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Speaker 1: Also media, What's dying in darkness? My Democracy? I'm Robert

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Speaker 1: Evans hosted Behind the Bastards. We're coming on recording this

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Speaker 1: the day that The Washington Post is getting attacked online

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Speaker 1: for not endorsing anybody in the election, which I'm grateful

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Speaker 1: for because it means that no one hasn't noticed that

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Speaker 1: Cool Zone has also not put in our endorsement for

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Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four election, which is really good because

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Speaker 1: every year, you know, we advise people to vote for

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Speaker 1: the same man, Richard Milhouse Nixon. Now to talk about

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Speaker 1: our greatest president and I think our greatest future president.

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Speaker 1: Noah Shackman, Noah, how are you feeling? Do you think

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Speaker 1: Nixon's got it this year? You think he's going to

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Speaker 1: pull out a win.

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Speaker 2: I thought you were saying I was your greatest future president.

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Speaker 1: You could be, You could be, but you need to

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Speaker 1: be a little more Nixonian. You know, have you considered

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Speaker 1: trying to destroy the world while drunk and only Henry

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Speaker 1: Kissinger being the one that can stop you?

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Speaker 2: No? I haven't, so I guess I'm not qualified.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a bummer. No. You are a contributing

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Speaker 1: writer at Rolling Stone, contributing editor at Wired, and you're

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Speaker 1: here to talk about pe Tizzy, which Peter TiAl does

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Speaker 1: not go by. And well, probably if he was not

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Speaker 1: committed to destroying us after the first two episodes, that

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Speaker 1: nickname is probably going to get us attacked.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you're definitely yeah.

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Speaker 1: We're done. We're done here everybody. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: How do you feel about the news today? Is it good?

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Speaker 1: You happy? Happy about the news?

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Speaker 2: The Washington postling.

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Speaker 1: I don't know whatever news is happening today. I assume

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Speaker 1: something else went down, right, somebody died.

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Speaker 2: I'm excited. The Yankees are playing in the world. Cheers.

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Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. Bill Clinton called Kerry Lake attractive.

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Speaker 1: It's been an exciting week for everybody.

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Speaker 2: I mean, you know, tiger can't change the stripe.

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Speaker 1: From yeah, yeah, if we want to call him a tiger,

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Speaker 1: yeah yeah, so uh yeah, let's uh, I guess let's

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Speaker 1: get back into the old Peter Teal game. I'm I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm ready to talk about him. You're ready to talk

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Speaker 1: about him? Yeah, I will bums away. If you're a journalist,

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Speaker 1: which you know two thirds of us are in this call.

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Speaker 1: December seventh, two thousand and seven ought to be a

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Speaker 1: date that lives an infamy. That was my my Pearl

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Speaker 1: Harbor joke, But it's also a joke referencing the Gawker lawsuit,

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Speaker 1: because that is the day that Gawker, via its tech

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Speaker 1: website Valley Wag published an article with the title Peter

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Speaker 1: Teal is totally gay people Now Valley Wag, which was

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Speaker 1: you know, the again, like the tech imprint of Gawker

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Speaker 1: had been writing about Peter Teel for a while, and

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Speaker 1: they had published articles kind of insinuating that Peter was

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Speaker 1: gay for quite a while. The company founder, Nick Denton, was,

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Speaker 1: to his credit, someone who recognized early on that Peter

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Speaker 1: was not just another rich investor guy, but somebody who

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Speaker 1: was amassing significant power and had a weird ideology and

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Speaker 1: should be covered. Unfortunately, the downside of it was that

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Speaker 1: Nick's instincts were, you know, this was a messy time

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Speaker 1: for digital media, shall we say, and Valleywag was not

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Speaker 1: at this point entirely conducting itself in the best traditions

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Speaker 1: of a journalistic enterprise. Right. And while I think an

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Speaker 1: argument can be made, a strong one that Peter being gay,

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Speaker 1: given his funding of the Republican Party, is to a

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Speaker 1: degree relevant to the public interest. The way in which

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Speaker 1: Valley Wag reported on this initially was not a public

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Speaker 1: interest story, right, Like that title, Peter Teal is to that,

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Speaker 1: that's not a we're we're getting out necessary information title, right,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of that's being extremely caddy right.

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Speaker 3: By the way, our guest today is no chef.

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Speaker 2: And why are you slipping me in on the caddy

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Speaker 2: outing here?

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Speaker 1: I introduced him this this much.

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Speaker 2: I haven't Catalie outed anybody in the Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Robert definitely did forget to introduce you last time, but

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Speaker 3: we redid it. We did it, and it was fine.

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Speaker 1: I got it.

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Speaker 3: This time gets his credits because.

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Speaker 4: They're thank you get your.

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Speaker 1: Credits, Robert.

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Speaker 3: I would credit you too if I could.

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Speaker 1: Do you remember this, Noah, when when Gawker outed Peter,

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Speaker 1: because I didn't catch it really at the time, but

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Speaker 1: I was a baby at this point.

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Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't either, but I did know, you know,

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Speaker 2: the Nick Dent and Crewe and Nick a little bit

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Speaker 2: back then, and honestly, so many of the people involved

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Speaker 2: were so fucking whacked out on powders and pills you

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Speaker 2: probably forgot they even did it.

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Speaker 1: All of the money that was going around in digital

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Speaker 1: media back then. I think it would have been hard

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Speaker 1: not to be whacked out on powders and pills, but

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Speaker 1: you could. This is not like the Post wouldn't have

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Speaker 1: done this reporting in this way, right, or the New

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Speaker 1: York Times. You can think of that what you will,

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Speaker 1: but like this was this was a little messy. I

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Speaker 1: think probably. I mean, Peter never sues over this, but

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Speaker 1: this is the inciting incident of what he gets angry

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Speaker 1: at them. So I don't think this would have been

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Speaker 1: something that could have been adjudicated in court. But it

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Speaker 1: is something that if you're kind of going on, where

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Speaker 1: does Peter Teal have a right to privacy? Like if

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Speaker 1: you're arguing that because of his advocacy, you know this

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Speaker 1: is relevant, which I think is an argument that can

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Speaker 1: be made strongly. You probably want to be a little

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Speaker 1: bit clearer in making that argument than Peter Teal was

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Speaker 1: totally gay folks. Yeah yeah, yeah, Now again, I I

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Speaker 1: that's that. I don't think like the fundamental issue here

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Speaker 1: is that they out at him. I think it's just

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Speaker 1: more that like, yeah, it's kind of a kind of

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Speaker 1: a grotty way to do it. Do you say grody?

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Speaker 1: I did? I did I am a high school girl

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. Wow, late nineties, right, yeah.

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Speaker 2: I thought it was more of an eighties thing, but hey,

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Speaker 2: you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably more of an eighties thing. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: the you know, this had been Valleywag had been kind

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Speaker 1: of poking at Peter for a while, right. They had

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Speaker 1: been making before that article some kind of veiled claims

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Speaker 1: about him being gay, and Valley Wag is kind of

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Speaker 1: certainly writing more on like the what do you call it,

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Speaker 1: tabloid end of things. Right at this period of time,

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Speaker 1: Goker is going to professionalize in the period you know,

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Speaker 1: before they get sued into oblivion by Peter, But in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven they are still very much like

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Speaker 1: new kids on the block. We don't really give a shit. Now.

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Speaker 1: The question that comes to if you've read about Peter

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Speaker 1: Teal is like, why did he get so offended at

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Speaker 1: the fact that he was outed? Because by all accounts,

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Speaker 1: he was pretty open in his personal life, Like, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem like this shocked even his like Republican colleagues,

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Speaker 1: people who had gone to Teal parties, who like knew

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Speaker 1: him personally, who had got to his nightclub, like he

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Speaker 1: didn't like, go to extreme lengths to hide this fact

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Speaker 1: about himself. Instead, what seems to have enraged him was

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Speaker 1: not the specifics of the fact that he was outed,

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Speaker 1: but this line from the Valley Wag article. The only

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Speaker 1: thing that's strange about teal sexuality. Why on earth was

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Speaker 1: he so paranoid about its discovery for so long? Now

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't really that didn't not line doesn't stick out

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Speaker 1: to me. But here's from an article in The Atlantic

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Speaker 1: which interviewed Ryan Holiday, who wrote a book about the

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Speaker 1: Gaker case. Here's here's what Ryan said about why that line,

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Speaker 1: in particular like tweaked Teal. He thought Denton was implying

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Speaker 1: that Peter had psychological problems. When you read the comment,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't feel that way. But Teal thought, here's the

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Speaker 1: publisher of a media outlet, not just a blogger, going

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Speaker 1: after me. The blog post felt like the first article

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Speaker 1: after years of negative Golcker coverage against Teal.

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Speaker 2: I mean, look, I do think it like it feels

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Speaker 2: weird when you're on the other side of it, And

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Speaker 2: I think, like you know, for those of us like

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Speaker 2: write and broadcast right it like you wanna you sometimes

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Speaker 2: want to take a spin on the other side of

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Speaker 2: the camera, so to speak, and see how that stuff feels.

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Speaker 2: On the other hand, like what's he doesn't seem to

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Speaker 2: have made it a secret, doesn't seem to have been

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Speaker 2: a big deal. On the other other hand, you know,

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Speaker 2: I think outing people's fucked up and yeah and so

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Speaker 2: and I feel like, you know, people's sexuality is like

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Speaker 2: their own, uh is their own choice. On the other

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Speaker 2: other other hand, like you know, if you're going to

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Speaker 2: embrace some weirdo, like you know, retro seventeenth century ideology

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Speaker 2: about really and empower, then you know, then you might

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Speaker 2: have to grapple with its inconsistencies and hypocrisies. So, I

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Speaker 2: don't know, it's.

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Speaker 1: A tough one, Yeah, it is. It is kind of

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Speaker 1: a tough like this is I think a useful thing

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Speaker 1: for people who are interested in the ethics of journalism

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Speaker 1: to comment on. I don't think it's interesting like the

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Speaker 1: specifics of why Peter gets angry, this idea that he

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Speaker 1: was mostly pissed that Goker had maybe insinuated that he

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Speaker 1: was not emotionally balanced. Now, the other argument you'll hear

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Speaker 1: here is that the primary real reason Peter was pissed

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Speaker 1: about this is that it was fine for him to

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Speaker 1: be gay and kind of open about it in his

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Speaker 1: private life with the people who hung out around him,

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Speaker 1: but not publicly open about it because who he really

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Speaker 1: wanted to keep this from or to re maintain plausible

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Speaker 1: deniability with is the Saudis Right, he has a lot

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Speaker 1: of business involvement in the Middle East and the Immirates

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Speaker 1: as well as in Saudi Arabia, and he didn't want

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Speaker 1: to be an out gay man traveling to in dealing

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Speaker 1: with these countries, right Like, he felt that that would

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Speaker 1: be damaging to his business interests. So that's the other

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Speaker 1: argument that you'll hear, and I'm sure it's probably a

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Speaker 1: number of things. In any case, it doesn't This is

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Speaker 1: like I think when I first was aware of this case,

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Speaker 1: most of the casual reporting was like, you know, Peter

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Speaker 1: Thiel got involved in wanting to sue Gawker and do

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Speaker 1: oblivion because they outed him, right like, that was the

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Speaker 1: DDT A to B. I think it's a little less

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Speaker 1: direct than that, And I think this is the picture

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Speaker 1: Chafkin page paints, the picture holiday paints and holidays. The

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Speaker 1: guys really seems to have gone into this. The most

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Speaker 1: is that this is what kind of gets Gawker on

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Speaker 1: Peter's radar and annoys him. But he's not committed to

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Speaker 1: taking them down yet, right, Like that's not going to

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Speaker 1: happen for years and years. So this is just kind

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Speaker 1: of like the beginning of the conflict that they have

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Speaker 1: in each other. So we're we're gonna move on here

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Speaker 1: and later we will come back to the story, but like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this is how he's kind of kind of

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Speaker 1: starting to get angry at Gawker. And I do think

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Speaker 1: it's useful to holiday suggests that there's another reason why

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Speaker 1: Peter's pissed as a result of this, and it has

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Speaker 1: more to do philosophically with the kind of reporting that

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Speaker 1: Gawker is doing and what they represent about the media

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Speaker 1: in the digital age that Peter is kind of personally

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Speaker 1: repelled by, maybe even frightened of. And I'm going to

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Speaker 1: quote from an interview that he did again here from

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven up until twenty twelve, Denton was

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Speaker 1: on a devil may care right of breaking rules as

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Speaker 1: a media publisher, and that was so diametrically opposed to

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Speaker 1: Peter's vision of quiet individuality. This belief that weirdos needed

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Speaker 1: to be left alone if they were going to change

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Speaker 1: the world. Peter saw that Gawker would punish people for

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Speaker 1: that weirdness.

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Speaker 2: What yeah, I'm.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure how much. I mean, it's perfectly

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Speaker 1: fine for it's perfectly reasonable on Holiday's part to be like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Peter's doing this because that's just how he feels. I

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Speaker 1: do think that's a very silly like.

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Speaker 2: Give me a break. Yeah, what was teals uh Stanford

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Speaker 2: paper again? What were they doing?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, the Stanford where they were like outing professors

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Speaker 1: and stuff based on their political ideology and like his

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Speaker 1: best friend who wrote those anti AIDS columns like screaming

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Speaker 1: about how he hopes that this fucking gay professor dies

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Speaker 1: of AIDS or whatever, like.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and so now, yeah, worried about what exactly?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that that Dockers making it unsafe to be weird,

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Speaker 1: I you know, and Holidays more sympathetic to Peter in

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Speaker 1: this and that I then I certainly come out of

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Speaker 1: like if that is how Peter justified this to himself,

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Speaker 1: it's stupid or maybe it's just uh Ryan kind of

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Speaker 1: needing to find a more reasonable reason.

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Speaker 2: I think there's yeah, put it in a different way, man, Like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: I've been as you can see from the gray hair,

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Speaker 2: I've been involved in journalism for a long time, and

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Speaker 2: I've been involved in tech journalism for a long time.

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Speaker 2: Back then was like the time of maximum subservience of

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Speaker 2: tech journalism.

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Speaker 1: It was a critical industry. Yeah, not at all.

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Speaker 2: I mean, like, if you think the political press of

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty five towards future press is bad, this is like,

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Speaker 2: you know, that would be a pale imitation of the

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Speaker 2: Silicon Valley press of that era. And so I think

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Speaker 2: Valley Bay Wagon its own you know, fucked up, weird

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Speaker 2: old way was like the only people that were like

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Speaker 2: bothering to penetrate or interrogate that or one of the

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Speaker 2: few people.

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Speaker 1: They weren't socatively yeah, just completely subservient.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, now they were reflexively gross in some other ways.

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Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, yeah, a friend of mine worked

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Speaker 2: on that. But like, you know, I feel like some

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Speaker 2: of it was just like how dare you actually, you know,

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Speaker 2: not follow the rules of obeisance here? And how dare

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Speaker 2: you not kiss my ass? That feels like more part

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Speaker 2: of it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably like, I think that's

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Speaker 1: probably a fair because this is actually what I came

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Speaker 1: up in tech journalism, And yeah, it was a completely

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Speaker 1: like Valleywag was one of the rare places where you

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Speaker 1: would get people who were trying to be confrontational to

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Speaker 1: these guys who were kind of worshiped at the time.

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Speaker 1: You would have to go far to find really critical

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Speaker 1: reporting on Zuckerberg, on fucking Steve Jobs, on a guy

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Speaker 1: like Teal. In this period of time, like two thousand

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Speaker 1: and seven is when that Forbes article on the PayPal

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Speaker 1: mafia that we quoted from comes out where they're like

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Speaker 1: taking a picture of Peter and all of his friends

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Speaker 1: and framing it like it's a like a film, like

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Speaker 1: a poster and stuff. So yeah, I do think and

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Speaker 1: I do think that's important context for like, we don't

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Speaker 1: want to I'm not like trying to deny how gross

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Speaker 1: a lot of the especially today, a lot of like

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Speaker 1: the way value Wig framed things was, but it is

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Speaker 1: important to note also the value of what they were

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Speaker 1: doing that like, well, at least they were confronting these guys,

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Speaker 1: you know, And it was it was two thousand and seven,

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Speaker 1: it was a different era. Digital media was new. We

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Speaker 1: can talk about like what the ideal way to confront

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Speaker 1: them would have been but like at least they were,

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Speaker 1: so I don't know, it's it's it's a it's a

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Speaker 1: messy time. Nobody's nobody. Nobody handled it perfectly now in

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Speaker 1: terms of how Chafkin interprets this, because Chafkin is a

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Speaker 1: lot it gives a lot less slack to Peter, and

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Speaker 1: his argument is that his argument is that like, after

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Speaker 1: this Gawker article comes out, Peter is angry but at

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Speaker 1: the same sense of the but at the same time

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Speaker 1: he's he's kind of like liberated by the fact that

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Speaker 1: he's been outed now, and that this is a big

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Speaker 1: part of why he becomes such an open not just

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Speaker 1: in funding of the far right, but funding of a

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Speaker 1: lot of his weird libertarian pet causes is now that

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Speaker 1: he has been outed, like, well, you know, maybe it's

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Speaker 1: gonna fuck with some of my business in the Middle East,

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Speaker 1: but at least I can be who I am openly now.

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Speaker 1: And I think there's a good case to be made

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Speaker 1: for that because it's after this article comes out that

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Speaker 1: Peter starts, for example, sinking huge amounts of money into

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Speaker 1: c steading, which is an art idea championed by weird

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Speaker 1: libertarians who wanted to build their own cities, independence of

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Speaker 1: the government in the ocean. Peter backs the Sea Steading Institute.

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Speaker 1: He starts funding these guys who are doing like little

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Speaker 1: burning Man style events which actually do sound kind of cool,

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Speaker 1: where they're like living in the sea or rivers and

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Speaker 1: stuff for days at a time. And he's funding this

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Speaker 1: this libertarian uh you know, kind of fail sun dude

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Speaker 1: who's a major c set steading advocate, and he's giving

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Speaker 1: like speeches and stuff. He's actually more into this. This

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Speaker 1: is not just because when you've got Teel money you

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Speaker 1: could just be a dilettante about something that you're casually

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Speaker 1: interested in. Peter is like giving speeches and writing essays

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Speaker 1: about how sea steading he thinks might hold some of it.

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Speaker 1: It's a sea yeah. Yeah, yeah, like homesteading, but on

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Speaker 1: the sea. Sea steading.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, tell me again, how did we get from

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Speaker 2: Peter toe is totally gay to Peter Teele is totally

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Speaker 2: sea stetting.

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Speaker 1: Well, Peter Teal Peter Teel, who has now been revealed

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Speaker 1: as gay, can be revealed can reveal himself also as

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Speaker 1: a weirdo libertarian and be like, look, you know, I've

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Speaker 1: been outed on this thing that I actually wanted to

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Speaker 1: keep quiet, So I might as well be open about

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Speaker 1: the fact that I think that we can replace governments

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Speaker 1: by living on the ocean and building floating cities. Why not?

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Speaker 2: Again, Like, I feel like at every step it's like, dude,

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Speaker 2: this guy is like stuck in like second semester freshman year. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it's like he like took some bong hit that like

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Speaker 2: he never quite recovered from.

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Speaker 1: We all took a bong hit we didn't quite recover from. No,

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Speaker 1: let's not judge him for that is charged.

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Speaker 2: I'm just saying that, like his particular like techno libertarian

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Speaker 2: you being dude, Yeah, what if we homestead it on

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Speaker 2: the sea? Yeah, and then no government could touch us?

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Speaker 2: We could be pirates?

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Speaker 1: Are this is?

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Speaker 2: Are you kidding me?

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Speaker 1: This is the toughest part of the Peter Teel story

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Speaker 1: for me here because I have to report on this

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Speaker 1: and I don't like Peter obviously. I wrote like seventeen

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Speaker 1: eighteen thousand words on why he's a bad guy. I also,

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Speaker 1: I think this kind of rules. I do think it

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Speaker 1: kind of rules. I don't like it as a political thing.

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Speaker 1: It's like we're going to replace all the governments. But

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Speaker 1: I love the idea of I liked. Look, I watched

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Speaker 1: too much SeaQuest as a kid to not be attracted

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Speaker 1: to the idea of taking to the ocean to build Europe.

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Speaker 1: It's cool. I'm sorry, it's a cool idea. I like

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Speaker 1: fucking forgive me, wow, I like it. I think it's

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Speaker 1: neat what I'm sorry?

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Speaker 2: What is se Quest? See?

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Speaker 1: What is c God? Alien?

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Speaker 3: Alien four?

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Speaker 1: Albelievable? No. So back in like the mid to late

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Speaker 1: nineties when after after Star Trek to the Next Generation

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Speaker 1: really blew up when it was kind of like season

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Speaker 1: three or so starting to hit its stride, a TV

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Speaker 1: show that was basically Star Trek the Next Generation but

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Speaker 1: set in a future where humans had taken to the

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Speaker 1: ocean to like expand their living territory. And it was

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Speaker 1: the lead actor, like their picard was Roy Scheider, the

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Speaker 1: sheriff from Jaws, and he like ran this giant like

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Speaker 1: submarine city that traveled around and like kept the peace

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Speaker 1: in the underwater frontier. It was a good show. It

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Speaker 1: was a good show.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Jaws on it too.

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Speaker 1: No, No, But there was a dolphin character. There was

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Speaker 1: a talking dolphin. There was a talking dolphin which there

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Speaker 1: was supposed to be in the original Star Trek the

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Speaker 1: next Generation. I think there was watched that was something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because Gene Roddenberry was as he was a believer that like,

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Speaker 1: once we have a nuclear war, dolphins and humans will

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Speaker 1: like ascend together. Oh yeah, yeah, you might have been

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Speaker 1: friends with that guy who raped that dolphin. I'm not

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Speaker 1: saying he was in favor of raping dolphins, but there

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Speaker 1: was a John C. Lily raped a dolphin. Yeah, what

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Speaker 1: well do you guys know about John C. Lily?

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Speaker 2: Peter Teele raped a dolphin.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that is the allegation we're making on behind the bastards.

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Speaker 1: Thank you Noah for stating it, because now you you

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Speaker 1: and the iHeartRadio Corporation are both on are both on

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Speaker 1: the hook for making that statement for a dollar. To

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Speaker 1: be honest, I think the guys you think dolphins are

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Speaker 1: equal to human beings. I don't think Peter Teel cares

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Speaker 1: about dolphins very much, else he would have different politics.

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Speaker 2: Dolphins are cool, although I also.

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Speaker 1: Don't think he's molested a dolphins. So you know, some

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Speaker 1: of those pro dolphin guys did where do you stand

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Speaker 1: on molesting dolphins? Email Sophie, do you have any email technically, Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to read it.

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Speaker 3: The contact page on our website.

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Speaker 1: So we've hit about the point of two thousand and

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Speaker 1: eight or so, Peter is getting into funding Sea Steading.

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Speaker 1: He's getting more open, he's starting to put out more

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Speaker 1: money to like libertarian causes.

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Speaker 2: Dolphins allowed on the sea stead you know, I.

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Speaker 1: Think that's going to vary from if I'm cea Steading. Yes,

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Speaker 1: dolphins are independent citizens with independent rights, but also they

401
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Speaker 1: have to abide by our laws, which is going to

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Speaker 1: be hard for some dolphins because some dolphins are scum.

403
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Speaker 1: But that's a separate question. What So, this is right

404
00:21:24,840 --> 00:21:27,080
Speaker 1: around the time two thousand and eight or so that

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Speaker 1: Peter Thiel starts reading the work of a fairly new

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Speaker 1: blogger on like the right wing scene, this kind of

407
00:21:33,160 --> 00:21:37,440
Speaker 1: underground hit who's particularly popular in the Bay Area tech

408
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Speaker 1: industry scene, a guy named Curtis Jarvin, who at this

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Speaker 1: point is writing under the name Menshus Moldbug. Now, we

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Speaker 1: did our episodes with you know, pretty recently on Minshus,

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Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go into a ton of

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Speaker 1: detail on him, but he advocates a return to monarchy

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Speaker 1: based around like small city states ruled by ceo kings,

414
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Speaker 1: Like that's his idea is like, it wouldn't it be

415
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Speaker 1: better if tech CEOs ran the world and like it

416
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Speaker 1: was a series of small city states that you could

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Speaker 1: travel in between, which if you've ever like had to

418
00:22:05,960 --> 00:22:08,800
Speaker 1: use the yeah, like all of us have. Have you

419
00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:11,119
Speaker 1: ever used any of the products these companies make, the

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00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:14,000
Speaker 1: idea of them running an entire government is a nightmare.

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Speaker 1: But Peter thinks it's starting to think in this period

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Speaker 1: that maybe that's the right way to do things. And

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Speaker 1: I the open question always here is like does he

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Speaker 1: actually believe this is better for mankind? Because the thing

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Speaker 1: you'll get in Chaefkins writing and in Peter's own writings,

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Speaker 1: if you're trying to figure out, like why does he

427
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Speaker 1: think this is he has this belief that the tech

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Speaker 1: industry has ground to a halt, that human innovation is frozen, right,

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Speaker 1: that all of the stuff the tech industry is putting out,

430
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Speaker 1: or these like bullshit little products and like gadgets and

431
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:48,800
Speaker 1: stuff that don't actually take us forward in the way

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Speaker 1: that you know, we had dreamed of going, you know

433
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,879
Speaker 1: when Peter was a young kid, which you know is

434
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:57,240
Speaker 1: to a degree true, although Peter's one of the guys

435
00:22:57,320 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: funding and investing in these bullshit projects that absolutely don't

436
00:23:01,320 --> 00:23:05,159
Speaker 1: take the species forward make a lot of money. So

437
00:23:05,840 --> 00:23:08,040
Speaker 1: does he believe that, like we need to do this

438
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:11,640
Speaker 1: in order to actually increase innovation again because capitalist democracy

439
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 1: can't do it? Or does he? Is he just a

440
00:23:15,080 --> 00:23:17,239
Speaker 1: guy who wants to be more powerful and he's like, well,

441
00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:19,399
Speaker 1: if I'm a CEO, k I'm more powerful, right.

442
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:22,400
Speaker 2: And that I mean that's the okrans Razor answer. I mean,

443
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:25,760
Speaker 2: like what the guy that in the future will fund

444
00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:29,600
Speaker 2: like the right wing YouTube is upset that tech isn't

445
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 2: being innovative enough.

446
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you know.

447
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:35,199
Speaker 2: That that's just the real motivation here. I find that

448
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:35,879
Speaker 2: hard to believe.

449
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:38,119
Speaker 1: That's what guy I always come back to is like,

450
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:42,640
Speaker 1: but he funded all of the bullshit projects, Like he's

451
00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: back in face, but he's like the first Facebook investor

452
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:47,240
Speaker 1: that was there was never any chance that that was

453
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:50,680
Speaker 1: going to take us into Star Trek future, right right right?

454
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:56,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I I want to establish a multiplanetary species,

455
00:23:56,440 --> 00:23:58,040
Speaker 2: and the way I'm going to do it is by

456
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:01,280
Speaker 2: putting some money behind two point.

457
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:03,760
Speaker 1: Zero Yeah, this guy built a website to rate chicks

458
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:06,240
Speaker 1: on how hot they are. That's gonna that's really gotta

459
00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: that's gonna bring us to the hover board's oh yeah.

460
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 2: Got yeah on the SeaQuest.

461
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, or put us on the sequest DSB. That's right.

462
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,800
Speaker 1: That's thank you, thank you, And also everyone ri ip

463
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:21,440
Speaker 1: Roy Scheider. You know, if there's ever been a better

464
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:25,080
Speaker 1: drunk sheriff in film history, I haven't seen him. You

465
00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 1: know the watch Go watch Jaws tonight, people. It's a

466
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:32,120
Speaker 1: nice Halloween movie. So Peter starts shotgunning money to Yarvin

467
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,879
Speaker 1: during this period of time as well. He invests you know,

468
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:38,120
Speaker 1: like a million dollars something like that in the stupid

469
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 1: tech company project Yarvin has and I think there's probably

470
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,600
Speaker 1: an additional chunk of dark money that he he could

471
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:46,560
Speaker 1: And this is where this is. You know, we can

472
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:50,400
Speaker 1: laugh about how inconsistent or an ethicle his like motivations are,

473
00:24:50,840 --> 00:24:52,840
Speaker 1: but the way he does this is smart because he

474
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 1: recognizes I really like this guy's writing. This guy is

475
00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:01,000
Speaker 1: putting out some stuff that's legitimately subversive on like the

476
00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 1: role of democracy and how it's like doomed that I

477
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:06,400
Speaker 1: think is useful towards where I want to see things go.

478
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 1: And he's right against such a way that is inherently

479
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:15,160
Speaker 1: attractive and magnetic to other tech bros. So I want

480
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:18,160
Speaker 1: to fund this guy as a way of like slipping

481
00:25:18,200 --> 00:25:21,960
Speaker 1: this drug into the supply of the Silicon Valley power

482
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: elite that's going to warp the way they think about

483
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 1: the world. And this is a very successful project. You know,

484
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:31,639
Speaker 1: I don't know the degree to which all of that

485
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:34,400
Speaker 1: is a plan from the beginning, but he really, like

486
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: like Yarvin, goes to parties at Peter's house and stuff

487
00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 1: like they are tight, and I think this is very

488
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:43,680
Speaker 1: much like a kind of part of his cohesive increasing

489
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 1: plan that like, this is a guy who's a reflexive contraryan.

490
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 1: He kind of hates ordinary people. He wants to be

491
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,439
Speaker 1: able to rule them. He certainly wants to be locked

492
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 1: forever as someone who is above them. And he I

493
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:02,199
Speaker 1: think finds very attractive idea of if we build go

494
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:05,400
Speaker 1: back to a system that's this kind of neo monarchist system,

495
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,280
Speaker 1: I can be enshrined like the House of windsor as

496
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: a permanent especially if I never have to die, right

497
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 1: as a permanent power and speaking of never dying, nova,

498
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:20,160
Speaker 1: you know, who can't die, who cannot be killed. Absolutely

499
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: cannot be killed. I've tried to kill them. They won't die.

500
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: Is the sponsors of our podcast. We're backed before the

501
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:37,000
Speaker 1: Yeah ship.

502
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 2: That might be my new nickname.

503
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: There's a crap.

504
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,399
Speaker 2: Because I too have a shiny helmet and a third

505
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 2: rate Marvel super.

506
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: Oh no, you're a second rate easily. You're you're you're like,

507
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:59,439
Speaker 1: you're like, you're like above Morbiustier. Wow. Yeah, better than

508
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: the MORBs. Yeah, you're Madam Webb. You're a Madam Webber

509
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: style character. You know what I do. I'd go so

510
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,119
Speaker 1: far as ant man. And you know why that's a

511
00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: big compliment is everybody likes Paul Rudd.

512
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:10,440
Speaker 2: Everybody. It's true.

513
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: I assume everyone doesn't like Paul Rudd, but a lot

514
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 1: of people do. It's very popular.

515
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 2: He's a dad in Brooklyn. I like him.

516
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah. And speaking of Paul Rudd, not at all.

517
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: Because Paul Rudd has not aged in thirty years and

518
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:28,360
Speaker 1: Peter Peter puts a lot of money into life extension projects.

519
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:32,639
Speaker 1: We connected it. We made it work, yes, specifically trying

520
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:34,679
Speaker 1: to steal the blood of Paul Rudd to figure out

521
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 1: what's going on there, what's going on there? How you're

522
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: trying to play as a thirty nine year old man.

523
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 2: It's incredibly takes a blood of teenagers and Paul Rudd, Yeah,

524
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:47,880
Speaker 2: hold on, I want to give the Curtis Yarvin thing

525
00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:50,639
Speaker 2: that we're talking about before the is it a little

526
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 2: bit of it? Like, you know, Peter Teel himself got

527
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:59,880
Speaker 2: sort of seed funding money as a weirdo reactionary right

528
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:02,439
Speaker 2: back when he was a kid, and so he's just

529
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:06,719
Speaker 2: kind of like paying it forward to this next weirdo reactionary.

530
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, paying it forward I think credits Peter maybe with

531
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 1: a degree of generosity, which is a weird term to

532
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:15,680
Speaker 1: use for like right wing rullshit. But I think maybe

533
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: it's I think maybe if I'm trying to psychoanalyze Peter

534
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 1: and I'm not being fair here, but fuck it, it's

535
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: my podcast. Peter was willing to take that money and

536
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 1: preferred it to not having the money and not having

537
00:28:27,840 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: like a platform. But I also think he probably found

538
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:35,320
Speaker 1: it kind of like emasculating maybe to need someone else's

539
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: money that like his first plans had failed and that's

540
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: why he had to take that right wing influencer grifter

541
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 1: money in the first place. And I think maybe there's

542
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 1: a satisfaction to him in having the shoeb be. On

543
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: the other foot, on now being the guy who is

544
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: funding those influencers, right, obviously he sees the value in

545
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: that kind of funding, right, So I think he's always

546
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,360
Speaker 1: been kind of supportive of that, and maybe on the

547
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: if you're being you're giving him more credit as like

548
00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: being less of a dick. All again, this is still

549
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: an evil thing to do. Maybe it's that he genuinely

550
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: is like, well, this money was there for me when

551
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: I was a fledgling right wing shithead. I got to

552
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 1: pay it forward, you know, and invest in the career

553
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:15,720
Speaker 1: of another asshole.

554
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 2: But here is Jarvin is specifically right, I mean, correct

555
00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 2: me if I'm wrong, But Jarvin is like specifically promoting

556
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 2: guys like Peter Thiel.

557
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:35,120
Speaker 1: As yes God, yes, right, God, kings of the City

558
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 1: States that are going to replace the United States as

559
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: the doom of democracy comes down, right, Yeah, yeah, there

560
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: are neo feudalists right at the end of the day,

561
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 1: all they want is a fucking coat of arms and

562
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: a goddamn fucking march to listen to. You go to

563
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 1: the comments, you like, look up old czarist Russian the

564
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 1: band music and shit, you look at the it's about

565
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: all these guys being like, oh, if only we could

566
00:30:01,920 --> 00:30:04,239
Speaker 1: go back to the beautiful days of the Romanovs. All

567
00:30:04,320 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 1: of those guys are no less intellectually courageous than fucking

568
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: Peter teal Right, they just dress it up a little

569
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: less by masturbating over the fucking tzar. All of these

570
00:30:13,760 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: guys just want a tzar or they want to be

571
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 1: the czar, right, or they want to be you know,

572
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:21,360
Speaker 1: the Czar's I think Peter wants to be a grand

573
00:30:21,440 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 1: duke or some shit.

574
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 2: Right.

575
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 1: The tsar is probably a little bit too much exposure.

576
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 2: This would all be much funnier if you think of

577
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 2: them all with those giant curly Q mustaches, absolutely knee

578
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:36,480
Speaker 2: breeches yeah yeah, powdered wigs.

579
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, or if you think about them all we could

580
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: just talk about what happened to the czars in a basement,

581
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: but you know that's probably ay. So Peter starts throwing

582
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 1: money into living forever. He invests a lot in a

583
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: guy named Aubrey de Gray who's running something called the

584
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: Methusla Institute, And yeah, Degray is like the most prominent

585
00:30:57,160 --> 00:30:59,600
Speaker 1: we could live forever if we just figure out the

586
00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 1: right thing advocate up to the present day, he's still

587
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: sort of like one of the big names in this industry.

588
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: Depending on how you kind of read into things. I

589
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 1: think he's a guy who got a lot more credit

590
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 1: because I used to be interested in some of what

591
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:15,280
Speaker 1: he had to say. I think maybe in I've come

592
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: around to it, he's more of a con man in the

593
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: modern era. That's not an allegation, but like that's kind

594
00:31:20,240 --> 00:31:23,640
Speaker 1: of my gut feeling about the dude. But he's certainly

595
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: he is not a right wing figure in this period. Degray,

596
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: if anything, would be more on the progressive side of

597
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:32,719
Speaker 1: things in the early two thousands, like progressive left. So

598
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: the fact that Peter is funding him again, Libertarians are

599
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: kind of like more aligned with the left in this

600
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: period of time because of their opposition to the Bush

601
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: Party is a general rule, So the fact that Teal,

602
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: who is kind of a neocon in some ways, is

603
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: funding a guy like Degray might would not have been

604
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:55,000
Speaker 1: seen as like, oh, it's this weird right wing billionaire

605
00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: foisting money rights right, Like, That's just not how it

606
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,360
Speaker 1: would have looked. He also puts money into cryogenics and

607
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,240
Speaker 1: he's sure. There's some interesting interviews with him where he's like,

608
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: asked what he thinks would be a good human life span,

609
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: and he was like, I don't see why people shouldn't

610
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: live forever, right, But specifically he's what's kind of important

611
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:16,520
Speaker 1: to note here is that Peter doesn't really have an

612
00:32:16,520 --> 00:32:19,440
Speaker 1: interest in making sure people live forever. That's not what

613
00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: he's about. He wants to live forever. And he even

614
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,040
Speaker 1: makes some specific statements about how I don't agree with

615
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: the ideology that death for every person is necessary, right, yeah,

616
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 1: And I think what's happening here is that, like again,

617
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 1: Peter is this kind of to his bones contrarian. He

618
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 1: rejects other people. And one of the things that bonds

619
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 1: all people together, no matter how smart you are, how

620
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 1: rich you are, who you are, is that everybody dies.

621
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: And that I think is what's most offensive about death

622
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: to Peter is that it it it kind of forever

623
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 1: locks him in as one of the herd, right, Like,

624
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: you're not fundamentally above the rest of mankind if you

625
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: die like everyone else. And I think that's the primary

626
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 1: reason why he's so obsessed with this, you know, like

627
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: he is he wants to be a pharaoh. He sees

628
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: himself as like a pharaoh type, right, that he has

629
00:33:13,960 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 1: owed this kind of eternity of power and influence because

630
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,600
Speaker 1: he is so special. And the idea that like no man,

631
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: when it all comes down into it, you wind up

632
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: in the dirt like everybody else. Like that is the

633
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,480
Speaker 1: most offensive part of this to him, even more than

634
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: like any fears about, you know, the the final cessation

635
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: of consciousness. It's it's being inextricably bound to everyone else

636
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 1: who exists.

637
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 2: That is like more than that than just like scared

638
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:43,840
Speaker 2: little man child with too much money who is just like,

639
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:47,240
Speaker 2: oh no, this you know, this might happen to me,

640
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 2: and therefore I'm gonna like support this. Like guy who

641
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 2: looks like a wizard, who's gonna tell me, yeah, he.

642
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: Does look like a wizard. Did you have you looked

643
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:57,840
Speaker 1: up a picture of Aubrey de Gray or did you

644
00:33:57,880 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 1: just guess that he looks like a wizard.

645
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 2: I just remind myself, this guy has got a beard.

646
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,480
Speaker 1: Oh man, so fa, he looks like such a wizard.

647
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 2: It's crazy.

648
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: So they pull up that wizard ass, motherfucker.

649
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 2: It's wild. It's like, yeah, honestly, it looks like one

650
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:18,200
Speaker 2: of those things like there's like a kid hiding inside

651
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 2: the beard's.

652
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:23,560
Speaker 1: Get off the gray ass son of a bitch.

653
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll just have Malcolm throw a picture up while

654
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 3: we're talking about it.

655
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, find one that really makes him look like

656
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 1: a fucking wizard.

657
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 2: There's really none that don't that doesn't They are all

658
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:40,400
Speaker 2: wizard picks. Yeah, you know, I did did you fund

659
00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 2: this guy directly or did he fund him through the founders.

660
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: I think through the Founder's fund that he starts at Clarion.

661
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: I think that's where most of his money comes in. Yeah.

662
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I like sim like I ran across the

663
00:34:56,280 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 2: edges of this when I was reporting back in the day. Yeah,

664
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 2: I definitely. Like. There's a couple of other Founder's Fund

665
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:09,560
Speaker 2: partners who are also equally into you know, wizardry and

666
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 2: life extension and stuff like that, and I was doing

667
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:18,320
Speaker 2: a story on them. Specifically, they hired an in house

668
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 2: meditation teacher and guru who claimed that he could personally

669
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:27,280
Speaker 2: enlighten them and bring them like universal consciousness and oneness

670
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 2: with the Buddha.

671
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 1: Yeah.

672
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:30,359
Speaker 2: I mean, as far as I can tell, it totally worked, right,

673
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 2: I mean, what else would you do with your time

674
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 2: then support the end of American democracy if you're in Yeah. Yeah,

675
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 2: so anyway, and yeah, they were all into life extension

676
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 2: and all kinds of all kinds of stuff like that.

677
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 2: I didn't see Teal at that time, but definitely, like

678
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:52,240
Speaker 2: there's a lot of his people that were in there.

679
00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's natural you kind of get super

680
00:35:56,120 --> 00:36:00,040
Speaker 1: rich in your early twenties and then you know, you

681
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: first concern after that, when you have more money than

682
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: you could ever spend, is like, well, I want to

683
00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:06,480
Speaker 1: live long enough to spend all this right.

684
00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 2: Right money than God. I want to be God.

685
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:12,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Some of it's probably that, Like

686
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: I think, as a general rule, by the time you

687
00:36:14,040 --> 00:36:16,799
Speaker 1: get really rich, you're usually maybe probably closer to your

688
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,200
Speaker 1: thirties than your early twenties for most of these guys.

689
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,360
Speaker 1: And that is when feelings of mortality, you know, you

690
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 1: start to and you start to also at the early

691
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:28,120
Speaker 1: stages of aging. There is a lot that if you

692
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,320
Speaker 1: have shitloads of money for the right kind of drugs

693
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: and the right kind of like personal training and shit,

694
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:37,600
Speaker 1: you can kind of push off the early steps of

695
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:40,840
Speaker 1: aging significantly, and you can also do stuff like you

696
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 1: see this with both Teal and with Elon Musk. Once

697
00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:47,239
Speaker 1: they get rich physically, they change a lot. Initially, you know,

698
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: you can get the hair tramlance like Jeff Bezos, you

699
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:52,319
Speaker 1: get on Hgah, you get a personal trainer, and you

700
00:36:52,320 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 1: start to convince yourself, wow, so much of what I

701
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: you know, when I was like a young kid just working,

702
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: I couldn't have a body like this because I didn't

703
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 1: have the resources to pay experts to maintain it for me.

704
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 1: And I'm able to what else is possible, right right,

705
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 1: And I think that's probably part of what's going on there.

706
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 2: Also just getting a lot of money all once breaks

707
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:15,319
Speaker 2: bad for you.

708
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: That was a good part of like BoJack Horseman right

709
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: where there's that line where it's like the age at

710
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: which you suddenly at which you become a millionaire is

711
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: the age that you're like frozen at forever. You don't

712
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 1: really progress mentally past that point.

713
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 2: May we all get to that point?

714
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: May we all get to that point, you know, but

715
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 1: hopefully when you're like forty right as opposed to taking

716
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:40,399
Speaker 1: the Zuckerberg route. So at this point, all of these

717
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 1: gifts that Peter you know, has been giving, it's interesting,

718
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: like he's a The primary thing that he's done at

719
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: this stage, right for all of you know, the money

720
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: and the high ambitions, is he has started cashed out

721
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:56,719
Speaker 1: on and abandoned PayPal, and then he has launched an

722
00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 1: investment firm called Clarium, and by kind of the the

723
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:04,240
Speaker 1: second Bush term, Clarium is becoming a really big deal.

724
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: By two thousand and four, they had two hundred and

725
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars under management, and within like a couple

726
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:12,280
Speaker 1: of years, the fund was worth more than two billion dollars,

727
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:15,840
Speaker 1: which is that it's double and triple digit growth for

728
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:18,719
Speaker 1: most of its early years. It changes. People will say

729
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:23,359
Speaker 1: it completely changed how venture capital works in the valley, right,

730
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: because it was such a successful company. The kind of

731
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:29,360
Speaker 1: bets that Peter and his because all of the people's

732
00:38:29,360 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 1: staff there are his friends from PayPal and his like

733
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,759
Speaker 1: right wing buddies at Stanford, right, who are also in

734
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 1: large part a lot of his buddies from PayPal, you know,

735
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: and he's kind of picking. He's finding guys who are

736
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,680
Speaker 1: starting companies. Some people will allege their all guys he

737
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,799
Speaker 1: finds attractive. You know. I don't know. I think that

738
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just people being like, oh, this guy's handsome,

739
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: Peter's gay. That must be part of it. I don't

740
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 1: know that it actually is, but he's he's finding these

741
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:57,280
Speaker 1: other founders and he's bringing them in. It is noted.

742
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 1: There's a couple of things that make Peter's fund really

743
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 1: different from other funds. For one, he's not interested in

744
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: people constantly making moves. He's fine if you only make

745
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: one investment a year, right. And again, he doesn't really

746
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,319
Speaker 1: fire people. He's bad at that. He's bad at confrontation.

747
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:15,320
Speaker 1: You can kind of wind up shuffled off to a

748
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: part of the company where you don't have much connection

749
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 1: to Peter if you fuck up enough. But like, he

750
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:23,440
Speaker 1: doesn't like conflict. For as many sort of evil, fucking

751
00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 1: confrontational things and people as this guy invests in, he

752
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: personally doesn't seem to have much stomach for conflict, especially

753
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: not with people he likes. So when it comes to

754
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,720
Speaker 1: like what made Clarium super wealthy, one of the things

755
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: that was hugely influential in their growth was backing one

756
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:44,760
Speaker 1: of the most toxic corporations on the planet, Opti Canada.

757
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:45,399
Speaker 2: Now.

758
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 1: Opti is an Israeli Canadian company that is involved in

759
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 1: like taking bitchumen and extracting oil from it. And this is,

760
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: of all of the ways to get oil out of

761
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:59,120
Speaker 1: the ground, bitumen extraction is like the most fucking poisonous,

762
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: right it is. This is the absolute worst way to

763
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: get oil for the environment. It is a hideously toxic

764
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,920
Speaker 1: thing to do. And Peter and his company put a

765
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: shitload of money behind this, and it secures returns of

766
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 1: like sixty percent for them. And this is the period

767
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:19,160
Speaker 1: Peter is very much anti kind of climate change. I

768
00:40:19,160 --> 00:40:22,319
Speaker 1: don't know how much he acts climate Chang's very pro

769
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: climate change. Yeah, I think he's anti anti like he's

770
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,799
Speaker 1: I think he would say anti the ideology of climate change. Right.

771
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's happened here is right

772
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:33,760
Speaker 1: around like two thousand and six seven he he Elon

773
00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:37,360
Speaker 1: Musk and David Sachs fund a movie called Thank You

774
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: for Smoking, which I actually just watched the day that

775
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,239
Speaker 1: Biden dropped out of the election. It still holds up. Yeah,

776
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: it's a good movie. It's it's a fucking what's his

777
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:47,759
Speaker 1: name the guy who played two Face and the new

778
00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 1: in the chrysn Ol in Batman movies. Yeah him.

779
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a disturbingly a handsome guy.

780
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: Incredibly and like right, it is Aaron Eckert right at

781
00:40:57,160 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 1: his like the peak of him being a handsome, charming

782
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:02,919
Speaker 1: son of a bitch. It's a good movie. Like it's

783
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:05,399
Speaker 1: easily the best thing that those three guys were ever

784
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: involved with. It's based off a book by William F.

785
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:14,840
Speaker 1: Buckley's son, which is Rhodesia Lover William F. Buckley. But

786
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:18,440
Speaker 1: it's a good book, Like it is extremely libertarian, and

787
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: it is extremely early Aughts libertarian, and it's one of

788
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: those things. I think if you take the ideology that

789
00:41:26,239 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: the book's characters have completely seriously, then it's a lot

790
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 1: less enjoyable. But it's it's impossible to really do that

791
00:41:33,560 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 1: when you're watching it because there's just so many talented

792
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: people involved, and it's a good script. Again, Aaron eckert

793
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:43,480
Speaker 1: is is just just soaking up the screen, and you've

794
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,359
Speaker 1: got fucking JK. Simmons is kind of the antagon. There's

795
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:49,960
Speaker 1: a lot of great people in that movie. Anyway, go

796
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: watch Thank You for Smoking. It holds up like believe

797
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 1: me people. But you also as you watch it think

798
00:41:56,280 --> 00:41:59,879
Speaker 1: like this is pretty true to Peter's actual unironic belief

799
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: about politics in the early two thousands, right, as opposed

800
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: to just like, well, this is a fun movie about

801
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:09,760
Speaker 1: like these absolutely amoral merchants of disinformation, right.

802
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, come on, stop being so serious, why right?

803
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: Right right? We're never going to wind up behind power

804
00:42:18,760 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah.

805
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:22,839
Speaker 2: Name.

806
00:42:24,120 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 1: Peter's putting money into Thank You for Smoking and bitum

807
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: an extraction, and he's also kind of this is the

808
00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: period where he's really started to relish being the famous

809
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:38,280
Speaker 1: founder guy here, and he gets more open about everything

810
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:40,839
Speaker 1: in his life. I'm going to quote from Chafkin's book

811
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: The Contrarian. Here, he began telling close friends and then

812
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: coworkers that he was gay, socializing in bars are on

813
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: the roof of his new house, often with the handsome

814
00:42:48,080 --> 00:42:50,799
Speaker 1: young men he was hiring, many of whom were out teel.

815
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: Self actualization would pay off. In August two thousand and seven,

816
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 1: four months before the recession began and close to a

817
00:42:56,600 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 1: year before most Americans realized the economy was collapsing, sent

818
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: a letter to investors declaring that the economic expansion was

819
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:06,160
Speaker 1: officially over. We've begun a long post boom phase that

820
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 1: can be called the long Goodbye, the letter said. And

821
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:14,479
Speaker 1: this is one of Peter's great successful predictions, right, which

822
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: is that he calls he starts writing in two thousand

823
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: and seven about the global financial crash that's going to

824
00:43:20,920 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: really hit in two thousand and eight. He is very

825
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: much ahead of the curve on this. A few months

826
00:43:27,080 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 1: after that two thousand and seven letter, right at the

827
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 1: start of two thousand and eight, just weeks after he'd

828
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 1: been outed by Gawker, Peter sends out a ten thousand

829
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:37,080
Speaker 1: word essay to investors. And this is another thing that

830
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:40,040
Speaker 1: kind of he's famous for as like a hedge fun guy,

831
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: is he will periodically write these massive political and philosophical

832
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,880
Speaker 1: sometimes even religious essays and send them out to all

833
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:50,640
Speaker 1: of his funders right to kind of explain their philosophy

834
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: at the moment. And a lot of this is like,

835
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 1: I have a lot of confidence in your fucking dorm

836
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: room ass musings. If you're sending this kind of shit

837
00:43:57,160 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 1: out of people are trusting to invest money in, I'm

838
00:43:59,480 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: guessing a lot of these wound up just kind of

839
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:08,200
Speaker 1: like thrown into trash. But so he predicts correctly that

840
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: there's this crash coming. But he also I think, because

841
00:44:11,760 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 1: just of who he is, he over captastrophizes, right. The

842
00:44:15,160 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight crash was really bad. He sees

843
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 1: that coming. He also thinks it's definitely going to cause

844
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 1: a depression, right, that no one is going to bail

845
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:27,160
Speaker 1: out anything, and that the cycle of collapse will continue

846
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: absolutely unabated, will go on like a runaway sort of

847
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 1: freight train kind of deal.

848
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 2: Right.

849
00:44:32,560 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: And so instead of doing what would have been the

850
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: smart thing as an evil investor, which is shorting the

851
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:40,480
Speaker 1: housing market, right, tell you you have your people in

852
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: their risky positions with like companies that owe a lot

853
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: of money and fucking short the housing market, right in

854
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,000
Speaker 1: order to make money off of what you can in

855
00:44:49,040 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 1: the immediate term and kind of avoid the consequences of

856
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 1: this cruel winter coming. Peter, he kind of continues in

857
00:44:55,640 --> 00:45:01,320
Speaker 1: this like apocalypse preacher persona and quote uh and states

858
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: that he is quote recommending prayer and repentance in lieu

859
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:08,359
Speaker 1: of investments analysis insane things. They're right to investors. Yeah,

860
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:11,960
Speaker 1: He's like, you should all repent to Christ. We're done.

861
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 2: That's unbelievable.

862
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: It's so sandwich board, is he what? Sorry? Yeah, Yeah,

863
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 1: he's basically doing like a fucking yeah sandwich board kind

864
00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: of thing, right, is nigh.

865
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 2: Is there any chance, was there any chance that he

866
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 2: was just that was just a bit or he was

867
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:32,239
Speaker 2: just kind of joke there.

868
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 1: I think he's being I think maybe there's an element

869
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: of that, but he doesn't. His what he does financially

870
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 1: is also what you would do if you legitimately expected

871
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: total collapse, right, Like he does initially short the dollar,

872
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: and there are initial like high yields. Right Like he

873
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:52,240
Speaker 1: bets against some companies that are taken up by large loans,

874
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: and their yields in the first half of two thousand

875
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: and eight go up to like five times their prior rate. Right.

876
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:00,680
Speaker 1: Kind of at the height of this that between six

877
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: point four and like eight billion dollars under management, right,

878
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 1: and this is a fund that back in like two

879
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 1: thousand and two or three was two hundred and sixty million.

880
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 2: Right.

881
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: So you can see why people are like, wow, this

882
00:46:10,600 --> 00:46:12,759
Speaker 1: is the future of investing. What a genius Peter is

883
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:14,880
Speaker 1: And he looks like a genius in kind of the

884
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: early stages of that financial collapse. But again we're just

885
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:20,879
Speaker 1: talking about the first half of two thousand and eight here. Now.

886
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,879
Speaker 1: He described his school of thought on these matters as

887
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:27,839
Speaker 1: being a global macro investor, which in his terms, meant

888
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: looking out at world events and basing your economic predictions

889
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:33,960
Speaker 1: on kind of the vibe you felt about the times

890
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 1: in large, as opposed to the specific situation each of

891
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 1: those companies was in. He urged investors at Clarion to

892
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: make one trade per week, which chaf Can credits to

893
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: his combination of indecisiveness and high tolerance for risk. Quote.

894
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: Teal argued that the world was heading to end times.

895
00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:54,280
Speaker 1: Investment analysts often employ religious metaphors, speaking of the second

896
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 1: coming of bond yields or inequities apocalypse, but Teal was

897
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:00,839
Speaker 1: not speaking metaphorically. The entire huge in order, he wrote,

898
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 1: could unravel in a relentless escalation of violence, famine, disease.

899
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,239
Speaker 1: Wore a death against this future. It is far better

900
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,880
Speaker 1: to save one's immortal soul and accumulate treasures in heaven,

901
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,000
Speaker 1: in the eternal city of God, than it is to

902
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:14,400
Speaker 1: a mass of fleeting fortune in the transient and passing

903
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:16,399
Speaker 1: city of Man. And when you read it like that,

904
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to see that as not like,

905
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:21,840
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, you're going If that's just totally

906
00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek, you're really going far with it.

907
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that is deep into the bit. I mean

908
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 2: you are really committing.

909
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,319
Speaker 1: You're you're far too committed to this bit, and it's

910
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 1: not a great bit.

911
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a whole life of Brian.

912
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: Yeah right, right, Shit, that's so weird.

913
00:47:38,880 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is a deeply weird guy.

914
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a fucking strange fella.

915
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:49,600
Speaker 2: It's pretty weird when like the young Blood transfer and

916
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 2: like bankrolling the like roided out wrestlers lawsuit over the

917
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:59,320
Speaker 2: dudes are like sort of the bottom tier weird things

918
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 2: you do. Like the really weird stuff is the stuff

919
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:04,319
Speaker 2: he says out and open to his own investors.

920
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, well he's so strange.

921
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,320
Speaker 2: Oh man, oh my god, I'm not going to be

922
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 2: as rich as I'm personally not, may not be as

923
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 2: rich as as I might have been before. My like

924
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 2: Wall Street buddies aren't going to be able to rapaciously

925
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:23,920
Speaker 2: divide up loans the way they're were before. Yeure, society

926
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 2: is doomed.

927
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:30,080
Speaker 1: Were if you hate people and you fundamentally think that

928
00:48:30,120 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 1: they're like messy little scum who need to be ruled,

929
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 1: you can't imagine things would go bad. If you're scared

930
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 1: about a financial collapse, you have to imagine they are

931
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: on the edge of eating each other, right, because they're

932
00:48:42,239 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: They're not any better than animals, right, And I'm not

933
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:47,359
Speaker 1: trying to shit talk animals. I'm just saying I think

934
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: that's how Peter thinks about things, right, I think animals

935
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 1: are much better than people usually. But that's I think.

936
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: I think I'm accurately describing. That's how I think Peter feels.

937
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:01,000
Speaker 1: I'm basing that off of vibes, like Peter was basic

938
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 1: thinking about the collapse of the world. Right, But I

939
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: have as good a record with vibes as Peter does,

940
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:16,720
Speaker 1: at least. Uh yeah, yeah, here's some ads and we're

941
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 1: bad anyway. That's all very weird that Peter is so

942
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:28,320
Speaker 1: kind of married to the fucking Bible as a hedge

943
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,120
Speaker 1: fund guy. But the weirdness does mask there's a real

944
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: insight here right in that Peter again, he's going to

945
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:37,840
Speaker 1: fuck up on taking advantage of this. He extends it

946
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 1: too far. I also think his fundamental analysis is correct,

947
00:49:41,239 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: which is he argues in that paper that investors are

948
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:47,359
Speaker 1: going to be unable to as the housing market comes

949
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 1: unwound and as these increasing contradictions in the way our

950
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:53,560
Speaker 1: economy is set up become impossible to ignore. And I think,

951
00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 1: although Peter won't admit this, climate change is a big

952
00:49:55,800 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 1: part of that, investors are going to be unable and

953
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: unwilling to accept that things can't continue growing at the

954
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:05,480
Speaker 1: rates that they'd always been growing, right, that that's not possible,

955
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:10,440
Speaker 1: and rather than accept the inevitability of contraction or even collapse,

956
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 1: they will start a process of massively overvaluing every asset systematically,

957
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 1: causing an endless cascade of bubbles in every sector. And

958
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 1: that is what happened, right, that's today, that's the last

959
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 1: twenty years. Right, Like, he's not fundamentally wrong, but he

960
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:30,359
Speaker 1: also overextends how bad it's going to be and how

961
00:50:30,440 --> 00:50:31,879
Speaker 1: quickly it's going to be that bad.

962
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 2: Right.

963
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 1: And the other bad move here is that if you

964
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:37,839
Speaker 1: are a hedge fund guy, even though I think this

965
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 1: is fundamentally not incorrect analysis, it's a bad thing to

966
00:50:42,200 --> 00:50:45,160
Speaker 1: put out to the people investing money in you that

967
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:47,360
Speaker 1: I think the end times are coming.

968
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 2: Right.

969
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:50,279
Speaker 1: That does not make people want to keep money with you.

970
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 1: It doesn't make them want to invest more money with you.

971
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: It kind of makes them want to build bunkers and

972
00:50:54,960 --> 00:50:57,040
Speaker 1: maybe feel like they need some of that money liquid

973
00:50:57,080 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: to build bunkers, right right, Yeah, So Peter starts to

974
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:04,480
Speaker 1: panic increasingly Later in two thousand and eight, as the

975
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:08,239
Speaker 1: signs get worse, he holds meetings to Warren employees that

976
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:10,880
Speaker 1: he thinks every brokerage in the country is going to

977
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,839
Speaker 1: go under and there's going to be no currency, and

978
00:51:13,960 --> 00:51:16,680
Speaker 1: like he literally he has his company making sure they

979
00:51:16,719 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 1: have at least a couple grand or a thousand or

980
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: something on hand for every employee so that he can

981
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:24,759
Speaker 1: keep his employees fed if all of the currency collapses.

982
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:27,520
Speaker 1: They're talking about like buying gold bricks, like this is

983
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:32,799
Speaker 1: like apocalypse hoarder nonsense. Nice, Like Peter is worried that

984
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 1: his employee best friends, who were his entire social group

985
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,040
Speaker 1: are going to starve to death and he has to

986
00:51:39,080 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: make sure he has cash to pay for their food,

987
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 1: which is actually kind of sweet. Like it does show

988
00:51:46,120 --> 00:51:49,720
Speaker 1: Peter is to some extent capable of caring about other people,

989
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: if that's accurate, but not in a way that makes

990
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:58,399
Speaker 1: them a good guy. But there's a degree of care there.

991
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:00,480
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's like who else live to

992
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 2: serve him?

993
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:04,800
Speaker 1: Right right? I need to have I need to have cash,

994
00:52:04,840 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 1: so I can buy food, so I can maintain a

995
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: degree of control over these other people. So they have

996
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:11,400
Speaker 1: to continue being my friends. Maybe that's it. Probably do

997
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:11,879
Speaker 1: anything else?

998
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 2: Did they learn kung food? They did they start shooting?

999
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 1: You have to assume food. You have to assume there's

1000
00:52:17,680 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: some stuff like you. I can't. I can't imagine that

1001
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:23,360
Speaker 1: you could believe this about the future and not be

1002
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 1: buying guns and stuff right now. Peter's strong belief that

1003
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:30,880
Speaker 1: the tech bubble is going to burst and cause a

1004
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:35,320
Speaker 1: depression causes him to change, like clarium standard operating procedure

1005
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: is that we're going to bet against the future stability

1006
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 1: of the US economy, and that seems like that should

1007
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:41,879
Speaker 1: have been the first half of two thousand and eight.

1008
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 1: That makes them a fuck load of money, right, and

1009
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: in the second half it's going to cost them everything. Right. So,

1010
00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:51,040
Speaker 1: because Peter's word is law, very little is expected of

1011
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:53,279
Speaker 1: his workers on a day to day basis, So life

1012
00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:55,359
Speaker 1: of the company is like pretty chill during these early

1013
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:58,400
Speaker 1: apocalypse stages. According to chaef Gen, people played a lot

1014
00:52:58,440 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: of chess and spent their free time to over how

1015
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: they'd run a theoretical country if they had the freedom

1016
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: to build it from the ground up. Quote. Everyone spent

1017
00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking politics, although it was important

1018
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:10,880
Speaker 1: that those politics always be of the right wing variety.

1019
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:13,200
Speaker 1: An employee told me that it was common to hear

1020
00:53:13,239 --> 00:53:15,640
Speaker 1: about talk about climate change denial and to see web

1021
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 1: browsers open to v dare, a far right web site

1022
00:53:18,600 --> 00:53:21,319
Speaker 1: with a long record of publishing white nationalist writing. Oh,

1023
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about that. It gets a lot worse

1024
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 1: in terms of Vdair's shit, my man's. This had been

1025
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:31,800
Speaker 1: a good enough strategy for years, but Peter's inherent distrust

1026
00:53:31,800 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 1: of tech businesses is going to cause him to miss

1027
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: a lot of opportunities here, as well as his belief

1028
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,960
Speaker 1: that like collapse is inevitable. He turns down a chance

1029
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: to invest in Tesla, which might be understandable given his

1030
00:53:42,920 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 1: history with Elon. Right, if I can, if I can

1031
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 1: be like, well, I get why you would miss this,

1032
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:49,799
Speaker 1: because you know what a mess he is, right, but

1033
00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:52,560
Speaker 1: that is undoubtedly it's a bad financial decision. To not

1034
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:54,440
Speaker 1: get involved with Tesla in two thousand and eight is

1035
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:58,839
Speaker 1: a poor financial mission, right. He also turned down the money,

1036
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 1: the chance to put money into YouTube when it was

1037
00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:04,359
Speaker 1: still a startup and that is a catastrophic bit as

1038
00:54:04,400 --> 00:54:07,240
Speaker 1: a tech founder. Missing YouTube is a big one.

1039
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 2: That's also particularly funny because then later on he'll fund

1040
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:12,800
Speaker 2: Rumble the.

1041
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:13,920
Speaker 1: Right right Way YouTube.

1042
00:54:14,040 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, so I think YouTube, but I got

1043
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:20,720
Speaker 2: assuming even better. I guess I got right wing YouTube

1044
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:21,720
Speaker 2: with Russell Brandan.

1045
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:23,920
Speaker 1: And this is like, this is right right Around the

1046
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:26,040
Speaker 1: same time he neglects to invest in YouTube is when

1047
00:54:26,040 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: he neglects to take part in like the second funding

1048
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 1: round for Facebook. So he misses a lot in a

1049
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:33,160
Speaker 1: row here, and then two thousand and eight comes about

1050
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 1: and right, and after these initial successes, he bets on

1051
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:39,359
Speaker 1: the idea. So he's he's made money the first half

1052
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:41,320
Speaker 1: of the financial of two thousand and eight, of the

1053
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:45,040
Speaker 1: collapse year, by betting on against the dollar. But then

1054
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:48,160
Speaker 1: he has this belief that as the as the collapse

1055
00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 1: starts to run away, he believes, not only are some

1056
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 1: banks going to collapse, every bank is going to be nationalized,

1057
00:54:54,920 --> 00:54:57,880
Speaker 1: right and because he thinks that the government is going

1058
00:54:57,920 --> 00:54:59,719
Speaker 1: to have to take over all of the banks. I

1059
00:54:59,760 --> 00:55:01,840
Speaker 1: think this is just because he's also a libertarian, so

1060
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: his nightmare is like this, you know, the government taking

1061
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:07,839
Speaker 1: over everything. He decides unlike all of the guys who

1062
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:10,799
Speaker 1: make money off of, you know, the collapse. Unlike all

1063
00:55:10,840 --> 00:55:13,759
Speaker 1: the big short guys, he decides not to short any

1064
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:16,160
Speaker 1: banks because he thinks that since the government's going to

1065
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 1: nationalize them all, once they get nationalized, their stock value

1066
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:23,920
Speaker 1: is going to soar. And so after predicting the collapse,

1067
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:27,239
Speaker 1: he puts nearly a billion dollars into stocks and all

1068
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:29,439
Speaker 1: of these banks, and like another one and a half

1069
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 1: billion or so into Google and fucking of all of

1070
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:35,000
Speaker 1: the places to put like eight hundred million dollars, fucking Yahoo.

1071
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:42,480
Speaker 1: He puts eight undred million dollars in such a whiff.

1072
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: It's such a fuck up.

1073
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 2: Oh my god.

1074
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:52,320
Speaker 1: It's so funny, man, It's so fucking funny. And I had, again,

1075
00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: as a general rule, I actually, compared to most of

1076
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 1: our guys, I respect Peter, you know, not in a

1077
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 1: positive way, but just in a like it's dangerous not to.

1078
00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:03,080
Speaker 1: But I also had thought he had been much more

1079
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:06,359
Speaker 1: successful than this. And it's so interesting to me that

1080
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: he fucks up on these big investments while getting the

1081
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:16,319
Speaker 1: bigger picture kind of fundamentally right, which is is so humanizing, right,

1082
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 1: is that's such a human thing to do. I've been

1083
00:56:18,200 --> 00:56:21,359
Speaker 1: there myself, where like you, you predict a big thing

1084
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:25,799
Speaker 1: correctly and your micro response to that you fuck up

1085
00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:29,960
Speaker 1: because of who you are, right, right, that's so human.

1086
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:34,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, but still, I mean, I think all banks are

1087
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:37,760
Speaker 2: going to fail, therefore I'm going to put a billion

1088
00:56:37,800 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 2: dollars into them. Is wild? That is that.

1089
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:43,560
Speaker 1: Government's obviously get to nationalize every bank, right.

1090
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:46,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really sniffing too much of your own.

1091
00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:49,400
Speaker 1: Clue, it is. And it's like this, it's this failure,

1092
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:51,920
Speaker 1: it's this this belief that, like I believe that the

1093
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,319
Speaker 1: you know, the fucking Democrats who are going to come

1094
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:58,520
Speaker 1: into office are legitimately communists. They would never do the

1095
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:01,359
Speaker 1: capitalist thing of propping up the banks and just giving

1096
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: these people free money to put a halt, like to

1097
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: paper over their fuck ups. Right, Obviously they're going to

1098
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 1: make this bid for ultimate power and nationalize everything, right,

1099
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:13,399
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, that's not what they did. Turns

1100
00:57:13,400 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 1: out they are just owned by bankers. Yeah, sorry, sorry, Peter,

1101
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 1: you guys won too much and now you've lost your money.

1102
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 2: Just because you call every Democrat a socialist does not

1103
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 2: mean in.

1104
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:31,439
Speaker 1: Fact, not what they are, not what they are. Good job,

1105
00:57:32,680 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: So at the end of the year, and by you know,

1106
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 1: the time Obama takes off as Peter has lost billions,

1107
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:40,160
Speaker 1: putting him in a similar bucket to people who had

1108
00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:43,040
Speaker 1: failed completely to see that the crash was coming. After

1109
00:57:43,120 --> 00:57:46,120
Speaker 1: being up by like five times in early to kind

1110
00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 1: of mid two thousand and eight, by the end of

1111
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 1: the year, he's down five percent, right. And then, to

1112
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:54,480
Speaker 1: make matters worse, once kind of the collapse hits, he

1113
00:57:54,600 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 1: dumps a shitload of his holdings while stock prices are

1114
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:00,840
Speaker 1: low because he assumes a deppression is and nothing is

1115
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:04,280
Speaker 1: going to rebound, and he needs cash. And then all

1116
00:58:04,320 --> 00:58:06,880
Speaker 1: of this shit does rebound, and so he misses out

1117
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 1: twice in a row. Here, investors begin to abandon Clarium,

1118
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:13,000
Speaker 1: which had been worth eight billion almost I think at

1119
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 1: his at its height, and by the end of the

1120
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:16,560
Speaker 1: year was down to two billion dollars, like by two

1121
00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, it's like a quarter of what it

1122
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 1: had been at its height, right, which is a major

1123
00:58:20,640 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 1: fuck up, you know, So yeah, fascinating stuff. Now, this

1124
00:58:27,080 --> 00:58:30,280
Speaker 1: is where we also get back to Gawker, right kind

1125
00:58:30,280 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eight or so. Here I stated

1126
00:58:33,400 --> 00:58:38,400
Speaker 1: earlier that Ryan Holiday argues Peter responded to Gawker's confrontational

1127
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,840
Speaker 1: tabloid expose style, right, which he saw as a danger

1128
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:44,760
Speaker 1: to weird geniuses like him who moved the species forward.

1129
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:49,120
Speaker 1: Chafkin makes a somewhat different argument quote Teal came to

1130
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: believe that the real reason for the mass redemptions, which

1131
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 1: is like all of the people taking their money out

1132
00:58:54,360 --> 00:58:58,520
Speaker 1: of Clarium, was Gawker Media. Some of Clarium's big investors,

1133
00:58:58,520 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: according to former employees, were Arab sovereign wealth funds controlled

1134
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 1: by governments that considered homosexuality to be a crime. Teal

1135
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:07,840
Speaker 1: has never explicitly acknowledged this, but he has hinted at

1136
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: why he may have wanted to keep his sexual orientation

1137
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 1: out of view. So he a bunch of people pull

1138
00:59:12,680 --> 00:59:14,800
Speaker 1: their money out of his fund in this period where

1139
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: he is making repeated fuck ups, and he blames it

1140
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:20,600
Speaker 1: on Gawker outing him right.

1141
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 2: I invest eight hundred million dollars in Yahoo places any Yahoo.

1142
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight.

1143
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 2: Homide Yeah, and like somehow that's.

1144
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nick Dayton made you put a billion dollars into Yahoo?

1145
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:40,400
Speaker 2: Brother, Yeah, I let my own weird like them to

1146
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:45,080
Speaker 2: steal your underwear. Yeah. So phychology warp my brain and

1147
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 2: somehow that's Valley Wags for.

1148
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:50,320
Speaker 1: A billion dollars almost into yeah, like a billion dollars

1149
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 1: into Google almost. That's probably a smart Yeah, definitely a

1150
00:59:52,640 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: smart long term investment. But like Yahoo, Yahoo in two

1151
00:59:56,840 --> 00:59:58,960
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, I was twenty and I knew that

1152
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:00,760
Speaker 1: Yahoo was a bad investments.

1153
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeahoo's crazy.

1154
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:12,320
Speaker 1: That's so fucking funny. Oh man, my god. So I

1155
01:00:12,320 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 1: think the other reason he's angry at Gawker here is

1156
01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:16,880
Speaker 1: that Gker is reporting on a lot of his fuck

1157
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:18,560
Speaker 1: ups too, and I think in such a way that

1158
01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:21,520
Speaker 1: he kind of blames them for why investors start pulling

1159
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:25,640
Speaker 1: out right, Gaker revealed our screw ups publicly in a

1160
01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:28,400
Speaker 1: way that hurt us, right, and so and that, by

1161
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:31,160
Speaker 1: the way, again that this kind of view that like, oh,

1162
01:00:31,160 --> 01:00:34,240
Speaker 1: they out at him and so he destroyed them. That's

1163
01:00:34,720 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: you know, that makes the case like the dangers of

1164
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:40,000
Speaker 1: a petty billionaire seemed clearer with that statement. But this

1165
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: is much more standard, evil rich guy, They damaged my

1166
01:00:43,240 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 1: business interests by reporting on me screwing up, and so

1167
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: I wanted them out right. That's perfectly normal, rich guy,

1168
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 1: evil bullshit, right, Yeah, So this period, though, you know,

1169
01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:57,080
Speaker 1: while he is apparently burning with rage at Gker the

1170
01:00:57,160 --> 01:00:58,880
Speaker 1: end of the Bush years to start of the Obama era,

1171
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:02,320
Speaker 1: it's not a whole bad time for him either, because

1172
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:05,200
Speaker 1: while he's again he's super rich, so he's insulated personally

1173
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:08,760
Speaker 1: from any real consequences. And while his clarium investments fail

1174
01:01:08,840 --> 01:01:11,360
Speaker 1: and he stops being like the lauded, you know, hedge

1175
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:15,000
Speaker 1: fund genius of the new generation, Peter ces success in

1176
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 1: another venture which had been launched based on the Egor

1177
01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:21,520
Speaker 1: software that he's depending on. I've heard a couple of

1178
01:01:21,520 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 1: different versions of the story. One is that Levchin, his

1179
01:01:24,320 --> 01:01:28,240
Speaker 1: founder at PayPal Buddy codes it some of them. The

1180
01:01:28,280 --> 01:01:30,720
Speaker 1: intercept reporting says it was another guy at PayPal who

1181
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:32,600
Speaker 1: coded it. I don't know which one of them coded it.

1182
01:01:33,000 --> 01:01:35,480
Speaker 1: But Igor is this software that they had started at

1183
01:01:35,520 --> 01:01:39,560
Speaker 1: PayPal to stop Russian scammers. Right that there are allegations

1184
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:42,080
Speaker 1: and lawsuits that it was kind of stolen in part

1185
01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:44,840
Speaker 1: from another company, But that's a story for another day.

1186
01:01:45,360 --> 01:01:48,800
Speaker 1: Peter is as obsessed with security and fighting terrorism as

1187
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: any neo coon, and he starts to focus on the

1188
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:54,680
Speaker 1: idea that like Egor, might be useful for something Besides

1189
01:01:54,720 --> 01:01:58,000
Speaker 1: fighting fraud, perhaps this could also allow the government to

1190
01:01:58,120 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: hunt and kill terrorists that had Peter to fear for

1191
01:02:01,120 --> 01:02:03,520
Speaker 1: his own life. I'm going to have to go back

1192
01:02:03,560 --> 01:02:06,040
Speaker 1: in time here, and I hate to jump around like this,

1193
01:02:06,120 --> 01:02:08,120
Speaker 1: but Peter's involved in too many things to not do

1194
01:02:08,200 --> 01:02:10,280
Speaker 1: this from time to time. So let's go back to

1195
01:02:10,360 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 1: July of two thousand and four, right when he and

1196
01:02:13,240 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: a conservative chaplain from Stanford organize a six day seminar

1197
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: with Renee Girard. The scapegoat philosopher Guy Til had attacked

1198
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,760
Speaker 1: the Bush administration then for not being cruel enough to Muslims,

1199
01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:27,600
Speaker 1: and had gone after the ACLU for their unhinged support

1200
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:30,240
Speaker 1: of civil liberties at the expense of security. He had

1201
01:02:30,320 --> 01:02:32,720
Speaker 1: encouraged the creation of a new system, which he built

1202
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 1: as a replacement for the UN. He was like, instead

1203
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:38,160
Speaker 1: of the UN, we should have an international consortium of

1204
01:02:38,200 --> 01:02:41,760
Speaker 1: public and private intelligence companies all working together to quote

1205
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 1: forge the decisive path to a truly global packs Americana. Right,

1206
01:02:46,800 --> 01:02:50,800
Speaker 1: this American piece that intelligence agencies can bring us if

1207
01:02:50,800 --> 01:02:53,680
Speaker 1: we give them enough money and power to murder people

1208
01:02:53,720 --> 01:02:59,760
Speaker 1: with drones. It's so why yeah, and Igor at this point,

1209
01:02:59,760 --> 01:03:02,680
Speaker 1: it's just a fancy way of what I call making

1210
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:04,840
Speaker 1: a crazy board, right, that thing you see in like

1211
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: movies and TV, you know, True Detective where you've got

1212
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:09,440
Speaker 1: like all the pictures connected by bits of string. Right,

1213
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:11,720
Speaker 1: IGOR is a way of doing that on the computer

1214
01:03:11,880 --> 01:03:13,880
Speaker 1: right where you're plugging it. And it also is pulling

1215
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:16,480
Speaker 1: from you can have it pull from. Oh, I know

1216
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:18,640
Speaker 1: that we're looking for a guy who drives a who

1217
01:03:18,640 --> 01:03:20,400
Speaker 1: lives in the state and drives a blue car, and

1218
01:03:20,440 --> 01:03:22,080
Speaker 1: as a DUI, I want you to pull up from

1219
01:03:22,120 --> 01:03:23,720
Speaker 1: like all of these records. You have access to everyone

1220
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:25,560
Speaker 1: who fits that, right, and we can add them to

1221
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:26,520
Speaker 1: the crazy board, you know.

1222
01:03:27,640 --> 01:03:31,000
Speaker 2: And it was like, look, it's like starting at nine

1223
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:34,840
Speaker 2: to eleven especially, there was like the fantasy, the uber

1224
01:03:34,960 --> 01:03:38,360
Speaker 2: fantasy of all these spook and spook adjacent types and

1225
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:41,080
Speaker 2: all tech types that wanted to make money off of them,

1226
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:43,320
Speaker 2: was that you know, you could have sort of like

1227
01:03:43,640 --> 01:03:45,360
Speaker 2: you know, the equivalent of maybe what we call an

1228
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:51,040
Speaker 2: AI today, right that like could basically predict a terrorists

1229
01:03:51,040 --> 01:03:52,800
Speaker 2: we're going to strike before they were going to strike,

1230
01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 2: you know, they were going to call you know, they

1231
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:56,720
Speaker 2: were going to stop the next nine to eleven before

1232
01:03:57,120 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 2: the guys even you know, had really hatched the plan.

1233
01:04:00,160 --> 01:04:02,120
Speaker 2: And so there have been a bunch of programs that

1234
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 2: started and failed, you know, before then. And you know,

1235
01:04:06,720 --> 01:04:09,280
Speaker 2: there were some that were in existence and law enforcement,

1236
01:04:09,600 --> 01:04:11,280
Speaker 2: but they were clunky. There were you know, there were

1237
01:04:11,280 --> 01:04:14,200
Speaker 2: government software. So they did they look shitty, and they

1238
01:04:14,400 --> 01:04:17,400
Speaker 2: you know, and and and they didn't work so well.

1239
01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:21,600
Speaker 2: And then and they didn't have real Silicon Valley talent,

1240
01:04:22,400 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 2: like yeah, these guys did.

1241
01:04:25,040 --> 01:04:27,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think it could be a little hrd

1242
01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:31,360
Speaker 1: for people to visualize what Igor did, what this software does,

1243
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:33,320
Speaker 1: this software becomes Palenteer does. So I'm going to quote

1244
01:04:33,320 --> 01:04:36,320
Speaker 1: from an article in Bloomberg by Peter Waldman, Lizette Chapman,

1245
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:40,360
Speaker 1: and Jordan Robertson. Here, the software Clones combs through disparate

1246
01:04:40,440 --> 01:04:44,280
Speaker 1: data sources, financial documents, airline reservations, cell phone records, social

1247
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:48,160
Speaker 1: media postings, and searches for connections that human analysts might miss.

1248
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:51,120
Speaker 1: It then presents the linkages and colorful, easy to interpret

1249
01:04:51,160 --> 01:04:56,200
Speaker 1: graphics that look like spiderwebs. So, based on this technology,

1250
01:04:56,280 --> 01:04:59,200
Speaker 1: Peter founds Palenteer that same year, two thousand and four,

1251
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:03,200
Speaker 1: and Palaeer is the name of the infamous seeing stones

1252
01:05:03,400 --> 01:05:05,320
Speaker 1: in the Lord of the Rings, which are you know,

1253
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:08,360
Speaker 1: the most famously the one is owned by the evil

1254
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:11,960
Speaker 1: wizards sorrowmon. Right, So if you're naming your company that

1255
01:05:12,080 --> 01:05:15,480
Speaker 1: exists to provide this like seeing stone to the highest

1256
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:21,680
Speaker 1: bidder palateer, that's explicitly evil. Right. This isn't like a

1257
01:05:21,800 --> 01:05:24,200
Speaker 1: case where like the good guys have their own seeing stones.

1258
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:27,000
Speaker 1: It's just the bad guys. It's a bad thing to have.

1259
01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:33,040
Speaker 1: It connects you inevitably to Sauron. Like anyway, very fun.

1260
01:05:33,200 --> 01:05:36,520
Speaker 1: I love fiction, now, Peter, one of the things that

1261
01:05:36,640 --> 01:05:42,080
Speaker 1: interesting about fucking Pallenteer is that, like with most of

1262
01:05:42,080 --> 01:05:44,120
Speaker 1: his companies, Peter has an interest in this, but he

1263
01:05:44,160 --> 01:05:46,560
Speaker 1: also has one of his close friends actually running shit,

1264
01:05:46,920 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 1: being the day to day guy organizing everything, and Peter's

1265
01:05:50,480 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: friend who helps him run. Palenteer is famously always described

1266
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:57,720
Speaker 1: as his most liberal friend, a guy named Alex Karp,

1267
01:05:57,920 --> 01:06:02,840
Speaker 1: who Bloomberg identifies as a self described neo Marxist. Now,

1268
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:04,960
Speaker 1: I don't know about Alex, you know, like, what the

1269
01:06:05,000 --> 01:06:07,480
Speaker 1: fuck do you mean about as the guys starting the

1270
01:06:07,520 --> 01:06:11,120
Speaker 1: capitalist spy firm? How can you consider yourself a neo Marxist?

1271
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:14,560
Speaker 1: But also some Marxists or boot liquors. So maybe that's

1272
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:16,160
Speaker 1: the kind of guy that Alex Karp is.

1273
01:06:17,120 --> 01:06:20,000
Speaker 2: Look, there's plenty of people that you know or yeah,

1274
01:06:20,080 --> 01:06:21,520
Speaker 2: you know whatever.

1275
01:06:21,280 --> 01:06:25,560
Speaker 1: The communists and spy agencies, right, yeah, yeah, Or.

1276
01:06:26,320 --> 01:06:27,440
Speaker 2: What I was going to say is, you know whatever

1277
01:06:27,440 --> 01:06:30,120
Speaker 2: the far left equivalent of a limousine liberal is. Those

1278
01:06:30,120 --> 01:06:31,520
Speaker 2: people are definitely out there.

1279
01:06:31,800 --> 01:06:35,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fucking CIA socialist or something like that. I guess, yeah,

1280
01:06:35,800 --> 01:06:39,960
Speaker 1: there you oh, there you go. So getting off the

1281
01:06:39,960 --> 01:06:43,320
Speaker 1: ground is slow going at first for Pallunteer, for this

1282
01:06:43,400 --> 01:06:45,320
Speaker 1: is a hard thing. It's a really hard industry to

1283
01:06:45,320 --> 01:06:48,600
Speaker 1: break into, right because intel agencies are first and foremost

1284
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:51,160
Speaker 1: government agencies, and if you know anything about the government,

1285
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:54,440
Speaker 1: getting a government agency to adopt a new software tool

1286
01:06:54,880 --> 01:06:57,960
Speaker 1: is a brutal thing to do, right. It is very

1287
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:00,560
Speaker 1: hard to convince them to make moves like that. It

1288
01:07:00,560 --> 01:07:02,720
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what kind of agency it is. This is

1289
01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:06,640
Speaker 1: always an uphill struggle. So in order to aid Pallenteer

1290
01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 1: in kind of getting this buy in, they needed to

1291
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:11,200
Speaker 1: really start to take off. Peter brought in some of

1292
01:07:11,200 --> 01:07:14,200
Speaker 1: the most ghoulish neocons he could find to apply pressure

1293
01:07:14,200 --> 01:07:18,640
Speaker 1: in DC, and this included friend of the Pod John Poindexter,

1294
01:07:18,800 --> 01:07:22,840
Speaker 1: who oh JP had worked for Ronald Reagan until he

1295
01:07:22,920 --> 01:07:25,720
Speaker 1: was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran contra. He

1296
01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:29,960
Speaker 1: then got kind of quote unquote exonerated and gets hired

1297
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:34,560
Speaker 1: by Dick Cheney to craft the Total Infraation Awareness Program.

1298
01:07:34,840 --> 01:07:37,720
Speaker 1: This was a Bush era intelligence mission with a seemingly

1299
01:07:37,800 --> 01:07:40,360
Speaker 1: kind of reasonable goal. Right, We're going to collect all

1300
01:07:40,440 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 1: of the data we can on everything happening, food prices, YadA, YadA, YadA,

1301
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:48,600
Speaker 1: and these different areas that we have military interests in,

1302
01:07:48,960 --> 01:07:52,160
Speaker 1: and we're going to have algorithms comb that data to

1303
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:56,320
Speaker 1: spot patterns that might be indicative of terrorist groups operating

1304
01:07:56,360 --> 01:07:58,920
Speaker 1: beneath the surface. Right. It's one of those things that

1305
01:07:59,120 --> 01:08:02,520
Speaker 1: sounds reasonable on its face. If you look at how

1306
01:08:02,520 --> 01:08:05,000
Speaker 1: the War on Terror went, none of this ever works

1307
01:08:05,040 --> 01:08:07,440
Speaker 1: out quite as way well as they think it does. Right,

1308
01:08:07,720 --> 01:08:09,880
Speaker 1: But the smart guys in the room are all like, obviously,

1309
01:08:09,960 --> 01:08:12,280
Speaker 1: this is how we win the war on Terror back then, you.

1310
01:08:12,200 --> 01:08:14,440
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, I mean that was the whole ship. That

1311
01:08:14,560 --> 01:08:18,200
Speaker 2: was the whole thing for these guys, yep was you

1312
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:21,840
Speaker 2: know it was going to be uh you know, what's

1313
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:24,120
Speaker 2: the Tom Cruise movie? Uh?

1314
01:08:25,320 --> 01:08:26,519
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, we're gonna know about it.

1315
01:08:28,200 --> 01:08:30,280
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And they were going to you know, put

1316
01:08:30,320 --> 01:08:32,639
Speaker 2: money to the or or they're gonna you know, feed

1317
01:08:32,640 --> 01:08:34,800
Speaker 2: the information your goals and they're going to feed you

1318
01:08:34,840 --> 01:08:38,200
Speaker 2: a red ball. That was the whole thing there. And yeah,

1319
01:08:38,280 --> 01:08:41,960
Speaker 2: volunteer got every single last one of the you know,

1320
01:08:42,640 --> 01:08:46,400
Speaker 2: members of this church of this like you know, weird

1321
01:08:46,920 --> 01:08:50,920
Speaker 2: Spye church to advocate for them. The other thing was

1322
01:08:51,000 --> 01:08:53,000
Speaker 2: like you couldn't walk into a train in d C

1323
01:08:53,600 --> 01:08:54,400
Speaker 2: without there.

1324
01:08:54,240 --> 01:08:57,799
Speaker 1: Being a oh yeah yeah.

1325
01:08:57,840 --> 01:09:02,960
Speaker 2: And and like every guy that you know and hated

1326
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 2: Muslims and love Star Wars was promoting what.

1327
01:09:08,800 --> 01:09:15,879
Speaker 1: A brand they have, So they bring out John Poindex.

1328
01:09:16,040 --> 01:09:17,920
Speaker 1: Now it's important here to note that EGOR, which is

1329
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:21,120
Speaker 1: what palent Heer is selling at this point, didn't gather

1330
01:09:21,280 --> 01:09:24,120
Speaker 1: or create new information of its own. Right, This is

1331
01:09:24,120 --> 01:09:27,280
Speaker 1: not a Big Brother system. This is a an algorithm

1332
01:09:27,320 --> 01:09:30,400
Speaker 1: that works off of the extant Big Brother system, right,

1333
01:09:30,560 --> 01:09:34,280
Speaker 1: organizing all of the info that the existing surveillance operations

1334
01:09:34,320 --> 01:09:38,519
Speaker 1: can put at your disposal. Right, it's data mining, you know. Now,

1335
01:09:38,560 --> 01:09:41,960
Speaker 1: One early concern is that analysts using EGOR would use

1336
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:44,360
Speaker 1: the vast array of catalog data at their disposal to

1337
01:09:44,400 --> 01:09:47,200
Speaker 1: stalk and harass their ex girlfriends, which, if you know

1338
01:09:47,280 --> 01:09:50,240
Speaker 1: how cops work, is a thing that happens constantly. Anytime

1339
01:09:50,240 --> 01:09:53,439
Speaker 1: you've got a database that like a certain chunk of

1340
01:09:53,479 --> 01:09:55,280
Speaker 1: employees have access to, some of them are going to

1341
01:09:55,360 --> 01:09:56,640
Speaker 1: use it to stock their girlfriends.

1342
01:09:56,720 --> 01:09:56,840
Speaker 2: Right.

1343
01:09:57,200 --> 01:10:01,240
Speaker 1: This is a known issue here. One of the ways

1344
01:10:01,240 --> 01:10:03,080
Speaker 1: in which they sell themselves to a lot of these

1345
01:10:03,080 --> 01:10:06,479
Speaker 1: intel agencies is Alex KRP promises, We're going to make

1346
01:10:06,479 --> 01:10:09,519
Speaker 1: it impossible for cops to stock their ex girlfriends because

1347
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:12,120
Speaker 1: we're going to log every search request made into the

1348
01:10:12,160 --> 01:10:14,920
Speaker 1: system in a way that will allow you to audit them. Right. So,

1349
01:10:15,080 --> 01:10:17,080
Speaker 1: I mean they're selling point. It's like we're going to

1350
01:10:17,080 --> 01:10:21,320
Speaker 1: actually provide accountability in the spook process. Right. Chaef Get

1351
01:10:21,360 --> 01:10:23,400
Speaker 1: describes this as a key part of the company's pitch,

1352
01:10:23,439 --> 01:10:26,559
Speaker 1: but he also writes one of Palenteer's former engineers were

1353
01:10:26,560 --> 01:10:29,240
Speaker 1: called meetings during which government clients would suggest trying to

1354
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:31,639
Speaker 1: use the database to look up an ex girlfriend immediately

1355
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:34,960
Speaker 1: after hearing the whole privacy spiel. Palenteer employees would never

1356
01:10:35,000 --> 01:10:38,080
Speaker 1: object to these requests, this person said. Instead, they would

1357
01:10:38,120 --> 01:10:40,400
Speaker 1: remind clients that searches were logged and then allow them

1358
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:41,960
Speaker 1: to look up whoever they want it, no matter how

1359
01:10:42,000 --> 01:10:47,840
Speaker 1: flimsy the pretext. Yeah, that's how that always works. Ah,

1360
01:10:47,880 --> 01:10:48,479
Speaker 1: every time.

1361
01:10:51,000 --> 01:10:54,639
Speaker 2: You don't need a predictive algorithm to predict that one,

1362
01:10:54,720 --> 01:10:55,320
Speaker 2: do you? Yeah?

1363
01:10:55,479 --> 01:10:57,040
Speaker 1: No, you shared out, you shared that.

1364
01:10:57,760 --> 01:10:57,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1365
01:10:58,160 --> 01:11:00,800
Speaker 1: Get you give people a computer spot device and they

1366
01:11:00,800 --> 01:11:05,280
Speaker 1: are going to stock their girlfriends ex girlfriends. Yeah. Now,

1367
01:11:05,320 --> 01:11:08,200
Speaker 1: thanks to their famous friends and infinite cash reserves, Palaentteer

1368
01:11:08,240 --> 01:11:11,080
Speaker 1: managed to get contracts with the CIA and the NYPD,

1369
01:11:11,439 --> 01:11:14,360
Speaker 1: but actual adoption on a wide scale wouldn't happen without

1370
01:11:14,360 --> 01:11:17,799
Speaker 1: corporate purchases because no one in intelligence trusted a product

1371
01:11:17,800 --> 01:11:21,000
Speaker 1: that only the government used. Peter tried to force the

1372
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:25,040
Speaker 1: government's hand here by selling other hedge funds, like selling

1373
01:11:25,080 --> 01:11:28,360
Speaker 1: Igor to other finance companies, right, and he marketed it

1374
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 1: as Palenteer Finance. So we've got this software that the

1375
01:11:31,840 --> 01:11:34,280
Speaker 1: government's interested in using. It is the spy software, but

1376
01:11:34,400 --> 01:11:37,320
Speaker 1: you can use it to predict which kind of investments

1377
01:11:37,320 --> 01:11:39,840
Speaker 1: are going to work out best. Right by gathering all

1378
01:11:39,840 --> 01:11:41,759
Speaker 1: of this data and using it to predict the future

1379
01:11:41,760 --> 01:11:44,960
Speaker 1: of finance. Now, this is a massive failure as an

1380
01:11:44,960 --> 01:11:48,479
Speaker 1: actual finance product because it doesn't work very well. People

1381
01:11:48,479 --> 01:11:50,920
Speaker 1: don't really make a lot of money off of Palenteer

1382
01:11:50,960 --> 01:11:54,000
Speaker 1: finance advising their trades, but it works out as a

1383
01:11:54,000 --> 01:11:56,560
Speaker 1: business decision because they're able to get a couple of

1384
01:11:56,600 --> 01:11:59,320
Speaker 1: different finance companies to buy into it, and then they

1385
01:11:59,360 --> 01:12:01,200
Speaker 1: can go back to the government and say, hey, look,

1386
01:12:01,479 --> 01:12:04,880
Speaker 1: this company and that company already using it to make trades. Obviously,

1387
01:12:05,040 --> 01:12:07,760
Speaker 1: DC should be using this to fight terrorism, right, And

1388
01:12:07,800 --> 01:12:09,960
Speaker 1: the government's like, oh, well, some bank bought it, so

1389
01:12:10,000 --> 01:12:11,880
Speaker 1: I guess we should as well, like.

1390
01:12:11,920 --> 01:12:15,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's yeah, and there's they're I mean, looking government

1391
01:12:15,160 --> 01:12:17,920
Speaker 2: there's always like, you know, they're constantly being like, oh,

1392
01:12:17,960 --> 01:12:20,439
Speaker 2: we're falling behind. You know, the private sector really knows

1393
01:12:20,560 --> 01:12:21,080
Speaker 2: even though.

1394
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:22,639
Speaker 1: It works, they wouldn't make a big fuck up.

1395
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:27,120
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, if only we could run government

1396
01:12:27,200 --> 01:12:33,320
Speaker 2: more effectively like a business. Yeah, And I mean that,

1397
01:12:33,560 --> 01:12:35,720
Speaker 2: I mean it's totally how it worked. It's totally how

1398
01:12:35,720 --> 01:12:39,400
Speaker 2: it worked. Our adversaries can use these tools freely. Why

1399
01:12:39,400 --> 01:12:40,160
Speaker 2: shouldn't we.

1400
01:12:40,120 --> 01:12:44,320
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't we? And obviously as soon as the public sector,

1401
01:12:44,400 --> 01:12:46,559
Speaker 1: as soon as actually like the CIA and the FBI

1402
01:12:46,720 --> 01:12:50,559
Speaker 1: and the NYPD start putting money into Palenteer, then even

1403
01:12:50,600 --> 01:12:54,599
Speaker 1: though Palenteer finance had kind of not done great. A

1404
01:12:54,600 --> 01:12:57,040
Speaker 1: lot of banks and finance agencies start to be like, oh,

1405
01:12:57,040 --> 01:12:58,320
Speaker 1: I guess well, we have to get involved in the

1406
01:12:58,360 --> 01:13:00,000
Speaker 1: government's buying this stuff. So we've got to buy it.

1407
01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:02,439
Speaker 1: We've got to get and so in two thousand and nine,

1408
01:13:02,560 --> 01:13:07,599
Speaker 1: JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond future future subject of the Pole,

1409
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:15,280
Speaker 1: gets purchases like makes a contract with Palenteer. Now almost

1410
01:13:15,360 --> 01:13:17,960
Speaker 1: the instant they and they're doing this as like a

1411
01:13:18,000 --> 01:13:20,080
Speaker 1: security measure. We want to we want we have like

1412
01:13:20,120 --> 01:13:22,719
Speaker 1: a division in our company that's looking for evidence based

1413
01:13:22,720 --> 01:13:25,680
Speaker 1: on like the communications our employees have internally that we

1414
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:27,920
Speaker 1: might have an employee who's breaking the law. Right, that's

1415
01:13:27,960 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 1: part of compliance. Right, we want to be there's a

1416
01:13:30,040 --> 01:13:32,640
Speaker 1: degree to which we're legally obligated to spy on our

1417
01:13:32,640 --> 01:13:37,080
Speaker 1: employees making investment decisions to make sure nobody's doing anything criminal. Right. Sure,

1418
01:13:37,520 --> 01:13:40,000
Speaker 1: So that's why they get this software. The instant they

1419
01:13:40,080 --> 01:13:42,280
Speaker 1: get it, they're head of security who's like using the

1420
01:13:42,280 --> 01:13:45,120
Speaker 1: Palenteer software, uses it to spy on the entire c

1421
01:13:45,200 --> 01:13:47,880
Speaker 1: suite for no real reason, right, Like he loses his

1422
01:13:48,000 --> 01:13:50,719
Speaker 1: mind with power and starts stalking all of the people

1423
01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:55,559
Speaker 1: running the company. This guy's name was Peter Kovicia, and

1424
01:13:55,600 --> 01:13:58,800
Speaker 1: he was a former secret serviceman who ran again a

1425
01:13:58,800 --> 01:14:01,040
Speaker 1: group in the company that was taped with using algorithms

1426
01:14:01,040 --> 01:14:03,320
Speaker 1: to monitor employees. And I'm going to quote again from

1427
01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:06,320
Speaker 1: Bloomberg here. Aided by as many as one hundred and

1428
01:14:06,320 --> 01:14:10,240
Speaker 1: twenty forward deployed engineers from the data mining company Palateer Technologies,

1429
01:14:10,640 --> 01:14:14,639
Speaker 1: Kavicia's group vacuumed up emails and browser histories, GPS locations

1430
01:14:14,680 --> 01:14:18,120
Speaker 1: from company issued smartphones, printer and download activity, and transcripts

1431
01:14:18,120 --> 01:14:22,759
Speaker 1: of digitally recorded phone conversations. Pellenteer software aggregated, searched, sorted,

1432
01:14:22,800 --> 01:14:25,960
Speaker 1: and analyzed these records, surfacing keywords and patterns of behavior

1433
01:14:25,960 --> 01:14:29,200
Speaker 1: that Kavichia's team had flagged for potential abuse of corporate secrets.

1434
01:14:29,520 --> 01:14:33,160
Speaker 1: Pellenteer's algorithm, for example, alerted the Insider Threat team when

1435
01:14:33,200 --> 01:14:36,240
Speaker 1: an employee started badging into work lated and usual, a

1436
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:39,840
Speaker 1: sign of potential disgruntlement that would trigger further scrutiny and

1437
01:14:40,560 --> 01:14:45,320
Speaker 1: possible physical surveillance after hours by bank security personnel. So

1438
01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:49,240
Speaker 1: that's nuts, but that's also what he's supposed to be doing.

1439
01:14:49,320 --> 01:14:51,840
Speaker 1: But right after, right as soon as they get access

1440
01:14:51,840 --> 01:14:54,080
Speaker 1: to this, Kavicia goes rogue and I'm going to continue

1441
01:14:54,120 --> 01:14:57,879
Speaker 1: with that quote. Former JP Morgan colleagues described the environment

1442
01:14:57,920 --> 01:15:01,280
Speaker 1: as Wall Street meets Apocalypse now with Kovichia as Colonel

1443
01:15:01,360 --> 01:15:04,760
Speaker 1: kurtz ensconced upriver in his office suite eight floors above

1444
01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:07,200
Speaker 1: the breast of the bank's security team. People in the

1445
01:15:07,200 --> 01:15:09,320
Speaker 1: department were shocked that no one from the bank or

1446
01:15:09,360 --> 01:15:12,839
Speaker 1: Palenteers said any real limits. They darkly joked that Kovichia

1447
01:15:12,960 --> 01:15:15,559
Speaker 1: was listening to their calls, reading their emails, watching them

1448
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:19,040
Speaker 1: come and go. Some planted fake information in their communications

1449
01:15:19,040 --> 01:15:21,519
Speaker 1: to see if Kavichia would mention it at meetings, which

1450
01:15:21,520 --> 01:15:24,240
Speaker 1: he did. It all ended when a bank's when the

1451
01:15:24,240 --> 01:15:27,160
Speaker 1: bank's senior executives learned that they too were being watched,

1452
01:15:27,320 --> 01:15:29,920
Speaker 1: and what began as a promising marriage of masters of

1453
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:35,240
Speaker 1: big data and global finance descended into a spying scandal. Nice,

1454
01:15:35,439 --> 01:15:42,160
Speaker 1: very funny, extremely funny. Oh my god, no, no, no,

1455
01:15:42,240 --> 01:15:45,479
Speaker 1: and just like the most predictable thing that could have happened, right,

1456
01:15:45,560 --> 01:15:47,880
Speaker 1: this is what happens. Every time you give these guys

1457
01:15:47,920 --> 01:15:52,000
Speaker 1: this toy. Kavichia gets fired. But the promise of pallenty

1458
01:15:52,120 --> 01:15:55,800
Speaker 1: remain undimmed, even though there is tremendous debate app to

1459
01:15:55,800 --> 01:15:57,680
Speaker 1: the present day as to whether or not much of

1460
01:15:57,720 --> 01:16:00,160
Speaker 1: what they do works. This is less the case now

1461
01:16:00,200 --> 01:16:01,760
Speaker 1: that they're doing like we'll talk about this some in

1462
01:16:01,760 --> 01:16:04,599
Speaker 1: the last episode, like when it comes to providing targeting

1463
01:16:04,640 --> 01:16:07,360
Speaker 1: solutions based on data. I mean, there's the jury is

1464
01:16:07,400 --> 01:16:09,519
Speaker 1: still out on how well that's working in like Ukraine,

1465
01:16:09,640 --> 01:16:11,920
Speaker 1: But certainly in this period there's a big debate as

1466
01:16:12,000 --> 01:16:15,240
Speaker 1: any of the shit really work. Right, Pallenteer's going to

1467
01:16:15,320 --> 01:16:19,280
Speaker 1: take credit for the bin Laden assassination, very unlikely they

1468
01:16:19,280 --> 01:16:21,840
Speaker 1: had anything to do with it, but they do kind of.

1469
01:16:22,080 --> 01:16:26,400
Speaker 1: They take like oblique credit for it, and the software

1470
01:16:26,439 --> 01:16:29,519
Speaker 1: is swiftly adopted by police stations and cities like New York,

1471
01:16:29,640 --> 01:16:34,080
Speaker 1: Chicago and La Palateer software was often used allegedly to

1472
01:16:34,120 --> 01:16:37,280
Speaker 1: single out innocent individuals because the connections in their lives

1473
01:16:37,280 --> 01:16:40,960
Speaker 1: look suspicious to the algorithm. And here's Bloomberg again. The

1474
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:44,640
Speaker 1: platform is supplemented with what sociologist Sarah Brain calls the

1475
01:16:44,680 --> 01:16:47,439
Speaker 1: secondary surveillance network, the web of who is related to,

1476
01:16:47,479 --> 01:16:50,160
Speaker 1: who friends with or sleeping with whom. One woman in

1477
01:16:50,200 --> 01:16:52,639
Speaker 1: the system for example, who wasn't suspected of committing any

1478
01:16:52,640 --> 01:16:55,400
Speaker 1: crime was identified as having multiple boyfriends within the same

1479
01:16:55,439 --> 01:16:57,960
Speaker 1: network of associates, says Brain, who spent two and a

1480
01:16:58,000 --> 01:17:00,479
Speaker 1: half years embedded with the LAPD while we searching her

1481
01:17:00,479 --> 01:17:03,840
Speaker 1: dissertation on big data policing at Princeton University and who's

1482
01:17:03,880 --> 01:17:06,719
Speaker 1: now an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

1483
01:17:07,160 --> 01:17:09,200
Speaker 1: Anybody who logs into the system can see all these

1484
01:17:09,200 --> 01:17:12,600
Speaker 1: intimate ties, she says, to widen the scope of possible connections,

1485
01:17:12,600 --> 01:17:15,800
Speaker 1: she says, the LAPD has also explored purchasing private data,

1486
01:17:15,880 --> 01:17:19,439
Speaker 1: including social media for closure and toll road information, camera

1487
01:17:19,479 --> 01:17:22,639
Speaker 1: feeds from hospitals, parking lots and universities, and delivery information

1488
01:17:22,680 --> 01:17:28,880
Speaker 1: from Papa John's International and Pizza Hut LLC. Now this

1489
01:17:29,000 --> 01:17:34,920
Speaker 1: is used. Yeah, no I no, I do think that

1490
01:17:34,960 --> 01:17:37,360
Speaker 1: the government should have access to our Papa John's records,

1491
01:17:37,360 --> 01:17:39,960
Speaker 1: but mainly to make sure like, hey man, you've ordered

1492
01:17:40,000 --> 01:17:45,439
Speaker 1: fourteen extra large pizzas this month? Okay, do you like

1493
01:17:45,520 --> 01:17:47,360
Speaker 1: a hug? Can we should send a guy by your

1494
01:17:47,360 --> 01:17:48,280
Speaker 1: house to give you a hug?

1495
01:17:48,720 --> 01:17:51,880
Speaker 2: The proper order of Papa John's orders is zero zero

1496
01:17:52,960 --> 01:17:54,519
Speaker 2: Domino's orders is zero.

1497
01:17:54,720 --> 01:17:56,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, pizza hut Man, Come on.

1498
01:17:56,840 --> 01:18:00,000
Speaker 2: Noiza, a proper number of orders is zero.

1499
01:18:00,320 --> 01:18:02,920
Speaker 1: No. I like a good stuff crust. I like it

1500
01:18:02,960 --> 01:18:07,439
Speaker 1: good stuff crust. Oh yeah, I love a big pizza

1501
01:18:07,520 --> 01:18:08,599
Speaker 1: hut pizza. You know what?

1502
01:18:08,680 --> 01:18:11,320
Speaker 3: You know what's good though, is those those Shack Papa

1503
01:18:11,360 --> 01:18:12,360
Speaker 3: John's commercials to.

1504
01:18:12,400 --> 01:18:14,120
Speaker 2: Get me everything.

1505
01:18:14,360 --> 01:18:16,720
Speaker 1: Wow, No, you can't get me. You can't get me

1506
01:18:16,760 --> 01:18:18,519
Speaker 1: into a Papa John. You know what they don't get

1507
01:18:18,520 --> 01:18:18,920
Speaker 1: me to do?

1508
01:18:19,439 --> 01:18:21,200
Speaker 3: Still eat Papa John's.

1509
01:18:21,520 --> 01:18:24,360
Speaker 1: No, No, I would eat shack before I eat a

1510
01:18:24,400 --> 01:18:32,120
Speaker 1: Papa John's. Wow, he's gotta have marbling, you know. Yeah.

1511
01:18:32,240 --> 01:18:34,879
Speaker 1: I've always endorsed cannibalism and very pro cannabally.

1512
01:18:34,880 --> 01:18:36,720
Speaker 3: It's one of those freaks that said they wanted to

1513
01:18:36,760 --> 01:18:37,560
Speaker 3: eat Moodang.

1514
01:18:38,400 --> 01:18:41,200
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is, Sophie. Well, but speaking

1515
01:18:41,200 --> 01:18:43,720
Speaker 1: of eating people, let's talk about the tragic case of

1516
01:18:43,800 --> 01:18:47,760
Speaker 1: Manuel Rios. He doesn't get eaten, I hope not. H

1517
01:18:48,040 --> 01:18:50,040
Speaker 1: Manuel is a guy who grew up in East la

1518
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:52,320
Speaker 1: and had a lot of friends who joined a local

1519
01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:55,960
Speaker 1: gang east Side eighteen. In twenty sixteen, he was seated

1520
01:18:55,960 --> 01:18:58,120
Speaker 1: in a parked car with a friend who'd been jumped

1521
01:18:58,160 --> 01:19:00,920
Speaker 1: into the gang. When police rolled up, his friend ran,

1522
01:19:01,040 --> 01:19:04,000
Speaker 1: but Rios, who had not been breaking any laws, didn't run.

1523
01:19:04,040 --> 01:19:05,519
Speaker 1: He was like, why why the fuck would I run?

1524
01:19:05,560 --> 01:19:07,599
Speaker 1: Like my buddy's in a gang, Like, of course he's

1525
01:19:07,600 --> 01:19:10,639
Speaker 1: going to flee. I'm not doing anything wrong. But because

1526
01:19:10,960 --> 01:19:13,800
Speaker 1: you know, cops be how they are, he gets added

1527
01:19:13,840 --> 01:19:17,840
Speaker 1: to the LAPD's gang database right and Pallenteers software because

1528
01:19:17,840 --> 01:19:19,800
Speaker 1: of how many other gang dudes that he's just kind

1529
01:19:19,800 --> 01:19:23,160
Speaker 1: of socially knows, because of where he lives, he gets

1530
01:19:23,280 --> 01:19:25,920
Speaker 1: identified as a high priority target and he starts getting

1531
01:19:26,000 --> 01:19:30,400
Speaker 1: stopped constantly by the cops. Quote the police on autopilot

1532
01:19:30,400 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 1: with Palenteer are driving Rios towards his gang friends, not

1533
01:19:34,000 --> 01:19:37,120
Speaker 1: away from them. Worries Maria Saba, a neighbor and community

1534
01:19:37,200 --> 01:19:40,200
Speaker 1: organizer who helped him get off meth. When whole communities

1535
01:19:40,240 --> 01:19:43,440
Speaker 1: like East La are algorithmically scraped for pre crime suspects,

1536
01:19:43,560 --> 01:19:46,840
Speaker 1: data is destiny, says Saba. These are systemic processes, and

1537
01:19:46,880 --> 01:19:49,840
Speaker 1: when people are constantly harassed in a gang context, it

1538
01:19:49,880 --> 01:19:52,880
Speaker 1: pushes them to join the internalized being told they're bad,

1539
01:19:53,840 --> 01:19:55,800
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the you know, one of the

1540
01:19:56,080 --> 01:19:58,160
Speaker 1: we will talk a lot more about Pollentteer, even in

1541
01:19:58,200 --> 01:20:00,280
Speaker 1: part four. But that's like, one of the really dark

1542
01:20:00,320 --> 01:20:03,639
Speaker 1: things about this is that it's masquerading as like this

1543
01:20:03,800 --> 01:20:06,960
Speaker 1: genius predictive, but all it's really doing is like, oh,

1544
01:20:07,000 --> 01:20:08,840
Speaker 1: you live in a poor neighborhood, a lot of your

1545
01:20:08,840 --> 01:20:10,920
Speaker 1: friends grow up to be in gangs. Cops should probably

1546
01:20:10,920 --> 01:20:14,320
Speaker 1: fuck with you constantly, you know, fuck with this guy constantly, right,

1547
01:20:14,479 --> 01:20:16,599
Speaker 1: And that's all it is. It's stopping frisks that you

1548
01:20:16,720 --> 01:20:17,800
Speaker 1: threw an algorithm over.

1549
01:20:18,360 --> 01:20:20,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or it almost reminds me of like, you know

1550
01:20:20,200 --> 01:20:22,720
Speaker 2: how like in the shitty day, shitty early days of

1551
01:20:22,800 --> 01:20:28,040
Speaker 2: like a map quest and Google Maps, where it like

1552
01:20:28,560 --> 01:20:31,360
Speaker 2: you'd get some drivers that would just follow the directions

1553
01:20:31,600 --> 01:20:34,120
Speaker 2: no matter how unhinged.

1554
01:20:35,840 --> 01:20:38,200
Speaker 1: A river yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

1555
01:20:37,800 --> 01:20:41,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like guys, use your.

1556
01:20:41,479 --> 01:20:44,320
Speaker 1: Eyes, homie, what's up, what's up? And you know this?

1557
01:20:45,080 --> 01:20:49,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, And instead it'd be like they just follow. They

1558
01:20:49,479 --> 01:20:50,520
Speaker 2: blame the algorithm.

1559
01:20:50,720 --> 01:20:50,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1560
01:20:50,960 --> 01:20:52,599
Speaker 2: Now, if it's just going to cost you an extra

1561
01:20:52,600 --> 01:20:54,800
Speaker 2: ten bucks on an uber, that's one thing. But when

1562
01:20:54,800 --> 01:20:58,080
Speaker 2: it costs you know, some poor kid getting harassed over

1563
01:20:58,120 --> 01:21:01,920
Speaker 2: and over again, that's something totally different. And that mortally happened.

1564
01:21:01,920 --> 01:21:03,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it sure did.

1565
01:21:04,840 --> 01:21:04,920
Speaker 2: So.

1566
01:21:04,960 --> 01:21:08,160
Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, Peter did an interview with Bloomberg. By

1567
01:21:08,160 --> 01:21:11,040
Speaker 1: this point, civil libertarians, which had been previously kind of

1568
01:21:11,080 --> 01:21:15,040
Speaker 1: Peter's constituency, had started blowing the horn over Pallanteer. Peter

1569
01:21:15,080 --> 01:21:17,080
Speaker 1: felt a need to make the case to his fellow

1570
01:21:17,160 --> 01:21:20,439
Speaker 1: libertarians on the need to embrace being spied on. He

1571
01:21:20,640 --> 01:21:23,240
Speaker 1: argued that data mining was less harmful than the quote

1572
01:21:23,240 --> 01:21:26,920
Speaker 1: crazy abuses entraconian policies the Bush administration had pushed after

1573
01:21:27,000 --> 01:21:28,880
Speaker 1: nine to eleven, And I would desperately love to hear

1574
01:21:29,000 --> 01:21:32,280
Speaker 1: which of those policies didn't you agree with, Peter, because

1575
01:21:32,280 --> 01:21:34,200
Speaker 1: it seems like you think they didn't go far enough, right,

1576
01:21:34,200 --> 01:21:36,439
Speaker 1: But he's like, look, if we want to avoid a

1577
01:21:36,479 --> 01:21:39,800
Speaker 1: police state, obviously you have to let me, Peter Tiel,

1578
01:21:39,880 --> 01:21:42,320
Speaker 1: build a surveillance state. That's all that can stop us

1579
01:21:42,320 --> 01:21:45,160
Speaker 1: from having an evil police state. Right, what a libertarian.

1580
01:21:45,439 --> 01:21:47,400
Speaker 1: That's why I'm selling this shit to the CIA and

1581
01:21:47,439 --> 01:21:51,040
Speaker 1: to spy on us. Keeps liberty libertate.

1582
01:21:51,439 --> 01:21:54,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I hadn't thought of this before, but

1583
01:21:54,320 --> 01:21:57,360
Speaker 2: I remember around this time libertarians in my life are

1584
01:21:57,560 --> 01:22:01,240
Speaker 2: self professed libertarians in my life. Yeah, from like really

1585
01:22:01,240 --> 01:22:03,559
Speaker 2: caring about this stuff to throwing up their hands and

1586
01:22:03,560 --> 01:22:04,599
Speaker 2: saying what privacy is did?

1587
01:22:05,000 --> 01:22:08,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing you can do. It's the nine to eleven effect.

1588
01:22:08,600 --> 01:22:11,400
Speaker 1: It's so much because a big part of this is

1589
01:22:11,479 --> 01:22:14,759
Speaker 1: like you have this kind of same thing that happens

1590
01:22:14,760 --> 01:22:16,639
Speaker 1: where you've got all these guys who in the early

1591
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:20,400
Speaker 1: two thousand's kind of the early part of the Bush

1592
01:22:20,439 --> 01:22:23,519
Speaker 1: era the late nineties had been like atheist activists who

1593
01:22:23,560 --> 01:22:26,559
Speaker 1: were like super anti the religious right, and then after

1594
01:22:26,640 --> 01:22:29,599
Speaker 1: nine to eleven they all get really racist against Muslims,

1595
01:22:29,640 --> 01:22:33,400
Speaker 1: and it pushes them towards conservatives and it's like, oh, guy,

1596
01:22:33,439 --> 01:22:36,320
Speaker 1: so you guys didn't have any principles ever, right, Okay,

1597
01:22:36,360 --> 01:22:37,839
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. Yeah.

1598
01:22:37,840 --> 01:22:40,240
Speaker 2: And so and on the data side, it's like, oh, yeah,

1599
01:22:40,240 --> 01:22:43,360
Speaker 2: we were really for civil liberties, but now that privacy

1600
01:22:43,439 --> 01:22:47,360
Speaker 2: is dead, Yeah, you might as well have the Lotian

1601
01:22:47,640 --> 01:22:50,639
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, what's the difference. Just let it happen,

1602
01:22:50,680 --> 01:22:53,120
Speaker 2: or if there's someone's going to spy on you, let it.

1603
01:22:53,080 --> 01:22:57,920
Speaker 1: Be Peter Teal. Yeah, here's one of us at least yep,

1604
01:22:58,600 --> 01:23:03,160
Speaker 1: speaking of Peter Till Noah, you got anything to plug?

1605
01:23:05,720 --> 01:23:07,760
Speaker 2: Yes, I have my new I don't know I have

1606
01:23:07,760 --> 01:23:10,080
Speaker 2: some I tried to come up with the lame chok

1607
01:23:10,200 --> 01:23:11,679
Speaker 2: there on the front. No I have nothing a plug.

1608
01:23:11,800 --> 01:23:14,439
Speaker 2: But you can find me at Noah Shackman. That's n

1609
01:23:14,520 --> 01:23:17,519
Speaker 2: O A H S H A C H T M

1610
01:23:17,560 --> 01:23:22,600
Speaker 2: A N yeah at most social platforms.

1611
01:23:22,600 --> 01:23:29,400
Speaker 1: Well check out Noah and you know figure out now.

1612
01:23:29,479 --> 01:23:31,639
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell people to do anything illegal.

1613
01:23:33,000 --> 01:23:36,120
Speaker 2: Crazy board, Yeah, make it crazy.

1614
01:23:36,160 --> 01:23:38,640
Speaker 1: Go make a crazy board. Go make a crazy board

1615
01:23:38,400 --> 01:23:39,479
Speaker 1: as a center.

1616
01:23:39,640 --> 01:23:45,120
Speaker 4: May also someone suggests instead touch grass and peta dog.

1617
01:23:45,240 --> 01:23:48,800
Speaker 1: And touch grass, peta dog, make a crazy board on

1618
01:23:48,840 --> 01:23:52,040
Speaker 1: your wall. Stop hanging out with your friends. Cut off

1619
01:23:52,080 --> 01:23:54,719
Speaker 1: all contact with your family. Many of them live alone

1620
01:23:54,760 --> 01:23:57,760
Speaker 1: in a dark room. Just try to be more like

1621
01:23:57,840 --> 01:24:02,120
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey and True Detective Right is much like matt

1622
01:24:02,439 --> 01:24:05,040
Speaker 1: thank your daughter for dying and sparing you the sin

1623
01:24:05,120 --> 01:24:07,840
Speaker 1: of being a father. Do all that good good Matthew

1624
01:24:07,920 --> 01:24:10,400
Speaker 1: McConaughey and True Detective stuff. Have fun with it, but

1625
01:24:10,520 --> 01:24:13,519
Speaker 1: don't have fun with you. Do not eat, do not

1626
01:24:13,560 --> 01:24:19,680
Speaker 1: eat anything but amphetamines. Cigarettes, just just them up. Make

1627
01:24:19,760 --> 01:24:22,679
Speaker 1: us make a cigarette shake every morning. Okay.

1628
01:24:26,400 --> 01:24:29,120
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1629
01:24:29,479 --> 01:24:32,080
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1630
01:24:32,160 --> 01:24:36,120
Speaker 4: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1631
01:24:36,200 --> 01:24:38,720
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1632
01:24:38,960 --> 01:24:42,320
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes

1633
01:24:42,640 --> 01:24:46,280
Speaker 3: every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot

1634
01:24:46,320 --> 01:24:48,880
Speaker 3: com slash at Behind the Bastards