Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Podcast A Bastard with
Speaker 2: Robert Evans and Noah Shack. Noah, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: A good question?
Speaker 1: Mark?
Speaker 3: Good?
Speaker 2: Good question Mark?
Speaker 3: How good can one feel? In part four of the.
Speaker 2: Great Question?
Speaker 3: No, I feel great there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great question, Noah contributing writer at Rolling Stone, contributing
Speaker 2: editor at Wired. You did it. You did that, so sable.
Speaker 2: I did it last time, too unbelievable. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: think we should. I want to start here by saying, uh,
Speaker 2: there's yet another post on the one of the subreddits
Speaker 2: accusing now Garrison and me both of sounding like we
Speaker 2: always have a nasal infection and like, I'm sorry those
Speaker 2: of you who don't have a low grade sinus infection
Speaker 2: every year, but the rest of us have allergies. Robert's
Speaker 2: allergic to grass. The world is poisoned to me. I
Speaker 2: don't know what to tell you, Like I have eggs,
Speaker 2: I'm allergic to my own fucking skin. Get off, get
Speaker 2: off my back, thank you, thank you. Noah, it's true.
Speaker 2: My relentless toughness, Robert, Robert and.
Speaker 1: I are allergic to so many things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's us incredible. People imagine being being really like
Speaker 2: this is. This is I'm the person who has most
Speaker 2: been victimized by the Internet because of how people are
Speaker 2: to me about my nose. It's it's I'm the main
Speaker 2: victim of cancel culture.
Speaker 3: You know, are you in a bubble currently?
Speaker 2: I live in a bottle. Yeah. I have to like
Speaker 2: taze anyone who tries to get closer than ten feet
Speaker 2: from me because I'm just a fragile little flower boy.
Speaker 2: So I noted last episode that Peter was simpatica with
Speaker 2: the Bush administration when it came to surveillance. The only
Speaker 2: real issue with them is that they weren't mean enough
Speaker 2: to Muslims. In two thousand and seven, though, he gained
Speaker 2: another issue with the Bush administration, which was that, if
Speaker 2: you guys can remember back this far right. At the
Speaker 2: end of his last term in office, w announced massive
Speaker 2: support for a new immigration reform package, which today, unfortunately
Speaker 2: we would call like hopelessly live leftist right like the
Speaker 2: George W. Bush two thousand and seven immigration reform package
Speaker 2: is like so much more progressive than you could get
Speaker 2: away with now and part it included a path to
Speaker 2: citizenship for undocumented Americans. Bush's attempts to fix immigration as
Speaker 2: he saw it again. This was not seen as great
Speaker 2: by progressives in the day, but it's just kind of
Speaker 2: more than you could get away with. Now didn't work out,
Speaker 2: and it didn't work out because there's this massive ground
Speaker 2: swell of rage from the fight flank of his own
Speaker 2: party right that is furious that Bush is suggesting any
Speaker 2: mercy for people who had entered the country illegally. Teal
Speaker 2: saw this movement as promising, and he credited the failure
Speaker 2: of Bush era immigration reform on an unprecedented internet campaign.
Speaker 2: Teal money started to flow towards anti immigration organizations reaching
Speaker 2: people online was called. One was a nonprofit called Numbers USA,
Speaker 2: which argued that the US needed to reduce the number
Speaker 2: of immigrants allowed in every single year. Numbers USA was
Speaker 2: founded and operated by Roy Beck, who himself had once
Speaker 2: worked for a guy named doctor John Tanton, who had
Speaker 2: founded other earlier anti immigration groups. Beck had worked for
Speaker 2: Tanton's US Inc. That's the anti immigration organization for a
Speaker 2: decade and had helped Tanton organize a book They Vacation together.
Speaker 2: These guys are very close ideologically and personally. Now, once
Speaker 2: Roy starts his Numbers USA foundation, which is backed by
Speaker 2: Peter teel. He starts to downplay his relationship with Tanton
Speaker 2: because John Tanton, in addition to being Roy's friend, is
Speaker 2: a white supremacist. Here's the Southern Property Law Center writing
Speaker 2: about tantin as long ago as nineteen eighty eight, A
Speaker 2: set of internal memoranda to the staffs of two groups
Speaker 2: he founded, the Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR and
Speaker 2: US English were leaked and showed and showed Tanton warning
Speaker 2: of a coming latin Onslaught, questioning whether Latinos were as
Speaker 2: durable as others, and worrying that Latinos were outbreeding whites.
Speaker 2: A decade later, he told a reporter that whites would
Speaker 2: soon develop a racial consciousness and the result would be
Speaker 2: the war of all against all. He hired and worked
Speaker 2: alongside Wayne Lutton, who has held other leadership positions in
Speaker 2: four white supremacist hate groups. He published and endorsed a
Speaker 2: racist book on immigration, and he published numerous white supremacists.
Speaker 2: Tanton compared immigrants to bacteria that will continue growing until
Speaker 2: the population crashes, and sneered at immigrants defecating and creating
Speaker 2: garbage and looking for jobs. There's a lot that's messed
Speaker 2: up there.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, the Latin Onslaught is the name of
Speaker 3: a six Spanish language metal band.
Speaker 2: It's also latinot is the term I use for that
Speaker 2: that period where Emilio x Estevez and uh Charlie Sheen
Speaker 2: we're both really starting to hit it in a big
Speaker 2: in a big way, you know. I believe that was
Speaker 2: the Latinslot. Yeah, it's Latin enough.
Speaker 3: This show. This peer tell is an immigrant to this country, right.
Speaker 2: Born in Germany. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for.
Speaker 3: Sure he's an anti immigration immigrant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to be honest though, Like that's the
Speaker 2: thing that people always get like flipped out by. But
Speaker 2: that's like the core of the hardest anti immigrant chunk
Speaker 2: of the US population is immigrants and children of immigrants, right,
Speaker 2: Like you know, the Cuban community in Florida being one example,
Speaker 2: but like half of the fucking border patrol is Latino,
Speaker 2: you know, and those guys are yeah.
Speaker 4: Am I right? Remembering that Til has said it like
Speaker 4: his citizenship is here, and then also New Zealand.
Speaker 2: Yes, he kind of fudged getting New Zealand citizenship. People
Speaker 2: will argue that he wasn't actually there long enough to
Speaker 2: get it. But if you have enough money, you can
Speaker 2: get the citizenship and like, you know, New Zealand, if
Speaker 2: you want to offer me citizenship too, I'll take it,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of messed up that you give it
Speaker 2: to Peter. Yeah, man, I could really use the New
Speaker 2: Zealand citizenship right about now.
Speaker 3: Citizenship if you found enough companies that are named after
Speaker 3: a Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, there's a certain if you founded three companies
Speaker 2: named after Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: Game, you get to go to New Zealand. No, seriously,
Speaker 3: is he pro immigration to New Zealand too?
Speaker 2: He's pro him having a say, a safe valve. You know,
Speaker 2: that's I think all that it is, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, how do how come all these people or some
Speaker 3: of these people hardcore Catholic but also hardcore against the
Speaker 3: biggest hardcore Athlics on the planet aka the uh South
Speaker 3: and Central American populations.
Speaker 2: Uh. You know, that's a good question, in part because
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys actually kind of hate what
Speaker 2: most Catholics see as Catholicism, like the kind of trad
Speaker 2: cath the trad cath movement today. They're all converts, they're
Speaker 2: all into aspects of like my whole family's Catholic, and
Speaker 2: like the kind of shit these people will say about like, no,
Speaker 2: the pope is valid because this is seven hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: It's like like Catholics are like, now he's the pope.
Speaker 2: You like, you listen to the pope, you know, that's
Speaker 2: all that matters, is like you know, it's this, it's this,
Speaker 2: this kind of separation between what cultural Catholicism is and
Speaker 2: like the fact that right now the fucking in a
Speaker 2: I think it's a in Pennsylvania. The Republicans are going
Speaker 2: after this nunnery because like a bunch of nuns are
Speaker 2: registered to vote there and they're like none of them
Speaker 2: live there. They're like, the nuns are talking about counter
Speaker 2: suing them, and man, if the nuns are suing you,
Speaker 2: no born Catholic I have ever known would fuck with
Speaker 2: a group of nouns terrify you go get their uns.
Speaker 2: They're frightening people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but even this Jew knows that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these guys are not like they're they're not Catholic
Speaker 2: in the sense that Catholics are Catholic. They're Catholic in
Speaker 2: the sense that like people who become fans of Warhammer
Speaker 2: forty thousand because they don't get the joke, are fans
Speaker 2: of Warhammer forty thousand. That's the kind of Catholics they are,
Speaker 2: right anyway, I feel.
Speaker 1: Like that was a very alien fore moment.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, everyone understands Warhammer.
Speaker 3: Do you have some sort of endorsement deal with Warhammer
Speaker 3: forty thousand?
Speaker 2: No, I wish I did. I would take more money,
Speaker 2: but Games Workshop does not give out money. That is
Speaker 2: the last thing that company does.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I feel like if you could socourre some that
Speaker 3: sweet sweet Games Workshop yeah money, Yeah, you might be
Speaker 3: able to find a cure for your.
Speaker 2: ALLEGI I can do a whole podcast and all of
Speaker 2: the characters that are based on nineteenth century gay poets
Speaker 2: in Warhammer forty thousand, more than you'd think.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, So go off, Ken.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Peter Teal, he is this guy John Tanton
Speaker 2: is directly connected to the dude. Teal's not backing Tanton,
Speaker 2: but he's backing his protege Roy Beck at Numbers USA. Right,
Speaker 2: And that's not all I'm going to continue that quote
Speaker 2: from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The report revealed that
Speaker 2: over the course of some twenty years, Tanton had corresponded
Speaker 2: with Holocaust and ires, former clan lawyers and leading white
Speaker 2: nationalist thinkers. He introduced leaders of FAIR, on whose board
Speaker 2: he still sits today, to the president of the Pioneer Fund,
Speaker 2: a racist outfit set up to encourage race betterment. At
Speaker 2: a private club, he promoted the work of an infamous
Speaker 2: anti Semitic professor, Kevin MacDonald to both FAIR officials and
Speaker 2: a major donor. At one point, pursuing his interest in eugenics,
Speaker 2: the utterly discredited science of breeding a better human race,
Speaker 2: he tried to find out if Michigan had laws allowing
Speaker 2: forced sterilization. His concern, Tanton wrote in a letter of inquiry,
Speaker 2: was a local pair of sisters who have nine illegitimate
Speaker 2: children between them. And again, Peter Teal is putting money
Speaker 2: into all of the people adjacent to this guy, right
Speaker 2: like he is backing a lot of organizations that are
Speaker 2: next to him like this, this is just you can see,
Speaker 2: and this is he's very much Tela is very happy
Speaker 2: when like this Bush era immigration reform package goes down
Speaker 2: in flames, because he has been one of the things
Speaker 2: he's most consistent on again since like the two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven eight is wanting massive restrictions and particularly non
Speaker 2: white immigration into the United States, which is not a
Speaker 2: libertarian stance and is really just kind of a far
Speaker 2: right racist stance.
Speaker 3: While bankrolling this like yeah, weirdo neo monarchist who's trying
Speaker 3: to like convince yeah, the blogosphere right wing to abandon democracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is actually a writer around the same time,
Speaker 2: because it's like two thousand and eight and nine that
Speaker 2: he starts getting involved with Yarvin, and it's two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight that he's sends a million dollars to Numbers
Speaker 2: USA through an intermediary, according to Chafkin, who notes Teal
Speaker 2: didn't comment on the report at the time, but several
Speaker 2: sources familiar with his political activities have told me the
Speaker 2: reported donation was real, So you know, it doesn't look
Speaker 2: like a thing that's absolutely confirmed, but there's definitely like
Speaker 2: ties between him and Roy Beck, and Beck is tied
Speaker 2: to Tanton, and this is all kind of part of
Speaker 2: this very long process of Teal backing different explicitly racist
Speaker 2: anti immigration organizations. Now, the next year, right around the
Speaker 2: time that JP Morgan started experimenting with Pallanteer, Peter Teal
Speaker 2: published an article in the Cato Institute's Journal with his
Speaker 2: Sea stetting buddy this is the guy that he's backing.
Speaker 2: At the Sea Steatic Institute. The theme of that issue
Speaker 2: was the idea of creating libertarian enclaves outside of existing states.
Speaker 2: Teal submitted an essay, The Education of a Libertarian, where
Speaker 2: he channeled his friend Curtis Jarvin to write, I no
Speaker 2: longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible. He wined that
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties where the last gasp of hope for
Speaker 2: liberty because Americans then gave women the right to vote
Speaker 2: and created the welfare state, and these two innovations had
Speaker 2: made political victory impossible for libertarians. Libertarians can't win elections
Speaker 2: because women can vote and there's welfare, and we'll never
Speaker 2: get those people to give us any votes. Right, That's
Speaker 2: why he's so angry about this ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I can't play this game. Yeah, this game
Speaker 3: is over. This game is stupid.
Speaker 2: I find whining about this shit so fascinating because we
Speaker 2: have all seen Peter and guys like him. They've only
Speaker 2: gotten wealth and power through the system that they claim
Speaker 2: to be oppressed by. It is the only place that
Speaker 2: they have ever been or wouldever be a success. These
Speaker 2: guys are the winners of our society. They are elevated
Speaker 2: by a system that is designed to produce and support them,
Speaker 2: but they still can't feel help, but feel like losers
Speaker 2: all the time, no matter what they do, and so
Speaker 2: they turn their rage against the system that is the
Speaker 2: only reason they're special.
Speaker 4: Don't act like a loser.
Speaker 2: Don't act like a fucking.
Speaker 3: There you go. Don't act like a fucking loser. It's
Speaker 3: just it is the most loserus shit to complain that
Speaker 3: we couldn't possibly win on an election because fifty.
Speaker 2: Girls too many girls will Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like they're like we won our D and
Speaker 3: D games and there were no girls.
Speaker 2: In yeah those, Yeah, you know win D and D
Speaker 2: win just by playing. But yes, I get your point.
Speaker 2: Peter's frustrations were amplified by a public outcry against his
Speaker 2: complaints about women voting. Right, Like, people get angry at
Speaker 2: him for saying this, and he is forced to come
Speaker 2: out and kind of backpedal, be like, I don't want
Speaker 2: to take away win's right to vote. I just recognize
Speaker 2: that this is a problem, right, and I want to
Speaker 2: find a shortcut to avoid democracy cramping my style. Right.
Speaker 2: I don't want to stop women from voting, but we
Speaker 2: have to agree, this is a problem that guys like
Speaker 2: me can't win as many elections because the girls now.
Speaker 2: Another constant teel irritant was the free press, as we
Speaker 2: talked about last episode. I do think his initial irritance
Speaker 2: with Valley Wag comes from a semi understandable place, but
Speaker 2: it took years of them reporting on his actual doings
Speaker 2: in a manner that I think was generally responsible journalism
Speaker 2: before Teal acted. Here's the shadowy, inciting incident of the
Speaker 2: Gawker lawsuit. According to Derek Thompson in an article with
Speaker 2: The Atlantic where he interviews Ryan Holliday, he's the guy
Speaker 2: who wrote the book on this. In twenty eleven, he
Speaker 2: is in Berlin and he takes a meeting with a
Speaker 2: then twenty six year old Teal devotee, who you might
Speaker 2: call mister A. The young man essentially tells Teal, I
Speaker 2: know you're obsessed with Gawker, and I have an idea
Speaker 2: to destroy them. He says, Teal should create a show
Speaker 2: company to fund investigators and lawyers to find causes of
Speaker 2: action against Gawker and ultimately sue it into oblivion. He
Speaker 2: estimates that the plan will take up to five years
Speaker 2: and up to ten million dollars in funding, which is prophetic.
Speaker 2: So it's this mysterious mister A who nobody knows the
Speaker 2: real name of, allegedly who is the guy who sits
Speaker 2: down with Teal and is like, Hey, I think if
Speaker 2: you find if you just keep putting it, put money,
Speaker 2: you know, put it towards some people, maybe I can
Speaker 2: help you with this the feeling this guy's kind of
Speaker 2: angling for a gig, Like we will figure out when
Speaker 2: gawker slips up and we will use that to stick
Speaker 2: the knife in them.
Speaker 3: Right, maybe that's the lawyer or something like that. I mean,
Speaker 3: like maybe that's like a lawyer just trying.
Speaker 2: To Maybe maybe it's Ryan Holidays again. The reporter revealed
Speaker 2: this describes mister A as a professional son, in other words,
Speaker 2: someone who sought out and wormed his way into the
Speaker 2: confidences of father figures who could advance his career and Teal.
Speaker 2: Some people will say this is in part because he
Speaker 2: has crushes on some of these guys, but Teal has
Speaker 2: a habit of finding generally handsome young men and putting
Speaker 2: them into his inner circle. Backing this kind of how JD.
Speaker 2: Vance and Blake Masters get into his circle, right, and
Speaker 2: I don't know how much. I'm trying to just kind
Speaker 2: of like stay out of it, because what matters is
Speaker 2: he's backing these people, not whether or not he thinks
Speaker 2: they're hot. But that is an allegation. You'll hear that's
Speaker 2: made about this, right, And I don't know, I'm sure that,
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's not a non factor. Sometimes you hear
Speaker 2: out this guy who like goes out and targets older
Speaker 2: men to try and like embolden his career and is like,
Speaker 2: I know how you can destroy Gawker, And maybe Peter,
Speaker 2: he's frustrated, he's angry that he can't do anything about
Speaker 2: this thing that's hurting his business, and then like this
Speaker 2: hot dude comes up with a plan to kill them, right,
Speaker 2: Maybe that's some of what's going on. According to the
Speaker 2: version of the story told by Holiday, Peter compared to
Speaker 2: complain to mister A over their meal that he couldn't
Speaker 2: just outright destroy Gawker, and mister A said back, Peter,
Speaker 2: if everyone thought that way, what would the world look like?
Speaker 2: Right if people didn't just destroy journalistic outlets like because
Speaker 2: they could, where would we be as a society. So
Speaker 2: if this is accurate, that is kind of a not
Speaker 2: a I don't know if it's a big if, but
Speaker 2: it is an if. Peter. This guy is who succeeds
Speaker 2: in getting Peter to fund this operation to find a
Speaker 2: way to kill Gawker, and they eventually find the way
Speaker 2: to kill Gawker in an unlikely place, the office of
Speaker 2: a Florida DJ named Bubba the Love Sponge. Here we go,
Speaker 2: Here's where Bubba the Love Sponge comes in. Everyone's been
Speaker 2: waiting for this since we started talking to you. You know,
Speaker 2: speaking of Bubba the Love Sponge. You know who is
Speaker 2: a love sponge?
Speaker 4: The sponsors of this podcast.
Speaker 2: That's right, the sponsor of this podcast. I think that's
Speaker 2: a cum joke. So everyone enjoy that and go over
Speaker 2: there please before just come yeah, one of the two.
Speaker 2: We're back, and boy, I hope we all enjoyed that
Speaker 2: ad from Hymns. Hymns I think they sell testosterone. Now
Speaker 2: why not get involved or ozembic is it ozimbic they're
Speaker 2: selling basically whatever, give them some money, give them some money,
Speaker 2: hymns or back back in two thousand and six, whole
Speaker 2: COVID sponsor as Sophie and they give us money. Come on, hymns.
Speaker 2: Get on the bastard's trade, you know, yeah, adds like that.
Speaker 2: Every day. We'd shill for you, we'd chill for you.
Speaker 2: I'll sell hymns. I don't give a fuck. Uh right now,
Speaker 2: give hymns. Do you enough testosterone? Probably? But you could
Speaker 2: have more. It's what all the celebrities do. They'll ship
Speaker 2: it to your door. Who gives a shit?
Speaker 3: Howboult give us one of those like sheepish? Like fuck?
Speaker 3: I have to do this house read conversion of hymns.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I may or may not hear a podcasts.
Speaker 2: Do you feel bad about your body? Well you probably should,
Speaker 2: so get on ozimbic, the drug that is probably fine
Speaker 2: for you. No one really knows yet. It's a little
Speaker 2: like vaping.
Speaker 3: Try it out, ye see what happens.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Back in two thousand and six, Whole Cogan had
Speaker 2: been depressed over the state of his marriage. I love
Speaker 2: where the story starts, which is I had again, just
Speaker 2: casually hearing it. I had thought that it was a
Speaker 2: case of like he was just cheating on Bubba with
Speaker 2: Bubba's wife. No, no, no, Hulk comes over because he's
Speaker 2: getting a divorce and he's just in a dark place.
Speaker 2: And he needs his friend, Bubba the Love Sponge and
Speaker 2: bubbas a bad place. I really need some comfort, and
Speaker 2: Bubba the Love Sponge is like, Holkster, you know it'll
Speaker 2: cheer you up fucking my wife. Why don't you go
Speaker 2: into my bedroom and fuck my wife? And the Hulk said, okay,
Speaker 2: but you're not going to film this, are you? Brother?
Speaker 2: I know you always film people who have sex in
Speaker 2: your house. You're not going to film the hulks dick,
Speaker 2: are you? And Buba was like, of course, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to film you, And then of course he films
Speaker 2: the whole keving sex and he takes the recording made
Speaker 2: in his house and he puts the recording in his
Speaker 2: desk at the radio station where he works. Incredible, did
Speaker 2: you do amazing?
Speaker 3: Shit? Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: So funny. This is such a funny case, Like a
Speaker 2: lot of good people lost their jobs, but this part
Speaker 2: of it's really funny. Some people. Yeah, not all good
Speaker 2: people lost their jobs, but a lot of good people. Then,
Speaker 2: so fast forward about six years. Obama is on his
Speaker 2: way to term number dose and Bubba gets in a
Speaker 2: conflict with a guy who Ryan Holiday describes as Hey,
Speaker 2: this is the funniest term in the world, rival DJing
Speaker 2: nothing sadder than the words rival DJ.
Speaker 3: Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, rival Florida DJ. If this is and again there's
Speaker 2: some debate, I'm not saying this is absolutely what happened,
Speaker 2: but this is probably the most It's certainly the most
Speaker 2: entertaining and probably the most credible story as to why
Speaker 2: this all happens. If this is accurate, the whole destruction
Speaker 2: of goker thing started because Bubba the Love Sponge at
Speaker 2: a rival Florida DJ had an argument over who was
Speaker 2: going to like get which time slot, and the rival
Speaker 2: DJ broke into his desk and stole the videos to
Speaker 2: like hold him for like them for ransom basically, and
Speaker 2: ultimately leaked the videos to Gawker to embarrass Bubba the
Speaker 2: Love Sponge. Hulk was only ever an accidental casualty in
Speaker 2: the It was collateral damage. The poor ulkster. That's in
Speaker 2: the Great Florida the Great Game of Florida DJs. He's Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Is the DJ. Mister A is the secret maybe the
Speaker 3: rival DJ.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm gonna say, Definitely. I'm going to
Speaker 2: say definitely in a way that makes iHeartMedia legally responsible.
Speaker 2: If I'm absolutely.
Speaker 3: Because if there's one DJ all radio up the radio.
Speaker 3: iHeartMedia boom.
Speaker 2: Right, of course we've got to be tied into this.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get.
Speaker 2: Call the CEO. We're gonna blow this thing wide open. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, anyway, Gocker now here is where Gaker? Because
Speaker 2: I may I mentioned how it's questionable their choice to
Speaker 2: out Peter, but probably in a court of law defensible
Speaker 2: because of who Peter is, you know, politically, because of
Speaker 2: how influential he is. Like you again, that's why he does.
Speaker 2: Peter doesn't sue over that this. This is something they
Speaker 2: probably could have defended. What Gawker does next is something
Speaker 2: that is it still was potentially defensible. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: Gacker makes some mistakes in their legal representation here, but
Speaker 2: it's deeply questionable. This is a thing that I can
Speaker 2: say I'm leaning on this not being newsworthy, right, And
Speaker 2: what's not newsworthy is they publish the video. They don't
Speaker 2: just report on the fact that there's a whole Cogan
Speaker 2: sex tape. They published the video under the title even
Speaker 2: for a minute, watching Hull Cogan have sex in a
Speaker 2: canopy bed is not safe for work, But watch it anyway,
Speaker 2: and that's just hard to defend in court that you're
Speaker 2: going to have to defend that.
Speaker 3: Right, although an incredible headline, an incredible headline, incredible headline.
Speaker 2: Nobody said they were bad at headlines, I mean an
Speaker 2: incredible headline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, publishing sex tapes is probably not it's on the edge.
Speaker 3: It's on the edge.
Speaker 2: It's on the edge. Yeah, So this is something that
Speaker 2: is again, this is potentially defensible. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 2: blanket not, but it is something you were probably going
Speaker 2: to have to defend in court. Right, you have crossed
Speaker 2: a line that is going to open you up to
Speaker 2: some potential injury here. Now, one reason why is that
Speaker 2: the sex that Hogan had with Bubba, the love Sponge's
Speaker 2: wife was not as a part of his job. As
Speaker 2: you know, Hulk Hogan the public figure. Right, this is
Speaker 2: not something he did with his subordinate. This is not
Speaker 2: something he did on company property, right, Like, this is
Speaker 2: not something you can argue as an abuse of power
Speaker 2: on the Holkster's part. You know, this is a consensual
Speaker 2: non monogamy. I guess you could call it. Really that
Speaker 2: just happened to get filmed. So Hulk has an argument
Speaker 2: that what happened was a violation of his privacy. Now
Speaker 2: gocker Again, I think if they had just reported on
Speaker 2: the tape's existence, could have defended it. Making it a
Speaker 2: vai le is a lot harder to defend. Teal's people
Speaker 2: set legal wheels in motion. And it's again, it's like
Speaker 2: twenty twelve when this article, when this video gets released,
Speaker 2: so that's like six years after the sex tape was filmed,
Speaker 2: and for a few years, the case kind of grinds forward.
Speaker 2: And part of what it grinds forward is Gawker doesn't
Speaker 2: know that Teal is backing hul Cogan and you know,
Speaker 2: the Holkster's got money, but the Holkster does not have
Speaker 2: a major media company money. And the smart play if
Speaker 2: you are a big corporation like Gawker sued by a guy,
Speaker 2: even a rich guy, is delay make it as expensive
Speaker 2: for them as possible. Right, You run out the clock
Speaker 2: and eventually they will not want to keep burning cash
Speaker 2: in order to keep fighting you.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I may, I'm not sure Gawker was
Speaker 3: ever that big of a company. I think it was more.
Speaker 3: And listen, I got a little bit of skin in
Speaker 3: this game. Yeah, Gawker's lawyer at the time, and then
Speaker 3: they're pressure. Yeah, I work with afterwards, But I would
Speaker 3: just say at the dly East rabble truck together for
Speaker 3: a compleaders is like, look, I think in general, you
Speaker 3: got the First Amendment errors on the side of publishing, right,
Speaker 3: even creepy ash absolutely like all Cogan's dick and so
Speaker 3: I mean, I think what they were more pursuing was
Speaker 3: a uh, you know what happens in any of these
Speaker 3: First Amendment cases where they're they're they're trying to put
Speaker 3: up their best defenses against getting sued, and those defenses
Speaker 3: take a while. And I don't think it was I mean,
Speaker 3: this company was never particularly a huge company. They had
Speaker 3: insurance that protected them against litigation at some points, and
Speaker 3: and and you know they had you know, depending on
Speaker 3: where the case landed, whether it's in New York or
Speaker 3: Florida or whatever, they had better defenses against the walk
Speaker 3: because a lot of the stuff is weirdly state by state.
Speaker 2: And this is an early judge shopping case. Like the
Speaker 2: fact that they wind up in a Florida district with
Speaker 2: a very sympathetic judge is a big part of what
Speaker 2: hurts them. If it had been in a different district.
Speaker 2: They probably probably would have gone better for them. I
Speaker 2: should know that. Yeah, it's kind of like a holiday
Speaker 2: is argument as to how this went badly is that
Speaker 2: Gawker takes the standard strategy you would take, which is
Speaker 2: a bad strategy if Hogan has the kind of financing
Speaker 2: behind him that they couldn't have known he had, right,
Speaker 2: like the fact that there's so much more money behind this,
Speaker 2: which starts to become clear later in the case, Like,
Speaker 2: it's the kind of thing people do not initially know.
Speaker 2: Gocker doesn't initially know that Teal is backing them, and
Speaker 2: what Holiday will argue, And I think I think you're
Speaker 2: probably right, But I don't think it's wrong that if
Speaker 2: Gaker had known who was supporting the lawsuit, there are
Speaker 2: probably changes they would have made and how they pursued
Speaker 2: their defense, or at least how they pursued publicizing that
Speaker 2: Teal was involved. Right, Yeah, Like maybe maybe you try
Speaker 2: to make that clear earlier, right, Right, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Hulk Hogan sues company that publishes dictape is one thing, right,
Speaker 3: you know, weirdo right wing billionaire ye shoes media company
Speaker 3: for no particular reason. Yeah, but you know happens to
Speaker 3: use the sex sape as an excuse. That's a totally
Speaker 3: different thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a totally different thing. And yeah that's and
Speaker 2: again i Holiday, I quote him a lot because he's
Speaker 2: the guy who like wrote the book on this case.
Speaker 2: He is kind of more on Teal side than I am.
Speaker 2: And then I think most reporters are. Although the Teal
Speaker 2: side more and a goacker made a lot of major mistakes.
Speaker 2: And I don't entirely agree with Holiday here, but they
Speaker 2: do make a number of mistakes. Right, there are some
Speaker 2: like issues with the way this legal defense goes down.
Speaker 2: But also it's one of these things where well, if
Speaker 2: you have Peter Teal money and the ability to judge,
Speaker 2: shop and shit in a way that a guy Teal does,
Speaker 2: it's it's hard to imagine he wouldn't eventually have gotten
Speaker 2: them on something. Right.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly you're going to operate differently if you know
Speaker 3: that there's a right wing billionaire that's built trying to
Speaker 3: kill you. Yeah, exactly, shine to destroy the planet. Like,
Speaker 3: that's a very different kind of way to operate. And look,
Speaker 3: I think also just like growing up in the same
Speaker 3: era of media is like I think we all a
Speaker 3: lot of us were like kind of self taught and
Speaker 3: kind of like relearning the rules as we went along, right,
Speaker 3: you know, Like you know, this was you know, a
Speaker 3: major object lesson and and we would have all rolled
Speaker 3: a little bit differently if we had known that there
Speaker 3: are these like you know, kind of like autocratic gazillionaires
Speaker 3: that were kind of out to destroy what we were about.
Speaker 2: And this is the thing, this is one of the
Speaker 2: things that's so sad about this is that like a
Speaker 2: lot of the a lot of the issues that you know,
Speaker 2: in terms of like we can when we talk about
Speaker 2: like the areas in which Gawker made mistakes, a lot
Speaker 2: of them are just due to how young the company was,
Speaker 2: how new this whole branch of the media was, and
Speaker 2: that we are all because I was a part of
Speaker 2: a digital media company there, I like definitely I was learning,
Speaker 2: and like learning by breaking a lot of the rules
Speaker 2: of journalism early on in my career too, Like we
Speaker 2: were trying to figure out how these things worked in
Speaker 2: a new era where there was suddenly both opportunity and
Speaker 2: money in a way that journalists had not been used
Speaker 2: to for a while, but also brand new pitfalls and threats. Right,
Speaker 2: And this is well said, I don't think. I don't
Speaker 2: think it was you know, Gawker, if they had done
Speaker 2: things differently, might have been able to survive. But someone
Speaker 2: was going to go down in flames for something like
Speaker 2: this as a result of the different period that we
Speaker 2: had entered into, Right. I do kind kind of believe
Speaker 2: that maybe it wouldn't have had to be Gawker, but
Speaker 2: it was going to be somebody because there was just
Speaker 2: so much being tried that was new and that hadn't
Speaker 2: been adjudicated, you know, like that that was always good,
Speaker 2: and it was the same thing I think most of
Speaker 2: us expected. It was going to come down over like
Speaker 2: whistleblower stuff, you know, WikiLeaks kind of shit, as opposed
Speaker 2: to Bubble the Love Sponge. But it was going to happen, right, right.
Speaker 2: So a big part of why the case goes against
Speaker 2: God is there's this. One of kind of the leading
Speaker 2: moments of this court case is that in court, Gacker
Speaker 2: editor in chief Aj Delario, in a deposition kind of
Speaker 2: jokes that the only celebrity sex tape he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: considered news whethy was one that featured a preschooler. That
Speaker 2: does not go over well in court. It's not a
Speaker 2: great moment, although I don't think it actually changes the
Speaker 2: It's just why would you say that. I don't know anyway,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna He's suffered enough, But it doesn't. This
Speaker 2: all goes very badly, right, I mean, it goes as
Speaker 2: badly as it possibly could. Even though the case had
Speaker 2: not initially gone super well for Hulk. Ultimately, you know
Speaker 2: the fact that this judge is very sympathetic, it all
Speaker 2: goes their way in the case, the plaintiff is awarded
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty million dollars in damages. Goker, as
Speaker 2: you have said, was never that big as a media company,
Speaker 2: and this absolutely drives them into bankruptcy. Nick Denton sold
Speaker 2: the company off to Univision, which shuddered the embattled flagship site.
Speaker 2: And that is the end of Gaker, except for it's
Speaker 2: kind of sort of back. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: know how we want to like it didn't all die out, right,
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a and this is a scary moment.
Speaker 3: Live on in one in one way or another.
Speaker 2: My old site lives on in one way or another. Zombie, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the zombies of our youths as writers, So Teal, you know,
Speaker 2: he gets one of the things that happens kind of
Speaker 2: at the tail end of this is that it becomes
Speaker 2: clear to the people involved in the case and the
Speaker 2: people paying attention to it that Teal is the guy
Speaker 2: funding this. I think it might have been Vogue, I
Speaker 2: think that published I maybe getting that wrong, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't Gager that published the first article being like, hey,
Speaker 2: Teal's behind this. But right as the case is ending,
Speaker 2: it comes out that Peter Teal is the guy who
Speaker 2: had backed this right, and so Teal is able there's
Speaker 2: this like backlash against him, but he's also able to
Speaker 2: kind of go out in the open and take a
Speaker 2: victory lap. He tells The New York Times. It's less
Speaker 2: about revenge and more about pacific deterrence. I saw Goker
Speaker 2: pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention
Speaker 2: by bullying people even when there was no connection with
Speaker 2: the public interest. And like you back guys like JD. Vanson,
Speaker 2: Blake Masters whose politics is entirely dedicated to attacking little
Speaker 2: people who have no power right destroying their lives for
Speaker 2: cloud like, you don't believe any of this shit, Peter. Now,
Speaker 2: the Gocker case was the first thing to put Teal
Speaker 2: on my radar in a big way, right. You know.
Speaker 2: I wish I could say I was one of those
Speaker 2: guys who from the early days of pallunteer and knew
Speaker 2: he was dangerous. But it wasn't until this that I
Speaker 2: was like, oh shit, there's this Peter Teal guy, and
Speaker 2: he seems like a real problem. Right. It's also notable that, like,
Speaker 2: it's not entirely I think that the surface summary of this,
Speaker 2: which is that Gocker outed Teal and then he destroyed them,
Speaker 2: is not entirely what happened.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Gocker was damaging to his business interests for years, and
Speaker 2: so he laid out a painstaking and slow, in funded
Speaker 2: a pains taking some slow path to taking them out right,
Speaker 2: which I think is a scarier story, you know, just
Speaker 2: than that he was angry that they'd outed him and
Speaker 2: so he slapped them down. The time that he waited,
Speaker 2: how long this took, you know, the inevitability of it
Speaker 2: in some ways, that like once this was set in
Speaker 2: motion it couldn't be stopped, is much more upsetting to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And also it's not just his I think it's
Speaker 3: more just like his class, you know that like the
Speaker 3: burgeoning tech oligar class. Yeah, they really were made deeply uncomfortable, Yeah,
Speaker 3: by by a brand of journalism that that was sometimes
Speaker 3: fucked up and sometimes you know, question their power, and
Speaker 3: you know that that threatened them a lot more than
Speaker 3: the journalism that played by the rules one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of the time and never threaten their power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this this idea too, that journalism is has
Speaker 2: a chance at surviving. Now there's suddenly like because in
Speaker 2: this new media era, there was a lot of money
Speaker 2: comparatively for journalists, not money, a lot of money on
Speaker 2: objective terms, but there's a lot of money coming into
Speaker 2: journalism based on what journalists had gotten used to after
Speaker 2: like the early Craigslist era had killed local newspapers. And
Speaker 2: so there's suddenly this lifeline for reporting and you have
Speaker 2: this explosion in sights that had started as kind of
Speaker 2: less legitimate. Gaker's early days is no One's p finest hour,
Speaker 2: just like the earliest days of BuzzFeed, right, you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a clickbait site. And then they start
Speaker 2: this very serious, groundbreaking news organization that really does great work,
Speaker 2: and it's terrifying to these guys who are like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: maybe we're going to deal with more of this than
Speaker 2: we ever had as opposed to it all being on
Speaker 2: the out and dying, and so they kind of commit
Speaker 2: themselves to killing it. And this is that Silicon This
Speaker 2: is Peter Teele is the first of the Silicon elite
Speaker 2: to start flexing their muscles to destroy the independent media, right.
Speaker 3: And I'd say more than just Silicon Valley. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: you know this is now in the era when you know,
Speaker 3: I was running The Daily Beast and and and you know,
Speaker 3: basically there would be no major story about a rich
Speaker 3: person that didn't come with a massive legal threat. Yeah. None.
Speaker 3: Like the time, you could not write about a rich person.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about like their personal life. I'm talking
Speaker 3: about any company that they were involved in, Yeah, their
Speaker 3: business interests. Nothing would come without a legal threat. And
Speaker 3: so it was just a regular part of the publishing
Speaker 3: process which was deal with legal considerations. And often it
Speaker 3: was the very same lawyers that were connected with the
Speaker 3: Gawker case that were then being hired by everybody else
Speaker 3: because they had, you know, they had learned this one trick.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's one weird trick. Yeah yeah, And so
Speaker 3: you know that stuff was real, and I don't know
Speaker 3: that it stopped us from publishing any stories, but it
Speaker 3: definitely stopped like, it definitely slowed down the pace of
Speaker 3: stories for sure. And it definitely I know, I definitely
Speaker 3: know of others where you know, big stories got killed off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because of the because of the legal threats.
Speaker 2: A chilling effect, right, it has this chilling effect, And
Speaker 2: it's one of these things where this is part of
Speaker 2: what this is part of what's so scary about doing
Speaker 2: media right is you have to in order to stay relevant,
Speaker 2: to survive, you have to explore things, you have to
Speaker 2: try new things. And that also means, you know, it
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean I'm not saying every journalist would have
Speaker 2: published the bub Bubba the love Sponge video, but you
Speaker 2: are going to do things that are new and that
Speaker 2: you can't say are covered under the laws that supported
Speaker 2: you in the past when you're trying to adapt to
Speaker 2: changing circumstances, and that's always going to create opportunities for
Speaker 2: people to destroy you if they're scared by what you're doing. Yep, fair, Yep, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that that that gets at it. I hope
Speaker 2: in a way that's pretty fair. Speaking of destroying your enemies,
Speaker 2: you know who my enemies aren't.
Speaker 3: Noah, the people who advertise on this podcast.
Speaker 2: That's right. None of them are my enemies. None of them. Whatever.
Speaker 2: Sue journalists for reporting on their personal business, you know,
Speaker 2: and if they have, no, they didn't. You didn't see that,
Speaker 2: deny the evidence of your rise in ears. That's the
Speaker 2: behind the mastards promise. Ah, we're back. So one of
Speaker 2: the results of the Gawker lawsuit is that Peter gets
Speaker 2: put thrust in the public awareness and gets criticized in
Speaker 2: a much bigger way after this, right he is no
Speaker 2: longer is kind of like, oh, he's just this smart founder,
Speaker 2: he's kind of a libertarian. He probably has a couple
Speaker 2: of different stances like, oh, this guy's like a dangerous
Speaker 2: right wing ghoul. Right, Like, that's that's really people. And
Speaker 2: this happens right May of March twenty sixteen is when
Speaker 2: the Gawker case, you know, gets closed in court, and
Speaker 2: obviously Peter becomes like the Republican parties bigger single funder
Speaker 2: I think during this period, and it's our capped. I
Speaker 2: think he's at least one of them. Because of the
Speaker 2: way money works in all of this, it's kind of
Speaker 2: hard to say that for a statement. But he's a
Speaker 2: major donor and he speaks at the twenty sixteen RNC
Speaker 2: where he endorses Donald Trump, and he makes a big
Speaker 2: deal about the fact that I am a gay Republican.
Speaker 2: The Republicans are welcoming now, you know, they'll accept you,
Speaker 2: unlike these evil liberals who aren't really tolerant. The Republicans
Speaker 2: accept me a gay man. And obviously, like that was
Speaker 2: the thing that Republicans were doing at the time, like
Speaker 2: Trump because the Pulse Nice club shooting was like a
Speaker 2: Muslim who did it, Like I could really, you know,
Speaker 2: pretend to be defending gay people and anti isis credentials
Speaker 2: and it works because people are make bad decisions a
Speaker 2: lot of the time.
Speaker 3: It's amazing. I mean, but it was such transparent bullshit
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 2: Oh it was. It was so if you paid any attention.
Speaker 2: But most voters are like most people listen to podcasts,
Speaker 2: they're hearing every fourth word while they're doing the law
Speaker 2: and right, so they miss ship.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, okay, yes, I mean, it was just
Speaker 3: it was complete, trans It was transparent.
Speaker 2: I watched him give that speech at the r n
Speaker 2: C and it was like the I felt coded in
Speaker 2: a thick layer of sick. It was nasty, man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was also like, sure, dude, the party
Speaker 3: of of of anti gay policy and rhetoric for fucking
Speaker 3: decades is all of a sudden doing a made just
Speaker 3: because because they've got a candidate in a wig. It's like,
Speaker 3: come on, dude, like that is just not true. And
Speaker 3: it was just so obvious at the time. And this
Speaker 3: is like, you know, a couple of years after gay
Speaker 3: marriage was was legalized.
Speaker 2: Not even a couple, it was just like a year, right,
Speaker 2: and Peter Marriag Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like, you know, such a major advancement.
Speaker 3: It's just it's wild to me. It's wild. I don't
Speaker 3: believe any I do not believe one single person actually
Speaker 3: believes that stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I don't know. It's hard to And like
Speaker 2: Peter is I think the the caveat do all of this.
Speaker 2: We talk about these philosophers he likes, and these visions
Speaker 2: he as of the future, and it's like, maybe all
Speaker 2: he really believes in is that Peter Thiel should always
Speaker 2: be on top, right, Maybe maybe that's all you actually
Speaker 2: need to know. That said, I also think we all
Speaker 2: make up in elaborate justifications for the selfish things we
Speaker 2: want to do. You know, that's being a person too,
Speaker 2: So it's not it's not worthless to look at like, well,
Speaker 2: how does Peter do that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Because he has much more money and power than us, Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, oh, this guy's a weirdo with authoritarian tendencies.
Speaker 3: I'm a weirdo with authoritarian tendencies. We got to get
Speaker 3: together somehow. Let me justify this by somehow claiming that
Speaker 3: because he's a New Yorker and he's not totally afraid
Speaker 3: of gay people, like ye know, the rest of the
Speaker 3: people up on that Republican stage, therefore I'll go with him,
Speaker 3: and therefore it's fine.
Speaker 2: I think I think Peter's probably correct in a meaningless
Speaker 2: way that I don't think Donald Trump personally is bigoted
Speaker 2: against gay people, right, I don't think he gives a fuck.
Speaker 2: But I think Donald Trump is willing to kill every
Speaker 2: gay person in this country for Donald Trump's power, right yeah,
Speaker 2: right now, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's running more ads about like demonizing trans people
Speaker 3: he is about any every other topic combined. That is
Speaker 3: his number one closing massive kill trans people.
Speaker 2: It's crazy and it's you know, This is as much
Speaker 2: as because like it's kind of out Peter Teel's not
Speaker 2: supporting the Republicans in twenty twenty four. He's not making
Speaker 2: like public donations, right, And the reporting around it is like, well,
Speaker 2: it's because of how angry he is that in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two they launched everything into these culture war crusades,
Speaker 2: and like he's really disappointed in that, and like the
Speaker 2: focus and on gay people. There's stories that like has
Speaker 2: now deceased boyfriend like kind of talked him into stopping
Speaker 2: supporting Republicans because of how you know, crazy they were
Speaker 2: at the Andy gay stuff at the same time, guy
Speaker 2: is exactly and Blake Masters are both two of the
Speaker 2: biggest anti gay like Christian fucking lifestyle crusaders out there.
Speaker 2: And these guys are total teal creatures. So do I.
Speaker 3: Believe any no vaccies? Man, It's not like like if
Speaker 3: this guy's the uber genius, he likes to betray himself
Speaker 3: as he can't be like, oh whoops, how could I
Speaker 3: possibly know what you're doing?
Speaker 2: You know what you're doing. Yeah. So, now this period
Speaker 2: after twenty sixteen, when Peter has has really gone a whole
Speaker 2: hog for Trump, people start reporting a lot more on
Speaker 2: all of these other weird investments He's doing right, and
Speaker 2: they start reporting on his life extension fixation. Now all
Speaker 2: of his life extension investments are made through his a
Speaker 2: lot of them made through his nonprofit Breakout Labs, which
Speaker 2: is supporting, like you know, unconventional solutions to major problems,
Speaker 2: and one of those major problems is extending human lifespan
Speaker 2: and ending aging. Now people think this is kind of
Speaker 2: quirky of Peter, so they start looking into it and
Speaker 2: reporting on it, and Peter starts getting asked by journalists
Speaker 2: in interviews about this. In one interview with The Washington Post,
Speaker 2: he explained, I've always had this really strong sense that
Speaker 2: death was a terrible, terrible thing. I think that's somewhat unusual.
Speaker 2: Most people end up compartmentalizing and they're in some mode
Speaker 2: of denial and acceptance about death. They both have the
Speaker 2: result of making you very passive. I worry the FDA
Speaker 2: is too restrictive. Pharmaceutical companies are way too bureaucratic. A
Speaker 2: tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of NIH
Speaker 2: spending goes to genuine anti aging research, the whole thing
Speaker 2: gets treated like a lottery ticket. Part of the problem
Speaker 2: is that aging research doesn't always lend itself to being
Speaker 2: a great for profit business, but it's still a very
Speaker 2: important area for philanthropic investment. And you know, one thing
Speaker 2: Peter comes around on is that government funding is okay
Speaker 2: if it's supporting things like anti aging research that I
Speaker 2: might benefit from, right, Like, we don't need roads or schools,
Speaker 2: but I don't want to die. But also I love
Speaker 2: this idea that like, well, normal people aren't scared of death.
Speaker 2: Everyone's scared of death, Peter, We're just not going to
Speaker 2: baby's about it. Deal with it, man, fucking take it
Speaker 2: on the chin, motherfucker. God.
Speaker 3: No, Look, you can argue. I think there's plenty of
Speaker 3: great arguments that, like the way drugs are kind of
Speaker 3: okay in this country.
Speaker 2: Is saying there's not ways that the FDA could be better. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of my favorite Peter Teel medical stories from
Speaker 3: that era that we reported on at the time was
Speaker 3: he was very upset with how the FDA was handling
Speaker 3: herpies drugs, and so he bankrolled a series of quasi
Speaker 3: legal certainly sidestepping around US safety rules. Let's just call
Speaker 3: them gray market market in the Caribbean.
Speaker 2: I think it like, oh man, that's fun that's good.
Speaker 2: That's just good stuff.
Speaker 3: Objected with like off, you know, with like untried non
Speaker 3: anti virus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome, awesome, he's your black market val cyc Lavie
Speaker 2: for his fucking awesome so good.
Speaker 3: At the time, was a dying doctor Peter Teel and
Speaker 3: a rogue herpes vaccine trial gone wrong?
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's so funny. No, no, rogue herpes vaccine
Speaker 2: trial not an attractive series of words to have attached
Speaker 2: to your name.
Speaker 3: No touch to your and so you definitely don't want
Speaker 3: it to all go wrong.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, your rogue vaccine trial you really
Speaker 2: want to work out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you want that to go excellently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't want to have made everyone at your
Speaker 2: fucking creepy beach parties take a bad vaccine? Did he
Speaker 2: give everyone herpes? What happened there?
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember. I'm just looking through the name
Speaker 3: of the company was Rational Vaccines, which.
Speaker 2: I haven't Oh, I like that.
Speaker 3: Rational vaccines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the irrational ones out there.
Speaker 3: No Institutional Review board or i RB to monitor the
Speaker 3: safety of the trials. That No, Yeah, you definitely don't
Speaker 3: want to have a safe purpose control group.
Speaker 2: What's that useful for?
Speaker 3: Yeah, didn't know how aware was manufactured, whether it needed
Speaker 3: booster shots. Yeah, no, this was.
Speaker 4: All all all the things that you would hope that
Speaker 4: they would know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know. Now, but look, I mean I
Speaker 3: think a lot of billionaires, uh do I think that
Speaker 3: that is something not completely uncommon in the billionaire classes,
Speaker 3: Like you know, I'm going to do you know, I'm
Speaker 3: going to hack science or I'm or the science industrial complex.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to really disrupt science. And what
Speaker 3: better way to do that than with the herpes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, disrupt herpees, I guess, not hurting it at all.
Speaker 3: Let's say one trial recipient started getting ringing in his
Speaker 3: ears and squirred speech.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yeah, let's just give everyone something worse
Speaker 2: than herpes.
Speaker 3: Then, a Colorado woman in her forties said she got
Speaker 3: flu like aches and numbness soon after the second shot.
Speaker 3: Numbness not a good thing to get after her now.
Speaker 3: The symptoms were followed by a quote excruciating thirty day
Speaker 3: outbreak of herpes.
Speaker 2: Great, wow, thirty days. That's a long time to have
Speaker 2: a herpes out break.
Speaker 3: I have new symptoms every day. That one later told Halford,
Speaker 3: this is terrifying.
Speaker 2: Disrupted herpes. You know, before it was an incredibly manageable
Speaker 2: viral illness that can be easily handled with medication, and
Speaker 2: now people have month long outbreaks. You did it again, Peter.
Speaker 2: You moved fast and you broke herpies.
Speaker 3: It sounds like they broke quite a few other things too, jeess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so funny, okay. So in August of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: the same month that Peter shows up at v r
Speaker 2: N see Maya Kossoff published an article titled Peter Teal
Speaker 2: wants to inject himself with young people's blood. Now this
Speaker 2: is not the first reporting on Peter Teal's interest in blood,
Speaker 2: but I think because of the title, this is one
Speaker 2: that has like a big impact on you know how
Speaker 2: people like how that rumor starts to spread. Now, the
Speaker 2: actual ultimate source of this was an article published in
Speaker 2: the same week for Ink magazine by Jeff Berkovici, who
Speaker 2: put out an old interview he'd done a year before
Speaker 2: with Teal that touched on Peter's interest in what's called
Speaker 2: a biosis quote, which includes the practice of getting transfusions
Speaker 2: of blood from a younger person as a means of
Speaker 2: improving health and potentially reversing aging. I'm looking into parabiosis stuff,
Speaker 2: which I think is really interesting. This is where they
Speaker 2: did the young blood into older mice and they found
Speaker 2: that it had a massive rejuvenating effect. And so that
Speaker 2: is one that Again it's one of these very odd
Speaker 2: things where people had done these studies in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and then it got dropped altogether. I think a
Speaker 2: lot of these things have been strangely under explored. Now.
Speaker 2: The reason parabiosis was under explore under explored is that
Speaker 2: it doesn't really work right. Blood transfusions are amazing medicine
Speaker 2: for the reasons that you would think, like when people
Speaker 2: lose all their blood, right, great to be able to
Speaker 2: give people a blood transfusion when they have been shot
Speaker 2: and bled out. It's not going to make you young, because
Speaker 2: of course, it doesn't work that way, because that's stupid.
Speaker 2: It's stupid that it would work that way. That's not
Speaker 2: how blood works, and it's not how aging works, and
Speaker 2: you're silly for thinking it. Oh no, no, Unfortunately, nothing
Speaker 2: can stop aging, except apparently taking lots of HGH and testosterone.
Speaker 2: Huh you don't, noah, do you have twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a month because I could. I can help you out
Speaker 2: with a plan here.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I definitely got that.
Speaker 2: His name is his name is Vito. He will meet
Speaker 2: you at the gym with a trash bag, and yeah,
Speaker 2: you too could have a trash bag.
Speaker 3: I can drain him of his blood, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, when I don't care what happens to Veto, like
Speaker 2: he's a steroid dealer, like his life has no value.
Speaker 2: Like we're good either way. There, I can I can
Speaker 2: do both.
Speaker 3: I could be I could be Belton Suspenders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can take Vito's blood, although Vito's blood is
Speaker 2: going to be even more HGH in testosteron and I'm
Speaker 2: going to warn you about that right now. Your your
Speaker 2: hgh gut is going to have its own gravitational pull
Speaker 2: like the moon or like Joe Rogan's HGH gut.
Speaker 3: Oh I know, I know that's really that is really unfortunately. Okay,
Speaker 3: So you're telling me so veto take his blood.
Speaker 2: Take pre hghd you don't need anymore. You literally can't
Speaker 2: fit more HGH in your blood than Veto has in his.
Speaker 2: And then you just sell that sack of gear to
Speaker 2: somebody else who wants to spend twelve grand on gear.
Speaker 3: You know it's a beautiful So I'm gonna do ya
Speaker 3: d The next time we do this podcast, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be ripping this fucking lapt.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be deadlifting eleven pounds, Yeah, bursting your colon
Speaker 2: out and she gets your Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's going to be the size of a thimble.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you can read the Lord of the rings
Speaker 2: and braille and the acne on your back.
Speaker 3: It's going to be incredible, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Brocovicci reported that a Teal Capital employee who
Speaker 2: was also Peter's personal health director had ties to Jesse
Speaker 2: car Mason, the founder of Ambrosia LLC. And I would
Speaker 2: if we had more time, there's so much Peter to
Speaker 2: get into, we would talk more about all of these
Speaker 2: different grifters. Carmesan is very fun. Legally, I'm not calling
Speaker 2: him a grifter. I just don't think what he was
Speaker 2: trying to do really works. But he did provide the
Speaker 2: product that he claimed. Ambrosia LLC was looking for volunteers
Speaker 2: over the age of thirty five to receive blood transfusions
Speaker 2: from the young Goker reported around this time that they
Speaker 2: had gotten a tip and again, this is right after
Speaker 2: the lawsuit has concluded that Teal spent forty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a quarter to get blood transfusions from an eighteen year old. Now,
Speaker 2: is Gker just trying to take a shot at Peter
Speaker 2: because of what happened? There's not outside evidence of this, right,
Speaker 2: nothing's ever come forward to make it clear that Teal
Speaker 2: definitely was taking the blood of the young right. In interviews,
Speaker 2: Peter has always been consistent that he had he never
Speaker 2: got around to starting it, right. He told a reporter
Speaker 2: that he hadn't quite started yet, and he has since
Speaker 2: denied ever taking the blood of the young, telling that
Speaker 2: Andrew Sorkin at Deal Book on the record, I am
Speaker 2: not a vampire, which I have to say, is something
Speaker 2: a vampire would say. He's like Alla on one hand,
Speaker 2: only a vampire would say that, because normal people don't
Speaker 2: have any reason to deny being vampires. Yeah, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean that's that is that's pretty that still kind of rules.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a good chance he never actually
Speaker 2: did this, not because he wouldn't, but just because I
Speaker 2: think it became clear pretty early on that this didn't work. Right.
Speaker 2: Brian Johnson, The Big Life extension guy taught like took
Speaker 2: his son's blood for a while, and I think has
Speaker 2: stopped because it just doesn't do anything. Peter is not.
Speaker 2: I don't think Peter would care that people were calling
Speaker 2: him a vampire if this worked, right, because he's open
Speaker 2: about that. He takes HGH as like a life extension thing, right, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think he would hide it if he was
Speaker 2: on it. I think maybe it just the science was
Speaker 2: not there in any real way, and Peter's not going
Speaker 2: to do something like this, like it's it's not pleasant,
Speaker 2: probably like you wouldn't want to get constant blood transfusions
Speaker 2: if you weren't convinced it. Did something.
Speaker 3: Speak for yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of us just like blood. From an article
Speaker 2: in Business Insider quote, Teal told Bloomberg TV in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen that he was taking Human growth home on pills
Speaker 2: known as HGH. Teel toad Bloomberg TV that he believes
Speaker 2: HGH can help maintain muscle mass, so that's less likely
Speaker 2: to get bone injuries and arthritis and stuff like that
Speaker 2: as you get older, which is true. I'm sure there
Speaker 2: are some problems of aging that HGH helps you avoid.
Speaker 2: But HGH has side effects. You can get carpal tunnel
Speaker 2: from it, you can get muscle and joint pain, you
Speaker 2: get an increased risk of cancer. Research has shown that
Speaker 2: people in animals whose natural levels of HGH are high
Speaker 2: are likely to die at a younger age than those
Speaker 2: with lower levels of HGH. So I don't know that
Speaker 2: I would take this gamble. I think this may just
Speaker 2: be a case of Peter wanting the cosmetic benefits of HGH.
Speaker 2: It makes you look jacked, even if you don't spend
Speaker 2: all that much time working out as opposed to, Peter
Speaker 2: truly believes this is a life extension technology. I think
Speaker 2: it's probably more accurate that he convinced himself it's keeping
Speaker 2: him young because it has cosmetic benefits that he appreciates. Right,
Speaker 2: My stance and all this life extension stuff is that
Speaker 2: Peter Teal will die one day, and as is the
Speaker 2: case with all of us, he will probably die sooner
Speaker 2: than he expects, because that's just the way shit goes. Sorry, Peter,
Speaker 2: I recommend making peace with it. That's the only real
Speaker 2: way to handle this. Now. I went back and forth
Speaker 2: with myself for how much to cover of each of
Speaker 2: Peter's evil interests For example, in twenty sixteen, Peter was
Speaker 2: a mega donor to the Republican Party, but like most
Speaker 2: people who get involved with Trump, he soured on him quickly,
Speaker 2: and he avoided donating to Trump's reelection campaign in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty out of what he described as frustration with Trump's personality. Right,
Speaker 2: I don't disagree with any of his policy, but I'm
Speaker 2: angry at how much he's become the story. Right. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, he got back in the electioneering saddle,
Speaker 2: and he backed Jdvance and Blake Masters with unprecedented donations.
Speaker 2: He gives more money to jd Vance than a single
Speaker 2: candidate had ever received for a congressional seat. In all,
Speaker 2: Peter Teel put thirty five million dollars in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two into sixteen federal level Republican candidates, and twelve of
Speaker 2: them win. But the overall performance of the GOP in
Speaker 2: those midterms is famously poor. And it's famously poor because
Speaker 2: a big part of their campaign rhetoric was spurred by
Speaker 2: irrational bigotry against LGBT and particularly Tea Americans. Peter would
Speaker 2: publicly state that this frustrated him. I think this has
Speaker 2: to do with the fact that there's a guy he's
Speaker 2: dating at the time who is a like a gay
Speaker 2: male model and who will give later interviews. I think
Speaker 2: these are kind of we're actually right around this point
Speaker 2: where he says that, like, yeah, I talked to him
Speaker 2: about this and like convinced him to stop right because
Speaker 2: I think these people are toxic and they're bad for us,
Speaker 2: and I didn't think he should be doing this. This
Speaker 2: model's name was Jeff Thomas, as we'll talk about. He's
Speaker 2: deceased now, but you know he would claim that, like
Speaker 2: I talked to pee, and I don't see why Jeff
Speaker 2: would have necessarily light about this other than that, I
Speaker 2: think Jeff was getting shit for his associated with Teal
Speaker 2: because of how much more aggressive Republicans were being at
Speaker 2: gay people. So maybe that's was Jeff's reason to want
Speaker 2: to say this. Teal is going to set out twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, but he does. It's kind of worth noting
Speaker 2: if you're trying to take seriously this idea that he
Speaker 2: stopped backing Republicans because of a toxic they were getting.
Speaker 2: He backs the most toxic of them in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: So I just don't know how much to take that
Speaker 2: I don't think I should take that very seriously. Now
Speaker 2: I could say more about how teal c steading ambitions
Speaker 2: have metastasized to a broader quest by some Silicon Valley
Speaker 2: elites to create an independent network state rule by big
Speaker 2: tech in a place like California. I probably should, but
Speaker 2: we'll leave it with this, which is that one of
Speaker 2: the major advocates of the network state movement is an
Speaker 2: investor named Belaji Shrinevasen, whof Teal suggested to Trump should
Speaker 2: lead the FDA in twenty sixteen. Thankfully, Lash didn't wind
Speaker 2: up leading the FDA. But this guy is a really
Speaker 2: dangerous dude, and he's taken some of these ideas, these
Speaker 2: Curtis Jarvin ideas that heel started to mainstream, and he's
Speaker 2: been twisting them into very dark directions. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: his book The Network State described a plan for tech
Speaker 2: oligarchs to make their own countries, escaping democracy. At the
Speaker 2: same time, one of his chief plots was to conquer
Speaker 2: San Francisco. Here's a repoet from an article in The
Speaker 2: New Republic on Blaji's current advocacy. What I'm currently really
Speaker 2: calling for is something like tech Zionism, he said, after
Speaker 2: comparing his movement to those started by the Biblical Abraham,
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, Theodore Herzel,
Speaker 2: the spiritual founder of the State of Israel, and le
Speaker 2: Kwan Yu, former authoritarian ruler of Singapore. What a collection.
Speaker 2: Bolaji then revealed his shocking idea for a tech governed
Speaker 2: city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a
Speaker 2: new political tribe clad in gray shirts. And if you
Speaker 2: see another gray on the street, you do the nod,
Speaker 2: he said during a four hour talk on the Moment
Speaker 2: of Zen podcast. You're a Fellow Gray. The gray shirts
Speaker 2: would feature Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos
Speaker 2: white combinators, a good one for the city of sam
Speaker 2: says go In particular, Grays would also receive special ID
Speaker 2: cards preventing access to exclusive Gray controlled sectors of the city.
Speaker 2: In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the
Speaker 2: police department, funding weekly policemen's banquets to win them over.
Speaker 2: Gray should embrace the police. Okay, all in on the police,
Speaker 2: said schmid Nevawsen. What does that mean? That means, as
Speaker 2: I said, banquets, That means every policeman's son, dotter, wife, cousin,
Speaker 2: you know, sibling, or whatever. She'd get a job at
Speaker 2: a tech company in security. In exchange for extra food
Speaker 2: and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Shrinivasen
Speaker 2: recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their
Speaker 2: political leanings. For example, did you want to take the
Speaker 2: sign off Elon's building? Some shit, absolute loser. Shit is stupid,
Speaker 2: fucking X sign incredibly fun.
Speaker 3: This is like it's like as if no Nazi ever
Speaker 3: got a blowjob. Hmmm, this is what. Yeah, they would
Speaker 3: come up with.
Speaker 2: The fucking Grays.
Speaker 3: So's we'll talk about like.
Speaker 2: He deserves more all of this. We're having the YadA
Speaker 2: YadA so much just because like Peter is involved in
Speaker 2: so much. You know, I can't responsibly. This is like
Speaker 2: I think I'm trying to just give as much of
Speaker 2: an overview as I can here. You should do more reading.
Speaker 3: Do you think the Grays thing is like some kind
Speaker 3: of aliens thing, Like, yes, we're the Grays?
Speaker 2: Like I think, I mean, I think he's he's recognizes
Speaker 2: that it takes advantage of kind of that symbology. But no,
Speaker 2: I think it's not even that creative.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have something cool on our shirts, like, yeah.
Speaker 2: We got a picture of fucking Elon or a doze.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, my god.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have the wide Combinator, and all the cops
Speaker 3: are gonna love jobs.
Speaker 2: You're gonna give the cops kids jobs. Their failed sons
Speaker 2: will get to work at our security companies. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 2: keep it safe. Yeah. So I'm gonna move on to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit at the end here about Peter's
Speaker 2: war on higher education. He started his public life by
Speaker 2: all authoring a book with David Sachs on the intellectual
Speaker 2: corruption in American academia. As a multi billionaire, he launched
Speaker 2: a program to prove higher education unnecessary, the Teal Fellowship.
Speaker 2: The idea behind the much ballyhooed Fellowship was that Peter
Speaker 2: would pick twenty students per year and give them each
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars to drop out of school and
Speaker 2: do their own thing trying to start a business with
Speaker 2: some support from the Teal Foundation. Basically, Peter pays for
Speaker 2: you to figure out a company you want to start,
Speaker 2: and your association with him makes it easy for you
Speaker 2: to get VC bucks and keeping with his supreme weirdness
Speaker 2: as a dude. Teal announced the initiative by attacking the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church kind of, if you get into the right college,
Speaker 2: you'll be saved. If you don't, you're in trouble. As
Speaker 2: I've said, colleges are as corrupt as the Catholic Church
Speaker 2: was five hundred years ago. They're sort of charging people
Speaker 2: more and more. It's the system of indulgences. You have
Speaker 2: this priestly or professorial class that doesn't do very much work,
Speaker 2: and you basically tell people that if you get a diploma,
Speaker 2: you're saved. Otherwise you go to hell. And like, that's
Speaker 2: such a weird way to look at it, because it's
Speaker 2: it's not the professor who have made college expensive. In part,
Speaker 2: it's like the same reason people like you, these VC
Speaker 2: ghouls that you know who are part of the administrator
Speaker 2: class we're sitting on the boards of these colleges, want
Speaker 2: more money. Like, it's not a random Marxist professor who
Speaker 2: has decided that college is going to cost eighty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a semester. That guy doesn't benefit from that situation, right.
Speaker 3: Not at all. They get paid the same amount of money.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, yeah, look, I remember when.
Speaker 3: This came out and I was like, you know what
Speaker 3: it like. I can sort of get down with.
Speaker 2: The idea of like circumveying your I don't think college
Speaker 2: is best for it. I drop down, right. A lot
Speaker 2: of people benefit from not doing college. But this, this
Speaker 2: going to war with college is such a weird movement,
Speaker 2: such a weird thing to do.
Speaker 3: He said, Hey, this isn't worth college isn't worth it.
Speaker 3: Take my money, that's worth it. See, but like college
Speaker 3: is a Catholic church.
Speaker 2: I don't Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Now,
Speaker 2: depending on who you ask, the program could be viewed
Speaker 2: as a success or a failure, because the program that
Speaker 2: comes out of this is that like Peter's going to
Speaker 2: pay one hundred grand per student if you try to
Speaker 2: drop out of college. Right from an article on the
Speaker 2: website Education Surge. A columnist for Bloomberg who is himself
Speaker 2: a venture capitalist, Aaron Brown, recently did an analysis of
Speaker 2: the two hundred and seventy one people who have received
Speaker 2: a Teal Fellowship since the program began, and it turns
Speaker 2: out eleven of them have gone on to start new
Speaker 2: companies now valued at more than a billion dollars, making
Speaker 2: them what are called unicorns in the industry. He sees
Speaker 2: that as a pretty remarkable record for finding unicorns. It's
Speaker 2: not like colleges aren't trying to encourage their students to
Speaker 2: start companies through various programs. Brown says, none of those
Speaker 2: have been anywhere near as successful as giving these kids
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars and sending them out into the world.
Speaker 2: So that's one analysis of the program. Max Chafkin, you
Speaker 2: won't be surprised to hear, gives a more critical summary
Speaker 2: of things. First off, he alleges the foundation was started
Speaker 2: in part for the media attention it would get, which
Speaker 2: would distract people from the fact that Peter's Founder's Fund
Speaker 2: has lost a lot of investors after his hedge fund
Speaker 2: fell apart. Peter launched the Fellowship with a characteristic five
Speaker 2: thousand word essay on what happened to the Future written
Speaker 2: by his partner at the Founder's vund, Bruce Gibney. It
Speaker 2: includes the line we wanted flying cars, and we got
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty characters. Thus, the Fellowship was a
Speaker 2: small attempt to get the future back on track by
Speaker 2: encouraging ambitious geniuses to take big swings and not just
Speaker 2: work for the man making fake technologies solving fake problems.
Speaker 2: Chaefkin points out that these kinds of fake technologies were
Speaker 2: precisely where the Founder's Fund had invested its money for years.
Speaker 2: Founder's fund backed Facebook, a social network just like Twitter,
Speaker 2: as well as path, Gowala, and slide, which were all
Speaker 2: social media companies. The last one, which had been started
Speaker 2: by Teal's PayPal co founder Max Levchin, was known for
Speaker 2: something called super Poke, which have allowed users to virtually slap, punch,
Speaker 2: and grope their Facebook friends, and was about as far
Speaker 2: from the randy and ideal as one good man imagine.
Speaker 2: The fellowship did connect some young men with funding that
Speaker 2: wound up leading to profitable companies, but none of them
Speaker 2: gave us the flying car or anything but more of
Speaker 2: the same overvalued Silicon Valley bullshit, and Schafgan argues the
Speaker 2: program than damage to some of the young people in it.
Speaker 2: For one thing, the program tossed kids into the Bay
Speaker 2: Area with little mounted to a small sum of money
Speaker 2: and very little social support or institutional support. Ironically, the
Speaker 2: kinds of things that universities are decent at providing. Quote,
Speaker 2: they showed up in California, only to find out that
Speaker 2: the actual execution of the fellowship was basically an afterthought.
Speaker 2: Once Teal had achieved its marketing goal, there was no
Speaker 2: structure to speak up beyond that suggestion and the requirement
Speaker 2: that they not enroll in school or take a full
Speaker 2: time job. Some former fellows talked to Schaefkan and made
Speaker 2: the very interesting point that the actual benefit of the
Speaker 2: fellowship was essentially the same as what you got out
Speaker 2: of an Ivy League school, access to powerful people in money.
Speaker 2: The Teal program, one fellow told, promised libertarian capitalism in
Speaker 2: a supportive community that would reward creativity rather than Machiavellian maneuvering.
Speaker 2: What I found was comically not that he said. It
Speaker 2: was college without the classes, a residential community, or studying.
Speaker 2: In short, most of what was enriching about college. It
Speaker 2: wasn't an attack on a credentialing system. It was another
Speaker 2: credential And of course, yeah, yeah, I think that gets
Speaker 2: it right. The greatest privilege of wealth is the ability
Speaker 2: to be taken seriously as a diletant. Right. You don't
Speaker 2: have to know anything, you don't have to earn your
Speaker 2: way in to show up with a bunch of money
Speaker 2: and be a serious player. Now, sometimes this works out.
Speaker 2: That's what James Cameron does with deep sea exploration. But
Speaker 2: he's a real he becomes a legitimate expert, right, Like,
Speaker 2: No one can argue that at this point, But James
Speaker 2: Cameron very rarely is that how it works out. Usually,
Speaker 2: usually it works out like this, right.
Speaker 3: It's usually more like the difshit who've got everybody killed
Speaker 3: in the.
Speaker 2: Exact right, Stockton Rush. Yes, Peter represents the other side
Speaker 2: of the coin, and perhaps his longest lingering danger next
Speaker 2: to the career of JD Vance is his company Pallantier,
Speaker 2: And we're close by talking some about Palenteer. In the
Speaker 2: year since JP Morgan signed on and saw their whole
Speaker 2: c suite get spined on, Palenteer has spread over the globe.
Speaker 2: It gained a great deal of influence after the US
Speaker 2: killed bin Laden, and some people insinuated that Pallenteer's tech
Speaker 2: had helped track the terrorists down. This appears to be untrue,
Speaker 2: but it spread far and wide enough that you can
Speaker 2: find plenty of critical reporting on the company that will
Speaker 2: point out its alleged connection to bin Laden's death. After
Speaker 2: Trunk took office, Peter saw his most nativest dreams come
Speaker 2: true in a way that meant big bucks for Palenteer.
Speaker 2: They made a contract with ICE and Homeland Security Investigations
Speaker 2: for thirty eight million dollars. This led to them providing
Speaker 2: software for a twenty seventeen operation that targeted unaccompanied children
Speaker 2: and their families tried to enter the United States. This
Speaker 2: was the Kids in Cages scandal. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: read an excerpt from the Intercept next. I think Ryan
Speaker 2: Grimm wrote this one. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information
Speaker 2: Act litigation provided to the Intercept show that this claim
Speaker 2: that Palenteer software is strictly involved in criminal investigations as
Speaker 2: supposed to deport tiations is false. The discrepancy between the
Speaker 2: private intelligence firm's public assertion and the reality conveyed in
Speaker 2: the newly released documents was first revealed by Mihinte, an
Speaker 2: advocacy organization that has closely tracked Palenteer's murkey role in
Speaker 2: immigration enforcement. Far from a detached support in cross border
Speaker 2: criminal investigations, the materials released this week confirmed the role
Speaker 2: Palateer played in facilitating hundreds of arrests, only a small
Speaker 2: fraction of which actually led to criminal prosecutions. The document
Speaker 2: makes it clear that the operation which would directly target
Speaker 2: the parents and other family members of children apprehended at
Speaker 2: the border, all with help of Palateer's case management app.
Speaker 2: The document continues to instruct that if sufficient information on
Speaker 2: parents or family members is obtained while investigating an unaccompanied child,
Speaker 2: a collateral case would be sent to the affected team
Speaker 2: for action. The instructions make it clear that enabled inquiries
Speaker 2: could result in charges against a child's family. Teams will
Speaker 2: be available immediately to conduct database checks and provide and
Speaker 2: contact super a suspected sponsor, parent or family members to identify, interview,
Speaker 2: and if applical, seek charges against the individual and administratively
Speaker 2: arrest the subjects and anybody encountered during the inquiry who
Speaker 2: was not who was out of status. So the Palenteer
Speaker 2: aided campaign to hunt down and arrest family members of
Speaker 2: children who crossed the border alone was touted by the
Speaker 2: Trump administration's top immigration hardliners as a necessary measure to
Speaker 2: de tear asylum seekers from making the journey north. According
Speaker 2: to figures ICE provided the intercept on Monday, the twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen initiative led to four hundred and forty three arrests,
Speaker 2: including thirty five criminal arrests. Prosecutions, however, were much more
Speaker 2: difficult to come by, with ICE, acknowledging that the campaign
Speaker 2: led to just thirty eight prosecutions related to alien smuggling
Speaker 2: or re entry of removed aliens. Karp, the avowed neo Marxist,
Speaker 2: had initially expressed frustration at his company being involved in
Speaker 2: government overreach. In twent and thirteen, he told Forbes, I
Speaker 2: didn't sign up for the government to know when I
Speaker 2: smoke a joint or have an affair. But in the
Speaker 2: wake of reporting on his company's involvement in ICE, when
Speaker 2: some employees that Pallunteer pushed to divest themselves from work
Speaker 2: with ICE, Karp pushed to renew a forty two million
Speaker 2: dollar ICE contract and attacked workers at Google and other
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley companies that had protested contracts with the military
Speaker 2: and law enforcement. In the first couple years after Trump
Speaker 2: took office, Pallanteer acquired contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars more than the total revenue they perceived from
Speaker 2: the US government during Obama's entire second term. Palenteer has
Speaker 2: at varying points explored deals with the Saudis, and in
Speaker 2: January Karp flew to Israel to express solidarity with the
Speaker 2: Israeli government, and one presumes make the case for why
Speaker 2: the IDF should buy his company's products at the moment.
Speaker 2: Pallenteer's technology is also heavily used in Ukraine, where by
Speaker 2: some accounts, it plays a major role in targeting decisions. Now,
Speaker 2: I am hesitant to rely on a lot of reporting
Speaker 2: that basically asks iftise acts as advertisements for Palenteer's technology,
Speaker 2: but there is some evidence that their algorithmic analysis has
Speaker 2: been useful in allowing Ukraine to more efficiently target and
Speaker 2: expend munitions on the battlefield. It is not really possible
Speaker 2: for me to analyze how how effective Palateer's technology is here, right,
Speaker 2: in part because information siloing in a war with this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff is so effective. I do worry about
Speaker 2: how much a lot of the reporting on the efficacy
Speaker 2: of Palateering Ukraine, how much of it sounds like an
Speaker 2: ad And I'm always very questionable about early reports that
Speaker 2: military and intelligence products are like game changingly effective, right,
Speaker 2: because a lot of the time that winds up being overblown. Right,
Speaker 2: I can't say that it is. I don't know. This
Speaker 2: is something that will be adjudicated in the march of time. Right,
Speaker 2: this is still all going on.
Speaker 4: There was an article today from Reuters. Did you read
Speaker 4: that one?
Speaker 2: No? No, I mean no nothing today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was an article that came out today that
Speaker 4: that Paleteer was dumped by their Norwegian investor over their
Speaker 4: work with Israel.
Speaker 2: That's interesting and there I could we should probably talk
Speaker 2: more about that. It's just this is all coming out.
Speaker 2: Like Karp recently visited Israel earlier at the start of
Speaker 2: this year to kind of make overtures directly to the
Speaker 2: Israeli government. Israel most of their like AI targeting that's
Speaker 2: gotten so rightly covered is not through Palenteer, but Palaeer
Speaker 2: clearly wants to be in that business with Israel, right,
Speaker 2: Like they're seeing what's going on in Gaza and like
Speaker 2: this is a place where we can make a lot
Speaker 2: of money. You know. It's just a case where I
Speaker 2: think they kind of got beaten to the punch on
Speaker 2: some of this stuff. When it comes to what they've
Speaker 2: been doing in Ukraine, Pallanteer has played a big role
Speaker 2: in turning the war in Ukraine into what center for
Speaker 2: Security and Emerging Technology analyst Rita Konev described as an
Speaker 2: AI war lab. It's possible that their technology has been
Speaker 2: helpful to Ukraine, but even in the most defensible use
Speaker 2: of Palenteer's tech, there are troubling questions. From a write
Speaker 2: up by c SET, national security officials and experts caution
Speaker 2: that these new tools may end up in the hands
Speaker 2: of adversaries. Rita Kane have raised significant concerns about the
Speaker 2: long term implications of the demployment of advanced technology in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: She stated the prospects for proliferation are crazy. She also
Speaker 2: post critical questions about the future implications. Most companies operating
Speaker 2: in Ukraine right now said they align with US national
Speaker 2: security goals, but what happens when they don't? What happens
Speaker 2: the day after, right, and you know what happens with
Speaker 2: governments who are engaged in stuff that's a lot more questionable,
Speaker 2: you know, than what Ukraine is doing right like what
Speaker 2: we're talking about with them shopping around Israel. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of a lot of unknown questions about
Speaker 2: how this is going to work out. This is not
Speaker 2: I hope this is like a ground level overview of
Speaker 2: what Palainteer does of why you should, you know, be
Speaker 2: paying attention to them. Nobody should take this as the
Speaker 2: final word on everything Palanteer gets up to. That's too
Speaker 2: big for even four parts of a podcast. But I
Speaker 2: think we've laid the groundwork and I think, Noah, that's
Speaker 2: where we're going to have to roll out for the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow.
Speaker 3: You know, usually these Behind the Bastards series they end
Speaker 3: on such a positive note.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when the guy's still alive, it's a bummer.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When it's more like the AI machine is coming
Speaker 3: to kill you, yeah, yeah, not as positive.
Speaker 2: Peter's going to help build the AI death machine that
Speaker 2: gets you targeted because you were once friends with a
Speaker 2: guy who looked up the wrong thing on the internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I should note that in April of last year, Peter's
Speaker 2: quote unquote boyfriend. You know, he's married, but I think
Speaker 2: just kind of had probably probably was a consensual sort
Speaker 2: of sleeping around thing. There was this male model, Jeff Thomas,
Speaker 2: that he had been seeing. He put him up in
Speaker 2: a thirteen million dollar mansion, he bought him a sports car.
Speaker 2: Thomas is the guy who claims he talked Peter out
Speaker 2: of supporting the Republicans in twenty twenty three. It's kind
Speaker 2: of unclear what was going on with him. Teal has
Speaker 2: always been famous for throwing these very lavish, very decadent
Speaker 2: parties right, very much at odds with the whole religious
Speaker 2: conservative image that he had. There's definitely some texts and
Speaker 2: stuff that have come out about like the parties that
Speaker 2: he would plan with this guy. There's some evidence they
Speaker 2: had a fight, or maybe he had a fight, Peter
Speaker 2: at a fight with his husband. It may have been
Speaker 2: that Jeff got angry at him over his support of
Speaker 2: the right, and that like that's part of why he
Speaker 2: pulled away from Teal because he like moved out of
Speaker 2: the house. I just don't know who was on what
Speaker 2: side of this. But in twenty twenty three, Jeff committed suicide,
Speaker 2: and we do not know why. We don't know what
Speaker 2: happened here. I'm bringing this up just because people are
Speaker 2: gonna be like, why aren't you talking about this? But like,
Speaker 2: there's really not enough for me to say what happened here, right,
Speaker 2: But it is like a thing that you'll run into
Speaker 2: with Peter. I didn't want to just leave it out
Speaker 2: because you know, that would seem like a weird hole
Speaker 2: to have in the story too. Yeah, yeah, it's cool stuff.
Speaker 2: It's also it's part worth noting for like the ethics
Speaker 2: of Pallanteer that when Peter was interviewed about like how
Speaker 2: Israel has been using AI and a lot of their
Speaker 2: targeting those resulted in heavy, massive civilian casualties, his basic
Speaker 2: statement was like, I don't think it's worth criticizing them
Speaker 2: on this. You have to assume they know their business, right, which, like, man,
Speaker 2: a lot of innocent people have died as a result
Speaker 2: of this AI targeting shit. And I think that tells
Speaker 2: you where Peter sees the ethics in his industry, right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really matter, you know. Uh anyway, sorry, YadA YadA,
Speaker 2: so much there, But like, how how do you cover
Speaker 2: all of this in four episodes? We're already over time?
Speaker 2: So thank you, Noah. I appreciate you sitting here with
Speaker 2: us for this.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I think, yeah do I thank you? Am
Speaker 3: I thanking you?
Speaker 2: I haven't thought, I never do, never will.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, but thank you Noah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And people people can follow you on the internet by
Speaker 4: you're at your game.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, okay, goodbye.
Speaker 2: Goodbye, joy love.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website at
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: at Behind the Bastards