Part Two: Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ

Robert answers the big question: who does Peter Thiel think the antichrist might be? And we learn about the time he considered cryonically freezing his own head after death. Check out Sarah’s new show here: https://link.mgln.ai/6Pab8j See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome behind the bastards back to podcast people bad about tell all them you. I'm Robert Evans and yeah, with me again for part two of our episode on what Peter Thiel thinks about the Antichrist.

• 0:24Robert Evans?

  I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm sorry that that's, that's what we're, we're talking about right now.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  I love it. We're getting right to the heart of the matter, you know, because people are like, do you want to talk about the economy? And I'm like, no, no.

• 0:37Robert Evans?

  No, I don't, I don't want to talk about the economy. I'm tired of talking about the economy.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Tell me about what these idiots think. Tell me what they believe.

• 0:45Robert Evans?

  Yes, absolutely. So here we are. Sarah Marshall, you got anything you want to plug here at the start before we dive back into it?

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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. And it's, it's a sad show. It's a fun show. It's a show about history. It's a show about today. It's called The Devil You Know. It's all right now with CBC Podcasts. And of course I also host a show called You're Wrong About, and you can listen to that too. And it's a, you know, we have fun while trying to get to the bottom of things, much like you do.

• 1:31Robert Evans?

  Right, right. We're talking today about Peter Thiel being wrong about something important. And we're also talking about the devil he knows, or at least who he thinks the devil might be.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yes, his fantasy devil, perhaps.

• 1:44Robert Evans?

  His fantasy devil. I guarantee you're not going to see where this is building to.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  My question is, Sarah, who is your fantasy devil?

• 1:53Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah, there you go.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Uh, Peter Cook and Bedazzled, of course.

• 1:58Robert Evans?

  Oh, you know, Sarah, you could not have said anything that would have gotten me more on your side than that. I love the original Bedazzled.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:08Robert Evans?

  He is, he's the best Satan, easily, by a mile.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Tell me why you think that is. And people haven't seen this movie enough. This is a delight. It's Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

• 2:18Robert Evans?

  I respect, both from a theological standpoint and from just an entertainment standpoint, the idea of a devil who is folk, whose primary focus is not on acts of grand evil, but on acts of like petty annoyance, like that scene where he's just like casually scratching records and then putting them in the mail is so funny to me.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  And there's a scene where he's ripping the last pages out of novels.

• 2:41Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes. 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.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've had a long time to see it.

• 2:49Robert Evans?

  But there's a great scene, there's a great scene where the guy whose soul, he's the devil, is trying to win. And here talking and the guy, the human asks him like, why did you rebel against God in the first place? It seems like he had a pretty sweet deal. And the devil, the devil like gets up on top of, I think it's a mailbox or something. And he's like, okay, I'm gonna like walk you through what it was like, you know, back then. I'm God, start praising me. And this is the guy's like goes around like, I praise you, everybody, keep going, keep praising me, keep praising me, keep. And he goes on like this for a while. And eventually the guy's like, hey, can we take a break? And maybe I get up there for a minute? And the devil's like, that's exactly what I thought.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Right? And it plays on, you know, the feeling that a lot of us have in Sunday School or equivalent that like, you know, that, that the character of God in the Bible is insufferable, you know?

• 3:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, a dick.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  And I don't know if that plays into our topic today, but I have always noticed it. And especially, and I also really love the Cartman Land episode of South Park where Kyle's faith is challenged. And so his parents tell him the story of Job.

• 3:54Robert Evans?

  That's a blast from the past.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  And he's like, why would God do that to a good man?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  And it's like, why would God do that? Cause 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. You're like, hmm.

• 4:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  The date, the devil comes out looking comparatively good in that story because it's less of a betrayal from him. He's just an asshole.

• 4:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I, yeah. Anyway, watch, watch the original Bedazzled. You don't need to watch the

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Original Bedazzled.

• 4:30Robert Evans?

  The one made with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can watch that one. It's cute. It's fun.

• 4:36Robert Evans?

  If you want.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  But yeah, Peter, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, one of the great comedy duos. And I do feel like the idea of just the, the trickster devil is so beautifully embodied there. And that it's interesting to me that the devil is kind of the trickster character. And we took the trickster who's necessary in most cosmologies and made him evil, which is a very different.

• 4:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. A very different role to play.

• 5:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So I don't know, folks, watch Bedazzled. It's more biblically accurate than Peter Thiel's Lecture on the Antichrist. I'll say that.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 5:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  That feels so true.

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• 6:32Robert Evans?

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• 6:56Robert Evans?

  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.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  We might have to do like a day-long staged event doing that, like when Andy Kaufman read The Great Gatsby. Yeah, I'm ready.

• 7:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Or I could just get 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.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  People would go, I would love it.

• 7:24Robert Evans?

  But we're gonna have to cut through the remainder of that first lecture before we get into who he thinks might be the Antichrist. And so when we left off-

• 7:31Speaker 01

  I do feel like you've given me a pretty clear sense of how unhinged this whole-

• 7:35Robert Evans?

  Thank you. Good.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  -theology is, yeah.

• 7:38Robert Evans?

  I'm glad we at least landed on that. So when we 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. Next, Peter says that "after the development of the atom bomb," quote, "technology itself became apocalyptic." 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 like this is the first like what if a nuclear war movie, right?

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 8:10Robert Evans?

  And the gist of this is that nukes were really dangerous. 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 in mass, right?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:25Robert Evans?

  I would say, I think most people would say like, it's pretty reasonable reaction to nukes.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Kind of the theme of a lot of Twilight Zone episodes as well. Pretty reasonable.

• 8:34Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, fairly middle of the road concept.

• 8:37Robert Evans?

  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. So like if a country's doing war crimes, there's some sort of mechanism.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  The United States from doing the things that we will choose to do again.

• 8:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, we don't really do this. The IC, I mean, we briefly, Serbia, we punish briefly, but that's kind of it. You know, in terms of international law, 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. Peter Thiel is in a lot of ways, a very old fashioned, kind of paranoid, the UN is the devil, the Antichrist wants the UN to take over the world kind of guy.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  He's the Sterling Hayden in Doctor Strangelove, kind of a role that's so crucial in American politics.

• 9:24Robert Evans?

  And Doctor Strangelove is going to come up in a little bit here. You're going to hear what Peter thinks about that movie.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 9:29Robert Evans?

  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. Like at no point did it have even a fraction of that much power.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:46Robert Evans?

  Obviously.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  And if it did, then, you know, they would have solved more problems, you would think.

• 9:51Robert Evans?

  Maybe things would be better. Peter is that kind of a crank, but he doesn't want you to think about that. So he has to dress this up in like theological terms and shit.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:09Robert Evans?

  Right. 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? And this is bad because it that this is Peter is blaming basically the the fact that we don't make scientific advancements anymore.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:24Robert Evans?

  On this train of thinking that 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.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 10:34Robert Evans?

  And I feel like I've explained enough why this is all nonsense.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, from a film history perspective, that's even wrong. Because like, what do you call Metropolis, baby?

• 10:44Robert Evans?

  Frankenstein.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:46Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Seriously.

• 10:48Robert Evans?

  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. Coincidentally, this is also when the Catholic Church stopped giving apocalyptic sermons. Did it? Is that true? I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, because I went to I like, my dad was Catholic. I didn't only go to Catholic Church, but I went to Catholic Church a good amount as a little kid. And I remember the priest talking about the end times and the second coming. It wasn't the only thing that certainly not as much of a focus in Catholicism it is, as it is in a lot of like evangelical Christian Christian sects. But it's not not talked about.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  He's like Catholics aren't talking about it constantly, and therefore they're not doing it at all.

• 11:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Like, I guess by citation here is like, I went to church as a kid. What the fuck are you basing this on, Peter? Like, that's just not true. And it's also like, well, Catholicism is just one chunk of Christianity and a lot of Christian faiths and priests and pastors over the last 75, 80 years have talked about the apocalypse in different ways. It's a common subject. 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.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:06Robert Evans?

  Is like, no.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  It's like in the late 20th century, people talked about it, you know? An unbelievable amount and like pretty consistently. And Ben, you know, it's right. 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.

• 12:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah. 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? That's the argument he's making. Yes.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Fascinating. The Antichrist is Amish.

• 12:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that or a Luddite, right?

• 12:54Robert Evans?

  Now, Peter, the other thing, I mean, and that's really what he believes. He does believe the Antichrist is a Luddite and he also misunderstands Luddites, whatever.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah.

• 13:01Robert Evans?

  He, he also, he goes on, he's angry that he doesn't like secular apocalyptic fears. Cause 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. And that's really incomplete. Quote, "We should add the risk of the biblical Antichrist manifesting as a one world government. 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." And like, first off, that's not really a risk because like there, no one to think, no reasonable person thinks a one world government is anywhere close to a reality.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah.

• 13:43Robert Evans?

  It's just not a realistic fear. Like even if that was a bad thing, it's not a realistic fear. Looking at the world today.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:50Robert Evans?

  And the whole, this, this idea that like, oh, the secular maps onto the theological, you've got the one world state of the Antichrist and then the no world of the, of Armageddon. And like, those things are only mapped neatly if you're an idiot. 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. That's not a one world state. Like the movie that he argues for is not advocating a one world state and neither are most people who want a stronger UN or ICC. Basically 0% of people, including me, who support a stronger ICC, want to one world state. You just want there to be punishments for genocide. Right?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Right. And in this case, it feels like people, including Peter Thiel in this case, are bending themselves into pretzels to justify. Their desire to get to kill whoever they want and call it morally good.

• 14:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, 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. And that's wrong. That's fundamentally wrong for anyone to be able to punish me, Peter Thiel, or hold me accountable for any of my actions whatsoever. That's the worst thing that can happen.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Because I'm baby, but I'm also the most powerful person in the world, or I should be.

• 15:16Robert Evans?

  And I should be because of how smart I am.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  But also, who will stop me? Someone please stop me. No, no one stop me.

• 15:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah, fucking Peter. So this next paragraph is, I've said this several times, this is where things get really crazy, but this is where things get really crazy.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  This is where things get really crazy? It's been really crazy.

• 15:34Robert Evans?

  It's been pretty crazy, but it's gonna, it's about to be crazier. We should at least suspect that the apocalypse in our newspaper headlines is the apocalypse of the Bible. This is not mysticism, but simple extrapolation of human nature. Wisdom has not increased, even if information has. The one point on which the atheist and fundamentalist agree is that violence comes from God. The Christian, however, knows it comes from man. I know, right? What the fu- are you, wait, Peter, what?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  What are we saying?

• 16:04Robert Evans?

  I think, let me tell you what I think he's arguing here. I think he's saying that atheists, obviously fundamentalists, believe that all, everything comes from God, so that includes all violence. Atheists blame all violence on religion, right?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  That makes sense when you put it that way.

• 16:21Robert Evans?

  I've, I wasn't, I was an angry atheist. I'm not an angry atheist anymore. I'm still more or less an atheist. I've never met an atheist who thinks all violence is caused by religion.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:33Robert Evans?

  I've never met a one. That's a crazy thing to believe.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  There's certainly capitalism looking at you, kid, and a lot of other stuff.

• 16:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, some dude like murdering his wife because he doesn't want to pay alimony. It's not God. That kind of stuff happens like a fucking a rapist committing rape isn't like God didn't make him do that. Right? Like, obviously, there's rapists who do it through the, well, sorry.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Of just sort of male entitlement. And just, you know, yeah, there's, anyway. It's 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.

• 17:06Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Which again, is very eighth grade.

• 17:08Robert Evans?

  And it's, it is very like, it's like how a 12 year old debate bro, Christian kid talks about a like, when I was a 12 year old. Right wing debate, bro. This is how I thought about atheism, right? But it's like a straw man that an adult wouldn't have.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  You would hope not.

• 17:25Robert Evans?

  An absurd idea. But both the atheist and the fundamentalist believe all violence comes from God. Counterpoint. No?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  It's like, you've never talked to an atheist. I mean, yeah.

• 17:37Robert Evans?

  No one thinks that. I don't even think, I guess, like fundamentalists would argue that everything comes from God or whatever. So, but yeah, but like even then, I think most, very few of them would phrase it that way, even if the religious fundamentalist that I know, that's just a weird way to phrase anything like you, you're.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Well, in any argument based on there being like a few key groups of people who all think the same thing as each other.

• 18:00Robert Evans?

  They all think this. Exactly. And it's this, weirdly enough, this sentence of all of the reading I've done on Peter Thiel, and I have read extensively, I've read a lot of, most of the interviews he's done over the years. I've read a lot of his own writing.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  You've been through a lot.

• 18:15Robert Evans?

  This is the thing that scares me most. 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. And that disconnect is so, it's very upsetting to me. Like, that's scary how disconnected he is from reality, I would say. I, I am upset by this.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:47Robert Evans?

  Now, from here, Peter argues that if we're heading for war or Armageddon, then it's not unreasonable to think that there might be an apocalyptic war, right? Then it's not unreasonable to worry that an Antichrist might rise to power, promising to end wars and bring stability back, right? If it's reasonable to say we might have a war that ends humanity, it's gotta be reasonable also to say that the Antichrist might rise to power, promising to stop that war, right? Both of those are logical things. And let's, let's, let's give him that. That's a nonsense point in and of itself, but let's pretend that makes sense.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Sure, whatever.

• 19:22Robert Evans?

  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. 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." Like, that literally is directly what Trump said. I'm not editorializing in any way.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I know.

• 19:48Robert Evans?

  You know this, Peter, right? Like, anyway, Peter just doesn't deal with this.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  He's like, who's to say?

• 19:54Robert Evans?

  Right. Who's to say this thing that actually happened, obviously, isn't relevant?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Well, 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. Won't that be fun?

• 20:07Robert Evans?

  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. And Donald, I, Peter, literally believe the Antichrist will rise to power, promising to stop World War III. Donald Trump rose to power, promising to stop World War III. Obviously, none of this is worth talking about, completely irrelevant. Instead, Peter now talks about two different, like, 80-year-old novels about the Antichrist from, like, the early 20th century, both of which, and he brings these, I, he summarizes them. I don't think we even need to talk about the novels, because what he's, what he's pointing out is that both of these novels about the Antichrist, and most Antichrist narratives,

• 20:50Robert Evans?

  all have a plot hole, which is that they don't explain how the Antichrist will actually seize power.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 20:58Robert Evans?

  In late, which is like a weird thing to care about. Anyway, whatever. 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. He, the Antichrist, rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety. Oppenheimer lamented, "We need new knowledge like we need a hole in the head." Nick Bostrom has proposed preventative policing and global compute governance in his vulnerable world hypothesis. Eliza Yudkowski's latest book is, "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies." And Peter is saying all three of these guys are potential Antichrists or servants of the Antichrist, right? Because they're spreading, as he gives this lecture series that's entirely about his apocalyptic

• 21:43Robert Evans?

  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 so much.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Except, of course.

• 21:57Robert Evans?

  Apocalypse, except him. It's fine with him.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  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 basically another dictator, question mark, you know?

• 22:12Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:15Robert Evans?

  And it's the funniest thing to me, we'll get to his other Antichrist, the fact that he's like Eliza Yudkowski, maybe an Antichrist, right? Certainly an agent of the Antichrist.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Certainly.

• 22:28Robert Evans?

  We've made fun of him on this show a lot, right? Like, he's an AI risk dude. And obviously, I don't like AI. I don't, but not because, like, Yudkowski is like a rationalist who believes, he's like a member of a cult, kind of the leader of a cult, based on these like deranged ideas of rationality. 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?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I mean, it's dangerous enough in terms of taking all our jobs, you know? We can just start with that.

• 23:02Robert Evans?

  Sure. No, he's not one of the it'll take our jobs thing. He doesn't care about artists making a living. Yudkowsky cares about, like, he believes that the Harlan Ellison short story, I have no mouth and I must, but I must scream. That's what he literally thinks AI will do, right?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  But before that, it'll take our gems.

• 23:20Robert Evans?

  It'll take our jobs, exactly. And it's fun, because like, Peter Thiel funded Yudkowsky in his early career, his like rationalism and stuff. Like, Peter gave this guy money and supported the growth of like, the rationalist subculture in the Bay Area.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And then he was like, wait, no, not that.

• 23:40Robert Evans?

  No, yeah, he's literally, he says in his lecture that he thinks Yudkowsky is deranged now, because Yudkowsky's anti-AI.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  So he has a former mentee who then takes his ideas in a direction he doesn't like, and he's like, that guy could be the Antichrist. I mean, if nothing else, doesn't this story make you feel better about your own beefs, you know?

• 24:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I do kind of think Garrison might be the Antichrist, you know, my protege, one-time protege, but yeah, that's separate.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  One's protege could always be the Antichrist.

• 24:11Robert Evans?

  I mean, Sophie, it's certainly not impossible.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Garrison is a perfect angel. Sophie is the one you least suspect, you know, when you think about it, so.

• 24:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it could be Sophie. It could be Sophie. I've accepted that a while ago.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I think it's Paul Pierce, anyways.

• 24:29Robert Evans?

  You think it's Paul Pierce? Okay, sure, why not? 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. So, obviously, Yudkowsky, you know, is at least in consideration.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Guy I've never heard of, obviously.

• 24:53Robert Evans?

  Right. This guy must be it. And Peter not only hates Yudkowsky, he feels the need to analyze him as a possible Antichrist, because Yudkowsky's main claim to fame now is he's trying to like, warn people about AI and stop AI development. And AI is the only thing that could give Peter a return on his financial investment, commensurate to what he thinks he deserves. So obviously, Yudkowsky's evil for trying to stop this stuff, you know?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Can 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. 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. Like, that's taking it to another level. You're like, oh gee, I just expected a PowerPoint.

• 25:45Robert Evans?

  That's what we're doing. Yeah. 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. That's if that's not the Antichrist, that's an agent of the Antichrist. Except for me. Except for me, obviously. And Donald Trump, you know. So here's, here's a quote from his first lecture. My thesis is that in the 17th and 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of crazy evil science. In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It's someone like Greta or Eliza Yudkowsky. Greta Thunberg. He says, he specifically, and he, he'll go in later and be like, I don't think Yudkowsky is, he definitely thinks

• 26:30Robert Evans?

  Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist. He very directly is clear about that. He thinks Greta Thunberg could be the Antichrist.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  What, what, what is it about her that so unnerves tyrants? I mean, I guess the fact that she's, you know, very smart and impossible to corrupt. Yeah, the truth.

• 26:50Robert Evans?

  She's speaking the truth to power. She's proved to, I mean, honestly, like, I, 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, get something weird. And she's just like, really consistently got a great head on her shoulders.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:21Robert Evans?

  And so I, that scares the hell out of them.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right. And I can't be convinced to, 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? Look away. Let me do a little sleight of hand over here. It's because parlor tricks.

• 27:40Robert Evans?

  I think fundamentally, why they, 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 dead, because obviously she doesn't have any power.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:53Robert Evans?

  She's like somewhat influential, but she can't, she's not going to throw Peter Thiel in prison or destroy, she simply does not have the power.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  She's not a corporation. She's just a person with morals. Yeah.

• 28:06Robert Evans?

  She's just a person with morals and basically zero real world power.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:11Robert Evans?

  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, like, I don't, I think that's a silly stance. 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 allowed, and who fought viciously against any attempts to reduce the harm humanity was doing to the biosphere in order to make themselves wealthier. And they will be hated as a result. That's just a fact.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  But not by that many people, because so many people have died as a direct result of their actions and inactions.

• 28:57Robert Evans?

  Yes. Like, I think Greta represents the reality that in the future, these people, like, won't, they won't be able to, after, especially after they're dead, keep up the lie

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:09Robert Evans?

  that they were fighting against all this disinformation from the left and pretend, you know, the climate change fake, like, that lie won't hold up at a certain point.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  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. Yeah.

• 29:31Robert Evans?

  Exactly. Like, there will be a future in which the bullshit that they have spent their lives propping up is not widely believed. And that doesn't mean it'll be a perfect future or even a more just future. It just means that in the future, people will know what a scumbag Peter was. And that's why he is so scared and hateful of her. Right? I think that's it.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also that he's gonna die and other people will continue to live and sail around. Yep.

• 29:58Robert Evans?

  He's gonna die probably sooner than he expects, like most people. And a lot of folks are going to be happy because it'll be good when he dies. Anyway. Speaking of death, advertisements are a kind of death. That's what in French, the word for advertisement means, the little death.

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• 31:50Robert Evans?

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• 32:00Robert Evans?

  And we're back. Yes.

• 32:04Robert Evans?

  Talking about my flawless knowledge of French and talking about Peter Thiel's belief that fucking Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist. So

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 32:12Robert Evans?

  Let's talk about this from a theological standpoint, 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. He is described repeatedly as a prince or a king. Now, I could see being like, well, obviously, that's if we're going with the the Bible is true, but not always literally, you know, these are apocryphal stories. Okay, a king could be a stand-in for a president or a senator. Sure. 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 Greta Thunberg as a king or a prince.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:52Robert Evans?

  Same with Elise Yedkaski. Like, they're not political leaders. And the Antichrist definitely is. Like, again, Peter's selective embrace of literal readings of the Bible here really biting him in the ass.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it's all very literal unless I need it to be so figurative that it completely goes in a new direction. Thank you.

• 33:11Robert Evans?

  I also love his fundamental, like, oh, you don't understand Doctor Strangelove, like, the movie at all. Because the idea that, like, well, in the 17th or 18th century, the Antichrist would have been Doctor Strangelove, right?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:22Robert Evans?

  Well, no.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Such a random reference. Yeah.

• 33:26Robert Evans?

  Right. For one thing, like, in the movie of the same name, he's not a political leader. He's the president's scientific advisor. And he's not responsible for the apocalypse.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:38Robert Evans?

  At least not primarily, right? Now, the same actor.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  He's mainly delivering exposition. Right.

• 33:44Robert Evans?

  Exactly. Yes. And like, it is true, Peter Sellers also plays the president, right? He plays he plays by Doctor Strangelove and the president that Strangelove is advising. But even if you're saying, well, that means they're the same person, that doesn't Peter Sellers as the president being the Antichrist, doesn't make sense in that movie? Because like

• 34:02Speaker 01

  It's just embarrassing to misremember a movie in your big speech.

• 34:05Robert Evans?

  It's so bad.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:06Robert Evans?

  Like, you could re-watch it. You're writing a four Part lecture series, man.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 34:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it would have been a king or something.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Like in the Bible, a text people knew better than a movie that wouldn't come out for 300 years.

• 34:29Robert Evans?

  I also think, again, I don't, maybe he hasn't even seen the movie because it sounds like Peter thinks Doctor Strangelove causes the apocalypse in the movie Doctor Strangelove.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  He's like, well, you know, it's about, it's about an atomic bomb and it's called Doctor Strangelove. So probably Doctor Strangelove made the bomb, obviously. I mean, I didn't have time to watch it, but I deduced it because I'm so smart.

• 34:49Robert Evans?

  That must be what happens. And like, no, for the record, if you haven't seen it, Doctor Strangelove is a mad scientist and a Nazi.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:58Robert Evans?

  But he doesn't, there's a crazed US general who launches the initial nuclear strike.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Who's as American as can be.

• 35:05Robert Evans?

  Right. And like the government, like we try to reach out to the USSR in our bunker and are like, these are where the missiles are coming in. You know, you can shoot them out of the sky. Like, please, we don't want to actually have a nuclear war. This is a fuck up.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:17Robert Evans?

  And the USSR is like, oh, well, we actually built a doomsday device that will go off automatically and we can't stop it, right?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Right. And the premise is like, what if an American general lost his mind and there weren't adequate safeguards in place?

• 35:31Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Before he could cause mutually assured destruction. And it's like, oh, yeah, I guess. I mean, that's certainly not a problem we're having now.

• 35:39Robert Evans?

  Right, exactly. Certainly no more relevant now than it was back then. But it's like, neither the president nor Doctor Strangelove are Antichrist figures. No one really is in the movie Doctor Strangelove, actually.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  No, they're not.

• 35:54Robert Evans?

  Like, but it's particularly weird to say Doctor Strangelove is the Antichrist because he doesn't incite the action. Like, that just isn't accurate.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Have you ever seen, because you know, The Omen has two sequels and they're not that good.

• 36:10Robert Evans?

  Oh, God, yeah, it does.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  The second one has Sam Neill 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.

• 36:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  But the movie like doesn't really know what to have him be doing because it is like, what would the Antichrist believe? Like, what would his whole deal be? You know, like, people are kind of like reluctant to state that.

• 36:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 36:45Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right. Exactly. So the fact that, you know, he's listed Greta Thunberg and Elisa Yudkowsky as possible Antichrist. Both of those things are insane. At least Thunberg, she is like popular. She has a lot of like followers and people who care about what she says. Elisa Yudkowsky, he's got his little cult, but he's not, you really, you think he's got the juice to even be on the list of potential Antichrists? You're vastly overestimating this man's charisma, this weirdo's charisma.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  He's not even in the top thousand.

• 37:17Robert Evans?

  No, no. I am a more realistic Antichrist than fucking Elisa Yudkowsky.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Jeb Bush way ahead of him, honestly.

• 37:24Robert Evans?

  Yes, Jeb is much closer. So after this, in the second lecture, Peter apparently goes into more detail about his beliefs on the Antichrist, per The Guardian. Quote, Teal goes on to identify the legionnaires of the Antichrist as people like Elisa Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, and Greta Thunberg, who argue for world government to stop science. So that's at least a little more realistic. He's like, well, maybe they're not the Antichrist, but they're at least his legionnaires.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 37:51Robert Evans?

  Okay, man. And again, I shouldn't have to say neither Yudkowsky nor Thunberg nor Bostrom want to stop all science, right?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Right. Nobody's arguing for that.

• 38:02Robert Evans?

  Exactly. There are very specific issues with specific technologies, but Peter can't stand that because, again, they'll get in the way of his profit, right? Like, that's really what this comes down to. It's very banal, but that is the truth of it. Peter goes on to say, "The legionaries of the Antichrist, like Eliza Yedkowski, Nick Bostrom and Greta Thunberg, argue for world government to stop science. The Antichrist has somehow become anti-science." And no, they just don't. 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."

• 38:44Robert Evans?

  And it's one of his few statements that I'm like, "Yeah, that's a good response."

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's the nice thing about standing next to someone who's completely off their cracker. You get to seem a little bit more normal.

• 38:56Robert Evans?

  Very, seem much more reasonable. Now, I will say Greta's response was much better because her spokespeople, whoever that 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. It's just, don't, there's, what are you gonna say?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  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.

• 39:23Robert Evans?

  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." Like, "I talked with the devil and we have a plan for you. You don't even know how we're ensnaring you."

• 39:38Speaker 01

  You're gonna dig it.

• 39:39Robert Evans?

  "We got you, baby. We got you." Now, at the same time, in his second lecture, Peter talks about his Luddite Antichrist candidates, 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. And that name is Marc Andreessen. Now, Marc Andreessen is the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz. He is a fellow big tech AI venture capitalist ghoul. And actually, I'd be like, "Yeah, Marc Andreessen, not a bad Antichrist candidate. He is evil." 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 Marc Andreessen wants, right? That's his stated goal.

• 40:24Robert Evans?

  Marc is the author of something called The Techno- Optimist manifesto, which argues that AI will solve all problems, including like climate change, all of our serious life threatening issues will be solved by a super intelligent AI. Therefore, anyone who tries to slow or stop AI development is evil and needs to be destroyed, killed if necessary is the is what your 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, that's Mark Andreessen.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Great. A lot of really well balanced people with a lot of power in this world is what I'm learning more and more.

• 41:02Robert Evans?

  Sane billionaires, all of them, all of them sane. 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 he's putting out gobbledygook AI propaganda.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 41:18Robert Evans?

  And this, I mean, he is because, yeah, I think his issue is Yankowski's anti AI stuff is that it will inevitably could become a god that's evil. And Andreessen is just like the opposite where he's like, it will inevitably become a god, but good, right? And so I guess Peter rejects both of them. But he says this, when he brings up Mark in the context of the Antichrist. It's not Andreessen, by the way. I think Andreessen is not the Antichrist because, you know, the Antichrist is popular.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 41:47Robert Evans?

  Funny shade.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  But I thought I'd say his name and the word Antichrist in the same sentence several times.

• 41:52Robert Evans?

  Several times. I didn't need to bring it up, right? 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, quoth Peter, I saw the Mr. Hyde version about a year ago, where it was just a nonstop Tourette's yelling swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on. And I don't have trouble believing that Bill Gates is a dick. Yeah, I'll give you that, Peter. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. I don't have trouble believing he's a Jekyll and Hyde. Clearly, his wife left for after the Epstein stuff for a good reason, you know?

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:34Robert Evans?

  Now, as I noted, reporters with The Guardian, namely Joanna Boyen, Derek Kerr, and Nick Robins 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.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 42:50Robert Evans?

  Maybe one day.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:51Robert Evans?

  And on the subject of Bill Gates and their article, they write something very funny. "Ultimately, Thiel concedes Gates cannot be the Antichrist, bringing up the topic more than once."

• 43:01Speaker 01

  He's not a-

• 43:03Robert Evans?

  And here's, that's so funny. He really is stuck on that. He's not a political leader. He's not broadly popular. And again, perhaps to Gates's credit, he's still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins, who believe that science and atheism are compatible.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  What?

• 43:18Robert Evans?

  And that fundamentally, he believes, well, because being anti-science is what makes you the Antichrist, so that must mean that you can't be pro-science and not Christian.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:27Robert Evans?

  It's actually impossible.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Walk it off. Walk it off, Peter.

• 43:31Robert Evans?

  This is disordered thinking. This is like-

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:34Robert Evans?

  There's something actually wrong here.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  This is like, if he weren't a billionaire, his, his family would be like, "Hey, buddy, do you wanna, should we try a new medication for you, bud?"

• 43:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  "You wanna go feed some squirrels?"

• 43:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, something to take your mind off the crazy.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Why don't we put this manifesto in the drawer?

• 43:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we'll, we'll come back to this tomorrow, Peter. Maybe we'll, we'll keep working on this.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Why don't we have some hot soup?

• 44:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, some soup, maybe a cup of coffee, you know, maybe some tea. Caffeine's probably bad for you right now, huh?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Just get off this Antichrist thing for a while.

• 44:10Robert Evans?

  You've been screaming about Bill Gates for 45 minutes.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  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, you know?

• 44:21Robert Evans?

  That's the whole, and that, yeah, that's part of why they're angry at the people they're angry at. And 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.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  You know, Microsoft Word had some, you know,

• 44:37Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Some tricky areas, let's say.

• 44:40Robert Evans?

  Sure, yeah. But it can't just be that, because Thiel is friends with Elon Musk. So the fact that Bill Gates is just an asshole can't explain it, right?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Robert Evans?

  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?

• 44:58Speaker 01

  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, without which I would not have probably gotten to hear Morning Edition for many years.

• 45:05Robert Evans?

  There you go, yeah. My, uh, my, my ex-wife wouldn't have had a laptop in elementary school, you know?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:12Robert Evans?

  Um, so I, I think that's really his issue with Gates. And I, I think that in part because of, uh, what I found in a Washington Post article, because the Post also got access to the tapes, and an article by Natasha Tiki, Elizabeth Dwaschkin, and Garrett DeVinc, uh, they wrote this. "The investor Thiel said he recently encouraged Musk to reneg on his 2012 commitment to the Giving Pledge movement cofounded by Gates, which asks wealthy people to commit the majority of their fortune to charitable causes," according to the recordings. And this is Thiel here. "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," Thiel said he warned Musk, according to the recording. "Painting the philanthropist as among the malevolent forces besetting technologists." That's his hatred of Gates.

• 45:57Robert Evans?

  Gates wants billionaires to give away their money to these evil left-wing causes, and he convinces Musk to stop.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  He funded too many modern dance troupes, therefore Antichrist. It's like, you need to have higher standards for your Antichrist behavior, I gotta say.

• 46:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And it does, you know, Thiel's positive on Musk now, I think because Musk is useful. He also, in this lecture series, has nice things to say about J.D. Vance, whose political career he paid to get off the ground.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:24Robert Evans?

  Uh, per Maggie Dupree, writing for Futurism, Thiel, quote, "described himself as very pro-Vice President J.D. Vance, to whom Thiel has given millions in campaign funds, though he did express that he's concerned..." Yeah. "He did express that he's concerned the VP, who's Catholic, might give too much credence to the Pope. The place that I would worry about is that he's too close to the Pope," said Thiel, per The Guardian. "And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the Pope. I hope there are a lot more." And that's like, my issue with J.D. Vance is that he might be a papist. Okay, great.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Well, we've gone back to puritanism in this country. We have to worry about papistry now on top of everything else. It's also like, I mean, look, I'm, I, I don't believe in Antichrist stuff. I never have. I'm not a devil believer, but you know, which is part of my interest in the Satanic panic, which it just seems like extra wild when you're not afraid of Satan yourself. Um, I'm, I grew up afraid of a lot of things. I was afraid of the Bermuda Triangle, but I wasn't afraid of Satan, um, because that just wasn't, didn't seem relevant to my life. Um, and like, if I were to pick an Antichrist today, it would obviously be Trump. Like, he's really behaving very Antichrist-y. And it's just so funny to have him leading

• 47:42Speaker 01

  a party that has become so much about, you know, this kind of death cult and Armageddonism. And they're like, but not you, sir. And it's like, because, because look at him.

• 47:53Robert Evans?

  Not the obvious guy. Yeah. Like, and it's, again, like, even the things you name in this are clearly more relevant to Trump than fucking Greta Thunberg or whatever.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 48:03Robert Evans?

  Um, now, outside of this frankly unhinged lecture series, back in June, Peter gave an interview to Ross Douthat, Douthat, whatever is, however you say his fucking last name, at the New York Times. And Ross, he's one of the worst writers alive. 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. He was Bill Kristol's replacement. And a massive downgrade for Bill Kristol even. Uh, he's both entirely uncritical of big tech and pro everyone should be religious. And so he and Peter Thiel are peas in a pod. And during that interview, Ross asks what Peter thinks about the techno-optimist manifesto

• 48:43Robert Evans?

  that Marc Andreessen self-published in 2023. Um, 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. So slowing things down is, AI down is the same as committing mass murder.

• 48:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Think about the Studio Ghibli-esque portraits of your husband that will never be drawn.

• 49:05Robert Evans?

  Exactly, exactly. It's a fate worse than death for all of us. And the fact that, like, the document is generally considered to be a foundational text for effective accelerationism. You know, that's kind of the philosophical name for what Andreessen is preaching. And that's close to what Peter Thiel advocates, because he's literally arguing that Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist, or is at least furthering the Antichrist's agenda because she's skeptical about AI and fossil fuels and shit.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And I'm the Antichrist too. Congratulations to me.

• 49:36Robert Evans?

  Like, Thiel definitely thinks the same way, but I think he's incapable. 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.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:50Robert Evans?

  And so he says this about the essay. "It represents a kind of corporate utopianism. In the 1990s, there was a broad cultural optimism that technology would solve everything. But by 2025, that optimism has shrunk. Today's visions are narrower, less inclusive and less confident. The grand utopian projects have given way to incremental gains, overshadowed by fears of collapse."

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 50:10Robert Evans?

  And that's accurate, but like, the problem, again, he's not capable of like, looking at what he's literally saying. The visions are narrower, the optimism has shrunk. That doesn't mean that like, we're not making technological progress.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:27Robert Evans?

  But it does mean that like, there's a problem in how people are

• 50:30Speaker 01

  We made massive progress.

• 50:32Robert Evans?

  visualizing progress. Right. Yes.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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.

• 50:44Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  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 buy your Norah Jones CDs. But that's over, man.

• 50:56Robert Evans?

  Right. And the article is just a great example. There's so much, Ross just lets Peter say nonsense without ever questioning him. It's like, it's one of the worst interviews I've ever read.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  It's like he's accidentally a great interviewer by being a terrible interviewer because he just lets him say stupid stuff.

• 51:12Robert Evans?

  You did, yeah, you do get more out. There's no, like, Peter drops the line again. He makes the claim that like after 1945, churches stopped preaching end times sermons and like, question Peter, no, they didn't.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Really? Where did all those left behind movies come from?

• 51:27Robert Evans?

  The left behind books massively popular, Peter. Like, and had nothing to do with technology, by the way. 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. Anyway, I don't know how Peter can think this through. I don't know how Ross can't question any of this other than Ross is just like the fucking bootlicker-iest bootlicker, whoever licked a goddamn boot.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  It's like, I hear you got some good blood for me later on.

• 51:55Robert Evans?

  Right. One of the weirdest things to me here is that, like, Ross is theoretically a Christian. He's a big C.S. Lewis fan. And Peter is theoretically a Christian. But then in this interview, Peter describes the choice presented by the Bible in the book of Revelations as Antichrist or Armageddon, and that this is unacceptable. And thus, quote, "We must find a third path."

• 52:20Speaker 01

  And it's me.

• 52:22Robert Evans?

  Which is like, no, it doesn't. That's not like, for one thing, the Bible doesn't present a choice. It just says there's an Antichrist and that leads to the second coming and an Armageddon.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  And everything's gonna get all weird and then people are gonna get up out of their graves. It's gonna be wacky, you guys. Yeah.

• 52:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  It's not like you have an option to change that if you're gonna believe it. You have to just like, you know, God knows no one has ever been selective about their beliefs as a Christian.

• 52:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's this, both that like Ross doesn't question Peter on this.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:55Robert Evans?

  And also. This is so heretical. Like, I'm not a

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:00Robert Evans?

  I don't care personally, but like, you should.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  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

• 53:19Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  interpretations than

• 53:21Robert Evans?

  Absolutely.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like things have gotten a little bit over the top.

• 53:27Robert Evans?

  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? Is this idea, this, this, this ongoing thing that like, well, anyone can be a priest or a pastor. Anyone can speak the word, right?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Right. Anyone can speak in tongues at a certain point if, if they feel like it.

• 53:46Robert Evans?

  Anyone can interpret the Bible. Sure. 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 or the apocalypse, but I think there's a third way, because Peter is literally saying,

• 54:03Speaker 01

  I'm adding stuff.

• 54:03Robert Evans?

  We can avoid the biblical apocalypse by getting our politics right.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I mean, actually, we're kind of getting into Joseph Smith territory, right? Where you're like, I believe in the Bible, but also, I'm adding stuff.

• 54:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I think we, I think we can rewrite the ending of the Bible.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  And also, I need to have sex with your wife.

• 54:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's weird, right? And especially because Peter describes himself as a little old orthodox Christian, which like, this is not anywhere close to orthodox, right? The idea that you're arguing God might let us avoid having an Antichrist and an Armageddon and still live forever? That's not Christian theology. That's

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:45Robert Evans?

  Peter theology.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  You're right. That's like getting into, you're starting to found your own religion at that point, which, yeah, you certainly have the resources to do.

• 54:54Robert Evans?

  That's, I would argue what Acts 17 is doing, is they are not spreading Christianity to Silicon Valley elites. They are creating a new, like a, like a Mormonism

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:05Robert Evans?

  for rich people.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  They're hybridizing Christianity with like Silicon Valley billionaire culture.

• 55:10Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Now that's the Antichrist, the cursed child of two evil parents.

• 55:16Robert Evans?

  The Antiest of Christ.

• 55:20Robert Evans?

  And it is kind of weird to me. Part of what's strange is that like, he wants to avoid the biblical apocalypse. And I think what that means is that Peter Thiel is so clearly scared of death that he can't even embrace everlasting life. Like, he would prefer, he vastly would prefer some scientist keeps his body alive than like, Jesus ensures him eternal life in heaven.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  He's like, I believe in you, God, but stay the fuck away.

• 55:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah. That's fascinating.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  It's the most reasonable thing that I've theorized him thinking this whole time, in a way.

• 55:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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. And it also facilitates a lot of structure and a lot of, just a lot of stability in people's lives. 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, 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

• 56:40Speaker 01

  to sort of maybe use religion to get out of the human urge towards solipsism.

• 56:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  It feels like this is like, no, I'm actually using religion to become more self-centered than ever. Isn't that great?

• 56:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  You can't even become an angel.

• 57:05Robert Evans?

  We have to find a fix for that. Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Right. You'd rather be like, a death becomes her.

• 57:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  You know, person just walking around getting hairline fractures and gluing yourself back together.

• 57:16Robert Evans?

  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. There's only one really valuable thing about the article that he writes interviewing Thiel, which is that it includes a fascinating segment where Peter talks about his early attempts to secure eternal life for himself.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 57:37Robert Evans?

  And I'm just gonna read, I'm gonna read a long quote from the interview here.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Please do.

• 57:40Robert Evans?

  "Peter, I remember 1999 or 2000 when we were running PayPal. One of my co-founders, Luke Nosek, he was into Alcor and Cryonics and that people should freeze themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a freezing party. You know a Tupperware party? People sell Tupperware policies. At a freezing party, they sell," and Ross butts in here, "was it just your heads? What was going to be frozen? Thiel, you could get a full body or just a head. Ross, the just a head option was cheaper. Thiel, it was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn't quite work and so the freezing policies couldn't be printed out." Okay.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  I miss dot matrix printers.

• 58:18Robert Evans?

  That's funny. I think a critical and thoughtful interviewer might have said something like, hey, it kinda 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. 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? Or like, are you still good? You still, you still following all that? Like, Ross doesn't ask this at all.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 58:57Robert Evans?

  Instead, when Peter talks about how this Cryonics company couldn't even get a printer to work, Ross nonsensically adds, "technological stagnation once again, right?"

• 59:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:08Robert Evans?

  Which is like, no, that's not what that's an example of at all.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:12Robert Evans?

  Period. But Peter responds, but in, he kind of ignores Ross, "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. And that was the last generation. So I'm always anti-boomer. 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. No one who's a millennial believes that anymore."

• 59:37Speaker 01

  I don't even know what that aside was about.

• 59:39Robert Evans?

  What, what is that even about? So you're anti-boomer because they thought they could live forever, but you can?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or just like, you know, say more about what, what did it feel like to think about getting your head sawn off by these people? How much did, did just the head cost versus the body? Say more about that.

• 59:57Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Would they give you someone else's limbs or put you on a big robot body like Robocop?

• 1:00:03Robert Evans?

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:00:06Robert Evans?

  So we're, we're almost done here. I want to, I want to end by talking a little bit more about Renee Girard and, and Schmidt and some of, some of Teal's philosophical beliefs. But first, let's have an ad real quick.

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• 1:01:50Robert Evans?

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• 1:02:01Robert Evans?

  All right, so we're back. And I talked about the start about Carl Schmitt, 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 memetic theory of like, like memetic rivalry, right? Where like people, once they cover their basic needs, still want things and so they kind of pick, well, what is this other guy who seems to be doing better than me have? And they, like, that's kind of memetic rivalry. But it doesn't make people happy, so they need scapegoats, you know? And Girard's attitude was like Christianity brought in, it should have brought an end to that. It's certainly evidence that we need to bring it into that.

• 1:02:45Robert Evans?

  It's bad to scapegoat groups of people. And Christ was kind of like, that's why he was killed, right? He was made into a scapegoat. And that's like the final evidence that it's wrong to do that. You know, that's Girard's attitude. Peter claims to be a major follower of Girard's. And he's gone to a bunch of gatherings. And in fact, in 2004, he and one of his mentors organized a week-long seminar on Rene Girard at Stanford. And they invited Girard, who was alive at the time. And they also invited a scholar of Carl Schmitt, who was also like a peer of Rene Girard named Wolfgang Palaver, who is, Palaver is one of Peter Thiel's favorite intellectuals. That's a hell of a name. It's a quite a name.

• 1:03:28Robert Evans?

  And Thiel is very like, is a huge, big fan of this guy. And a major like, like cites him quite frequently and has invited him to a number of these different events, right? This 2004 seminar on Girard is right after Peter Thiel got rich, after he like sold PayPal. So he, he funds this thing. And the theme of the conference is politics and the apocalypse. And the title, like, that theme was suggested by Wolfgang Palaver, like, while they were planning the event. So this is obviously, it's a couple of years after 9/11. And people who are, you know, what you'd call memetic theorists, these folks who like buy into a lot of Girard's beliefs about memetic rivalry are trying to figure out like,

• 1:04:09Robert Evans?

  Did the, was nine 11 like an example of like planetary memetic rivalry? This 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 you can see some, they're jealous of our freedoms, right? So, kind of one of the questions that these, these Gerard fans, these memetic, you know, theoreticians are talking about is like, is that kind of, does that explain what was going on there? Or is there something else for us to, to take out of this? And Thiel's attitude was that the primary thing that nine 11 showed us is that the West can't protect itself.

• 1:04:53Robert Evans?

  He wrote a paper right before this event in which he stated, "The brute facts of September 11th demand a reexamination of the foundations of modern politics. 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." 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? And we haven't realized the actual nature of the fight? And if Karl Schmidt were in charge of things, our response to nine 11, the just response would be to call for a crusade against Islam, right?

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:05:36Robert Evans?

  Like, that's the rational response.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very rational to try and eradicate a religion, I find, generally.

• 1:05:43Robert Evans?

  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. We didn't do that enough, which like, I mean, we did, the people you would have supported then, George W. Bush, like that is how they framed it and it failed.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  That's very much how Alan Jackson was describing the situation. Again, he's like really recommending antichristy behavior. We must say, I also realize I keep saying it like anti-pasto, but you know.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  What if it was delicious?

• 1:06:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, what if the Antichrist tasted better?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, what if there were some olives?

• 1:06:24Robert Evans?

  But was less filling at the same time?

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Just a nice cold snack on a summer's day.

• 1:06:30Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  You know, when you've got pasta coming later.

• 1:06:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like, like a Montucky cold snack. Yes, exactly.

• 1:06:37Robert Evans?

  So Wolfgang is 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.

• 1:06:55Robert Evans?

  And that's what he bases a lot of his like, well, we were doing the wrong things after nine 11 on is his ideas of like how Schmidt would have handled things instead. And I want to quote from a right, an article in Wired, kind of summarizing this journey. "It would quickly become apparent that Thiel had spent some time considering the paper Pallaver presented the day the two men met in 1998. The strange new thoughts Thiel wanted his audience to entertain were, it turned out, largely those of Carl Schmidt. But where Pallaver 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. The high point of politics," Pallaver quote Schmidt as saying, "are the moments in which the enemy is in concrete clarity recognized as the enemy. In Thiel's mind,

• 1:07:38Robert Evans?

  Osama bin Laden was capable of this kind of politics. The West, with its fetish for individual rights and procedures, was not." So Pallaver is quoting Schmidt as being like, this guy believed that the high point in politics was the defining of an enemy, right? And getting a group of people, getting a community to recognize an enemy. And that's a lot of, I mean, that's where Schmidt kind of goes in with Gerard, is they both had this concept of like scapegoating as being important. But Schmidt is like, this is how you gain power. This is actually how you destroy democracy is by finding an enemy, defining them as not part of the community and excising them.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Robert Evans?

  And then you continually push that barrier.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  And if you don't do that, you're a moron.

• 1:08:19Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Robert Evans?

  And Pallaver is saying that's what Schmidt believed because he was bad, right? And that that's like, like, that's an awful thing to believe, but like, this is what Schmidt was advocating. And Thiel is like, no, that's awesome. And Pallaver, like, their relationship over the last 20 years has been Pallaver gradually realizing Peter Thiel likes him because he describes accurately what a monster believed, and Peter Thiel is the same kind of monster.

• 1:08:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  What a fun day at Stanford.

• 1:08:51Robert Evans?

  It's, it's awesome. 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. Thiel seemed to fear towards the creation of a bland world embracing economic and technical organization. This was Schmidt's nightmare scenario. In such a world, Thiel said, "A representation of reality might appear to replace reality. Instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games. Instead of heroic feats, there could be thrilling amusement park rides. Instead of serious thought, there could be intrigues of all sorts, as in a soap opera. 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."

• 1:09:34Robert Evans?

  Thiel's discussion of Schmidt didn't mention the Hitler or the Nazis once.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Irrelevant. Who cares?

• 1:09:41Robert Evans?

  Great. Yeah. Why does it matter that this guy was a Nazi and arguing for Nazis? And what matters is that we need to take his idea about picking an enemy. And it's actually a really bad thing if like people are playing video games instead of fighting in real wars. That like that is the path to the Antichrist? Like we're replacing the real heroism with fictional heroism. It's a very fascist idea. It's fundamentally a very fascist idea.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  So basically, he's like, yeah, like if we don't become fascist, we're gonna, we have to become fascist to protect ourselves from the Antichrist, sweetie.

• 1:10:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And kind of the, the conclusion Thiel draws from Palaver's writing about Schmidt is that, because Schmidt fundamentally suggested like we have to have these dramatic solutions to the problem, like to deal with the enemy.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  A final solution, if you will.

• 1:10:32Robert Evans?

  He's, he's a Nazi, right? Thiel pulls back from that, but he's, his solution is you have to fortify the modern West. And you can't do that through democracy, right? So you have to, you have to hide, you have to trick people. In order to get around democratic institutions, because those aren't going to like, you can't actually work through them. So I'm going to quote from Thiel directly. "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 truly global Pax Americana." In other words, what we need to do is develop-

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  A one-world government.

• 1:11:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. No, no, no, no. Just a one-world surveillance super system controlled by Peter Thiel.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. That's very important.

• 1:11:21Robert Evans?

  Not a one-world government. No, no. 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?

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:33Robert Evans?

  It's just a surveillance state that I'm in charge of, you know?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  So basically you're saying it would be terrible if somebody did the things that I want to do myself. It has to be me.

• 1:11:41Robert Evans?

  Right. Exactly.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Ah, God.

• 1:11:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's, it's awesome. Um, 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?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  It's like when Oliver Stone realized all these guys were getting into finance because they loved his movie that they never saw the last quarter of, apparently.

• 1:12:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And it's been, like, Girardians in general, like, people who are, like, like our followers of Rene Girard in his intellectual tradition have, like, this has been kind of a growing horror for a lot of them. 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 is- Justified him betting on Facebook by saying, quote, "I bet on memesis," right? Like on memetic, this idea that like memetic rivalry is the underpinning of Facebook, right? It's the underpinning of social media, the I'm going to, both people being jealous

• 1:12:57Robert Evans?

  and wanting to imitate the lives of other people they see on, right? And so people have been saying since the early 2000s that like Gerard is kind of, Girardian philosophy is kind of baked into a lot of the most toxic stuff about social media. 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?

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Robert Evans?

  And this is, again, Gerard was saying it's bad to do that. Vance, who calls himself a Girardian, is clearly just saying like, oh, Gerard kind of explained how scapegoating works and I like that, right?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  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. And your takeaway is like, wow, if I beat my child, they're going to be a lot more obedient and do more chores. I'm going to do that. Hey, everybody, this article says you should beat your child. And the person who wrote it is like, what?

• 1:14:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. And it's this, it's so like, I'll quote, like, here's, because Vance has directly stated that, coming to understand Gerard influenced his Christianity, quote,

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:14:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He spoke of memetic, his theory of memetic rivalry, that we tend to compete over the things that other people want, spoke directly to some of the pressures I experienced at Yale. But it was his related theory of the scapegoat and what it revealed about Christianity that made me reconsider my faith.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  It made me realize that I could be a Christian and an absolute dickwad who didn't care about human beings or human suffering. And that was very inspiring to me.

• 1:14:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Gerard 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 to distract people from the fact that the system is unjust in making them unhappy. 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? Like, that's basically what Vance is saying.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  That's, that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. It's the, there are, um,

• 1:15:13Robert Evans?

  It's cool.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  I think JD Vance could have had less education and would have been just fine.

• 1:15:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Less access to education for one Apple action.

• 1:15:22Robert Evans?

  Right. To continue from that Wired article, for some Girardians, this was a breaking point. The memetic theorist Bernard Perret lambasted Vance and his billionaire mentor in a French political journal, accusing them of casting a shadow over Gerard's legacy. Within months, several more prominent Girardians followed suit. It's difficult to claim Gerard, who fundamentally believes that violence is linked to exclusion, and at the same time accuse Haitians of eating dogs, Girardian scholar Paul Dumont Che told a Canadian newspaper. Either you didn't understand Gerard, or you're a liar.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  I mean, when he put it that way.

• 1:15:55Robert Evans?

  And I guess this is where we'll kind of close, you know?

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Calling the burn unit for Peter Thiel in this very satisfying little way.

• 1:16:03Robert Evans?

  And JD Vance, yeah, this little, I mean, fucking Palaver's apparently emailed him a few times, being like, how are you okay with this? You know? How is anyone okay with this?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Well, 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. And there's something nice about that. It's scary, but at least we can feel superior.

• 1:16:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a good bit at the end of that Wired piece, where I think Palaver kind of reveals that he has Thiel's number. What I've observed are traces of deep fear, he told me. Fear of death, fear of terrorism, and it all comes down to a lack of trust and a craving for security, Palaver suspects. There are so many cases where he expresses fears and concerns and need for protection, Palaver says. And if your main thing is seeking protection, you play with fire. And I guess that's, that's

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  like Davison Butthead.

• 1:17:03Robert Evans?

  Okay.

• 1:17:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, 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? You're so scared of dying that you are embracing apocalyptic, like just extremely dangerous. You're playing with fire. You are you are embracing authoritarianism. You are welcoming the Antichrist in because you're so scared of death.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  And there you go. And because you're so rich, everyone else has to welcome the Antichrist along with you, apparently.

• 1:17:45Robert Evans?

  And none of your weird like hoax medicine attempts to extend your life have proven to work. And you're good, just gonna blame Greta Thunberg 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. And you're no different from the pharaohs.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  And they're never gonna get it.

• 1:18:09Robert Evans?

  Nope.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Robert Evans?

  You will die and be forgotten, too.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  And you know, and that's kind of nice.

• 1:18:14Robert Evans?

  It's good. It's good. That's why I'm fundamentally optimistic because of death, right? 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. And I don't think it ever will be.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Right. None of these people are ever gonna be around forever. And a lot of them are gonna like

• 1:18:32Robert Evans?

  Nothing will be.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  choke on a bit of toffee or something and

• 1:18:36Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  You know, not enough of them, but yeah.

• 1:18:39Robert Evans?

  No, not enough, but they all something will get all of them like it will everyone. And that's good. It's good that people die. If if someone actually created an immortality cure, I would, I would want to stop that. I think that that's broadly, I don't think it's possible. It's a silly thing to even. Theorize, but it's bad. It would be bad if it was real.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Well, and also like even if that if that did exist, it would only exist for like the worst people in the world, you know?

• 1:19:08Robert Evans?

  Exactly. Yes.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Robert Evans?

  And it would be the end of progress fundamentally. If like people stopped dying, you know, like that's just it's it's not even good theoretically.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Robert Evans?

  I get people get angry whenever I bring this up where they're like, so you don't want to cure cancer? I'm like, if you cure cancer, people will still die. You won't cure cancer also, but like.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Also, there's like eight million cancers to cure, you know, you just pick one and just keep going until you got a bingo.

• 1:19:33Robert Evans?

  No, I 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. Cause they just don't live long enough for them to happen, but we'll keep experiencing new cancers.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  Start getting getting the like biblical patriarch eight hundred year old guy cancer.

• 1:19:52Robert Evans?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. 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?

• 1:20:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Again, that's the thing. 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, like.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  God, imagine the trouble we would cause for each other if we lived forever.

• 1:20:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah. How much how much worse memetic rivalry would be? Yeah.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Whoa. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:20:23Robert Evans?

  Well, anything else?

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:20:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:20:38Robert Evans?

  Embrace death. Like, let's all cheer death on as it goes after Peter Thiel.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Death wielding a sickle like a polo mallet, galloping towards another billionaire.

• 1:20:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, you know, and let's all encourage Peter Thiel to explore the ocean floor, like those other guys.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  I hear there's a lot of good stuff still down there. You could find those other guys.

• 1:21:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Bring up their vaporized.

• 1:21:07Robert Evans?

  You could save them. They're no, they're, they're all, they need to be rescued. They're all still down there.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  They're playing Parcheesi.

• 1:21:12Robert Evans?

  Only you, Peter, only you can save them.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  With Poseidon.

• 1:21:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  The Antichrist is down there.

• 1:21:21Robert Evans?

  Plugables before we roll out here?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so well, I, uh, 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. And, uh, also my new show, The Devil You Know, which is from CBC Podcasts. You can find it wherever 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. And it's, uh, we got to talk to some amazing people and I'm so happy to get to share their stories with everybody.

• 1:22:01Robert Evans?

  I'm happy to, uh, both for that and because the episode is over and so I get to not work anymore. All right, everybody, you stop working too. I don't care what you're doing. If you're a heart surgeon listening to this, cut, stop, walk away, walk away.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 1:22:17Robert Evans?

  Are you raising a bridge? Get out of there. Pilot, jump out of the plane, you know? Put on your, put on your backpack with the thing in it and get out of there. Everyone quit working right now.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 1:22:27Robert Evans?

  Whatever you're doing.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  That'll be fine. Yeah. Whatever Robert Antichrist Evan says.

• 1:22:33Robert Evans?

  Here we go.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  If you're the Antichrist, stop Antichristing this minute. You got a foot bath going.

• 1:22:39Robert Evans?

  I would, I would be such a good Antichrist. Uh, yeah, but unfortunately Greta Thunberg took the job from me.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, she's pretty good too.

• 1:22:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  The podcast is over.

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedi.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

• 1:23:19Robert Evans?

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• 1:23:52Speaker 06

  Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field. I'm Nicole Auerbach.

• 1:23:56Speaker 07

  And I'm Joshua Perry.

• 1:23:58Speaker 06

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  From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the stories shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football.

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  Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered. Watch Rushing the Field on NBC Sports now.

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