Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 1: where Robert Evans is still waking up, still kind of hungover,
Speaker 1: which I know I introduced like a third of our
Speaker 1: episodes that way, and it might lead some of you
Speaker 1: to wonder, does Robert have a problem, And the answer
Speaker 1: to that question is no, I have a solution. Sophie.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm in pain, but my best friend's here, so that's
Speaker 2: a win. And you my other best friend. I have two,
Speaker 2: I have two.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I know where I stand. I know where
Speaker 1: I stand. Yeah, Sarah Marshall, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hello Robert. A pyramid is the strongest shape, or well,
Speaker 3: I guess a triangle, but a pyramid if you're in marketing.
Speaker 3: I Sophie, I'm so happy to be here with you,
Speaker 3: my legend, my queen, and Robert, you a guy who
Speaker 3: is also here. I'm just kidding. Thank you so alike.
Speaker 3: And I think of you every time I see a goat.
Speaker 1: A goat, Okay, that's good because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: those out there. You. You and Sophie were talking about
Speaker 1: your beautiful friendship, and it made me think about the
Speaker 1: differences between like deep male and deep female friendships, because
Speaker 1: when I was thinking back to my stories with my
Speaker 1: best friend, it's all the different times that Linny, either
Speaker 1: I puked on Lenny or Lenny puked on me.
Speaker 3: I have one, but only one. Yeah, well now I
Speaker 3: have two. I have two anyway.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's good. That's a good number. That's a
Speaker 1: good number.
Speaker 3: St Yeah, it's a I mean, what do you what
Speaker 3: do you think that you're kind of the stuff of
Speaker 3: your intimacy with your male friends is about un.
Speaker 1: You know, honestly, I think a big part of it's
Speaker 1: just male or female friends is just that kind of
Speaker 1: that kind of bone deep trust where you feel as
Speaker 1: comfortable with another person as you do like feeling alone
Speaker 1: on your your couch. I would say that's about the
Speaker 1: highest level of intimacy in or out of a romantic
Speaker 1: relationship that exists.
Speaker 2: Just to say, Robert, I would love to puke on you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sophie. That's very sweet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Coppen one day. You guys just keep putting in
Speaker 3: your hours.
Speaker 1: I've avoided puking on you for the same REUW I've had.
Speaker 1: I think I've puked done more people than the average person.
Speaker 1: The most at once was like nine.
Speaker 3: But yeah, wow, the most at once.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of that. It took some work. It took
Speaker 1: some work in elevation.
Speaker 3: I like to stay in and you know, watch the
Speaker 3: Drew carry Show, so I don't get the opportunity as much.
Speaker 3: It's a great shame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, now that you think of it, I've
Speaker 1: never puked on someone while watching the Drew Carrey Show,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it may be a caustive effect.
Speaker 2: Speaking of great shows, I would like Sarah to plug
Speaker 2: her new show.
Speaker 3: For our audience. I have a show to plug. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and Sophie, you have been such a help to me
Speaker 3: in my show advertising tour, going hither and on, ringing
Speaker 3: Mike cow Bell telling people about my new show, which
Speaker 3: is called The Devil. You know, it's from CBC Podcasts.
Speaker 3: It features such iconic performances as our dear friend Jamie
Speaker 3: Loftus performing the book. Michelle remembers, Oh my god, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a win that just needed to happen, and now
Speaker 3: it's happened. And it's also, you know, an attempt to
Speaker 3: kind of tell the story of the Satanic Panic and
Speaker 3: its initial spread in the eighties. It's sort of long
Speaker 3: shadow in the nineties and how it came back in
Speaker 3: a way that suggests it never went away in the
Speaker 3: present day by talking to individual people whose lives were
Speaker 3: dramatically affected and often you know, pretty much destroyed by it.
Speaker 3: And but and yet it's also I think not that depressing.
Speaker 3: I really want to mstis that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've had an argument with a friend about like
Speaker 1: whether or not like because his argument was that Kissinger's
Speaker 1: Diplomacy was the book that you needed to read in
Speaker 1: order to really understand like American statesmanship. And I was like, now,
Speaker 1: it's Michelle Remembers. That's the book if you want to
Speaker 1: understand how politics works in this country.
Speaker 3: You know, you said Americans, suh, And I was like, psychopaths. Noah, okay, weird.
Speaker 3: I thought, I think that, Yeah, I think that's true.
Speaker 3: And it stands to reason that the book that explains
Speaker 3: America is Canadian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is the case. Often that's the case.
Speaker 3: I would love to hear your thoughts on Michelle Remembers,
Speaker 3: because it's a book that like defies description, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a book that I think
Speaker 1: says a lot about how irrationality can be foundational to
Speaker 1: a lot of people's fundamental beliefs about how the world works,
Speaker 1: like it's and it's also a book about how I mean,
Speaker 1: the story of the book and how it became popular
Speaker 1: and what happened like to it during its creation is
Speaker 1: incredibly relevant for like foundationally how everything from like reality
Speaker 1: TV to like modern politics works in this country. Like
Speaker 1: it's the story of a fantasy overtaking reality in the
Speaker 1: minds of tens of millions of Americans based on nothing
Speaker 1: but like, I'd rather believe that there's that satanic pedophiles
Speaker 1: run the country than anything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And that's like one of the things we're
Speaker 3: trying to get at, which is, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: this enduringly fascinating thing of like why why did people
Speaker 3: why did it feel less scary in a way to
Speaker 3: believe in what was seemingly the scariest thing possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's you know, that's actually very relevant to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today. All of this both both
Speaker 1: how irrationality and fantasy become like the undergirding aspects of
Speaker 1: people's under standing about reality and how about these things
Speaker 1: have come to completely dominate us politics and culture because
Speaker 1: they primarily primarily because they dominate the thinking and the
Speaker 1: rationality of the power elite in this country. And that's
Speaker 1: why today you and I, Sarah are going to be
Speaker 1: talking about Peter Teel's weird obsession with the Antichrist.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh this is amazing, wow, because I
Speaker 3: know that he's a handful and I feel like, probably
Speaker 3: from Sophie that Yeah, I'm so excited. Is Peter Teel?
Speaker 3: Is this the guy who took down Gawker all by himself?
Speaker 1: He sure did this. Is funded well with Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 1: Hope was a load bearing part of that.
Speaker 3: He got Hulk Hogan to hulk out all over Gawker
Speaker 3: and journalism and free speech. So that's nice.
Speaker 1: So we've done a two parter on Peter about his
Speaker 1: life and background. But this is the guy. He's the
Speaker 1: co founder of PayPal. He actually is the guy who
Speaker 1: kind of like orchestrated Elon Musk's ouster from the company
Speaker 1: and they were at odds. Now they're friends again. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful story.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd watch an HBO original movie about that.
Speaker 3: I would be like a six out of ten, you know.
Speaker 2: Storrying Jeremy Strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I was gonna say Jared Leto for both
Speaker 1: of them, that he was the only man upsetting enough
Speaker 1: to play both those guys.
Speaker 3: It'll make test audiences puke yeah on each other.
Speaker 1: Jesse Eisenberg. I realized the other day because I saw
Speaker 1: him in that Kieran or Rory Colchin, which one of
Speaker 1: the Coulkins was in the movie with him. Yeah, Kieren Colchin,
Speaker 1: and he was good, And I was like, oh, I've
Speaker 1: hated Jesse Eisenberg for years. I guess because he just
Speaker 1: did a good job of playing Mark Zuckerberg. Like I
Speaker 1: think I just hated him because he did a job well.
Speaker 3: He really did, though, But the thing is he kind
Speaker 3: of always plays guys who you're like, hmm, no, got
Speaker 3: away from me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't seem safe, Like I'm watching my drink
Speaker 1: around you, Jesse Eisenberg, which she did. He I don't
Speaker 1: think real Jesse Eisenberg is air into.
Speaker 3: That kind of big all of his characters. You're like, look,
Speaker 3: it's not to be rude, but I'm going to be
Speaker 3: a little rude. It's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you upset me on some fundamental level. There's something
Speaker 1: something wrong in the pit of your soul. Jesse Eisenberg
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you've been able to turn that into
Speaker 1: your careers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not welcome in my house or.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Sorry, if you're listening to this podcast, Jesse.
Speaker 3: Taking No Prisoners, this is you know, you have to
Speaker 3: be provocative in today's political wins, and we're doing it.
Speaker 1: You have to be ruthless to get into the mood
Speaker 1: to talk about the things Peter Teel believes about the world.
Speaker 1: Because despite being an aspiring, immortal CEO king and one
Speaker 1: of the major patrons of the modern far right and
Speaker 1: the guy who got JD. Vance's career started, you know,
Speaker 1: he funded his campaign, he funded he's he's his mentor.
Speaker 1: Despite all of that, Peter.
Speaker 3: Being that guy's mentor, you're like, hey, buddy, you killed
Speaker 3: the pope and your face still looks like a captures.
Speaker 1: Meant Yeah, still doing good.
Speaker 3: Funny you have an apple juice or an apple sauce?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you to sit down over here next
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Despite sports reference, that was so beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah well yeah, well that's kind of a classic MST
Speaker 3: three K descriptor of like Robert Zadar type. I will
Speaker 3: Robert all the baseball references I can Robert Zadar, who
Speaker 3: was a No, kids.
Speaker 1: Don't know Robert Zadar. You know, I'm glad Robert Zadar.
Speaker 3: It's spelled Robert the apostrophe dar obviously.
Speaker 1: And yes he had a condition, that's why his face
Speaker 1: looked like that, and it's often fatal, but in his case,
Speaker 1: he was like right in the sweet spot where it
Speaker 1: just made him an incredibly in demand character actor during
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you play a lot of alien prison guards.
Speaker 1: A lot of alien prison guards.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Robert Zadar not much to do with Peter Teal,
Speaker 1: But the other stuff we were talking about.
Speaker 3: Does ived Heal.
Speaker 1: I've got back and forth in my studies on Teal,
Speaker 1: and I think in the biographical episodes we did about him,
Speaker 1: I concluded he's one of the very few of these
Speaker 1: guys who like scares me because of how intelligent and
Speaker 1: disciplined and patient and competent he is, and the fact
Speaker 1: that disciplined intelligence and patients with him are married to
Speaker 1: like thirty billion dollars in net worth, right, which is
Speaker 1: a dangerous mixture for a guy who thinks democracy should
Speaker 1: come to an end and is actively working to further
Speaker 1: that goal. This week, I think I have to make
Speaker 1: me a cult book because I don't entirely agree with
Speaker 1: that anymore.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think that's exciting.
Speaker 1: I may have overestimated his intelligence and cunning, which I don't.
Speaker 1: He's still a dangerous man, right, I think he's out
Speaker 1: of his mind, And I think he's out of his
Speaker 1: mind in part because he's not as smart as certainly
Speaker 1: he thinks he is, and not as smart as maybe
Speaker 1: I thought he was. And you know, it's tough for
Speaker 1: me to tell entirely what's going on here, but I've
Speaker 1: become increasingly convinced that he's like unwell in a way
Speaker 1: that's leading him, that's made him less functional as a person.
Speaker 1: And I kind of think this Antichrist obsession is an
Speaker 1: example of that, because this is it's very disordered thinking
Speaker 1: that you see when you like listen to him try
Speaker 1: to explain his beliefs, which I'm going to do to you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to walk you through everything. He
Speaker 1: recently did a four day lecture series laying out his
Speaker 1: theories on the Antichrist. There's been articles about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're like reasonably online, you might have seen something
Speaker 1: about this, because the lectures weren't public, but they were
Speaker 1: publicly advertised. The page for the registration for these lectures
Speaker 1: is still up on some service called Luma that I
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of before this, but it was at
Speaker 1: the in the Embarcadero in San Francisco on September fifteenth,
Speaker 1: was the first of these, and it was called the Antichrist,
Speaker 1: a four part lecture series. And the picture of this
Speaker 1: is just like Peter Teel from fifteen years ago, underneath
Speaker 1: the logo of the group that supported this speech, the
Speaker 1: Act seventeen Collective. It's weird how young Sophie can pull
Speaker 1: up that and then like a modern day photo of
Speaker 1: Peter Teel. It's just like for it. It's fitting, I
Speaker 1: guess for a guy whose most public obsession is with
Speaker 1: living forever. But yeah, so the event summary reads, you
Speaker 1: are warmly invited to a series of four lectures by
Speaker 1: Peter Teal addressing the topic of the Biblical Antichrist. Peter
Speaker 1: is a technology entrepreneur and investor who has spent much
Speaker 1: of his career writing and speaking about how his Christian
Speaker 1: faith informs his understanding of the world. His remarks will
Speaker 1: be anchored on science and technology and will comment on
Speaker 1: the theology, history, literature, and politics of the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: I have twenty twenty five Peter up on the screen
Speaker 2: for you, Robert.
Speaker 3: Say it last place in the Katie Lang tribute competition.
Speaker 1: That's a fair comparison, Sarah.
Speaker 3: And I love Katie Lang. That's not the point here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, And I love Peter Teal, you know.
Speaker 3: Oh, and I mean certainly the Lord loves him, but
Speaker 3: maybe not anybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know about the Lord, but yeah, possibly possibly.
Speaker 3: If Jesus, I would simply be looking at a lot
Speaker 3: of people who talk about me a lot and being like,
Speaker 3: I don't know you, Please stop implying that we're friends.
Speaker 3: This is Yeah, I'm sending you a sease and desist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got to be like I'm sure you've experienced
Speaker 1: the same thing, Like when you get like a degree
Speaker 1: of fame. Every now and then you'll meet fans who
Speaker 1: will like talk about something you did that meant something
Speaker 1: to them, and the way they will explain it is like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound familiar to me at all. That's what
Speaker 1: you took out of that. That's not what I meant
Speaker 1: in any way. Can I do I say that to you?
Speaker 1: Do I say like, oh, no, that had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with like you've read in something completely absent there,
Speaker 1: or do you just like smiling?
Speaker 3: People think I often or remember me saying something that
Speaker 3: I feel like is smarter than I said because I
Speaker 3: don't know it any longer. But then you're like, did
Speaker 3: I know it at one time and then I said it? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I forgot it? Or are they confusing me with some
Speaker 3: other show they listened to that same day? Could be
Speaker 3: that too. Sometimes it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: I've seen it all happen where it's like, no, that
Speaker 1: was a guest who said that, and you just like
Speaker 1: transposed it to being me.
Speaker 3: Thanks for giving me credit. Yeah, I was personally in
Speaker 3: a Simpson's commentaries, And one of the things the writers
Speaker 3: kind of consistently talk about is like, who wrote that?
Speaker 3: Was that your joke? Was that my joke? I can't remember,
Speaker 3: or like someone being like I love that choke in
Speaker 3: that episode wrote and they're like, I didn't write that joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's to do a thing. Yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: my favorite thing. You did well I didn't.
Speaker 3: So you're like that I had I was near it
Speaker 3: and I was around, so yeah, I was in the room.
Speaker 1: I was in the room when that joke was made. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I midwife to that joke. Yeah, I provided moral support
Speaker 1: to the birth of that joke.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this summary of Peter's lecture on the Antichrist goes
Speaker 1: on to note that Peter's thinking about the anti beliefs
Speaker 1: on this subject drop from the work of several prominent
Speaker 1: theologians and philosophers. These include Renee Gerard, Jonathan Swift, and
Speaker 1: former Bastard's Pod alumni Karl Schmidt. Now, if you haven't
Speaker 1: listened to those episodes, I would recommend listening to the
Speaker 1: Karl Schmidt episodes. The gist of it is Schmidt was
Speaker 1: a right wing political philosopher, and when the Nazis came
Speaker 1: to power, they basically called him up and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you're writing the justif the education, the educated justification for
Speaker 1: Nazism's good? Like that, We need you to come in
Speaker 1: and do that right. Yeah, it's not great. And you know,
Speaker 1: Schmidt was a perfect fit for this job because his
Speaker 1: earlier work had been a huge influence on a lot
Speaker 1: of prominent Nazis. So he helped influence the Nazis and
Speaker 1: how they took power. A big thing he wrote about
Speaker 1: was how to use effectively the creation of borders in
Speaker 1: order to destroy liberal democracy. Basically his kind of in
Speaker 1: a nutshell, it does works very well. And he's the
Speaker 1: guy who the basic idea was that like anytime you
Speaker 1: every society, no matter how like liberal and democracy, draws
Speaker 1: a line between like who are members of the community
Speaker 1: and who aren't, who is a citizen and who isn't,
Speaker 1: and wherever you find that line, anytime there's a border,
Speaker 1: that's the thing you can use to destroy that liberal
Speaker 1: democracy because you figure out where that is and you
Speaker 1: start pushing it inward and you start trying to define
Speaker 1: other groups as not part of the community. Right, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the fundamental weak point that all liberal
Speaker 1: democracies have. And it's you know, in a way, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the the other side of the anarchist belief that,
Speaker 1: like any border is implies the violence of its maintenance. Right,
Speaker 1: the existence of a border fundamentally implies violence, because that's
Speaker 1: the only way to maintain a border. And what Schmidt
Speaker 1: was saying is the existence of a border is an
Speaker 1: opportunity to carve groups of people out of the body
Speaker 1: politic in order to gain authoritarian political power. Right, that's
Speaker 1: Karl Schmidt, who Peter Thiel loves and sees as a
Speaker 1: big influence.
Speaker 3: Right, So he's not being subtle about any of this.
Speaker 3: He's like, here are my top three influences.
Speaker 1: One of them so much my buddies. Yeah, these are
Speaker 1: all my faves. Well, and it's the other guy that
Speaker 1: he listed there, Renee Gerrard, is a I mean, neither
Speaker 1: of these guys are like exactly household names, but Girard
Speaker 1: a big part of like his belief system was the
Speaker 1: idea of like scapegoating, right, and how like scapegoating works
Speaker 1: within you know, and like why communities pick scapegoats, and
Speaker 1: like how the whole process works. And that's also like
Speaker 1: a major influence on Peter Teel, like that which is
Speaker 1: you know, not again, if you look at the kind
Speaker 1: of politics, like the right wing politics that he's supported
Speaker 1: during his lifetime, it makes sense that he finds these
Speaker 1: kind of things influential. Like, So, Schmid's essential idea is
Speaker 1: that like when once a human society like has reached
Speaker 1: the level where most people's basic needs are satisfied, they're
Speaker 1: still like unmet desires, but people don't know like entirely
Speaker 1: what it is that they want that they don't have,
Speaker 1: and so they engage in mimicry where they like look
Speaker 1: at what their neighbors who are doing the best have
Speaker 1: and they seek to they aspire to mimic the most
Speaker 1: impressive people in their society. Right. And because people are
Speaker 1: never really satisfied and this memetic rivalry never really leads,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's never something that you can actually like
Speaker 1: achieve or like get the things that these unfilled desires
Speaker 1: can't really be met, and so people need like an
Speaker 1: explanation for why it doesn't work, for why they're not happy,
Speaker 1: and that tends to get channeled into a war of
Speaker 1: all against one via what Gerard called a scapegoat mechanism.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so these are the two huge like Schmidt and
Speaker 1: Gerard are the two huge pillars of Peter Teel's like
Speaker 1: personal philosophy. And one of the things Gerard believed is
Speaker 1: that Christianity kind of marks this turning point in human
Speaker 1: consciousness because like the Crucifixion narrative is fundamentally Jesus being
Speaker 1: murdered in an act of collective violence against escape goat, right,
Speaker 1: and so like that's kind of this that Christianity leads
Speaker 1: to this sort of epiphany by which human beings have
Speaker 1: started to realize that, like the scapegoating rituals that we
Speaker 1: engaged in are wrong and it's like a bad thing
Speaker 1: to do. And yeah, that's that's kind of where Girard goes.
Speaker 1: Peter Teel winds up taking this in some weird places,
Speaker 1: right where basically Gerard's attitude was that you have to
Speaker 1: reject scapegoating because like Christ's example is proof that it's
Speaker 1: fundamentally evil and wrong. And Teal's kind of interpretation from
Speaker 1: that is that you can't really avoid scapegoating, like that's
Speaker 1: the inevitable path forward, and so it's kind of a
Speaker 1: thing you have to it's a tool you have to
Speaker 1: make use of. This like human need to scapegoat is
Speaker 1: a thing that you can use to drive politics. Essentially
Speaker 1: where Peter Teal takes this, guys, because Gerard was not advocated, right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're all watching that happen, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's not to dairy queen, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: So these are Peter Teal's kind of favorite philosophers that
Speaker 1: have inspired his takes on the anti Christ, And unfortunately
Speaker 1: full audio of these talks is not available publicly. Seven
Speaker 1: hours of so or so have been leaked to a
Speaker 1: couple of different outlets. I don't have them tragically, but
Speaker 1: we do have one attendee took word for word nearly
Speaker 1: notes of the first lecture, which got him kicked out
Speaker 1: of subsequent lectures. So we've got that, and we've got
Speaker 1: articles that have summarized and quoted directly from teal in
Speaker 1: these lectures. So I feel pretty confident that I can
Speaker 1: explain what this motherfucker believes to the extent that it
Speaker 1: will ever make sense. So before we get into that,
Speaker 1: we should talk about the group that funded this lecture series,
Speaker 1: which is the Acts seventeen Collective. You would have seen
Speaker 1: that on the photo of Peter that we post a
Speaker 1: little bit earlier if you're watching it. The name of
Speaker 1: the Act seventeen Collective is based on chapter seventeen of
Speaker 1: the Book of Acts. And you know the Bible, uh,
Speaker 1: and this chapter of concerns.
Speaker 3: You said Bible, You said Bible, Sarah, go's heard of it?
Speaker 1: Heard of it? Heard of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you might. You might have caught this one.
Speaker 1: And it's it's the New Testament, which, if you're not
Speaker 1: into religion, it's the aliens to the Old Testament's alien.
Speaker 3: Oh God, that's so true.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Obviously, Jesus is sort of a Ripley figure.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have argued that over
Speaker 1: the years he was clearly heavily inspired by Ripley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unless he's Yeah, there's a little bit of Newt
Speaker 3: in there too, though.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of new Sure. Absolutely, I think
Speaker 1: the Apostle Paul is Hicks. We could generally Biblical scholars
Speaker 1: agree that that the Apostle Paul was inspired by corporal Hicks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's a chapter. Yeah, there's a broad consensus. You
Speaker 1: have to really read the original Aramaic that Aliens was
Speaker 1: written in to get a lot of that. Yeah, James
Speaker 1: Cameron writes exclusively in arame it's a real problem for
Speaker 1: a lot of the collaborators. So Act seventeen that the
Speaker 1: chapter that's in concerns Paul and some of his companions
Speaker 1: on like a trip through Greece. They're not just in Greece,
Speaker 1: or they're not just in Athens, but it's like they
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time in Athens arguing about religion
Speaker 1: with philosophers. Right, They're going to these different markets in
Speaker 1: public places and synagogues and they're talking to like educated
Speaker 1: scholars about religion to like argue that, hey, Christianity is
Speaker 1: a thing. Basically I'm summer, right, I'm YadA YadA ying
Speaker 1: this a lot. But like that it is like, have.
Speaker 3: You thought about Christianity?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Have you thought about Christianity in like a logical
Speaker 1: and like like sense. Like he's trying to make the
Speaker 1: intellectual this is like that's chapter is like Paul arguing
Speaker 1: and debating with a lot of intellectuals about his new religion. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, which is relevant? Yes, it's like the shark
Speaker 1: tank part of the Bible. Yeah to sell.
Speaker 3: Girl, you gotta hate girl?
Speaker 1: And I say, girl, whatever is that a shark tank joke? Sophie?
Speaker 1: How am I supposed to get that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: It's the ladies who peaked in high school on MLM
Speaker 3: Facebook ten years ago kind of a thing. Oh it
Speaker 3: is happening.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is definitely that for Paul, where he's
Speaker 1: like sliding into the DMS of a friend from high
Speaker 1: school who happens to be like a rabbi, being like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm doing this new thing. You want to hear about it?
Speaker 1: Can I get you to show up? Like well, there
Speaker 1: will be free makeup. We'll get it, give you free
Speaker 1: make over. Talk about Jesus.
Speaker 3: There's going to be snacks. We're going to learn about leggings.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, also Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Jesus wants you to sell these leggings. No,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what's going on basically, And the Act
Speaker 1: seventeen Collective is inspired by this chapter dedicated specifically to
Speaker 1: spreading Christian doctrine to political and cultural elites in Silicon Valley, right,
Speaker 1: which is why that chapter makes sense, right, because Paul
Speaker 1: is kind of talking to these sort of intellectual elites.
Speaker 1: Act seventeen is like, we need to be proselytizing, not
Speaker 1: to the poor, not to the huddled masses, you know,
Speaker 1: not to the people that like Jesus talk to you,
Speaker 1: but like the billionaires. We need to convert the billionaires.
Speaker 3: So it's the opiate of the few, now.
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
Speaker 3: I mean they are obsessed with not dying, so it
Speaker 3: does make sense that they would be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: my immortal soul. Yeah that's the ticket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, flipping the chair around backwards. You kids are just
Speaker 1: into eternal life, huh. I know a guy who offers
Speaker 1: eternal life, you don't even have to take your son's blood, Peter, exactly, Well,
Speaker 1: you do have to take his son's blood, the son,
Speaker 1: somebody's son's blood, that's right.
Speaker 3: Plus gross, you just have a cracker and some grape juice.
Speaker 1: That's right. And if you want to be immortal, listeners,
Speaker 1: whatever sponsor of the podcast comes on next will ensure
Speaker 1: that you never die. Just you though, heard that, and
Speaker 1: we're back. I hope you're enjoying your new immortality. You
Speaker 1: know you're going to watch everyone that you love and
Speaker 1: care for die, everything that you care for end, eventually,
Speaker 1: watch the stars themselves wink out. But you know, have
Speaker 1: fun with that.
Speaker 3: I didn't think it through you.
Speaker 1: People never do with immortality.
Speaker 3: Also, what about the scenario where if you're immortal and
Speaker 3: everyone else dies and then there aren't people to maintain
Speaker 3: nuclear reactors and they all melt down, and then the
Speaker 3: globe is covered in nuclear fallout? What are you going
Speaker 3: to do then, Dracula.
Speaker 1: I feel like I could maintain a nuclear reactor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one in your area is going to be
Speaker 3: so you're going to take care of the one in Washington,
Speaker 3: so we'll be sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll that'll be good. I mean,
Speaker 1: all that nuclear waste from the Hanford site's going to
Speaker 1: poison all of the waters, but that'll happen anyway. Good.
Speaker 3: I mean, where else are we going to get those
Speaker 3: albino gators or whatever they have right there?
Speaker 1: Exactly? You know, I assume that in a couple of
Speaker 1: generations it'll be gator territory. The Pacific Northwest will warm
Speaker 1: up enough finally, then I could have a gator farm
Speaker 1: in my yarm.
Speaker 3: You were always meant to be gator territory.
Speaker 1: Really everywhere was everywhere was so yeah. The Act seventeen
Speaker 1: collective dedicated to preaching to the most needy in our society,
Speaker 1: which is tech billionaires.
Speaker 3: Yes, well the hearts i've heard.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Egyptian since yes, yes, it's funny. What I
Speaker 1: think is funniest about this is like the Act seventeen
Speaker 1: works perfectly as a name, like you're referencing a part
Speaker 1: of the Bible that's relevant to what the group does.
Speaker 1: But they needed to make it into a backronym anyway,
Speaker 1: which I don't understand because like, no, it already worked,
Speaker 1: why would you make this an acronym? But they did,
Speaker 1: and so they've decided that Acts also stands for acknowledging
Speaker 1: Christ and technology and society. All right, all right, again unnecessary,
Speaker 1: but I hope you're happy I got Max, you know, sure,
Speaker 1: many Yeah. So the organization was founded by or At.
Speaker 1: He's co founded by Michelle Stevens. And she, I mean,
Speaker 1: she was some sort of entrepreneur. She was involved in
Speaker 1: tech to some extent and kind of did this after
Speaker 1: she left a company. Her husband, Trey, was one of
Speaker 1: the first. Trey Stevens is one of the first Pallanteer
Speaker 1: employees and now works for Peter's venture capital fund as
Speaker 1: a partner. So this is a guy who was involved
Speaker 1: in Peter's military spying company and also his VC fund,
Speaker 1: and it's his wife that founds the Acts seventeen collective.
Speaker 1: And I found an interview with Michelle where she explains
Speaker 1: how the group came about, and so this is their
Speaker 1: origin story, per Michelle. By the end of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: my company was winding down and my husband's fortieth birthday
Speaker 1: was that November. I wanted to celebrate big. We invited
Speaker 1: over two hundred and twenty of his closest friends to
Speaker 1: a three day birthday party in New Mexico called the Roast,
Speaker 1: the Toast and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost Day,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd have a sort of remixed church service.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be funny if we tricked a bunch of
Speaker 1: people into going to church? We served caviar bumps, breakfast, pizza, mimosas,
Speaker 1: and spiked coffee. Dj Canvas had come out with his
Speaker 1: crew to play a Saturday night set, remixing all of
Speaker 1: our beloved movie themed songs into a trap beat. He
Speaker 1: also does this for Christian and worship music. He's got
Speaker 1: the best dance moves.
Speaker 3: No wonder nobody likes white people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that made me cringe nearly to death. Sarah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest.
Speaker 3: It's also funny that they're like, isn't it fun and
Speaker 3: subversive to have caviar bumps and then go worship Christ?
Speaker 3: And it's like, no, because the whole problem in America
Speaker 3: arguably is that the prosperity gospel has taken over Christianity
Speaker 3: and it's no longer a moderating influence on capitalism.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, and that they also it's just.
Speaker 3: Gross and silly to be doing that. It's gross, stop it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just deeply upsetting and it's this, it's
Speaker 1: this fundamentally poisonous thing that stands against most of what
Speaker 1: the religion has has at least publicly stood for over
Speaker 1: the course of like the history of the faith. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's fundamentally a theoretical interpretation of Christianity, I think, right, Like, if.
Speaker 3: You think the good parts of Christianity, which I feel
Speaker 3: like most people would acknowledge that there are like at
Speaker 3: least some good ideas in there. Like one of the
Speaker 3: main themes is like don't eat caviaar off each other's
Speaker 3: hands while a huge percentage of the population is in
Speaker 3: dire poverty. That's it's one of the main.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have to like the religion to be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: the one time that like literally God beat people up,
Speaker 1: it was because they were money changing in the temple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have money changes. That probably shouldn't. He might
Speaker 1: not like money changers at all. Actually, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's like, which is just what Peter Thiel and his
Speaker 1: friends do. That's what a venture capital fund is. They're
Speaker 1: changing money.
Speaker 3: Huh. And also PayPal, where you literally just move money
Speaker 3: around for a fee. Yes, yeah, it's it is really
Speaker 3: it's just it's fascinating, and it's like, what is it
Speaker 3: like to become an enthusiastic about a belief system that
Speaker 3: your actual beliefs are pretty much contrary too, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm curious about.
Speaker 1: That's that's the thing, and the answer is you have
Speaker 1: to like remake the belief system into something that is
Speaker 1: not does not familiar to most people who actually like
Speaker 1: are members of the faith. Like you have to create
Speaker 1: your own Christianity, which is what Peter's done. That's effectively
Speaker 1: what these Antichrist lectures are is him reinventing Christianity four billionaires.
Speaker 3: So he's the Antichrist.
Speaker 1: Just that is the twist at the end of this.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that, though, you have to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit of DJ Canvas. I just I needed to.
Speaker 1: I tried. I didn't have the courage, the raw heroism
Speaker 1: to look at examples of his dance moves, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to leave those to our imagination. But I
Speaker 1: did find his just Got Saved mixtape, and Sophie's gonna
Speaker 1: play you like fifteen seconds of that, so let's hear it.
Speaker 1: I am not so God.
Speaker 3: I am not so God.
Speaker 1: I am not so good God.
Speaker 3: No, I am not so God.
Speaker 1: I am not so Gota. I am not so God God.
Speaker 1: There you go. See, Okay, I wouldn't want to get
Speaker 1: down to that with Peter Teal and a bunch of
Speaker 1: venture capital guys.
Speaker 3: Thanks for that. The thing is like, if I met,
Speaker 3: like some I don't know, a fifteen year old Bible
Speaker 3: campgoer who was like, I love this song, I would
Speaker 3: be like, that's nice, good for you.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But then it's like like so directly about this
Speaker 3: idea of like being rescued from being one of the
Speaker 3: down trodden, and it's like you're the one who's treading
Speaker 3: on people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone knows your name. You're one of the most
Speaker 1: famous people in the world. Like you're all wealthy and powerful.
Speaker 3: You've got buildings with your name on it.
Speaker 1: I mean you have everything that you've ever wanted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't mean God. You are God in society
Speaker 3: as we have it set up, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also love that they're like this music is
Speaker 1: just so bumping, it'll trick people into going to church.
Speaker 3: It's not going to see like should music at all.
Speaker 3: It's like, yes, it's tricky.
Speaker 1: I want you the audience to imagine you're at this
Speaker 1: birthday party. This guy is laying down what we what
Speaker 1: will We'll call it a beat, right, and people are
Speaker 1: dancing as well as you'd expect a bunch of tech
Speaker 1: elites to dance. And then while this is all going on,
Speaker 1: Peter Teal gets up spontaneously and, in Michelle's words quote,
Speaker 1: gave a fifty five minute lecture on forgiveness and miracles. No.
Speaker 3: God, it's like in succession when you're like, why do
Speaker 3: these people keep throwing parties? They're so bad and parties
Speaker 3: just stop having them?
Speaker 1: Is this even a party?
Speaker 3: Evil?
Speaker 1: That's abuse to be that's like torture, Like the CIA
Speaker 1: didn't do that shit back during the at the very least.
Speaker 3: It's it's that timeshare thing, you know, where you just
Speaker 3: have to attend a short sales pitch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm imagining too, like the dawning realization like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that Peter's talking. I thought we were all dancing. Okay,
Speaker 1: he's probably just doing a little quick toast. No, no,
Speaker 1: not doing a toast.
Speaker 3: I actually have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I need to get a drink, maybe do some
Speaker 1: caviar bumps. I don't know. Michelle stated, we were blown away.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were looking like he had ten heads,
Speaker 1: like what are you talking about? And I'll believe that.
Speaker 1: I'll believe that being the response to this, so, she
Speaker 1: says the reaction was mixed. Some of her Christian friends
Speaker 1: were angry that she'd put a non seminary trained guy
Speaker 1: up and had him give a sermon that like, this
Speaker 1: is heretical, he doesn't know what he's talking about. This
Speaker 1: is certainly not Christianity that he's ranting about. It's kind
Speaker 1: of weird that you did this to all of us.
Speaker 1: But she said some other Christian friends of hers were like,
Speaker 1: you just tricked over two hundred people into going to church,
Speaker 1: and that's good. We like it. We think that's great.
Speaker 1: And so this is the origin of the Act seventeen collective.
Speaker 3: Right time a boring guy forces you to listen to
Speaker 3: him for an hour, that is Kirk.
Speaker 1: That's church. Yes, this podcast has often been church.
Speaker 3: Running into someone you kind of know, Kirk Church.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of church. Getting an uber driver who
Speaker 1: just immediately starts talking for the entire drive about like
Speaker 1: his weird philosophical beliefs. That's a kind of church. You know,
Speaker 1: thank you Dale for informing me about the dangers of vaccines.
Speaker 1: You know, I wouldn't have known without that, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's a big one. God. The important thing
Speaker 3: is that Peter Tele has the freedom to express himself
Speaker 3: what God knows he hasn't had access to in society before.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, our culture has really cracked down on Peter
Speaker 1: Tele's ability to express his beliefs to the world. And yeah.
Speaker 1: So the purpose of the ACT seventeen Collective is specifically
Speaker 1: to trick San Franciscans, who Michelle describes as one of
Speaker 1: the most unchurched cities in America, into going to church
Speaker 1: and becoming Christians. Right, that's what this group exists to do.
Speaker 3: They have Unitarianism, that's enough.
Speaker 1: Right, Unitarians are nice and not bigots. That's kind of
Speaker 1: the whole point. And these people want to be assholes.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Oh see, Hey, that's key because one of the prop
Speaker 1: most prominent members of the ACTS seventeen Collective is Gary
Speaker 1: Tan who is the CEO of y Combinator, which is
Speaker 1: a tech startup incubator. He's hosted several ACTS seventeen events
Speaker 1: in his home, which is a former church, including one
Speaker 1: with former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger about the holy shift
Speaker 1: across life, AI leadership and faith, and for an idea
Speaker 1: of some of the other things Gary Tan is into.
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from a twenty twenty four article
Speaker 1: in The New Republic by Gildoran, which is writing about
Speaker 1: a Twitter rant that Tan went on January of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Posting on x formerly Twitter, Tan wished death
Speaker 1: upon a majority of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Speaker 1: Fuck Chan, Peskin, Preston Walton, Melgar Row than sapphi Chan
Speaker 1: as a label and motherfucking crew, wrote Tan, name checking
Speaker 1: seven progressive supervisors and a hypercringy attempt to adapt Tupac
Speaker 1: Shakur's hit him up to his drunken rants, die slow motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: For good measure, he posted a photo of his personal
Speaker 1: liquor cabinet. It's inscription, Gary Tan s f social media
Speaker 1: troll Twitter menace on his liquor cabinet. Man, Well, it's not.
Speaker 3: Like anyone in local office in San Francisco has ever
Speaker 3: been famously assassinated by a crazy guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that did really piss people. Yeah yeah, god yeah,
Speaker 1: a super godly, super godly. Now another godly thing Tan
Speaker 1: did was fund the recall campaign against Progressive District Attorney Chesabuden.
Speaker 1: He also promised to wipe out supervisors who expressed worries
Speaker 1: about the safety of driverless taxis, telling them your days
Speaker 1: are numbered.
Speaker 3: You know, if he used to threats all the time,
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And it's very funny to be like, you
Speaker 1: think these are unsafe, I'll kill you. And then like
Speaker 1: three months later, a Cruz taxi pins a pedestrian and
Speaker 1: drags her across the payment, which leads to Cruz losing
Speaker 1: its operating permit and receiving a one point five million
Speaker 1: dollar fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although where I'm sure they could afford.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but maybe they weren't super safe. Gary River cars.
Speaker 3: Don't you kill people? I kill people, That's.
Speaker 1: Right, Jerry Tan does. Tan had delete his tweets threatening
Speaker 1: city supervisors, as you brought up due to the Harvey
Speaker 1: milk of it, all right, because a bunch of them
Speaker 1: received death threats after he threatened to Jesus killings. Because
Speaker 1: he has fans who are you know, assholes.
Speaker 3: Jesus is like, leave me out of this one.
Speaker 1: Right, Gary put out a statement directed by a crisis
Speaker 1: pr firm and said I am sorry for my words
Speaker 1: and regret my poor decision. Tan is one of a
Speaker 1: chunk of wealthy reactionary using their money to try to
Speaker 1: change progressive San Francisco into something of a haven for
Speaker 1: far right plutocrats. He's a big network state guide like
Speaker 1: Peter Teel. And you know the fact that the city's
Speaker 1: already very friendly to these guys doesn't matter, because again,
Speaker 1: it's really the thing Girard picked up on, which is
Speaker 1: that once people have everything they need, they're still unhappy.
Speaker 1: And because that unhappiness fundamentally can't be dealt with in
Speaker 1: the ways that they try to like the things that
Speaker 1: they think will make them happy, simply don't they just
Speaker 1: find someone to be angry at. They need a scapegoat.
Speaker 1: You know, that's for Jerry Tan. It's the progressives in
Speaker 1: San Francisco. That's why Jerry's unhappy.
Speaker 3: And what they don't realize is as a secret to
Speaker 3: happiness is small achievable goals in a sort of vague
Speaker 3: general progression. So you know, you're like, I want to
Speaker 3: get better at baking. I want to make a bousch
Speaker 3: to Noel for Christmas. I'm going to spend three months
Speaker 3: developing my bush de ol skills. But because they have
Speaker 3: no patience, they just want to destroy democracy because that
Speaker 3: feels like it would be faster. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's just because for these guys, there's
Speaker 1: so little that they can really say. There's nothing above them.
Speaker 1: They have all of the money, there's no one who
Speaker 1: can tell them what to do. So the only thing
Speaker 1: theoretically above them is the state, and so is the government,
Speaker 1: and so they define and honestly, most of the government
Speaker 1: is in their pocket. Is a general rule. Lawmakers are
Speaker 1: not anti Silicon Valley billionaires, so instead they pick like
Speaker 1: the thing they can't control, which is the small number
Speaker 1: of people who get elected like on progressive agendas trying
Speaker 1: to fix problems. And those are the people who don't
Speaker 1: like because those are the only people in politics who
Speaker 1: aren't going to pretend to respect you, to love you, right,
Speaker 1: because they're kind of fundamentally in opposition to guys like you,
Speaker 1: and so you have to that's who's responsible for all
Speaker 1: of the problems. That's who does everything wrong. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why I'm unhappy.
Speaker 3: Because someone out there doesn't like me, or someone out
Speaker 3: there like marginally hardh respect me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's it's the reason why so many
Speaker 1: famous people lost their minds as soon as they got
Speaker 1: access to Twitter, right, is like being confronted with the
Speaker 1: fact that people dislike you and disrespect you, and that's
Speaker 1: just life. Maybe you could be a better person.
Speaker 3: But like you normally don't hear about it in detail,
Speaker 3: you know, and so having the ability to reach for
Speaker 3: that knowledge it is kind of this yeah, like a
Speaker 3: fascinating yeah, I don't know, experiment in terms of what
Speaker 3: would happen if people suddenly became telepathic, because in a
Speaker 3: way people did, especially choys Carolodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's the it's the same reason
Speaker 1: why like so many people high up in like our
Speaker 1: media class, like the folks who write for the like
Speaker 1: columns for the New York Times, consider quote unquote wokeism
Speaker 1: and cancel culture a bigger problem than any of the
Speaker 1: things that are actually going to kill them, because like
Speaker 1: it's this, No, people, I went to Harvard or Yale
Speaker 1: or whatever, and my family name is this, and I
Speaker 1: have this fancy john and people are calling me an idiot.
Speaker 1: They that shouldn't be allowed. That's got to be illegal
Speaker 1: that they're calling me a dip shit for my dipshit opinions, and.
Speaker 3: It's like they were calling you an idiot before. East
Speaker 3: didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just yeah, you couldn't see it and people
Speaker 1: weren't sharing it one hundred thousand times. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, there are a bunch of very healthy people, these
Speaker 3: these billionaires, they're driving, they're doing great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're doing great. And they have now formed Act
Speaker 1: seventeen because they want to establish a theocracy that makes
Speaker 1: it illegal to not like them or respect them. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: that's the gist of the Act seventeen Collective in my opinion.
Speaker 1: And obviously, as I noted, they were inspired by a
Speaker 1: rant Peter Teel gave at a birthday party about Christianity,
Speaker 1: and so it's only fitting that they would host a
Speaker 1: four part lecture series by him about the Antichrist. During
Speaker 1: the first of these lectures, Michelle Stevens, the found under
Speaker 1: of the collective, introduced Peter on September fifteenth by calling
Speaker 1: him one of the great Christians of our time as
Speaker 1: well as one of the great capitalists. Sony, sure, those
Speaker 1: two things seem like they should go together. We're going
Speaker 1: to start with the most detailed information of God, which
Speaker 1: is the almost word for word notes on lecture one
Speaker 1: titled knowledge shall be increased Now. The attendee who published
Speaker 1: his notes on this lecture was the head of protocol
Speaker 1: research at a software company called Succinct, and his name
Speaker 1: is hit Chi Kulkarney. And from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: Kulkarney is a fan of Teal. I don't think he
Speaker 1: posted these notes as like a work of undercover reporting.
Speaker 1: I think he was just super enthusiastic and kind of
Speaker 1: ignored that the event itself warned people not to share
Speaker 1: and spread what they heard inside, like folks weren't supposed
Speaker 1: to record this and stuff.
Speaker 3: It was like, he's Chris Modest. It's so great, people
Speaker 3: are gonna.
Speaker 1: To People need to read this. Kulkarney was banned from
Speaker 1: listening to other lectures, but his notes are, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell from other reviews that include quotes
Speaker 1: from Peter Teal, pretty close to one to one. So
Speaker 1: Teal opens his lecture with a quote from the Book
Speaker 1: of Daniel. But thou, oh Daniel, shut up the words
Speaker 1: and seal the book. Even to the time of the end,
Speaker 1: many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased,
Speaker 1: and this is like talking about the end of days, right, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Daniel, shut up, shut up, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Shut up. Peter Teal interprets this as Daniel, who he
Speaker 1: describes as a biblical historian, predicting that knowledge was would
Speaker 1: increase vastly towards the end of time and quote as
Speaker 1: knowledge increased, apocalyptic fears would mount, leaving room for a
Speaker 1: tyrant to rise. Now, there's a lot that's wrong with
Speaker 1: these few sentences. Like, first, I don't really that's not
Speaker 1: the only omen Yeah right, that's not really what Daniel's saying. That, like,
Speaker 1: the increase in knowledge will increase apocalyptic fears, which will
Speaker 1: let a tyrant. For that's not how the Antichrist comes
Speaker 1: to power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a lot to get from the word increase.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you're reading a lot in there.
Speaker 3: And he's like, and that tyrant is me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you'll be surprised at who he thinks that
Speaker 1: tyrant is, Sarah. I'm excited for that reveal. That's that's
Speaker 1: gonna be really fun.
Speaker 3: For you, Sandray.
Speaker 1: No, it's weirder than that.
Speaker 3: De fact Joe, First Lady of New York, Sandra Ley
Speaker 3: just like.
Speaker 1: Nope, although he's probably she's probably on his list. I'll
Speaker 1: give you that. But yeah, okay, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that Peter says here that's really
Speaker 1: questionable is he describes Daniel as a historian, Like, in fact,
Speaker 1: he describes Daniel as the first historian. Right, it's like
Speaker 1: the first person to really think of history in a
Speaker 1: modern way. Uh, that's very silly, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: worth noting. Biblical scholar debate ferociously whether or not Daniel
Speaker 1: was writing reliable accounts of history, whether or not he
Speaker 1: was effectively trying to write a history, right, Because there's
Speaker 1: the two broad interpretations of like how the Book of
Speaker 1: Daniel was written. As one is the author Daniel had
Speaker 1: these experiences with he and his friends and chronicled them.
Speaker 1: Right that he's like writing an account of things that
Speaker 1: he saw and did, and he's including in their genuine
Speaker 1: prophecies that he made that were fulfilled in some cases
Speaker 1: centuries later. Right, that's the traditional interpretation of the Book
Speaker 1: of Daniel. Right. Modern biblical historians have pointed out that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that suggests that the author
Speaker 1: of the Book of Daniel was someone who would have
Speaker 1: been alive centuries after the actual biblical Daniel, and that
Speaker 1: the Book of Daniel couldn't have been written contemporaneously. Right.
Speaker 1: In other words, like this is more of like a
Speaker 1: work of historical fiction than historical fact. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like one of the argument the real Daniel is supposed
Speaker 1: to have been a member of the Judean nobility who
Speaker 1: was taken to Babylon during the Babylonian captivity and became
Speaker 1: popular at Nebuchenezer's court. He eventually became a dream interpreter
Speaker 1: and a prophet, and again, up until like the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: it was widely agreed that this historical guy wrote the
Speaker 1: Book of Daniel and filled it with prophecies he had
Speaker 1: at the time that were proven right later. Now there's
Speaker 1: a good write up on the Biblical hermeneutic stack Exchange
Speaker 1: with Citations, which summarizes the modern critical argument about Daniel. Quote.
Speaker 1: The Book of Daniel is replete with historical inaccuracies regarding
Speaker 1: the Babylonian and Persian periods, indicating it was written quite
Speaker 1: some time after those eras. Between this point and the
Speaker 1: independent nature of the court tales, the person of Daniel
Speaker 1: appears to be a literary fabrication, not a historical figure,
Speaker 1: and hence not the author of the book. Davies, who
Speaker 1: is a biblical scholar, suggests that this Daniel character may
Speaker 1: not have been a well known figure in Jewish culture
Speaker 1: before the book was completed, and Collins is one scholar
Speaker 1: to suggest the very name Daniel was chosen for the
Speaker 1: anonymous Jewish sage of the folk life, or out of
Speaker 1: the inspiration from the ancient sage Danel mentioned by Ezekiel
Speaker 1: and ugartic texts. Right. So the likeliest and the thing
Speaker 1: widely believed by biblical scholars today is that this because
Speaker 1: of some very fundamental historical inaccuracies in the Book of Daniel.
Speaker 1: This was written later and Daniel was never meant to
Speaker 1: be a real person, Like the name was taken by
Speaker 1: an ancient sage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the same way that Binikula wasn't actually written.
Speaker 1: By a dog exactly exactly. Well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: scholarly debate about that. Well that's true, Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a believer.
Speaker 3: It feels like it's to me kind of the marker
Speaker 3: of a good historian to understand that people in the
Speaker 3: past also enjoyed using literary devices, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yes, and that there's also this It's weird to
Speaker 1: me how despite how much some people who are religious
Speaker 1: emphasize the importance of faith, there's this idea that like, well,
Speaker 1: but no, if it's not literally Daniel that wrote this
Speaker 1: about his literal life, then that would be saying that
Speaker 1: the Bible doesn't have value. And it's like, why not, Like.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes it gets a little frilly. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a work of literature. Let them have their literary devices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't bother people with other kinds of literature
Speaker 1: that it's not literally true that Aragorn's son of Rathorne
Speaker 1: isn't a real historical figure. People have still changed their
Speaker 1: lives as a result of those books, you know, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't know, maybe they just don't have that
Speaker 1: much faith. And I guess Peter doesn't, because again he
Speaker 1: always describes Daniel as absolutely the guy who wrote the
Speaker 1: Book of Daniel and as a historians a real historian.
Speaker 1: And you know he's real because he made predictions about
Speaker 1: the future that happened, and again historians will say, well,
Speaker 1: because they happened before the person.
Speaker 3: That wrote the book in the future.
Speaker 1: It's like if you could write a historical fiction about
Speaker 1: a guy who's a prophet and include a bunch of
Speaker 1: shit about World War Two in your book set in
Speaker 1: nineteen ten. That doesn't mean you prophesied World War Two.
Speaker 1: You're just looking You're just writing fiction.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be great if some guys saw that coming? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's like, I don't know, and just any
Speaker 3: kind of nostalgia media like that seventies show where they're like, oh, right, kids,
Speaker 3: stop playing with the lawn darts. Isn't it funny?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: We know now what that's about? How many time where
Speaker 3: this is set?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, this is That's exactly what's going on in
Speaker 1: the Book of Daniel. And speaking of lawn darts, this
Speaker 1: podcast is sponsored entirely by lawn darts. Lawn darts. Aren't
Speaker 1: there too many kids in the world?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Love Canal didn't get enough of them.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're back. We're thinking about all the things
Speaker 1: that used to kill kids back before we decided to
Speaker 1: make the world safe. And yeah, now things are good.
Speaker 1: It's a safe world for children.
Speaker 3: They're perfect now. Yeah, no complaints.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why so many schools have metal detectors. Great stuff.
Speaker 1: So I don't have when it comes to the Biblical scholarship.
Speaker 1: Was the Book of Daniel written by I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty convinced that it was written later, and Daniel is
Speaker 1: a historical fiction and amalgam of different people and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's arguments scholars will make either way.
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me is that Teal doesn't reference these
Speaker 1: arguments at all. He doesn't even mention them, which it
Speaker 1: could just mean that he has a strong Biblical literalism
Speaker 1: stance and he disagrees with those takes, But the fact
Speaker 1: that he doesn't mention them at all, I kind of
Speaker 1: wonder if he just doesn't know because he doesn't actually
Speaker 1: like read curiously about stuff like this. I yeah, I
Speaker 1: could believe that he doesn't really care about scholarship on
Speaker 1: the Bible. He reads it and takes whatever is useful
Speaker 1: to him out of it and has no interest in
Speaker 1: what anyone else has said about it.
Speaker 3: Well, and this feels like he's doing like his impression
Speaker 3: of a smart person, And I feel like a lot
Speaker 3: of people's smart person impression is like I read the
Speaker 3: Bible and I figured out what it's about without the
Speaker 3: benefit of ever reading any one else's thoughts about it, ever,
Speaker 3: and it's like, that's not what intelligence is about. Intelligence
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that you never listen to anyone else for
Speaker 3: your whole life.
Speaker 1: No, no, Nor is it like, well, I assume this,
Speaker 1: the English translation of this has all of the context
Speaker 1: that's useful in understanding it historically, right, right, there's no
Speaker 1: need to look back at the different ways that this
Speaker 1: is different things have been interpreted, different translations, Like, there's
Speaker 1: no value in any of that. They got it right
Speaker 1: with the King James version. That's the official version. Now
Speaker 1: God said, so this one.
Speaker 3: I found in the hotel is going to take me home. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I feel like what people maybe who I don't know,
Speaker 3: look down on scholarship as a pursuit, don't really realize
Speaker 3: about it maybe and maybe disdain it because they understand
Speaker 3: this kind of collaborative quality to it is anything you
Speaker 3: figure out in an academic setting or really like any
Speaker 3: you know, kind of real pursuit of learning and research
Speaker 3: is you're standing on the shoulders of everyone else who's
Speaker 3: thought about it and worked on it in the past.
Speaker 3: And there's and you have a you know, an awareness
Speaker 3: that you're only doing like an extra little millimeter of
Speaker 3: progressing an idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's also something a guy like Peter Teel
Speaker 1: can't accept. Like the collaborative nature of like through which
Speaker 1: actual knowledge is built is fundamentally that's why all these
Speaker 1: guys are so bullish on AI is. It's abhorrent to
Speaker 1: them that other people have thought thoughts that they haven't thought,
Speaker 1: or that they didn't think first, that they might not understand.
Speaker 1: You know, it's this A healthy person understands there's things
Speaker 1: that are beyond me. Even if I'm very smart, I'm
Speaker 1: not smart in every area, you know. I think I'm
Speaker 1: certain that like Stephen Hawking wouldn't have like gotten angry
Speaker 1: if somebody had tried to explain to him how like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: your fridge is broken, Steve, and this is what's wrong,
Speaker 1: because I doubt Stephen Hawking knew much about how we're
Speaker 1: refrigerators worked, right, And I'm sure he was humble enough
Speaker 1: to be like, well, no, I need to get a
Speaker 1: repair guy, like this is.
Speaker 3: What happened on EastEnders for the past ten years.
Speaker 1: Sure, or this is what this versus of the Bible,
Speaker 1: you know how it was translated a thousand years ago
Speaker 1: and so it might mean something different. I actually intelligent
Speaker 1: people have a degree of humility in terms of the
Speaker 1: things they don't know. And I think to a guy
Speaker 1: like Peter Teele, the idea that like there might be
Speaker 1: anything important that he doesn't know is deeply offensive. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the Silicon Valley ideology in a nutshell,
Speaker 1: which is why, like, no, all that matters is what
Speaker 1: I know and what I can have this robot summarize,
Speaker 1: it can do everything else because other kinds of knowledge
Speaker 1: than the ones I have, and other kinds of skill
Speaker 1: aren't real knowledge or skill because I don't have them.
Speaker 1: That's my interpretation of Peter Teel. You know yours my Yeah,
Speaker 1: where's my very.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess like kind of toddler like anger at
Speaker 3: anything that elluse your grasp. So you have to kind
Speaker 3: of shrek the world to fit your own worldview.
Speaker 1: And that's what he's doing with the Bible here, because
Speaker 1: it's written to Peter that Daniel is a real prophet
Speaker 1: and a real historian, because he interprets Daniel twelve four,
Speaker 1: which I quoted earlier as a prophecy. Now this is
Speaker 1: the fact the idea that, like, oh, what he's saying
Speaker 1: is that knowledge increases, which leads to us expecting an apocalypse,
Speaker 1: and that creates room for a tyrant. That's not really
Speaker 1: how the Bible foresees the Antichrist rising, you know, but
Speaker 1: apocalyptic fears have been with us as long as civilization, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a thing that starts with Christendom, and
Speaker 1: it's not a thing that starts with Daniel, right. The
Speaker 1: Book of Daniel didn't invent apocalyptic beliefs. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those you'll sometimes hear it claim that prior to
Speaker 1: the year one thousand, Christendom was convulse that like the
Speaker 1: last millennium, there were a bunch of specific fears that
Speaker 1: the world was going to end then. And this is
Speaker 1: actually not really accurate. But it's not accurate because people
Speaker 1: didn't really agree what year it was on a wide
Speaker 1: scale back then, however, is Peter Steylefels wrote in a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine article for The New York Times, So
Speaker 1: were there religious terrorists and overwrought expectations of the final
Speaker 1: judgment in the year nine ninety nine, Absolutely, and also
Speaker 1: in the years eight ninety nine, eleven ninety nine, twelve
Speaker 1: ninety nine, you name it. One might as well turn
Speaker 1: the question around and ask how could it have been otherwise?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: In other words, it wasn't so much that people were
Speaker 1: obsessed with the year one thousand, It's that they they
Speaker 1: have always People did not widely agree on what year
Speaker 1: it was at all times in the past, but people
Speaker 1: have always expected the end of the world was around
Speaker 1: the corner, no matter what year they thought it was
Speaker 1: going to happen. That's just natural human nature, right, it.
Speaker 3: Guess makes sense. Well, And also, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: not take this is just me kind of guessing, but
Speaker 3: I feel like if you look at human history, there
Speaker 3: are plenty of civilizations that have ended right or that
Speaker 3: have come very close to it through you know, plague
Speaker 3: or being built next to a volcano or right massive
Speaker 3: floods or whatever else. And so it feels like this,
Speaker 3: this idea of destruction that will have been actually come
Speaker 3: for everyone. Sure is because something that you would develop
Speaker 3: as an idea based on what it feels like to
Speaker 3: exist as a human being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes complete sense. And like it is this
Speaker 1: like you can't how can you how could somebody live
Speaker 1: through like the the Black Death and be in like
Speaker 1: a city where seventy five percent of the population dies,
Speaker 1: like that is an apocalypse that you looked through, just
Speaker 1: like I mean, fuck, if you lived in Berlin in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, you're living through an apocalypse or hiroshima,
Speaker 1: you know, like that, that's an apocalypse. What else would
Speaker 1: you call it?
Speaker 2: We create?
Speaker 3: Yeah, humans create a lot of them or witness a
Speaker 3: lot of them. And I do feel like post pandemic.
Speaker 3: I have this feeling of like, all right, we can
Speaker 3: have another of these. I don't know, like that's not
Speaker 3: sure precidented anymore.
Speaker 1: So what's not honestly might be nice. We all got
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks off last time, you know, sure.
Speaker 3: We had before we descended into a lot worse more
Speaker 3: fascism for several we had a couple of weeks where
Speaker 3: things were really chilled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really got to catch up on Netflix. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got to rewatch some good TV shows. Yeah. So in
Speaker 1: that article, Steinfelds goes on to quote Bernard McGain, who's
Speaker 1: a scholar of medieval religion from the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: who said medieval folk lived in a more or less
Speaker 1: constant state of apocalyptic expectation. And if that sounds kind
Speaker 1: of chillingly familiar to you, it's because we haven't changed. Really,
Speaker 1: We're the same as people back then, and we expect
Speaker 1: the world to end just like they did in some
Speaker 1: different ways. You know, r.
Speaker 3: Tummy's hurt for different reasons and sometimes the same.
Speaker 1: So some of them the same. Yeah, And obviously there's
Speaker 1: different theories as to why do people always think the
Speaker 1: world is going to end? You know, you can That's
Speaker 1: a lot of ink has been spilled on that topic.
Speaker 1: But I think it boils down to two factors, and
Speaker 1: neither of which really involves an increase in knowledge like
Speaker 1: Peter is obsessed with. I think it. The two big
Speaker 1: factors are, number one, the apocalypse makes for good entertainment.
Speaker 1: People are interested in the idea of the world ending.
Speaker 1: And number two, it's less scary to imagine the world
Speaker 1: ending than to imagine yourself dying in the world going on,
Speaker 1: which is what will happen, right to everybody, and especially
Speaker 1: for guy like Peter Teel Yeah, right.
Speaker 3: And right, and especially if you're you know, an egomaniac
Speaker 3: who no one is restraining any longer. You're like, look,
Speaker 3: everyone has to go out with me ultimately somehow.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I am certain that he would prefer
Speaker 1: a nuclear holocaust to himself dying alone while the world continues, right,
Speaker 1: he would his last year's.
Speaker 3: Being a bunker the second one.
Speaker 1: God willing, you know. I just hope those bunkers ain't
Speaker 1: deep enough or the security their security guides will take
Speaker 1: him out. I'm sure they haven't figured out the shot
Speaker 1: collars well enough. Now that's it, I will. I will acknowledge.
Speaker 1: One thing that Peter says that I agree with is
Speaker 1: that I think apocalyptic fears have in the past and
Speaker 1: do today provide space for a tyrant to rise, you know.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think I don't
Speaker 1: think Peter realizes, but is clear to me studying his
Speaker 1: beliefs about the Antichrist, is that he justifies his yearning
Speaker 1: for a tyrant his desire to end democracy and replace
Speaker 1: it with a dictatorship. He justifies that as the only
Speaker 1: way to stop the Antichrist and the end of the world,
Speaker 1: which is deeply anti Christian because Peter's whole idea he
Speaker 1: says he's a Christian. He says, I am a believer
Speaker 1: that the Antichrist will come and bring about the end
Speaker 1: of days, but I also think it can be stopped,
Speaker 1: and that's a good thing, which is like not the religion,
Speaker 1: my dude, right, Like, you can't stop the Antichrist, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Don't you kind of have to just go through the
Speaker 3: whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty important, right, it's like.
Speaker 3: The last you know, the final conflict of the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he has cut that scene out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's important for you to understands that Peter's
Speaker 1: belief is not the standard Christian apocalyptic belief that you
Speaker 1: heard even from like weirdo fundamentalists, you know, believe in
Speaker 1: the rapture. Peters is all of that, except but we
Speaker 1: can stop the bad stuff if we put the right
Speaker 1: dictator in to day.
Speaker 3: It's actually amazing because he's made himself the main character
Speaker 3: of the Bible, which yeah, I can't think of another
Speaker 3: person who's managed to do that. They usually stick with
Speaker 3: the characters that are in there.
Speaker 1: Jesus, did you know, And yeah, like.
Speaker 3: You know and people, you know, we're very familiar with
Speaker 3: people using Jesus as a proxy for their own desires.
Speaker 3: But yeah, to actually write self insert Bible fan fiction.
Speaker 1: It's it's stunning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It's stunning.
Speaker 1: It's really it's really some impressive stuff, and it's it's
Speaker 1: very funny. We're barely into Peter's like the first episode
Speaker 1: of Peter's speech, so I'm gonna I'm gonna read for
Speaker 1: you now. It started with him quoting that passage from
Speaker 1: the Book of Daniel. Here's the second paragraph of his speech.
Speaker 1: In late modernity, such worries of the apocalypse are in fashionable,
Speaker 1: and the Antichrist is a forgotten figure. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I lied. We couldn't get through the whole paragraph because
Speaker 1: that first sentence, like what world are you living in?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 1: The Antichrist is a forgotten figure?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Where have you heard of the Antichrist? Peter Taylor is
Speaker 3: probably growing up watching the Omens during Gregory I Pack,
Speaker 3: just like everyone else did.
Speaker 1: Have you talked to a person? Yeah? And this is
Speaker 1: a load bearing belief of his that churches don't talk
Speaker 1: about the apocalypse of the Antichrist anymore? What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Are you? How do you think this? And
Speaker 1: just to add some polling data here, in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: the Public Policy Polling conducted a series of a survey
Speaker 1: on conspiratorial beliefs among American voters. Thirteen percent of respondence
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen believed Barack Obama was the Antichrist. Another
Speaker 1: thirteen were unsure, and seventy three percent stated they didn't
Speaker 1: think Obama was the Antichrist, but all of them were
Speaker 1: aware of the concept of the antichrist pair. I mean,
Speaker 1: this isn't yeah, it's yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3: It's Satan's kid, you know.
Speaker 1: It's really exactly, it's little Nikki, it's his, it's his.
Speaker 1: You know. Look, if Satan is uh, Francis Ford Coppola,
Speaker 1: the Antichrist is Nicholas Cage, who also would be a
Speaker 1: good pick to play the anti Christ.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, my god that that has to have
Speaker 3: happened in nineteen ninety four and we forgot about it.
Speaker 1: It better Yeah, yeah, it just skipped us by. I
Speaker 1: watched him play a surfer recently. Not a great movie. Wow,
Speaker 1: not a great movie.
Speaker 3: Sorry, what I appreciate that. Nicholas Cage, well, I apparently
Speaker 3: can't say no. You know. They're just like, will you
Speaker 3: be in this really inappropriate role and he's like yes.
Speaker 1: He's also an Australian in that, and they just explained
Speaker 1: it by being like, oh, we moved to America when
Speaker 1: California when I was young. It's like, I don't you
Speaker 1: still don't really sound Australian to.
Speaker 3: Me, Nicholas Cage, all right, Mel Gibson, But.
Speaker 1: Also I will watch you do anything for roughly ninety minutes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess I'm the fool here, and often
Speaker 1: an additional thirty Yeah, some many cases more than that.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to actually read another paragraph, Peter said,
Speaker 1: this time you'll get the whole paragraph. But it's just
Speaker 1: as insane, and so like, hold your questions till the end, Sarah,
Speaker 1: but I know you're going to immediately have them. Our
Speaker 1: universities tell us that fears of the apocalypse are irrational
Speaker 1: and that the world is simply getting better, And yet
Speaker 1: our news tells us otherwise. We are worried about existential
Speaker 1: risks from AI bioweapons and nuclear war. How can we
Speaker 1: understand our apocalyptic time? And like what universities are you?
Speaker 1: You think college professors are telling all their kids the
Speaker 1: world is always getting better and that's what happened? Like
Speaker 1: who where? What are you basing this on? What college classes? Maybe?
Speaker 3: He write Candide, and he was like, so that's what
Speaker 3: they do in college.
Speaker 1: That's what professors must feel all the time.
Speaker 3: College. You spend four years with people saying everything is fine,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it, don't even think about it, It's great.
Speaker 1: That's what's so weird to me about this is that,
Speaker 1: like Peter hates universities in the standard right wing way,
Speaker 1: so I'm not surprised that he's critical of professors, But
Speaker 1: the standard right wing critique of professors in the university
Speaker 1: isn't they think the world's getting better?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: It's that like all of these leftist academics are telling
Speaker 1: everyone capitalism is fucked up and the climate change is
Speaker 1: kind of it's the opposite of that. That's such a
Speaker 1: weird thing for you to say.
Speaker 3: Being you, Peter, it feels like kind of classic like
Speaker 3: Freshmen comp writing, where you're like, yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 3: invent a problem that doesn't exist in order to justify
Speaker 3: the importance of my position. And it's like, all right,
Speaker 3: you just made that up, but whatever, Fine, keep going.
Speaker 1: And it's like like I get that you're you can
Speaker 1: you're creating strawman, but like you're creating conflicting strawman, Like
Speaker 1: your strawmen aren't internally consistent, which is kind of weird.
Speaker 1: Right Anyway, after this, Peter goes on to state that
Speaker 1: the apocalypse is not a fixed date on a calendar,
Speaker 1: and he briefly summarizes the hilarious history of people trying
Speaker 1: to predict the end of days. Then he writes, still,
Speaker 1: if the day and the hour remain hidden, perhaps we
Speaker 1: may at least suspect the century. Now, I would argue
Speaker 1: this is just as delusional as trying to predict the
Speaker 1: day of the apocalypse, but it is much smarter from
Speaker 1: a gambler's point of view. And Peter Tiel is a
Speaker 1: degenerate gambler, right, Like, you got a lot of space
Speaker 1: to be wrong if you're just like, oh, it'll happens
Speaker 1: sometime in the twenty first century, right Like, that is
Speaker 1: the smart play.
Speaker 3: You'll be dead before people know you're totally wrong. Yeahsolutely Yeah. Now,
Speaker 3: next he tells his audience that if we are to
Speaker 3: take the Antichrist seriously, and again, for Peter, the Antichrist
Speaker 3: and the apocalypse are both synonyms, we have to ask
Speaker 3: four questions. These four questions are, what is the Antichrist's
Speaker 3: relationship to Armageddon, when will he arrive? What is his
Speaker 3: relationship to Christ? And who is the Antichrist now Peter's
Speaker 3: selective reading of scripture concludes that the Antichrist is the
Speaker 3: final antagonist before the revelation of Christ and Armageddon quote
Speaker 3: the beast of the Sea heading a world government. He
Speaker 3: will come after many forerunners and will deceive the faithful
Speaker 3: by appearing more Christian than Christ. Now, for that last question,
Speaker 3: who is the Antichrist? Peter notes that the Antichrist, depending
Speaker 3: on who you listen to, could be a single person,
Speaker 3: or a system or a type that repeats across history.
Speaker 3: Right and next he has a diggression where he claims
Speaker 3: that David from the Bible was the first real historian quote,
Speaker 3: because he foresaw a one time sequence of world empires,
Speaker 3: whereas classical historians like Thucydides saw only cycles. Quote, Athens
Speaker 3: versus Sparta, Germany versus Britain, and China versus America were
Speaker 3: one and the same. They were just steps in an
Speaker 3: eternal recurrence. And I know there's a lot that's wrong there.
Speaker 3: We'll get back to the antichrist stuff, but I have
Speaker 3: to correct Peter's talking about history, because this is not
Speaker 3: fair to Thucidides or to classical thought, and neither nothing
Speaker 3: he's saying here is like accurate historiography. Right, Classical thinkers
Speaker 3: did talk about the cyclical nature of history, like Thucidities
Speaker 3: talked about that, But he wasn't saying that like history
Speaker 3: is trapped in these like like cycles of like it's
Speaker 3: the same thing happening over and over again. He was
Speaker 3: making the same observation modern people do looking at history,
Speaker 3: which is that like, oh, people make the same mistakes
Speaker 3: a lot. Huh, Like there's a lot of similarities in
Speaker 3: history that rhyme because we keep fucking up in similar ways.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna here's a quote from Thucydides himself, just to
Speaker 1: make that point. If my work is judged useful by
Speaker 1: any who shall wish to have a clear view both
Speaker 1: of the events which have happened and those which will someday,
Speaker 1: according to the human condition, happen again in such and
Speaker 1: such like ways, it will suffice for me. So Throcidides
Speaker 1: is saying, my work is a success if it leads
Speaker 1: people to understand the human condition and the patterns that
Speaker 1: we go through as people. Right, Like the patterns in
Speaker 1: history as a result of the human condition. That's a
Speaker 1: very like modern thing really in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: And I think it's actually comports pretty well with modern historiography,
Speaker 1: which is like the exact same things don't repeat, but
Speaker 1: people make similar choices historically in similar situations, and that's
Speaker 1: why you study history. Like I actually think Thucydides is
Speaker 1: saying something timeless here, and Peter is saying that no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this guy is that this is a classical person who's
Speaker 1: trapped with like a very limited view of history of
Speaker 1: history that's fundamentally wrong because he doesn't believe history can progress,
Speaker 1: you know, which is not what Thucydides is saying. He's
Speaker 1: making a point about human nature.
Speaker 3: He's got to create another meaningless straw man in order
Speaker 3: to exactly theoretical point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, in part because Daniel has to be the first
Speaker 1: real historian, you.
Speaker 3: Know, because historians predict things that haven't happened yet.
Speaker 1: Right, That's what big historian is.
Speaker 3: Robert.
Speaker 2: My question is, do we have any from the source.
Speaker 2: Do they say, like how the audience is reacting to
Speaker 2: this like fifty five minute thing.
Speaker 1: They seemed engrossed from the reports I've heard, like mostly
Speaker 1: interested people kept showing up. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have the audio, so I can't hear like what the
Speaker 1: reaction was. Was there a lot of applause? Was it
Speaker 1: all people being polite to Peter because they work in
Speaker 1: his VC fund? These are the unknowns, you know? To me?
Speaker 1: So I can't answer that question accurately, Sophie, But it's
Speaker 1: a good question, so Peter claim his justification. His explanation
Speaker 1: for why Daniel was the first real historian is that
Speaker 1: Daniel was the first historian to realize that world empires
Speaker 1: would all fall in succession, leading ultimately to the end
Speaker 1: of the world and the coming of God's kingdom. Now, okay, Daniel,
Speaker 1: I mean he that he made a that's kind of
Speaker 1: what he predicted, but not in a way that's accurate
Speaker 1: to modern history, because this is critical, Sarah. Daniel prophesied
Speaker 1: four earthly kingdoms rising and falling in succession, and then
Speaker 1: after vose four kingdoms rise and fall will get the
Speaker 1: end of days in God's eternal kingdom. Right, and the
Speaker 1: first we know what the kingdoms were. The first was Babylon,
Speaker 1: which did indeed rise and fall, The second was Persia,
Speaker 1: the third was Greece. Some of what Daniels wrote is
Speaker 1: often seen to him having predicted Alexander the great, although
Speaker 1: again it was written after Alexander's time, probably right, probably,
Speaker 1: and then the fourth kingdom that rosen fall was probably Rome, right,
Speaker 1: that that's what Daniel was prophesying. Now, if you're a
Speaker 1: history no talk, right, you might be saying at this point,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's been a lot of empires since
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire fell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like the Ottoman Empire springs to mind.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's a good empire. Yeah, the American.
Speaker 3: Empire you know, ye, falling as we speak.
Speaker 1: Obviously, the Canadian Empire the most powerful and evil of
Speaker 1: them all.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, the seat of global Satanism, according to
Speaker 3: Michelle Remembers.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And anyway, Peter's stance seems to be that,
Speaker 1: like Daniel was right, but that and again Daniel is
Speaker 1: literally the guy who wrote the Book of Daniel and
Speaker 1: literally historian. But also the four Kingdoms thing was figurative, right,
Speaker 1: He wasn't literally talking about the actual historical empires. He
Speaker 1: was about right, yeah, yeah, which is the only way
Speaker 1: because like again, he missed a lot of history after
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, in between that and the apocalypse, And
Speaker 1: as a result, I might suggest that like, well, Daniel
Speaker 1: clearly didn't foresee anything past the Roman Empire in terms
Speaker 1: of empires rising and falling. Maybe thucidides is way of
Speaker 1: looking at history, you know, seeing patterns of human behavior
Speaker 1: and seeing how they anticity influenced historic events, rather than
Speaker 1: trying to predict specific events. Maybe that's a more productive
Speaker 1: way to look at history. Maybe e Thucydides was a
Speaker 1: better historian than Daniel.
Speaker 3: Now the correct way to look at history is self
Speaker 3: insert fan fait. We've been over there, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right. Make yourself the most important character in history.
Speaker 3: Why bother studying anything if you can't be the main
Speaker 3: character of it?
Speaker 1: Right, I've always felt that way anyway, So thank you
Speaker 1: for like reinforcing my belief system here. Oh ye anyway.
Speaker 1: In his next paragraph, Peter continues to be dizzyingly wrong.
Speaker 1: From seventeen fifty to the early nineteen hundreds, technology accelerated
Speaker 1: at a pace that defies comprehension. In the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: lifespans doubled, we moved faster physically, Steam engines led to
Speaker 1: automobiles and jet airplanes, and the twenty first century technology
Speaker 1: only means information technology progress in all other fields has
Speaker 1: halted the question naturally arises, is the singularity in the
Speaker 1: past or in the future.
Speaker 3: Now, he doesn't know what singularity means.
Speaker 1: No, he doesn't, and he doesn't know. This is a
Speaker 1: very if all you care about is like the consumer
Speaker 1: tech industry, it's a I understand how your attitude could be.
Speaker 1: Nothing is progressing aside from it information technology. Smartphones aren't
Speaker 1: really improving anymore, Tablets are kind of laptops. All of
Speaker 1: these things that used to be wildly different every year
Speaker 1: are only kind of a little bit different now with
Speaker 1: every new innovation, progress has stopped. If you only look
Speaker 1: at technology and like gadgets a guy keeps in his
Speaker 1: living room or their pocket. I get how you might
Speaker 1: say that, And clearly that's how Peter Teal thinks about
Speaker 1: technology because he's a terminal narcissist. Right, you can only
Speaker 1: see progress through the lens of the parts of the
Speaker 1: tech industry he makes money on. But the idea that,
Speaker 1: like all other fields of scientific endeavor, have stalled in
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades is insane nonsense. And for example,
Speaker 1: mRNA vaccine technology advanced gractically in recent history. Right, that
Speaker 1: doesn't count to Peter for some reason.
Speaker 3: And like what does it matter if something advances, is
Speaker 3: if you can't make exponential profits off of it, who cares?
Speaker 1: Yep yep. And that's clearly what's going going on here.
Speaker 1: I don't even know, like should I, like I have,
Speaker 1: I had a rant in here about like car tech,
Speaker 1: like automobile safety technology, just just like a point of
Speaker 1: how wrong he is, because like it's matt like since
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, Like there's a little bit of debate
Speaker 1: about this, but like anti lock breaks became normal in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and kind of after that, you've started
Speaker 1: getting an increasing a variety of like what are called
Speaker 1: advanced driver assistance systems or ADAS. This includes everything from
Speaker 1: like collision warnings to automated emergency braking and electronic stability
Speaker 1: control lane assist, all that kinds of stuff. And like
Speaker 1: electronic stability control or e SC systems alone have been
Speaker 1: shown to reduce single vehicle fatal crash crash fatality chances
Speaker 1: by between like forty and fifty six percent. There's a
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
Speaker 1: that shows that like some of these, like like rear
Speaker 1: braking systems have reduced rearing collisions by twenty seve seven percent.
Speaker 1: Like the data overall suggests that like automated emergency braking
Speaker 1: with combined with a warning reduces rearing crashes by between
Speaker 1: fifty and fifty six percent, and all together, newer cars
Speaker 1: have something like a fifty percent lower fatality risk in
Speaker 1: crashes than cars built in the late fifties. This is
Speaker 1: a staggering groove improvement, and a lot of it's occurred
Speaker 1: in the last like twenty years. Again during this period
Speaker 1: of time where Peter with Peter's like nothing's getting better, Well,
Speaker 1: a lot is. It's just not what you care about, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have kind of reached the apex of what a
Speaker 1: screen can do. Probably, like you can't get out.
Speaker 3: That's fine, there's other things cancers to research, you know,
Speaker 3: we're making headway in other areas. It's fine.
Speaker 1: It's it's so weird to be like, well, TVs are
Speaker 1: as good as they're going to get. All the progress
Speaker 1: is halted now there's nothing else.
Speaker 3: So you might as well give up. I guess, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm ready for the apocalypse if my TV is not
Speaker 3: going to keep improving. Yeah, you can't make the image
Speaker 3: any smoother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's just really telling that. Like Peter's attentude
Speaker 1: is like only information technology is still advancing, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's the only technology you're looking at, right, you
Speaker 1: don't care about car safety, you don't care about any
Speaker 1: of these other fields.
Speaker 3: Well, if he's not paying attention to it, it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like when a baby drops something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a there's a very funny at this
Speaker 1: point in his write up he made of Peter's speech,
Speaker 1: Cool Carney, the guy taking notes includes a graph and
Speaker 1: I I don't know, I think that Peter's presentation had
Speaker 1: a graph like this. I don't know that maybe, but
Speaker 1: it's it's so funny, Sarah, look at this beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: There's there's two graphs. One is labeled in the past
Speaker 1: and one is labeled in the future. And the one
Speaker 1: that says in the past shows the line basically going
Speaker 1: an S curve, but like it's going rapidly up knowledge
Speaker 1: on the X axis, time on the Y axis, or
Speaker 1: did I fuck up the axes? And then it's showing
Speaker 1: it's showing knowledge going up massively over time and then
Speaker 1: plateauing suddenly. And then the one labeled in the future
Speaker 1: shows knowledge at a steady rate until it shotguns up
Speaker 1: rapidly over time. I guess that's Peter predicting that knowledge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can we see the right data for.
Speaker 1: These What is the data? What is knowledge based on?
Speaker 1: How are we defining knowledge in the future when now
Speaker 1: don't we know?
Speaker 3: Why do we have a chart of the future. It's
Speaker 3: because he's a try historian, like Daniel who wrote the
Speaker 3: Book of Daniel Duh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love I love fake graphs, and this is
Speaker 1: a beautiful fake graph to me, it's perfect. I don't
Speaker 1: even know what you're trying to argue, other than like
Speaker 1: AI will increase the rate of knowledge. Maybe it looks
Speaker 1: like that's kind of what he's trying to say, But
Speaker 1: he's arguing certainly that right now we're stuck, like science
Speaker 1: is stuck, you know, And this is like the core
Speaker 1: of everything Peter believes, and like why he is so
Speaker 1: supportive of radical political change is that he thinks it's
Speaker 1: death for the human race, that science is stuck. And
Speaker 1: as a spoiler, the antichrist is all of the anti
Speaker 1: science people who want to stop AI research, who want
Speaker 1: to stop oh drilling for fossil fuels, like who wanted
Speaker 1: like that that is his his doom loop. Right, Peter says, quote,
Speaker 1: we are running a red queen's race, working harder, running faster,
Speaker 1: yet standing still. Wages of stagnated health is plateauing, and
Speaker 1: optimism is fading. Nixon declared a war on cancer in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, promising victory by the bisentennial in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. No president today would dare to clear a
Speaker 1: war on Alzheimer's And like, I mean, yeah, man, because
Speaker 1: we didn't. We didn't beat cancer in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, Nixon was very brave. Hey, if he hadn't got,
Speaker 3: if he hadn't resigned, maybe he would have cured cancer.
Speaker 1: Sure, It's like, I don't know, man, Maybe the fact
Speaker 1: that this was it didn't work last time is why
Speaker 1: presidents don't say shit like that anymore, because it's like dumb,
Speaker 1: It's like, dully, yeah, it's a stupid thing to do.
Speaker 3: Grandiose and over the top thing to say.
Speaker 1: And I got that.
Speaker 3: It's personally disappointing to you that the presidents don't act
Speaker 3: more megalomania call. But but it is.
Speaker 1: Also the idea that like, oh wow, it's fun that
Speaker 1: he recognizes regular people their wages are standing still, like
Speaker 1: things like quality of life increases have plateaued, and things
Speaker 1: aren't getting better at the rate they used to. And
Speaker 1: yet my wealth as a billionaire has increased massively, while
Speaker 1: like regular wages are stagnant. Rich people like me, the
Speaker 1: top one percent of the top one percent, are getting
Speaker 1: a lot more. Hmm. Wonder if those are connected. I
Speaker 1: wonder if maybe all of the benefits that should be
Speaker 1: spread out throughout society in order to do things like
Speaker 1: increase life expectancy and increase average wealth and like ensure
Speaker 1: people are able to retire and all this stuff that
Speaker 1: translates to quality of life. I wonder if the fact
Speaker 1: that all that money is going to me has anything
Speaker 1: to do with this stagnation nah antichrist. Yeah. In his
Speaker 1: next paragraph, Peter gets to the core of why he's
Speaker 1: so angry at science and academia. Science once proud promised
Speaker 1: radical life extension. To day, the closest we come to
Speaker 1: mastery over death is legalized euthanasia. And I, yeah, no, Peter,
Speaker 1: that's not true.
Speaker 3: Like he just hasn't he. I don't think anyone has
Speaker 3: given him feedback on this.
Speaker 1: No, no, And it's like, yeah, this is very clearly
Speaker 1: a man without an editor for sure.
Speaker 2: Editor, he needs a producer, he needs us, a single
Speaker 2: person to say no.
Speaker 1: I feel like science never promised radical life. You probably
Speaker 1: read like an article and like people were someone who
Speaker 1: wasn't a scientist talked about radical or a grifter talked
Speaker 1: about radical and you bought it because you're not that smart.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's who promised radical life. I think some conmen
Speaker 1: promised you radical life extension. And as you age and
Speaker 1: none of the nonsense you're doing really works the way
Speaker 1: it's supposed to, you realize you've been conned, and you're
Speaker 1: blaming science as opposed to the grifters that you listen
Speaker 1: to and gave a lot of money, And maybe that's
Speaker 1: what's going on.
Speaker 3: And blaming science for your magical thinking not working in
Speaker 3: those wall as it used to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also, just like the closest we come to mastery
Speaker 1: of a death is legalized euthanasia. Again, like fucking, the
Speaker 1: most recent vaccine technology leaps, and like life expectancies have
Speaker 1: increased in a lot of ways for a lot of
Speaker 1: specific illnesses, there are a lot of new medicines that
Speaker 1: didn't exist ten years ago twenty years ago, that exists
Speaker 1: that exists now, and like.
Speaker 3: Gene modification technology, yeah you know, yeah, like I really
Speaker 3: euthanasia is exciting, but come.
Speaker 1: On, Yeah, there's a ton of medical improvements and even breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: just none of them mean that you'll live forever, because
Speaker 1: that's not possible. Peter.
Speaker 3: But basically, he's like science is in the diction, we
Speaker 3: might as well all kill ourselves. But wait, there's more.
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. It's like looking at it's like
Speaker 1: looking at like the aerospace field and being like, there's
Speaker 1: been no progress in the life thirty years because we
Speaker 1: haven't developed faster than light travel.
Speaker 3: Because I didn't see it on TV, so I assume
Speaker 3: it didn't.
Speaker 1: Happen, right, But like planes are a lot safer, like
Speaker 1: plane crashes are a lot rare, Like isn't that count
Speaker 1: as an improvement? No, fuck you, we don't have warp speed.
Speaker 1: I'm angry. Yeah. Anyway, we'll talk some more about Peter
Speaker 1: Teel and what he believes, and specifically we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about who he thinks the Antichrist might be in
Speaker 1: part two, but this is part one. It ran a
Speaker 1: little long, but thank you Sarah for indulging me.
Speaker 3: Thank you. This has been a horrifying journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How do you feel about Peter? You seem smart.
Speaker 3: I feel like he's a tiny little baby and I
Speaker 3: can't wait to see him become even tinier before my
Speaker 3: very eyes next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Robert, who is your anti Christ?
Speaker 3: Robert?
Speaker 1: Who do I think the Antichrist is? Honestly? Like Peter
Speaker 1: t He is not a bad pick if you're kind
Speaker 1: of going though with the more traditional view, Ali, it
Speaker 1: needs to be somebody who's like popular, who's like widely beloved,
Speaker 1: you know, by people who's able to like get a
Speaker 1: large following together. I feel like mister Beast. I feel
Speaker 1: like mister Beast's very probable Antichrist. Yeah, see it, there's
Speaker 1: nothing behind his eyes. We can all agree on that, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, black eyes like a doll size.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad that you brought up Jaws, because I
Speaker 1: do think that the solution to mister Beast is the
Speaker 1: same as the solution to the shark and Jaws.
Speaker 3: Yeah, make him bite into an oxygen tank.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm in a crowdfund a shitty boat, like not
Speaker 1: a good boat, like a fucked up looking boat that
Speaker 1: I've been living on.
Speaker 3: It's named after the thing that almost ate you when
Speaker 3: you were young writer. Or no, it's called the or
Speaker 3: I guess it's samed after the only thing that can
Speaker 3: eat the thing that almost ate you when you were young.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, so yeah, that's gonna be great anyway.
Speaker 1: If you haven't watched the original Jaws, go listen to Jaws.
Speaker 3: Plug your pluggable, Sarah, Yeah, go listen to the Devil.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's out right now from CBC Podcasts. It's my new
Speaker 3: mini series about the Satanic panic and all of the
Speaker 3: truly wonderful people who got caught up in it. And
Speaker 3: I was so happy to get to talk to you
Speaker 3: today about something that scares me so much more than
Speaker 3: any depiction of the devil. And I cannot wait to resume.
Speaker 1: Yay, all right, everyone, Part one is done, Go away
Speaker 1: for a while.
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