31]  You have to trick people into it in order to get around democratic institutions because those aren't going to like, you can't actually work through them.
[01:16:40]  So I'm going to quote from Thiel directly.
[01:16:42]  Instead of the United Nations filled with interminable and inconclusive parliamentary debates that resemble Shakespearean tales told by idiots, we should consider the secret coordination of the world's intelligence services as the decisive path to a truely global Pax Americana.
[01:16:56]  In other words, what we need to do is develop...
[01:16:59]  Yeah.
[01:17:00]  No, no, no, no.
[01:17:01]  Just a one-world World surveillance super system controlled by Peter Thiel.
[01:17:04]  Not a one-world government.
[01:17:06]  No, no.
[01:17:07]  We need, we do need, Thiel says, a political framework that operates outside the checks and balances of representative democracy, but that's not a one-world government, right?
[01:17:16]  Right.
[01:17:16]  It's just a surveillance state that I'm in charge of, you know.
[01:17:19]  So basically, he's saying it would be terrible if somebody did the things that I want to do myself.
[01:17:23]  It has to be me.
[01:17:25]  Right.
[01:17:25]  Exactly.
[01:17:28]  God.
[01:17:30]  Yeah, it's, it's awesome.
[01:17:32]  You know, and it there's that wired article does a really good job of talking about Palaver's kind of dawning horror as he realizes that like he's been reading all these old papers of mine about Schmidt, but interpreting them as like, this guy's awesome and I want to do all the things he's suggesting.
[01:17:50]  Like when Oliver Steve realized all these guys were getting into finance because they loved his movie that they never saw the last quarter of, apparently.
[01:17:59]  And it's been like Girardians in general, like people who are like our followers of Rene Girard and his intellectual tradition have like this has been kind of a growing horror for a lot of them.
[01:18:12]  And I think that probably should have started earlier because like it has often been said that Rene Girard was kind of the inventor of the like button on Facebook for good reason because Peter Thiel has justified him betting on Facebook by saying, quote, I bet on mimesis, right?
[01:18:29]  Like on mimetic, this idea that like mimetic rivalry is the underpinning of Facebook, right?
[01:18:35]  It's the underpinning of social media.
[01:18:38]  I'm going to both people being jealous and wanting to imitate the lives of other people they see on right.
[01:18:45]  And so people have been saying since the early 2000s that like Girard is kind of Girardian philosophy is kind of baked into a lot of the most toxic stuff about social media.
[01:18:55]  But what really fucked a lot of these people up is kind of more recently because JD, when they saw JD Vance during the 2024 election, start lying about Haitians and like spreading, knowingly spreading like lies about like Haitians eating dogs and stuff, because this is classic scapegoating, right?
[01:19:13]  Yeah.
[01:19:14]  And this is, again, Girard was saying it's bad to do that.
[01:19:18]  Vance, who calls himself a Girardian, is clearly just saying like, oh, Gerard kind of explained how scapegoating works and I like that, right?
[01:19:26]  It feels like reading a book on or an article on child abuse and like the psychological effects that like beating your child has on them.
[01:19:34]  And your takeaway is like, wow, if I beat my child, they're going to be a lot more obedient and do more chores.
[01:19:39]  I'm going to do that.
[01:19:40]  Hey, everybody, this article says you should beat your child.
[01:19:44]  And the person who wrote it is like, what?
[01:19:46]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:19:47]  And it's this, it's so like, I'll quote, like, here's, because Vance has directly stated that coming to understand Girard influenced his Christianity.
[01:19:57]  Quote, yeah, he spoke of mimetic, his theory of mimetic rivalry, that we tend to compete over the things that other people want, spoke directly to some of the pressures I experienced at Yale.
[01:20:07]  But it was his related theory of the scapegoat and what it revealed about Christianity that made me reconsider my faith.
[01:20:13]  It made me realize that I could be a Christian and an absolute dickwad and didn't care about human beings or human suffering.
[01:20:19]  And that was very inspiring to me.
[01:20:22]  Yeah, Gerard's saying Christ was killed because he was turned into a scapegoat by these powers, you know, doing the thing that authoritarian monsters always do, which is create and destroy scapegoats, distract people from the fact that the system is unjust and making them unhappy.
[01:20:40]  And Vance is like, yeah, this changed like the idea of Christ as a scapegoat made me realize that I could lie about Haitians to become the vice president.
[01:20:49]  Like that's basically what Vance is saying.
[01:20:52]  That's that's nice.
[01:20:53]  Yeah.
[01:20:54]  Yeah.
[01:20:55]  It's that they're cool.
[01:20:57]  I think JD Vance could have had less education and would have been just fine.
[01:21:02]  Yeah.
[01:21:03]  Less access to education for one Apple action.
[01:21:06]  Right.
[01:21:07]  To continue from that wired article, for some Girardians, this was a breaking point.
[01:21:12]  The memetic theorist Bernard Perret lambasted Vance and his billionaire mentor in a French political journal, accusing them of casting a shadow over Girard's legacy.
[01:21:19]  Within months, several more prominent Girardians followed suit.
[01:21:22]  It's difficult to claim Girard, who fundamentally believes that violence is linked to exclusion and at the same time accuse Haitians of eating dogs.
[01:21:28]  Girardian scholar Paul Dumos told a Canadian newspaper: either you didn't understand Girard or you're a liar.
[01:21:36]  I mean, when you put it that way.
[01:21:39]  And I guess this is where we'll kind of close, you know, calling the burn unit for Peter Thiel and this very satisfying little light.
[01:21:47]  And JD Vance, yeah, this little, I mean, fucking Palavers apparently emailed him a few times, being like, How are you okay with this?
[01:21:56]  You know, how is anyone okay with this?
[01:21:59]  Well, but it's like they may have way too much power and it may be horrifying to contemplate, but nothing will ever make them less idiotic than they clearly are.
[01:22:08]  And there's something nice about that.
[01:22:10]  It's scary, but at least we can feel superior.
[01:22:14]  Yeah, there's a good bit at the end of that wired piece where I think Palaver kind of reveals that he has Teal's number.
[01:22:24]  What I've observed are traces of deep fear, he told me: fear of death, fear of terrorism.
[01:22:30]  And it all comes down to a lack of trust and a craving for security, Pulaver suspects.

=== Feeling Superior to Fear (05:04) ===

[01:22:34]  There are so many cases where he expresses fears and concerns and need for protection, Pulaver says.
[01:22:38]  And if your main thing is seeking protection, you play with fire.
[01:22:42]  And I guess that's that's like the innocent butthead.
[01:22:47]  Okay.
[01:22:49]  Yeah.
[01:22:49]  I mean, I would say it's Peter can recognize that fears of the apocalypse and the end of days could allow an Antichrist to take power, but doesn't understand that in his own life, your own fear of that is leading you to embrace what is effectively the Antichrist, right?
[01:23:07]  You're so scared of dying that you are embracing apocalyptic, like just extremely dangerous.
[01:23:15]  You're playing with fire.
[01:23:16]  You are embracing authoritarianism.
[01:23:18]  You are welcoming the Antichrist in because you're so scared of death.
[01:23:23]  And there you go.
[01:23:24]  And because you're so rich, everyone else has to welcome the Antichrist along with you, apparently.
[01:23:29]  And none of your weird, like, hoax medicine attempts to extend your life have proven to work.
[01:23:35]  And you're just going to blame Greta Tunberg by saying she's anti-science because you can't just acknowledge that the thing you wanted is something that rich, powerful people have always wanted and never gotten because it's impossible.
[01:23:48]  And you're no different from the pharaohs.
[01:23:50]  And they're never going to get it.
[01:23:52]  Nope.
[01:23:53]  Nope.
[01:23:53]  You will die and be forgotten.
[01:23:55]  And that, and you know, and that's kind of nice.
[01:23:57]  That's good.
[01:23:58]  It's good.
[01:23:59]  That's why I'm fundamentally optimistic because of death, right?
[01:24:02]  I think it's a good thing in the long run that people die and that we're never going to like immortality is not real.
[01:24:10]  And I don't think it ever will be.
[01:24:12]  Right.
[01:24:12]  None of these people are ever going to be around forever.
[01:24:14]  And a lot of them are going to like choke on a bit of toffee or something.
[01:24:19]  And sure, you know, not enough of them, but yeah.
[01:24:23]  No, not enough.
[01:24:24]  But they all, something will get all of them, like it will everyone.
[01:24:27]  And that's good.
[01:24:28]  It's good that people die.
[01:24:30]  If someone actually created an immortality cure, I would want to stop that.
[01:24:37]  I think that that's broadly speaking.
[01:24:38]  I don't think it's possible.
[01:24:39]  It's a silly thing to even theorize, but it's bad.
[01:24:43]  It would be bad if it was real.
[01:24:44]  Well, and also, like, even if that did existed, it would only exist for like the worst people in the world, you know?
[01:24:52]  Exactly.
[01:24:52]  Yes.
[01:24:53]  Yeah.
[01:24:53]  And it would be the end of progress fundamentally if like people stopped dying.
[01:24:58]  You know, like that's just, it's, it's not even good theoretically.
[01:25:01]  Yeah.
[01:25:02]  I get people get angry whenever I bring this up where they're like, so you don't want to cure cancer?
[01:25:05]  I'm like, if you cure cancer, people will still die.
[01:25:08]  You won't cure cancer also.
[01:25:10]  But like.
[01:25:10]  Also, there's like 8 million cancers to cure.
[01:25:13]  You know, you just pick one and just keep going until you get a bingo.
[01:25:17]  No, I believe if we do cure, if we were to cure all of the current cancers, then we would start seeing different weird cancers that people don't get right now because they just don't live long enough for them to happen.
[01:25:28]  But we'll keep experiencing new cancers.
[01:25:30]  Start getting the like biblical patriarch 800-year-old guy cancer.
[01:25:35]  Exactly.
[01:25:36]  Yeah.
[01:25:36]  Yeah.
[01:25:37]  And also it's like, think about how bored people are now and how much more bored we would be if we were immortal, you know?
[01:25:45]  Yeah.
[01:25:46]  Again, that's the thing.
[01:25:46]  And that's the thing Gerard, like, that's kind of something Gerard was dealing with is like this, you know, when people's needs are met and they're still unhappy.
[01:25:56]  God, imagine the trouble we would cause for each other if we lived forever.
[01:26:00]  Yeah.
[01:26:00]  How much, how much worse mimetic rivalry would be.
[01:26:03]  Yeah.
[01:26:06]  Well, anything else?
[01:26:09]  Well, thanks for telling me about someone so horrible and embarrassing that they, I have come around to your moral of, well, let's embrace death because at least he's going to get that guy.
[01:26:20]  Yeah.
[01:26:21]  Yeah.
[01:26:21]  I love that.
[01:26:22]  Let's embrace death.
[01:26:23]  Like, let's all cheer death on as it goes after Peter Thiel.
[01:26:28]  Death wielding a sickle like a polo mallet, galloping towards another billionaire.
[01:26:34]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:26:37]  You know, and let's all encourage Peter Thial to explore the ocean floor like those other guys.
[01:26:43]  I hear there's a lot of good stuff still down there.
[01:26:46]  You could find those other guys.
[01:26:48]  Yeah.
[01:26:48]  You could bring up their vaporized remains.
[01:26:50]  You could save them.
[01:26:51]  No, they're all, they need to be rescued.
[01:26:53]  They're all still down there.
[01:26:54]  They're playing Perksheesy.
[01:26:56]  Only you, Peter.
[01:26:57]  Only you can save them.
[01:26:58]  With Poseidon.
[01:27:00]  Yeah.
[01:27:02]  The Antichrist is down there.
[01:27:04]  Pluggables before we roll out here?
[01:27:07]  Yeah.
[01:27:08]  So, well, you can find me at my show You're Wrong About where we talk about the folly of man and iconic bimbos and misunderstood history and all kinds of fun stuff.
[01:27:20]  And also my new show, The Devil You Know, which is from CBC Podcasts.
[01:27:26]  You can find it wherever.
[01:27:27]  You listen to podcasts and it's about the satanic panic and also all the horrible things that people do and use Satan as an excuse to do, which is of course very relevant to today.

=== The Folly of Man (03:39) ===

[01:27:39]  And we got to talk to some amazing people and I'm so happy to get to share their stories with everybody.
[01:27:45]  I'm happy too, both for that and because the episode is over and so I get to not work anymore.
[01:27:52]  All right, everybody.
[01:27:53]  You stop working too.
[01:27:54]  I don't care what you're doing.
[01:27:55]  If you're a heart surgeon listening to this, stop.
[01:27:58]  Walk away.
[01:27:59]  Walk away.
[01:28:00]  Are you raising a bridge?
[01:28:02]  Get out of there.
[01:28:02]  Pilot, jump out of the plane.
[01:28:04]  You know, put on your backpack with the thing in it and get out of there.
[01:28:08]  Everyone quit working right now.
[01:28:10]  Whatever thing.
[01:28:11]  Whatever things.
[01:28:13]  Whatever Robert Antichrist Evan says.
[01:28:16]  Here we go.
[01:28:18]  If you're the Antichrist, stop antichristing this minute.
[01:28:21]  Got a footbath going.
[01:28:23]  I would be such a good Antichrist.
[01:28:26]  Yeah.
[01:28:27]  But unfortunately, Greta Tunberg took the job from me.
[01:28:30]  Yeah.
[01:28:30]  Yeah.
[01:28:31]  She's pretty good too.
[01:28:32]  Yeah.
[01:28:33]  The podcast is over.
[01:28:37]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
[01:28:41]  For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:28:50]  Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube.
[01:28:53]  New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.
[01:28:56]  Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at behind the bastards.
[01:29:03]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:29:11]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:29:14]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:29:16]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:29:18]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[01:29:22]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:29:24]  Trust me, babe.
[01:29:25]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:29:34]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[01:29:39]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[01:29:42]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[01:29:50]  An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
[01:29:53]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[01:29:56]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[01:30:05]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:30:10]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
[01:30:13]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:30:16]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:30:18]  That's so funny.
[01:30:20]  Surely stay with me each night, each morning.
[01:30:27]  Listen to Nora Jones' Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:30:35]  What's up, everyone?
[01:30:36]  I'm Ago Moda.
[01:30:37]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:30:39]  Woo, woo, woo, woo.
[01:30:41]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:30:45]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:30:46]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:30:53]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:30:55]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:31:02]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:31:04]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:31:06]  There's a lot of life.
[01:31:07]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:31:14]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:31:17]  Guaranteed human.