Part One: Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ

Robert sits down with Sarah Marshall to discuss just what Peter Thiel believes about the antichrist and who he thinks is destroying the world. (2 Part Series) 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.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert Evans is still waking up, still kinda hungover, uh, which I know I've introduced like a third of our episodes that way, and it might lead some of you to wonder, does Robert have a problem? And the answer to that question is no, I have a solution. Sophie, how are you doing today?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm in pain, but my best friend's here, so.

• 0:27Robert Evans?

  That's a win.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  And you, my other best friend. I have two. I have two.

• 0:33Robert Evans?

  It's okay. I know where I stand. I know where I stand.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:36Robert Evans?

  Sarah Marshall, welcome to the show.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Hello, Robert. A pyramid is the strongest shape, or well, I guess a triangle, but a pyramid if you're in marketing. Um, I, Sophie, I'm so happy to be here with you, my legend, my queen, and Robert, you, uh, a guy who is also here. I'm just kidding.

• 0:57Robert Evans?

  Thank you.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  You're also a legend. I think of you every time.

• 0:59Robert Evans?

  What an honor.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  I see a goat.

• 1:01Robert Evans?

  And that's how you see a goat. Okay. That's good, because there's a lot of those out there. You, you and Sophie were talking about your beautiful friendship, and I, it made me think about the differences between like, deep male and deep female friendships, because when I was thinking back to my stories with my best friend, it's all the different times that Lenny, either I puked on Lenny, or Lenny puked on me. Uh.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  I have one of those stories, but only one. Yeah. Well, no, I have two. I have two. Anyway, but.

• 1:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that's good. That's a good number. That's a good number.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, I mean, what do you, what do you think that you're kind of, the stuff of your intimacy with your male friends is about?

• 1:47Robert Evans?

  Uh, I don't know. You know, honestly, I think a big part of it's just male or female friends is just that kind of, that kind of bone deep trust where you feel as comfortable with another person as you do, like, feeling alone on your couch. Uh, I would say that's about the highest level of intimacy in or out of a romantic relationship that exists.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Just, just to say, Robert, I would love to puke on you.

• 2:10Robert Evans?

  Thank you, Sophie. That's very sweet.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  It'll happen one day. You guys just keep putting in your hours.

• 2:16Robert Evans?

  I've avoided puking on you for the same reason. I've had, I think I've puked on more people than the average person. The most at once was like nine. Um, but yeah.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Wow. The most at once.

• 2:29Robert Evans?

  I'm proud of that. It took some work. It took some work and elevation.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  I like to stay in and, you know, watch the Drew Carey show. So I don't get the opportunity as much. It's a great shame.

• 2:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I, you know, now that you think of it, I've never puked on someone while watching the Drew Carey show. So there may be a cause of effect.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Speaking of great shows, I would like Sarah to plug her new show for our audience.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  I have a show to plug. And Sophie, you have been such a help to me in my show advertising tour. Um, going hither and yon, ringing my cowbell, telling people about my new show, which is called The Devil You Know. It's from CBC Podcasts. It features such iconic performances as our dear friend Jamie Loftus performing the book Michelle Remembers.

• 3:25Robert Evans?

  Oh my God. Yeah. That's a win.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  That just needed to happen. And now it's happened. And it's also, you know, an attempt to kind of tell the story of the Satanic panic and its initial spread in the eighties. It's sort of long shadow in the nineties and how it came back in a way that suggests it never went away in the present day by talking to individual people whose lives were dramatically affected and often, you know, pretty much destroyed by it. And, but, and yet it's also, I think, not that depressing.

• 3:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Really want to emphasize that.

• 4:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I've had an argument with a friend about like, uh, whether or not like, cause his argument was that Kissinger's diplomacy was the, the book that you needed to read in order to really understand like American statesmanship. And I was like, no, it's Michelle Remembers. That's the book you need to read if you want to understand how politics works in this country.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  You know, you said American Suh, and I was like psychopaths. No. Okay. Weird. I thought, I think that, yeah, I think that's true. And it stands to reason that the book that explains America is Canadian.

• 4:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yeah. Often is, this is the case. Often that's the case.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  I would love to hear your thoughts on Michelle Remembers because it's a book that like defies description, you know?

• 4:46Robert Evans?

  I mean, it's a, it's a book that I think says a lot about how irrationality can be foundational to a lot of people's fundamental beliefs about how the world works. Like it's, and it's also a book about how, I mean, the story of the book and how it became popular and what happened like to it during its creation is incredibly relevant for like foundationally, how everything from like reality TV to like modern politics works in this country. Like it's the story of a fantasy overtaking reality in the minds of tens of millions of Americans, based on nothing but like, oh, I'd rather believe that there's that satanic pedophiles

• 5:30Robert Evans?

  run the country than anything else.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, one of the things we're trying to get at and which is, you know, kind of this enduringly fascinating thing of like, why, why did people, why did it feel less scary in a way to believe in what was seemingly the scariest thing possible?

• 5:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And there's, you know, that's actually very relevant to what we're talking about today. All of this, both, both how irrationality and fantasy become like the undergirding aspects of people's understanding about reality and how about these things have come to completely dominate US politics and culture because they primarily, primarily because they dominate the thinking and the rationality of the power elite in this country. And that's why today, you and I, Sarah, are going to be talking about Peter Thiel's weird obsession with the Antichrist.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Oh my God. Oh, this is amazing. Wow. Cause I know that he's a handful and I feel like I've heard probably from Sophie that this exists.

• 6:29Robert Evans?

  He's a bushel and a peck.

• 6:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  I'm so excited. Is Peter Thiel, is this the guy who took down Gawker all by himself?

• 6:39Robert Evans?

  He sure did. This is the guy who funded, well, with Hulk Hogan. Hulk was a load bearing part of that.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  He got Hulk Hogan to Hulk out all over Gawker and journalism and free speech. So that's nice.

• 6:54Speaker 03

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• 6:59Speaker 04

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• 7:29Robert Evans?

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• 8:00Speaker 05

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• 8:34Robert Evans?

  So, we've done a two-parter on Peter about his, like, life and background, but this is the guy. He's the co-founder of PayPal. He actually is the guy who kind of like orchestrated Elon Musk's ouster from the company, and they were at odds. Now they're friends again. It's a beautiful story, you know?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  I'd watch an HBO original movie about that. That would be like a six out of 10, you know?

• 8:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Starring Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Strong.

• 8:59Robert Evans?

  Oh, I was gonna say Jared Leto for both of them.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Oh, that works, too.

• 9:03Robert Evans?

  He's the only man upsetting enough to play both those guys.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  It'll make test audiences puke.

• 9:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  On each other.

• 9:11Robert Evans?

  Poor Jesse Eisenberg. I realized the other day, because I saw him in that Kieran or Rory Colkin, which one of the Colkins was in the movie with him.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  You're in.

• 9:21Robert Evans?

  Karen Colkin, and he was good. And I was like, oh, I've hated Jesse Eisenberg for years. I guess because he just did a good job of playing Mark Zuckerberg. Like, I think I just hated him because he did a job well.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  He really did, though. But the thing is, he kind of always plays guys who you're like, hmm, no, get away from me.

• 9:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you don't seem safe. Like, I'm watching my drink around you, Jesse Eisenberg. What you get? I don't think real Jesse Eisenberg has earned that kind of suspicion.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Biggest of his characters. You're like, look, it's not to be rude, but I'm gonna be a little rude. It's fine.

• 9:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah. You upset me on some fundamental level. There's something, something wrong in the pit of your soul, Jesse Eisenberg. And I'm glad you've been able to turn that into a career.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Characters. Yeah.

• 10:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah. You're not welcome in my house.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Good for him. Wow, guys.

• 10:08Robert Evans?

  Sorry if you're listening to this podcast, Jesse Eisenberg.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  We're really taking no prisoners. This is, you know, you have to be provocative in today's political wins, and we're doing it.

• 10:18Robert Evans?

  You have to be ruthless to get into the mood to talk about the things Peter Thiel believes about the world. Because despite being an aspiring immortal CEO king and one of the major patrons of the modern far right, and the guy who got J D Vance's career started, you know, he funded his, his campaign, he funded, he's, he's his mentor. Despite all of that, Peter Thiel-

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Imagine being that guy's mentor. You're like, hey, buddy, you killed the Pope and your face still looks like a catcher's mitt?

• 10:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  No, it's fine.

• 10:47Robert Evans?

  Still doing good?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Why don't you have an apple juice or an applesauce?

• 10:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, why don't you sit down over here next to me? Uh, yeah, despite, I mean, maybe or because of-

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Sarah, you made a sports reference. That was so beautiful.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Oh, catcher's mitt. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, that, that's kind of a classic MST 3K descriptor of like, I don't know, a Robert Zadar type. I will-

• 11:10Robert Evans?

  Ah, Robert Zadar.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Do all the baseball references I can. Robert Zadar. Ooh, Z no.

• 11:15Robert Evans?

  The kids don't know Robert Zadar, you know? I'm glad, I'm glad we do.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Kids, look up Robert Zadar. It's spelled how you would think. Z apostrophe D A R. Obviously.

• 11:23Robert Evans?

  And, yes, he had a condition. That's why his face looked like that. And it's often fatal. But in his case, he was like, right in the sweet spot where it just made him an incredibly in-demand character actor during the 1980s.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. He played a lot of alien prison guards.

• 11:39Robert Evans?

  Lot of alien prison guards. Yeah. Anyway, Robert Zadar, not much to do with Peter Thiel, but the other stuff we were talking about does.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 11:50Robert Evans?

  I've got back and forth in my studies on Thiel, and I think in the biographical episodes we did about him, I concluded he's one of the very few of these guys who like scares me because of how intelligent and disciplined and patient and competent he is. And the fact that disciplined intelligence and patience with him are married to like 30 million billion dollars in net worth, right? Which is a dangerous mixture for a guy who thinks democracy should come to an end and is actively working to further that goal. This week, I think I have to make a mea culpa because I don't entirely agree with that anymore.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Oh, that's exciting.

• 12:26Robert Evans?

  I may have overestimated his intelligence and cunning, which I don't, he's still a dangerous man, right? I think he's out of his mind and I think he's out of his mind in part because he's not as smart as certainly he thinks he is. And not as smart as maybe I thought he was. And you know, it's tough for me to tell entirely what's going on here. But I've become increasingly convinced that he's like unwell in a way that's leading him, that's made him less functional as a person. And I kind of think this Antichrist obsession is an example of that because this is, it's very disordered thinking that you see when you like,

• 13:07Robert Evans?

  listen to him try to explain his beliefs, which I'm going to do to you. I'm going to try to walk you through everything. He recently did a four day lecture series, laying out his theories on the Antichrist. There've been articles about this. Yeah. If you're reasonably online, you might've seen something about this because the lectures weren't public, but they were publicly advertised. The page for the registration for these lectures is still up on some service called Luma, that I'd never heard of before this, but it was, it was at the, in the Embarcadero in San Francisco. On September 15th was the first of these and it was called the Antichrist, a four part lecture.

• 13:48Robert Evans?

  And the picture of this is just like Peter Thiel from 15 years ago. Underneath the logo of the group that supported this speech, the Act 17 Collective. It's weird how young Sophie can pull up that and then like a modern day photo of Peter Thiel. It's just like.

• 14:06Robert Evans?

  For it, it's fitting, I guess, for a guy whose most public obsession is with living forever. But yeah, uh, so the event summary reads, you are warmly invited to a series of four lectures by Peter Thiel, addressing the topic of the biblical Antichrist. Peter is a technology entrepreneur and investor who has spent much of his career writing and speaking about how his Christian faith informs his understanding of the world. His remarks will be anchored on science and technology and will comment on the theology, history, literature and politics of the Antichrist.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  I have 2025 Peter up on the screen for you, Robert and Sarah.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna say it, last place in the Katie Lang tribute competition.

• 14:50Robert Evans?

  That's a fair comparison, Sarah.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  And I love Katie Lang. That's not the point here. Yeah.

• 14:56Robert Evans?

  No, and I love Peter Thiel, you know?

• 14:59Speaker 02

  And I mean, certainly the Lord loves him, but maybe not anybody else.

• 15:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I don't know about the Lord, but yeah, possibly, possibly.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  If I were Jesus, I would simply be looking at a lot of people who talk about me a lot and being like, I don't know you. Please stop implying that we're friends. This is, I'm sending you a cease and desist.

• 15:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, it's gotta be like, I'm sure you've experienced the same thing. Like when you get like a degree of fame, every now and then you'll meet fans who will like talk about something you did that meant something to them. And the way they will explain it is like, that doesn't sound familiar to me at all. That's what you took out of that? That's not what I meant in any way. Can I, do I say that to you? Do I say like, oh no, that had nothing to do with, like you've read in something completely absent there? Or do you just like smile and nod?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  People think I often or remember me saying something that I feel like is smarter than I said, because I don't know it any longer. But then you're like, did I know it at one time? And then I said it and then I forgot it? Or are they confusing me with some other show they listened to that same day? It could be that too sometimes. It's very interesting.

• 16:15Robert Evans?

  I've seen it all happen where it's like, no, that was a guest who said that. And you just like transposed it to being me.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Thanks for giving me credit. Yeah, I was, I've been listening to Simpsons commentaries. And one of the things the writers kind of consistently talk about is like, who wrote that? Was that your joke? Was that my joke? I can't remember. Or like someone being like, I love that joke in that episode you wrote. And they're like, I didn't write that joke. Yeah. I love that that's kind of a consistent thing. Yeah.

• 16:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, this is my favorite thing you did. Well, I didn't.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  You're like, but I had, I was near it and I, I was around. So yeah, I was in the room.

• 16:49Robert Evans?

  I was in the room when that joke was made. Absolutely.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  I midwifed that joke.

• 16:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I provided moral support to the birth of that joke.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:59Robert Evans?

  So this summary of Peter's lecture on the Antichrist goes on to note that Peter's thinking about the Antichrist, beliefs on this subject, draw from the work of several prominent theologians and philosophers. These include Renee Girard, Jonathan Swift, and former Bastards Pod alumni, Carl Schmidt. Now, if you haven't listened to those episodes, I would recommend listening to the Carl Schmidt episodes. The gist of it is Schmidt was a right wing political philosopher. And when the Nazis came to power, they basically called him up and said, hey, you're writing the just of the edu, the educated justification for why Nazism is good. Like that, we need you to come in and do that. Right?

• 17:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's not great. And Schmidt was a perfect fit for this job because his earlier work had been a huge influence on a lot of prominent Nazis. So he helped influence the Nazis and how they took power. A big thing he wrote about was how to use effectively the creation of borders in order to destroy liberal democracy. Basically, his, his kind of, in a nutshell.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Seems to be working.

• 18:06Robert Evans?

  It does, it works very well. And he's the guy who, the, the, the basic idea was that like, anytime you, in every society, no matter how like liberal a democracy draws a line between like who are members of the community and who aren't, who is a citizen and who isn't. And wherever you find that line, anytime there's a border, that's the, the, the thing you can use to destroy that liberal democracy. Cause you figure out where that is and you start pushing it inward and you start trying to define other groups as not part of the community, right? Um, and that's kind of the fundamental weak point that all liberal democracies have. Uh, and it's, you know, it, it, in a way, it's kind of the, the, the

• 18:48Robert Evans?

  other side of the anarchist belief that like any border is, implies the violence of its maintenance, right? The existence of a border fundamentally implies violence because that's the only way to maintain a border. And what Schmidt was saying is the existence of a border is an opportunity to carve groups of people out of the body politic in order to gain authoritarian political power, right? That's Carl Schmidt, who Peter Thiel loves, uh, and sees as a big influence, right?

• 19:17Speaker 02

  So he's not being subtle about any of this. He's like, here are my top three influences. One of them helped the Nazis so much.

• 19:24Robert Evans?

  My, my, my buddies. Yeah. These are all my faves. Well, and it's the other guy that he listed there, Renee Girard is a, uh, I mean, neither of these guys are like exactly household names, but Girard, a big part of like his belief system, uh, was the idea of like scapegoating, right? And how like scapegoating works within, you know, and like why communities pick scapegoats and like how the whole process works. And that's also like a, a major influence on Peter Thiel, like that, which is, you know, not, again, if you look at the kind of politics, uh, like the right wing politics that he's supported

• 20:05Robert Evans?

  during like his lifetime, it, it makes sense that he finds these kinds of things influential. Like, um, so Schmidt's essential idea is that like when, once a human system- Society like has reached the level where most people's basic needs are satisfied. There's still like unmet desires, but people don't know like entirely what it is that they want, that they don't have. And so they engage in mimicry where they like look at what their neighbors who are doing the best have. And they they seek to they aspire to mimic the most impressive people in their society, right? And because people are never really satisfied and this memetic rivalry

• 20:49Robert Evans?

  never really leads, I mean, it's it's never something that you can actually like achieve or or like get the things that these unfilled desires can't really be met. And so people need like an explanation for why it doesn't work, for why they're not happy. And that tends to get channeled into a war of all against one via what Gerard called a scapegoat mechanism, right? And so these are the two huge like Schmidt and Gerard are the two huge like pillars of Peter Thiel's like personal philosophy. And one of the things Gerard believed is that Christianity kind of marks this turning point in human consciousness because like the crucifixion

• 21:30Robert Evans?

  narrative is fundamentally Jesus being murdered in an act of collective violence against a scapegoat, right? And so that like that's kind of this that Christianity leads this sort of epiphany by which human beings have started to realize that like the scapegoating rituals that we engaged in are wrong. And it's like a bad thing to do. And yeah, that's, that's, that's kind of where Gerard goes. Peter Thiel winds up taking this in some weird places, right? Where basically Gerard's attitude was that you have to reject scapegoating because like Christ's example is proof that it's

• 22:10Robert Evans?

  fundamentally evil and wrong. And Thiel's kind of interpretation from that is that you can't really avoid scapegoating like that's the inevitable path forward. And so it's kind of a thing you have to. It's a tool you have to make use of this like human need to scapegoat is a thing that you can use to drive politics. Essentially where Peter Thiel takes this guys because Gerard was not advocating that sort of behavior. Right, well, we're all watching that happen, you know?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's not to Dairy Queen, that's for sure.

• 22:48Robert Evans?

  No, so these are Peter Thiel's kind of favorite philosophers that have inspired his takes on the Antichrist. And unfortunately, full audio of these talks is not available publicly. Seven hours of so or so have been leaked to a couple of different outlets. I don't have them tragically, but we do have one attendee took word for word nearly notes of the first lecture, which got him kicked out of subsequent lectures. So we've got that and we've got articles that have summarized and quoted directly from Thiel in these lectures. So I feel pretty confident that I can explain what this motherfucker believes to the extent that it will ever make sense.

• 23:26Robert Evans?

  So before we get into that, we should talk about the group that funded this lecture series, which is the Acts 17 Collective. You would have seen that on the photo of Peter that we posted a little bit earlier, if you're watching it. The name of the Acts 17 Collective is based on chapter 17 of the Book of Acts and, you know, the Bible. And this chapter concerns.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  She said Bible, you said Bible, Sarah goes, heard of it.

• 23:53Robert Evans?

  Heard of it, heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you might, you might have caught this one. And it's the New Testament, which if you're not into religion, it's the aliens to the Old Testament's alien.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Oh, God, that's so true.

• 24:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, Jesus is sort of a Ripley figure. I think a lot of people have argued that over the years. He was clearly heavily inspired by Ripley.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, unless he's, yeah, there's a little bit of Newt in there too, though.

• 24:19Robert Evans?

  There's a little bit of Newt, sure, absolutely. I think the Apostle Paul is Hicks.

• 24:26Robert Evans?

  Generally biblical scholars agree that the Apostle Paul was inspired by Corporal Hicks.

• 24:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so chapter 17. There's a broad consensus. You have to really read the original Aramaic that aliens was written in to get a lot of that, yeah. James Cameron writes exclusively in Aramaic. It's a real problem for a lot of his collaborators. So Act 17, that the chapter that that's in concerns Paul and some of his companions on like a trip through Greece. They're not just in Greece, or they're not just in Athens, but it's like they spend a lot of time in Athens, arguing about religion with philosophers, right? They're going to these different markets and public places and synagogues, and they're talking to like educated scholars about religion to like argue that, hey,

• 25:16Robert Evans?

  Christianity is is a thing, basically. I'm Samir, I'm yada yadaing this a lot, but like, that's like-

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Hey, girl. Have you thought about Christianity?

• 25:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Have you thought about Christianity in like a logical and like like sense? Like, he's trying to make the intellectual, this is like, that's chapter is like Paul arguing and debating with a lot of intellectuals about his new religion, right?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  It's like Shark Tank.

• 25:43Robert Evans?

  Yes, it's like the Shark Tank part of the Bible. Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  It's Sarah said, "Hey, girl."

• 25:48Speaker 02

  You got a hey, girl.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  And I say, "Girl, whatever."

• 25:52Robert Evans?

  Is that a Shark Tank joke, Sophie? How am I supposed to get that?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  No, it's for the youth.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Ladies who peaked in high school on MLM Facebook 10 years ago, kind of a thing.

• 26:03Robert Evans?

  Oh, it is that.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  It's still happening, but yeah.

• 26:05Robert Evans?

  It is definitely that for Paul, where he's like sliding into the DMs of a friend from high school who happens to be like a rabbi, being like, "Hey, I'm doing this new thing. You want to hear about it? Can I get you to show up? Like, there'll be free makeup. We'll give you a free makeover. Talk about Jesus."

• 26:24Speaker 02

  There's gonna be snacks. We're gonna learn about leggings. Yeah.

• 26:28Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  And also Jesus. Yeah.

• 26:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Jesus wants you to sell these leggings. No, that is exactly what's going on, basically. And the Act 17 collective is inspired by this chapter dedicated specifically to spreading Christian doctrine to political and cultural elites in Silicon Valley, right? Which is why that chapter makes sense, right? Because Paul is kind of talking to these sort of intellectual elites. Act 17 is like, we need to be proselytizing not to the poor, not to the huddled masses, you know, not to the people that like Jesus talked to, but like the billionaires. We need to convert the billionaires.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  So it's the opiate of the few now.

• 27:06Robert Evans?

  Right, exactly.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  I mean, they are obsessed with not dying, so it does make sense

• 27:11Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  that they would be like, yeah, yeah, my immortal soul. Yeah, that's the ticket.

• 27:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah, flipping the chair around backwards. You kids are interested in eternal life, huh? I know a guy who offers eternal life. You don't even have to take your son's blood, Peter.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, you do have to take

• 27:27Robert Evans?

  Oh, not his son's.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  the son's blood.

• 27:29Robert Evans?

  The son, somebody's son's blood. That's right.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  That's a lot less gross. You just have a cracker and some grape juice.

• 27:34Robert Evans?

  That's right. And if you want to be immortal, listeners, whatever sponsor of the podcast comes on next will ensure that you never die. Just you, though.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Heard that.

• 27:48Speaker 04

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• 28:16Robert Evans?

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• 28:40Speaker 06

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• 29:15Robert Evans?

  Do ask. Your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term sponsor, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. Your mental health doesn't know it's World Mental Health Day. Stress does not politely wait until October 10th. Burnout does not RSVP. And your brain definitely doesn't check the calendar before deciding to spiral at 11:47 PM. Mental health is just a part of regular health. Therapy isn't only useful for big life choices. It could be a place to talk through smaller things. That work situation, taking up too much of your mental real estate or a relationship dynamic you can't quite name,

• 29:59Robert Evans?

  or simply the sense that something feels off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance who live outside the US? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/behind to explore your payment options. That's betterhelp.com/behind.

• 30:26Robert Evans?

  And we're back. I hope you're enjoying your new immortality. You know, you're gonna watch everyone that you love and care for die, everything that you care for end. Eventually watch the stars themselves wink out. But, you know, have fun with that.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  I didn't think it through.

• 30:40Robert Evans?

  You know, people never do with immortality.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Also, what about the scenario where if you're immortal and everyone else dies and then there aren't people to maintain nuclear reactors? And they all melt down and then the globe is covered in nuclear fallout? What are you gonna do then, Dracula?

• 31:00Robert Evans?

  I feel like I can maintain a nuclear reactor.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one in your area is gonna be... So you're gonna take care of the one in Washington. So we'll be okay.

• 31:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll, that'll be good. I mean, all that nuclear waste from the Hanford site's gonna poison all of the waters, but that'll happen anyway.

• 31:16Robert Evans?

  Good stuff.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  I mean, where else are we gonna get those albino gators or whatever they have up there?

• 31:20Robert Evans?

  Exactly, you know? Um, I assume that in a couple of generations, it'll be gator territory. The Pacific Northwest will warm up enough, finally, then I could have a gator farm in my yard.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  We were always meant to be gator territory, really.

• 31:34Robert Evans?

  Everywhere was. Everywhere was. Um, so yeah, the ACT17 Collective, dedicated to preaching to the most needy in our society, which is tech billionaires.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yes, well, they do have the heaviest hearts, I've heard.

• 31:49Robert Evans?

  Yes, in the Egyptian sense, yes.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:52Robert Evans?

  Um, it's funny, what I think is funniest about this is like, the ACT17 works perfectly as a name, like, you're referencing a part of the Bible that's relevant to what the group does, but they needed to make it into a acronym anyway, which I don't understand, because like, no, it already works, why would you make this an acronym? But they did, and so they've decided that ACTS also stands for Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  All right.

• 32:19Robert Evans?

  All right. Again, unnecessary, but I hope you're happy, I guess.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  You got a back then, Max, you know?

• 32:27Robert Evans?

  Sure, man.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Robert Evans?

  So the organization was founded by, or at least co-founded by Michelle Stevens. Um, and she, I mean, she was some sort of entrepreneur, she was involved in tech to some extent, and kind of did this after she left a company. Um, her husband Trey was one of the first, Trey Stevens, is one of the first Palantir employees, and now works for Peter's Venture Capital Fund as a partner. So this is a guy who was involved in Peter's military spying company.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 33:01Robert Evans?

  And also his VC fund, and it's his wife that founds the ACT17 Collective. And I found an interview with Michelle, where she explains how the group came about, and so this is their origin story, per Michelle. "By the end of 2023, my company was winding down, and my husband's 40th birthday was that November. I wanted to celebrate big. We invited over 220 of his closest friends to a three-day birthday party in New Mexico called The Roast, The Toast, and The Holy Ghost." On the Holy Ghost Day, we thought we'd have a sort of remixed church service. Wouldn't it be funny if we tricked a bunch of people into going to church? We served caviar bumps, breakfast pizza, mimosas and spiked coffee. DJ Canvas had come out with his crew to play a Saturday night set, remixing all of our beloved movie themed songs into a trap beat.

• 33:46Robert Evans?

  He also does this for Christian and worship music. He's got the best dance moves.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  No wonder nobody likes white people.

• 33:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that that made me cringe nearly to death. Sarah, I'm gonna be honest.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  It's also funny that they're like, isn't it fun and subversive to have caviar bumps? And then go worship Christ? And it's like, no, because like the whole problem in America arguably is that the prosperity gospel has taken over Christianity and it's no longer a moderating influence on capitalism.

• 34:19Robert Evans?

  Right? Yeah. And that the.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And also it's gross and silly to be doing that. It's gross. Stop it.

• 34:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's it's just deeply upsetting and it's this. It's this fundamentally poisonous thing that stands against most of what the religion has has at least publicly stood for over the course of like the history of the faith. Like it's it's fundamentally a heretical interpretation of Christianity, I think.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Right? Like if you take the the good parts of Christianity, which I feel like most people would acknowledge that there are like at least some some good ideas in there. Like one of the main themes is like, don't eat caviar off each other's hands while a huge percentage of the population is in dire poverty. That's like, it's one of the main.

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, you don't you don't have to like the religion to be like, okay, well, the one time that like literally God beat people up, it was because they were money changing in the temple.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:24Robert Evans?

  Probably shouldn't have money changers that probably shouldn't. He might not like money changers at all, actually.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  It's so funny. It's like.

• 35:31Robert Evans?

  Which is just what Peter Thiel and his friends do. That's what a venture capital fund is. They're changing money.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  And also PayPal, where you literally just move money around for a fee.

• 35:40Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it is really, it's just, it's fascinating. And it's like, what is it like to become enthusiastic about a belief system that your actual beliefs are pretty much contrary to, you know? I'm very curious about that.

• 35:57Robert Evans?

  That's, that's the thing. And the answer is you have to like remake the belief system into something that is not, does not familiar to most people who actually like are members of the faith. Like you have to create your own Christianity, which is what Peter's done. That's effectively what these Antichrist lectures are, is him reinventing Christianity for billionaires.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  So he's the Antichrist twist.

• 36:25Robert Evans?

  That is the twist at the end of this.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:27Robert Evans?

  Before we get to that, though, you have to hear a little bit of DJ Canvas.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 36:33Robert Evans?

  I, I just, I needed to, I tried, I, I didn't have the courage, the raw heroism to look at examples of his dance moves. So we're gonna have to leave those to our imagination. But I did find his Just Got Saved mixtape and Sophie's gonna play you like 15 seconds of that. So let's hear it.

• 37:13Robert Evans?

  There you go. See?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:15Robert Evans?

  Who wouldn't want to get down to that with Peter Thiel and a bunch of venture capital guys?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Thanks for that.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  The thing is, like, if, if I met, like, some, I don't know, 15 year old Bible camp goer who was like, I love this song. I would be like, that's nice. Good for you.

• 37:32Robert Evans?

  I don't care. Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. But that it's like, like so directly about this idea about, of like, being rescued from being one of the downtrodden. And it's like, you're the one who's treading on people.

• 37:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Everyone knows your name. You're one of the most famous people in the world. Like, you're all wealthy and powerful.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  You've got buildings with your name on it. I mean.

• 37:54Robert Evans?

  You have everything that you've ever wanted.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you don't need God. You are God in society as we have it set up, you know?

• 38:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And I also love that they're like, this music is just so bumping, it'll trick people into going to church.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  It's not gonna seem like Christian music at all. It's like, mm, yes, tricky.

• 38:13Robert Evans?

  I want you, the, the, the audience, to imagine you're at this birthday party. This guy is laying down what we, what we'll, we'll call it a beat, right? And people are dancing as well as you'd expect a bunch of tech elites to dance. And then, while this is all going on, Peter Thiel gets up spontaneously and in Michelle's words, quote, "gave a 55-minute lecture on forgiveness and miracles."

• 38:39Speaker 02

  No, no. God, it's like in Succession when you're like, why do these people keep throwing parties? They're so bad at parties. Just stop having them.

• 38:49Robert Evans?

  Is this even a party?

• 38:50Speaker 02

  You're too evil.

• 38:51Robert Evans?

  That's abuse to be. That's like torture. Like, the CIA didn't do that shit back during the fucking-

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Well, at the very least, it's, it's that timeshare thing, you know, where you just have to attend a short sales pitch.

• 39:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And I'm imagining too, like, the dawning realization, like, oh, wow, Peter's talking. I thought we were all dancing. Okay, he's probably just doing a little quick toast. No, no, he's not doing a-

• 39:14Speaker 02

  It's been like half an hour.

• 39:15Robert Evans?

  Not doing a toast.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  I actually have to go to the bathroom. Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 39:19Robert Evans?

  I need to get a drink, maybe do some caviar bumps. I don't know.

• 39:25Robert Evans?

  Michelle stated, "We were blown away. A lot of people were looking like he had tin heads. Like, what are you talking about?" And I'll believe that. I'll believe that being the response to this.

• 39:36Robert Evans?

  So she says the reaction was mixed. Some of her Christian friends were angry that she'd put a non-seminary-trained guy up and had him give a sermon that, like, this is heretical. He doesn't know what he's talking about. This is certainly not Christianity that he's ranting about. It's kind of weird that you did this to all of us. But she said some other Christian friends of hers were like, "You just tricked over 200 people into going to church, and that's good? We like it. We think that's great." And so this is the origin of the Act 17.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Anytime a boring guy forces you to listen to him for an hour, that is church.

• 40:11Robert Evans?

  That's church. Yes. This podcast has often been church.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Running into someone you kind of know. Church.

• 40:20Robert Evans?

  Church. That's a kind of church. Getting an Uber driver who just immediately starts talking for the entire drive about like his weird philosophical beliefs. That's a kind of church, you know? Thank you, Dale, for informing me about the dangers of vaccines. You know, I wouldn't have known without that ride.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's a big one. God. The important thing is that Peter Thiel has the freedom to express himself, which God knows he hasn't had access to in society before.

• 40:49Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes. Our, our culture has really cracked down on Peter Thiel's ability to, to express his beliefs to the world. And yeah, so the, the purpose of the Act 17 Collective is specifically to trick San Franciscans, who Michelle describes as one of the most unchurched cities in America, into going to church and becoming Christians, right? That's, that's what this group exists to do.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  They have unitarianism. That's enough.

• 41:14Robert Evans?

  Right. Unitarians are nice and not, not bigots. That's kind of the whole point. And these people want to be assholes.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Right. Oh, I see.

• 41:22Robert Evans?

  That's key. That's key. Because one of the most prominent members of the Act 17 Collective is Gary Tan, who is the CEO of Y Combinator, which is a tech startup incubator. He's hosted several Act 17 events in his home, which is a former church, including one with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger about the holy shift across life, AI, leadership, and faith.

• 41:48Robert Evans?

  And for an idea of some of the other things Gary Tan is into, I'm going to quote from a 2024 article in The New Republic by Gil Doran, which is writing about a Twitter rant that Tan went on January of 2024. Posting on X, formerly Twitter, "Tan wished death upon a majority of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Fuck Chan Peskin, Preston Walton, Melgar, Rone, and Safi Chan as a label and motherfucking crew," wrote Tan, "name checking Severn progressive supervisors in a hyper cringey attempt to adapt Tupac Shakur's hit him up to his drunken rants. Die slow, motherfuckers." For good measure, he posted a photo of his personal liquor cabinet. Its inscription, "Gary Tan, SF social media troll, Twitter menace." On his liquor cabinet, man.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Well, it's not like anyone in local office in San Francisco has ever been famously assassinated by a crazy guy.

• 42:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, that did really piss people off for that exact reason.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Very godly behavior.

• 42:49Robert Evans?

  Super godly, super godly. Now, another godly thing Tan did was fund the recall campaign against progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin. He also promised to wipe out supervisors who expressed worries about the safety of driverless taxis, telling them, "Your days are numbered."

• 43:07Speaker 02

  You know, if you use death threats all the time, it doesn't mean anything. Yeah.

• 43:12Robert Evans?

  Exactly. And it's very funny to be like, "You think these are unsafe? I'll kill you." And then like three months later, a cruise taxi pins a pedestrian and drags her across the pavement, which leads to Cruz losing its operating permit and receiving a $1.5 million fine.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yep. Although, which I'm sure they could afford.

• 43:30Robert Evans?

  I'm sure, but maybe they weren't super safe. Gary?

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Driverless cars don't kill people. I kill people.

• 43:37Robert Evans?

  That's right. Jerry Tan does.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 43:40Robert Evans?

  Tan had delete his tweets threatening city supervisors, as you brought up, due to the Harvey Milk of it all, right? Because a bunch of them received death threats after he threatened to kill them. Because he has fans who are, you know, assholes.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Jesus is like, "Leave me out of this one."

• 43:57Robert Evans?

  Right. Gary put out a statement directed by a crisis PR firm and said, "I am sorry for my words and regret my poor decision."

• 44:07Robert Evans?

  Tan is one of a chunk of wealthy reactionaries using their money to try to change progressive San Francisco into something of a haven for far-right plutocrats. He's a big network state guy like Peter Thiel. And, you know, the fact that the city's already very friendly to these guys doesn't matter because, again, It's really the thing Gerard picked up on, which is that once people have everything they need, they're still unhappy. And because that unhappiness fundamentally can't be dealt with in the ways that they try to, like the things that they think will make them happy, simply don't. They just find someone to be angry at. They need a scapegoat, you know? That's for Jerry Tan. It's the progressives in San Francisco. That's why Jerry's unhappy.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  And what they don't realize is there's a secret to happiness is small, achievable goals in a sort of vague, general progression. So, you know, you're like, I want to get better at baking. I want to make a bouche de Noël for Christmas. I'm going to spend three months developing my bouche de Noël skills. But instead, because they have no patience, they just want to destroy democracy because that feels like it would be faster. I don't know. I might, maybe it is.

• 45:19Robert Evans?

  Well, I think it's just because for these guys, there's so little that they can really say. There's nothing above them.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:25Robert Evans?

  There's no, they have all of the money. There's no one who can tell them what to do. So the only thing theoretically above them is the state. And so is the government. And so they define, and honestly, most of the government is in their pocket. Like, as a general rule, lawmakers are not anti-Silicon Valley billionaires. So instead, they pick like the thing they can't control, which is the small number of people who get elected like on progressive agendas, trying to fix problems. And those are the people who don't like, because those are the only people in politics who aren't going to pretend to respect you, to love you, right? Because they're kind of fundamentally in opposition to guys like you. And so you have to, that's who's responsible for all of the problems. That's who does everything wrong.

• 46:11Robert Evans?

  You know, that's why I'm unhappy.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Because someone's out there doesn't like me. Or is making my life marginally harder.

• 46:18Robert Evans?

  Respect me. Yeah, I mean, it's the reason why so many famous people lost their minds as soon as they got access to Twitter. Right? Is like being confronted with the fact that people dislike you and disrespect you. And that's just life.

• 46:32Robert Evans?

  Maybe you could be a better person, but like.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  You just normally don't hear about it in detail, you know? And so having the ability to reach for that knowledge. It is kind of, yeah, like a fascinating,

• 46:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  I don't know, experiment in terms of what would happen if people suddenly became telepathic, because in a way, people did.

• 46:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Especially Joyce Carol Oates.

• 46:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the, it's the same reason why, like, so many people high up in, like, our media class, like, the folks who write for the, like, columns for the New York Times, consider quote unquote woke-ism and cancel culture a bigger problem than any of the things that are actually going to kill them.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:07Robert Evans?

  Because, like, it's this, no, people, I, I went to Harvard or Yale or whatever, and my family name is this, and I have this fancy job, and people are calling me an idiot. They, that shouldn't be allowed. That's gotta be illegal, that they're calling me a dipshit for my dipshit opinions.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  And it's like, they were calling you an idiot before, you just didn't know about it.

• 47:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:28Robert Evans?

  You just, yeah, you, you couldn't see it, and people weren't sharing it 100,000 times.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, anyway.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  They're, they're a bunch of very healthy people, these, these billionaires. They're, they're thriving, they're doing great, yeah.

• 47:41Robert Evans?

  They're doing great, and they have now formed Act 17 because they want to establish a theocracy that makes it illegal to not like them or respect them.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 47:50Robert Evans?

  Right? That's the gist of the Act 17 collective, in my opinion. And obviously, as I noted, they were inspired by a rant Peter Thiel gave at a birthday party about Christianity, and so it's only fitting that they would host a four-part lecture series by him about the Antichrist. During the first of these lectures, Michelle Stevens, the founder of the collective, introduced Peter on September 15th by calling him "one of the great Christians of our time," as well as "one of the great capitalists."

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 48:19Robert Evans?

  Sure, those two things seem like they should go together. We're gonna start with the most detailed information of God, which is the, the almost word-for-word notes on lecture one, titled "Knowledge Shall Be Increased." Now, the attendee who published his notes on this lecture was the head of protocol research at a software company called Succinct, and his name is Shichi Kulkarni. And from what I can tell, Kulkarni is a fan of Thiel. I don't think he posted these notes as, like, a work of undercover reporting. I think he was just super enthusiastic and kind of ignored that the event itself warned people not to share and spread what they heard inside. Like folks weren't supposed to record this and stuff.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  He was like, he's just modest. It's so great. People are gonna wanna know.

• 49:03Robert Evans?

  People need to read this. Cole Carney was banned from listening to other lectures, but his notes are, as far as I can tell, from other reviews that include quotes from Peter Thiel, pretty close to one to one. So Thiel opens his lecture with a quote from the Book of Daniel. "But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, even to the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." And this is like talking about the end of days, right?

• 49:32Speaker 02

  But thou, O Daniel, shut up.

• 49:34Robert Evans?

  Shut up. Yeah, shut up, Peter. Thiel interprets this as Daniel, who he describes as a biblical historian, predicting that knowledge would increase vastly towards the end of time. And, quote, "As knowledge increased, apocalyptic fears would mount, leaving room for a tyrant to rise." There's a lot that's wrong with these few sentences. And like, first, I don't really, that's not the only...

• 50:01Speaker 02

  I think he got that from the omen.

• 50:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right. That's not really what Daniel's saying. That like, an increase in knowledge will increase apocalyptic fears, which will let a tyrant... Fourthly, that's not how the Antichrist comes to power.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a lot to get from the word increase.

• 50:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:19Robert Evans?

  Uh huh. You're reading a lot in there.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  And he's like, and that tyrant is me.

• 50:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. You'll be surprised at who he thinks that tyrant is, Sarah. I'm excited for that reveal. That's, that's gonna be really fun for you.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Sandra Lee, is my guess.

• 50:36Robert Evans?

  No, it's weirder than that.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Or de facto First Lady of New York, Sandra Lee. Just like to mention that.

• 50:43Robert Evans?

  No. Although he's probably, she's probably on his list. I'll give you that. Nice. Okay. We'll get to that. So the other thing that Peter says here that's really questionable is he describes Daniel as a historian. Like, in fact, he describes Daniel as the first historian, right? It's like the first person to really think of history in a modern way.

• 51:05Robert Evans?

  That's very silly. And it's kind of worth noting biblical scholars debate ferociously whether or not Daniel was writing reliable accounts of history, whether or not he was effectively trying to write a history, right? Because there's Right. the two broad interpretations of like how the book of Daniel was written. As one is the, the, the author, Daniel, had these experiences with he and his friends and chronicled them, right? That he's like writing an account of things that he saw and did. And he's including in there genuine prophecies that he made that were fulfilled in some cases centuries later, right? That's, that's the traditional interpretation of the book of Daniel, right? Modern biblical historians have pointed out that it, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that

• 51:49Robert Evans?

  the author of the book of Daniel was someone who would have been alive centuries after the actual biblical Daniel, and that the book of Daniel couldn't have been written contemporaneously, right? In other words, like, this is more of like a work of historical fiction than historical fact. It's kind of like one of the arguments. The real Daniel is supposed to have been a member of the Judean nobility, who was taken to Babylon during the Babylonian captivity and became popular at Nebuchadnezzar's court. He eventually became a dream interpreter and a prophet. And again, up until like the 19th century, it was widely agreed that this historical guy wrote the book of Daniel and filled it with prophecies he had at the time that were proven right later.

• 52:31Robert Evans?

  Now, there's a good write-up on the biblical hermeneutic stack exchange with citations, which summarizes the modern critical argument about Daniel. Quote, "The book of Daniel is replete with historical inaccuracies regarding the Babylonian and Persian periods, indicating it was written quite some time after those eras. Between this point and the independent nature of the court tales, the person of Daniel appears to be a literary fabrication, not a historical fiction." And hence not the author of the book. Davies, who is a biblical scholar, suggests that this Daniel character may not have been a well-known figure in Jewish culture before the book was completed. And Collins is one scholar to suggest the very name Daniel was chosen for the anonymous Jewish sage of the folklore out of the inspiration from the ancient sage Danil, mentioned by Ezekiel and Ugaritic texts, right?

• 53:16Robert Evans?

  So the likeliest and the thing widely believed by biblical scholars today is that this, because of some very fundamental historical inaccuracies in the book of Daniel, this was written later, and Daniel was never meant to be a real person, like the name was taken by an ancient sage.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, the same way that Benicula wasn't actually written by a dog.

• 53:35Robert Evans?

  Exactly, exactly. Well, there's a lot of scholarly debate about that.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Well, that's true.

• 53:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  But, you know.

• 53:41Robert Evans?

  I'm a believer.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  It feels like it's, to me, kind of the marker of a good historian to understand that people in the past also enjoyed using literary devices, you know?

• 53:52Robert Evans?

  Yes, and that, there's also this, it's weird to me how, despite how much some people who are religious emphasize the importance of faith, there's this idea that like, well, but no, if it's not literally Daniel that wrote this about his literal life, then that would be saying that the Bible doesn't have value. And it's like, well, why not? Like.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes it gets a little frilly, you know? It's, it's, it's a work of literature. Let them have their literary devices.

• 54:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It doesn't bother people with other kinds of literature that it's not literally true, that Aragorn, son of Arathorn, isn't a real historical figure. People have still changed their lives as a result of those books, you know?

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Right?

• 54:34Robert Evans?

  But I don't know, maybe they just don't have that much faith. And I guess Peter doesn't, because again, he always describes Daniel as absolutely the guy who wrote the book of Daniel and as a historian, as a real historian. And you know, he's real because he made predictions about the future that happened. And again, historians will say, well, because they happened before the person wrote the book.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  In the future.

• 54:55Robert Evans?

  It's like, if you, you could write a historical fiction about a guy who's a prophet and include a bunch of shit about World War II in your book set in 1910, that doesn't mean you prophesied World War II. You're just looking, you're just writing fiction, you know?

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Wouldn't it be great if some guy saw that coming? Yeah.

• 55:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  I mean, it's like, I don't know, and just any kind of nostalgia media like that 70's show where they're like, oh. Kids stop playing with the lawn darts. Isn't it funny that we know now what that's about?

• 55:25Robert Evans?

  How many kids they'll kill.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  In the time where this is set?

• 55:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Yes, this is, that's exactly what's going on in the book of Daniel. And speaking of lawn darts, this podcast is sponsored entirely by lawn darts. Lawn darts, aren't there too many kids in the world?

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Love Canal didn't get enough of them.

• 55:45Robert Evans?

  That's right.

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• 57:19Robert Evans?

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• 58:00Robert Evans?

  We're back. We're thinking about all the things that used to kill kids back before we decided to make the world safe. And, uh, yeah, now things are good. It's a safe world for children.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Things are perfect now. Yeah.

• 58:13Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  No complaints.

• 58:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Uh, that's why so many schools have metal detectors.

• 58:20Robert Evans?

  Great stuff. So I don't have, when it comes to the biblical scholarship, was the book of Daniel written by, I mean, I'm pretty convinced that it was written later and Daniel was a historical fiction and amalgam of different people and whatnot. But, you know, there's arguments scholars will make either way. What's interesting to me is that Teal doesn't reference these arguments at all. He doesn't even mention them, which I could, it could just mean that he has a strong biblical literalism stance and he disagrees with those takes. But the fact that he doesn't mention them at all, I kind of wonder if he just doesn't know, cause he doesn't actually like read curiously about stuff like this.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  I believe that.

• 59:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I could believe that he doesn't really care about scholarship on the Bible. He reads it and takes whatever is useful to him out of it and has no interest in what anyone else has said about it.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Well, and this feels like he's doing like his impression of a smart person. And I feel like a lot of people's smart person impression is like, I read the Bible and I figured out what it's about without the benefit of ever reading anyone else's thoughts about it ever. And it's like, that's not what intelligence is about. Intelligence doesn't mean that you never listen to anyone else for your whole life.

• 59:32Robert Evans?

  No, no, nor is it like, well, I assume this, the English translation of this has all of the, the context that's useful in understanding it historically, right?

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:43Robert Evans?

  There's no need to like, look back at the different ways that this is different, things have been interpreted, different translations, like, there's no value in any of that. They got it right with the King James Version. That's the official version now. God said so.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  This one I found in the hotel is gonna take me home. Yeah, and I feel like what people maybe who, I don't know, look down on scholarship as a pursuit, don't realize about it, maybe, and maybe disdain it because they understand this kind of collaborative quality to it is that anything you figure out in an academic setting, or really like any, you know, kind of real pursuit of, of learning and research is you're standing on the shoulders of everyone else who's thought about it and worked on it in the past. And there's, and you have a, you know, an awareness that you're only doing like, an extra little millimeter of, of progressing an idea.

• 1:00:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And that's also something a guy like Peter Thiel can't accept. Like, the collaborative nature of like, through which actual knowledge is built is fundamentally, that's why all these guys are so bullish on AI, is it's abhorrent to them that other people have thought thoughts that they haven't thought, or that they didn't think first, that they might not understand, you know? It's this, a healthy person understands, there's things that are beyond me, even if I'm very smart, I'm not smart in every area, you know? I, I think, I'm certain that like, Stephen Hawking wouldn't have like, gotten angry if somebody had tried to explain to him how like, oh yeah, your fridge is broken, Stephen, and this is what's wrong. Cause I doubt Stephen Hawking knew much about how refrigerators worked, right?

• 1:01:17Robert Evans?

  And I'm sure he was humble enough to be like, well, no, I need to get a repair guy.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Or someone's like, this is what happened on EastEnders for the past 10 years.

• 1:01:24Robert Evans?

  Sure. Or this is what this verse of the Bible, you know, how it was translated a thousand years ago. And so it might mean something different. Actually, intelligent people have a degree of humility in terms of the things they don't know. And I think to a guy like Peter Thiel, the idea that like, there might be anything important that he doesn't know is deeply offensive. And I think that's the Silicon Valley ideology in a nutshell.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Robert Evans?

  Which is why like, no, all that matters is what I know and what I can have this robot summarize. It can do everything else. Cause other kinds of knowledge than the ones I have, and other kinds of skill, aren't real knowledge or skill, cause I don't have them. That's my interpretation of Peter Thiel. You know, yours may, yours may vary.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Well, I guess like kind of toddler like anger at anything that eludes your grasp. So you have to kind of shrink the world to fit your own worldview.

• 1:02:13Robert Evans?

  And that's what he's doing with the Bible here because it's important to Peter that Daniel is a real prophet and a real historian because he interprets Daniel 12, four, which I quoted earlier as a prophecy. Now, this is the fact, the idea that like, oh, what he's saying is that knowledge increases, which leads to us expecting an apocalypse and that creates room for a tyrant. That's not really how the Bible foresees the Antichrist rising, you know? But apocalyptic fears have been with us as long as civilization, right? Like it's, it's, it's not a thing that starts with Christendom and it's not a thing that starts with Daniel. Right? The book of Daniel didn't invent apocalyptic beliefs.

• 1:02:55Robert Evans?

  And it's, it's one of those, you'll sometimes hear it claimed that prior to the year 1,000, Christendom was convulsed that like the last millennium, there were a bunch of specific fears that the world was going to end then. And this is actually not really accurate, but it's not accurate because people didn't really agree what year it was on a wide scale back then. However, as Peter Steinfeldt wrote in a 1999 article for the New York Times. So were there religious terrorists and overwrought expectations of the final judgment in the year 999? Absolutely. And also in the years 899, 1199, 1299, you name it. One might as well turn the question around and ask, how could it have been otherwise? Right? In other words, it wasn't so much that people were obsessed with the year 1,000.

• 1:03:37Robert Evans?

  It's that they, they have always, people did not widely agree on what year it was at all times in the past. But people have always expected the end of the world was around the corner. No matter what year they thought it was going to happen. That's just natural human nature, right?

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  It just makes sense. Well, and also, you know, not to, this is just me kind of guessing, but I feel like if you look at human history, there are plenty of civilizations that have ended, right? Or that have come very close to it through, you know, plague or being built next to a volcano or massive floods or whatever else. And so it feels like this, this idea of. Destruction that will eventually come for everyone.

• 1:04:18Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Is just something that you would develop as an idea based on what it feels like to exist as a human being.

• 1:04:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that makes complete sense. And like, it is this, like, you can't, how can you, how could somebody live through like, the, the Black Death and be in like, a city where 75% of the population dies? Like, that is an apocalypse that you've lived through. Just like, I mean, fuck, if you lived in Berlin in 1945, you're living through an apocalypse. Or Hiroshima, you know, like, that's an apocalypse. What else would you call that?

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  We create, yeah, humans create a lot of them, or witness a lot of them. And I do feel like post pandemic, I have this feeling of like, all right, we can have another of these. I don't know. Like, that's not unprecedented anymore. So what's next?

• 1:05:04Robert Evans?

  Honestly, might be nice. We all got a couple of weeks off last time, you know? Sure.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  We had, before we descended into, you know,

• 1:05:13Robert Evans?

  Things got a lot worse.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  More fascism for several years. We had a couple of weeks where things were really chilled. Yeah.

• 1:05:19Robert Evans?

  Really got to catch up on Netflix. Yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Made that dog go on a coffee.

• 1:05:22Robert Evans?

  Some good TV shows. Yeah.

• 1:05:26Robert Evans?

  So, in that article, Steinfeld goes on to quote Bernard McGinn, who's a scholar of medieval religion from the University of Chicago, who said, medieval folk lived in a more or less constant state of apocalyptic expectation. And if that sounds kind of chillingly familiar to you, it's because we haven't changed, really. We're the same as people back then, and we expect the world to end, just like they did, in some different ways, you know?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  And our tummy is hurt, for different reasons, and sometimes the same.

• 1:05:53Robert Evans?

  Some of the same, yeah. And obviously, there's different theories as to why do people always think the world is going to end? You know, you can, that, that's a, a lot of ink has been spilled on that topic. But I think it boils down to two factors, and neither of which really involves an increase in knowledge, like Peter is obsessed with. I think it, the two big factors, and number one, the apocalypse makes for good entertainment. People are interested in the idea of the world ending. And number two, it's less scary to imagine the world ending than to imagine yourself dying and the world going on, which is what will happen, right, to everybody?

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Robert Evans?

  And especially for a guy like Peter Thiel. Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Right. And especially if you're You know, an egomaniac who no one is restraining any longer. You're like, look, everyone has to go out with me ultimately somehow.

• 1:06:42Robert Evans?

  Oh, my God. I, I am certain that he would prefer a nuclear Holocaust to himself dying alone while the world continues, right? He would prefer his last years being in a bunker.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  Well, guess what, buddy boy? It's gonna be the second one.

• 1:06:55Robert Evans?

  God willing, you know?

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Robert Evans?

  I just hope those bunkers ain't deep enough. Or the security, their security guards will take him out, I'm sure. They haven't figured out the shock collars well enough. Now, that said, I will, I will acknowledge one thing that Peter says that I agree with is that I think apocalyptic fears have in the past and do today provide space for a tyrant to rise, you know? And one of the things that I think, I don't think Peter realizes, but is clear to me, studying his beliefs about the Antichrist, is that he justifies his yearning for a tyrant, his desire to end democracy and replace it with a dictatorship. He justifies that as the only way to stop the Antichrist and the end of the world, which is deeply anti-Christian, because Peter's whole idea, he's, he says he's a Christian.

• 1:07:40Robert Evans?

  He says, I am a believer that the Antichrist will come and bring about the end of days, but I also think it can be stopped, and that's a good thing, which is like, not the religion, my dude.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:07:54Robert Evans?

  Like, you can't stop the Antichrist.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Isn't it? Don't you kind of have to just go through the whole thing?

• 1:07:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's key. It's pretty important.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Right. It's like the last, you know, the, the final conflict of the movie. You can't just cut that scene out. Yeah.

• 1:08:10Robert Evans?

  And that's, that's important for you to understand is that Peter's belief is not the standard Christian apocalyptic belief that you've heard, even from like weirdo fundamentalist, you know, who believe in the rapture. Peter's is all of that except, but we can stop the bad stuff if we put the right dictator in today.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  It's actually amazing because he's made himself the main character of the Bible, which I haven't, I can't think of another person who's managed to do that. They usually stick with the characters that are in there.

• 1:08:37Robert Evans?

  Jesus did, you know?

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  And yeah, and like, you know, and people, you know, we're very familiar with people using Jesus as a proxy for their own desires, but to actually write self-insert Bible fanfiction.

• 1:08:52Robert Evans?

  It's stunning. Yeah.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's stunning.

• 1:08:56Robert Evans?

  It's really, it's really some impressive stuff. And it's very funny. We're barely into Peter's, like, the first episode of Peter's speech. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read for you now. It started with him quoting that passage from the book of Daniel. Here's the second paragraph of his speech. "In late modernity, such worries of the apocalypse are unfashionable, and the Antichrist is a forgotten figure." And I'm sorry, I lied. We couldn't get through the whole paragraph, because that first sentence, like, what world are you living in, man?

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  I know. Have you seen movies? Where have you heard of the Antichrist, Peter Thiel? It was probably growing up watching The Omens during Gregory Pack, just like everyone else did.

• 1:09:34Robert Evans?

  Have you talked to a person? Yeah. And this is a load-bearing belief of his that churches don't talk about the apocalypse or the Antichrist anymore. What are you talking about?

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Constantly.

• 1:09:45Robert Evans?

  Like, are you, how do you think this? And just to add some polling data here, in 2013, the Public Policy Polling conducted a series of a survey on conspiratorial beliefs among American voters. 13% of respondents in 2013 believed Barack Obama was the Antichrist. Another 13 were unsure. And 73% stated they didn't think Obama was the Antichrist, but all of them were aware of the concept of the Antichrist, Peter.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:10:17Robert Evans?

  This isn't new. Yeah.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  It's, yeah. It's Satan's kid, you know? It's really.

• 1:10:23Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  It's Little Nicky.

• 1:10:25Robert Evans?

  It's his, it's his, you know, look, if Satan is Francis Ford Coppola, the Antichrist is Nicolas Cage, who also would be a good pick to play the Antichrist. I'm just saying.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, yes. That has to have happened in 1994, and we forgot about it. It better.

• 1:10:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah. We, it just skipped us by. I watched him play a surfer recently. Not a great movie.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:10:48Robert Evans?

  Um, not a great movie. Sorry, guys.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  That's what I appreciate, that Nicolas Cage will, I apparently can't say no, you know? They're just like, will you be in this really inappropriate role? And he's like, yes.

• 1:11:00Robert Evans?

  He's also an Australian in that. And they just explained it by being like, oh, we moved to America when California when I was young. It's like, I don't, you still don't really sound Australian to me, Nicolas Cage.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  All right, Mel Gibson.

• 1:11:14Robert Evans?

  But also, I will watch you do anything for roughly 90 minutes. So I guess I'm the fool here.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  And often an additional 30.

• 1:11:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, some, many cases more than that. So I'm going to actually read another paragraph. Peter said, this time you'll get the whole paragraph, but it's just as insane. And so like, hold your, hold your questions till the end, Sarah, but I know you're going to immediately have them. Our universities tell us that fears of the apocalypse are irrational and that the world is simply getting better. And yet our news tells us otherwise. We are worried about existential risks from AI, bioweapons and nuclear war. How can we understand our apocalyptic time? And like, what universities are you, you think college professors are telling all their kids the world is always getting better? And that's what, like, who, where, what are you basing this on? What college classes?

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  Maybe he read Candide and he was like, so that's what they do in college.

• 1:12:11Robert Evans?

  That's what professors must feel all the time.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  Famous in college, you spend four years with people saying, everything's fine. Don't worry about it. Don't even think about it. It's great.

• 1:12:20Robert Evans?

  That's what's so weird to me about this is that like Peter hates universities in the standard right wing way. So I'm not surprised that he's critical of professors, but the standard right wing critique of professors in the university isn't, they think the world's getting better.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:36Robert Evans?

  It's that like, all of these leftist academics are telling everyone capitalism is fucked up and the, and the climate change is, it's the opposite of that. That's such a weird thing for you to say, being you, Peter.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  It feels like kind of classic, like freshman comp writing where you're like,

• 1:12:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  I'm going to invent a, a problem that doesn't exist in order to justify the importance of my position. And it's like, all right, you just made that up, but whatever, fine, keep going.

• 1:13:04Robert Evans?

  And it's like, yeah, like, I get that you're, you can, you're creating straw men, but like, you're creating conflicting straw men, like your straw men aren't internally consistent, which is kind of weird, right? Um, anyway, uh, after this, Peter goes on to state that the apocalypse is not a fixed date on a calendar, uh, and he briefly summarizes the hilarious history of people trying to predict the end of days. Then he writes, "Still, if the day and the hour remain hidden, perhaps we may at least suspect the century." Now, I would argue this is just as delusional as trying to predict the day of the apocalypse, but it is much smarter from a gambler's point of view. And Peter Thiel is a degenerate gambler, right? Like, you got a lot of space to be wrong if you're just like, "Oh, it'll happen sometime in the 21st century," right?

• 1:13:49Robert Evans?

  Like, that is the smart play.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  You'll be dead before people know you're totally wrong. Yeah.

• 1:13:54Robert Evans?

  Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, now, next, he tells his audience that if we are to take the Antichrist seriously, and again, for Peter, the Antichrist and the apocalypse are both synonyms, we have to ask four questions. These four questions are: What is the Antichrist's relationship to Armageddon? When will he arrive? What is his relationship to Christ? And who is the Antichrist? Now, Peter's selective reading of scripture concludes that the Antichrist is the final antagonist before the revelation of Christ and Armageddon, quote, "The beast of the sea heading a world government. He will come after many forerunners and will deceive the faithful by appearing more Christian than Christ." Now, for that last question,

• 1:14:36Robert Evans?

  who is the Antichrist? Peter notes that the Antichrist, depending on who you listen to, could be a single person, or a system, or a type that repeats across history, right? Uh, and next, he has a digression where he claims that David, from the Bible, was the first real historian, quote, "Because he foresaw a one-time sequence of world empires, whereas classical historians like Thucydides saw only cycles." Quote, "Athens versus Sparta, Germany versus Britain, and China versus America were one and the same. They were just steps in an eternal recurrence." And I know there's a lot that's wrong there. We'll get back to the Antichrist stuff, but I have to correct Peter's talking about history, because this is not fair to Thucydides, or to classical thought, and neither, nothing

• 1:15:20Robert Evans?

  he's saying here is like, accurate historiography, right? Classical thinkers did talk about the cyclical nature of history, like Thucydides talked about that, but he wasn't saying that like, history is trapped in these like-

• 1:15:35Robert Evans?

  Like cycles of like, it's the same thing happening over and over again. He was making the same observation modern people do looking at history, which is that like, oh, people make the same mistakes a lot, huh? Like, there's a lot of similarities in history that rhyme because we keep fucking up in similar ways.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:52Robert Evans?

  I'm gonna, here's a quote from Thucydides himself, just to make that point. If my work is judged useful by any who shall wish to have a clear view, both of the events which have happened and those which will someday, according to the human condition, happen again in such and such like ways, it will suffice for me. So Thucydides is saying, my work is a success if it leads people to understand the human condition and the patterns that we go through as people, right? Like, the patterns in history is a result of the human condition. That's a very, like, modern thing, really, in a lot of ways. And I think is actually, comports pretty well with modern historiography, which is like, the exact same things don't repeat, but people make similar choices historically in similar situations. And that's why you study history?

• 1:16:35Robert Evans?

  Like, I actually think Thucydides is saying something timeless here. And Peter is saying that, no, no, no, this guy is, this is a classical person who's trapped with, like, a very limited view of history that's fundamentally wrong. Because he doesn't believe history can progress, you know? Which is not what Thucydides is saying. He's making a point about human nature.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  He's got to create another meaningless straw man in order to make his theoretical point, yeah.

• 1:17:00Robert Evans?

  Yes, in part because Daniel has to be the first real historian, you know?

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Because historians predict things that haven't happened yet.

• 1:17:08Robert Evans?

  Right, that's what being a historian is.

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  Robert, Robert, my question is, do we have any, from your, from the source, do they say, like, how the audience is reacting to this, like, 55-minute thing?

• 1:17:21Robert Evans?

  They seemed engrossed from the reports I've heard, like, mostly interested. People kept showing up. I don't know, I don't have the audio, so I can't hear, like, what the reaction was. Was there a lot of applause? Was it all people being polite to Peter because they work in his VC fund? These are the unknowns, you know, to me. So I can't answer that question accurately, Sophie, but it's a good question.

• 1:17:44Robert Evans?

  So Peter, his justification for why Daniel was the first real historian is that Daniel was the first historian to realize that world empires would all fall in succession, leading ultimately to the end of the world and the coming of God's kingdom.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:18:00Robert Evans?

  Now, Daniel, I mean, he made a, that's kind of what he predicted, but not in a way that's accurate to modern history, because, and this is critical, Sarah, Daniel prophesied four earthly kingdoms, rising and falling in succession, and then after those four kingdoms rise and fall, we'll get the end of days in God's eternal kingdom, right? And the first, we know what the kingdoms were. The first was Babylon, which did indeed rise and fall. The second was Persia. The third was Greece. Some of what Daniel wrote is often seen as him having predicted Alexander the Great, although, again, it was written after Alexander's time, probably, right? Probably. And then the fourth kingdom that rose and fall was probably Rome, right?

• 1:18:45Robert Evans?

  That that's what Daniel was prophesying. Now, if you're a history know-.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  You know, TikTok.

• 1:18:50Robert Evans?

  Right. You might be saying at this point, I feel like there's been a lot of empires since the Roman Empire fell.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. It feels like, the Ottoman Empire springs to mind.

• 1:19:01Robert Evans?

  Sure. That's a good, the British Empire.

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a big one.

• 1:19:04Robert Evans?

  The American Empire, you know?

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yep, falling as we speak.

• 1:19:07Robert Evans?

  Obviously, the Canadian Empire, the most powerful and evil of them all.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, the seed of global Satanism, according to Michelle Remembers. So there you go.

• 1:19:16Robert Evans?

  Yes, yes. And anyway, Peter's stance seems to be that, like, Daniel was right, but that, and again, Daniel is literally the guy who wrote the Book of Daniel and literally historian, but also the four kingdoms thing was figurative, right? He wasn't literally talking about the actual historical empires he was talking about.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  It's figurative when it helps my argument.

• 1:19:39Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:19:41Robert Evans?

  Which is the only way, because like, again, he missed a lot of history after the Roman Empire. In between that and the apocalypse. And as a result, I might suggest that like, well, Daniel clearly didn't foresee anything past the Roman Empire in terms of empires rising and falling. Maybe Thucydides' way of looking at history, you know, seeing patterns of human behavior and seeing how they influence historic events, rather than trying to predict specific events. Maybe that's a more productive way to look at history. Maybe Thucydides was a better historian than Daniel.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  No, the correct way to look at history is self-insert fanfiction. We've been over this.

• 1:20:17Robert Evans?

  That's right.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Make yourself the most important character in history. Why bother studying anything if you can't be the main character of it?

• 1:20:25Robert Evans?

  Right. I've always felt that way anyway, so thank you for like reinforcing my belief system here.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:33Robert Evans?

  Anyway, in his next paragraph, Peter continues to be dizzyingly wrong. "From 1750 to the early 1900s, technology accelerated at a pace that defies comprehension. In the 20th century, lifespans doubled. We moved faster physically. Steam engines led to automobiles and jet airplanes. In the 21st century, technology only means information technology. Progress in all other fields has halted. The question naturally arises, is the singularity in the past or in the future?"

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  He doesn't know what singularity means.

• 1:21:03Robert Evans?

  No, he doesn't. And he doesn't know, this is a very, if all you care about is like the consumer tech industry. It's a, I understand how your attitude could be, nothing is progressing, aside from information technology. Smartphones aren't really improving anymore. Tablets are kind, laptops, all of these things that used to be wildly different every year are only kind of a little bit different now with every new innovation. Progress has stopped. If you only look at technology and like gadgets a guy keeps in his living room or their pocket, I get how you might say that. And clearly, that's how Peter Thiel thinks about technology, because he's a terminal narcissist, right? Who can only see progress through the lens of the parts of the tech industry he makes money on.

• 1:21:46Robert Evans?

  But the idea that like, all other fields of scientific endeavor have stalled in the last couple of decades is insane nonsense. I mean, for example, mRNA vaccine technology advanced rapidly in very recent history, right?

• 1:22:04Robert Evans?

  That doesn't count to Peter for some reason.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  But you know, what does it matter if something advances if you can't make exponential profits off of it? Who cares?

• 1:22:13Robert Evans?

  Yep. Yep. And that's clearly what's going on here. I don't even know, like, should I, like, I have, I had a rant in here about, like, car tech, like automobile safety technology, just as like a point of how wrong he is. Because like, it's Matt, like, since the 1980s, like, there's a little bit of debate about this. But like, anti-lock brakes became normal in the 1980s. And kind of after that, you've started getting an increasing variety of like what are called advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS. This includes everything from like collision warnings to automated emergency braking and electronic stability control, lane assist, all that kinds of stuff. And like electronic stability control or ESC systems alone have been shown to reduce

• 1:22:57Robert Evans?

  single vehicle fatal crash, crash fatality chances by between like 40 and 56%. There's a 2017 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that shows that, like, some of these like, like rear braking systems have reduced rear end collisions by 27%. Like, the data overall suggests that like automated emergency braking with combined with a warning reduces rear end crashes by between 50 and 56%. And altogether, newer cars have something like a 50% lower fatality risk in crashes than cars built in the late 50s. This is a staggering degree of improvement, and a lot of it's occurred in the last like 20 years. Again, during this period of time where Peter, Peter's like, nothing's getting better. Well, a lot is.

• 1:23:42Robert Evans?

  It's just not what you care about. Like, yeah, we have kind of reached the apex of what a screen can do, probably. Like, you can't get-

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  But you know, that's fine. There's other-

• 1:23:52Robert Evans?

  There's other things.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Cancers to research, you know? We're still making headway in other areas. It's fine.

• 1:23:58Robert Evans?

  It's it's so weird to be like, well, TVs are as good as they're going to get. All the progress is halted now. There's no, nothing else.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  So we might as well give up, I guess. Yeah, I'm ready for the apocalypse if my TV is not going to keep improving.

• 1:24:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Can't make the images any smoother.

• 1:24:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it it's just really telling that like Peter's attitude is like only information technology is still advancing. And it's like, yeah, because that's the only technology you're looking at, right? You don't care about car safety. You don't care about any of these other fields.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  Well, if he's not paying attention to it, it doesn't exist, you know? It's like when a baby drops something.

• 1:24:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and there's a, there's a very funny, at this point in his write up, the he made of Peter's speech, cool Carney, the guy taking the notes includes a graph. And I, I don't know, I think that Peter's presentation had a graph like this. I don't know that maybe, but it's, it's so funny, Sarah. Look at this beautiful thing. There's, there's two graphs. One is labeled in the past and one is labeled in the future. And the one that says in the past shows the line basically going as an S curve, but like it's going rapidly up. Knowledge on the X axis, time on the Y axis, or did I fuck up the axes? And then it's showing, it's showing knowledge going up massively over time and then plateauing suddenly.

• 1:25:19Robert Evans?

  And then the one labeled in the future shows knowledge at a steady rate until it shotguns up rapidly over time. I guess that's Peter predicting that knowledge will.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  Can we see the raw data for these?

• 1:25:32Robert Evans?

  What is the data? What is knowledge based on? How are we defining knowledge? In the future, when?

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  How do we know? Why do we have a chart of the future? It's because he's a true historian like Daniel, who wrote the book of Daniel, duh.

• 1:25:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I love, I love fake graphs and this is a beautiful fake graph to me. It's perfect. I don't even know what you're trying to argue other than like AI will increase the rate of knowledge, maybe? It looks like that's kind of what he's trying to say, but he's arguing certainly that right now we're stuck. Like science is stuck, you know? And this is like the core of everything Peter believes and like why he is so supportive of radical political change is that he thinks it's death for the human race that science is stuck. And as a spoiler, the Antichrist is all of the anti-science people who want to stop AI research, who want to stop. Drilling for fossil fuels, like who wanted like that? That is his, his doom loop, right?

• 1:26:27Robert Evans?

  Peter says, quote, "We are running a Red Queen's race, working harder, running faster, yet standing still. Wages have stagnated, health is plateauing, and optimism is fading. Nixon declared a war on cancer in 1971, promising victory by the bicentennial in 1976. No president today would dare declare a war on Alzheimer's." And like, I mean, yeah, man, because we didn't, we didn't beat cancer in 1976, right?

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Nixon was very brave. Hey, if he hadn't got, if he hadn't resigned, maybe he would have cured cancer.

• 1:26:59Robert Evans?

  Sure. It's like, I don't know, man. Maybe the fact that this was a, didn't work last time is why presidents don't say shit like that anymore. Because it's like dumb.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  Because it's silly.

• 1:27:07Robert Evans?

  It's like dumb. It's a stupid thing to do.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  It's a grandiose and over the top thing to say. And I get that it's personally disappointing to you that the presidents don't act more megalomaniacal, but yeah.

• 1:27:19Robert Evans?

  It is also the idea that like, oh, wow. It's fun that he recognizes regular people, their wages are standing still, like things like quality of life increases have plateaued and things aren't getting better at the rate they used to. And yet my wealth as a billionaire has increased massively while like regular wages are stagnant. Rich people like me, the top 1% of the top 1% are getting a lot more. Hmm. Wonder if those are connected? I wonder if maybe all of the benefits that should be spread out throughout society in order to do things like increase life expectancy and increase average wealth and like ensure people are able to retire and all this stuff that, that translates to quality of life. I wonder if the fact that all that money is going to me has anything to do with this stagnation?

• 1:28:04Robert Evans?

  Nah.

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  No, Antichrist.

• 1:28:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah. In his next paragraph, Peter gets to the core of why he's so angry at science and academia. "Science once proud promised radical life extension. Today, the closest we come to mastery over death is legalized euthanasia."

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:28:20Robert Evans?

  And I, yeah, no?

• 1:28:24Robert Evans?

  Peter, that's not true.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  Like, he just, he just hasn't, he, I don't think anyone has given him feedback on this.

• 1:28:31Robert Evans?

  No, no. And it's like, yeah, this is very clearly a man without an editor, for sure.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  He needs an editor. He needs a producer. He needs a single person to say no, sir.

• 1:28:45Robert Evans?

  I feel like science never promised radical life. You probably read like an article and like, people where someone who wasn't a scientist talked about radical, or a grifter talked about radical and you bought it because you're not that smart. Maybe that's who promised radical life. I think some con man promised you radical life extension. And as you age and none of the nonsense you're doing really works the way it's supposed to, you realize you've been conned and you're blaming science as opposed to the grifters that you listened to and gave a lot of money. I think maybe that's what's going on, Peter.

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  And blaming science for your magical thinking not working as well as it used to. Yeah.

• 1:29:25Robert Evans?

  And also just like the closest we come to mastery of a death is legalized euthanasia. Again, like fucking, uh, the most recent vaccine technology leaps and like life expectancies have increased in a lot of ways for a lot of specific illnesses. There are a lot of new medicines that didn't exist 10 years ago, 20 years ago that exists now, exist now. And like, absolutely.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  Gene modification technology, you know? Yeah.

• 1:29:51Robert Evans?

  Like, I kind of.

• 1:29:52Speaker 02

  I realize euthanasia is exciting, but come on.

• 1:29:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah. There's a ton of medical improvements and even breakthroughs. Just none of them mean that you'll live forever because that's not possible, Peter.

• 1:30:03Speaker 02

  But basically he's like, science is in the dix and we might as well all kill ourselves. But wait, there's more.

• 1:30:10Robert Evans?

  But wait, there's more. It's like looking at, it's like looking at like the aerospace field and being like, there's been no progress in the last 30 years because we haven't developed faster than light travel.

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Because I didn't see it on TV, so I assume it didn't happen.

• 1:30:22Robert Evans?

  Right. But like planes are a lot safer. Like plane crashes are a lot rarer. Like, isn't that counted as an improvement? No, fuck you. We don't have warp speed. I'm angry. Um, yeah. Anyway, we'll talk some more about Peter Thiel and what he believes. And specifically, we're going to talk about who he thinks the Antichrist might be in part two. But this is part one. It ran a little long, but thank you, Sarah, for indulging me.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  Thank you. This has been a horrifying journey.

• 1:30:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah. How do you feel about Peter? He seems smart?

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  I feel like he's a tiny little baby and I can't wait to see him become even tinier before my very eyes next time.

• 1:31:08Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Robert, who is your Antichrist, Robert?

• 1:31:12Robert Evans?

  Who do I think the Antichrist is? Honestly, like Peter Thiel's not a bad pick. If you're kind of going though, with the more traditional view of like, it needs to be somebody who's like popular, who's like widely beloved, you know, by people who's able to like get a large following together. Uh, I feel like Mr. Beast.

• 1:31:33Robert Evans?

  I feel like Mr. Beast, very probable Antichrist. Yeah.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  I can see it.

• 1:31:37Robert Evans?

  There's nothing behind his eyes. We can all agree on that, right?

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  That black eye is like a doll's eyes.

• 1:31:47Robert Evans?

  And I, I'm glad that you brought up Jaws because I do think that the solution to Mr. Beast is the same as the solution to the shark in Jaws.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  Yep. Make him bite into an oxygen tank.

• 1:31:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I'm going to crowdfund a shitty boat, like not a good boat, like a fucked up looking boat that I've been living on for a while.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  It's named after the thing that almost ate you when you were younger. Or no, it's called the orc, I guess. It's named after the only thing that can eat the thing that almost ate you when you were younger.

• 1:32:14Robert Evans?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, that's going to be great. Anyway, if you haven't watched the original Jaws, go listen to Jaws. Plug your pluggable, Sarah.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, go listen to The Devil You Know. It's out right now from CBC Podcast. It's my new mini-series about the Satanic Panic and all of the truly wonderful people who got caught up in it. Um, and I was so happy to get to talk to you today about something that scares me so much more than any depiction of the devil. And I cannot wait to resume.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 1:32:49Robert Evans?

  All right, everyone. Part one is done. Go away for a while.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  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.

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