← After Party with Emily Jashinsky
After Party with Emily Jashinsky
Trump’s Middle East Victory Lap, MTG’s Reality, and Thiel’s Private Lectures, with Spencer Klavan
01:12:50
Emily Jashinsky begins the show with a look at President Trump’s victory lap as he declares the Gaza War over, Israeli hostages are freed, and hundreds of Palestinians are released. She also discusses Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break with Republicans on immigration. Then Emily is joined by Spencer Klavan, Associate editor for Claremont Review of Books and Author of “Light of the Mind, Light of the World," to discuss topics including the viral exchange between Vice President Vance and MA Senator Elizabeth Warren on Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s latest pandemic warning. Emily and Spencer then take a deep dive into The Washington Post’s coverage of Peter Thiel’s private lectures. They debate whether Thiel is exploiting Silicon Valley’s spiritual revival in his remarks on AI and the antichrist. The conversation then takes a lighter turn as they discuss CNN’s article on the ‘male gaze’ comeback. Finally, Emily wraps up the show with a reality...
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A
Hey everyone, it's Nicki and Bri, and we're here to let you know that we have a podcast, the Nicki and Bri Show. Yes, and we've got new episodes every Monday and Thursday. We're serving up real deal conversations that go beyond the cameras. Think Motherhood Confessions, Sisterhood Vibes, Boss Business Energy and TV Life Tea. Need a laugh? We got you craving inspo. We got inspiration and affirmations on deck. Want a little cry or a big Heck yes. Then that's our jam. Whether we're breaking down pop culture, sharing, parenting wins or fails, unpacking personal growth, or just riffing on everyday chaos, nothing is off limits. Plus, we welcome incredible guests, play our favorite games, and do what only sisters can. Keep it 100 while raising a glass together. So pop a bottle, hit play and come hang with us. Listen to the Nikki and Bri show wherever you get your podcast.
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B
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C
Hi everyone. Welcome to afterparty, a show where we talk about the news, then we also drink a little bit about the news. I'm obviously wearing my Milwaukee brewers hat tonight because we are live while the brewers are playing the Los Angeles Dodgers and man, this could be a rare winning season for Milwaukee. So paying very close attention to all of that. Just want to remind everyone, first of all, thank you and remind everyone to also subscribe while you're at it. It helps us a ton. Liking adding comments. Subscribing helps a bunch on YouTube. It helps a bunch over on whichever podcast platform use. Of course we do podcast only formats on Friday, so we're not just technically two days a week. We do podcasts for you on Fridays. Now you can send in your questions to Emily at devilmaker Media or the After Party Emily Instagram and I do my best to answer just about all of them. Many of them actually live while I'm taping the show. I read through them spontaneously and hopefully you get some good stuff out of that. Another reminder, I am going to be with Glenn Greenwald on the Megyn Kelly Tour October 24th in San Antonio, Texas. You can get your tickets over at Megan Kelly.com if you want to come join us for that show. We are super, super excited. Now. There's a lot to get through. These news cycles are absolutely packed. Not just a lot to talk about, but a lot to drink about as well. Maybe one thing to raise a glass to is seems to be momentarily a reprieve from the war that has consumed Middle east for the last two years. Incredible images of hostages being returned and in Israel, of course, families being reunited in Gaza. And Donald Trump, of course, was in both Israel and Egypt today taking something of a victory lap. We'll have a little bit of that right off the top of the show. I want to I have some thoughts on Marjorie Taylor Greene. I've been talking a lot about Marjorie Taylor Greene lately, but I want to go into a little bit more depth. And of course, the great Spencer Clavin is joining us tonight. I'm told he has a very special scotch. So we'll hear all about, I'm sure, Spencer, special scotch. We're going to talk to him about Columbus Day. Happy Columbus Day. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. We're going to talk about Anthony Fauci coming out on pbs. And spoiler alert, he thinks there might be another pandemic. Peter Thiel, this is a perfect subject for the great Spencer Clavin. Peter Thiel is giving a lot of eyebrow raising lectures on the catacomb and the Antichrist that are getting covered, I think sort of poorly in mainstream media. And Spencer identified a very funny article on CNN about how the male gaze has returned that we are going to dive into, as I would be remiss if I ended the show without getting into Hilaria Baldwin. I said Hilaria. Her name is Hilary Baldwin. But we'll get into all of that, of course. Let's start with Donald Trump's victory tour in the Middle east today as these images of hostages being returned, as these images of families being united in Gaza are coming up. Very, very moving and emotional to see what's happening over there. Trump gives a speech in the Knesset today. He says Marco Rubio may go down as the greatest secretary of state in history. He takes some jabs at Miriam Adelson, says at one point he's not sure whether she he once asked whether she loves Israel more than America and she didn't answer. Sort of an awkward moment in the Knesset when he did that. And then he headed over to Egypt for a ceremony where he had some very kind words for Giorgio Meloni of Italy. God rolled us we have a woman.
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B
A young woman who's, I'm not allowed to say it because usually it's the end of your political career if you say it.
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C
She's a beautiful young woman. Now, if you use the word beautiful.
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B
In the United States about a woman, that's the end of your political career.
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C
But I'll take my chances. Where is she? There she is.
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B
You don't mind being called beautiful, right?
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C
Because you are. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it.
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B
She wanted to be here and she's incredible. And they really respect her in Italy. She's, she's a very successful, very successful politician.
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C
I mean, listen, I'm sitting here in a baseball cap, but that woman is also incredibly well dressed. She never misses. So you see what Trump's going, maybe he read the CNN article about the return of the male gaze, decided that he was no longer hiding his appreciation, the female form. Although I'm not sure he ever heard about the end of the male gaze, that it ever became taboo. Let's go ahead and roll this clip of Donald Trump also talking to Mark Carney of Canada, who, who, by the way, he just met with at the White House last week.
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B
I'm glad you upgraded me to president.
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C
Great stuff. It's good.
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B
I started.
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C
Did you hear what he said there? He taps Cardi on the shoulder and Cardi says, thank you for upgrading me to president. And Trump says, oh, did I say that? He kind of taps Carney back and then goes, at least I didn't say governor right into the hot microphone. Just another incredible moment. He was also needling Keir Starmer, obviously prime minister of the UK as well. So he's feeling good on this victory tour. And it's sort of easy to understand why politically, because Biden and the Democrats are really unsure of what to do in this moment. Joe Biden, Biden finally responded to the peace deal actually, just earlier this evening. We can put Biden's reaction up on the screen. He says, I am deeply grateful and relieved that this day has come for the last living 20 hostages who have been through unimaginable hell and are finally reunited with their families and loved ones. And for the civilians in Gaza who have experienced immeasurable loss and will finally get the chance to rebuild their lives. He goes to say, goes on to say, my admin worked relentlessly to bring hostages home, get relief to Palestinian citizens and end the war. I commend President Trump and his team for their work to get a renewed senior cease fire deal over. The finish line ends by saying now, with the backing of the US and the world, the Middle east is on a path to peace that I hope endures in a future for Israelis and Palestinians, like with equal measures of peace, dignity and safety. This sentiment seems to be, I mean, inescapable is maybe the right word for it. It's kind of hard for Joe Biden to react in this moment because obviously there was a ceasefire secured literally on the eve of his presidency back in January. That ceasef turned out to be temporary and obviously that was the Trump administration pushing it over the finish line, even by the admission of the Biden administration at that point in time. And so it's a very unsteady moment right now for the left. There's no question about that. On the one hand, there are many people who don't trust this peace deal and are pessimistic about the prospect for long term hope in the, in the Middle east, particularly for the people of Gaza. And I think that's a perfectly defensible position. In fact, I think it's, it's such a defensible position that basically everybody feels right now, everybody feels right now uneasy about how durable this is, how long this is able to endure, how long this lasts. But it's obvious. And we'll put this cover of Time magazine up on the screen if we have it. Donald Trump just this afternoon is now gracing the COVID of Time magazine. The article says, quote, the living Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan alongside a Palestinian prisoner release. The deal may become a signature achievement of Trump's second term. And it could mark a strategic turning point for the Middle East. So that last part is obviously critical. It could mark a strategic turning point for the Middle East. That's where you see the Joe Bidens and the Elizabeth Warrens of the world, who we'll talk about in just one moment, because of course, it's Indigenous Peoples Day. That's where you see them struggling to grapple with the politics here because everybody has to admit that this genuinely is new. This is a historic, sweeping peace plan. We are in phase one of it right now, as was discussed on last Wednesday show, just while the details were coming down, we talked about how phase one of a very, very fragile peace deal that could be littered with tripwires and all of that. But if it lasts, if it lasts three months, if it lasts six months, if it lasts a year, what we've just entered is a new chapter in the Middle east because right now these Negotiations have brought together a coalition. And that coalition, including Donald Trump, who's the head of this peace board, by the way, is now responsible for trying to hold this peace together. And the war is over. I have to tell you, just before we went live tonight, I finished watching the new October 7th documentary about the Nova Music Festival on Paramount. And it just underscores the depth of the security failures that day before, during and after. And there was a lot of suspicion around Netanyahu's long term objectives and intent on prolonging the conflict. And I won't weigh in on one direction or the other, except to say that many people believed he was in some ways afraid of what peacetime could bring. A reckoning politically for himself, perhaps. Because again, when you revisit October 7th, now that the hostages are returned bodies, living hostages, that conversation about those failures, of course there's all of Netanyahu's own problems with corruption scandals and all of that that are going to bubble to the surface. But the security failure, I think, is now going to creep back into the discourse in a way that is absolutely critical, absolutely critical, stunning and essential for the future of the country as well. To dig into what exactly went wrong on that day. And Netanyahu is, is now going to have even more questions to answer. He's been answering these questions for two years. But now that the war is over and it feels like the dust has settled and a new chapter has been opened, those questions are really going to mount for Netanyahu. Just a shocking documentary, too. I don't necessarily want micro and watching it because the raw footage that's spliced together between Hamas body cameras and Nova music festival goers on their iPhones puts it all into such, such stark relief. All right, let's move on to Marjorie Taylor Greene, who went on Tim Dillon's podcast over the weekend for honestly, a fantastic episode, riveting content, I have to say. Shout out to you, Tim Dillon, for this conversation with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Megan's conversation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think that was a month or two ago, was also just incredible insight into someone who I think is truly one of the few normies, and that sounds funny here in D.C. to call Marjorie Taylor Greene, somebody who was elected with this baggage of former conspiracies, all that type of thing, to call her a normie. But if you spend time with normal people outside of D.C. marjorie Taylor Greene is a suburban small business Facebook mom. And everyone in this country right now has lost trust in the government. And so a lot of these conspiracies we all know that if you look across the board at Institutional Trust have become more and more attractive as people have gotten more and more skeptical. It's not to say any individual conspiracy theory is correct. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has made interesting sort of, I don't want to call them apologies kind of apologies, but more explanations for why she's. She said what she said in the past, and now people are acting as though it's some major surprise that Marjorie Taylor Greene, this government shutdown, is saying, hey, the administration seems to be going in a direction that those average rally goers. She spoke in great detail about how the administration should be focused on the people that she knows very well. She's basically one of them who waited in the freezing rain, in the scorching heat, in lines outside Trump rallies for the better part of the last 10 years, who don't get special dispensation, who aren't Javier Milei, who's getting the better of this soybean deal at the moment because of the bailout, and they aren't. She made this point as well. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, who worked very, very hard against Donald Trump for a long time, decided to start saying nice things about Donald Trump and seems to be reaping rewards in the form of favorable government treatment. And she says she's been making this argument about health care. I'm going to roll the clip first, but I think it's really interesting and I think it tells us something about not just politics, but media. So let's go ahead and roll S1. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tim Dillon.
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A
As a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry and as a realist, I can say we have to do something about labor, and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that. So, and I'm going to get pushback on that. But it's, I'm just living in reality from here on out.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And if I'm, if anybody's mad at me for saying the truth, then I'm sorry.
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B
Marjorie Taylor Greene, ladies and gentlemen, our Next President. Sorry, J.D.
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C
Vance.
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B
Well, I mean, these people are saying it. I go to dinner parties.
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A
Yeah, I heard you. Well, by the way, I heard you on Joe Rogan.
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C
Okay, so what she's talking about there has gone super viral with people who are allied with President Trump right now wanting Republicans to hold the line on the government shutdown, looking at it and saying, this is a betrayal of your party and your team. And Marjorie Taylor Greene very clearly comes out during that interview and says, I no longer want to wear the jersey of the Republican team. Now she is an elected Republican. So obviously there are, there's some reason, reason for consternation if you're a partisan, if you're a partisan Republican who sees the Republican Party as the premier vehicle for your preferred policies, to look at that and say, hey, Marjorie, maybe another time. As a journalist, of course that is not how I look at it and certainly not how I see a politician's job. So I probably have a different perspective than some Trump allies who maybe wish that she saved this until after they got dumbs to cave on the question of health subsidies for non citizens, which absolutely is on the table. There's some nuance, but that absolutely is on the table. My prediction is that Dems will cave on that. They will come to the table and then they'll try to act like the adults in the room who always said we only want citizens to benefit from health, health care subsidies. So Republicans now come to the table with us on guess what? Premiums exploding as Biden era 2021 tax credits. Extend, expand. I just said extended, expand. Neither is true. The word I was looking for was expire. Expire at the end of the year. And that's what Marjorie Taylor Greene has been breaking with the party over. It started with Israel, it is now these tax credits. And that is opening, I'm sorry, these health care credits. And that has opened up a new universe for Marjorie Taylor Greene to step into and basically break with the party. Talk a little bit more freely about, for example, immigration. That clip is Trump allies posting it all over and say, now Marjorie Taylor Greene is worried about cheap labor now that wage costs are rising. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants the cheap labor back. And that's not necessarily true. What she was saying in that clip is that she supports deportations, she supports a hawkish immigration policy, but she feels as though the administration needs an off ramp. And I think it's actually pretty fair to look back on the first, what, 10 months of the Trump administration, second Trump administration, and say these are gargantuan policy tasks in front of the administration. But whether it's Doge or some of these immigration raids, for example, that have pissed me off when I see US Citizens being detained, no matter if I like their politics or not, it pisses me off to see because. Because right now Keir Starmer is implementing digital ID in the United Kingdom partially because he is exploiting his citizens with legitimate concerns about illegal immigration in the country. Well, guess what he's saying, here you go. We're implementing digital IDs so that we can crack down on illegal immigration. There's a massive Palantir contract that is being worked out just over the course of the second Trump administration with dhs. It may specifically be with ICE to sweep up all kinds of surveillance data. Palantir doesn't collect the data. Palantir organizes the data, collates the data, essentially for the government. But if you think US Citizens are not being caught up in that dragnet, I have news for you. So if you are a podcaster or a journalist, you are much more free to say these things than if you are a literal partisan like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But this is where before we bring Spencer and I just wanted to mention it's very, very interesting. Marjorie Taylor Greene is breaking with her party right now because I was reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman over the weekend. He really laments Reagan at the time in the mid-80s, that Ronald Reagan is a television president. And he talks about how William Howard Taft would never be able to get elected in the age of television. He was simply too fat. And that's again, it's a lamentation. It's sort of nostalgic for a time before television. The argument fundamentally, he's explicitly building on Marshall McLuhan. We talk about that a lot on the show, the medium being the message. But he's saying the substance of, of politics is being lost in the distraction of performance and the distraction of aesthetics. And imagine where this is about to go when we hit sort of peak smartphone politics, where now the most important or the most prolific form of communication is smartphone videos, vertical smartphone videos. And those vertical smartphone videos feel very intimate. And the incentive for politicians is to look at they're not all going to be, but to look much more authentic. It's not enough for Chuck Schumer to talk into an iPhone camera and read off of a script. This is how the medium is changing the message. Chuck Schumer thinks, oh, the medium changing the message. I need to talk on Instagram without much production. No, it doesn't matter that you're just talking on Instagram without much production. Your message itself has to change and your message has to sound a lot more intimate and authentic. And what that's going to mean is the parties, at least on the surface, are going to look like they're losing control. Will they devise new ways to seize that control back? Perhaps. But Marjorie Taylor Greene is a really, really, I think, good if you see it in a bad sense canary in a coal mine. I don't know that it'll necessarily be worse than the status quo at all. It's a good canary in the coal mine for the parties about their loss of control. This is not going to last much longer for them. And if anything, Republicans should be taking this as a gift and a way to sort of, from a partisan perspective, work with the new medium and learn lessons of the new medium. We'll see. We'll see. All right, before we bring Spencer Clavin in the great Spencer Clavin. The legendary Spencer Clavin. Let me tell you, a warehouse. Things are very, very heavy right now. Politics is divisive, the news can be depressing, and it often feels like we, just as a society, have more pulling us apart than bringing us together. But here's something simple that unites us. Shopping small. Everybody loves to shop small. When you choose to buy from a small business, you're not just getting a product. You're helping someone's dream grow. And you're investing in values we all share. Honesty, craftsmanship, and community. Everybody believes in those three values. That's what a warehouse is all about. They've teamed up with nearly a hundred small business makers around the US to bring you handmade goods filled with heart and creativity, uniting people of all backgrounds in this singular mission. It's a beautiful website, guys. Head on over there. So let's choose connection over division and show small businesses the support they deserve. Visit a warehouse shop.com and use code party for 15% off your first order. That's a warehouse shop code party.
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B
Hey, everyone, it's me, Andy Cohen. Buckle up, because I have a podcast called Daddy Diaries where I take my listeners on an as it happened, recount of life as a daddy to two kids, dozens of housewives, and the occasional fella. Listen to the Daddy Diaries to hear about my high highs and low lows of parenting, housewives, drama, and so much more. Daddy Diaries available wherever you listen to podcasts.
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C
Now let's return to the mythical, legendary, great Spencer Clavin. He's associate editor over at the Claremont Review of Books. He's the author of Light of the Mind, Light of the World, a wonderful book. And he is what had how many scotches so far, Spencer? One, two, three?
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B
You've been climbing for a while, Emily. I mean, I had to keep myself entertained somehow.
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C
I was watching you in the zoom box.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And I was getting increasingly hot under the collar because I was hearing you talk about the great Spencer Clavin, the legendary, the mythical And I think there's been a terrible mistake because I'm just the standard issue. Spencer or Clavin, I don't know if you ordered the legendary one online on Amazon, but this is, this is. Yeah, exactly. You're getting the TEEMU version, I'm afraid.
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C
But I ordered, I very much did not order the TEMU version. So here I am.
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B
Yeah, I'm afraid this is what happens when you drink and shop online, Emily.
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C
I never make those mistakes. Spencer. Actually. Of course not. You know, this bigger conversation about how things have changed since 2024. So, like the last year since 2024, Zora Mamdani, for example, posted, I think it was in 2020, wearing a glove, like a medical glove, because it was Covid era flipping off a statue of Christopher Columbus back at the, back in the day. And now we have the Vice President of the United States posting F9 here in response to a little Elizabeth Warren who reacted to the hostage release in a way that J.D. vance found objectionable. He, quote, tweets that and says, the President told me he did this on indig in honor of you, Spencer. How's that for a vibe shift? I mean, this is not 2020, right? Like, this is new. And I think that that period you were writing about very eloquently at the time of, and we were all talking about it constantly, of these heightened tensions that felt like they felt linear. It felt like we were at the beginning of something and certainly not at the end of something. It turns out maybe we were in the middle or maybe we were at the end. Now that we're looking at the Vice President trolling Elizabeth Warren, a well deserved troll, over her claim to indigenous personhood on Columbus Day.
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B
Yeah, this is Vance 2028 is what this is. This isn't 2024. This is looking ahead to the next presidency. But I think this thing you ended your monologue by talking about is actually the real vibe shift, and that is the transition from pre digital to post digital media. And that that sense of authenticity, whether it's genuinely authentic or just the ability to convey that that's what Donald Trump is actually a master at. Even though he's an older guy, he is a person just by sheer virtue, I think, of being kind of unhinged. He's somebody that can make you believe that he's really kind of typing on his phone and you hear people close to him saying, we have to take his phone away, or we wish we could take his phone away. But in reality, that's what makes him fit for this moment. And I think this scuffle that's going on with Vance and Warren and everybody kind of, you know, fighting gloves off politics about Columbus Day and October 7th, et cetera, et cetera, this is indicative of the world that we're. We're living in now. And I don't think we've lived through the last vibe shift. I wish we had. I wish this was like forever into the future. Woke is over, and now everybody is just going to happily build the JD Vance future or whatever, and we have that opportunity in front of us. But really, I think we're entering into a whole new era of politics. And the fact that that tweet you showed is about both October 7th and the hostages being released and Indigenous Peoples Day or Columbus Day is actually bizarrely perfect. Because one thing I was thinking on this Columbus Day is that the whole indigenous people's thing, the whole wretched of the earth, oppressor, oppressed way of understanding the world, is actually the exact same idea that the far left, which is now the part of the left that's in control, it's the same idea that the far left has about Israel. And they take this same rubric and they apply it to everything, right? That all conflicts are mapped onto who is the powerful, quote, unquote, white man, and who is the downtrodden, quote, unquote, indigenous person. And it doesn't matter how ill fitting that is for the relevant situation. It doesn't matter how complicated or nuanced or multifaceted the actual reality is on the ground. That's where the energy is on the left is with that way of. Of that singular way of understanding the world. And I think what we're doing really, as what we're living through, is we're moving away from whatever the politics of kind of post World War II America and the world was, into a fight over whether that's how we're going to view things. Are we going to live in a world of endless grievance and recrimination, or are we going to face up to the actual challenges on the ground as they really are, which is, I think, kind of what Trump stands for, for better or for worse, whatever else you may love or hate about him.
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C
Well, or let me try this out on you. Do we descend into raw power politics in a way that departs from the post. The post war neoliberal era? And you don't have to be. I mean, I should actually probably not even say neoliberal, but classical liberal era, the, the kind of industrial, global, classical liberal Era. Maybe that's. I don't. That's too many words, Spencer. But you write about this in, in your book to some extent. Tom Holland, at the end of Dominion frames wokeness as a hyper Christian worldview. This. This sort of steroid version of the Sermon on the Mount, where it. It elevates people who fall into oppressor, oppressed, necessarily, if they're in the oppressed category, and assigns virtue to them in a way that's polar opposite from, of course, how Nietzsche saw. I mean, this is sort of the same criticism that Nietzsche leveled at Christianity. And, you know, as you were talking about The Indigenous People October 7th connection, in a way, being oddly perfect. I look at that too, and I think the intentions behind both of these movements, not always, not categorically, but there are a lot of decent Americans who wanted. Wanted this war to end and wanted to stop to the suffering. There are a lot of decent Americans who look at Christopher Columb, they're like, oh, I so wish some of that wasn't a part of his legacy. And I guess the alternative to that is the. The era we came from or raw power politics. And here's Trump himself talking just yesterday about how he doesn't think he's. He's heaven material. Something like that. Right. We have a very secular but very sympathetic Christian president. Right. It's a strange time. And I don't know if you think there's symbolism to that or if it's more than a symbol. It sort of reflects something very real.
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B
Oh, Emily, it's time for a drink. I'm gonna take up my.
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C
Scott.
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B
Last time I was on here. Cheers. Last time I was on here, I had a martini because I have this delusion that mixing cocktails makes me look cool. But I was watching those hostage release videos and I thought it's time for truly celebratory snifter of bunahab and whiskey from the island of Islay. Yeah. Okay.
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C
So, yeah, I'm drinking raw Campari, by the way. That's what this is, my fall drink. Raw Campari.
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B
That's. It's for Georgia Hard on this podcast. I almost thought you said raw hemp. And I was like, this is a very different sort of situation than I expected. Okay, so you raise a profound point.
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C
Evergreen sentiment. Spencer, welcome to the show.
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B
Yeah, you want to just paste profound.
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C
Points every time I open my mouth.
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B
Man to the zoom screen, baby.
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C
Get used to it. This is like your third time on the show.
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B
Yeah, I know, it's true. I should. At this point, I Shouldn't even pause to mention it, but I have to because I'm gathering my thoughts. I have so many interesting ones that I need to just like vampires out second and flatter you. Okay, so some of our oldest Greek texts in the corpus, some of the most ancient Greek writing there is written in this writing system called. Called linear B. Kind of before the Alphabet that we now use for. For Greek and that the Greek. The sort of classical Greeks use emojis. Right, precisely. So actually just. Yeah, just. Just TikTok videos, they were. They were kind of like drawing out individual vertical screen. It's remarkable how things come full circle. But one of the. Some of the tablets that we have in. In linear be contain among other things, the name Erinyes. You can spell this out. It's one of the oldest things you can spell out in Greek. And the Erinyes are the Furies. They're the goddesses of blood guilt. And this is one of the reasons why we think the Furies might be some of the oldest Greek goddesses, maybe pre Greek, they might have inherited them from even older societies. Why do I bring all of this up?
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C
It's to say that you're a loser.
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B
Yeah, because I'm such.
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C
You read way too much.
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B
Yeah, exactly. Because you really listen. You knew what you were getting into. You knew what you signed up for. You were on team of. You can't lie to me. You were on team EMU at 2 in the morning. It was. You'd close down the after party. It was the after after party. And you said, I really want to hear about some ancient Greek goddesses of vengeance. Yes, Power politics and the politics of vengeance, which is to say blood feuding, family feuds, Hatfields and McCoys. That tribe took my goat a hundred years ago, and now we kill them.
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C
Even though Clavin's versus Knowles.
- [32:03]
B
Precisely. So that is the oldest form of politics in the world. In fact, that is the default state of humanity. So when you ask are we going to move past neoliberalism, globalist, whatever, into power politics, my answer is that really is the only other place to go. I mean, the story that the Greeks told was that they put the Furies away in order to create democracy. Democracy and representative government and like deliberation and justice and these sort of impersonal rights that people had in ancient Athens. That was the alternative to the thing that everyone else was doing everywhere, which is just like your ancestors killed my answers and now I kill you. And I really do think that. That Christianity and Republican government represent two actual advances over that default state. And it might be that the only place to go is back. And this is kind of one of the things that Holland's book, which you mentioned reveals, is that Christianity is a radical break with pagan ethics. To reject it or get rid of it is really just to go back to paganism. I was just watching the Wicker Man. You ever see the original Wicker Man? Not the Nicholas Cage one.
- [33:32]
C
I haven't seen the.
- [33:33]
B
Okay, I hadn't either. And it's a wildly. The movie's wildly ahead of its time and it is about how the free love culture of the 60s and 70s is actually just child murdering paganism. So I do think, yes, the only other option ahead of us besides kind of Christendom, besides the west and figuring out how to do the west in the 21st century in the age of the iPhone. The only other possibility is a kind of regression into what I have called zombie paganism. Right. It's like it's not the original thing because that was sort of natural and healthy. This is digging up an old, old form of politics out of its grave and letting it roam around wildly and like decomposing in real time and also.
- [34:22]
C
And also sort of slapping modern clothes on it. Like that's the kind of the metaphor sort of works there, Spencer. Like putting a bucket hat on the zombie of paganism.
- [34:30]
B
That's right. Well, I hadn't started drinking when I came up with the metaphor, so.
- [34:36]
C
It'S okay now. Well, actually, let's go ahead and talk about Anthony Fauci and then get to Peter Thiel because these are all connected. So I want to. To play this clip of Anthony Fauci on pbs, a recent PBS interview. This particular clip went viral and caught, I shouldn't say a lot of attention because I went and searched Google News for how much coverage it got. Literally no major news coverage, but it went viral on social media. So let's roll this S2.
- [35:03]
B
And then there's the transformative, if I might use that word, experience that we've all had now in year five of. So the thought that we won't have another pandemic I think is naive at best and just not completely unrealistic at worst. So to rephrase your question, I'm convinced that there will be another pandemic. And that's the reason why we have to be perpetually prepared to prevent the terrible impact of a pandemic like so.
- [35:40]
C
Dr. Fauci's perpetual preparation was gain of function research, which he described in different ways when it came to light that gain of function research was likely behind this pandemic. But gain of function research has been supported by, I don't know, maybe half the scientific community. It's long been really controversial, but has been a controversial debate because we've framed it and couched it in these sort of Western liberal terms that we must, we must gain the function. Literally, we must gain the function in order to prepare. And if this is, I mean, if what we all surmise about the pandemic at this point actually is the truth, which is that a lab that was getting American funding despite its lax security, created a virus that killed millions of people around the world. Spencer, it puts us in this very interesting moment of evaluating neoliberalism through the criteria of the. The sort of dressing of post war Christianity that so much of the neoliberal world brought about. Am I wrong? I'm wrong in many ways, I'm sure. But tell me that I'm right.
- [36:50]
B
I'm still. You're absolutely. You're right about everything. It's amazing. It's like I've never seen anything like it. I'm still stuck on why won't Anthony Fauci go away? I mean, that is to me the perennial mystery of our times. Like, talk about failing upward. This is a person who, not everyone remembers that before he screwed up the COVID epidemic pandemic, he also screwed up the AIDS epidemic by telling people they could get it by like. I forget exactly what.
- [37:17]
C
How dare you.
- [37:18]
B
I'm so sorry to tell you this. To my knowledge, the AIDS epidemic did not leak from a lab in In Wuhan, but. And was. Was not the result of gain function research. But this is kind of. Of amazing, right? The perpetual preparedness. It's like the Kantian perpetual peace, right? This is just the end of history state where we're always going to be on perennial alert against the. The merest possibility of infection. And it really is. And you and I talked about this back when it was happening, when we were in the height of COVID right? It did represent a kind of vision of the end of history. It was like we are going to just achieve stasis. We're going to grind down, not to like a kind of balance or equilibrium, this dynamic negotiation which is the Western tradition of deliberative politics and prudence and republican government. But instead we are simply going to reach absolute zero, right? We're just going to find the lowest possible point where no danger is ever incurred. We're going to minimize risk. And this idea has no natural endpoint Right. And this is why people like us were saying it's not going to matter when they get the vaccine, right? They're telling you that you just have to do all of this until somebody comes up with a COVID vaccine, and then they'll finally let you out of your house. But actually, that's not going to be enough, because even vaccines don't flatline human life in the way that they're looking for, right? They're looking for a state of perfection, a state of safety and security and total planning that can only happen basically in death or after death. Right? I mean, Christians believe that this perfect human life, where we shall be free from the hands of our enemies, that's something that never will be achieved. This side of paradise, we can kind of approximate toward it, we can hope for it, we can look prophetically into the future. But. But here and now, we are in an imperfect world where our knowledge is imperfect and our souls are, you know, are. Are not yet fully what they shall be. And so we just have to muddle along as best we can and accept that death is in the world and that there are dangers, et cetera. When you hear Fauci talk about perpetual preparedness, always being prepared, constantly being on alert, he's right. There will be another pandemic. There will be more wars. There will be more rumors of wars, right? This is the state of the world. And the idea, the kind of weird, like, eschatological vision that we're gonna close off the danger of that and we're just gonna escape death and we're gonna be free of it all. I actually think that is, like, much, much more dangerous than anything that we. Like any pandemic that we might face down the line, much as many of the COVID responses were more dangerous and harmful than Covid itself was.
- [40:19]
C
Spencer, I'm going to take that as an incredibly poetic and artful transition that you did deliberately into this next subject.
- [40:26]
B
Everything is deliberate. Whatever. If it's. If it's good, I did it on purpose. Anything that is bad, I. It was. It was the bots.
- [40:35]
C
It's good to sort of establish those parameters. But while we're translating Greek, let's talk about the catacombs of Second Thessalonians, because Peter Thiel, obviously, co founder of Palantir and tech mogul, one of the tech moguls, really, not just tech mogul, but one of the tech moguls, one of the most important historical figures that is living right now, has been giving a series of lectures around the world about The Antichrist. He sat down for a two part interview with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution and has basically been giving a version of that. He went to Ross Douthit's podcast. He was in San Francisco recently. And the Washington Post wrote up some leaks from the San Francisco lecture. The headline here is Inside Billionaire Peter Thiel's Private Lectures Warnings of The Antichrist and U.S. destruction. The question of the catacomb is enormously complicated. And Spencer, you and I could talk in like very weedy and useless ways about Carl Schmitt and all of the different, different elements of this cauldron.
- [41:40]
B
And now we're going to. Congratulations, audience. Here we go.
- [41:44]
C
Well, but I mean this, this gets what when you were talking just now about Fauci and this idea of perpetual preparedness that does sound not entirely unlike the description of the Antichrist from the Bible. And Thiel's lectures on the catacomb have been. And basically I have a very cynical perspective on this, Spencer, basically pitching generative AI, not just AI, but generative AI LLM type of stuff as the catechin that is holding back the Antichrist, according to what Paul wrote in Second Thessalonians, which you may actually have. You may actually know that by heart. You may have committed that to memory. I have not. But the catacon basically is what Paul says is quite, was holding back the Antichrist. Schmidt saw in that Communism one world Communism. Peter Thiel has been talking a little bit about that as well. But he's also posited that somebody like Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist and that it may be generative AI that re injects dynamism into the world and allows humans freely to posit their own solutions or to create their own solution. Solutions with agency as individuals. And that holds back the Greta Thunbergs from their positions as the Antichrist. Now you can correct my interpretations of dispenser if you've seen it go in a different way. My concern is that Peter Thiel has seen a Christian revival in Silicon Valley, which I know you know is very real because you literally wrote a book kind of aimed at that exact audience about this very phenomenon as sort of in the vein.
- [43:23]
B
I suppose that's true.
- [43:24]
C
Oh, interesting.
- [43:25]
B
Right.
- [43:25]
C
So, but my cynical interpretation is he saw that happening and said a lot of Christians are hearing from these creators of LLMs, generative AI, saying we're worried that this is a portal to hell. We are worried that LLMs are conjuring demons, and we think maybe the world is going to end because of generative AI. And this is sort of a pitch for Thiel, who is sort of a Girardian, not so much a lowercase orthodox Christian, to reassure Christians and to sort of have them buy into the. Get their permission for generative AI because he feels like it's not going to come from Democrats or the left.
- [44:04]
B
So all that, stop worrying and love ChatGPT.
- [44:07]
C
Yeah, I love the machine. Yeah. So I ask you again, Spencer, am I wrong?
- [44:14]
B
I think you may be half right this time.
- [44:17]
C
Tell me.
- [44:18]
B
I know this is not why you have me on your podcast.
- [44:21]
C
No, it is.
- [44:21]
B
That's exactly why I'd like to start. Start perhaps with this Washington Post article, which really tickles me because if you read the Legacy Press, there is truly nothing more sinister or threatening than an arcane right wing intellectual. Like the way that these people report on Curtis Yarvin, my colleagues at the Claremont Institute, and now these Thiel lectures, which really are like, talk about dorky losers sitting around and talking. I mean, like, these are my people. Right. This is like, this really is right. Exactly. We're talking about the catacomb. We're getting in the weed. Like, and the way that these pieces portray this is always as like a dark, smoke filled back room where everyone rubs their hands together and talks in code about taking over the world. I've been in some of these smoke filled back rooms and I promise we're way, way less cool than this makes us sound. If only, right? If only we had that power. But. But basically, I think what's going on here is I'm working my way towards saying I don't think that Thiel is opportunistically taking advantage of a surge of Christian sentiment among techies. I think Thiel actually represents one wing of that surge and that he's been part of it.
- [45:46]
C
Right.
- [45:46]
B
Yeah. He's been helping organize it, he's been leading it. Yeah. And that in that capacity he has an interpretation of these passages not just about the catacomb, but about. About the Antichrist and the mark of the beast. And there's a lot of, you know, very, to me, arcane language in those texts that I think we're only supposed to understand, basically in retrospect. Right. I don't think that we're supposed to use this. In fact, I think that Jesus actually forbids us from using this to try and calculate when the world is going to end or like headed off at the pass or whatever. And as I'm talking, it's probably becoming clear that, like, my interpretation of These passages is somewhat different from Teal's. Right. Thiel thinks that these are warnings about a constant threat to humanity that always we are being tempted to veer between two extremes. One is maximal safety and the other is maximal recklessness. And I'm kind of like, I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, but like.
- [46:46]
C
But enter Fauci again.
- [46:47]
B
Yes, exactly. Right now he's saying the Antichrist of the moment is Greta Thunberg. Right. Is the person that wants to freeze all human activity and innovation for fear of destroying or offending the old gods. Right. Mother Nature will be angry. Another person he mentions is Eliezer Yudkowski, who's a big AI Doomer thinks that Grok is going to turn his all into paperclips.
- [47:12]
C
But one of those people who was instrumental in the design.
- [47:15]
B
Exactly. Right, right, right. He's the guy that's basically saying, oh, no, we have let Cthulhu out of the sea or whatever it is, and now we must roll this back as quickly as possible. And Teal is basically saying, no, in order to right the ship as an antidote, we need to be like AI maximalists. You can take that or leave it. It's not a plot to take over the world. It is a pitchforward for AI that is slightly more optimistic than I am. Right. I mean, my take. I don't know if we've talked about my take on AI, but my take is basically Psalm 115, which is about what happens when you carve idols and then pray to them as if they were gods. Right. I think that this stuff is inherently of some use, that the tech itself, you know, I've seen it used. Well, I've used it myself, I think with some success. But that the. The real threat that the Bible warns us against is treating things that only look like humans as if they had souls. Right. Eyes have they, but see not. Ears have they, but hear not. And those who make them are becoming like them. Right. Like, it's really about the way we look at our machines. Anyway, I.
- [48:26]
C
That's.
- [48:27]
B
That's my take on this. Teal has a slightly different one, which is like, in order to counterbalance. I think in order to counterbalance the Greta Thunberg Antichrist, we must go all in on American innovation and take AGI.
- [48:40]
C
To the no regulations, basically.
- [48:41]
B
Exactly.
- [48:42]
C
Just like, this is why I have a cynical perspective on it. It just. It seems to me like there's. He's very smart and clever and shrewd, and he notices that part of this Christian Revival is that there are people like you and I talking much more openly about faith who bring a faith based skepticism to some of these very, very powerful new tools. And because of that, do I think Thiel is insincere? No. But I think Thiel might be working from point A to get to point B by sort of using the catacomb idea to say we need to deregulate.
- [49:18]
B
You think it's motivated reasoning basically like you're reading your policy back into.
- [49:23]
C
If I were Peter Thiel and I needed a grand strategy to convince this one group of people who may hold back the Republican Party for being supportive of opening up regulations on AI. I actually think this would be a pretty, this would be a pretty smart approach.
- [49:40]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think all I'll say is we are all always in danger of doing that. Right. I mean everyone, I think needs to be checking himself about whether he started with the kind of thing he wants to do or the life he wants to live and then his read it back back into the Bible. People accuse me of doing this, by the way, with homosexuality all the time, which I, you know, obviously I probably.
- [50:02]
C
Would accuse you of doing that, but we don't even need to have that.
- [50:04]
B
We don't have to get into it. Right, right. But like this is a thing that. Yeah, exactly. But like this is the thing that, that this is a danger that is definitely real. And I think guys like me and perhaps like you are always frustrated, frustrating to innovators because our point of view on this is basically that human nature isn't changing anytime soon and that we're essential. Whatever tech we may invent, we remain essentially in the same spiritual condition which is like wretched and in need of salvation. And also maybe you'd agree with this, maybe you wouldn't, but I think that whole thing about like nobody knows when the end of the world is coming. Not the angels in heaven, not like human beings, not the Son, but only the Father. Right. Like there's this, there's a real kind of, to me veil dropped on this that makes me really skeptical of like, oh, the end of the world is coming. And in fact, like at the end of the day it's less sexy, but probably more true. Just to say, you know, repent and believe in the, in God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent and you shall be saved. Like that's, that's basically where we're at.
- [51:20]
C
I love that. I obviously want to talk about the CNN article that you highlighted. But before we do, just because you particularly have Good knowledge in this space. Can you give us a little bit of a truncated kind of historical context for the catacomb itself? I mean, obviously going back to Nero, there were people reading into Paul and Schmidt talking in the age of one world communism about was the 1920s. So it was probably Stalin. It's a recurring theme in the Christian world.
- [51:52]
B
Well, okay, I promise I really am speaking off the top of my head. So you are getting Temu Spencer Clayton right now about this. But if I remember correctly, there's two figures. The catacomb, which means the one who holds back or. Or restrains. And then the Antichrist, who is the one that ushers in or. Or is, you know, forced. You take the mark.
- [52:16]
C
Well, and this is. This is actually a better part of the. This brings up a better way to ask the question which I meant to do, which is the dial that gets to this. In this Teal interview, should Christians want to hold. Want to identify the Antichrist? Is the catacomb a Greta Thunberg figure? Is the catacomb a Christian fig. That's why I think it gets to your point about the. The sort of futility of trying to read into all of this. But as we are just thinking about the historical context, how have Christians thought about whether they should be someone who is like, trying to defeat the catacomb, focus on the Antichrist? Like, who is the. Is the catacomb? It just all. Is the catacomb a good figure because they're holding back the Antichrist?
- [52:57]
B
Well, right. I think that's a really good question. Like, my perspective on this is another place where I. I differ from Teal is Maranatha. Right? It's in. It's in the epistles. Lord, come quickly. And I think many of the early Christians basically thought that what Jesus was talking about was the destruction of the second Temple. Right.
- [53:17]
C
Which.
- [53:17]
B
Which, like, so really spoiler alert. After the resurrection, like, and. And so it has been a perennial feature of the Christian church to think that the world is always on the verge of ending. And for my money, that may always be true. Like, there is something about. There's something for the point of view that prophecies do refer to a specific time in the future, but also describe a pattern that is constantly recurring throughout history. So I think salvation history is like this. Like, if you read Isaiah and the prophecies of the suffering servant and all of the things that seem to refer to Jesus, I think he is also describing the liberation of the Jews from their exile in Babylon, which happened before Jesus. And he's describing many, many acts of liberation that have happened in Jesus name ever since the resurrection. So it's possible for kind of these texts to be so. Describe patterns that are so deeply ingrained into the structure of the universe that they recur and repeat themselves in larger and smaller ways kind of throughout. Throughout history.
- [54:25]
C
So now you're a Gerardian too?
- [54:27]
B
I mean, yeah, I think I really like Gerard. I think he's like, got a lot to say for himself. But the short answer to your question is like, I don't think actually that it's our job to stop the apocalypse from coming. And arguably the lindy trad Christian view is that we should all be very eager for the apocalypse to happen or at least for, you know, we're not supposed to want to live, I guess, in the moment when it happens, because that's when everything is really going to suck. Right? Jesus says, like, pray that you will not. Not be around to see this. But I do think that ultimately, since we think that we win in the end of this, we. We do. Like, holding back the apocalypse isn't necessarily the. The obvious Christian thing to do. And it's possible that by trying to hold it back, you're really just playing into God's hands because he's got this whole, like, drama orchestrated that includes both the catacomb and the Antichrist and kind of balances them against one another. That would be. That would be for my money, like, lord, come quickly.
- [55:28]
C
Right, okay. So that's really well said. And no small. I mean, it's no small matter when we're talking about how to think in the terms of how Thiel is thinking here and how to evaluate what Thiel is saying here. It's a fairly important bit of nuance. Spencer.
- [55:42]
B
Yeah. Your eschatology really does affect, I think, the way that you, for example, do politics. Right. Because if you think that it's possible, in the words of. Was it Eric Vogelin to imminentize the eschaton, Right. To, like, bring about the conditions.
- [55:55]
C
You were gonna do it.
- [55:56]
B
Yeah. You couldn't. Right, exactly. Like, drink. Is it on your. Is it part of the drinking game? Yeah. Well.
- [56:06]
C
So it does.
- [56:07]
B
It does matter very much. And like, people like Teal would accuse people like me of quietism. Right. Because my point of view is basically like, nope, we're just doing. Doing like, the reason that deliberative Republican politics is kind of the best option is because it doesn't envision a future end of history where we will achieve some perfect state. It's just like we're just here, right, trying to do justly and love mercy and build just societies in the context of a world that will eventually end. But we're not trying to, like, make that happen or bring it about or whatever, Whatever. And so we get. I am like, very kind of complacent about this sort of stuff. Like people say, oh, AI is going to end the world or it's going to bring about the utopia. And I'm like, it might, but that's not really, you know, it's kind of above my pay grade.
- [57:03]
C
Yeah, that's more of an Andrew Clavin question, maybe.
- [57:06]
B
No, precisely. It is from him that I learned. Learned to kick back and not.
- [57:11]
C
Not worry about complacency is a great inherited trait. Okay, Spencer, you drew my attention to this incredible article from CNN about the male gaze. And I want to read a quote from it. The recent rise of weight loss medications coincided with social media influencers sharing ways to get smaller and no longer celebrating bodies of all size. Advertisements followed suit, making men's desire once again a dominating factor in how stories are told, making men's desires once again a dominating factor in how stories are told and how women are portrayed. How had these discarded ideas made their way back into circulation? These discarded ideas, which, by the way, Spencer will obviously always be with us because they're fundamental to human nature. Didn't we all agree we were through with them? The culprit, I have learned, is the male gaze. It was always there, but it now. But now it has stepped back into the spotlight. This written in such casual language on CNN is incredible, especially in the context of this big conversation we've just been having about modernity. Spencer. Because it is so almost lackadaisical about discarding fundamental elements of human nature, but doing it in this, like, sort of TikTok news of the day. I mean, TikTok in the sense of like 60 minutes, like news of the day.
- [58:36]
B
That was great. Could you do that again, please? That was, that was really. I really liked that.
- [58:39]
C
Spencer. I'd prefer not to.
- [58:41]
B
Oh, really? You don't perform?
- [58:44]
C
Yeah. What do you think I am like a zoo animal? Spencer? Yes, but it's like so back in 2020, of course, people like Lizzo were. It is true that, that the elites were trying to get rid of the, quote, male gaze by promoting Lizzo as healthy, healthy at any size. That was glossy magazine coverage. Wasn't just Lizzo all over the place. Now that OIC exists, we're sort of like vibe shift. Magazines are hot again. Allegedly. I don't know, but there's something kind of interesting there.
- [59:21]
B
Well. Well, speaking as a male gay, I, too, find it really objectionable when men gaze at me with such desire. I'm sorry. I've been waiting for. Right, yeah. Yeah. It's like, I, too, hate being beautiful and desirable.
- [59:43]
C
Cat called the construction workers.
- [59:46]
B
I mean, this whole line of thought has really always seemed, like, protesting too much to me. Like, oh, no, it's so awful how all the men, they look at me and they find me so beautiful, and it really just hurts my little heart.
- [59:59]
C
Oh, stop.
- [60:00]
B
Don't do it anymore. But on top of that, yeah, there's. There's the whole vibe shift kind of angle to this. I'm not so sure that the Ozempic thing, how much that's going to wash. Like, it was not Ozempic. That caused people to get fed up with looking at, like. Yeah, exactly. With looking at, like, obese rappers spilling out of their underwear. Right.
- [60:27]
C
Nobody was ever okay with that. Just.
- [60:29]
B
This was. All right.
- [60:31]
C
The women's studies department of Oberlin was overjoyed about that. It was pretty much relegated to the faculty lounge.
- [60:38]
B
Well, that's the part of it that really, that I find actually most interesting. You know, there was just this study, I think it was an internal study done at Harvard about how basically grade inflation and political grandstanding has taken over the school, has, like, eaten it up from the inside out. And now a Harvard degree. You know, you might have learned something if you went to Harvard. You might equally just have spent four years learning to disguise your true sentiments and tamp down any spark of originality that that might occur to you.
- [61:13]
C
Because everyone's got a little Pete Hegseth in them. Everyone wants to go off on the fat generals, but at Harvard, we're taught to resist that. I, too, unlearning the Pete Hegseth in all of us.
- [61:23]
B
That's right. We need to be trained, reprogrammed, deprogrammed even out of our fat phobia. Right. So I did not look up who the authors of this article are, because life is very short, and I have important things to do. But I can only presume that these are two. I think it's two women that are writing, like, a think piece based on their women's studies degree.
- [61:49]
C
Oh, my.
- [61:49]
B
Or it's just one.
- [61:50]
C
Yeah, it could have been anyone.
- [61:52]
B
I think it took two people to write this, write this article, if you can believe it. And what's really, to me, what hurts my sensitive scholar's heart just a little bit, is to reflect on the fact that, like, if we lived in a society, outlets like CNN could be running pieces by actual scholars informing the public about, oh, shut up, this is like going to cut the feed and I start talking about this. But, you know, like, there was a time I'm old enough to actually not old enough to remember, but like, there was a time I'm told, when guys like Tom Holland would have, say, a regular column in the Guardian, right, When, when you would have this idea of the public intellectual. It was not a news of the day story. Maybe it had a bit of a news hook, maybe it was attached to some, to some news story, but really it was a way for the people who have invested time and energy in becoming experts in some field and in whom this civilization had also invested resources and, and, and education is a way for them to give back to the world. Right? That was, that was kind of part of their obligation as, as people that got to spend time thinking we've now basically, like everything else, the left has taken this and worn it as a skin suit, hollowed it out, zombified it and turned it into a decrepit, rotting shell of itself so that you end up with these articles about concepts about nothing. Right? This is literally not. No word in this piece refers to any underlying reality. There are like three at least degrees of remove from any concept in this article and anything that's actually true to what's going on in human nature, basically, if you translate the piece, the subtext is the campaign of intimidation and lies that we managed to foist upon the American public for about five years has now disintegrated. And we are dismayed that people aren't ashamed of their natural inclinations anymore. Right? That's what's, that's what the piece is about. And so if you consider the layers and generations and decades of social failure that have to go into creating a situation where people like this can become credentialed at major institutions for talking absolute rot. Not just while talking absolute rot, but they have degrees in talking absolute rot, which then is published in our ostensibly major news outlets. That part of it, if you think about it too much, actually does make you want to drink yourself into a stupor because it's just like very shameful that this happens.
- [64:38]
C
I mean, ostensibly, you've just said a lot of smart things. But I also am of the great suspicion that was a loquacious, thickly veiled pitch for your own CNN.com column.
- [64:51]
B
Spencer Clavin put me in coach. I promise never to talk about the male gays. No, I wanna. I wanna post at cbs. Right. That's the. I always get them mixed up. But CBS is the one that just got taken over by Barry Weiss. Right.
- [65:04]
C
So that's.
- [65:05]
B
Right. Who knows? Maybe that'll. That'll fix things.
- [65:07]
C
But I think really, Spencer, where they need you is CNN at this point.
- [65:10]
B
That's true. Yeah. It's a good point. All right.
- [65:12]
C
They're already writing about the male gaze.
- [65:13]
B
So I need to apply my male gaze to some sensitive issues of national.
- [65:18]
C
Politics as a matter of representation. It's only.
- [65:21]
B
Yeah.
- [65:22]
C
Spencer Clavin, associate editor over at the Claremont Review of Books and author of Light of the Mind, Light of the World, which is wonderful. It was such a pleasure to have you on the show tonight. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [65:33]
B
A true delight, Emily. Always, anytime. Thank you for having me.
- [65:36]
C
The best. We look forward to having Spencer back very, very soon. Now, I have thoughts on Hilaria Baldwin in just one Mom. But before that, did you know. I know you know this. Chips and fries were once cooked in beef tallow until the 1990s when corporations swapped it for cheap seed oils. Now, those oils make up 20% of the average American's daily calories and are linked to inflammation and metabolic issues. Somehow, of course, that got sold as, quote, healthy. But Masa chips is flipping the script. They use just three ingredients. Organic corn, sea salt, and 100% grass fed beef tallow. No seed oils, no filling, just bold flavor and serious crunch. Strong enough to scoop guac or salsa without crumbling. I tested this out last night during the Packer game. Served some Masa chips. People were beside themselves. Jaw on the floor, wanted to get their own bags right away. Snacking on Masa is really a whole different vibe. You feel satisfied, light and energized with zero crash bloat or that gross sluggish fog. And the beef tallow is so good. That's the secret sauce. It keeps you full and focused, not mindlessly munching. My favorite flavor, I like the spicy flavor. I like lime. I like churro. The zing hits just right. So if you're ready to give Masa a try, go to masachips.comafterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 25 off your first order. Great deal. That's masachips.comafterparty, and code AFTERPARTY for 25 OFF your first order. And if you don't feel like ordering online, good news. That's fine. Masa is now available nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a bag before they are gone.
- [67:09]
B
Hey everyone, it's me, Andy Cohen. Buckle up because I have a podcast called Daddy Diaries where I take my listeners on an as it happened recount of life as a daddy to two kids, dozens of housewives and the occasional fella. Listen to the Daddy Diaries to hear about my high highs and low lows of parenting, housewives, drama and so much more. Daddy Diaries available wherever you listen to podcasts podcasts.
- [67:31]
A
I'm Dr. Sarah Rahal, the founder and CEO of Armra. I developed armor Colostrum because I know your body was designed to thrive. It's your natural state, your birthright, and you can reclaim it. Colostrum is the first nutrition we receive in life with every essential nutrient our bodies need. It's nature's original blueprint for health. After a devastating health crisis almost took my life, I made it my mission to harness this power. Using proportion proprietary technology, Armor captures over 400 bioactive nutrients in every scoop, delivering over 1000 benefits that transform your health at its foundation. Whether for gut health, metabolism, skin, hair, immunity, mood, energy, fitness or recovery, I invite you to join this collective revival of health and discover radical transformation for yourself. Visit armour.com that's a r m r a dot com and enter code health30 for 30% off your first subscription order. This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose street, cure or prevent any disease.
- [68:31]
C
Maybe Hilaria Baldwin wants some masa chips to celebrate her Hispanic heritage and to wallow after getting voted off Dancing with the Stars. Now, I don't think I've ever seen an episode of Dancing with the Stars. I'm not opposed to watching Dancing with the Stars. I understand that it's fairly addictive television. I like the communal aspect of it, by the way. But I'm going to read from an E. News article here that's a spoiler alert. I'm going to share this tab first. Okay, so E News reports Hilaria Baldwin. I can't read this first line. I'm sorry, I can't read it. I think I have to read it. Hilaria Baldwin is two stepping toward the haters. Who wrote that? This is why you need to put Spencer Clavin in. Whether it's CNN or E. Online, someone's gotta put him in because these this cannot continue. This is. This is a crime. Hilaria Baldwin is two stepping toward the haters following her elimination last week from Dancing with the stars. The 41 year old, shared why she believes she and her partner Gleb Savchenko were booted from season 34 of the competition series, quote, quote, I did get bullied off the show, Hilaria said in an Oct. 12 Instagram Live, referring to the criticism she received online throughout her four weeks on Dancing with the Stars. I did. That's for sure. That's for sure. This is interesting because I think Hilaria Baldwin has fundamentally not reckoned with the fact that she is unlikable to everybody outside of Manhattan. Like, just profoundly unlikable. Her public Persona as her real. Like, as a real human being. She may actually be nice, but if you watched the reality show that they put out, oh, my gosh, it was a travesty. And if you want, if you. If you paid attention to her entire career, she's been acting literally as just a human being in her public life, seemingly her private life, as well as Hilaria, when her real name. Her real name game is Hillary. Maybe you remember this controversy from just a couple of years back. It was. It was pretty incredible. Here is Pop Crave. Now, this is what I didn't want to spoil earlier. Here is Pop Crave posting this, this video back in. So this was from 2025, but this first started going viral. I want to say it was like 2021 or 2022. Everybody was, like, cooped up because of COVID and started just snooping on Hilaria Baldwin's life. Her real name is Hillary. She's from Boston. She kept pretending to be Hispanic. And this is how far that jig went.
- [71:17]
A
I learned this from when I was a kid.
- [71:20]
C
Don't look it up online because you'll learn something different. Are you listening to that accent? This woman is from Boston. It's about to get worse. But this woman is from Boston and she is complaining that she was bullied off Dancing with the stars in 2025. Because it couldn't possibly have just been that people don't like her. I learned this from when I was a kid. He learned okay, but I met it before.
- [71:42]
B
Hold on. Can you please explain what your.
- [71:45]
C
There we go. I don't know what that one is.
- [71:48]
A
But I can tell you that my tortilla.
- [71:49]
B
So rude.
- [71:50]
C
Is potatoes. You have to not cut them too tiny because they're not going to have the right texture. And then does that sound like a woman from Boston? Potatoes. Like, you know, here we go. I. My husband hates. She pretended just then that she forgot the English word for onion. That's what just happened in this cooking video. She straight up pretended this is from somewhere in the last 10 years. Hilaria, who's actually Hillary from Boston, was putting on such a facade that she actually pretended to forget the English word onion because she was in such a zone, speaking her native tongue, of course, which is Spanish. And it turned out to be sort of classic diagnosable case of study abroad syndrome, where a white girl from Boston really wanted to identify with another community to make herself look more interesting and exotic, despite again, being Hillary from Boston. And now she wonders, or she blames bullying, by the way. Listen, she's a very wealthy, powerful person. It's hard to argue that any online mob of average people who just don't like this woman and find the whole thing kind of amusing is actually bullying her because of the power dynamic that's implied by the word bullying. I don't think that by talking about this, I'm bullying Hilaria Baldwin. This woman is like extremely wealthy, very famous, very connected. I hardly think that somebody in a spare bedroom wearing a baseball cap at 11pm on a Tuesday is bullying Hilaria. So. So take that for what you will. But the power dynamic is obvious that she thinks average. The idea that she thinks average Dancing with the Stars viewers and voters would have any ability to even bully her is kind of speaks to the level of victimization that she sees herself at here. Now, to be fair, I'm talking about her right now, right? Like this woman does get a lot of online criticism. It is directly a consequence of her inviting a lot of online criticism by being. Being publicly obnoxious and objectionable for over a decade now. And some of it goes wildly too far, of course, some of it goes wildly too far. Some people are outright mean, some people are nasty, Some people are just awful. And we talk a lot on the show about how the Internet incentivizes that type of behavior. But to blame bullying rather than just sit with, with and cope with the reality that the public just really doesn't like you, Hilaria Baldwin, because you lied to them for a very long time about something very stupid. Maybe they thought they got this reality show and had reframed themselves with the public, even though nobody watched this reality show. I did watch it, actually, but I only made it through a couple of episodes. So it's another. It's like a classic case. The theme through tonight's episode is that 2020 is over. Some people are just now realizing it. This era where we all had pro to pretend to be ridiculous. Most of the country's done with that. Not everybody's done with that. It'll still be with us for a really long time, but some people are having a harder time coping with it than others. Okay, as a reminder, I will be joining Megan and Glenn Greenwald in San Antonio, Texas on October 24th for the wonderful Megan Megan Kelly Live Tour. Go to Megyn Kelly.com for ticket information. Of course you can shoot me an email over@emilyoublemaycare media.com I read all of them. Respond to as many as possible on happy hour or actually over email as well. So we will be back on Wednesday with more happy hour. Excited to see you then, Gubbers. Have a great night everyone.
- [75:55]
A
Hey everyone, it's Nikki and Bri, and we're here to let you know that we have a podcast, the Nikki and Bri Show. Yes, and we've got new episodes every Monday and Thursday. We're serving up real deal conversations that go beyond the cameras. Think Motherhood Confessions, Sisterhood Vibes, Boss Business Energy, and TV Life Tea. Need a laugh? We got you craving inspo. We got inspiration and affirmations on deck. Want a little cry or a big? Heck yes. That's our jam. Whether we're breaking down pop culture, sharing parenting wins or fails, unpacking personal growth, or just riffing on everyday chaos, nothing is off limits. Plus, we welcome incredible guests, play our favorite games, and do what only sisters can keep it 100 while raising a glass together. So pop a bottle, hit play, and come hang with us. Listen to the Nikki and Bree show wherever you get your podcast.