Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson demanded hurricane
Speaker 1: relief aid, which he did not end up voting for.
Speaker 1: Of course, we have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The New Republic editor Mike Tamaski joins us to talk
Speaker 1: about the debate and the state of the race. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Harvard and MIT humanist chaplain Greg Epstein
Speaker 1: about his new book, tech Agnostic, how technology became the
Speaker 1: world's most powerful religion and why it desperately needs a reformation.
Speaker 2: But first the news and now the news.
Speaker 3: So my, there's patterns that occur that some people lie
Speaker 3: about those patterns. One of those patterns is is that
Speaker 3: Trump does not say very nice things about our troops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump does not for whatever reason, is injured troops. Somehow,
Speaker 1: even though normal people feel terrible for injured troops or
Speaker 1: injured people in general, Trump seems to not have the
Speaker 1: empathy chip, and much to his detriments, So on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: he referred to brain injuries. These are troops who've had
Speaker 1: these brain injuries that have ruined or greatly disturbed their lives.
Speaker 2: These are the injuries.
Speaker 1: They had in the Iranian attack on a base in Iraq.
Speaker 2: He called them headaches.
Speaker 1: And he made these comments on Tuesday after it was
Speaker 1: believed that he had said, you'd been tougher on a
Speaker 1: rand than anyone. And again, this is like Trump's whole
Speaker 1: strong man thing where he says that he is better, tougher,
Speaker 1: more presidential, but he usually usually just sort of ignores
Speaker 1: the truth, and that's what's happening here. But also the
Speaker 1: cruelty of these troops being injured and then having Donald
Speaker 1: Trump just consider it to be lost completely a non
Speaker 1: issue is really disturbing. And again we see Donald Trump
Speaker 1: degrading the military. Not surprising, but disturbing.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 1: It has not been a great day for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: great week for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 3: Jesse, Well, there's a thing that the left is very
Speaker 3: excited about in one of Trump's legal proceedings, which is
Speaker 3: that there's going to be some unsealed filings a Trump
Speaker 3: twenty twenty election case.
Speaker 1: What are you seeing here, So, Judge chuck In unsealed
Speaker 1: the Special Councils filing in the Trump twenty twenty election case.
Speaker 1: Jack Smith had wanted to do this. We had thought
Speaker 1: that maybe it wouldn't happen because Trump seems to get
Speaker 1: away with everything. But in fact it has been unsealed.
Speaker 1: It is one hundred and sixty five page filing with
Speaker 1: some reactions. But the net of it is Donald Trump encouraged.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of stuff we suspected, right. Like Donald
Speaker 1: Trump encouraged, got excited about the idea that there would
Speaker 1: be another Brooks Brothers riot. He encouraged a riot. He
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the stuff you suspected.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: When a colleague of that undefined campaign, there's a campaign
Speaker 1: employee tells a person their batch of votes appear to
Speaker 1: be heavily in favor of Joe Biden. The employee responded,
Speaker 1: find a reason it isn't give us options to file litigation.
Speaker 1: When a colleague suggested there would be unrest reminiscent of
Speaker 1: the Brooks Brothers riot in Florida in two thousand, the
Speaker 1: campaign employee.
Speaker 2: Said, make them riot.
Speaker 4: Do it.
Speaker 1: The motion alleges, and the filing provided numerous examples of
Speaker 1: how then Vice President Mike Pence allegedly tried to gradually
Speaker 1: and gently convince Trump to accept his election loss. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot of stuff we thought, but
Speaker 1: the proof is extremely important, and in my mind, it's
Speaker 1: good to see that we're not all crazy and that,
Speaker 1: but a lot of us suspected what was happening was
Speaker 1: actually happening. Jesse Cannon, I have a news article that
Speaker 1: I want to add to our news cycle today.
Speaker 3: Tell me all about it.
Speaker 1: A pair of billionaire preachers, if that is Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I read about this, tidaw. A pair of billionaire preachers
Speaker 1: built the most powerful political machine in Texas. I know
Speaker 1: you're going to be shocked to hear this, but they
Speaker 1: are not Democrats.
Speaker 3: You're telling me the people who benefit from a tax
Speaker 3: loophole the most are not Democrats. I don't believe you.
Speaker 1: It's two oil tycoons, Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, and
Speaker 1: they have basically pushed the Texas State House to the
Speaker 1: furthest right of anyone's wildest dreams. They're Christian nationalists, but
Speaker 1: they also donate a lot of money.
Speaker 2: You trump in there.
Speaker 1: Is a line about how it's so conservative that the
Speaker 1: state House is so conservative now that old school Republicans
Speaker 1: are basically rhinos.
Speaker 2: Compared to this.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's really interesting about these two is they
Speaker 1: really want to end public schools with vouchers and create
Speaker 1: a Christian school world, and that is again because of
Speaker 1: the desire to make America a Christian nation. It's definitely
Speaker 1: worth reading. It's in pro publica. It's a kind of
Speaker 1: really expensive reporting that all of us need to support
Speaker 1: and super interesting and definitely worth the read.
Speaker 5: We have even more toward dates for you. Did you
Speaker 5: know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have Fast Politics
Speaker 5: BOLEI jug Fast are heading out on tour to bring
Speaker 5: you the night of laughs for our dark political landscape.
Speaker 5: Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at
Speaker 5: the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty
Speaker 5: seventh at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
Speaker 5: We'll be at the Bavariam in Milwaukee on the twenty
Speaker 5: first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be
Speaker 5: in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
Speaker 5: the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston
Speaker 5: at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October
Speaker 5: we'll be in Affiliates City Winery and then DC on
Speaker 5: the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just
Speaker 5: announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth
Speaker 5: of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh
Speaker 5: as we get through this election and hopefully never hear
Speaker 5: from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
Speaker 5: we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests
Speaker 5: to help you laugh instead of cry your way through
Speaker 5: this election season and give you the inside analysis of
Speaker 5: what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now
Speaker 5: by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics
Speaker 5: as Unusual dot bio.
Speaker 1: Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and
Speaker 1: author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. My friend, my editor, Mike Tamaski.
Speaker 1: Oh Stukes, my former editor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but my heart, Yeah the best.
Speaker 6: Still have visions in your pros in my dreams occasion.
Speaker 1: Ah, my pros are not that good. I think your
Speaker 1: editing is better than my writing. Let's talk about where
Speaker 1: we are with in the world of politics and insanity.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, we're in a decent place. I think
Speaker 6: we all would have liked him. Walls who have done
Speaker 6: better in that debate and would have liked to see
Speaker 6: him throw more punches and correct more of those lives.
Speaker 6: On the other hand, I've seen now three polls after
Speaker 6: action polls showing that he really won among independents. It's
Speaker 6: very interesting thing to look at. People like us pundits
Speaker 6: all agree that Vance won. Advance was more polished. There's
Speaker 6: no question about it. If you look at the poles
Speaker 6: of regular people who watch and ask who won, Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it's Advance, but margin of error or sometimes it's
Speaker 6: a dead heat, so there's no clear consensus on who won.
Speaker 6: But then among independence, I've seen three polls that Wills
Speaker 6: and Independence favored him handily. So it may be Molly
Speaker 6: that exactly the thing that people like you and I
Speaker 6: wanted him to do was just to be partisan, be
Speaker 6: a fire breathing partisan. It may well be that the
Speaker 6: fact that he wasn't that is exactly what went over Independence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense that Vance,
Speaker 1: even though Vance was a little nicer last night, that
Speaker 1: the niceness and the sort of cheerful Midwestern demeanor of
Speaker 1: Walls is actually more meaningful to voters than being right
Speaker 1: or scoring points or debunking miss right.
Speaker 2: I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, I feel like we should have a moment
Speaker 1: here to talk about vibes and the case four vibes.
Speaker 2: Okay, you ready.
Speaker 6: On pro vibe fire away.
Speaker 1: For example, there's been so much time during the Biden
Speaker 1: administration when I've talked to people in the admin or
Speaker 1: around the admin or media people, and you know, you've said, well,
Speaker 1: they do they're doing this, chips and science, they are
Speaker 1: doing this, they're doing that. And they've said, you know,
Speaker 1: when you've you know, all this really good, cool, interesting
Speaker 1: policy stuff, and then you know the person will say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but nobody knows, so does it matter if nobody knows?
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden Harris gets in the
Speaker 1: race and she has really good vibes for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the vibes are like it's like the opposite of Biden.
Speaker 1: People are just they wanted and they're interested in her
Speaker 1: and they love her and they you know, there's just vibes.
Speaker 1: And then people are like, you can't run for president
Speaker 1: of vibes.
Speaker 6: O contrere. I mean a lot of people have a
Speaker 6: lot of people have I mean, you know, obviously the
Speaker 6: policies and general philosophy has got to be mixed in there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they're Democrats. I mean, they have a lot
Speaker 2: of policy.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan was a vibe kind
Speaker 6: of candidate. I mean it was clear what he was for,
Speaker 6: you know, or what he was against government. But he
Speaker 6: was a vibee kind of candidate with that sunny smile
Speaker 6: of his and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But wasn't Bill Clinton kind of a vibey candidate.
Speaker 6: Clinton's kind of vibey Obama was. I mean, any successful
Speaker 6: charismatic politician is here's the way to put it. Voters
Speaker 6: and just human beings. You know, we reason emotionally. Okay,
Speaker 6: we reason emotionally that which has to say, our first
Speaker 6: response to a person we see on TV, or you know,
Speaker 6: a sports team who we obsessed partly on the basis
Speaker 6: of their color schemes and uniforms. You know, our first
Speaker 6: reactions are emotional, and they're just instant, and they're either
Speaker 6: kind of positive or kind of negative. And then we
Speaker 6: start building in our brain the logical reasons that support
Speaker 6: that first emotional instinct. So you're either, in the case
Speaker 6: of Donald Trump, a case unfathomable to you and me.
Speaker 6: There are millions of people out there who saw him
Speaker 6: come down to that escalator and went, that's my guy.
Speaker 6: And then right, you know, and they just did that emotionally,
Speaker 6: and then you are constructing the intellectual reasons while you're
Speaker 6: for it, But the first reaction is emotional. Without question.
Speaker 1: I think there's really a case for vibes here in
Speaker 1: this moment in political life, and Trump was largely a
Speaker 1: vibes based candidate.
Speaker 6: He was and remains so, and so like she needs
Speaker 6: to be in her own right, we have a great
Speaker 6: matchup here because she's very much the opposite.
Speaker 1: So now let's talk about what she needs to do
Speaker 1: right now. I've heard anxiety that she's not on the
Speaker 1: trail enough, but there was just a major, major hurricane
Speaker 1: and she's down there in Georgia today doing what she
Speaker 1: needs to do and not looking partisan, and you know,
Speaker 1: she is in leadership. There are like three things happening
Speaker 1: right now that I think are these sort of outside issues.
Speaker 1: There's a hurricane, there's this doc worker strike, which could
Speaker 1: be enormous, and then there's the Iran Israel war.
Speaker 6: So talk to me the last one first. That could
Speaker 6: damage I mean, it depends on how it goes over
Speaker 6: the next four and a half weeks. Obviously, this is
Speaker 6: a situation where she can't particularly depart much from her boss,
Speaker 6: and her boss, unfortunately, is saying do anything you want
Speaker 6: to do, Bibe. Now, waging a war against Husblela is
Speaker 6: a different thing than killing a bunch of babies at Kaza.
Speaker 6: Everybody understands that. But you know, I don't know. The
Speaker 6: only thing we can do is just hope that that
Speaker 6: conflagration doesn't explode before November fifth, because she just can't
Speaker 6: really separate herself very much from the president while she's
Speaker 6: the vice president. It's just really hard to do. Hubert
Speaker 6: Humphrey learned that in nineteen sixty eight. Now with the strike,
Speaker 6: I worry about that. I have read that it would
Speaker 6: take like three weeks for the effects to be felt
Speaker 6: by the average consumer. So I would certainly hope they
Speaker 6: can get it settled before then.
Speaker 1: Despite the fact that the head of the dock workers
Speaker 1: is from friend, they have not gotten a raise in
Speaker 1: a long time, and the business is a good business.
Speaker 6: But they endorsed Harris back in July, right, the undid did, Yeah,
Speaker 6: the union did, but some of that, so there's that.
Speaker 6: I don't know. The only other thing I would say Mollie,
Speaker 6: is that Okay, Harris came out of the gate, you know,
Speaker 6: like a fire ablaze, you know, tons of energy, tons
Speaker 6: of sizzle, tons of charisma. Walls seemed a great choice.
Speaker 6: Their first barnstorming tour, great convention, great barnstorming tour, after
Speaker 6: the convention, great debate. Great. In the last week or two,
Speaker 6: a couple of weeks, they've lost a little bit of
Speaker 6: that is inevitable, that can't be sustained forever. But okay,
Speaker 6: the question phasing the campaign is they should have known,
Speaker 6: and I'm sure they did know they were going to
Speaker 6: lose some of that. So what do you do? How
Speaker 6: do you keep it going? What's the next phase? I
Speaker 6: don't think that's really clear yet what the next phase is.
Speaker 6: And they there's just a certain sharpness that's missing. I mean,
Speaker 6: maybe it comes from just being out on the trail.
Speaker 6: And of course you and I aren't seeing this because
Speaker 6: we're not in places where you know, it's the States, yeah,
Speaker 6: and we're not seeing ads, and we're not seeing news
Speaker 6: accounts of their visits or anything. But I feel that
Speaker 6: they have lost a little momentum and last night was
Speaker 6: would have been a chance to get the momentum back
Speaker 6: and they didn't, so I don't know exactly what they
Speaker 6: do right now.
Speaker 1: So I did talk to them and was like, are
Speaker 1: you guys on the trail en?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I talked to someone in Biden world, not in Harris world,
Speaker 1: and he said it would be unseemly right now to
Speaker 1: be out there with the hurricane.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, I mean I don't understand those calculations. They're
Speaker 6: above my pay grade. But I think she needs to
Speaker 6: introduce some new ideas, introduce some new lines of attack
Speaker 6: against Trump. I assume they're getting a commercial up about
Speaker 6: Vance saying last night he said about the election in
Speaker 6: January sixth and so on. You know, they need to
Speaker 6: press that. Remember freedom from the Convention and the flag
Speaker 6: waving and all that stuff. I loved that stuff. Get
Speaker 6: back to that, and she talks about it in her
Speaker 6: stump speeches. I watch her stump speeches sometimes, but there
Speaker 6: still needs to be a little bit more communication to
Speaker 6: people of who she is. And you know what the
Speaker 6: core idea is behind this campaign?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really important point, is that
Speaker 1: there's got to be some of that. Talk to me
Speaker 1: about this moment where at the end of the debate.
Speaker 1: Vance is unable to say that Donald Trump lost in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: Well, it was the moment of the debate. It's a
Speaker 6: moment that, potentially, depending on what the Democrats managed to
Speaker 6: do with it, cancels out all of his fluid and
Speaker 6: successful answers earlier. It's very clear that Vance said the
Speaker 6: things he's said, that Timberwall said, he said, and you
Speaker 6: know he has said, you know what he would do
Speaker 6: with respect to you know, the next time around. So
Speaker 6: I think that's something that I wish that had come
Speaker 6: first Rathertheless, I wish that'd be the first question.
Speaker 1: The good news is so many people will see the
Speaker 1: clips of it. Yeah, that linear doesn't necessarily matter the
Speaker 1: way it did alone, you know, the way it did
Speaker 1: when everyone had cable. The problem is trump Ism is
Speaker 1: built on a lie, right, It's built on a lie
Speaker 1: that Trump won the twenty twenty election, which now Trump
Speaker 1: has stopped saying because I don't either he has some
Speaker 1: kind of memory issues or he's just decided that he's
Speaker 1: going to tell the truth about the twenty twenty election finally,
Speaker 1: But now he says I lost it by a whisker.
Speaker 2: You hear that sometimes, So like the.
Speaker 1: Lie of trump Ism is really one of the fundamental premises.
Speaker 1: The thing that made me anxious if we're going to
Speaker 1: go into Molly free therapy, which I guess we are
Speaker 1: because no one can stop me, is that. And we
Speaker 1: have not seen anyone able to do this really. Advance
Speaker 1: was able to do trumpsm without Trump a couple times
Speaker 1: during that debate. You know, this sort of sunny midwestern guy.
Speaker 1: He's not really midwestern, right, but he sort of became
Speaker 1: kind of you know, he's a cipher, so he became
Speaker 1: kind of Midwestern when he was with Walls, and you
Speaker 1: really did see a kind of you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: a folksy guy who wants to monitor women's periods. And
Speaker 1: I did feel like that line he has, which I
Speaker 1: think works really well for him, is that liberals say
Speaker 1: that if Donald Trump is president, everything is going to
Speaker 1: be a nightmare. But Donald Trump was president before and
Speaker 1: you're all still here, right, And some of those ideas
Speaker 1: like where he sort of made this case that Trump
Speaker 1: was saving Obamacare even though it's not true, olt like
Speaker 1: he was able to put a plausible spin on it.
Speaker 6: Well he was, and that's you know, that's where you know,
Speaker 6: we were disappointed the Walls didn't rebut that particularly that
Speaker 6: thing about saying at Mountcare that was just insane.
Speaker 2: And I mean amazingly demented and insane.
Speaker 6: It was. So Vance is going to head back out
Speaker 6: on the trail. I would presume he's going to go
Speaker 6: back to talking the way he talked before this debate, right,
Speaker 6: because that's that's what those audiences want to hear. They
Speaker 6: don't they don't want to hear mister midwestern nice guy.
Speaker 6: They don't want to hear a guy who expresses sympathy
Speaker 6: to Tim Walls at the fact that his son saw
Speaker 6: somebody get shot. They want somebody who breathes fire.
Speaker 2: That was the mainstream pivot, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they want somebody who breathes fire. And I think
Speaker 6: he's kind of like returned to being that person in
Speaker 6: pretty short order.
Speaker 1: What scares me is that the mainstream pivot works, and
Speaker 1: that one of the reasons why Trump is is having
Speaker 1: so much trouble surviving is because of Trump, and that
Speaker 1: his policies, if given to someone who is more disciplined,
Speaker 1: less in saying better pretending to be normal, could ultimately
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five could really end up being a
Speaker 1: real thing.
Speaker 6: Well, yes, but that's a problem for God on the road.
Speaker 6: You know, right now our problem is Donald Trump. But
Speaker 6: the pivot to normal can work. But you know, Romney
Speaker 6: did a similar thing in the first debate in two
Speaker 6: thousand and eight. He didn't become president. You know, it
Speaker 6: depends on what the other side does with it. And
Speaker 6: after that debate, Obama shaped up won the next two debates.
Speaker 6: And also they've attacked Romney very successfully over baying capital
Speaker 6: and they won comfortably. And I think, you know, Harris Harrison,
Speaker 6: the Democrats can do the same thing. They have more
Speaker 6: money than God. They can put whatever virtuals they want.
Speaker 6: You know, there's not enough airtime in Michigan for them
Speaker 6: to spend all their money. They have so much money.
Speaker 6: So as long as they do good ads and good
Speaker 6: TikTok social media stuff, then you know, I think they
Speaker 6: still ought to be able to define Trump in a
Speaker 6: way that you know, Vance's performance last night will be
Speaker 6: a distant memory by November fifth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Thank you so much, Mike Tamaski. I
Speaker 1: hope you wilcome back.
Speaker 6: Thank you anytime.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
Speaker 1: awful Trump's second term could be. Well, so are we,
Speaker 1: which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
Speaker 1: a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have just released the final episode of this five
Speaker 1: episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John
Speaker 1: Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if you
Speaker 1: are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
Speaker 1: you can hit play and put your phone in the
Speaker 1: lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
Speaker 1: All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 2: We need to educate.
Speaker 1: Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
Speaker 1: to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 1: Harvard and MIT chaplain Greg Ebstein is the author of
Speaker 1: tech Agnostic, How Technology became the world's most powerful religion
Speaker 1: and why it desperately needs a reformation. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Greg, Thank.
Speaker 4: You so much. Molly, it's so good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: All right, you gotta tell us first of all, tell
Speaker 1: us what you do.
Speaker 2: And then you can tell us what your book is about.
Speaker 4: My title is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT,
Speaker 4: so I serve those two universities. Chaplain is usually thought
Speaker 4: of as a religious advisor, community leader, etc. But I'm
Speaker 4: non religious. I'm an atheist. To the word that I
Speaker 4: like best is humanists, and I serve the very large,
Speaker 4: actually non religious communities at those institutions.
Speaker 1: So you're a religious advisor for the non religious.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I myself am non religious. It's unusual. When
Speaker 4: I first have it, got to Harvard to do this
Speaker 4: work about twenty plus years ago, I was one of
Speaker 4: the only humanist chaplains in North America, really one of
Speaker 4: the only ones in the world other than a couple
Speaker 4: places in Europe. And now I've completely lost track of
Speaker 4: how many of us there are. It's a growing field
Speaker 4: because the population of non religious people has just balloon
Speaker 4: in the past couple decades. And there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people who are not religious but want to live deeply meaningful,
Speaker 4: ethical lives, want to feel that they're part of a community,
Speaker 4: want to make the world a better place. And humanism
Speaker 4: is a word that I and a lot of other
Speaker 4: people use to describe that approach to life.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us about this book.
Speaker 4: So I have a book coming out in about three
Speaker 4: four weeks now. I've been working on it for five
Speaker 4: six years. It's a follow up to my book Good
Speaker 4: Without God, What a billion non religious people do believe.
Speaker 4: But this book is called tech Agnostic, How technology became
Speaker 4: the world's most powerful religion and why it desperately needs
Speaker 4: a reformation. And so it's it's a fun book, but
Speaker 4: it's also quite serious. It's a look at the fact
Speaker 4: that tech, what you might call big tech, what you
Speaker 4: might call this sort of mythological place of Silicon Valley,
Speaker 4: has taken on this enormous role in our lives, in
Speaker 4: our society, in our politics, that is so far beyond
Speaker 4: now what you could possibly refer to as the thing
Speaker 4: that most people refer to tech as, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: an industry, right, Like you say the tech and then
Speaker 4: algorithmically you complete that phrase with industry. Right, it just
Speaker 4: doesn't make any sense anymore, because there's no industry left
Speaker 4: on the face of the earth that isn't in some
Speaker 4: way at least significant industry that isn't in some way
Speaker 4: a tech industry. And so, having spent my life in
Speaker 4: the world of religion, when I was asked to join
Speaker 4: MIT as a chaplain, and I had this other role
Speaker 4: that they gave me called convener for ethical life. Back
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen, I started thinking like yeah at MIT
Speaker 4: at Mastersts Institute of Technology and Religion and non religious people,
Speaker 4: and I realized, Oh, this thing that has taken over
Speaker 4: my life has actually taken over most of our lives,
Speaker 4: and it really, when you start to think about it,
Speaker 4: actually can look like a religion.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it reminds me of churches right in the
Speaker 1: around the period of the Reformation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you've got the symbols, you've got the prayerful rituals,
Speaker 4: right like most religious people pray once a week, once
Speaker 4: a day, three times a day, five times a day.
Speaker 4: We genuflect before our stained glass black mirrors on average
Speaker 4: a couple hundred times a day now. And it's not
Speaker 4: a coincidence even that. You know, if you look at
Speaker 4: somebody doing that, you know, opening their phone, it does
Speaker 4: kind of look like they're worshiping and on. Like some
Speaker 4: religions that I could name, because I'm not in any
Speaker 4: way anti religious. I'm a chaplain. I work with people
Speaker 4: who are religious all the time. But this particular religion,
Speaker 4: you know, has a decent sized chance of causing some
Speaker 4: kind of apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think that's a really good point. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Why have I never put this together before? The technology
Speaker 1: is the new religion?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's a certain kind of humor to it, right,
Speaker 4: Like when I talk to people about this, I say, well,
Speaker 4: you know, am I literally saying that technology has become
Speaker 4: the world's most powerful religion? Or you know, is this
Speaker 4: whole book that I've written the most annoying extended metaphor
Speaker 4: you've ever heard in your entire life? And you know,
Speaker 4: the answer is yes, there's some of both meant. But
Speaker 4: what I'm really getting at here is that not only
Speaker 4: is this thing that we call tech now playing this
Speaker 4: just sort of like minute to minute role in our lives,
Speaker 4: where you know, everything that we do is some kind
Speaker 4: of interface with tech. And I used to write about
Speaker 4: tech addiction, but I stopped even thinking about it that way,
Speaker 4: because it's it's not an addiction if every single person
Speaker 4: that you know is doing it all the time equally
Speaker 4: and you can't even quite turn it off, like there's
Speaker 4: no way to opt out. But it's more than just that, Molly,
Speaker 4: It's big tech, if you want to use that phrase,
Speaker 4: has become dominated by some really weird ideas ideas that
Speaker 4: when I look at it through my sort of studies
Speaker 4: and religion lens look a lot like I mean, you
Speaker 4: could call the mythology, right. A lot of people have
Speaker 4: said that Silicon Valley has a kind of mythology to it.
Speaker 4: But if somebody said, well, you know, Zeus has taken
Speaker 4: over our culture, I mean, nobody would be particularly worried
Speaker 4: about that, right. But if I told you that, like
Speaker 4: fun to mentalist, Christianity was taking over, and I could
Speaker 4: give you some evidence for that, you might legitimately have
Speaker 4: to be concerned, right. And so that's why I actually
Speaker 4: think that the ideas that animate a lot of the
Speaker 4: multi multi billionaires in Silicon Valley look more to me
Speaker 4: like a kind of theology or a religious doctrine even
Speaker 4: And you know it's worrisome because if and I'll give
Speaker 4: you a couple of examples in a minute, obviously, but
Speaker 4: you know it's worrisome because if most of the people
Speaker 4: that are listening to this had a worry that their
Speaker 4: friend or their family, or that they themselves were under
Speaker 4: the spell of some kind of really weird sounding theological idea.
Speaker 4: And again, you know, there are good theological ideas too,
Speaker 4: plenty of them. But if you if you fell under
Speaker 4: the spell of some weird ones, you would instinctively, almost
Speaker 4: you know, intuitively know to question, right, what's the agenda
Speaker 4: behind this theological claim that you, the pope, the priest,
Speaker 4: the Rabbi, the minister, imom whatever are making. But we
Speaker 4: don't question the ideas that are underlying a lot of
Speaker 4: big tech nearly enough when I started looking at, you know,
Speaker 4: the role the tech is playing. I mean, just the
Speaker 4: fastest example that comes to my mind. There's another book
Speaker 4: out called AI Snake Oil that's written by two prominent
Speaker 4: Princeton AI scholars, Sayash Kapoor and i Arvin Neraanan, and
Speaker 4: you know, in it they talk about what AI can
Speaker 4: and can't do. But they have an article on their
Speaker 4: you know, blog about their book that they put out
Speaker 4: a couple weeks ago, and it was titled AI companies
Speaker 4: are pivoting from creating gods to building products good? And
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, that is good, I guess. But if
Speaker 4: they have to pivot from creating gods, that ought to
Speaker 4: tell you something, right, this is what what most people
Speaker 4: would agree, you know, is kind of our world's flagship
Speaker 4: industry right now, right the most trending human endeavor right
Speaker 4: now is trying to create AI and so you know
Speaker 4: they're having to pay it from creating gods. That's a
Speaker 4: little odd, that's a little scary, right, But it's more
Speaker 4: than just that though. You know, I noticed comparisons that
Speaker 4: I make in the book to you know, other major
Speaker 4: religious doctrines, even like the ideas of heaven and Hell
Speaker 4: of chosenness, which shows up obviously in Christian Gudeo Christian history,
Speaker 4: a ton religious colonialism. It just goes on and on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so connect this because tech Bros and not just Elon,
Speaker 1: but Andreas and Horowitzz, they're all in crew. All of
Speaker 1: these people consider themselves to be and I think they
Speaker 1: will eventually run for office. They all consider themselves right
Speaker 1: now they have surrogates like JD. Vance and Bratt Masters,
Speaker 1: but eventually I think they will get rid of the
Speaker 1: surrogates and just do it themselves. So explain to me
Speaker 1: what their ideology he is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's great because as you know, JD.
Speaker 4: Vance is the acolyte of Peter til Right, He's really
Speaker 4: nothing without Peter Tiel, who is this multi billionaire venture
Speaker 4: capitalists founder who is a kind of right winger libertarian
Speaker 4: that you know, is in many ways leading the charge
Speaker 4: of the kinds of weird ideas that I detail in
Speaker 4: my book and talk about, you know, why we ought
Speaker 4: to be concerned by so. Peter Tiel, for example, on
Speaker 4: his website the founder's fund up until at least now
Speaker 4: you know, maybe they'll change it at some point, but
Speaker 4: has talked about how for him, the ideal venture capitalist
Speaker 4: I mean, or rather the ideal recipient a venture capital,
Speaker 4: the ideal founder and a founder is a kind of
Speaker 4: demigod in the Silicon Valley pantheon, right. The ideal founder
Speaker 4: he you know, he says as a quote, has a
Speaker 4: kind of near messianic attitude about the company or whatever
Speaker 4: that he and it usually is he is founding. And
Speaker 4: you know, if that's not enough, and you know, by
Speaker 4: the way, like is that a good thing? Right? Usually
Speaker 4: if somebody came up to you on the street and
Speaker 4: told you that they have a near messianic attitude, you know,
Speaker 4: you would run like the wind right in the other direction,
Speaker 4: you know. And I had a guy named Russ Wilcox,
Speaker 4: who teaches how to be a CEO here at Harvard
Speaker 4: Business School, who talked to me on the record and
Speaker 4: said that he agrees with this, and that he too
Speaker 4: was looking for a kind of messianic complex in his founders.
Speaker 4: Then you've got somebody like a Mark Andresen, right, you
Speaker 4: know who you mentioned, who is so zealous that he
Speaker 4: has a document called the Techno Optimists Manifesto that was
Speaker 4: really popular when they put it up online, you know
Speaker 4: a little while back. It uses the phrase, Molly, we believe.
Speaker 4: He uses the phrase we believe one hundred and thirty
Speaker 4: three times in a short document. Okay, And just to
Speaker 4: give you one of so many quotes I could give
Speaker 4: you from this this document, which is it's so theological.
Speaker 4: I often begin my speeches to audiences with this document
Speaker 4: and I tell them I'm going to quote from scripture.
Speaker 4: He says, we believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives.
Speaker 2: How would that even work? That's so insane.
Speaker 4: It's not just insane, it's a very particular type of
Speaker 4: insanity for somebody like myself, where I've been studying religion
Speaker 4: my whole life. He says, we believe any deceleration of
Speaker 4: AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI,
Speaker 4: that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. Right.
Speaker 4: So what he's doing here, First of all, he's taking
Speaker 4: a line from abortion, right, He's taking the you know
Speaker 4: that you have to be pro life, rigidly pro life.
Speaker 4: He says essentially about bringing the AI into life, and
Speaker 4: that when somebody tells you that if you don't do something,
Speaker 4: that you're going to destroy the world, it's a classic
Speaker 4: form of extremist religious manipulation that basically says, we're going
Speaker 4: to take advantage of the fact that we know that you,
Speaker 4: like any other normal, decent human being, you want to
Speaker 4: be a moral person, you want to be a moral citizen. Again,
Speaker 4: most people do. It's just sort of you know, human nature,
Speaker 4: like we evolve to be selfish at times, but we
Speaker 4: also really needed to evolve to be cooperative and care
Speaker 4: about one another. Otherwise human beings don't get here to
Speaker 4: this day. Right. So, but he's taking advantage of that
Speaker 4: and saying like, if you don't obey our theology of
Speaker 4: AI where we want you to invest, or we want
Speaker 4: you to be part of our social project to invest
Speaker 4: trillions of dollars in this thing, then you're murdering. You're
Speaker 4: killing you know, you're terrible, right, And so that's a
Speaker 4: sense of how religious this phenomenon actually is.
Speaker 1: It's not bizarre, and it makes sense. And if you
Speaker 1: track like the decline in religion in this country and
Speaker 1: the assent of technology, it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 1: what you're saying.
Speaker 2: But I just never put it together. So now I'm scared.
Speaker 4: The thing that I would also want people to take
Speaker 4: away from this is that when I'm making these criticisms
Speaker 4: in the book and with you, like, I'm not anti technology,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't even know how to try to make an
Speaker 4: argument or to write a book that's anti technology, right, Like,
Speaker 4: I get it. You know, I'm not saying that, you know,
Speaker 4: we all need to go back to the days of
Speaker 4: you know, hovering around the fire. Right. What I am
Speaker 4: saying is that we've gone a little too far in
Speaker 4: our uncritical faith in any and every technology that comes along,
Speaker 4: and we've forgotten to ask ourselves, you know, at times,
Speaker 4: what agenda might be underlying, like our every day, every hour,
Speaker 4: every minute reliance on this stuff. And so that what
Speaker 4: I'm asking for is not like elimination of tech. It's
Speaker 4: a reformation. You know, we need to improve our way
Speaker 4: of thinking and acting around this stuff to.
Speaker 1: Have some amount of guile to not take this as
Speaker 1: necessarily all God.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so I'm a chaplain, right, I've spent
Speaker 4: twenty plus years working alongside religious people of all kinds. Right,
Speaker 4: there's fifty of us Harvard chaplains. There's about thirty of us,
Speaker 4: and I t chaplains. I've been in leadership roles, elected
Speaker 4: and appointed in both settings. You know, I regularly work
Speaker 4: with all kinds of religious people. I'm part of a
Speaker 4: fellowship right now by a big interfaith organization called Interfaith
Speaker 4: America called the Vote is Sacred fellowship where we're like
Speaker 4: it's religious leaders and myself working from across the country
Speaker 4: on how to strengthen and protect democracy. So there's great
Speaker 4: people in these religious communities, and I learn from them
Speaker 4: all the time that you know, my religious friends and
Speaker 4: colleagues make me a better person sometimes with you know,
Speaker 4: the ways that they interact with their families and their communities. Right.
Speaker 4: But what I like is reformed religion, self critical religion.
Speaker 4: I like Christians who know that Christianity isn't perfect, and
Speaker 4: they know that it desperately needs to be critiqued. Sometimes.
Speaker 4: I like Jews who are maybe religious or passionate about
Speaker 4: their Judaism but they can recognize that Judaism isn't perfect.
Speaker 4: They're not perfect. They need to be self critical. Israel
Speaker 4: isn't perfect, We need to be critical of it sometimes,
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera. Right, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, the same thing,
Speaker 4: even humanists, right like I tend to get into fights
Speaker 4: with you know, my fellow atheists, people like Richard Dawkins
Speaker 4: or Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchins if I
Speaker 4: felt like they're being too anti religious, trying to act
Speaker 4: like humanism. What I do is all perfect, all good. No.
Speaker 4: And so it's a recognition that the more that this
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley world becomes a kind of quasi religious institution,
Speaker 4: the more we need to be critical of it. The
Speaker 4: more we need to look at each new sort of
Speaker 4: value and values proposition and say, like, is that real?
Speaker 4: Can we really trust you, Sam Altman to be doing
Speaker 4: open AI for the good of the world. Sam Altman
Speaker 4: is going around now hat in hand, asking from some
Speaker 4: of the worst people on earth, honestly, for literally millions
Speaker 4: of dollars to build these data centers across America, each
Speaker 4: of which is as powerful as several nuclear power plants. Right,
Speaker 4: and like open Ai is a company that of course
Speaker 4: famously started as a nonprofit and they just this past
Speaker 4: week announced oh just kidding. All of the investment that
Speaker 4: made us a multi multi billion dollar company was made
Speaker 4: into a certain kind of company, but we were never
Speaker 4: actually going to be that kind of company after all.
Speaker 4: So you know, if you invested in us, or if
Speaker 4: you trusted us, screw you. We're now for profit and
Speaker 4: we want your trillion thank you, And so we need
Speaker 4: to learn how to be more critical of people like
Speaker 4: Altman in advances.
Speaker 2: Right. No, it's a really good point. It's a really
Speaker 2: really good point. Greg. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's a pleasure, Molly. You know, we first sort
Speaker 4: of interacted at the beginning of the pandemic when I
Speaker 4: was kind of doing online chaplaincy for some of my
Speaker 4: students on Twitter and LinkedIn because there was no way
Speaker 4: to reach them in person, and you kind of gave
Speaker 4: that a bit of a boost. You know. Something that
Speaker 4: I'd said to one of the students, I guess was
Speaker 4: moving to you. And it was so moving to me
Speaker 4: to get to engage with you back then. And I'm
Speaker 4: a huge fan. Thank you for what you do.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, thank you for coming on and really so interesting.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope to see again sometime. No moment.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon, Mai Jung Fast.
Speaker 3: I have to tell you, one of the things I
Speaker 3: feel like is one of the most just we'll look
Speaker 3: back as one of the more gross parts of our
Speaker 3: society was having our safety net be GoFundMe. And because
Speaker 3: it's one of the more gross parts of society, guess
Speaker 3: you just waded into it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the guy who wants to end federal
Speaker 1: disaster relief and many of the things that the federal
Speaker 1: government does just started a disaster relief go fund me
Speaker 1: page for people who have been affected by this monster hurricane.
Speaker 1: It's tacky, but it's also like, the federal government exists.
Speaker 1: We pay taxes so that we can help these people. Certainly,
Speaker 1: raising extra money is good, but I think it's worth
Speaker 1: realizing that Donald Trump could easily make a donation to
Speaker 1: this area or purchase something to give to people like
Speaker 1: paper Tels just kidding, not paper Tells, But he instead
Speaker 1: decided to raise money from his people. Again, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has taken a lot of money from his people. So
Speaker 1: the fact that he's trying to take more is really disgusting,
Speaker 1: and that is our moment of fucker. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.