Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome Behind the Bastards back to podcast people bad about
Speaker 2: tell all them you. I'm Robert Evans and yeah with
Speaker 2: me again for part two of our episode on what
Speaker 2: Peter Teale thinks about the anti christ. I'm just I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: that's that's what we're talking about, right.
Speaker 3: I love it. We're getting right to the heart of
Speaker 3: the matter, you know, because people are like, do you
Speaker 3: want to talk about the economy, And I'm like, no, no.
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I don't want to talk about the economy.
Speaker 2: I'm tired of talking about the economy.
Speaker 3: Tell me about what these idiots think, tell me what
Speaker 3: they believe.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Sarah Marshall, you got anything you want to plug
Speaker 2: here at the start before we dive back into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a new podcast about the Satanic panic
Speaker 3: and the wackado horrible things that the fear of a
Speaker 3: Satan who never showed up to the party caused self
Speaker 3: described good and law abiding people to bring about. And
Speaker 3: it's a sad show. It's a fun show. It's a
Speaker 3: show about history, it's a show about today. It's called
Speaker 3: The Devil. You know. It's all right now with CBC Podcasts,
Speaker 3: And of course I also host a show called You're
Speaker 3: Wrong About and you can listen to that too, and
Speaker 3: it's uh, yeah, you know, we have fun while trying
Speaker 3: to get to the bottom of things, much like you do.
Speaker 2: Right right, We're talking today about Peter Teal being wrong
Speaker 2: about something important, and we're also talking about the devil
Speaker 2: he knows, or at least who he thinks the devil
Speaker 2: might be. Yes, his fantasy devil. Yeah, perhaps his fantasy devil.
Speaker 2: I guarantee you're not going to see where this is
Speaker 2: building to.
Speaker 1: My question, is Sarah, who is your fantasy devil? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: Peter Cook and Bedazzled of course.
Speaker 2: Oh you know I Sarah, you could not have said
Speaker 2: anything that would have gotten me more on your side
Speaker 2: than that. I love the original Bedazzled he is He's
Speaker 2: the best Satan easily by a mile.
Speaker 3: Tell me why you think that is. And people haven't
Speaker 3: seen this movie enough. This is a lie. It's Peter
Speaker 3: Cook and Dudley Moore.
Speaker 2: I respect, both from a theological standpoint and from just
Speaker 2: an entertainment standpoint. The idea of a devil who is
Speaker 2: folks whose primary focus is not on acts of grand
Speaker 2: evil but on acts of like petty annoyance, like that
Speaker 2: scene where he's just like casually scratching records and then
Speaker 2: putting them in the mail. It's so funny to me.
Speaker 3: And there's a scene where he's ripping the last pages
Speaker 3: out of novels.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and there's that. There's that, I mean my
Speaker 2: favorite part. I guess spoilers for the film Bedazzled, which
Speaker 2: is half a century old. But there's a great scene.
Speaker 2: There's a great scene where the guy whose soul he's
Speaker 2: the devil is trying to win and he are talking
Speaker 2: and the guy the human asked him like, why did
Speaker 2: you rebel against God in the place it seems like
Speaker 2: he had a pretty sweet deal and the devil the
Speaker 2: devil like gets up on top of I think it's
Speaker 2: a mailbox or something, and he's like, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: like walk you through what was like you know back then,
Speaker 2: I'm God. Start praising me. And the guy's like goes
Speaker 2: around like, I praise you, keep going, keep praising, and
Speaker 2: be keep praising and be keep And he goes on
Speaker 2: like this for a while, and eventually the guy's like, hey,
Speaker 2: can we take a break and maybe I get up
Speaker 2: there for a minute, and the Devil's like, that's exactly
Speaker 2: what I thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly right. And it plays on the feeling that
Speaker 3: a lot of us have in Sunday School or equivalent
Speaker 3: that like, you know that the character of God in
Speaker 3: the Bible is insufferable, you know, And I know if
Speaker 3: that plays into our topic today, but I have always
Speaker 3: noticed it, and especially and I also really love the
Speaker 3: cartman Land episode of South Park where Kyle's faith is
Speaker 3: challenged and so his parents tell him the story of
Speaker 3: Job and he's like, why would God do that? Too?
Speaker 3: And it's like, why would God do that? Because like saying,
Speaker 3: you expect to like try and be a trickster, but
Speaker 3: the fact that God is like, hey, yeah, I should
Speaker 3: ruin this guy's life and see if he still phrases me.
Speaker 3: That's a good use of my time. You're like, hmmah.
Speaker 3: The day the Devil comes out looking comparatively good in
Speaker 3: that story because it's less of a betrayal from him.
Speaker 3: He's just an asshole.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, anyway, watch watch the original Bedazzled Wadled the one, Mabey, Yeah.
Speaker 3: You can't watch that one. It's cute, it's fun. You want,
Speaker 3: but yeah, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, one of the
Speaker 3: great comedy duos. And I do feel like the idea
Speaker 3: of just that the trickster devil is so beautifully embodied there,
Speaker 3: and that it's interesting to me that the devil is
Speaker 3: kind of the trickster character, and we took the trickster,
Speaker 3: who's necessary in most cosmologies and made him evil is
Speaker 3: very different. Yeah, a very different role to play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know, folks watch The Dazzled. It's
Speaker 2: more biblically accurate than Peter Teal's lecture on the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: I'll say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that feels so true.
Speaker 2: So I had planned, Sarah for us to get through
Speaker 2: the first one of Peter's, like the notes on his
Speaker 2: first lecture, faster than we did. Because we didn't get
Speaker 2: through that even.
Speaker 3: We might have to do like a day long staged
Speaker 3: event doing that, like when Dandie Kauffman read The Great Gatsby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm ready, yeah, Or I could just get this
Speaker 2: the Embarcadero to host me while I talk for four
Speaker 2: days about Peter Teal's lectures on the Antichrist and why
Speaker 2: they're very silly. But we're going to have to cut
Speaker 2: through the remainder of that first lecture before we get
Speaker 2: into who he thinks might be the Antichrist.
Speaker 3: And so when we left it, I do feel like
Speaker 3: you've given me a pretty clear sense of how unhinged
Speaker 3: this thank you good theology is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad we at least landed on that. So
Speaker 2: when we last left off with Peter, he was complaining
Speaker 2: that science promised to make us immortal and it failed
Speaker 2: to deliver, which it didn't, but nonetheless, next Peter says
Speaker 2: that after the development of the atom bomb quote, technology
Speaker 2: itself became apocalyptic, and in nineteen forty five, the National
Speaker 2: Committee on Atomic Information published One World or None, which
Speaker 2: is generally agreed to have been like the first atomic
Speaker 2: scare movie, Like this is the first like what if
Speaker 2: a nuclear war movie? Right, And the gist of this
Speaker 2: is that nukes were really dangerous and the only rational
Speaker 2: solution to a world in which everyone has nukes is
Speaker 2: a strong United Nations that can put an end to
Speaker 2: war and ensure nuclear weapons are never used. In moss right, yep,
Speaker 2: I would say I think most people would say, like,
Speaker 2: it's pretty reasonable reaction to nukes.
Speaker 3: Kind of the theme of a lot of Twilight Zone
Speaker 3: episodes as well, pretty reasonably right. Yeah, really middle of
Speaker 3: the road concept.
Speaker 2: It's also yeah, also this is also like a reaction
Speaker 2: to World War Two, where it's like we should probably
Speaker 2: have some sort of like international law, so like if
Speaker 2: a country's doing war crimes, there's some sort of mechanism
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 3: United States from doing the things that we will choose
Speaker 3: to do again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we don't really do this the ICs.
Speaker 2: I mean we briefly Serbia, we punish briefly. But that's
Speaker 2: kind of it, you know, in terms of international law.
Speaker 2: I'm cutting things down a little bit, but we never
Speaker 2: This is not a thing that ever really happens, but
Speaker 2: it is a thing. Peter Teel is in a lot
Speaker 2: always a very old fashioned kind of paranoid. The UN
Speaker 2: is the devil, the anti Christ, wants the UN to
Speaker 2: take over the world kind of.
Speaker 3: Guys's the Sterling Hayden and Doctor Strangelove kind of a
Speaker 3: role that's so crucial in American politics.
Speaker 2: And Doctor strange Love is going to come up in
Speaker 2: a little bit here. You're gonna hear what Peter thinks
Speaker 2: about that movie. But it's not it is. He tries
Speaker 2: to dress it up because he knows that, like, well,
Speaker 2: cranks to the guys who think that any reasonable person
Speaker 2: can be like, well, the un never came even any
Speaker 2: we're close to being a one world government, Like, at
Speaker 2: no point did it have even a fraction of that
Speaker 2: much power, obviously.
Speaker 3: And if it did, then you know they would have
Speaker 3: solved more problems.
Speaker 2: You would think maybe things would be better. Peter is
Speaker 2: that kind of a crank, but he doesn't want you
Speaker 2: to think about that. So we have to dress this
Speaker 2: up in like theological terms, and shit, he.
Speaker 3: Can't just be the guy down at the feed store,
Speaker 3: because really he's like you know, Dale from King of
Speaker 3: the Hill. But he has to make it seem important.
Speaker 2: Right, And so he says that you know, this movie
Speaker 2: One World or None was the birth of when we
Speaker 2: started seeing technology itself as like apocalyptic, right, And this
Speaker 2: is bad because this is Peter is blaming basically the
Speaker 2: fact that we don't make scientific advancements anymore on this
Speaker 2: train of thinking that starts, you know, with the nuclear
Speaker 2: paranoia of this idea that like, well, technology is bad
Speaker 2: and that's why we're not progressing technologically, of course, And
Speaker 2: I feel like I've explained enough why this is all nonsense.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also from a film history perspective, that's even wrong,
Speaker 3: because like, what do you call Metropolis Baby Frankenstein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, I mean the movie and the book. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's all There's so much we could critique about this,
Speaker 2: but I need to read you this next line. Coincidentally,
Speaker 2: this is also when the Catholic Church stopped giving apocalyptic sermons?
Speaker 2: Did it? Is that true? I don't know what the
Speaker 2: fuck you're talking about because I went to I like,
Speaker 2: my dad was Catholic. I didn't only go to Catholic Church,
Speaker 2: but I went to Catholic Church a good amount as
Speaker 2: a little kid, and I remember the priest talking about
Speaker 2: the end times and the Second Coming. It wasn't the
Speaker 2: only thing. That's certainly not as much of a focus
Speaker 2: in Catholicism. It is as it is in a lot
Speaker 2: of like Evangelical Christian Christian sects, but it's not not
Speaker 2: talked about.
Speaker 3: Start talking about it constantly, and therefore they're not doing
Speaker 3: it at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I guess by citation here is like I
Speaker 2: went to church as a kid. What the fuck are
Speaker 2: you basing this on on, Peter, Like that's just not true.
Speaker 2: And it's also like, well, Catholicism's just one chunk of Christianity,
Speaker 2: and a lot of Christian faiths and priests and pastors
Speaker 2: over the last seventy five eighty years have talked about
Speaker 2: the apocalypse in different ways. It's a common subject. I
Speaker 2: don't know, this whole pillar of his belief system, which
Speaker 2: is that people don't really talk about the Antichrist or
Speaker 2: the apocalypse anymore outside of technology causing it is like, No.
Speaker 3: It's like in the late twentieth century people talked about it,
Speaker 3: you know, an unbelievable amount and like pretty consistently, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's right. It just feels like he's arguing
Speaker 3: whatever he feels like he needs to in order to
Speaker 3: justify his the point he wants to make thing by thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, His issue is that like all of the people
Speaker 2: who are pushing these secular apocalyptic fears about like fertility
Speaker 2: collapsing or bioweapons or AI are kind of playing into
Speaker 2: the real Antichrist, because the Antichrist wants to stop technological progress, right,
Speaker 2: That's that's the argument he's making.
Speaker 3: Yes, fascinating, the Antichrist is Amish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or a Luddite right now, Peter, the other thing
Speaker 2: I mean and that's really what he believes. He does
Speaker 2: believe the Antichrist is a ludite, and he also misunderstands ledites. Whatever.
Speaker 2: He also, he goes on he's angry that he doesn't
Speaker 2: like secular apocalyptic fears because and he complains, he lists
Speaker 2: that like, oh, regular people when they talk about the apocalypse,
Speaker 2: they're always worried about like nukes or biological weapons or
Speaker 2: AI or you know, the children of men, fertility collapse.
Speaker 2: And that's really incomplete. Quote. We should add the risk
Speaker 2: of the biblical Antichrist manifesting is a one world government.
Speaker 2: Here the secular maps neatly onto the theological, the one
Speaker 2: world state of the Antichrist on the other hand, and
Speaker 2: the no world of armageddon. And like, first off, that's
Speaker 2: not really a risk because like they're no one to think,
Speaker 2: no reasonable person thinks one world government is anywhere close
Speaker 2: to a reality, Like it's just not a realistic fear,
Speaker 2: Like even if that was a bad thing, it's not
Speaker 2: a realistic fear looking at the world today, and the
Speaker 2: whole this idea that like, oh, the secular maps onto
Speaker 2: the theological. You've got the one world state of the Antichrist,
Speaker 2: and then the no world of the of Armageddon, and
Speaker 2: like those things are only map neatly if you're an idiot.
Speaker 2: One world or None is arguing in favor of a
Speaker 2: strong you win and a strong international criminal court to
Speaker 2: stop world leaders from doing crimes against humanity. That's not
Speaker 2: a one world state. Like the movie that he argues
Speaker 2: for is not advocating a one world state, and neither
Speaker 2: are most people who want a stronger You Win or ICC.
Speaker 2: Basically zero percent of people including me, who support a
Speaker 2: stronger ICC, want to one world state. You just want
Speaker 2: there to be punishments for genocide, right, right.
Speaker 3: And in this case, it feels like people, including Peter
Speaker 3: tail in this case, are betting themselves in a pretzels
Speaker 3: to justify their desire to get to kill whoever they
Speaker 3: want and call it morally good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think with Peter, because I don't think
Speaker 2: Peter's specifically all that motivated to kill specific groups of people.
Speaker 2: But I think Peter ses, if there's an international criminal court,
Speaker 2: if there's a higher international law of any kind, then
Speaker 2: that means I'm bound by laws, right, And that's wrong.
Speaker 2: That's fundamentally wrong for anyone to be able to punish me.
Speaker 2: Peter teel or hold me accountable for any of my
Speaker 2: actions whatsoever. That's the worst thing that can happen.
Speaker 3: Because I'm baby, but I'm also the most powerful person
Speaker 3: in the world, or I should be.
Speaker 2: And I should be because of how smart I am.
Speaker 3: But also, who will stop me? Someone? Please stop me?
Speaker 3: R I know no one stopped me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fucking Peter. So this next paragraph is I've said
Speaker 2: this several times. This is where things get really crazy.
Speaker 2: But this is where things get really crazy.
Speaker 3: This is where things get really crazy. It's been really crazy.
Speaker 2: It's been pretty crazy, but it's about to be crazier.
Speaker 2: We should at least suspect that the apocalypse in our
Speaker 2: newspaper headlines is the apocalypse of the Bible. This is
Speaker 2: not mysticism but simple extrapolation of human nature. Wisdom has
Speaker 2: not increased, even if information has. The one point on
Speaker 2: which the atheist and fundamentalist degree is that violence comes
Speaker 2: from God. The Christian, however, knows it comes from Man.
Speaker 2: I know what the fut are Wait, Peter, what what
Speaker 2: are we saying? I think? Let me tell you what
Speaker 2: I think he's arguing here. I think he's saying that atheists,
Speaker 2: obviously fundamentalists believe that everything comes from God, so that
Speaker 2: includes all violence. Atheists blame all violence on religion, right.
Speaker 3: If that makes sense when you put it that way, I.
Speaker 2: Was an angry atheist. I'm not an angry atheist anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm still more or less an atheist. I've never met
Speaker 2: an atheist who thinks all violence is caused by religion, right,
Speaker 2: I've never met a one. That's a crazy thing to believe.
Speaker 3: There's certainly capitalism looking at you, kid, and a lot
Speaker 3: of other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some dude like murdering his wife because he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to pay alimony. It's not God. That kind of
Speaker 2: stuff happens. Like a fucking a rapist committed rape. Isn't
Speaker 2: like God didn't make him do that, right, Like, obviously
Speaker 2: there's rapists to do it through the worry.
Speaker 3: Just sort of male entitlement and just you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's anyway. But it's like, this is the kind of
Speaker 3: writing where it's like you have to kind of simplify
Speaker 3: everything into an either or. It feels like right again
Speaker 3: is very eighth grade.
Speaker 2: And it's it is very like it's like how a
Speaker 2: twelve year old debate bro Christian kid talks about a
Speaker 2: like when I was a twelve year old right wing
Speaker 2: debate bro. This is how I thought about atheism. Right,
Speaker 2: But it's like a straw man that an adult wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: It's such an absurd idea. But both the atheist and
Speaker 2: the fundamentalists believe all violence comes from God.
Speaker 3: Counterpoint, No, it's like you've never talked to an atheist.
Speaker 2: I mean, no one thinks that. I don't even think.
Speaker 2: I guess like fundamentalists would argue that everything comes from
Speaker 2: God or whatever. So but yeah, but like even then,
Speaker 2: I think most very few of them would phrase it
Speaker 2: that way, even of the religious fundamentalists that I know.
Speaker 2: That's just a weird way to phrase anything. Like you're
Speaker 2: well in any.
Speaker 3: Argument based on there being like a few key groups
Speaker 3: of people who all think the same thing as each other.
Speaker 2: They all think never exactly. And it's this, weirdly enough,
Speaker 2: this sentence of all of the reading I've done on
Speaker 2: Peter Teel, and I have read extensively. I've read a
Speaker 2: lot of most of the interviews he's done over the years.
Speaker 2: I've read a lot of his own writing. This is
Speaker 2: the thing that scares me most. This scares me more
Speaker 2: than any of his anti democratic polemics where he's talking
Speaker 2: about the need for a dictatorship. Because the fact that
Speaker 2: he would think this and say this is evidence that
Speaker 2: there is a disconnect in his mind between what he
Speaker 2: thinks people believe and actual humanity, and that disconnect is
Speaker 2: so it's very upsetting to me, Like, that's scary how
Speaker 2: disconnected he is from reality. I would say I am
Speaker 2: upset by this. Yeah. Now, from here, Peter argues that
Speaker 2: if we're heading for war or armageddon, then it's not on.
Speaker 2: If it's reasonable to think that there might be an
Speaker 2: apocalyptic war, right, then it's not unreasonable to worry that
Speaker 2: an antichrist might rise to power, promising to end wars
Speaker 2: and bring stability back. Right. If it's reasonable to say
Speaker 2: we might have a war that ends humanity, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's got to be reasonable also to say that the
Speaker 2: antichrist might promise rise to power, promising to stop that war. Right.
Speaker 2: Both of those are logical things, and let's let's let's
Speaker 2: give him that that's a nonsense point in and of itself,
Speaker 2: but let's pretend that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Sure whatever, Peter somehow.
Speaker 2: Doesn't draw a connection from that to like, well, an
Speaker 2: antichrist might rise to power promising to stop World War three,
Speaker 2: to the fact that Donald Trump, who he's supported, got
Speaker 2: elected promising to stop like literally saying, I will avoid
Speaker 2: world War three if you vote for me, we'll stop
Speaker 2: having a We won't have War War three, but Kamala
Speaker 2: will lead us there or Biden will lead us there.
Speaker 2: Like that literally is directly what Trump said. I'm not
Speaker 2: editorializing in any way. Oh, I know you know this, Peter, right,
Speaker 2: Like anyway, Peter just doesn't deal with this, right, Who's
Speaker 2: to say this thing that actually happened obviously isn't relevant.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about how scary it would be if it
Speaker 3: happened in an imaginary way, so you can ignore the
Speaker 3: real way that it do just happen. Yeah, that'd be fun.
Speaker 2: The Bible literally says that many Christians, many believers, will
Speaker 2: be tricked by the Antichrist when he rises to power
Speaker 2: promising to fix a lot of this shit. And Donald I,
Speaker 2: Peter literally believe the Antichrist will rise to power promising
Speaker 2: to stop World War three. Donald Trump rose to power
Speaker 2: promising to stop World War three. Obviously, none of this
Speaker 2: is worth talking about, completely irrelevant. Instead, Peter now talks
Speaker 2: about two different like eighty year old novels about the
Speaker 2: Antichrist from like the early twentieth century, both of which
Speaker 2: and he brings these he summarizes them. I don't think
Speaker 2: we even need to talk about the novels because what
Speaker 2: he's what he's pointing out is that both of these
Speaker 2: novels about the Antichrist and most antichrist narratives all have
Speaker 2: a plot hole, which is that they don't explain how
Speaker 2: the Antichrist will actually seize power quot in late which
Speaker 2: is like a weird thing to care of anyway, whatever,
Speaker 2: In late modernity, we finally have the answer to how
Speaker 2: the Antichrist wi rise to power. By talking constantly of
Speaker 2: armageddon or in secular terms of existential risk, he the
Speaker 2: Antichrist rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety. Oppenheimer limited, we
Speaker 2: need new knowledge like we need a hole in the head.
Speaker 2: Nick Bostrom has proposed preventative policing and global compute governance
Speaker 2: and his Vulnerable World hypothesis. Elisar Jedkowski's latest book is
Speaker 2: If Anyone builds It, Everyone Dies, And Peter is saying
Speaker 2: all three of these guys are potential Antichrists or servants
Speaker 2: of the Antichrist, right, because they're redding. As he gives
Speaker 2: this lecture series that's entirely about his apocalyptic beliefs, he's saying,
Speaker 2: these guys who are talking about armageddon are all clearly
Speaker 2: agents of the Antichrist, if not the Antichrist themselves, because
Speaker 2: no one else would talk about the Antichrist and or
Speaker 2: the apocalypse so.
Speaker 3: Much except as he talks about the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Except it's fine with him.
Speaker 3: The whole thing is built on paradox is, because it's like,
Speaker 3: we have to avoid a one world government by giving
Speaker 3: all of our power to a dictator who will protect
Speaker 3: us from basically another dictator question Mark, You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's the funniest thing to me. We'll get
Speaker 2: to his other Antichrist, the fact that he's like Alizer
Speaker 2: yed Kowski, maybe an Antichrist right, certainly an agent of
Speaker 2: the Antichrist. Made we've made fun of him on this
Speaker 2: show a lot, right, Like he's a he's an AI
Speaker 2: risk dude, and obviously I don't like AI. I don't,
Speaker 2: but but not like yed Kowski is like a rationalist
Speaker 2: who believes in He's like a member of a cult,
Speaker 2: kind of the leader of a cult based on these
Speaker 2: like deranged ideas of rationality, and he thinks AI is
Speaker 2: dangerous because AI will become a god that and and
Speaker 2: it will any AI god we create will inevitably want
Speaker 2: to kill us.
Speaker 3: All right, I mean it's sanxious enough in terms of
Speaker 3: taking all our jobs. You know, we can get start
Speaker 3: with you that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, he's not one of the it'll take our jobs thing.
Speaker 2: He doesn't care about artists making a living. Yedkowski cares
Speaker 2: about like he believes that the Harlan Ellison short story,
Speaker 2: I have no mouth that I must, but I must scream.
Speaker 2: That's what he literally thinks AI will do.
Speaker 3: Right, But before that, it'll take our jobs.
Speaker 2: It'll take our jobs exactly. And it's fun because like
Speaker 2: Peter Teel funded yed Kowski in his early career, his
Speaker 2: like rationalism and stuff, Like Peter gave this guy money
Speaker 2: and supported the growth of like the rationalist subculture in
Speaker 2: the Bay Area.
Speaker 3: And then he was like, I know not that.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, he's literally saying. He says in this lecture
Speaker 2: that he thinks he had Kowski is dranged now because
Speaker 2: he had Kowski's anti AI.
Speaker 3: So he has a former mentee who then takes his
Speaker 3: ideas in a direction he doesn't like, and he's like
Speaker 3: that guy, uh huh could be the Antichrist. I mean,
Speaker 3: if nothing else, that doesn't this story make you feel
Speaker 3: better about your own beefs? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do kind of think Garrison might be the Antichrist,
Speaker 2: you know, my my protegee, but yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: Separate once protege could always be the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: I mean, Sophie, it's certainly not impossible.
Speaker 1: Garrison is a perfect angel.
Speaker 3: Sophie is the one you least suspect, you know, when
Speaker 3: you think about it.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it could be Sophie. It could be Sophie.
Speaker 2: I've I've accepted that a while ago.
Speaker 3: I think it's Paul Pierce.
Speaker 2: Anyway, you think it's Paul Pierce? Okay, sure, why not?
Speaker 2: So this is kind of where I've decided to get
Speaker 2: into the most publicized fee of Peter's Antichrist lectures, which
Speaker 2: is his predictions as to what modern fit people might
Speaker 2: be the Antichrist in disguise. So obviously Yudkowski, you know,
Speaker 2: is at least in consideration.
Speaker 3: Guy I've never heard of.
Speaker 2: Obviously, right, this guy must be it. And Peter not
Speaker 2: only hates Yudkowski, he feels the need to analyze him
Speaker 2: as a possible Antichrist, because Yudkowski's main claim to fame
Speaker 2: now is he's trying to like warn people about AI
Speaker 2: and stop AI development, and AI is the only thing
Speaker 2: that could give Peter a return on his financial investment
Speaker 2: commensurate to what he thinks he deserves. So obviously Yudkowski's
Speaker 2: evil for trying to stop this stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, we also appreciate that, Like even if you're
Speaker 3: you know, like, I don't think that the kind of
Speaker 3: person who wants to go to a four part lecture
Speaker 3: series on the Antichrist is like my kind of person.
Speaker 3: But even so, I do feel like you would assume
Speaker 3: you were in for something different than a guy being like,
Speaker 3: here are people I don't like personally and why I
Speaker 3: think they are the Antichrist, Like that's another level You're.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, hey, what we're doing. Yeah, And it's it's
Speaker 2: because basically Peter's primary claim here is that the Antichrist
Speaker 2: is anyone warning people about the apocalypse and trying to
Speaker 2: save the world. That's if that's not the Antichrist, that's
Speaker 2: an agent of the Antichrist except for me. Except for
Speaker 2: me obviously, and Donald Trump, you know, so here's here's
Speaker 2: a quote from his first lecture. My thesis is that
Speaker 2: in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Antichrist would have
Speaker 2: been a doctor strangelove, a scientist who did all this
Speaker 2: sort of crazy, evil science. In the twenty first century,
Speaker 2: the antichrist is a luddite who wants to stop all science.
Speaker 2: It's someone like Greta or a Leezer. You cast's Greta Tunberg,
Speaker 2: he says, he's specifically, and he he'll go in later
Speaker 2: and be like, I don't think he had kowski is
Speaker 2: He definitely thinks Greta Tunberg might be the Antichrist. He
Speaker 2: very directly is clear about that. He thinks Greta Tunberg
Speaker 2: could be the Antichrist.
Speaker 3: What what what is it about her that so unnerves tyrants?
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the fact that she's you know,
Speaker 3: very smart and abasemble, truth corrupt. Yeah, the truth, speaking
Speaker 3: the truth to power.
Speaker 2: She's proved to I mean, honestly, like, I've been just
Speaker 2: shocked at how continually good her takes have been. Just
Speaker 2: because like anytime someone gets famous, that famous, that young,
Speaker 2: like you expect, okay, at some point they're going to
Speaker 2: like either buy into a conspiracy theory or get something,
Speaker 2: gets something weird, and she's just like really consistently got
Speaker 2: a great head on her shoulders. Yeah, and so that
Speaker 2: scares the hell out of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, and can't be convinced to look away, which
Speaker 3: I do feel like, you know everything you've been talking
Speaker 3: about it. I mean, we've been joking about it, but
Speaker 3: so much of it as like, what in the world
Speaker 3: is that thing? Look away? Let me do a little
Speaker 3: sleight of hand over here. It's parlor tricks.
Speaker 2: I think fundamentally, why why he hates her and why
Speaker 2: she is hated by a lot of these guys so
Speaker 2: much is not that they're scared of the day because
Speaker 2: obviously she doesn't have any power. She's like somewhat influential,
Speaker 2: but she can't. She's not going to throw Peter Teal
Speaker 2: in prison or destroy thought. She simply does not have
Speaker 2: the power.
Speaker 3: She's not a corporation. She's just a person with morals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's just in the person with morals and basically
Speaker 2: zero real world power. But she is emblematic and embodies
Speaker 2: a fact, which is that I'm not a believer in Oh,
Speaker 2: justice will win out the bark the arc of history
Speaker 2: bends towards like I don't. I think that's a silly stance.
Speaker 2: But inevitably, in the future, if there are people, they
Speaker 2: will realize that Peter Teal and all of his ilk
Speaker 2: during this period of time were deranged monsters who destroyed
Speaker 2: the environment and who fought viciously against any attempts to
Speaker 2: reduce the harm humanity was doing to the biosphere in
Speaker 2: order to make themselves wealthier. And they will be hated
Speaker 2: as a result.
Speaker 3: That's just a fact, but not just based on the people,
Speaker 3: because so many people will have died as a direct
Speaker 3: result of their actions and inactions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I think Greta represents the reality that in
Speaker 2: the future these people like won't they won't be able
Speaker 2: to after especially after they're dead, keep up the lie
Speaker 2: that they were fighting against all this disinformation from the
Speaker 2: left and pretend, you know, the climate change fake Like
Speaker 2: that lie won't hold up at a certain point.
Speaker 3: Well, And that they're working so hard to create a
Speaker 3: mythology where like the story changes every day based on
Speaker 3: what needs to be true for them to be right,
Speaker 3: and that that kind of mythology won't perpetuate itself forever,
Speaker 3: and keep protecting them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly like there will be a future in which
Speaker 2: the bullshit that they have spent their lives propping up
Speaker 2: is not widely believed. And that doesn't mean it'll be
Speaker 2: a perfect future or even a more just future. It
Speaker 2: just means that in the future people will know what
Speaker 2: a scumbag Peter was, and that's why he is so
Speaker 2: scared and hateful of her, right, I think that's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And also that he's going to die and other
Speaker 3: people and he's going to die to live and sail around.
Speaker 2: Yep, he's going to die, probably sooner than he expects,
Speaker 2: like most people, and a lot of folks are going
Speaker 2: to be happy because it'll be good when he dies. Anyway,
Speaker 2: speaking of death, advertisements or a kind of death. That's
Speaker 2: what in French, the word for advertisement means the little death.
Speaker 2: And we're back, yes, talking about my flawless knowledge of
Speaker 2: French and talking about Peter Teel's belief that fucking credit
Speaker 2: Tunberg is the Antichrist. So perfect, Let's talk about this
Speaker 2: from a theological standpoint, because one thing the Book of
Speaker 2: Daniel is pretty clear about visa of the Antichrist is
Speaker 2: that the Antichrist is a political leader of some sort
Speaker 2: he has described repeatedly as a prince or a king.
Speaker 2: Now I could see being like, well, obviously that's if
Speaker 2: we're going with the The Bible is true, but not
Speaker 2: always literally. You know, these are apocryphal stories that Okay,
Speaker 2: I can could be a standard for a president or
Speaker 2: a senator, sure, but a young lady who sometimes tries
Speaker 2: to deliver food on a boat, there's no, that's not
Speaker 2: a There's no way to like describe Greta Tunberg as
Speaker 2: a king or a prince. Same with Eliza, you'd CASKI, like,
Speaker 2: they're not political leaders. And the Antigrist definitely is like again,
Speaker 2: Peter's selective embrace of literal readings of the Bible here
Speaker 2: really biting.
Speaker 3: Him in the ass, Like it's all very little roal,
Speaker 3: unless I need it to be so figurative that it
Speaker 3: completely goes in a new direction, thank you.
Speaker 2: I also love his fundamental like, oh, you don't know
Speaker 2: stand Doctor Strangelove like the movie at all, because the
Speaker 2: idea that like, well, in the seventeen or eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: the Antichrist would have been doctor Strangelove, right, well, no
Speaker 2: strange love, yeah, right. For one thing, like in the
Speaker 2: movie of the same name, he's not a political leader.
Speaker 2: He's the president's scientific advisor, and he's not responsible for
Speaker 2: the apocalypse, right, at least not primarily. Right now, the same.
Speaker 3: Act delivering exposition right.
Speaker 2: Exactly, yes, and like it is true. Peter Sellers also
Speaker 2: plays the president, right, he plays he plays by doctor
Speaker 2: Strangelove and the President that Strangelove is advising. But even
Speaker 2: if you're saying, well, that means they're the same person.
Speaker 2: That does Peter Sellers as the President being the Antichrist
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense in that movie because.
Speaker 3: Like it's just embarrassing to misremember a movie in your
Speaker 3: big speed.
Speaker 2: It's so bad, like you could rewatch it. You're writing
Speaker 2: a four part lecture series. Man.
Speaker 3: Also, in the seventeenth century, the Antichrist would not have
Speaker 3: been acharacter from a nineteen sixties movie, but it would
Speaker 3: have been the Antichrist just like the you know, the
Speaker 3: Devil's Kid or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have been a king or something.
Speaker 3: Like Bible, a text people knew better than a movie
Speaker 3: that wouldn't come out for three hundred years.
Speaker 2: I also think, again, I don't maybe he hasn't even
Speaker 2: seen the movie, because it sounds like Peter thinks doctor
Speaker 2: Strangelove causes the apocalypse in the movie Doctor Strange Love.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, you know it's about it's about an
Speaker 3: atomic bomb, and it's called Doctor Strangelove, So probably Doctor
Speaker 3: Strangelove made the bomb. Obviously. I mean I don't have
Speaker 3: time to watch it, but I deduced it because I'm
Speaker 3: so smart.
Speaker 2: That must be what happens. And like, no, for the record,
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it, Doctor Strangelove is a mad
Speaker 2: scientist and a Nazi. Yeah, but he doesn't. There's a
Speaker 2: crazed US general who launches the initial nuclear strike and
Speaker 2: says American as can be right, and like the government
Speaker 2: like we try to reach out to the USSR and
Speaker 2: our bunker and are like these are where the missiles
Speaker 2: are coming in, you know, you can shoot them out
Speaker 2: of the sky, Like please, we don't don't want to
Speaker 2: actually have a nuclear war. This is a fuck up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And the USSR is like, oh, well, we actually built
Speaker 2: a doomsday device that will go off automatically and we
Speaker 2: can't stop it.
Speaker 3: Right right, And the premise is like what if an
Speaker 3: American general lost his mind and there weren't adequate safeguards
Speaker 3: in place, yes, before he could cause mutually assured destruction,
Speaker 3: and it's like, oh, yeah, I guess, I mean that's
Speaker 3: certainly not a problem we're having.
Speaker 2: Now, right exactly, certainly no more relevant now than it
Speaker 2: was back then. But it's like neither the President nor
Speaker 2: Doctor Strange Lover antichrist figures, no one really is in
Speaker 2: the movie Doctor Strange Love action now. But it's particularly
Speaker 2: weird to say Doctor Strangelove is the Antichrist because he
Speaker 2: doesn't incite the action. Like that just isn't accurate.
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen because you know the omen has
Speaker 3: two sequels and they're not that good.
Speaker 2: Oh god that does.
Speaker 3: The second one has Sam Neal in it and he
Speaker 3: plays the adult Damien. He has like taken over the
Speaker 3: world and he's all charismatic and I think in politics
Speaker 3: and dating a newscaster lady. Yeah, but the movie like
Speaker 3: doesn't really know what to have him be doing because
Speaker 3: it is like what would the anti Christ believe? Like
Speaker 3: what would his whole deal be? You know, like people
Speaker 3: are kind of like reluctant to state that, yeah, and
Speaker 3: so it's like you get to sort of align it
Speaker 3: with whatever you know, people already find threatening at that time,
Speaker 3: which you know, hence all the Obama stuff.
Speaker 2: Right right, right exactly. So the fact that you know
Speaker 2: he's listed Greta Tunberg and Elisa Hidkowski as possible Antichrist,
Speaker 2: both of those things are insane. At least Tunberg, she
Speaker 2: is like popular, she has a lot of like followers
Speaker 2: and people who care about what she says. Alisa Yudkowski,
Speaker 2: he's got his little cult, but he's not you really,
Speaker 2: you think he's got the juice to even be on
Speaker 2: the list of potential Antichrist. You're vastly overestimating this man's charisma,
Speaker 2: rights charisma.
Speaker 3: It's not even in the top thousand.
Speaker 2: No, No, I am a more realistic Antichrist than fucking.
Speaker 3: keV Bush, way ahead of him.
Speaker 2: Honestly, yes, Jeb is much closer. So after this, in
Speaker 2: the second lecture, Peter apparently goes into more detail about
Speaker 2: his beliefs on the Antichrist. Per the Guardian quote, Teal
Speaker 2: goes on to identify the legionnaires of the Antichrist as
Speaker 2: people like at least Yudkowski, Nick Bostrom and Greta Tunberg
Speaker 2: who argued for world government to stop science. So that's
Speaker 2: at least a little more realist. He's like, well, maybe
Speaker 2: they're not the Antichrist, but they're at least his legionnaires.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, okay man, And again I should I
Speaker 2: shouldn't have to say neither yed Kowski, nor Tunberg nor
Speaker 2: Bostrom want to stop all science. Right, specific issues exactly,
Speaker 2: they're very specific issues with specific technologies. But Peter can't
Speaker 2: stand that because again they'll get in the way of
Speaker 2: his profit, right, Like, that's really what this comes down to.
Speaker 2: It's it's very banal, but that is the truth of it.
Speaker 2: Peter goes on to say the legionaries of the Antichrist,
Speaker 2: like Alizia Yeddkowski, Nick Bostman, Greta Tunberg, argue for world
Speaker 2: government to stop science. The Antichrist has somehow become anti science,
Speaker 2: and no, they just don't. When The Washington Post reached
Speaker 2: out to Yeddkowski for a statement, he replied, My understanding
Speaker 2: is that authorities for multiple Christian denominations have stated that
Speaker 2: Teal's views identifying the Antichrist with proposals to regulate the
Speaker 2: AI industry are not deemed by them to be compatible
Speaker 2: with conventional Christian belief. It's one of his few statements
Speaker 2: that I'm like, yeah, that's a good response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's a nice thing. If about standing
Speaker 3: next to someone who's completely off their cracker, you get
Speaker 3: to seem a little bit more normal.
Speaker 2: Very seem much more reasonable now. I will say Greta's
Speaker 2: response was much better because her spokespeople, whoever that, whoever
Speaker 2: the Post reached out to on her team didn't comment.
Speaker 2: Which is the best response to Peter Teel declaring you
Speaker 2: the Antichrist or one of his legionaries. It's just don't
Speaker 2: there's what are you gonna say?
Speaker 3: You really shouldn't have to issue a statement saying you're
Speaker 3: not the Antichrist whenever someone accuses you of it or else.
Speaker 3: You know, no one would ever get anything done in
Speaker 3: this country.
Speaker 2: I guess I feel like if I was in that boat,
Speaker 2: I would be like, yes, Peter, I am the Antichrist
Speaker 2: and I'm coming for your soul, buddy, Like I talked
Speaker 2: with the devil and we have a plan for you.
Speaker 2: You don't even know how we're ensnaring it. Yeah, got you, baby, Yeah,
Speaker 2: got you now. At the same time, in his second lecture,
Speaker 2: Peter talks about his luddite Antichrist candidates, like right. While
Speaker 2: he's doing that, he floats another name as a potential
Speaker 2: Antichrist briefly before kind of explaining why he doesn't think
Speaker 2: this guy is the Antichrist. And that name is Mark Andresen. Now,
Speaker 2: Mark Andreesen is the co founder of Andreson Horowitz. He
Speaker 2: is a fellow big tech AI venture capitalist ghoul. And
Speaker 2: actually I'd be like, yeah, Mark Andreesen not a bad
Speaker 2: antichrist candidate. He is evil, but Peter hates him not
Speaker 2: because he is a monster trying to destroy all art
Speaker 2: and human culture and replace it with AI slop, which
Speaker 2: is literally what Mark Andreeson wants, right, that's his stated goal.
Speaker 2: Mark is the author of something called the Techno Optimist Manifesto,
Speaker 2: which argues that AI will solve all problems, including like
Speaker 2: climate change. All of our serious life threatening issues will
Speaker 2: be solved by a super intelligent AI. Therefore, anyone who
Speaker 2: tries to slow or stop AI development is evil and
Speaker 2: needs to be destroyed, killed if necessary. Is is what
Speaker 2: you're is insinuated heavily, not directly state, but like anything
Speaker 2: you can do to stop the people who are anti
Speaker 2: AI is justified because they're trying to kill God.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: That's Mark Andreeson great and.
Speaker 3: What of really well balanced people with a lot of
Speaker 3: power in this world, is what I'm learning.
Speaker 2: More and more sane billionaires, all of them, all of
Speaker 2: them sane. And it's funny to me that as nuts
Speaker 2: as he is about this, Peter recognizes how crazy Mark
Speaker 2: is because his issue with Mark Andresen is that his
Speaker 2: he he's putting out gobbledegook AI propaganda. M And I
Speaker 2: mean he is, because yeah, I think his issue is
Speaker 2: yed Kowski's anti AI stuff is that it will inevitably
Speaker 2: become a god that's evil. And Andresen is just like
Speaker 2: the opposite, where he's like, it will inevitably become a
Speaker 2: god but good, right, And so I guess Peter rejects
Speaker 2: both of them. But he says this when he brings
Speaker 2: up Mark in the context of the Antichrist. It's not Andreeson.
Speaker 2: By the way, I think Andreson is not the Antichrist,
Speaker 2: because you know, the Antichrist is popular. Oh that's it's funny, shade.
Speaker 2: But I thought I'd say.
Speaker 3: His name on the word Antichrist in the same sentence
Speaker 3: several times.
Speaker 2: Several times. I didn't need to bring it up right. Next,
Speaker 2: he goes on to Bill Gates, who he he notes,
Speaker 2: you know, it's reasonable to put him on the list,
Speaker 2: but he thinks Gates is ultimately unlikely to be the Antichrist,
Speaker 2: even though he describes him as a Doctor jekylin Mister
Speaker 2: Hyde type character whose positive public face is just a mask.
Speaker 2: Quoth Peter, I saw the mister Hyde version about it
Speaker 2: year ago, where it was just a NonStop tourette's yelling,
Speaker 2: swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on. And I
Speaker 2: don't have trouble believing that Bill Gates is a dick. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll give you that, Peter, I'll give you that. I'll
Speaker 2: give you I don't have trouble believing he's a Jack
Speaker 2: ln Hyde. Clearly his wife left for after the Epstein
Speaker 2: stuff for a good reason.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Now, as I noted reporters with The Guardian, namely Joanna Buoyan,
Speaker 2: Derek Kerr and Nick Robbins early actually got trans like
Speaker 2: all seven hours of Peter's Antichrist lectures and listen to them,
Speaker 2: which I have not been able to do yet maybe
Speaker 2: one day, and on the subject of Bill Gates and
Speaker 2: their article, they write something very funny. Ultimately, Teal concedes
Speaker 2: Gates cannot be the Antichrist. Bringing up the topic more
Speaker 2: than once. And here's that's so funny. He really is
Speaker 2: stuck on that. He's not a political leader, he's not
Speaker 2: broadly popular, and again, perhaps to Gates's credit, he's still
Speaker 2: stuck in the eighteenth century alongside people like Richard Dawkins
Speaker 2: who believe that science and atheism are compatible. What and
Speaker 2: that's fundamentally he believes, Well, because being anti science is
Speaker 2: what makes you the Antichrist, So that must mean that
Speaker 2: you can't be pro science and not Christian. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: actually possible, Peter. This is disordered thinking. This is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's something actually wrong here.
Speaker 3: This is like, if you weren't a billionaire, his family
Speaker 3: would be like, hey, buddy, do you want to try
Speaker 3: for you? Yeah, you want to go feed some squirrels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something to take your mind off the crazy.
Speaker 3: Why don't we put this manifesto in the drawer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we'll come back to this tomorrow, Peter. Maybe
Speaker 2: we'll keep working on this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Why don't we have some hot soup?
Speaker 2: Yeah, some soup, maybe a cup of coffee, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe some tea. Caffeine is probably bad for you right now,
Speaker 2: get off.
Speaker 3: The sandy Christ thing for a while.
Speaker 2: You've been screaming about Bill Gates for forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I guess like part of the great American
Speaker 3: dream of becoming a billionaire is that no one can
Speaker 3: tell you how crazy you sound.
Speaker 2: You know, that's the whole and that. Yeah, that's part
Speaker 2: of why they're angry at the people they're angry at. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're doing a bit more research around this area. It
Speaker 2: makes it very clear why Peter Teal hates Bill Gates
Speaker 2: so much, aside from the fact that Gates seems to
Speaker 2: annoy a lot of people in general by being.
Speaker 3: Dick you know, Microsoft word had some you know, right
Speaker 3: and some tricky areas. Let's say.
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, but it can't just be that because Teal
Speaker 2: is friends with Elon Musk. So the fact that Bill
Speaker 2: Gates is just an asshole can't explain it, right, Yeah. So,
Speaker 2: and I think I figured out what it is, which
Speaker 2: is that Bill Gates has made a big public show
Speaker 2: of wanting to give away and convince other billionaires to
Speaker 2: give away most of their fortunes before they die.
Speaker 3: Right the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, without which I
Speaker 3: would not have probably gotten to hear Morning Edition for
Speaker 3: many years.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, my my ex wife wouldn't have
Speaker 2: had a laptop in elementary school, you know. So, I
Speaker 2: I think that's really his issue with Gates. And I
Speaker 2: think that in part because of what I found in
Speaker 2: a Washington Post article, because the Post also got access
Speaker 2: to the tapes and an article by Natasha Tiki, Elizabeth Dwashkin,
Speaker 2: and Garrett de vinc They wrote this The investor. Teal
Speaker 2: said he recently encouraged Musk to renege on his twenty
Speaker 2: twelve commitment to the Giving Pledge movement, co founded by Gates,
Speaker 2: which asks wealthy people to commit the majority of their
Speaker 2: fortune to charitable causes. According to the recordings, and this
Speaker 2: is Teal here, two hundred billion, if you're not going
Speaker 2: to be careful, is going to left wing nonprofits that
Speaker 2: are going to be chosen by Bill Gates. Teal said
Speaker 2: he warned Musk, according to the recording painting, the philanthropist
Speaker 2: is among the malevolent forces besetting technologists. That's his hatred
Speaker 2: of Gates. Gates wants to billionaires to give away their
Speaker 2: money to these evil left wing causes, and he convinces
Speaker 2: Musk to stop.
Speaker 3: He funded too many modern dance troops. Therefore Antichrist. It's
Speaker 3: like viral standards for your antichrist behavior.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, yeah, and it does. You know. Teal's
Speaker 2: positive on Musk, now, I think because Musk is useful.
Speaker 2: He also, in this lecture series has nice things to
Speaker 2: say about jd Vance, whose political career he paid to
Speaker 2: get off the ground. Per Maggie Dupree writing for Futurism,
Speaker 2: Teal quote described himself as very pro Vice President JD Vance,
Speaker 2: to whom Teal has given millions in campaign funds. He's concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he did express that he's concerned the VP, whose Catholic
Speaker 2: might give too much credence to the pope. The place
Speaker 2: that I will worry about it is to burst to
Speaker 2: the pope, said Teal per The Guardian. And so we
Speaker 2: have all these reports the fights between him and the pope.
Speaker 2: I hope there are a lot more. And that's like
Speaker 2: my issue with jd Vance is that he might be
Speaker 2: a papist.
Speaker 3: Okay, great, well, we've gone back to puritanism in this country.
Speaker 3: We have to worry about papistry now on top of
Speaker 3: everything else. It's also like, I mean, look, I'm I
Speaker 3: don't believe in antichrist stuff. I never have. I'm not
Speaker 3: a devil believer, but you know, which is part of
Speaker 3: my tists in the Satanic panic, which it just seems
Speaker 3: like extra wild when you're not afraid of Satan yourself.
Speaker 3: I grew up afraid of a lot of the things.
Speaker 3: I was afraid of the Bermuda Triangle, but I wasn't
Speaker 3: afraid of Satan because I just wasn't. Didn't seem relevant
Speaker 3: to my life.
Speaker 2: It's not a real thing.
Speaker 3: If I were to pick an anti christ today, it
Speaker 3: would obviously be Trump. Like, he's really behaving very anti Christy,
Speaker 3: and it's just so funny to have him leading a
Speaker 3: party that has become so much about you know, this
Speaker 3: kind of death cult and armageddonism. And they're like, but
Speaker 3: not you, sir, And it's like because because look at it.
Speaker 2: Not the obvious guy. Yeah. And it's again like, even
Speaker 2: the things you name in this are clearly more relevant
Speaker 2: to Trump than credit Dunberg or whatever. I mean now
Speaker 2: outside of this frankly unhinged lecture series. Back in June,
Speaker 2: Peter gave an interview to Ross do that doubt it whatever,
Speaker 2: however you say? Last name, but the New York Times
Speaker 2: and Ross one of the worst writers alive. He used
Speaker 2: to be the senior editor of the Atlantic, and I
Speaker 2: think he might be the most up his own ass
Speaker 2: conservative writer in the country. He was Bill Crystal's replacement
Speaker 2: and a massive downgrade from Bill Crystal. Even he's both
Speaker 2: entirely uncritical of big tech and pro everyone should be religious.
Speaker 2: And so he and Peter Teel are peas in a
Speaker 2: pod and during that interview, Ross asks what Peter thinks
Speaker 2: about the Techno Optimist Manifesto that Marc Andreesen self published
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, And again, that's basically saying we
Speaker 2: have to accelerate at all costs the growth of AI
Speaker 2: because it will solve all of our problems. So slowing
Speaker 2: things down AI down is the same as committing mass murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and think of us studio ghibli esque portraits of
Speaker 3: your husband that will never be.
Speaker 2: Drawn exactly exactly. It's a fate worse than death for
Speaker 2: all of us. And the fact that, like the document
Speaker 2: is generally considered to be a foundational text for AVE accelerationism,
Speaker 2: you know, that's kind of the philosophical name for what
Speaker 2: Andresen is preaching. And that's close to what Peter tele
Speaker 2: advocates because he's literally arguing that Gretit Tunberg might be
Speaker 2: the Antichrist, or is at least furthering the Antichrist's agenda
Speaker 2: because she's skeptical about AI and fossil fuels and shit.
Speaker 3: And I'm the Antichrist too. Congratulations to me.
Speaker 2: Like Teal definitely thinks the same way. But I think
Speaker 2: he's incapable. I think why he has to reject andresen
Speaker 2: is that he can't speak positively about appear with the
Speaker 2: same ideas if they put those ideas down first. And
Speaker 2: so he says this about the essay. It represents a
Speaker 2: kind of corporate utopianism. In the nineteen nineties, there was
Speaker 2: a broad cultural optimism that technology would solve everything, but
Speaker 2: by twenty twenty five, that optimism is shrunk. Today's visions
Speaker 2: are narrower, less inclusive, and less confident. The grand utopian
Speaker 2: projects have given away to incremental gains, overshadowed by fears
Speaker 2: of collapse. Oh and that's accurate, But like the problem again,
Speaker 2: he's not capable of like looking what he's literally saying.
Speaker 2: The visions are narrower, the optimism has shrunk. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that like we're not making technological progress, but it
Speaker 2: does mean that, like there's a problem in how people
Speaker 2: are mess he's a visualizing progress, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And it's like perhaps people are more pessimistic
Speaker 3: and perhaps even more reasonable because of how horrible everything's
Speaker 3: been for the last thirty years.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: I realized that in the nineties it was a utopian
Speaker 3: time when Starbucks had like big upholstered chairs in them
Speaker 3: and he could sit there for a long time and
Speaker 3: he could buy from Nora Jones CDs. But that's over man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And that the article is just a great example.
Speaker 2: There's so much ross. Just lets Peter say nonsense without
Speaker 2: ever questioning him. It's like it's one of the worst
Speaker 2: movies I've ever read.
Speaker 3: It's like he's accidentally a great interviewer by being a
Speaker 3: terrible interviewer because I guess lets him say stupid stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do get more out. There's no like Peter
Speaker 2: drops the line again. He makes the claim like after
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five, churches stopped preaching end Times sermons, and
Speaker 2: like question Peter, no, they didn't.
Speaker 3: Really, Where did all those left behind movies come from?
Speaker 2: The Left behind books massively popular? Peter, like Ann had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with technology. By the way, that's not
Speaker 2: how the anti I mean surveillance tech, I guess, but
Speaker 2: the Antichrist doesn't rise to power on the back of
Speaker 2: fears about fucking AI or whatever. Anyway, I don't know
Speaker 2: how Peter can think this true. I don't know how
Speaker 2: Ross can't question any of this other than Ross is
Speaker 2: just like the fucking boot lickorist boot liquor whoever looked
Speaker 2: at goddamn.
Speaker 3: Boot like I hear you got some good blood for
Speaker 3: me later on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: One of the weirdest things to me here is that
Speaker 2: like Ross is theoretically a Christian, he's a big C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis fan, and Peter is theoretically a Christian. But then
Speaker 2: in this interview, Peter describes the choice presented by the
Speaker 2: Bible in the Book of Revelations as anti Christ or Armageddon,
Speaker 2: and that this is unacceptable and thus quote, we must
Speaker 2: find a third path, right, it's me, which is like, no,
Speaker 2: it doesn't. That's not like for one thing, the Bible
Speaker 2: doesn't present a choice. It just says there's an anti Christ,
Speaker 2: and that leads to the second coming in an armageddon, and.
Speaker 3: Everything's going to get all weird and then people are
Speaker 3: going to get up out of their graves. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be wacky, you guys. Yeah, yeah, it's not like you
Speaker 3: have an option to change that. If you're going to
Speaker 3: believe it, you have to just like you know, God knows,
Speaker 3: no one has ever been selective about their beliefs as
Speaker 3: a Christian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this both that like Ross doesn't question Peter
Speaker 2: on this, Yeah, and also this is so heretical, Like
Speaker 2: I'm not a I don't care personally, but like you should.
Speaker 3: But don't you think that it's like weirdly become like
Speaker 3: a tenet of modern sort of American I don't know,
Speaker 3: like political Protestantism. I guess like we allow people much
Speaker 3: for your hand in terms of doing their own interpretations.
Speaker 3: Then absolutely, Yeah, it seems like things have gotten a
Speaker 3: little bit over the top.
Speaker 2: I mean, and that's that is definitely true that like
Speaker 2: we like that's that's a major factor in like the
Speaker 2: birth of Protestantism. Right, is this idea, this this this
Speaker 2: ongoing thing that like, well, anyone can be a priest
Speaker 2: or a pastor, anyone can speak the word, right, and like.
Speaker 3: Why can speaks at a certain point if they feel
Speaker 3: like it.
Speaker 2: Anyone can interpret the Bible, sure, but even so it
Speaker 2: is kind of very fundamentally heretical to be like the
Speaker 2: Bible says, there's we have to choose between, you know,
Speaker 2: the Antichrist of the apocalypse. But I think there's a
Speaker 2: third way, because Peter is literally saying, I think we
Speaker 2: can avoid the Biblical apocalypse by getting our politics right.
Speaker 3: And actually we're kind of getting into Joseph Smith's territory
Speaker 3: right where you're like, I believe in the Bible, but
Speaker 3: also I'm adding stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think we can rewrite the ending
Speaker 2: of the Bible.
Speaker 3: And also I need to have sex with your wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's weird, right, and especially because Peter
Speaker 2: describes himself as a little Orthodox Christian, which like this
Speaker 2: is not anywhere close to orthodox. Right, the idea that
Speaker 2: you're arguing God might let us avoid having an Antichrist
Speaker 2: and an armageddon and still live forever, that's not Christian theology.
Speaker 2: That's Peter deology.
Speaker 3: You're right, it's like getting into your starting to found
Speaker 3: your own religion at that point, which you certainly have resources.
Speaker 2: And that's I would argue what Act seventeen is doing
Speaker 2: is they are not spreading Christianity to Silicon Valley elites.
Speaker 2: They are creating a new like a like a Mormonism
Speaker 2: for rich people.
Speaker 3: Christianity with like second billionaire culture. Now that's the Antichrist,
Speaker 3: the curse child of too.
Speaker 2: Evil anteist of Christ. And it is kind of weird
Speaker 2: to me. Part of what's strange is that like he
Speaker 2: wants to avoid the biblical apocalypse. And I think what
Speaker 2: that means is that Peter Teel is so clearly scared
Speaker 2: of death that he can't even embrace everlasting life like
Speaker 2: he would prefer He vastly would prefer some scientist keeps
Speaker 2: his body alive then like Jesus ensures him eternal life,
Speaker 2: and like.
Speaker 3: I believe in you, God, but stay the fuck away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: The most reasonable thing that I've you know, theorized him
Speaker 3: thinking this whole time in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also it's like it's this thing of like, you know,
Speaker 3: because I do feel like if you look at sort
Speaker 3: of the sum of human experience, it's like, yeah, organized
Speaker 3: religion facilitates a lot of horror and a lot of evil,
Speaker 3: and it also facilitates a lot of structure and a
Speaker 3: lot of just a lot of stability in people's eyes.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the positive elements of it
Speaker 3: is the feeling of allowing yourself to not be in
Speaker 3: control and sort of believing in something, you know, not
Speaker 3: even necessarily a higher power, like it's a twelve steps
Speaker 3: kind of a thing, although that certainly is helpful for
Speaker 3: a lot of people too, because the sort of like
Speaker 3: the ability to believe in something beyond yourself and to
Speaker 3: sort of maybe use religion to get out of the
Speaker 3: human urge towards sollipsism. Yeah, it feels like this is like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm actually using religion to become more self centered than ever.
Speaker 3: Isn't that great?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And it's it's just like the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're you're so scared of death that you can't even
Speaker 2: even the idea of heaven. You can't even you have
Speaker 2: to find a fix for that, yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, like death becomes her Yeah, you know, person just
Speaker 3: walking around getting hairline fractures, incluing himself back together.
Speaker 2: And again, Ross, who is a useless thinker and a
Speaker 2: useless writer and a waste of column inches for The
Speaker 2: New York Times, can't even question that there's only one
Speaker 2: really valuable thing about the article that he writes Interviewing Teal,
Speaker 2: which is that it includes a fascinating segment where Peter
Speaker 2: talks about his early attempts to secure eternal life for himself.
Speaker 2: And I'm just gonna read I'm going to read a
Speaker 2: long quote from the interview here, Peter. I remember nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine or two thousand when we were running PayPal.
Speaker 2: One of my co founders, Luke Nosek. He was into
Speaker 2: alcore and cryonics and that people should freeze themselves. And
Speaker 2: we had one day where we took the whole company
Speaker 2: to a freezing party, you know, a Tupperware party. People
Speaker 2: sell Tupperware policies at a freezing party, they sell and
Speaker 2: the Ross butts in here was it just your heads?
Speaker 2: What was going to be frozen? Teal? You could get
Speaker 2: a full body or just ahead ross. The just ahead
Speaker 2: option was cheaper, Teal. It was disturbing when the dot
Speaker 2: matrix printer didn't quite work and so the freezing policies
Speaker 2: couldn't be printed out.
Speaker 3: Okay, I missed s matrix, Prince, that's buddy.
Speaker 2: I think a critical and thoughtful interviewer might have said
Speaker 2: something like, hey, it kind of seems like a lot
Speaker 2: of companies in a life extension space, like the guys
Speaker 2: who were selling you youthful blood to inject into your body,
Speaker 2: are like questionable and sketchy, and maybe con Men has
Speaker 2: repeatedly encountering stuff that doesn't work or is sketchy, like
Speaker 2: Alcore not being able to make a printer work. Has
Speaker 2: any of that made you reevaluate whether or not you're
Speaker 2: just following for a series of cons like the old
Speaker 2: pharaohs of Egypt taking fucking strychnine or whatever to make
Speaker 2: themselves live forever, or like are you still good? You
Speaker 2: still follow in all that? Like Ross doesn't asked this
Speaker 2: at all. Now, Instead, when Peter talks about how this
Speaker 2: cryonics company couldn't even get a printer to work, Ross
Speaker 2: nonsensically adds technological stagnation once again, right no, which is like, no,
Speaker 2: that's not what that's an example of it at all period.
Speaker 2: But Peter responds, but in retch kind of ignores Ross.
Speaker 2: But in retrospect it's also a symptom of the decline
Speaker 2: because in nineteen ninety nine this was not a mainstream view,
Speaker 2: but there was still a fringe boomer view where they
Speaker 2: still believed that they could live forever, and that was
Speaker 2: the last generation. So I'm always anti boomer, but maybe
Speaker 2: there's something we've lost even with this fringe boomer narcissistem
Speaker 2: where there were at least a few boomers who still
Speaker 2: believed science would cure all their diseases, no one who's
Speaker 2: a millennial believes that anymore.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what that aside was about.
Speaker 2: What is that even about? So you're anti boomer because
Speaker 2: they thought they could live forever, but you.
Speaker 3: Can, yeah, or just like, you know, say more about
Speaker 3: what did it feel like to think about getting your
Speaker 3: head son off by these people? How much did just
Speaker 3: the head cost versus the body? Say more about that?
Speaker 3: Exactly would they give you someone else's limbs or put
Speaker 3: you on a big robot body like RoboCop?
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so we're almost done here. I want to
Speaker 2: end by talking a little bit more about Renee Gerard
Speaker 2: and Schmidt and some of some of Teal's philosophical beliefs.
Speaker 2: But first, let's have an ad real quick, all right,
Speaker 2: So we're back, and I talked up at the start
Speaker 2: about Karl Schmidt, who's the Nazi philosopher who discussed how
Speaker 2: to destroy democracies in a way that Peter Teal followed
Speaker 2: and rene Gerard, who is this He's this big belief
Speaker 2: in sort of like this mimetic theory of like, uh,
Speaker 2: like mimetic rivalry, right, where like people, once they cover
Speaker 2: their basic needs still want things, and so they kind
Speaker 2: of pick, well, what is this other guy who seems
Speaker 2: to be doing better than me have? And they like,
Speaker 2: that's kind of mimetic rivalry, but it doesn't make people happy,
Speaker 2: so they need scapegoats, you know. And Gerard's attitude was
Speaker 2: like Christianity brought an it should have brought an end too,
Speaker 2: that it's certainly evidence that we need to bring it
Speaker 2: into that it's bad to escapegroat groups of people. And
Speaker 2: christ was kind of like that's why he was killed, right,
Speaker 2: he was made into a scapegoat, and that's like the
Speaker 2: final evidence that it's wrong to do that, you know.
Speaker 2: That's Gerard's attitude. Peter claims to be a major follower
Speaker 2: of Girard's, and he's gone to a bunch of gatherings
Speaker 2: and in fact, in two thousand and four, he and
Speaker 2: one of his mentors organized a week long seminar on
Speaker 2: renee Gerard at Stanford, and they invited Girard who was
Speaker 2: alive at the time, And they also invited a scholar
Speaker 2: of Carl Schmidt who was also like a peer of
Speaker 2: Renee Gerard named Wolfgang Palaver, who is Plaver is one
Speaker 2: of Peter Teal's favorite intellectuals name, it's quite a name,
Speaker 2: and Teal is very like a huge, big fan of
Speaker 2: this guy and a major like like cites him quite
Speaker 2: frequently and has invited him to a number of these
Speaker 2: different events. Right, this two thousand and four seminar on
Speaker 2: Girard is right after Peter Teal got rich after he
Speaker 2: like sold PayPal, so he he funds this thing. And
Speaker 2: the theme of the conference is politics and the apocalypse,
Speaker 2: and the type like that theme was suggested by Wolfgang
Speaker 2: Palava like before they were planning the event. So this
Speaker 2: is obviously is a couple of years after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: and people who are you know, what you'd call mimetic theorists.
Speaker 2: These folks who like buy into a lot of Girard's
Speaker 2: beliefs about me medic rivalry are trying to figure out
Speaker 2: like did the was nine to eleven, Like an example
Speaker 2: of like planetary mimetic rivalry, this like was it did
Speaker 2: it come out of anger from one part of the
Speaker 2: world at like all of the things that the West
Speaker 2: has that they don't have, which is very much kind
Speaker 2: of in line with like a lot of what Bush
Speaker 2: was saying, you know, not exactly, but that you can
Speaker 2: see some people they're jealous of our freedoms, right, So
Speaker 2: kind of one of the questions that these these Girard fans,
Speaker 2: these mimetic you know, theoreticians are talking about, is like,
Speaker 2: is that kind of does that explain what was going
Speaker 2: on there? Or is there something else for us to
Speaker 2: to take out of this? And Teal's attitude was that
Speaker 2: the primary that nine to eleven showed us is that
Speaker 2: the West can't protect itself. He wrote a paper right
Speaker 2: before this event in which he stated, the brute facts
Speaker 2: of September eleventh demand a re examination of the foundations
Speaker 2: of modern politics today. Mere self preservation forces all of
Speaker 2: us to look at the world anew, to think strange
Speaker 2: new thoughts, and thereby to awaken from that long and
Speaker 2: profitable period of intellectual slumber and amnesia that is so
Speaker 2: misleadingly called the Enlightenment. And his big attitude here is that,
Speaker 2: like Osama bin Laden is thinking rationally in a modern
Speaker 2: political sense, But the West is not right and we
Speaker 2: haven't realized the actual nature of the fight. And if
Speaker 2: Karl Schmidt were in charge of things, our response to
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, the just response would be to call
Speaker 2: for a crusade against Islam, right, of course, that's the
Speaker 2: rational response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, irrational to try and eradicate our religion, I find generally, I.
Speaker 2: Mean yeah, and that is like literally, like Teal's argument
Speaker 2: is that, like this is where this is like the
Speaker 2: fundament irrationality that the West indulged in is not seeing
Speaker 2: it as a holy war, is not seeing it as
Speaker 2: a fundamental clash of civilizations. We didn't do that enough,
Speaker 2: which like, I mean, we did the people you would
Speaker 2: have supported then, George W. Bush, like that is how
Speaker 2: they framed it and it failed.
Speaker 3: That was very much how Alan Jackson was describing the situation. Again,
Speaker 3: he's like, really recommending anti Christy behavior, we must say, yeah,
Speaker 3: I also realize I keep saying it like anti pasto,
Speaker 3: But yeah, what if it was delicious?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what if the Antichrist tasted better? But if the
Speaker 2: olives but was less filling at the same time.
Speaker 3: Just a nice cold snack on a summer's day, right,
Speaker 3: you know when you got pasta coming later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I'm on tucky cold snack, Yes, exactly. So Wolfgang,
Speaker 2: like Peter is a huge fan of him, specifically because
Speaker 2: of how Wolfgang interpreted a lot of Carl Schmidt's writing
Speaker 2: and like some essays that he wrote on like what
Speaker 2: Carl Schmidt meant and kind of his like how his
Speaker 2: concept of the political functioned, and that's what he bases
Speaker 2: a lot of his like well we were doing the
Speaker 2: wrong things after nine to eleven on is his ideas
Speaker 2: of like how Schmidt would have handled things instead. And
Speaker 2: I want to quote from an article in Wired kind
Speaker 2: of summarizing this journey, It would quickly become apparent that
Speaker 2: Teal had spent some time considering the paper Palavar presented
Speaker 2: the day the two men met in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: The strange new thoughts Teal wanted his audience to entertain,
Speaker 2: where it turned out largely those of Karl Schmidt, but
Speaker 2: where Palaver had been repulsed. Teal extolled Schmidt's robust conception
Speaker 2: of the political, in which humans are forced to choose
Speaker 2: between friends and enemies and everything else's delusion. The high
Speaker 2: point of politics, Palaver quote Schmidt is saying, are the
Speaker 2: moments in which the enemy is in concrete clarity recognized
Speaker 2: as the enemy. In Teal's mind, Osama bin Laan was
Speaker 2: capable of this kind of politics. The West, with its
Speaker 2: fetish for individual rights and procedures, was not so. Palaver
Speaker 2: is quoting Schmidt as being like, this guy believed that
Speaker 2: the high point in politics was the defining of an enemy, right,
Speaker 2: and getting a group of people, getting a community to
Speaker 2: recognize an enemy. And that's a lot of I mean,
Speaker 2: that's where Schmidt kind of goes in with Girard Is.
Speaker 2: They both had this concept of like scapegoating as being important.
Speaker 2: But Schmidt is like, this is how you gain power.
Speaker 2: This is actually how you destroy democracy is by finding
Speaker 2: an enemy, defining them as not part of the community,
Speaker 2: and excising them, and then you continually push that barrier.
Speaker 3: And if you don't do that, year a moron.
Speaker 2: Right, And Palaver is saying that's what Schmidt believed because
Speaker 2: he was bad, right, and that that's a that's an
Speaker 2: awful thing to believe, But like, this is what Schmidt
Speaker 2: was advocating, and Teal is like, no, that's awesome, and
Speaker 2: like their relationship over the last twenty years has been
Speaker 2: polov gradually realizing. Peter Teal likes him because he describes
Speaker 2: accurately what a monster believed, and Peter Teel is the
Speaker 2: same kind of monster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what a fun day at Stanford.
Speaker 2: It's it's awesome. To continue from that Wired article, Schmidt,
Speaker 2: Teal conjectured would have responded to nine to eleven by
Speaker 2: calling for a holy crusade against Islam, but the West
Speaker 2: was instead slipping beyond politics altogether. Teal seemed to fear
Speaker 2: towards the creation of a bland world, embracing economic and
Speaker 2: technical organization. This was schmich nightmare scenario, and such a world,
Speaker 2: Teal said, a representation of reality might appear to replace reality.
Speaker 2: Instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games
Speaker 2: instead of heroic feats. There could be thrilling amusement park
Speaker 2: rides instead of serious thought. There could be intrigues of
Speaker 2: all sorts, as in a soap opera. But that counterfeit reality,
Speaker 2: Teal argued, would be just the brief harmony that prefigures
Speaker 2: the final catastrophe of the apocalypse. The harmony in Schmid's
Speaker 2: telling of the anti Christ. Teal's discussion of Schmidt didn't
Speaker 2: mention the Hitler or the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Once irrelevant who cares?
Speaker 2: Great, Yeah, why does it matter that this guy was
Speaker 2: a Nazi and arguing for Nazis? And what matters is
Speaker 2: that when he was we need to take his idea
Speaker 2: about picking an in me And it's actually a really
Speaker 2: bad thing if like people are playing video games instead
Speaker 2: of fighting in real wars, that like that is the
Speaker 2: path to the anti Christ. Like we're replacing the cult
Speaker 2: real heroism with fictional hero It's a very fascist idea.
Speaker 2: It's fundamentally a very fascist idea.
Speaker 3: So basically he's like, yeah, like if we don't become fascist,
Speaker 3: we're gonna we have to become fascist to protect ourselves
Speaker 3: from the Antichrist. Sweetie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And kind of the the conclusion Teal draws from
Speaker 2: Pilaver's writing about Schmidt is that because Schmidt's fundamentally suggested,
Speaker 2: like we have to have these dramatic solutions to the problem,
Speaker 2: like to deal with the enemy, like.
Speaker 3: Final we kill them.
Speaker 2: Right, he's a Nazi, right, Teal pulls back from that,
Speaker 2: but he's his solution is a you have to fortify
Speaker 2: the modern West, and you can't do that through democracy, right,
Speaker 2: So you have to you have to hide, you have
Speaker 2: to trick people into it in order to get around
Speaker 2: democratic institutions because those aren't going to like you can't
Speaker 2: actually work through them. So I'm going to quote from
Speaker 2: Teal directly. Instead of the United Nations filled with interminable
Speaker 2: and inconclusive parliamentary debates that resemble shakespeare in tales told
Speaker 2: by idiots, we should consider the secret coordination of the
Speaker 2: world's intelligence services as the decisive path to a truly
Speaker 2: global packs Americana. In other words, that we need to
Speaker 2: do is develop government. Yeah, no, no, no, no, just
Speaker 2: a one world surveillance supersystem controlled by Peter Teals, not
Speaker 2: a one world government, no, no, we need we do need.
Speaker 2: Teal says, a political framework that operates outside the checks
Speaker 2: and balances of representative democracy. But that's not a one
Speaker 2: world government, right, It's just a surveillance state that I'm
Speaker 2: in charge of, you know.
Speaker 3: Basically saying it would be terrible if somebody did the
Speaker 3: things that I want to do myself. It has to
Speaker 3: be me.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. God, Yeah, it's it's awesome, you know, and
Speaker 2: it there's that Wired article does a really good job
Speaker 2: of talking about Pilaver's kind of dawning horror as he
Speaker 2: realizes that like he's been reading all the old papers
Speaker 2: of mine about Schmidt, but interpreting them is like, this
Speaker 2: guy's awesome, and I want to do all the things
Speaker 2: he's suggesting.
Speaker 3: Like when Oliver Still realized all these guys were getting
Speaker 3: into finance because they loved his movie that they never
Speaker 3: saw the last quarter of apparently.
Speaker 2: And it's been like Girardians in general, like people who
Speaker 2: are like like our followers of Renee Gerard and his
Speaker 2: intellectual tradition have like this has been kind of a
Speaker 2: growing horror for a lot of them. I think they
Speaker 2: probably should have started earlier, because, like it has often
Speaker 2: been said that Renee Gerard was kind of the inventor
Speaker 2: of the like button on Facebook for good reason, because
Speaker 2: Peter Thiel has justified him betting on Facebook by saying, quote,
Speaker 2: I bet on mimicis right, like on on mimetic, This
Speaker 2: idea that like memetic rivalry is the underpinning of Facebook, right,
Speaker 2: it's the underpinning of social media that I'm going to
Speaker 2: beat both people being jealous and wanting to imitate the
Speaker 2: lives of other people that they see once it right,
Speaker 2: And so people have been saying since the early two
Speaker 2: thousands that, like, Girard is kind of Girardian philosophy is
Speaker 2: kind of baked into a lot of the most toxic
Speaker 2: stuff about social media. But what really fucked a lot
Speaker 2: of these people up is kind of more recently because
Speaker 2: JD when they saw JD Vance during the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four election start lying about Haitians and like spread knowingly
Speaker 2: spreading like lies about like Haitians eating dogs and stuff,
Speaker 2: because this is classic scapegoating, right, And this is again
Speaker 2: Girard was saying it's bad to do that. Vance, who
Speaker 2: calls himself a Girardian, is clearly just saying like, oh,
Speaker 2: Gerard kind of explained how scapegoating works, and I like that, right.
Speaker 3: It feels like reading a book on or an article
Speaker 3: on child abuse and like the psychological effects that beating
Speaker 3: your child has on them, and your takeaway is like, Wow,
Speaker 3: if I beat my child, they're going to be a
Speaker 3: lot more obedient and do more cares. I'm going to
Speaker 3: do that. Hey, everybody, this article says you should beat
Speaker 3: your child, And the person who wrote it is like.
Speaker 2: What, Yeah, exactly, it's this. It's so like I'll quote like,
Speaker 2: here's because Vance has directly stated that coming to understand
Speaker 2: Girard influenced his Christianity.
Speaker 3: Quote thank God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he spoke of his theory of a medic rivalry,
Speaker 2: that we tend to compete over the things that other
Speaker 2: people want. Spoke directly to some of the pressures I
Speaker 2: experienced at Yale. But it was his related theory of
Speaker 2: the scapegoat and what it revealed about Christianity that made
Speaker 2: me reconsider my faith.
Speaker 3: It made me realize that I could be a Christian
Speaker 3: in an absolute dick wat you care about you beings
Speaker 3: were human suffering, and that was very conspiring to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gerard's saying Christ was killed because he was turned
Speaker 2: into a scapegoat by these powers, you know, doing the
Speaker 2: thing that that author Terian monsters always do, which is
Speaker 2: create and destroy scapegoats to distract people from the fact
Speaker 2: that the system is unjust in making them unhappy. And
Speaker 2: Vance is like, yeah, this changed. Like the idea of
Speaker 2: Christ as a scapegoat made me realize that I could
Speaker 2: lie about Haitians to become the vice president. Like that's
Speaker 2: basically what Vance has said.
Speaker 3: That's nice, Yeah, yeah, it's there.
Speaker 2: It's cool.
Speaker 3: I think Jade Vance could have had less education and
Speaker 3: would have been just fine. Yeah, less access to education
Speaker 3: for one Apple action.
Speaker 2: Right to continue from that Wired article. For some Gerardians,
Speaker 2: this was a breaking point. The memetic theorist Bernard Peret
Speaker 2: lambasted Advance and his billionaire mentor in a French political journal,
Speaker 2: accusing them of casting a shadow over Gerard's legacy. Within months,
Speaker 2: several more prominent Girardians followed suit. It's difficult to claim
Speaker 2: Gerard who fundamentally believes that violence is linked to exclusion
Speaker 2: and at the same time accuse Haitians of eating dogs.
Speaker 2: Girardian scholar Paul Dumoche told a Canadian newspaper, either you
Speaker 2: didn't understand your ride or you're a liar.
Speaker 3: I mean when you put it that way.
Speaker 2: And I guess this is where we'll kind of close,
Speaker 2: you know, calling.
Speaker 3: The burn unit for Peter Teal and they satisfying little.
Speaker 2: Way and jd Vance, yeah, this little I mean fucking
Speaker 2: Polaver's apparently. Yeah, emailed him a few times being like,
Speaker 2: how are you okay with this? You know, how is
Speaker 2: anyone okay with this?
Speaker 3: It's like they may have way too much power and
Speaker 3: it may be horrifying to contemplate, but nothing will ever
Speaker 3: make them less idiotic than they clearly are. And there's
Speaker 3: something nice about that. It's scary, but at least we
Speaker 3: can feel superior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a there's a good bit at the end
Speaker 2: of that wired piece where I think Polaver kind of
Speaker 2: reveals that he has Teal's number. What I've observed are
Speaker 2: traces of deep fear, he told me, fear of death,
Speaker 2: fear of terrorism, and it all comes down to a
Speaker 2: lack of trust in a craving for security. Pilaver suspects.
Speaker 2: There are so many cases where he expresses fears and
Speaker 2: concerns and need for protection. Palaver says, and if your
Speaker 2: main thing is seeking protection, you play with fire.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: And I guess that's like, okay, Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: would say it's Peter can recognize that fears of the
Speaker 2: apocalypse and the end of days could allow an Antichrist
Speaker 2: to take power, but doesn't understand that in his own life,
Speaker 2: your own fear of that is leading you to embrace
Speaker 2: what is effectively the Antichrist, Right, you're so scared of
Speaker 2: dying that you are embracing apocalyptic like just extremely dangant.
Speaker 2: You're playing with fire, you are embracing authoritarianism, you are
Speaker 2: welcoming the Antichrist in because you're so scared of death.
Speaker 3: And there you go, and because you're so rich, everyone
Speaker 3: else has to welcome the Antichrist along with you.
Speaker 2: Apparently, and none of your weird like hoax medicine attempts
Speaker 2: to extend your life have proven to work. And you
Speaker 2: get just gonna blame Greta Tunberg by saying she's anti
Speaker 2: science because you can't just acknowledge that the thing you
Speaker 2: wanted is something that rich, powerful people have always wanted
Speaker 2: and never gotten because it's impossible and you're no different
Speaker 2: from the pharaohs, and.
Speaker 3: They're never going to get it.
Speaker 2: Nope, No, you will die and be forgotten.
Speaker 3: And you know, and that's kind of nice.
Speaker 2: That's good, it's good. That's why I'm fundamentally optimistic because
Speaker 2: of death. Right. I think it's a good thing in
Speaker 2: the long run that people die and that we're never
Speaker 2: going to like, immortality is not real and I don't
Speaker 2: think it ever will be.
Speaker 3: Right, none of these people are ever going to be
Speaker 3: around forever, and a lot of them are going to
Speaker 3: like nothing, will be choke on a bit of toffee
Speaker 3: or something. And sure, you know, not enough of them,
Speaker 3: but yeah, no.
Speaker 2: Not enough, but they all something will get all of them,
Speaker 2: like it will everyone, and that's good. It's good that
Speaker 2: people die. If if someone actually created an immortality cure,
Speaker 2: I would I would want to stop that. I think
Speaker 2: that that's broadly, I don't think it's possible. It's a
Speaker 2: silly thing to even theorize, but it's bad. It would
Speaker 2: be bad if it was real.
Speaker 3: Well also, like even if that didn't exist, then it
Speaker 3: would only exist for like the worst people in the world, you.
Speaker 2: Know exactly, yes, yeah, and it would be the end
Speaker 2: of progress fundamentally, if like people stopped dying, you know,
Speaker 2: like that's just it's it's not even good theoretically. I
Speaker 2: get people get angry whenever I bring this up, where
Speaker 2: they're like, so you don't want to cure cancer. I'm like,
Speaker 2: if you cure cancer, people will still die. You won't
Speaker 2: cure cancer. Also, but like.
Speaker 3: Also, there's like eight million cancers to cure, you know,
Speaker 3: you just pick one and just keep going until you
Speaker 3: got a Bengo.
Speaker 2: No, I believe if we do cure, if we were
Speaker 2: to cure all of the current cancers, then we would
Speaker 2: start seeing different, weird cancers that people don't get right
Speaker 2: now because they just don't live long enough for them
Speaker 2: to happen. But we'll keep experiencing new.
Speaker 3: Cancers, start getting the like Publical Patriarch eight hundred year
Speaker 3: old guide cancer exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also it's like, think about how bored people are
Speaker 3: now and how much more bored we would be if
Speaker 3: we were immortal, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, that's the thing, and that's the thing Gerard like,
Speaker 2: that's kind of something Gerard was dealing with, is like this,
Speaker 2: you know, when people's needs are met and they're still unhappy.
Speaker 3: Like, I imagine the trouble we would cause for each
Speaker 3: other if we lived forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how much how much worse mimetic rivalry would be? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well anything else, Well, thanks for telling me
Speaker 3: about someone so horrible and embarrassing that they I have
Speaker 3: come around to your moral of, well, let's embrace death
Speaker 3: because at least he's going to get that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love let's embrace death, Like let's all
Speaker 2: cheer death on as it goes after Peter Thiel.
Speaker 3: Death wielding a sickle like a Polo mallet, right uping
Speaker 3: towards another billionaire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you know, And let's all encourage Peter Teel
Speaker 2: to explore the ocean floor like those other guys.
Speaker 3: I hear. There's a lot of good stuff still down there.
Speaker 3: You could find those other guys, Yeah, could bring up
Speaker 3: their vaporized you could.
Speaker 2: Save them there. No, they're they're all They need to
Speaker 2: be rescued.
Speaker 3: They're playing park cheesy.
Speaker 2: Only you, Peter, only you can save them with Poseidon. Yeah. Ah.
Speaker 3: The Antichrist is down there.
Speaker 2: Pluggables before we roll out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So well, I you can find me at my
Speaker 3: show You're Wrong About, where we talk about the folly
Speaker 3: of man and iconic bimbos and misunderstood history and all
Speaker 3: kinds of fun stuff, and also at my new show
Speaker 3: The Devil you Know, which is from CBC Podcasts. You
Speaker 3: can find it wherever you listen to podcasts, and it's
Speaker 3: about the Satanic panic and also all the horrible things
Speaker 3: that people do and use Satan as an excuse to do,
Speaker 3: which is of course very relevant to today and it's
Speaker 3: we got to talk to some amazing people, and I'm
Speaker 3: so happy to get to share their stories with everybody.
Speaker 2: I'm happy too, both for that and because the episode
Speaker 2: is over, and so I get to not work anymore.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, you stop working too. I don't care
Speaker 2: what you're doing. If you're a heart surgeon, I'm listening
Speaker 2: to this. Cut stop walk away, walk away us Are
Speaker 2: you raising a bridge? Get out of there, pilot, jump
Speaker 2: out of the plane, you know, put on your put
Speaker 2: on your backpack with the thing in it, and get
Speaker 2: out of there.
Speaker 3: Everyone quit working, right and everything whatever.
Speaker 1: Robert Anti christ Evan says.
Speaker 3: If you're the Antichrist, stop antichristing this minute. You got
Speaker 3: a footbath to go.
Speaker 2: I would. I would be such a good Antichrist. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: But unfortunately Greta Tunberg took the job from me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's pretty good too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the podcast is over. Behind the Bastards is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
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Speaker 1: your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube,
Speaker 1: new episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com slash At Behind the Bastards