Part Four: How Peter Thiel Became the Gravedigger of Democracy

Summary

Behind the Bastards: Part Four - How Peter Thiel Became the Gravedigger of Democracy

Hosted by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this episode of Behind the Bastards, hosts Robert Evans and Noah Shachtman delve deep into the controversial life and influence of Peter Thiel, a prominent tech billionaire whose actions have significantly impacted American democracy and the media landscape. Through a detailed analysis of Thiel's ventures, political maneuvers, and personal interests, the episode unravels how he has positioned himself as a formidable force against democratic institutions.

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Peter Thiel's Anti-Immigration Stance

Peter Thiel’s anti-immigration views are a cornerstone of his political activism. The discussion highlights his support for organizations like NumbersUSA, founded by Roy Beck, a protege of John Tanton—a figure notorious for his white supremacist affiliations.

Noah Shachtman [06:15]: "Thiel saw this movement as promising. And he credited the failure of Bush era immigration reform."

Thiel's backing of NumbersUSA aligns with his broader agenda to curb non-white immigration, a stance that contradicts his own status as an immigrant born in Germany and holding dual citizenship with New Zealand.

Noah Shachtman [08:12]: "Thiel is pro. Him having a say, a safe valve... the core of the hardest anti-immigrant chunk of the US population is immigrants and children of immigrants."

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The Gawker Lawsuit: A Strategic Assault

One of Thiel's most infamous actions was his orchestrated campaign against Gawker Media. The episode details how Thiel, after being outed by Gawker, funded a lawsuit that ultimately led to the media company's bankruptcy.

Noah Shachtman [16:00]: "Peter's frustrations were amplified by a public outcry against his complaints about women voting... forcing him to backpedal."

The hosts explain how Thiel's strategic legal maneuvers exploited Gawker's questionable decision to publish a sex tape of Hulk Hogan, turning a personal vendetta into a landmark case that reshaped media accountability.

Robert Evans [30:48]: "It's a scary moment."

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Influence on Politics and Republican Campaigns

Thiel's political influence extends into significant financial support for Republican candidates. In 2022, he donated $35 million to 16 federal-level Republican candidates, with 12 securing victories despite the GOP's overall poor performance.

Noah Shachtman [55:27]: "Peter Thiel is a major donor and he speaks at the 2016 RNC where he endorses Donald Trump."

Thiel's endorsement of candidates like J.D. Vance and Blake Masters underscores his commitment to shaping the Republican agenda, particularly in areas like anti-immigration and surveillance.

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Life Extension Obsessions

Beyond politics, Thiel's fascination with life extension and anti-aging research is explored. Through his nonprofit, Breakout Labs, he invests in unconventional solutions aimed at extending human lifespan, albeit with controversial methods.

Noah Shachtman [60:17]: "I think this may just be a case of Peter wanting the cosmetic benefits of HGH."

Thiel's pursuit of longevity technologies includes backing projects like Rational Vaccine, which faced significant setbacks during trials.

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Palantir and Surveillance State

Peter Thiel’s co-founded company, Palantir, plays a pivotal role in government surveillance and intelligence operations. The episode scrutinizes Palantir's contracts with ICE and Homeland Security, highlighting ethical concerns regarding privacy and civil liberties.

Noah Shachtman [72:38]: "Palantir software is strictly involved in criminal investigations as opposed to deportations is false."

The discussion points out Palantir’s involvement in controversial operations like the "Kids in Cages" scandal, where the company's software facilitated the arrest of family members of unaccompanied minors at the U.S. border.

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Thiel's War on Academia: The Thiel Fellowship

Thiel's critique of higher education culminates in the Thiel Fellowship, which offers $100,000 grants to young individuals to drop out of college and pursue entrepreneurial ventures. While some argue it fosters innovation, others criticize it for lacking the foundational support that traditional education provides.

Noah Shachtman [75:22]: "The Fellowship was a small attempt to get the future back on track by encouraging ambitious geniuses to take big swings."

The episode discusses the mixed outcomes of the fellowship, noting successes in producing unicorn startups but also highlighting personal struggles faced by some fellows.

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Network State and Future Ambitions

Thiel's vision of a "network state," as advocated by Balaji Srinivas, involves creating tech-governed enclaves that operate independently of traditional democratic frameworks. This concept raises alarms about the consolidation of power among Silicon Valley elites and the erosion of democratic norms.

Noah Shachtman [73:01]: "Balaji's shocking idea for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe."

The discussion emphasizes the potential dangers of such a state, including unchecked surveillance and the manipulation of law enforcement loyalties.

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Conclusions

Peter Thiel emerges as a multifaceted antagonist whose endeavors challenge the very foundations of democracy and ethical governance. From dismantling media establishments to influencing political landscapes and pursuing controversial scientific research, Thiel’s actions exemplify the disruptive power wielded by modern tech oligarchs.

Noah Shachtman [89:47]: "Peter's going to help build the AI death machine that gets you targeted because you were once friends with a guy who looked up the wrong thing on the Internet."

The episode closes by reflecting on the broader implications of Thiel’s influence, warning of a future where such concentrated power could undermine democratic institutions and individual freedoms.

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Notable Quotes

• Noah Shachtman [07:35]: "Thiel is putting money into all of the people adjacent to this guy."
• Sloan Glass [34:34]: "Right, you're going to operate differently if you know that there's a right wing billionaire that's building death trying to kill you."
• Noah Shachtman [44:05]: "A chilling effect, right?"

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Final Thoughts

Behind the Bastards offers a comprehensive examination of Peter Thiel’s role as a disruptor in American society. By intertwining his business ventures, political activism, and personal obsessions, the episode paints a cautionary tale of how individual influence can shape and potentially destabilize democratic institutions.

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For more insights and detailed analyses, tune into Behind the Bastards every Wednesday and Friday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Robert Evans]

Cool Zone Media.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh. Welcome back to behind the Podcast, A Bastard with Robert Evans and Noah Shachtman. Noah, how are you doing?

[Sloan Glass]

Good question mark.

[Noah Shachtman]

Good. Good question mark.

[Sloan Glass]

How good can one feel in part.

[Noah Shachtman]

Four of the Peter Thiel saga? Great question.

[Sloan Glass]

No, I feel great there.

[Noah Shachtman]

Ye.

[Sloan Glass]

I don't know.

[Noah Shachtman]

Great question, Noah. Contributing writer at Rolling Stone, contributing editor at Wired. Wow. You did it. You did that.

[Robert Evans]

So, see, we should.

[Noah Shachtman]

I did it last time, too. Unbelievable. Yeah, so I think we should. I want to start here by saying there's yet another post on the one of the subreddits accusing now Garrison and me both of sounding like we always have a nasal infection.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloan Glass, host of the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dani Shapiro]

From. Audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring Comes the Unborn, A shocking true story.

[Noah Shachtman]

My babies. Please. My babies.

[Dani Shapiro]

One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect.

[Noah Shachtman]

She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn their house down.

[Dani Shapiro]

Listen to the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maya Shankar]

It's been 30 years since the horror began.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

9, 1 1. What's your emergency?

[Noah Shachtman]

He said he was going to kill me.

[Maya Shankar]

In the 1990s, the tourist town of Domino beach became the hunting ground of a monster. We thought the murders had ended, but what if we were wrong?

[Sloan Glass]

Come back to Domino Beach.

[Noah Shachtman]

I'll be waiting.

[Maya Shankar]

Listen to the Murder Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

Hey, I'm Jack Beast Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of black literature. Black lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore, explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Blacklit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello. And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets. Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noah Shachtman]

Action. And, like, I'm sorry those of you who don't have a low grade sinus infection every year, but the rest of us have allergies.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, Robert's allergic to grass. Come on.

[Noah Shachtman]

The world is poison to me. I don't know what to tell you. Like, I have eczema. I'm allergic to my own fucking skin.

[Robert Evans]

Get off his back.

[Noah Shachtman]

Get off my back.

[Sloan Glass]

It's amazing you're still here.

[Noah Shachtman]

Thank you. Thank you, Noah. It's true. It's only my relentless toughness.

[Robert Evans]

Robert and I are allergic to so many things.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

She's incredible.

[Noah Shachtman]

Imagine being really like, this is. This is. I'm the person who has most been victimized by the Internet because of how mean people are to me about my nose. Yeah. I'm the main victim of cancel culture.

[Sloan Glass]

You know, Are you in a bubble currently?

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, I live in a bubble. Yeah. I have to, like, tase anyone who tries to get closer than 10ft from me because I'm just a fragile little flower boy. So I noted last episode that Peter was simpatica with the Bush administration when it came to surveillance. His only real issue with them is they weren't mean enough to Muslims. And two, in 2007, though, he gained another issue with the Bush administration, which was that, if you guys can remember back this far right, at the end of his last term in office, W announced massive support for a new immigration reform package, which today, unfortunately, we would call, like, hopelessly leftist, Right. Like the George W. Bush 2007 immigration reform package is, like, so much more progressive than you could get away with now. In part, it included a path to citizenship for undocumented Americans. Bush's attempt to fix immigration as he saw it. Again, this was not seen as great by progressives in the day, but it's just kind of more than you could get away with now. Didn't work out. And it didn't work out because there's this massive groundswell of rage from the right flank of his own party, right. That is furious that Bush is suggesting any mercy for people who had entered the country illegally. Thiel saw this movement as promising. And he credited the failure of Bush era immigration reform. On an unprecedented Internet campaign. Teal money started to flow towards anti immigration organizations reaching people online. One was a nonprofit called NumbersUSA which argued that the US needed to reduce the number of immigrants allowed in every single year. NumbersUSA was founded and operated by Roy Beck, who himself had once worked for a guy named Dr. John Tanton, who had founded other earlier anti immigration groups. Beck had worked for Tanton's US Inc. That's the anti immigration organization for a decade and had helped Tanton organize a book. They vacationed together. These guys are very close ideologically and personally. Now once Roy starts his Numbers USA foundation, which is backed by Peter Thiel, he starts to downplay his relationship with Tanton because John Tanton, in addition to being Roy's friend, is a white supremacist. Here's the Southern Property Law center writing about Tanton. As long ago as 1988, a set of internal memoranda to the staffs of two groups he founded, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, FAIR and US English, were leaked and showed and showed warning of a coming Latin onslaught, questioning whether Latinos were as durable as others and worrying that Latinos were outbreeding whites. A decade later, he told a reporter that whites would soon develop a racial consciousness and the result would be the war of all against all. He hired and worked alongside Wayne Lutton, who has held other leadership positions in four white supremacist hate groups. He published and endorsed a racist book on immigration and he published numerous white supremacists. Tanton compared immigrants to bacteria that will continue growing until the population crashes and sneered at immigrants defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs. There's a lot that's messed up there, you know? Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Although Latin Onslaught is the name of a sick Spanish language metal band, it's also.

[Noah Shachtman]

Latin Onslaught is the term I used for that period where Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen were both really starting to hit it in a big way. You know, I believe that's half Latin. That was the Latin Onslaught. Yeah, it's Latin enough.

[Sloan Glass]

This. So this Peter Thiel is an immigrant to this country, right?

[Noah Shachtman]

Born in Germany? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Sloan Glass]

He's an anti immigration immigrant.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. I mean, to be honest though, like, that's the thing that people always get like flipped out by. But that's like the core of the hardest anti immigrant chunk of the US population is immigrants and children of immigrants. Right. Like, you know, the Cuban community in Florida being one example. But like half of the fucking Border Patrol is Latino, you know, like. And those guys are. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Am I right in remembering that Thiel has, like, his citizenship is here and then also New Zealand?

[Noah Shachtman]

Yes. He kind of fudged getting New Zealand citizenship. People will argue that he wasn't actually there long enough to get it, but if you have enough money, you can get the citizenship and, like, you know, New Zealand. If you want to offer me citizenship, too, I'll take it. But it's kind of messed up that you gave it to Peter. Yeah, man, I could really use some New Zealand citizenship right about now.

[Sloan Glass]

Wait, is that, like, if you found enough companies that are named after Lord of the Rings?

[Noah Shachtman]

Yes. Yeah. There's a certain. If you founded three companies named after Lord of the Rings.

[Sloan Glass]

You get to go to New Zealand. No, seriously, Is he pro immigration to New Zealand, too, or is he.

[Noah Shachtman]

He's pro. Him having a say, a safe valve, you know, that's. I think, all that it is. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Also, how do. How come all these people, or some of these people. Hardcore Catholic, but also hardcore against the biggest hardcore Catholics on the planet, AKA the South and Central American populations?

[Noah Shachtman]

You know, that's a good question. In part because a lot of these guys actually kind of hate what most Catholics see as Catholicism. Like, the kind of trad Catholic. The trad Cath. Movement today. They're all converts. They're all into aspects of, like, my whole family's Catholic. And, like, the kind of shit these people will say about, like, no, the Pope is invalid because this. This from 700 years ago. It's like, shit like, Catholics. Like, no, he's the Pope. You listen to the Pope. You know, that's all that matters is, like, you know, it's this kind of separation between what cultural Catholicism is. And, like, the fact that right now, the fucking. In a. I think it's a. In Pennsylvania, the Republicans are going after this nunnery because, like, a bunch of nuns are registered to vote there, and they're like, none of them live there. The nuns are talking about countersuing them. And, man, if the nuns are suing you, no born Catholic I have ever known would fuck with a group of nuns.

[Robert Evans]

They're terrifying. You don't go against the nuns.

[Noah Shachtman]

They're frightening people.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Even this Jew knows that.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, These guys are not, like, they're not Catholic in the sense that Catholics are Catholic. They're Catholic in the sense that people who become Fans of Warhammer 40,000 because they don't get the joke are fans of Warhammer 40,000. That's the kind of Catholics they are. Right.

[Robert Evans]

Anyway, I feel like that was a very Alien Four moment again.

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no, no, no. Everyone understands Warhammer.

[Sloan Glass]

Do you have some sort of endorsement deal with Warhammer 40,000?

[Noah Shachtman]

No. I wish I did. I would take their money, but Games Workshop does not give out money. That is the last thing that company does.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah, I feel like if you could score some of that sweet, sweet Games Workshop money, you might be able to find a cure for your allergies.

[Noah Shachtman]

I can do a whole podcast and all of the characters that are based on 19th century gay poets in Warhammer 40,000 more than you'd think. Go ahead, go off, King. Yeah. So Peter Thiel, this guy John Tanton, is directly connected to the dude. Thiel's not backing Tanton, but he's backing his protege, Roy Beck at Numbers usa. Right. And that's not all. I'm going to continue that quote from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The report revealed that over the course of some 20 years, Tanton had corresponded with Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and leading white nationalist thinkers. He introduced leaders of fair, on whose board he still sits today, to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a racist outfit set up to encourage race betterment. At a private club, he promoted the work of an infamous antisemitic professor, Kevin McDonald, to both fair officials and a major donor. At one point pursuing his interest in eugenics, the utterly discredited science of breeding a better human race, he tried to find out if Michigan had laws allowing forced sterilization. His concern, Tanton wrote in a letter of inquiry, was a local pair of sisters who have nine illegitimate children between them. And again, Peter Thiel is putting money into all of the people adjacent to this guy. Right. Like he is backing a lot of organizations that are next to him. Right. Like this is just. You can see. And he's very much. Thiel is very happy when this Bush era immigration reform package goes down in flames because he has been one of the things he's most consistent on again, since 2007, 8 is wanting massive restrictions and particularly non white immigration into the United States, which is not a libertarian stance and is really just kind of a far right racist stance, while bankrolling.

[Sloan Glass]

This weirdo neo monarchist who's trying to convince the blogosphere right wing to abandon democracy.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, and this is actually a writer on the same time, because it's like 2008, 9 that he starts getting involved with Yarvin and it's 2008 that he first sends a million dollars to Numbers USA through an intermediary According to Chafkin, who notes Thiel didn't comment on the report at the time, but several sources familiar with his political activities have told me the reported donation was real. So it doesn't look like it's a thing that's absolutely confirmed, but there's definitely ties between him and Roy Beck, and Beck is tied to Tanton. And this is all kind of part of this very long process of Thiel backing different, explicitly racist, anti immigration organizations. Now, the next year, right around the time that JP Morgan started experimenting with Palantir, Peter Thiel published an article in the Cato Institute's journal with his seasteading buddy. This is the guy that he's backing at the Seasteading Institute. The theme of that issue was the idea of creating liberty libertarian enclaves outside of existing states. Thiel submitted an essay, the Education of a Libertarian, where he channeled his friend Curtis Yarvin to write, I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible. He whined that the 1920s were the last gasp of hope for liberty because Americans then gave women the right to vote and created the welfare state. And these two innovations had made political victory impossible for libertarians. Libertarians can't win elections because women can vote and there's welfare. And we'll never get those people to give us any votes. Right. That's why he's so angry about this shit. Yeah. Girls won't vote for us.

[Sloan Glass]

The ladies are too mean to us. So I can't play this game. This game is over. This game is stupid.

[Noah Shachtman]

I find whining about this shit so fascinating because we have all seen Peter and guys like him. They've only gotten wealth and power through the system that they claim to be oppressed by. It is the only place that they have ever been or would ever be a success. These guys are the winners of our society. They are elevated by a system that is designed to produce and support them. But they still can't feel help but feel like losers all the time, no matter what they do. And so, like, they turn their rage against this system. That is the only reason they're special.

[Robert Evans]

Don't act like a loser.

[Noah Shachtman]

Don't act like a fucking loser. Yeah, there you go.

[Sloan Glass]

Don't act like a fucking loser. It's just. It is the most loser of shit to complain that we couldn't possibly win on an election because 51% of the.

[Noah Shachtman]

Population can do any girls voting. Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. It's like they're like, we won our D and D games and there were no girls. Involved in those.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, you don't win D and D, you win just by playing. But yes, I get your point. Peter's frustrations were amplified by a public outcry against his complaints about women voting. Right. Like people get angry at him for saying this and he is forced to come out and kind of backpedal, be like, I don't want to take away women's right to vote. I just recognize that this is a problem. Right. And I want to find a shortcut to avoid democracy cramping my style. Right. I don't want to stop women from voting. But we have to agree this is a problem that guys like me can't win as many elections because of the girls. Now, another constant Teal irritant was the free press, as we talked about last episode. I do think his initial irritants with Valleywag comes from a semi understandable place. But it took years of them reporting on his actual doings in a manner that I think was generally responsible journalism before Thiel acted. Here's the shadowy inciting incident of the Gawker lawsuit, according to Derek Thompson in an article with the Atlantic where he interviews Ryan Holiday, who's the guy who wrote the book on this. In 2011, he is in Berlin and he takes a meeting with a then 26 year old Thiel devotee who you might call Mr. A. The young man essentially tells Thiel, I know you're obsessed with Gawker and I have an idea to destroy them. He says Thiel should create a shell company to fund investigators and lawyers to find causes of action against Gawker and ultimately sue it into oblivion. He estimates that the plan will take up to five years and up to $10 million in funding, which is prophetic. So it's this mysterious Mr. A, who nobody knows the real name of, allegedly who is the guy who sits down with Teal and is like, hey, I think if you just keep putting money, put it towards some people, maybe I can help you with this. You get that feeling this guy's kind of angling for a gig. We will figure out when Gawker slips up and we'll use that to stick the knife in them, right?

[Sloan Glass]

Maybe that's the lawyer or something like that. I mean, like, maybe that's like a lawyer just trying to get money.

[Noah Shachtman]

Maybe, maybe. Ryan Holiday, again the reporter revealed this, describes Mr. A as a professional son. In other words, someone who sought out and wormed his way into the confidences of father figures who could advance his career. And Teal, some people will say this is in part because he has crushes on some of these guys. But Thiel has a habit of finding generally handsome young men and putting them into his inner circle. Backing. This is kind of how J.D. vance and Blake Masters get into his circle, right? And I don't know how much I'm trying to just kind of, like, stay out of it, because what matters is he's backing these people, not whether or not he thinks they're hot. But that is an allegation you'll hear that's made about this, right? And I don't know. I'm sure that's not a non factor. Sometimes you hear about this guy who goes out and targets older men to try and embolden his career and is like, I know how you can destroy Gawker. And maybe Peter, he's frustrated, he's angry that he can't do anything about this thing that's hurting his business. And then this hot dude comes up with a plan to kill them, right? Maybe that's some of what's going on. According to the version of the story told by Holiday, Peter complained to Mr. A over their meal that he couldn't just outright Destroy Gawker. And Mr. A said back, peter, if everyone thought that way, what would the world look like? Right? If people didn't just destroy journalistic outlets, like, because they could, where would we be as a society? So if this is accurate, that is kind of not A. I don't know if it's a big if, but it is an if. Peter, this guy is who succeeds in getting Peter to fund this operation to find a way to kill Gawker. And they eventually find the way to kill Gawker in an unlikely place. The office of a Florida DJ named Bubba the Love Sponge. Here we go. Here's where Bubba the Love Sponge comes in. Everyone's been waiting for this since we started talking Teal. You know, speaking of Bubba the Love Sponge. You know who is a Love Sponge?

[Robert Evans]

The sponsors of this podcast.

[Noah Shachtman]

That's right, the sponsors of this podcast. I think that's a cum joke. So everyone enjoy that and go over that.

[Robert Evans]

Please be ads ridiculous or just come.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, one of the two.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this? And why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened. I'm journalist Sloan Glass, and I host the new podcast, American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the Crime became a character in the story on American Homicide. We'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou, and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dani Shapiro]

In the quiet town of Avella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy. Akron seemed to have it all. A whirlwind romance, a new home, and twins on the way. What no one knew was that Christy was hiding a secret so shocking it would tear their world apart.

[Noah Shachtman]

91 One Response. What's your emergency? My babies. Please. My babies.

[Dani Shapiro]

One woman, two lives, and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine.

[Noah Shachtman]

They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it.

[Robert Evans]

You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us right now.

[Noah Shachtman]

Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling.

[Robert Evans]

Myself, nobody's that crazy.

[Sloan Glass]

Crazy.

[Dani Shapiro]

Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets.

[Noah Shachtman]

She went batshit crazy. Shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids. Tried to burn her house down.

[Dani Shapiro]

Audio represents the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired? Depressed? A little bit revolutionary? Consider this. Start your own country.

[Noah Shachtman]

I planted the flag and just kind of looked out of like, this is mine. I own this.

[Robert Evans]

It's surprisingly easy.

[Noah Shachtman]

55 gallons of water for 500 pounds of concrete.

[Robert Evans]

Everybody's doing it.

[Sloan Glass]

I am King Ernest Emmanuel.

[Robert Evans]

I am the queen of Ladonia.

[Dani Shapiro]

I'm Jackson I, king of Kaffirburg.

[Sloan Glass]

I am the supreme leader of the.

[Noah Shachtman]

Grand Republic of Montonia.

[Robert Evans]

Be part of a great colonial tradition.

[Noah Shachtman]

But why can't I trade my own country? My forefathers did that themselves.

[Robert Evans]

What could go wrong?

[Sloan Glass]

No country willingly gives up their territory.

[Noah Shachtman]

I was making rocket with a black powder, you know, with explosive warhead. Oh, my God. What is that? Bullets? Bullet holes. We still have the off road portion to go.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to Escape from Zakistan.

[Noah Shachtman]

And we're losing daylight fast.

[Robert Evans]

That's Escape from zaqistan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maya Shankar]

It's been 30 years since the horror began.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

91 1.

[Noah Shachtman]

What's your emergency?

[Maya Shankar]

Someone. He said he was gonna kill me. Three decades since our small beach community was terrorized by a serial killer.

[Noah Shachtman]

Maybe.

[Sloan Glass]

My dear Courtney, we're not done after all.

[Maya Shankar]

In the 1990s, the tourist town of Domino beach became the hunting ground of a monster. No one was safe. No one could stop it. Police spun their wheels. Politicians spun the truth, while fear gripped us tighter with every body that was found. We thought it was over. We thought the murders had ended. But what if we were wrong?

[Noah Shachtman]

Come back to Domino Beach, Courtney. Come home. I'll be waiting for you.

[Maya Shankar]

Listen to the Murder Years, Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[I]

Hey there. I'm Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist who studies human behavior. On my podcast, A Slight change of Plans. I marry science and storytelling to better understand how to navigate the big changes in our lives.

[Maya Shankar]

It was like a slow nightmare, you know, because every day you think, oh, surely tomorrow I'll be better. And I would dream of being better. At night, I would dream that my face was quote, unquote normal or back to the way it was, and I'd wake up and there'd be no change.

[I]

I also speak with scientists about how we can be more resilient in the face of change.

[Sloan Glass]

You can think of the adolescent brain as like the social R and D engine of our culture, that something that looks like risky and idiotic to us is maybe their way of creatively trying to solve the problem of having social success and fewer of the things that bring you social failure.

[I]

Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Noah Shachtman]

We're back. And boy, I hope we all enjoyed that ad from Hims. Hims. I think they sell testosterone now. Why not get involved? Or Ozempic. Is it Ozempic? They're selling? Basically. Whatever. Give them some money. Give them some money, Hims.

[Robert Evans]

Or don't.

[Noah Shachtman]

Back in. Back in 2006. Hulk Hogan. Do they sponsor us? Sophie? Have they given us money? Come on, Hims. Get on the bastard's train. You know, ads like that every day.

[Robert Evans]

We'd shill for you.

[Noah Shachtman]

We'd shill for you. I'll sell hims. I don't give a fuck. Back in.

[Sloan Glass]

Give us a hymns ad right now.

[Noah Shachtman]

Come on, give us. Go ahead, Hymns. Do you have enough testosterone? Probably, but you could have more. It's what all the celebrities do. They'll ship it to your door. Who gives a shit?

[Sloan Glass]

How about give us one of those sheepish, like, fuck, I have to do this house read kind of version of him. Sometimes I May or may not hear on podcasts.

[Noah Shachtman]

Hey, do you feel bad about your body? Well, you probably should. So get on Ozembic, the drug that is probably fine for you. No one really knows yet. It's a little like vaping. Try it out, See what happens.

[Sloan Glass]

Mm.

[Noah Shachtman]

Anyway, back in 2006, Hulk Hogan had been depressed over the state of his marriage. I love where this story starts, which is I had again, just casually hearing it. I had thought that it was a case of, like, he was just cheating on Bubba with Bubba's wife. No, no, no. Hulk comes over because he's getting a divorce and he's just in a dark place, and he needs his friend Bubba the Love Sponge. And Bubba's in a dark place. The Hulkster's in a bad place. I really need some comfort. And Bubba the Love Sponge is like, hulkster, you know, it'll cheer you up. Fucking my wife. Why don't you go into my bedroom and fuck my wife? And the Hulk said, okay, but you're not going to film this, are you, brother? I know you always film people who have sex in your house. You're not going to film the Hulk's dick, are you? And Bubba was like, of course I'm not gonna film you. And then of course, he films the whole having sex with his wife, and he takes the recording made in his house and he puts the recording in his desk at the radio station where he works.

[Sloan Glass]

Incredible.

[Noah Shachtman]

Like, you do amazing shit.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah, that's incredible.

[Noah Shachtman]

So funny. This is such a funny case. Like, a lot of good people lost their jobs, but this part of it's really funny. Yeah, some people, yeah, not all good people lost their jobs, but a lot of good people did. So fast forward about six years. Obama is on his way to term number dose, and Bubba gets in a conflict with a guy who Ryan Holiday describes as a. This is the funniest term in the world. Rival dj.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah, sure.

[Noah Shachtman]

Nothing. Nothing sadder than the words rival dj.

[Sloan Glass]

A rival Florida dj.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. Rival Florida dj. Yeah. If this is. And again, there's some debate. I'm not saying this is absolutely what happened, but this is probably the most. It's certainly the most entertaining and probably the most credible story as to why this all happens. If this is accurate, the whole destruction of Gawker thing started because Bubba the Love Sponge at a rival Florida DJ had an argument over who was going to, like, get which time slot, and the rival DJ broke into his desk and stole the videos to, like, hold him for, like, them for ransom, basically, and ultimately leaked the Videos to Gawker to impl embarrass Bubba the love Sponge. Hulk was only ever an accidental casualty.

[Sloan Glass]

Collateral damage.

[Noah Shachtman]

It was collateral damage. The poor Hulkster.

[Sloan Glass]

Oh, that's in the great Florida DJ world.

[Noah Shachtman]

The great game of Florida DJs. He's Afghanistan.

[Sloan Glass]

Wait, is the rival DJ Mr. A the secret? Maybe the rival DJ was, you know what behind it all.

[Noah Shachtman]

I'm going to say definitely. I'm going to say definitely in a way that makes iHeartMedia legally responsible. If I'm absolutely.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Because if there's one dj, all radio.

[Noah Shachtman]

Absolutely.

[Sloan Glass]

I heart media. Boom.

[Noah Shachtman]

Right? Of course. We've got to be tied into this. Oh, my God.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Sophie connects. Get out your Palantir crazy board.

[Noah Shachtman]

Call the CEO. We're going to blow this thing wide open.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Noah Shachtman]

So, yeah. Anyway, Gawker. Now, here is where Gawker, because I mentioned how it's questionable their choice to out Peter, but probably in a court of law, defensible because of who Peter is politically, because of how influential he is. Again, that's why Peter doesn't sue over that. This is something they probably could have defended. What Gawker does next is something that is. It still was potentially defensible. We'll talk about Gawker makes some mistakes in their legal representation here, but it's deeply questionable. Questionable. This is a thing that I can say I'm leaning on this not being newsworthy. Right. And what's not newsworthy is they publish the video. They don't just report on the fact that there's a Hulk Hogan sex tape. They publish the video under the title even for a minute. Watching Hulk Hogan have sex in a canopy bed is not safe for work, but watch it anyway. And that's just hard to defend in court that. You're going to have to defend that. Right.

[Sloan Glass]

Although an incredible headline.

[Noah Shachtman]

An incredible headline. An incredible headline. Nobody said they were bad at headlines.

[Sloan Glass]

No, I mean, incredible headline. Yeah. Publishing sex tapes is probably not the greatest.

[Noah Shachtman]

It's on the edge. It's on the edge. Yeah. So this is something that is, again, this is potentially defensible. I'm not saying it's blanket not, but it is something you were probably going to have to defend in court. Right. You have crossed a line that is going to open you up to some potential injury here. Now, one reason why is that the sex that Hogan had with Bubba the Love Sponge's wife was not as a part of his job as, you know, Hulk Hogan, the public figure. Right. This is not something he did with his subordinate. This is not something he did on company property. Right. Like, this is not something you can argue is an abuse of power on the Hulkster's part. You know, this is a consensual, non monogamy, I guess you could call it, really, that just happened to get filmed. So Hulk has an argument that what happened was a violation of his privacy. Now Gawker, again, I think if they had just reported on the tape's existence, could have defended it. Making it available is a lot harder to defend. Thiel's people set legal wheels in motion. And again, it's like 2012, when this article, when this video gets released, that's like six years after the sex tape was filmed. And for a few years, the case kind of grinds forward. And part of why it grinds forward is Gawker doesn't know that Thiel is backing Hulk Hogan. And you know, the Hulkster's got money, but the Hulkster does not have a major media company money. And the smart play, if you are a big corporation like Gawker, sued by a guy, even a rich guy, is delay. Make it as expensive for them as possible. Right. You run out the clock and eventually they will not want to keep burning cash in order to keep fighting you.

[Sloan Glass]

I mean, if I may, I'm not sure Gawker was ever that big of a company. I think it was more. And listen, I got a little bit of skin in this game.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Gawker's lawyer at the time and then their president.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Somebody I work with afterwards. But I would just say at the Daily Beast, where Randall joined together for a couple years is like, look, I think in general, you gotta err on the First Amendment. Errors on the side of publishing. Right. Even creepy ass.

[Noah Shachtman]

Absolutely.

[Sloan Glass]

Like Hulk Hogan's dick. And so, I mean, I think what they were more pursuing was a. You know what happens in any of these First Amendment cases where they're trying to put up their best offenses against getting sued. And those defenses take a while. And I don't think it was. I mean, this company was never a particularly huge company. They had insurance that protected them against litigation at some points. And, you know, they had, you know, depending on where the case landed, whether it was in New York or Florida or whatever, they had better defenses against the law. Because a lot of this stuff is weirdly state by state.

[Noah Shachtman]

And this is an early judge shopping case. Like, the fact that they wind up in a Florida district with a very sympathetic judge is a big part of what hurts them. If it had been in a different District, they probably, probably would have gone better for them. I should note that. Yeah, it's kind of like Holiday's argument as to how this went badly is that Gawker takes the standard strategy you would take, which is a bad strategy if Hogan has the kind of financing behind him that they couldn't have known he had. Right. Like the fact that there's so much more money behind this, which starts to become clear later in the case. It's the kind of thing people do not initially know, Gawker doesn't initially know that Thiel is backing them. And what Holliday will argue. And I think you're probably right, but I don't think it's wrong that if Gawker had known who was supporting the lawsuit, there are probably changes they would have made in how they pursued their defense or at least how they pursued publicizing that Thiel was involved. Right. Yeah, maybe you try to make that, that clear earlier.

[Sloan Glass]

Right, right. You know, Hulk Hogan sues company that publishes dick tape is one thing. You know, weirdo right wing billionaire sues media company for no particular reason, but you know, happens to use the sex tape as an excuse. That's a totally different thing.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, it's a totally different thing. And yeah, that's. And again, Holiday, I quote him a lot because he's the guy who like wrote the book on this case. He is kind of more on Thiel's side than I am and than I think most reporters are. Although he's on Thiel's side more. And a Gawker made a lot of major mistakes. And I don't entirely agree with Holliday here, but they do make a number of mistakes. Right. There are some like, issues with the way this legal defense goes down, but also it's one of these things where, well, if you have Peter Thiel money and the ability to judge shop and shit in a way that a guy like Thiel does, it's hard to imagine he wouldn't eventually have gotten them on something. Right.

[Sloan Glass]

Well, certainly you're going to operate differently if you know that there's a right wing billionaire that's building death trying to kill you.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sloan Glass]

Designed to destroy your planet. That's a very different kind of way to operate. And look, I think also just growing up in the same era of media is like, I think we all, a lot of us were kind of self taught and kind of relearning the rules as we went along, you know, like, you know, this was, you know, a major object lesson and we would have all rolled a little bit differently. If we had known that there are these like, you know, kind of like autocratic gazillionaires that were kind of out to destroy what we were about.

[Noah Shachtman]

And this is the thing, this is one of the things that's so sad about this, is that like a lot of the. A lot of the issues that, in terms of when we talk about the areas in which Gawker made mistakes, a lot of them are just due to how young the company was, how new this whole branch of the media was, and that we are all. Because I was a part of a digital media company there, I was learning and learning by breaking a lot of the rules of journalism. Early on in my career, too, we were trying to figure out how these things worked in a new era where there was suddenly both opportunity and money in a way that journalists had not been used to for a while, but also brand new pitfalls and threats. Right.

[Sloan Glass]

And this is well said.

[Noah Shachtman]

I don't think it was, you know, Gawker, if they had done things differently, might have been able to survive, but someone was going to go down in flames for something like this as a result of the different period that we had entered into. Right. I do kind of believe that maybe it wouldn't have had to be Gawker, but it was going to be somebody because there was just so much being tried that was new and that hadn't been adjudicated. You know, like, that was always good and it was the same thing. I think most of us expected it was gonna come down over, like, whistleblower stuff, you know, WikiLeaks kind of shit, as opposed to Bubble the Love Sponge. But it was going to happen, right?

[Sloan Glass]

Right.

[Noah Shachtman]

So a big part of why the case goes against Gawker is there's this. One of kind of the leading moments of this court case is that in court, Gawker editor in chief A.J. delario in a deposition, kind of jokes that the only celebrity sex tape he wouldn't have considered news worthy was one that featured a preschooler. That does not go over well in court. It's not a great moment, although I don't think it actually changes the. It's just. Why would you say that? I don't know. Anyway, I'm not going to. He's. He's suffered enough, but it doesn't. This all goes very bad. I mean, it goes as badly as it possibly could. Even though the case had not initially gone super well for Hulk, ultimately the fact that this judge is very sympathetic, it all goes their way in the case, the plaintiff is awarded $140 million in damages. Gawker, as you have said, was never that big as a media company, and this absolutely drives them into bankruptcy. Nick Denton sold the company off to Univision, which shuttered the embattled flagship site. And that is the end of Gawker, except for it's kind of sort of back. I don't know. I don't know how we want to. Like, it didn't all die out. Right. But, yeah, it's a. And this is a scary moment.

[Sloan Glass]

Many of the sites still live in. Live on in one. In one way or another.

[Noah Shachtman]

For sure. My old site lives on in one way or another. Zombie. Yeah. The zombies of our youths as writers. Yeah. So Teal, you know, he gets. One of the things that happens kind of at the tail end of this is that it becomes clear to the people involved in the case and the people paying attention to it that Thiel is the guy funding this. I think it might have been Vogue. I think that published. I may be getting that wrong, but it wasn't Gawker that published the first article being like, hey, Thiel's behind this. But right as the case is ending, it comes out that Peter Thiel is the guy who had backed this. Right. And so Thiel is able. There's this backlash against him, but he's also able to kind of go out in the open and take a victory lap. He tells the New York Times it's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence. I saw Gawker pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attacked by bullying people, even when there was no connection with the public interest. And you back guys like J.D. vance and Blake Masters, whose politics is entirely dedicated to attacking little people who have no power. Right. Destroying their lives for clout. You don't believe any of this shit, Peter. Now, the Gawker case was the first thing that put Thiel on my radar in a big way. Right. I wish I could say I was one of those guys who, from the early days of Palantir, knew he was dangerous. But it wasn't until this that I was like, oh, there's this Peter Thiel guy, and he seems like a real problem, Right?

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah.

[Noah Shachtman]

It's also notable that, like, it's not entirely. I think that the surface summary of this, which is that Gawker outed Thiel and then he destroyed them, is not entirely what happened. Right. Gawker was damaging to his business interests for years, and so he laid out a painstaking and slow. And funded a painstakingly slow path to taking them out. Right. Which I think is a scarier story, you know, just than that he was angry that they'd outed him and so he slapped them down. The time that he waited, how long this took, you know, the inevitability of it in some ways that, like, once this was set in motion, it couldn't be stopped, is much more upsetting to me.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. And also, it's not just his. I think it's more just like his class, you know, like the burgeoning tech oligarch class.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

They really were made deeply uncomfortable.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. By.

[Sloan Glass]

By a brand of journalism that. That was sometimes fucked up and sometimes, you know, questioned their power. And, you know, that. That threatened them a lot more than the journalism that played by the rules 100% of the time and never threatened their power.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. And this, this idea, too, that journalism is. Has a chance at surviving now there's suddenly. Because in this new media era, there was a lot of money, comparatively for journalists. Not a lot of money in objective terms, but there's a lot of money coming into journalism based on what journalists had gotten used to after the early Craigslist era had killed local newspapers. And so there's suddenly this lifeline for reporting. And you have this explosion in sites that had started as kind of less legitimate. Gawker's early days is no one's findest hour. Just like the earliest days of buzzfeed. Right. You know, it was kind of a clickbait site. And then they start this very serious, groundbreaking news organization that really does great work. And it's terrifying to these guys who are like, oh, shit, maybe we're going to deal with more of this than we ever had, as opposed to it all being on the out and dying. And so they kind of commit themselves to killing it. And this is that Silicon. This is. Peter Thiel is the first of the Silicon elite to start flexing their muscles to destroy the independent media. Right.

[Sloan Glass]

And I'd say more than just Silicon Valley. I mean, look, you know, this is now in the era when, you know, I was running the Daily Beast and, you know, basically there would be no major story about a rich person that didn't come with a massive. A legal threat.

[Noah Shachtman]

Like none.

[Sloan Glass]

Like, 100% of the time you could not write about a rich person. I'm not talking about, like, their personal life. I'm talking about, you know, any company.

[Noah Shachtman]

They were involved in. Right.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Their business interests. Nothing would come without a legal threat. And so it was just a regular part of the publishing process, which was deal with legal considerations. And often it was the very same lawyers that were connected with the Gawker case that were then being hired by everybody else because they, you know, they had learned this one trick. So.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, that's one weird trick.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, that stuff was real. And I don't know that it stopped us from publishing any stories, but it definitely stopped, like, it definitely slowed down the pace of stories, for sure. And it definitely. I know, I definitely know of others where, where big stories got killed off because of the legal threats, for sure.

[Noah Shachtman]

A chilling effect, right? It has this chilling effect. And it's one of these things where this is part of what's so scary about doing media right, is you have to. In order to stay relevant and survive, you have to explore things, you have to try new things. And that also means. It doesn't necessarily mean. I'm not saying every journalist would have published the Bubba the Love sponge video, but you are going to do things that are new and that you can't say are covered under the laws that supported you in the past when you're trying to adapt to changing circumstances. And that's always going to create opportunities for people to destroy you if they're scared by what you're doing.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Fair.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yep. Yeah. I think that that gets at it. I hope in a way that's pretty fair.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah.

[Noah Shachtman]

Speaking of destroying your enemies, you know who my enemies aren't, Noah?

[Sloan Glass]

The people who advertise on this podcast.

[Noah Shachtman]

That's right. None of them are my enemies. None of them would ever sue journalists for reporting on their personal business. You know, we guarantee. And if they have. No, they didn't. You didn't see that. Deny the evidence of your eyes and ears. That's the behind the bastard's promise.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened. I'm journalist Sloan Glass and I host the new podcast, American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou, and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dani Shapiro]

In the quiet town of Avella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy, Akron seemed to have it all. A whirlwind romance, a new home, and twins on the way. What no one knew was that Christy was hiding a secret so shocking it would tear their world apart.

[Noah Shachtman]

911 response. What's your emergency? My babies, please. My babies.

[Dani Shapiro]

One woman, two lives, and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine.

[Noah Shachtman]

They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it.

[Robert Evans]

You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us right now.

[Noah Shachtman]

Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling.

[Robert Evans]

Myself, nobody's that crazy.

[Sloan Glass]

Crazy.

[Dani Shapiro]

Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets.

[Noah Shachtman]

She went batshit crazy. Shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids. Tried to burn their house down.

[Dani Shapiro]

Audio app presents the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired? Depressed? A little bit revolutionary? Consider this. Start your own country.

[Noah Shachtman]

I planted the flag and just kind of looked out of like, this is mine. I own this.

[Robert Evans]

It's the surprisingly easy.

[Noah Shachtman]

55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete.

[Robert Evans]

Everybody's doing it.

[Sloan Glass]

I am King Ernest Emmanuel.

[Robert Evans]

I am the Queen of Lidonia.

[Dani Shapiro]

I'm Jackson I, King of Capperburg.

[Sloan Glass]

I am the supreme leader of the.

[Noah Shachtman]

Grand Republic of Montonia.

[Robert Evans]

Be part of a great colonial tradition.

[Noah Shachtman]

Well, why can't I trade my own country? My forefathers did that themselves.

[Robert Evans]

What could go wrong?

[Sloan Glass]

No country willingly gives up their territory.

[Noah Shachtman]

I was making rakat with the black powder, you know, with explosive warhead. Oh, my God. What is that? Bullets? Bullet holes? We need help. We need help. We still have the off road portion to go.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to Escape from Zakistan.

[Noah Shachtman]

And we're losing daylight fast.

[Robert Evans]

That's Escape from zaqistan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maya Shankar]

It's been 30 years since the horror began.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

911.

[Noah Shachtman]

What's your emergency?

[Maya Shankar]

Someone. He said he was gonna kill me. Three decades since our small beach community was terrorized by a serial killer.

[Sloan Glass]

Maybe, my dear Courtney, we're not done after all.

[Maya Shankar]

In the 1990s, the tourist town of Domino beach became the hunting ground of a monster. No one was safe. No one could stop it. Police spun their wheels. Politicians spun the truth. While fear gripped us tighter with every body that was found. We thought it was over. We thought the murders had ended. But what if we were wrong?

[Noah Shachtman]

Come back to Domino Beach, Courtney.

[Sloan Glass]

Come home.

[Noah Shachtman]

I'll be waiting for you.

[Maya Shankar]

Listen to the Murder Years, Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[I]

Hey there. I'm Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist who studies human behavior. On my podcast, A Slight change of Plans, I marry science and storytelling to better understand how to navigate the big changes in our lives.

[Maya Shankar]

It was like a slow nightmare, you know, because every day you think, oh, surely tomorrow I'll be better. And I would dream of being better. At night, I would dream that my face was quote, unquote normal or back to the way it was, and I'd wake up and there'd be no change.

[I]

I also speak with scientists about how we can be more resilient in the face of change.

[Sloan Glass]

You can think of the adolescent brain as like the social R and D engine of our culture. That they're something that looks like, risky and idiotic to us is maybe their way of creatively trying to solve the problem of having social success and fewer of the things that bring you social failure.

[I]

Listen to A Slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh, we're back. So one of the results of the Gawker lawsuit is that Peter gets put thrust into public awareness and gets criticized in a much bigger way after this, right? He is no longer is kind of like, oh, he's just this smart founder. He's kind of a libertarian. He probably has a couple of different stances, like, oh, this guy's like a dangerous right wing ghoul, right? Like, that's really people. And this happens, right? May of 2000 or March of 2016 is when the Gawker case, you know, gets closed in court. And obviously Peter becomes like the Republican Party's biggest single funder I think during this period. And it's all capped. I think it's easy. He's at least one of them because of the way money works and all of this. It's kind of hard to say that for a statement, but he's a major donor and he speaks at the 2016 RNC where he endorses Donald Trump. And he makes a big deal about the fact that I am a gay Republican. The Republicans are welcoming now. They'll accept you. Unlike these evil liberals who aren't really tolerant. The Republicans, except me, a gay man. And obviously that was the thing the Republicans were doing at the time Trump, because the Pulse night club shooting was a Muslim who did it. I could really pretend to be defending gay people and hang up my anti ice his credentials. And it works because people make bad decisions a lot of the time.

[Sloan Glass]

It's amazing. But it was such transparent bullshit at the time.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh, it was so odd if you paid any attention. But most voters are like, most people who listen to podcasts, they're hearing every fourth word while they're doing the laundry. Right?

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah.

[Noah Shachtman]

So they miss shit, you know?

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Okay. Yes. I mean, it was just. It was complete transparency.

[Noah Shachtman]

It was transparent. I watched him give that speech at the rnc, and it was like I felt coated in a thick layer of sick. It was nasty.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah, yeah. And it was also like, sure, dude. The party of. Of. Of anti gay policy and rhetoric for fucking decades is all of a sudden doing a 180 just because what? Because they've got a candidate in a wig? It's like, come on, dude. Like, that is just not true. And it was just so obvious at the time. And this is like, you know, a couple of years after gay marriage was. Was legalized.

[Noah Shachtman]

2015. Not even a couple. It was just like a year. Right?

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah.

[Noah Shachtman]

And Peter gets married. Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. And it's like, you know, such a major advancement. It just. It's wild to me. It's wild. I don't believe any. I do not believe one single person actually believes that stuff. I'm sorry.

[Noah Shachtman]

I don't know. It's. And, like, Peter is, I think, the caveat to all of this. We talk about these philosophers he likes and these visions he has of the future, and it's like, maybe all he really believes in is that Peter Thiel should always be on top. Right. Maybe that's all you actually need to know. That said, I also think we all make up elaborate justifications for the selfish things we want to do. That just being a person, too, so it's not worthless to look at. Like, well, how does Peter do that? Right. Because he has much more money and power than us. Right? Right.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. It's like, oh, this guy's a weirdo with authoritarian tendencies. I'm a weirdo with authoritarian tendencies. We got to get together somehow. Let me justify this by somehow claiming that because he's a New Yorker and he's not totally afraid of gay people like the rest of the people up on that Republican stage, therefore, I'll go with him. Therefore, it's fine.

[Noah Shachtman]

I think Peter's probably corrected a meaningless way that I don't think Donald Trump personally is bigoted against gay people. Right. I don't think he gives a fuck, but I think Donald Trump is willing to kill every gay person in this country for Donald Trump's power. Right? Yeah. Right now he's running. Yeah, yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

He's running more ads about, like, demonizing trans people than he is about any. Every other topic combined. That is his number one closing argument.

[Noah Shachtman]

Is kill trans people.

[Sloan Glass]

It's crazy.

[Noah Shachtman]

And, you know, this is as much as. Because, like, it's come out. Peter Thiel's not supporting the Republicans in 2024. He's not making, like, public donations. Right. And the reporting around it is like, well, it's because of how angry he is that in 2022 they launched everything into these culture war crusades. And, like, he's really disappointed in that. And, like, the focusing on gay people. There's stories that, like, his now deceased boyfriend, like, kind of talked him into stopping supporting Republicans because of how, you know, crazy they were at the Andy G. Stuff at the same time. His boy Jack. Exactly. And Blake Masters are both two of the biggest anti gay, like, Christian fucking lifestyle crusaders out there. And these guys are total teal creatures. So do I believe any of that?

[Sloan Glass]

No backsies, man. It's not like if this guy's the uber genius he likes to portray himself as. He can't be like, oh, whoops, how could I have possibly seen this guy?

[Noah Shachtman]

You know what you're doing? Yeah. So now this period after 2016 when Peter has really gone whole hog for Trump, people start reporting a lot more on all of these other weird investments he's doing. Right. And they start reporting on his life extension fixation. Now, all of his life extension investments are made through his. A lot of them made through his nonprofit Breakout Labs, which is supporting unconventional solutions to major problems. And one of those major problems is extending human lifespan and ending aging. Now, people think this is kind of quirky of Peter, so they start looking into it and reporting on it. And Peter starts getting asked by journalists in interviews about this. In one interview with the Washington Post, he explained, I've always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing. I think that's somewhat unusual. Most people end up compartmentalizing and they're in some mode of denial and acceptance about death. They both have the result of making you very passionate. I worry the FDA is too restrictive. Pharmaceutical companies are way too bureaucratic. A tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of NIH spending goes to genuine anti aging research. The whole thing gets treated like a Lottery ticket. Part of the problem is that aging research doesn't always lend itself to being a great for profit business, but it's still a very important area for philanthropic investment. One thing Peter comes around on is that government funding is okay if it's supporting things like anti aging research that I might benefit from. We don't need roads or schools. But I don't want to die. But also I love this idea that like, well, normal people aren't scared of death. Everyone's scared of death, Peter. We're just not little babies about it. Deal with it, man. Fucking take it on the chin, motherfucker. God.

[Sloan Glass]

Now look, you can argue. I think there's plenty of great arguments that like the way drugs are kind of okay in this country is fine.

[Noah Shachtman]

Not saying there's not ways that the FDA could be better. Yeah, yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

One of my favorite Peter Thiel medical stories from that era that we reported on at the time was he was very upset with how the FDA was handling herpes drugs.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh, interesting.

[Sloan Glass]

He bankrolled a series of quasi legal, certainly sidestepping around U.S. safety rules. Let's just call them gray market herpes test in the Caribbean, I think in like kits and Nevis.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh man, that's fun. That's good. That's just good stuff.

[Sloan Glass]

Getting injected with like off, you know, with like untried non opinions drugs.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. Awesome, awesome. He's getting black market valciclovir for his fucking. Awesome. So good.

[Sloan Glass]

Our headline at the time was a dying Dr. Peter Thiel and a rogue herpes vaccine trial gone wrong.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh man, that's so funny.

[Sloan Glass]

Weren't you one in the same sentence?

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no. Rogue herpes vaccine trial. Not an attractive series of words to have attached to your.

[Sloan Glass]

No, not attached to your anything. And also you definitely don't want it to all go wrong.

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no, no, no. Your rogue vaccine trial, you really want to work out.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. You want that to go excellently.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. You don't want to have made everyone at your fucking creepy beach parties take a bad herpes vaccine.

[Sloan Glass]

No.

[Noah Shachtman]

Did he give everyone herpes? What happened there?

[Sloan Glass]

I'm trying to remember. I'm just looking through. The name of the company was Rational Vaccine.

[Noah Shachtman]

God on heaven. Oh my God, I like that.

[Sloan Glass]

Rational vaccines.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah. So host all the irrational ones out there.

[Sloan Glass]

No institutional review board or IRB to monitor the safety of the trials.

[Noah Shachtman]

Well, why would you need that?

[Sloan Glass]

No, no. Yeah, you definitely don't want to have a safe herpes.

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no, no. You don't need a control group. What's that Useful for.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Didn't know how or where it was manufactured, whether it needed booster shots. Yeah, no, this was all whackadoodle.

[Robert Evans]

All the things that you would hope that they would know.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, no, but look, I mean, I think a lot of billionaires do. I think that that is something not completely uncommon in the billionaire class is like, you know, I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to hack science or I'm going to. Or the science industrial complex. You know, I'm going to. I'm going to really disrupt science. And what better way to do that than with a herpes.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, disrupt herpes by, I guess, not hurting it at all.

[Sloan Glass]

Let's see, one trial recipient started getting ringing in his ears and slurred speech.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh, my God. Yeah, let's just give everyone something worse than herpes.

[Sloan Glass]

Then a Colorado woman in her 40s said she got flu like aches and numbness soon after the second shot. Numbness. Not a good thing to get after a herpes shot.

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no.

[Sloan Glass]

The symptoms were followed by a, quote, excruciating 30 day outbreak of herpes.

[Noah Shachtman]

Great. Wow. 30 days. That's a long time to have a herpes outbreak.

[Sloan Glass]

Oh, I have new symptoms every day. That one later told Halford. This is terrifying.

[Noah Shachtman]

He really disrupted herpes. Before, it was an incredibly manageable viral illness that could be easily handled with medication, and now people have month long outbreaks. You did it again, Peter. You moved fast and you broke herpes.

[Sloan Glass]

Sounds like they broke quite a few other things too. Jesus.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, so funny. Okay, so In August of 2016, the same month that Peter shows up at the Aren't, Maya Kossoff published an article titled, Peter Thiel Wants to Inject Himself with Young People's Blood. Now, this is not the first reporting on Peter Thiel's interest in blood, but I think because of the title, this is one that has a big impact on how that rumor starts to spread. Now, the actual ultimate source of this was an article published in the same week for Inc. Magazine by Jeff Berkovich Ricci, who put out an old interview he'd done a year before with Thiel that touched on Peter's interest in what's called parabiosis, quote, which includes the practice of getting transfusions of blood from a younger person as a means of improving health and potentially reversing aging. I'm looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice, and they found that it Had a massive rejuvenating effect. And so that is one that, again, it's one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1919 50s, and then it got dropped altogether. I think a lot of these things have been strangely underexplored. Now, the reason parabiosis was underexplored is that it doesn't really work. Right. Blood transfusions are amazing medicine for the reasons that you would think, like, when people lose all their blood. Right, right. Great. To be able to give people a blood transfusion when they have been shot and bled out, it's not going to make you young because, of course, it doesn't work that way. Because that stupid. It's stupid that it would work that way. That's not how blood works, and it's not how aging works. And you're silly for thinking it.

[Sloan Glass]

Wait, a son?

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no. Unfortunately, nothing can stop aging except for apparently taking lots of HGH and testosterone. Noah, do you have $12,000 a month? Because I can help you out with a plan here. I've got a guy.

[Sloan Glass]

I definitely got that.

[Noah Shachtman]

His name is Vito. He will meet you at the gym with a trash bag. And. Yeah, you too could have.

[Sloan Glass]

I can drain him of his blood.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, sure, Wayne. I don't care what happens to Vito. Like, he's a steroid dealer. His life has no value. We're good either way there.

[Sloan Glass]

Okay, so I can do both. I could be covered. I could be belt and suspenders.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, you could take Vito's blood. Although Vito's blood is gonna be even more HGH and testosterone. I'm gonna warn you about that right now.

[Sloan Glass]

Are you kidding me?

[Noah Shachtman]

Your HGH gut is going to have its own gravity, like the moon or like Joe Rogan's HGH gut.

[Sloan Glass]

Oh, I know. I know. That's real. That is really unfortunate. Okay, so you're telling me, so Vito take his blood.

[Noah Shachtman]

It's already pre H. It's already been pre hghed. You don't need any more. You literally can't fit more HGH in your blood than Vito has in his. And then you just sell that sack of gear to somebody else. Who wants to spend 12 grand on. On gear? You know, it's a beautiful story.

[Sloan Glass]

No, I'm going to double gear. I'm. Dude, the next time we do this podcast, I'm going to be ripping this fucking laptop apart.

[Noah Shachtman]

You're going to be deadlifting 1100 pounds. Yeah, yeah. Bursting your colon out as you fucking do your. Yeah, my dick is going to be.

[Sloan Glass]

The size of a thimble.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, yeah. You can read the Lord of the Rings and Braille in the acne on your back. Oh, it's going to be incredible.

[Sloan Glass]

Take that.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh, man. Yeah. So Bercovici reported that a Thiel Capital employee who was also Peter's personal health director had ties to Jesse Karmazin, the founder of Ambrosia, llc. And I would, if we had more time. There's so much Peter to get into. We would talk more about all of these different grifters. Karmazin is very funny. Legally, I'm not calling him a grifter. I just don't think what he was trying to do really works. But he did provide the product that he claimed. Ambrosia LLC was looking for volunteers over the age of 35 to receive blood transfusions from the young. Gawker reported around this time that they had gotten a tip. And again, this is right after the lawsuit has concluded that Thiel spent $40,000 a quarter to get blood transfusions from an 18 year old. Now, is Gawker just trying to take a shot at Peter because of what happened? There's not outside evidence of this. Right. Nothing's ever come forward to make it clear that Thiel definitely was taking the blood of the young. Right. In interviews, Peter has always been consistent that he never got around to starting it. Right. He told a reporter that he hadn't quite started yet, and he has since denied ever taking the blood of the young. Telling that. Andrew Sorkin at Dealbook on the Record. I am not a vampire, which I have to say is something a vampire would say.

[Robert Evans]

He's like, I'm a bell on one hand.

[Noah Shachtman]

Only a vampire would say that. Right. Because normal people don't have any reason to deny being vampires. Right.

[Sloan Glass]

I mean, that still kind of rules, though.

[Noah Shachtman]

I think there's a good chance he never actually did this. Not because he wouldn't, but just because I think it became clear pretty early on that this didn't work. Right. Brian Johnson, the big life extension guy, took his son's blood for a while and I think has stopped because it just doesn't do anything. Peter is not. I don't think Peter would care that people were calling him a vampire if this worked. Right. Because he's open about. He takes HGH as a life extension thing. Right. I don't think he would hide it if he was on it. I think maybe the science was not there in any real way. And Peter's not going to do something like this. It's not pleasant probably you wouldn't want to get constant blood transfusions if you weren't convinced it did something.

[Sloan Glass]

Speak for yourself.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, some of us just blood. From an article in Business Insider, quote, thiel told Bloomberg TV in 2014 that he was taking human growth hormone pills, also known as hgh. Thiel told Bloomberg TV that he believes HGH can help maintain muscle mass. So that's less likely to get bone injuries and arthritis and stuff like that as you get older, which is true. I'm sure there are some problems of aging that HGH helps you avoid, but HGH has side effects. You can get carpal tunnel from it. You can get muscle and joint pain. You get an increased risk of cancer. Research has shown that people in animals whose natural levels of HGH are high are likely to die at a younger age than those with lower levels of hgh. So I don't know that I would take this gamble. I think this may just be a case of Peter wanting the cosmetic benefits of hgh. It makes you look jacked even if you don't spend all that much time working out. As opposed to. Peter truly believes this is a life extension technology. I think it's probably more accurate that he convinced himself it's keeping him young because it has cosmetic benefits that he approved. Appreciates. Right?

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah.

[Noah Shachtman]

My stance on all this life extension stuff is that Peter Thiel will die one day. And as is the case with all of us, he will probably die sooner than he expects, because that's just the way shit goes. Sorry, Peter. I recommend making peace with it. That's the only real way to handle this. Now, I went back and forth with myself over how much to cover of each of Peter's evil interests. For example, in 2016, Peter was a mega donor to the Republican Party. But like most people who get involved with Trump, he soured on him quickly. And he avoided donating to Trump's reelection campaign in 2020 out of what he described as frustration with Trump's personality. Right. I don't disagree with any of his policy, but I'm angry at how much he's become the story. Right. In 2022, he got back in the electioneering saddle, and he backed J.D. vance and Blake Masters with unprecedented donations. He gives more money to J.D. vance than a single candidate had ever received for a congressional seat. In all, Peter Thiel put $35 million in 2022 into 16 federal level Republican candidates, and 12 of them win. But the overall performance of the GOP in those midterms is famously poor. And it's famously poor because a big part of their campaign rhetoric was spurred by irrational bigotry against LGBT and particularly TEA Americans. Peter would publicly state that this frustrated him. I think this has to do with the fact that there's a guy he's dating at who is a gay male model and who will give later interviews. I think these are kind of actually right around this point where he says that, yeah, I talked to him about this and convinced him to stop because I think these people are toxic and they're bad for us. And I didn't think he should be doing this. This model's name was Jeff Thomas. As we'll talk about, he's deceased now. But, you know, he would claim that like I talked to. And I don't see why Jeff would have necessarily lied about this other than that I think Jeff was getting shit for his association with Teal because of how much more aggressive Republicans were being at gay people. So maybe that's was Jeff's reason to want to say this Teal is going to set out 2024, but he does. It's kind of worth noting if you're trying to take seriously this idea that he stopped backing Republicans because of how toxic they were getting. He backs the most toxic toxic of them in 2022. So I just don't know how much to take that. I don't think I should take that very seriously. Now, I could say more about how Thiel seasteading ambitions have metastasized to a broader quest by some Silicon Valley elites to create an independent network state ruled by big tech and a place like California. I probably should. But we'll leave it with this, which is that one of the major advocates of the network state movement is an investor named Balaji Srinivas Vasin, who Thiel suggested to Trump, should lead the FDA in 2016. Thankfully, Bloch didn't wind up leading the FDA. But this guy is a really dangerous dude and he's taken some of these ideas, these Curtis Yarvan ideas that Thiel started to mainstream, and he's been twisting them into very dark directions. In 2022, his book the Network State described a plan for tech oligarchs to make their own countries, escaping democracy. At the same time, one of his chief plots was to conquer San Francisco. Here's a report from an article in the New Republic on Balaji's current advocacy. What I'm really calling for is something like Tek Zionism, he said after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the Founder of Mormonism, Theodore Herzl, the spiritual founder of the state of Israel, and Lee Kuan Yew, former authoritarian ruler of Singapore. What a collection. Balaji then revealed his shocking idea for a tech governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe. Clad in gray shirts. And if you see another Gray on the street, you do the nod, he said during a four hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. You're a fellow Gray. The gray shirts would feature Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos. Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular. Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive gray controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with a police department, funding weekly policemen's banquets to win them over. Gray should embrace the police. Okay, all in on the police, said Schwinawasin. What does that mean? That means, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman's son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling or whatever should get a job at a tech company in security. In exchange for extra food and jobs. Cops would pledge loyalty to the Greys. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example, example, did you want to take the sign off Elon's building?

[Robert Evans]

Some losers.

[Noah Shachtman]

So fucking lame.

[Robert Evans]

Some loser.

[Noah Shachtman]

Absolute loser is stupid. Fucking X sign. Incredibly funny.

[Sloan Glass]

This is like. It's like as if no Nazi ever got a blowjob. This is what.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, they would come up with the fucking Grays.

[Sloan Glass]

It's so.

[Noah Shachtman]

We'll talk about Srinivasan soon. Yeah, he deserves more. All of this we're having to yada yada so much. Just because Peter is involved in so much, I can't responsibly. This is like. I think I'm trying to just give as much of an overview as I can here to do more reading.

[Sloan Glass]

Do you think the Greys thing is like some kind of aliens thing? Like, yes, we're the Greys.

[Noah Shachtman]

I think he recognizes that, that it takes advantage of kind of that symbology. But no, I think it's not even that creative.

[Sloan Glass]

Oh, we're gonna have something cool on our shirts like a picture of Elon.

[Noah Shachtman]

A picture of fucking Elon. Or a Doge. I'm sure. My God, we're gonna have the Y.

[Sloan Glass]

Combinator logo on and all the cops are gonna love us. Cause we're gonna give them jobs.

[Noah Shachtman]

We're gonna give the cops kids jobs. Their failsons will get to work at Our security companies. Yeah. That'll keep you guys safe. Yeah. So I'm gonna move on to talk a little bit at the end here about Peter's war on higher education. Education. He started his public life by authoring a book with David Sacks on the intellectual corruption in American academia. As a multi billionaire, he launched a program to prove higher education unnecessary, the Thiel Fellowship. The idea behind the much ballyhooed fellowship was that Peter would pick 20 students per year and give them each $100,000 to drop out of school and do their own thing. Trying to start a business with some support from the Thiel Found Foundation. Basically, Peter pays for you to figure out a company you want to start and your association with him makes it easy for you to get VC bucks. In keeping with his supreme weirdness as a dude, Thiel announced the initiative by attacking the Catholic Church. Kinda if you get into the right college, you'll be saved. If you don't, you're in trouble. As I've said, colleges are as corrupt as the Catholic Church was 500 years ago. They're sort of charging people more and more. It's the system of indulgences. You have this priestly or professorial class that doesn't do very much work and you basically tell people that if you get a diploma, you're saved, otherwise you go to hell. And that's such a weird way to look at it because it's not the professors who have made college expensive. In part, it's the same reason people like you, these VC ghouls who are part of the administrator class who are sitting on the boards of these colleges want more money. It's not a random Marxist professor who has decided that college is going to cost $80,000 a semester. That guy doesn't benefit from that situation. Right?

[Sloan Glass]

Not at all. They can paid the same amount of money.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yes. I mean, yeah, look, I remember when.

[Sloan Glass]

This came out and I was like, you know what it like I can sort of get down with the idea of like circumvent your.

[Noah Shachtman]

I don't believe college is best for. I dropped out. Right. A lot of people benefit from not doing college, but this going to war with college is such a weird movement, such a weird thing to do in this situation.

[Sloan Glass]

If you said, hey, this isn't worth college isn't worth it. Take my money, that's worth it, then I can see. But college is a Catholic church that I don't buy.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Now, depending on who you ask, the program could be viewed as a success or a failure because the program that comes out of this is that Peter's going to pay 100 grand per student if you try to drop out of college, right? From an article on the website Education Surge, a columnist for Bloomberg who is himself a venture capitalist, Aaron Brown, recently did an analysis of the 271 people who have received a Thiel Fellowship since the program began. And it turns out 11 of them have gone on to start new companies now valued at more than a billion dollars, making them what are called unicorns in the industry. He sees that as a pretty remarkable record for finding unicorns. It's not like colleges aren't trying to encourage their students to start companies through various programs, brown says. None of those have been anywhere near as successful as giving these kids $100,000 and sending them out into the world. So that's one analysis of the program. Max Chafkin, you won't be surprised to hear, gives a more critical summary of things. First off, he alleges, the foundation was started in part for the media attention it would get, which would distract people from the fact that Peter's Founders Fund has lost a lot of investors after his hedge fund fell apart. Peter launched the fellowship with a characteristic 5,000 word essay on what happened to the future, written by his partner at the Founders Fund, Bruce Gibney, and includes the line we wanted flying cars and we got 140 characters. Thus, the fellowship was a small attempt to get the future back on track by encouraging ambitious geniuses to take big swings and not just work for the man making fake technologies solving fake problems. Chafkin points out that these kinds of fake technologies were precisely where the Founders Fund had invested its money for years. Founders funded backed Facebook, a social network just like Twitter, as well as Path, Goala and Slide, which were all social media companies. The last one, which had been started by Teal's PayPal co founder Max Levchin, was known for something called Super Poke, which allowed users to virtually slap punch and grope their Facebook friends, and was about as far from the Randian ideal as one could imagine. The fellowship did connect some young men with funding that wound up leading to profitable companies companies, but none of them gave us the flying car or anything, but more of the same overvalued Silicon Valley bullshit. And Chafkin argues, the program did damage to some of the young people in it. For one thing, the program tossed kids into the Bay Area with what amounted to a small sum of money and very little social support or institutional support. Ironically, the Kinds of things that universities are decent at providing. Quote, they showed up in California only to find out that the actual execution of the fellowship was basically an afterthought. Once Thiel had achieved its market goal, there was no structure to speak of beyond that suggestion and the requirement that they not enroll in school or take a full time job. Some former fellows talked to Chafkin and made the very interesting point that the actual benefit of the fellowship was essentially the same as what you got out of an Ivy League school, access to powerful people and money. The Thiel program, one fellow told, promised libertarian capitalism in a supportive community that would reward creativity rather than Machiavelli and maneuvering. What I found was comically, not that he said it was college without the classes, a residential community or studying. In short, most of what was enriching about college. It wasn't an attack on a credentialing system. It was another credential. And of course, yeah, yeah, I think that gets it right. The greatest privilege of wealth is the ability to be taken seriously as a dilettante. Right? You don't have to know anything, you don't have to earn your way to show up with a bunch of money and be a serious player. Now sometimes this work out. That's what James Cameron does with deep sea exploration. But he's a real. He becomes a legitimate expert. Right, like no one can argue that at this point, but James Cameron very rarely. Is that how it works out? Usually it works out like this, Right.

[Sloan Glass]

It's usually more like the dipshit who got everybody killed in the underseason.

[Noah Shachtman]

Exactly. Stockton Rush, right? Stockton Rush, yes. Peter represents the other side, the coin. And perhaps his longest lingering danger next to the career of J.D. vance is his company, Palantir. And we're going to close by talking some about Palantir. In the years since JP Morgan signed on and saw their whole C suite get spied on, Palantir has spread over the globe. It gained a great deal of influence after the US killed Bin Laden. And some people insinuated that Palantir's tech had helped track the terrorists down. This appears to be untrue. But it spread far and wide enough that you can find plenty of critical reporting on the company that will point out its alleged connection to Bin Laden's death. After Trunk took office, Peter saw his most nativist dreams come true in a way that meant big bucks for Palantir. They made a contract with ICE and Homeland Security Investigations for $38 million. This led to them providing software for a 2017 operation that targeted unaccompanied children and their families trying to enter the United States. This was the Kids in Cages scandal and I'm going to read an excerpt from the Intercept next. I think Ryan Grimm wrote this one Documents obtained through Freedom of Information act litigation provided at the Intercept show that his this claim that Palantir software is strictly involved in criminal investigations as opposed to deportations is false. The discrepancy between the private intelligence firms public assertion and the reality conveyed in the newly released documents was first revealed by Me Hint A, an advocacy organization that has closely tracked Palantir's murky role in immigration and enforcement. Far from a detached support in cross border criminal investigations, the materials released this week confirmed the role Palantir played in facilitating hundreds of arrests, only a small fraction of which actually led to criminal prosecutions. The document makes it clear that the operation which would directly target the parents and other family members of children apprehended at the border, all with help of Palantir's case management app. The document continues to instruct that if sufficient information on parents or family members is obtained while investigating and unaccompanied child, a collateral case would be sent to the affected team for action. The instructions make it clear that enabled inquiries could result in charges against a child's family. Teams will be available immediately to conduct database checks and provide and contact Super a suspected sponsor, parent or family members to identify, interview and if applicable, seek charges against the individual and administratively arrest the subjects and anybody encountered during the inquiry who is not who is out of status. So the Palantir aided campaign to hunt down and arrest family members of children who crossed the border alone was touted by the Trump administration's top immigration hardliners as a necessary measure to deter asylum seeker seekers from making the journey north. According to figures, ICE provided the intercept on Monday. The 2017 initiative led to 443 arrests, including 35 criminal arrests. Prosecutions, however, were much more difficult to come by, with ICE acknowledging that the campaign led to just 38 prosecutions related to alien smuggling or reentry of removed aliens. Karp, the avowed neo Marxist, had initially expressed frustration at his company being involved in government overreach. In 2013, he told Forbes, I didn't sign up for the government to know when I smoke a joint or have an affair. But in the wake of reporting on his company's involvement in ice, when some employees at Palantir pushed to divest themselves from working with ICE, Karp pushed to renew a $42 million ICE contract and attacked workers at Google and other Silicon Valley companies that had protested contract contracts with the military and law enforcement. In the first couple years after Trump took office, Palantir acquired contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars more than the total revenue they'd received from the US Government during Obama's entire second term. Palantir has at varying points explored deals with the Saudis. And in January, Karp flew to Israel to express solidarity with the Israeli government and one presumes make the case for why the IDF should buy his company's products. At the moment, Palantir's technology is also heavily used in Ukraine where by some accounts it plays a major role in targeting decisions. Now I am hesitant to rely on a lot of reporting that basically asks his advertise acts as advertisements for Palantir's technology, but there is some evidence that their algorithmic analysis has been useful in allowing Ukraine to more efficiently target and expend munitions on the battlefield. It is not really possible for me to analyze how a effective Palantir's technology is here. Right. In part because information siloing in a war with this kind of stuff is so effective. I do worry about how much a lot of the reporting on the efficacy of Palantir in Ukraine, how much of it sounds like an ad. And I'm always very questionable about early reports that military and intelligence products are game changingly effective. Right. Because a lot of the time that winds up being overblown. Right. I can't say that it is. I don't know. This is something that will be adjudicated in the march of time. Right. This is still all going on.

[Robert Evans]

There was a, there was an article today from Reuters. Did you read that one?

[Noah Shachtman]

No, no. I mean no, not nothing today.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, there is an article that came out today that that pal tier was dumped by their Norwegian investor over their work with Israel.

[Noah Shachtman]

Oh, that's interesting. And there I could. We should probably talk more about that. It's just this is all coming out like carp recently visit visited Israel earlier at the start of this year to kind of make overtures directly to the Israeli government. Israel, most of their AI targeting that's gotten so rightly covered is not through Palantir, but Palantir clearly wants to be in that business with Israel. Right. They're seeing what's going on in Gaza and this is a place where we can make a lot of money. It's just a case where I think they kind of got beaten to the punch on some of this stuff when it comes to what they've been doing in Ukraine. Palantir has played a big role in turning the war in Ukraine into what center for Security and Emerging Technology analyst Rita Konev described as an AI war lab. It's possible that their technology has been helpful to Ukraine. But even in the most defensible use of Palantir's tech, there are troubling questions. From a write up by cset, national security officials and experts caution that these new tools may end up in the hands of adverse adversaries. Rita Konev raised significant concerns about the long term implications of the deployment of advanced technology in Ukraine. She stated the prospects for proliferation are crazy. She also posed critical questions about the future implications. Most companies operating in Ukraine right now said they align with US national security goals. But what happens when they don't? What happens the day after? Right. And what happens with governments who are engaged in stuff that's a lot more questions questionable than what Ukraine is doing, like what we're talking about with them shopping around Israel. There's a lot of unknown questions about how this is going to work out. I hope this is a ground level overview of what Palantir does, of why you should be paying attention to them. Nobody should take this as the final word on everything Palantir gets up to. That's too big for even four parts of a podcast. But I think we've laid the groundwork and I think, Noah, that's what we're going to have to roll out for the day.

[Sloan Glass]

Wow. You know, usually these behind the Bastards series, they end on such a positive note.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah, well, when the guy's still alive, it's a bummer. I'll say a little in this one.

[Sloan Glass]

It's more like the AI machine is coming to kill you, which seems not as positive.

[Noah Shachtman]

Peter's going to help build the AI death machine that gets you targeted because you were once friends with a guy who looked up the wrong thing on the Internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should note that in April of last year, Peter's quote unquote boyfriend, he's married, but I think just kind of had probably was a consensual sort of sleeping around thing. There was this male model, Jeff Thomas, that he had been seeing. He put him up in a $13 million mansion. He bought him a sports car. Thomas is the guy who claims he talked Peter out of supporting the Republicans in 2023. It's kind of unclear what was going on with them. Thiel has always been famous for throwing these very lavish, very decadent part. Right. Very much at odds with the whole religious conservative image that he had. There's definitely some texts and stuff that have come out about the parties that he would plan with this guy. There's some evidence they had a fight or maybe he had a fight. Peter had a fight with his husband. It may have been that Jeff got angry at him over his support of the right and that that's part of why he pulled away from Teal. Cause he moved out of the house. I just don't know who was on what side of this. But in 2023, Jeff committed suicide and we do not know why. We don't know what happened here. I'm bringing this up just because people are going to be like, why aren't you talking about this? But there's really not enough for me to say what happened here. Right. But it is like a thing that you'll run into with Peter. I didn't want to just leave it out because that would seem like a weird hole to have in the story too. Yeah, it's cool stuff. It's part worth noting for the ethics of pal volunteer that when Peter was interviewed about how Israel has been using AI in a lot of their targeting that has resulted in heavy, massive civilian casualties, his basic statement was, I don't think it's worth criticizing them on this. You have to assume they know their business. Which man. A lot of innocent people have died as a result of this AI targeting shit. And I think that tells you where Peter sees the ethics in his industry. It doesn't really matter. Matter, you know. Right. Anyway, sorry to yada yada so much there, but like, how do you cover all of this in four episodes? We're already over time, so thank you, Noah. I appreciate you sitting here with us for this.

[Sloan Glass]

Thank you. I think. Do I thank you? Am I thanking you?

[Noah Shachtman]

I haven't thought. I never do, never will. Yeah.

[Sloan Glass]

Okay. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

But thank you, Noah.

[Noah Shachtman]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And people, people, people can follow you on the Internet by you. You're at your game.

[Sloan Glass]

Yeah. Noah Shackman. Sha Ch. Okay, goodbye.

[Noah Shachtman]

Goodbye.

[Maya Shankar]

Bye.

[Sloan Glass]

Hello, Joy.

[Robert Evans]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.comeehindthebastards.

[Jack Beast Thomas]

Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloan Glass, host of the New true crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dani Shapiro]

From. Audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring Comes the Unborn, A shocking true story.

[Noah Shachtman]

My babies. Please. My babies.

[Dani Shapiro]

One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect.

[Noah Shachtman]

She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, Tried to burn their house out.

[Dani Shapiro]

Listen to the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maya Shankar]

It's been 30 years since the horror began.

[Noah Shachtman]

Nine. One. One. What's your emergency? He said he was going to kill me.

[Maya Shankar]

In the 1990s, the tourist town of Domino beach became the hunting ground of a monster. We thought the murders had ended, but what if we were wrong?

[Sloan Glass]

Come back to Domino Beach.

[Noah Shachtman]

I'll be waiting for you.

[Maya Shankar]

Listen to the Murder Years, Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown]

Hey, I'm Jack Beast Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of black literature. Black lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Blacklit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello? And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets. Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.