Part Two: Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ

Summary

Behind the Bastards (Nov 6, 2025)

Part Two: Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ

Host: Robert Evans
Guest: Sarah Marshall

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the deep dive into billionaire Peter Thiel’s bizarre theology, paranoia, and preoccupations as highlighted in his recent lecture series on the Antichrist. Robert Evans and Sarah Marshall use their trademark irreverent, conversational style to dissect Thiel's fixation on apocalyptic themes, his scapegoating of figures like Greta Thunberg, and his disturbing philosophical influences. The episode unpacks Thiel's selective reading of Christian eschatology, his links to fascist-adjacent thinkers, and his fears about mortality, wrapped in fabulist, often contradictory frameworks that serve his own power.

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Major Themes and Purpose

• Dissecting Peter Thiel's Antichrist obsession through the lens of theology, pop culture, and plutocratic self-interest.
• Examining Thiel's odd, self-serving demonization of environmental and scientific critics (especially Greta Thunberg).
• Highlighting the influence of far-right and authoritarian thinkers like Carl Schmitt on Thiel’s political vision.
• Illustrating how Thiel’s fear of death and need for control underpins his worldview.
• Satirically framing the broader dangers of tech billionaire ideology through humor and cultural references.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Pop-Culture Devils & The Trickster Archetype (00:01–05:08)

• The episode opens with Sarah and Robert joking about their favorite “fantasy devils,” especially the comedic version in Bedazzled (Peter Cook & Dudley Moore):

  “...the idea of a devil whose primary focus is not on acts of grand evil, but on acts of, like, petty annoyance.” (Robert, 02:18)

• The trickster devil, common in myth, gets contrasted with Christianity’s pressed-into-evil Satan, setting up how “evil” is redefined across traditions.
• This segues into the main critique: Thiel has chosen a peculiar, personalized version of the Antichrist that ignores historical/literary nuance.

2. Nukes, Apocalypse, and Paranoia (08:06–15:55)

• The hosts recap Thiel’s lecture: after 1945, technology is seen as apocalyptic; Thiel blames this attitude for stalling progress.
• Thiel's claims that post-nuke culture overemphasized apocalypse and that only a strong UN--or one world government--could avert disaster are critiqued as outdated paranoia.
• Sarah mocks the simplistic, binary thinking:

  “Any argument based on there being a few key groups of people who all think the same thing as each other... Never.” (Sarah, 19:04)

• Robert points out Thiel’s contradiction: he dresses up old “UN is the devil” conspiracy in faux-theological language.

3. Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Logic (15:56–28:51)

• Thiel equates secular apocalypse warnings (nukes, AI, fertility collapse) with theological apocalypse—declaring the Antichrist will manifest through global anti-science governance.
• Thiel’s paranoia: anyone advocating for technological caution (bioweapons, AI, environmentalism) is either the Antichrist or a “legionnaire”—notably Greta Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky.
• Notable quote:

  “The Antichrist is Amish. Or a Luddite.” (Sarah, 14:01)

• Robert highlights Thiel’s inability to see that Trump’s “I’ll stop WW3” rhetoric is exactly the Antichrist archetype he’s warning about:

  “Donald Trump rose to power, promising to stop World War III. Obviously none of this is worth talking about. Completely irrelevant.” (Robert, 21:03)

• Thiel’s hypocrisy called out: he accuses others of apocalyptic fearmongering while delivering a four-part lecture on the subject himself.

4. Greta Thunberg, Yudkowsky, and Scapegoating (28:51–44:51)

• Thiel’s public, direct implication that Greta Thunberg could be the Antichrist exposes his fear of moral, incorruptible critics:

  “What is it about her that so unnerves tyrants? …she’s just a person with morals and basically zero real world power.” (Sarah & Robert, ~29:15)

• Thiel funded early AI risk thinkers (like Yudkowsky), now branding them threats because they challenge his techno-progress narrative.
• Sarah:

  “Even if you’re the kind of person who wants to go to a four-part lecture series on the Antichrist… you would assume you were in for something different than a guy being like, here are people I don’t like personally and why I think they’re the Antichrist.” (26:55)

• Thiel's “logic”: Only HE can be apocalyptic; critics are heretics or evil.

5. Thiel’s Idol Logic: Marc Andreessen, Bill Gates, and Musk (44:51–54:51)

• Thiel attacks Marc Andreessen (another AI-obsessed billionaire) saying he isn’t the Antichrist because “the Antichrist is popular.” (45:42)
• Thiel also targets Bill Gates, but ultimately dismisses him as insufficiently “anti-science” for true Antichrist status, letting his paranoid logic spiral:

  “I saw the Mr. Hyde version about a year ago where it was just a non-stop Tourette’s yelling... almost incomprehensible what was going on.” (Thiel via Robert, 46:51)

• Robert reveals what really bothers Thiel: Gates (via the Giving Pledge) wants billionaires to donate their wealth, threatening Thiel’s worldview of power and capital preservation.

6. Wresting Theology for Power (54:52–59:40)

• Thiel claims only by finding a “third way” outside the Bible’s choice of Antichrist vs. Armageddon—i.e., a secretive, non-democratic world order—can salvation (read: Thiel’s own immortality) be achieved.

  “Peter is so clearly scared of death that he can’t even embrace everlasting life.” (59:40)

• Sarah:

  “He’d rather be, like, a Death Becomes Her person, just walking around getting hairline fractures and gluing yourself back together.” (61:01)

7. Thiel, Girard, Carl Schmitt: The Authoritarian Path (68:39–80:52)

• Robert unpacks Thiel’s intellectual debt to Carl Schmitt (Nazi legal theorist who advocated destroying democracy via the friend/enemy distinction) and René Girard (whose “scapegoat theory” Thiel twists for self-justification).
• Thiel embraces the idea that defining enemies—creating scapegoats—is how you exercise real power and justifies the crusader mentality post-9/11:

  “The high point of politics... are the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized.” (Schmitt via Robert, 71:08)

• Thiel sees video gamers as decadent, not warlike—decay heralding apocalypse.
• JD Vance and other “Thielians” weaponize Girard’s theory to justify their own calculated, divisive politics, even as actual Girardians recoil.

8. Death, Legacy, and the Futility of Immortality (83:37–87:17)

• Thiel’s fear of mortality and need for mythic “control” is summed up:

  “You will die and be forgotten too.” (Robert, 84:45)

• Sarah:

  “That’s why I’m fundamentally optimistic. Because of death… immortality is not real and I don’t think it ever will be.” (84:52)

• The futility (and potential horror) of billionaire immortality quests is lampooned, underlining Thiel’s fundamental impotence before the one force he can’t disrupt—death.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The Antichrist is Amish. Or a Luddite.” (Sarah, 14:01)
• “Peter’s primary claim here is that the Antichrist is anyone warning people about the Apocalypse and trying to save the world. If that’s not the Antichrist, that’s an agent of the Antichrist… Except for me…” (Robert & Sarah, 27:09–27:10)
• On Greta Thunberg:

  “She’s not a corporation. She’s just a person with morals and basically zero real world power.” (Robert, 29:16)

• “If someone actually created an immortality cure, I would want to stop that… it would only exist for, like, the worst people in the world.” (Robert, 85:46)
• “Fundamentally why [Thiel] hates her… is she’s emblematic of the reality that the arc of history will condemn these people.” (Robert, 29:13)
• “Thiel claims to be a Christian, but he can’t even embrace everlasting life. He wants to outsmart God.” (Paraphrased, 59:40–59:45)
• “You have to fortify the modern west…and you can’t do that through democracy. So you have to trick people in order to get around democratic institutions.” (Robert, 77:54)
• “Basically, he’s saying, it would be terrible if someone did the things that I want to do myself. It has to be me.” (Sarah, 78:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:01–05:08: Devil pop culture, theology, and Bedazzled as theological satire
• 08:06–15:55: Thiel’s nuclear paranoia, post-WW2 apocalypticism, anti-UN conspiracy
• 15:56–28:51: Thiel’s nutty Antichrist logic, scapegoating critics, tying secular fears to demonology
• 28:51–44:51: Greta Thunberg, Yudkowsky, and scapegoating — Thiel’s hunt for personal enemies
• 44:51–54:51: Andreessen, Gates, and Musk — billionaire infighting, hostility to philanthropy/constraint
• 54:52–59:40: Theology as tool for self-preservation, refusal to accept Biblical destiny
• 68:39–80:52: Thiel’s intellectual debts (Schmitt, Girard), friend/enemy logic, Girardians’ horror
• 83:37–87:17: Death as optimistic counterweight, the futility of immortality, billionaire hubris

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Conclusion & Takeaways

Behind the Bastards delivers a characteristically sharp, humorous, but deeply informed critique of Peter Thiel’s framework—one that blends misread Christianity, fascist-inflected philosophy, and billionaire paranoia in pursuit of personal safety, power, and (literal) immortality. The episode makes clear that Thiel’s Antichrist is less a figure of religious prophecy and more a projection of his anxieties: any challenge to progress-panic, unlimited wealth, or unchecked techno-power is demonized.

Despite the darkness of Thiel’s vision, the hosts close on an oddly optimistic note: everyone, even Peter Thiel, must eventually die—so the myth of billionaire immortality, like Thiel’s theology, is ultimately a powerless fantasy. As Sarah says:

“That’s why I’m fundamentally optimistic. Because of death.”

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Related Content & Pluggables

• Sarah’s podcasts: You’re Wrong About (debunking misunderstood history), The Devil You Know (CBC, on the Satanic Panic)
• Robert invites everyone to stop working immediately—unless you’re performing surgery, in which case: don’t.

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Tone: Irreverent, satirical, well-researched, occasionally profane, and with deep pop cultural and historical references.

Best for listeners who want:

• In-depth critique of billionaire ideology
• Connections between theology, politics, and tech
• Humor and biting, left-leaning cultural analysis
• A thorough, timestamped understanding without having to wade through ads or digressions

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Transcript

[Sarah Marshall]

Call Zone Media.

[Robert Evans]

Welcome behind the Bastards. Back to podcast people Bad about. Tell all them you. I'm Robert Evans and yeah, with me again for part two of our episode on what Peter Thiel thinks about the Antichrist. I'm. I'm just, I'm. I'm sorry, that, that's, that's what we're talking about right now.

[Sarah Marshall]

I love it. We're getting right to the heart of the matter, you know, because people are like, do you want to talk about the economy? And I'm like, no, no, no, I.

[Robert Evans]

Don'T want to talk about the economy. I'm tired of talking about the economy.

[Sarah Marshall]

Tell me about what these idiots think. Tell me what they believe.

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely. So here we are. Sarah Marshall, you got anything you want to plug here at the start before we dive back into it?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I have a new podcast about the satanic panic and the wackadoo horrible things that the fear of a Satan who never showed up to the party caused self described good and law abiding people to bring about. And it's a sad show. It's a fun show. It's a show about history. It's a show about today. It's called the Devil. You know, it's all right now with CBC Podcasts. And of course, I also host a show called you'd're wrong about, and you can listen to that too. And it's, you know, we have fun while trying to get to the bottom of things, much like you do.

[Robert Evans]

Right, right. We're talking today about Peter Thiel being wrong about something important. And we're also talking about the devil he knows, or at least who he thinks the devil might be.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yes, his fantasy devil, perhaps.

[Robert Evans]

His fantasy devil. I guarantee you're not gonna see where this is building to.

[Sarah Marshall]

My question is, Sarah, who is your fantasy devil?

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, there you go.

[Sarah Marshall]

Peter Cook and Bedazzled, of course.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, you know, Sarah, you could not have said anything that would have gotten me more on your side than that. I love the original Bedazzled.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

He's the best Satan, easily by a mile.

[Sarah Marshall]

Tell me why you think that is. And people haven't seen this movie enough. It's a delight. It's Peter Cook and Dudley Moore I.

[Robert Evans]

Respect, both from a theological standpoint and from just an entertainment standpoint. The idea of a devil whose primary focus is not on acts of grand evil, but on acts of, like, petty annoyance. Like that scene where he's just casually scratching records and then putting them in the mail is so funny to me.

[Sarah Marshall]

And there's a scene where he's ripping the last pages out of novels.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, yes. And there's that. I mean, my favorite part, I guess. Spring for the film Bedazzled, which is half a century old.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, you've had.

[Robert Evans]

But there's a great scene. There's a great scene where the guy who's soul. The devil is trying to win and he are talking and the guy, the human, asks him like, why did you rebel against God in the first place? It seems like he had a pretty sweet deal. And the devil gets up on top of. I think it's a mailbox or something. And he's like, okay, I'm gonna walk you through what it was like back then. I'm God. Start praising me. And the guy goes around like, I praise you. Keep going. Keep praising me. Keep praising me. Keep. And he go on like this for a while. And eventually the guy's like, hey, can we take a break? And maybe I get up there for a minute. And the devil's like, that's exactly what I thought.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, exactly. Right. And it plays on the feeling that a lot of us have in Sunday school or equivalent that, like, you know, that the character of God in the Bible is insufferable. You know, And I don't know if that plays into our topic today, but I have always noticed it. And especially. And I also really love the Cartman Land episode of south park where Kyle's faith is challenged and so his parents tell him the story of Job.

[Robert Evans]

That's a blasphemy.

[Sarah Marshall]

And he's like, why would God do that to a good man?

[Robert Evans]

Why is he like this?

[Sarah Marshall]

And it's like, why would God do that? Cause, like, Satan, you expect to, like, try and be a trickster. But the fact that God is like, hey, yeah, I should ruin this guy's life and see if he still praises me. That's a good use of my time. You're like, the devil comes out looking comparatively good in that story because it's less of a betrayal from him. He's just an asshole.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Anyway, watch the original Bedazzled. You don't need to watch the original Bedazzled, the one made and. Or listen to Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, you can watch that one. It's cute.

[Robert Evans]

It's fun if you want.

[Sarah Marshall]

But yeah, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are one of the great comedy duos. And I do feel like the idea of just the trickster devil is so beautifully embodied there. And it's interesting to me that the devil is kind of the trickster character. And we took the trickster who's necessary and most cosmologies and made him evil.

[Robert Evans]

Crucial part of society.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. A very different role to play.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So I don't know, folks. Watch Bedazzled. It's more biblically accurate than Peter Thiel's lecture on the Antichrist, I'll say that.

[Sarah Marshall]

There you go. Yeah, that feels so true. This is an I heart podcast.

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[Robert Evans]

So I had planned, Sarah, for us to get through the first one of Peter's, like the notes on his first lecture faster than we did because we didn't get through that even.

[Sarah Marshall]

We might have to do like a day long staged event doing that. Like when Andy Kaufman read the Great Gatsby. Yeah, I'm ready.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Or I could just get the Embarcadero to host me while I talk for four days about Peter Thiel's lectures on the Antichrist and why they're very silly.

[Sarah Marshall]

People would go. I would want to.

[Robert Evans]

We're gonna have to cut through the remainder of that first lecture before we get into who he thinks might be the Antichrist. And so when we left Apollo, I.

[Sarah Marshall]

Do feel like you've given me a pretty clear sense of how unhinged this.

[Robert Evans]

Thank you.

[Sarah Marshall]

Good theology is.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I'm glad we at least landed on that. So when we left off with Peter, he was complaining that science promised to make us immortal and had failed to deliver, which it didn't, but. But nonetheless, next, Peter says that after the development of the atom bomb, technology itself became apocalyptic. And in 1945, the National Committee on Atomic Information published One World or None, which is generally agreed to have been like the first atomic scare movie. Like, this is the first, like, what if a nuclear war movie. Right. Oh, boy. And the gist of this is that nukes were really dangerous. And the only rational solution to a world in which everyone has nukes is a strong United nations that can put an end to war and ensure nuclear weapons are never used en masse. Right, Yep. I would say, I think most people would say, like, yeah, it's pretty reasonable reaction to nukes.

[Sarah Marshall]

Kind of the theme of a lot of Twilight Zone episodes as well. Pretty reasonable. Yeah. Fairly middle of the road concept.

[Robert Evans]

It's also. Yeah, it's also. This is also like a reaction to World War II, where it's like, we should probably have some sort of like, international law. So, like, if a country's doing war crimes, there's some sort of mechanism the.

[Sarah Marshall]

United States from doing the things that we will choose to do again.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I mean, we don't really do this. The icc. I mean, we briefly. Serbia, we punish briefly. But that's kind of it, you know, in terms of international law, I'm cutting things down a little bit, but we Never. This is not a thing that ever really happens, but it is a thing. Peter Thiel is in a lot of ways a very old fashioned, kind of paranoid, the UN is the devil, the Antichrist wants the UN to take over the world kind of guy.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's the STERLING Hayden and Dr. Strangelove kind of a role that's so crucial in American politics.

[Robert Evans]

And Dr. Strangelove is gonna come up in a little bit here. You're gonna hear what Peter thinks about that movie. Oh, no, but it's not. He tries to dress it up because he knows that like, well, cranks are the guys who think that any reasonable person can be like, well, the UN never came even anywhere close to being a one world government. At no point did it have even a fraction of that much power, obviously.

[Sarah Marshall]

And if it did, then they would have solved more problems.

[Robert Evans]

You would think maybe things would be better. Peter is that kind of a crank, but he doesn't want you to think about that. So he has to dress this up in theological terms and shit.

[Sarah Marshall]

He can't just be the guy down at the feed store. Cause really he's like Dale from King of the Hill. But he has to make it seem important.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And so he says that, you know, this movie, One World or None, was the birth of when we started seeing technology itself as like, apocalyptic. Right. And this is bad because Peter is blaming basically the fact that we don't make scientific advancements anymore on this train of thinking that starts, you know, with this nuclear paranoia of this idea that, like, well, technology's bad and that's why we're not progressing technologically, of course. And I feel like I've explained enough why this is all nonsense.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Also from a film history perspective, that's even wrong. Cause like, what do you call Metropolis, baby?

[Robert Evans]

Frankenstein.

[Sarah Marshall]

Seriously.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, the movie and the book. But yeah. There's so much we could critique about this. But I need to read you this next line. Coincidentally, this is also when the Catholic Church stopped giving apocalyptic sermons. Did it? Is that true? I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Because I went to, like, my dad was Catholic. I didn't only go to Catholic Church, but I went to Catholic Church a good amount as a little kid. And I remember the priest talking about the End times and the Second Coming. It wasn't the only thing. That's certainly not as much of a focus in Catholicism as it is in a lot of, like, evangelical Christian, Christian sects. But it's not. Not talked about.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's like Catholics aren't talking about it constantly and therefore they're not doing it at all.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I guess my citation here is like, I went to church as a kid. What the fuck are you basing this on, Peter? Like, that's just not true. And it's also like, well, Catholicism's just one chunk of Christianity and a lot of Christian faiths and priests and pastors over the last 75, 80 years have talked about the Apocalypse in different ways. It's a common subject. I don't. This whole, this whole pillar of his belief system, which is that people don't really talk about the Antichrist or the Apocalypse anymore outside of technology causing it.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Is like.

[Sarah Marshall]

No, it's like in the late 20th century, people talked about it, you know, an unbelievable amount and like pretty consistently. And you know it's Right. It just feels like he's arguing whatever he feels like he needs to in order to justify his, the point he wants to make thing by thing.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. His issue is that like all of the people who are pushing these secular apocalyptic fears about like fertility collapsing or bioweapons or AI are kind of playing into the real Antichrist because the Antichrist wants to stop technological progress. Right. That's the argument he's making. Yes.

[Sarah Marshall]

Fascinating. The Antichrist is Amish.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Or a Luddite. Right. Now, Peter, the other thing, I mean, and that's really what he believes. He does believe the Antichrist is a Luddite. And he also misunderstands Luddites. Whatever. Of course, he goes on. He's angry that he doesn't like secular apocalyptic fears. And he complains, he lists that like, oh, regular people, when they talk about the Apocalypse, they're always worried about nukes or biological weapons or AI or the children of men fertility collapse. And that's really incomplete. Quote. We should add the risk of the biblical Antichrist manifesting as a one world government here. The secular maps neatly onto the theological. The one world state of the Antichrist, on the other hand, and the no world of Armageddon. And like, first off, that's not really a risk because like, no one think, no reasonable person thinks a one world government is anywhere close to a reality. I mean, like, it's just not a realistic fear. Like, even if that was a bad thing, it's not a realistic fear. Looking at the world today.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And the whole this idea that like, oh, the secular maps onto the theological. You've got the one world state of the Antichrist and then the no world of Armageddon and like those Things only map neatly if you're an idiot. One World or none is arguing in favor of a strong UN and a strong International Criminal Court to stop world leaders from doing crimes against humanity. That's not a One World state. Like the movie that he argues for is not advocating a one world state. And neither are most people who want a stronger UN or ICC. Basically 0% of people, including me, who support a stronger ICC want a 1 world state. You just want there to be punishments for genocide. Right?

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. And in this case, it feels like people, including Peter Thiel in this case, are bedding themselves into pretzels to justify their desire to get to kill whoever they want and call it morally good.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And I think with Peter, because I don't think Peter's specifically all that motivated to kill specific groups of people, but I think Peter sees if there' International Criminal Court, if there's a higher international law of any kind, then that means I'm bound by law somewhere. And that's wrong. That's fundamentally wrong. For anyone to be able to punish me, Peter Thiel, or hold me accountable for any of my actions whatsoever. That's the worst thing that can happen.

[Sarah Marshall]

Because I'm baby. But I'm also the most powerful person in the world. Or I should be.

[Robert Evans]

And I should be because of how smart I am.

[Sarah Marshall]

But also, who will stop me? Someone please stop me. No, no one stop me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Fucking Peter. So this next paragraph is. I've said this several times. This is where things get really crazy. But this is where things get really crazy.

[Sarah Marshall]

This is where things get really crazy. It's been really crazy.

[Robert Evans]

It's been pretty crazy, but it's about to be crazier. We should at least suspect that the apocalypse in our newspaper headlines is the apocalypse of the Bible. This is not mysticism, but simple extrapolation of human nature. Wisdom has not increased, even if information has. The one point on which the atheist and fundamentalist agree is that violence comes from God. The Christian, however, knows it comes from man. I know, right? What the fuck are you. Wait, Peter, what.

[Sarah Marshall]

What are we saying?

[Robert Evans]

I think. Let me tell you what I think he's arguing here. I think he's saying that atheists, obviously fundamentalists, believe that everything comes from God. So that includes all violence. Atheists blame all violence on religion. Right?

[Sarah Marshall]

That makes sense when you put it that way.

[Robert Evans]

I wasn't. I was an angry atheist. I'm not an angry atheist anymore. I'm still more or less an atheist. I've never met an atheist who thinks all violence is caused by religion.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

You know, I've never met a one that's a crazy thing to believe.

[Sarah Marshall]

There's certainly capitalism looking at you kid. And a lot of other stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Some dude like murdering his wife because he doesn't want to pay alimony. That's not God. That kind of stuff happens. Like a fucking. A rapist committing rape isn't like God didn't make him do that. Right. Obviously there's rapists who do it of.

[Sarah Marshall]

Just sort of male entitlement and just, you know. Yeah, there's anyway. But it's like this is the kind of writing where it's like you have to kind of simplify everything into an either or. It feels like.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

Which again is very eighth grade.

[Robert Evans]

And it is very like. It's like how a 12 year old debate bro, Christian kid talks about like when I was a 12 year old right wing debate bro, this is how I thought about atheism. Right. But it's like a straw man that an adult wouldn't have. You would hope not such an absurd idea. But both the atheist and the fundamentalists believe all violence comes from God. Counterpoint.

[Sarah Marshall]

No, it's like you've never talked to an atheist. I mean.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no one thinks that. I don't even think. I guess like fundamentalists would argue that everything comes from God or whatever. So. But yeah, but like even then I think most very few of them would phrase it that way. Even of the religious fundamentalists that I know that's just a weird way to phrase anything. Like you're, you're.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, in any argument based on there being like a few key groups of people who all think the same thing as each other.

[Robert Evans]

They all think never. Exactly. And it's this weirdly enough, this sentence of all of the reading I've done on Peter Thiel and I have read extensively. I've read a lot of most of the interviews he's done over the years. I've read a lot of his own writing.

[Sarah Marshall]

We've been through a lot.

[Robert Evans]

This is the thing that scares me most. This scares me more than any of his anti democratic polemics where he's talking about the need for a dictatorship. Because the fact that he would think this and say this is evidence that there is a disconnect in his mind between what he thinks people believe and actual humanity. And that disconnect is so. It's very upsetting to me. Like that's scary how disconnected he is from reality. I would say I am upset by this.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Now from here Peter argues That if we're heading for war or Armageddon, then if it's reasonable to think that there might be an apocalyptic war. Right. Then it's not unreasonable to worry that an Antichrist might rise to power, promising to end wars and bring stability back. Right. If it's reasonable to say we might have a war that ends humanity, it's gotta be reasonable also to say that the Antichrist might promise. Rise to power, promising to stop that war. Right. Both of those are logical things. And let's, let's, let's give him that. That's a nonsense point in and of itself, but let's pretend that makes sense.

[Sarah Marshall]

Sure, whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Peter somehow doesn't draw a connection from that to like, well, an Antichrist might rise to power, promising to stop World War three, to the fact that Donald Trump, who he supported, got elected, promising to stop like literally saying, I will avoid World War iii. If you vote for me, we'll stop having a. We won't have World War iii, but Kamala will lead us there or Biden will lead us there. Like that literally is directly what Trump said. I'm not editorializing in any way.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, I know.

[Robert Evans]

You know this Peter, right? Like, anyway, Peter just doesn't deal with this.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's like, who's saying?

[Robert Evans]

Right. Who's to say this thing that actually happened obviously isn't relevant, but let's talk.

[Sarah Marshall]

About how scary it would be if it happened in an imaginary way so we can ignore the real way that it didn't just happen. Yeah, won't that be fun?

[Robert Evans]

The Bible literally says that many Christians, many believers, will be tricked by the Antichrist when he rises to power, promising to fix a lot of this shit. And Donald I, Peter, literally believe the Antichrist will rise to power, promising to stop World War Three. Donald Trump rose to power, promising to stop World War iii. Obviously none of this is worth talking about. Completely irrelevant. Instead, Peter now talks about two different, like 80 year old novels about the Antichrist from like the early 20th century, both of which he brings these. He summarizes them. I don't think we even need to talk about the novels because what he's pointing out is that both of these novels about the Antichrist and most Antichrist narratives all have a plot hole, which is that they don't explain how the Antichrist will actually seize power. Quote in late. Which is like a weird thing to care of anyway, whatever. In late modernity, we finally have the answer to how the Antichrist will rise to power by talking constantly of Armageddon or in Secular terms of existential risk. He the Antichrist rides the wave of apocalyptic anxiety. Oppenheimer lamented, we need new knowledge like we need a hole in the head. Nick Bostrom has proposed preventative policing and global compute governance in his Vulnerable World Hypothesis. Eliezer Yudkowski's latest book is if anyone builds it, everyone dies. And Peter is saying all three of these guys are potential Antichrists or servants of the Antichrist. Right? Because they're spreading. As he gives this lecture series that's entirely about his apocalyptic beliefs, he's saying these guys who are talking about Armageddon are all clearly agents of the Antichrist, if not the Antichrist themselves. Because no one else would talk about the Antichrist or the Apocalypse so much.

[Sarah Marshall]

Except as he talks about the Apocalypse.

[Robert Evans]

Except him. It's fine with him.

[Sarah Marshall]

And this whole thing is built on paradoxes because it's like we have to avoid a one world government by giving all of our power to a dictator who will protect us from basically another dictator. Question mark, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And it's the funniest thing to me. We'll get to his other Antichrist, the fact that he's like a leisure Yudkowski, maybe an Antichrist. Right. Certainly an agent of the Antichrist, Certainly cast. We've made fun of him on this show a lot. Right? Like, he's an AI Risk dude. And obviously I don't like AI but not because Yadkowski is like a rationalist who believes he's like a member of a cult, kind of the leader of a cult based on these deranged ideas of rationality. And he thinks AI is dangerous because AI will become a God. And it will. In any AI AI God we create will inevitably want to kill us. All. Right?

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, it's dangerous enough in terms of taking all our jobs. You know, we can just start with that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no, he's not one of the it'll take our jobs thing. He doesn't care about artists making a living. Yudkowski cares about, like, he believes that the Harlan Ellison short story I have no Mouth, But I Must Scream. That's what he literally thinks AI will do. Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

But before that, it'll take our gems.

[Robert Evans]

It'll take our jobs. Exactly. And it's fun. Cause, like, Peter Thiel funded Yudkowski in his early career. His rationalism and stuff. Peter gave this guy money and supported the growth of the rationalist subculture in the Bay Area.

[Sarah Marshall]

And then he was like, wait, no, not that.

[Robert Evans]

No. Yeah, he's literally. He says in his lecture that he thinks Yudkowski is deranged. Now because Yudkowski's anti AI.

[Sarah Marshall]

So he has a former mentee who then takes his ideas in a direction he doesn't like. And he's like, that guy could be the Antichrist. I mean, if nothing else, doesn't this story make you feel better about your own beefs? You know?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I do kind of think Garrison might be the Antichrist. You know, my protege, one time protege. But yeah, that's separate one's.

[Sarah Marshall]

Protege could always be the Antichrist.

[Robert Evans]

I mean Sophie, it's certainly not impossible.

[Sarah Marshall]

I. Garrison is an perfect angel. Sophie is the one you least suspect, you know, when you think about it.

[Robert Evans]

So eh, yeah, it could be Sophie. It could be Sophie. I've accepted that a while ago.

[Sarah Marshall]

I think it's Paul Pierce anyways.

[Robert Evans]

You think it's Paul Pierce? Okay, sure, why not? So this is kind of where I've decided to get into the most publicized feature of Peter's Antichrist lectures, which is his predictions as to what modern people might be the Antichrist in disguise. So obviously Yudkowski, you know, is at least in consideration.

[Sarah Marshall]

Guy I've never heard of obviously.

[Robert Evans]

Right. This guy must be it. And Peter not only hates Yudkowski, he feels the need to analyze him as a possible Antichrist. Because Yudkowski's main claim to fame now is he's trying to like warn people about AI and stop AI development. And AI is the only thing that could give Peter a return on his financial investment commensurate to what he thinks he deserves. So obviously Yudkowski's evil for trying to stop this stuff.

[Sarah Marshall]

Can we also appreciate that even if you're. I don't think that the kind of person who wants to go to a four part lecture series on the Antichrist is like my kind of person. But even so, I do feel like you would assume you were in for something different than a guy being like, here are people I don't like personally and why I think they're the Antichrist. Like that's taking another level. You're like, oh gee, I expected a PowerPoint.

[Robert Evans]

That's what we're doing. Yeah. And it's. Cause basically Peter's primary claim here is that the Antichrist is anyone warning people about the Apocalypse and trying to save the world. If that's not the Antichrist, that's an agent of the Antichrist.

[Sarah Marshall]

Except for me.

[Robert Evans]

Except for me, obviously. And Donald Trump, you know. So here's a quote from his first lecture. My thesis is that in the 17th and 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of crazy evil science in the 21st century. The Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It's someone like Greta or Eliza Yudkowski. Greta Thunberg. He says he specifically. And he'll go in later and be like, I don't think Yudkowski is. He definitely thinks Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist. He very directly is clear about that. He thinks Greta Thunberg could be the Antichrist.

[Sarah Marshall]

What is it about her that so unnerves tyrants? I mean, I guess the fact that she's, you know, very smart and impossible to corrupt. Yeah. The truth.

[Robert Evans]

She's speaking the truth to power. She's proved to. I mean, honestly, like, I've been just shocked at how continually good her takes have been just because, like, anytime someone gets famous that famous, that young, like you expect, okay, at some point they're going to like either buy into a conspiracy theory or get something. Get something weird. And she's just like, really consistently got a great head on her shoulders.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And so that scares the hell out of them.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Right. And can't be convinced to look away. Which I do feel like, you know, everything you've been talking about, I mean, we've been joking about it, but so much of it is like, what in the world is that thing? Look away. Let me do a little sleight of hand over here. It's because. Parlor tricks.

[Robert Evans]

I think fundamentally why he hates her and why she is hated by a lot of these guys so much is not that they're scared of the Dan, because obviously she doesn't have any power. She's like somewhat influential, but she's not going to throw Peter Thiel in prison or destroy. She simply does not have the power.

[Sarah Marshall]

She's not a corporation. She's just a person with morals.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, she's just a person with morals and basically zero real world power. But she is emblematic and embodies a fact which is that I'm not a believer in, oh, justice will win out. The bark. The arc of history bends towards like, I don't. I think that's a silly stance. But inevitably, in the future, if there are people, they will realize that Peter Thiel and all of his ilk during this period of time were deranged monsters who destroyed the environment and who fought viciously against any attempts to reduce the harm humanity was doing to the biosphere in order to make themselves wealthier. And they will be hated as a result. That's just a fact.

[Sarah Marshall]

But not by people. Because so many people will have died as a direct result of their actions and inactions.

[Robert Evans]

Like I think Greta represents the reality that in the future these people, they won't be able to after, especially after they're dead, keep up the lie that they were fighting against all this disinformation from the left and pretend the climate change fake, that lie won't hold up at a certain point.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, and that they're working so hard to create a mythology where the story changes every day based on what needs to be true for them to be right. And that that kind of mythology won't perpetuate itself forever and keep protecting them.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. Like there will be a future in which the bullshit that they have spent their lives propping up is not widely believed. And that doesn't mean it'll be a perfect future or even a more just future. It just means that in the future people will know what a scumbag Peter was. And that's why he is so scared and hateful of her. Right. I think that's it.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And also that he's gonna die and other people will come to live and sail around.

[Robert Evans]

Yep, he's gonna die. Probably sooner than he expects, like most people. And a lot of folks are going to be happy because it'll be good when he dies anyway. Speaking of death, advertisements are a kind of death. That's what in French the word for advertisement means. The little death.

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[Sarah Marshall]

Limu, Emu and Doug.

[Robert Evans]

Here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com.

[Sarah Marshall]

Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty Savings.

[Robert Evans]

Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.

[Hari Kondabolu]

On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley, a double board certified physician.

[Hari Kondabolu]

And I'm Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled do I have scurvy at 3am on health stuff, we're.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Talking about health in a different way.

[Hari Kondabolu]

It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

What our health says about us and the way we're living.

[Hari Kondabolu]

Like our episode where we look at.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Diabetes in the United states. I mean, 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Hari Kondabolu]

How preventable is type 2?

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Extremely. Or our in depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are.

[Hari Kondabolu]

Oh, it's hard to explain to rest of the world that like your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible. But like, you don't even know.

[Sarah Marshall]

You don't know, you don't know.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

It's going to be a fun ride.

[Hari Kondabolu]

So tune in, listen to health stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

All I know is what I've been.

[Sarah Marshall]

Told and that to have truth is a whole lie.

[Maggie Freeling]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Maggie Freeling]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Robert Evans]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Maggie Freeling]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Hari Kondabolu]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Robert Evans]

That y' all said.

[Sheryl McCollum]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas out.

[Maggie Freeling]

From lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to Find someone to blame.

[Hari Kondabolu]

America. Y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Maggie Freeling]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartrade Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. Yes, talking about my flawless knowledge of French and talking about Peter Thiel's belief that fucking Greta Thunberg is the Antichrist.

[Sarah Marshall]

So perfect.

[Robert Evans]

Let's talk about this from a theological standpoint because one thing the Book of Daniel is pretty clear about vis a vis the Antichrist is that the Antichrist is a political leader of some sort. He is described repeatedly as a prince or a king. Now I could see being like, well, obviously that's if we're going with the. The Bible is true. But not always literally. You know, these are apocryphal stories. Okay. A king could be a stand in for a president or a senator, sure. But a young lady who sometimes tries to deliver food on a boat. There's no way to describe Greta Thunberg as a king or a prince. Same with Elisa Yudkowski. They're not political leaders. And the Antichrist definitely is. Again, Peter's selective embrace of literal readings of the Bible here really biting him in the ass.

[Sarah Marshall]

You're like, it's all very literal. Unless I need it to being so figurative that it's completely. Goes in a new direction. Thank you.

[Robert Evans]

I also love his fundamental like, oh, you don't understand Dr. Strangelove like the movie at all. Because the idea that like, well, in the 17th or 18th century the Antichrist would have been Dr. Strangelove. Right, I know. Well, no.

[Sarah Marshall]

Such a random rationale. Yeah, right.

[Robert Evans]

For one thing, like in the movie of the same name, he's not a political leader. He's the President's scientific advisor. And he's not responsible for the Apocalypse, at least not primarily right now, the.

[Sarah Marshall]

Same act, he's mainly delivering exposition, right?

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. Yes. And like it is true. Peter Sellars also plays the president. Right? He plays Mo. He plays Dr. Strangelove and the president that Strangelove is advising. But even if you're saying, well, that means they're the same person, that does Peter Sellers as the president being the Antichrist doesn't make sense in that movie.

[Sarah Marshall]

Because like, it's just embarrassing to misremember a movie in your big speech.

[Robert Evans]

It's so bad, like you could rewatch it. You're writing a four part lecture series, man.

[Sarah Marshall]

Also, in the 17th century, the Antichrist would not have been a character from a 1960s movie, but it would have been the Antichrist. Just like the, you know, the devil's kid or whatever.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it would have been a king or something like in the Bible.

[Sarah Marshall]

A text people knew better than a movie that wouldn't come out for 300 years.

[Robert Evans]

I also think, again, I don't. Maybe he hasn't even seen the movie. Cause it sounds like Peter thinks Dr. Strangelove causes the apocalypse. In the movie Dr. Strangelove, he's like.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, you know, it's about an atomic bomb and it's called Dr. Strangelove. So probably Dr. Strangelove made the bomb. Obviously. I mean, I didn't have time to watch it, but I deduced it because I'm so smart.

[Robert Evans]

That must be what happens. And like, no, for the record, if you haven't seen it, Dr. Strangelove is a mad scientist and a Nazi. But he doesn't. There's a crazed US general who launches the initial nuclear strike.

[Sarah Marshall]

And then like as American as can be, right?

[Robert Evans]

And like the government, like we try to reach out to the USSR in our bunker and are like, these are where the missiles are coming in. You know, you can shoot them out of the sky. Like, please, we don't want to actually have a nuclear war. This is a fuck up. And the USSR is like, oh well, we actually built a doomsday device that will go off automatically and we can't stop it.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right, right. And the premise is like, what if an American general lost his mind and there weren't adequate safeguards in place before he could cause mutually assured destruction? And it's like, oh yeah, I guess. I mean that's certainly not a problem we're having now.

[Robert Evans]

Right, Exactly. Certainly no more relevant now than it was back then. But it's like neither The President nor Dr. Strangelove are antichrist figures. No one really is in the movie Dr. Strangelove actually.

[Sarah Marshall]

No, they're not.

[Robert Evans]

But it's particularly WEIRD to say Dr. Strangelove is the Antichrist because he doesn't incite the action. That just isn't accurate.

[Sarah Marshall]

Have you ever seen. Because you know, the Omen has two sequels and they're not that good.

[Robert Evans]

Oh God.

[Sarah Marshall]

The second one has Sam Neill in it and he plays the adult Damian and he's like taking over the world and he's all charismatic and I think in politics and dating a newscaster lady. But the movie doesn't really know what to have him be doing because it is like, what would the Antichrist believe? What would his whole deal be? People are kind of reluctant to state that. And so it's like you get to sort of align it with whatever, you know, people already find threatening at that time. Hence all the Obama stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Right, right, right, exactly. So the fact that he's listed Greta Thunberg and Alicia Yudkowski as possible Antichrist, both of those things are insane. At least Tunberg, she is, like, popular. She has a lot of followers and people who care about what she says. Alezer Yudkowski, he's got his little cult, but he's not you. Really? You think he's got the juice to even be on the list of potential Antichrists? You're vastly overestimating this man's charisma, his weirdo's charisma.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's not even in the top thousand.

[Robert Evans]

No, no. I am a more realistic Antichrist than.

[Sarah Marshall]

Fucking Omusi hit cat Jeb Bush. Way ahead of him, honestly.

[Robert Evans]

Yes, Jeb is much closer. So after this, in the second lecture, Peter apparently goes into more detail about his beliefs on the Antichrist. Per the Guardian quote, Teal goes on to identify the legionnaires of the Antichrist as people like Elisa Yudkowski, Nick Bostrom, and Greta Thunberg who argue for world government to stop science. So that's at least a little more realistic. He's like, well, maybe they're not the Antichrist, but they're at least his legionnaires.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, man. And again, I shouldn't have to say neither Yudkowski nor Tunberg nor Bostrom want to stop all science. Right. They both have specific issues. Exactly. They're very specific issues with specific technologies. But Peter can't stand that because, again, they'll get in the way of his profit. Right. Like, that's really what this comes down to. It's very banal. But that is the truth of it. Peter goes on to say, the legionaries of the Antichrist, like Elisa Yudkowski, Nick Bosterman, Greta Thunberg, argue for world government to stop science. The Antichrist has somehow become anti science. And no, they just don't. When the Washington Post reached out to Yudkowski for a statement, he replied, my understanding is that authorities from multiple Christian denominations have stated that Thiel's views identifying the Antichrist with proposals to regulate the AI industry are not deemed by them to be compatible with conventional Christian belief. That's one of his few statements that I'm like, yeah, that's a Good response.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I mean, that's the nice thing about standing next to someone who's completely off their cracker. You get to seem a little bit more normal.

[Robert Evans]

Very. Seemed much more reasonable. Now I will say Greta's response was much better because her spokespeople, whoever the Post reached out to on her team, didn't comment. Which is the best response to Peter Thiel declaring you the Antichrist or one of his legionaries? Just don't. What are you gonna say?

[Sarah Marshall]

You really shouldn't have to issue a statement saying you're not the Antichrist whenever someone accuses you of it, or else no one would ever get anything done in this country.

[Robert Evans]

I guess I feel like if I was in that boat, I would be like, yes, Peter, I am the Antichrist and I'm coming for your soul, buddy. I talked with the devil and we have a plan for you. You don't even know how we're ensnaring you. Got you, baby. We got you. Now at the same time, in his second lecture, Peter talks about his Luddite Antichrist candidates. Like right while he's doing that, he floats another name as a potential Antichrist briefly before kind of explaining why he doesn't think this guy's the Antichrist. And that name is Marc Andreessen. Now Marc Andreessen is the co founder of Andreessen Horowitz. He is a fellow big tech AI venture capitalist, ghoul. And actually I'd be like, yeah, Marc Andreessen, not a bad Antichrist candidate. He is evil. But Peter hates him not because he's a monster trying to destroy all art and human culture and replace it with AI slop. Which is literally what Marc Andreessen wants, right? That's his stated goal. Mark is the author of something called the Techno Optimist Manifesto which argues that AI will solve all problems, including like climate change. All of our serious life threatening issues will be solved by a super intelligent AI. Therefore anyone who tries to slow or stop AI development is evil and needs to be destroyed, killed if necessary. Is the is what you're is insinuated. Heavily, not directly stated, but like anything you can do to stop the people who are anti AI is justified because they're trying to kill God. You know, that's Marc Andreessen.

[Sarah Marshall]

A lot of really well balanced people with a lot of power in this world is what I'm learning more and more.

[Robert Evans]

Sane billionaires, all of them. All of them sane. And it's funny to me that as nuts as he is about this, Peter recognizes How crazy Mark is because his issue with Marc Andreessen is that he's putting out gobbledygook AI propaganda.

[Sarah Marshall]

Fair enough.

[Robert Evans]

Weirdly, he is because, yeah, I think his issue is Yudkowski's anti AI stuff is that it will inevitably become a God that's evil. And Andresen is just like the opposite, where he's like, it will inevitably become a God, but good. Right. And so I guess Peter rejects both of them, but he says this when he brings up Mark in the context of the Antichrist. It's not Andriesen, by the way. I think Andriesen is not the Antichrist because, you know, the Antichrist is popular. Oh, that's funny, Shade.

[Sarah Marshall]

But I thought I'd say his name and the word Antichrist in the same sentence several times.

[Robert Evans]

Several times. I didn't need to bring it up. Right. Next he goes on to Bill Gates, who he notes, you know, it's reasonable to put him on the list. But he thinks Gates is ultimately unlikely to be the Antichrist, even though he describes him as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type character whose positive public face is just a mask. Quoth Peter, I saw the Mr. Hyde version about a year ago where it was just a non stop Tourette's yelling swear words almost incomprehensible what was going on. And I don't have trouble believing that Bill Gates is a dick. Yeah, I'll give you that, Peter. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. I don't have trouble believing he's a Jekyll and Hyde. Clearly his wife left for after the Epstein stuff for a good reason, you know. Now, as I noted, reporters with the Guardian, namely Joanna Boyen, Derek Kerr and Nick Robbins early actually got like all seven hours of Peter's Antichrist lectures and listened to them, which I have not been able to do yet. Maybe one day. And on the subject of Bill Gates and their article, they write something very funny. Ultimately, Teal concedes Gates cannot be the Antichrist, bringing up the topic more than once. He's not a. And here's. That's so funny. He really is stuck on that. He's not a political leader, he's not broadly popular. And again, perhaps to Gates credit, he's still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins who believe that science and atheism are compatible.

[Sarah Marshall]

What?

[Robert Evans]

And that's fundamentally he believes. Well, because being anti science is what makes you the Antichrist. So that must mean that you can't be pro science. And not Christian.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay.

[Robert Evans]

It's actually impossible.

[Sarah Marshall]

Walk it out. Walk it off.

[Robert Evans]

Peter, this is disordered thinking. This is like there's something actually wrong here.

[Sarah Marshall]

This is like if he weren't a billionaire, his family would be like, hey, buddy, do you wanna.

[Robert Evans]

Should we try a new medication for you, bud? Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

You want to go feed some squirrels?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Something to take your mind off the crazy.

[Sarah Marshall]

Why don't we put this manifesto in the drawer?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. We'll come back to this tomorrow, Peter. Maybe we'll keep working on this.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Why don't we have some hot soup?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, some soup. Maybe a cup of coffee. You know, maybe some tea. Caffeine's probably bad for you right now, huh?

[Sarah Marshall]

Just get off this Andy Christ thing for a while.

[Robert Evans]

You've been screaming about bill gates for 45 minutes.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, but I guess, like, part of the great American dream of becoming a billionaire is that no one can tell you how crazy you sound.

[Robert Evans]

You know, that's the whole. And that. Yeah, that's part of why they're angry at the people they're angry at.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

They're doing a bit more research around this area. It makes it very clear why Peter Thiel hates Bill Gates so much. Aside from the fact that Gates seems to annoy a lot of people in general by being a dick.

[Sarah Marshall]

You know, Microsoft Word had some, you know, some tricky areas, let's say.

[Robert Evans]

Sure. Yeah. But it can't just be that because Thiel is friends with Elon Musk. So the fact that Bill Gates is just an asshole can't explain it. Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

So. And I think I figured out what it is, which is that Bill Gates has made a big public show of wanting to give away and convince other billionaires to give away most of their fortunes before they die. Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, without which I would not have probably gotten to hear Morning Edition for many years.

[Robert Evans]

There you go. Yeah. My ex wife wouldn't have had a laptop in elementary school, you know, So I think that's really his issue with Gates. And I think that in part because of what I found in a Washington Post article, because the Post also got access to the tapes. And an article by Natasha Tiki, Elizabeth Dwashkin and Garrett Devink, they wrote this. The investor Thiel said he recently encouraged Musk to renege on his 2012 commitment to the Giving Pledge movement, co founded by Garrett, which asks wealthy people to commit the majority of their fortune to charitable causes, according to the recordings. And this is Thiel here. 200 billion. If you're not Going to be careful is going to left wing nonprofits that are going to be chosen by Bill Gates. Thiel said he warned Musk, according to the recording, painting the philanthropist as among the malevolent forces besetting technologists. That's his hatred of Gates. Gates wants his billionaires to give away their money to these evil left wing causes. And he convinces Musk to stop.

[Sarah Marshall]

He funded too many modern dance troupes, therefore Antichrist. It's like you need to set standards for your Antichrist behavior, I gotta say.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, and it does. You know, Teal's positive on Musk now, I think because Musk is useful. He also, in this lecture series, has nice things to say about J.D. vance, whose political career he paid to get off the ground. Per Maggie Dupree. Writing for Futurism, Thiel, quote, described himself as very Pro Vice President J.D. vance, to whom Thiel has given millions in campaign funds.

[Sarah Marshall]

He did express.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, he did express that he's concerned the VP who's Catholic, might give too much credence to the Pope. The place that I would worry about.

[Sarah Marshall]

Is that he's too close to the.

[Robert Evans]

Pope, said Teal, per the Guardian. And so we have all these reports of fights between him and the Pope. I hope there are a lot more. And that's like my issue with JD Vance is that he might be a papist. Okay, great.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, we've gone back to Puritanism in this country. We have to worry about Papistry now on top of everything else. It's also like, I mean, look, I don't believe in Antichrist stuff. I never have. I'm not a devil believer, which is part of my interest in the Satanic panic, which it just seems like extra wild when you're not afraid of Satan yourself. I grew up afraid of a lot of things. I was afraid of the Bermuda Triangle, but I wasn't afraid of Satan because that just didn't seem relevant to my life.

[Robert Evans]

Just not a real thing.

[Sarah Marshall]

But if I were to pick an Antichrist today, it would obviously be Trump. Like, he's really behaving very Antichrist y. And it's just so funny to have him leading a party that has become so much about, you know, this kind of death cult and Armageddonism. And they're like, but not you, sir. And it's like, but just look at him.

[Robert Evans]

Not the obvious guy. Yeah, like, and it's again, like, even the things you name in this are clearly more relevant to Trump than Greta Dunberg or whatever. I mean, now, outside of this Frankly, Unhinged lecture series. Back in June, Peter gave an interview to Ross Douthat. Douthat. Whatever his name, however you say his fucking last name at the New York Times. And Ross is one of the worst writers alive. He used to be the senior editor of the Atlantic, and I think he might be the most up his own ass conservative writer in the country. He was Bill Kristol's replacement, and massive downgrade for Bill Crystal even. He's both both entirely uncritical of big tech and pro everyone should be religious. And so he and Peter Thiel are peas in a pod. And during that interview, Ross asks what Peter thinks about the techno optimist manifesto that Marc Andreessen self published in 2023. And again, that's basically saying we have to accelerate at all costs the growth of AI because it will solve all of our problems. So slowing things down as AI down is the same as committing mass murder. Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Think of all the studio Ghibli esque portraits of your husband that will never be drawn.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly, exactly. It's a fate worse than death for all of us. And the fact that the document is generally considered to be a foundational text for effective accelerationism, that's kind of the philosophical name for what Andreessen is preaching. And that's close to what Peter Thiel advocates because he's literally arguing that Greta Thunberg might be the Antichrist or is at least furthering the Antichrist's agenda because she's skeptical about AI and fossil fuels and shit.

[Sarah Marshall]

Then I'm the Antichrist too. Congratulations to me.

[Robert Evans]

Thiel definitely thinks the same way, but I think he's incapable. I think why he has to reject Andreessen is that he can't speak positively about a peer with the same ideas if they put those ideas down first. And so he says this about the essay. It represents a kind of corporate utopianism. In the 1990s, there was a broad cultural optimism that technology would solve everything. But by 2025, that optimism has shrunk. Today's visions are narrower, less inclusive and less confident. The grand utopian projects have given away to incremental gains overshadowed by fears of collapse. And that's accurate. But the problem, again, he's not capable of looking what he's literally saying. The visions are narrower, the optimism has shrunk. That doesn't mean that, like, we're not making technological progress, but it does mean that, like, there's a problem in how people are visualizing progress. Right? Yes.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And it's like Perhaps people are more pessimistic and perhaps even more reasonable because of how horrible everything's been for the last 30 years.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

I realized that in the 90s it was a utopian time when Starbucks had, like, big upholstered chairs in them and you could sit there for a long time and you could buy your Norwich Jones CDs, but that's over, man.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

And the article is just a great example. There's so much Ross just lets Peter say nonsense without ever questioning him. It's like it's one of the worst interviews I've ever read.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's like he's accidentally a great interviewer by being a terrible interviewer because he just lets him say stupid stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you do get more out. There's no. Like, Peter drops the line again. He makes the claim that, like, after 1945, churches stopped preaching End Times sermons and, like, question Peter. No, they didn't.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Really?

[Sarah Marshall]

Where did all those Left behind movies come from?

[Robert Evans]

The Left behind books. Massively popular. Peter, like. And had nothing to do with technology, by the way. That's not how the anti. I mean, surveillance tech, I guess. But the Antichrist doesn't rise to power on the back of fears about fucking AI or whatever. Anyway, I don't know how Peter can think this true. I don't know how Ross can't question any of this. Other than Ross is just like the. The fucking bootlickeriest bootlicker who ever licked a goddamn boot.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's like, I hear you got some good blood for me later on.

[Robert Evans]

Right. One of the weirdest things to me here is that, like, Ross is theoretically a Christian. He's a big CS Lewis fan, and Peter is theoretically a Christian. But then in this interview, Peter describes the choice presented by the Bible in the Book of Revelations as Antichrist or Armageddon, and that this is unacceptable and thus we must find a third path. Right. That's me. Which is like, no, it doesn't. That's not. Like, for one thing, the Bible doesn't present a choice. It just says there's an Antichrist and that leads to the Second Coming and an Armageddon and everything's gonna get all.

[Sarah Marshall]

Weird, and then people are gonna get up out of their graves. It's gonna be wacky, you guys. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's not like you have an option to change that. If you're gonna believe it, you have to just like, you know, God knows no one has ever been selective about their beliefs as a Christian.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It's this. Both that, like, Ross doesn't question Peter on this. And also, this is so heretical. Like, I'm not a. I don't care personally, but, like, you should.

[Sarah Marshall]

But don't you think that it's, like, weirdly become like a tenet of modern sort of American, I don't know, like, political Protestantism, I guess, that, like, we allow people a much freer hand in terms of doing their own.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[Sarah Marshall]

Interpretations then?

[Robert Evans]

Absolutely.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. It seems like things have gotten a little bit over the top.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, and that's. That is definitely true that, like, we, like, that's. That's a major factor in, like, the birth of Protestantism. Right. Is this idea, this, this. This ongoing thing that, like, well, well, anyone can be a priest or a pastor. Anyone can speak the word. Right. And like, why do you think anyone.

[Sarah Marshall]

Can speak in tongues at a certain point if they feel like it?

[Robert Evans]

Anyone can interpret the Bible. Sure. But even so, it is kind of very fundamentally heretical to be like, the Bible says we have to choose between the Antichrist or the apocalypse. But I think there's a third way. Cause Peter is literally saying, I think we can avoid the biblical apocalypse by getting our politics right.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, actually, we're kind of getting into Joseph Smith territory, right. Where you're like, I believe in the Bible, but also I'm adding stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I think we can rewrite the ending of the Bible.

[Sarah Marshall]

And also, I need to have sex with your wife.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. It's weird. Right. And especially because Peter describes himself as a little orthodox Christian, which, like, this is not anywhere close to orthodoxy. Right. The idea that you're arguing God might let us avoid having an Antichrist and an Armageddon and still live forever. That's not Christian theology. That's Peter theology.

[Sarah Marshall]

You're right. That's like getting into. You're starting to found your own religion at that point, which he certainly has resources.

[Robert Evans]

I would argue what Act 17 is doing is they are not spreading Christianity to Silicon Valley elites. They are creating a new, like, a Mormonism for rich people.

[Sarah Marshall]

They're hybridizing Christianity with, like, Silicon Valley billionaire culture. Oh, no. Now that's the Antichrist. The cursed child of two evil parents, the anti.

[Robert Evans]

Est of Christ. And it is kind of weird to me. Part of what's strange is that, like, he wants to avoid the biblical apocalypse. And I think what that means is that Peter Thiel is so clearly scared of death that he can't even embrace everlasting life. Like he would prefer. He vastly would prefer some scientist keeps his body alive than, like, Jesus Ensures him eternal life in heaven.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's like, I believe in you, God, but stay the fuck away.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's fascinating.

[Sarah Marshall]

The most reasonable thing that I've theorized him thinking this whole time, in a way. Yeah. And also it's like, it's this thing of like, you know, because I do feel like if you look at sort of the sum of human experience, it's like organized religion facilitates a lot of horror and a lot of evil. And it also facilitates a lot of structure and a lot of, just a lot of stability in people's lives. And I think one of the positive elements of it is the feeling of allowing yourself to not be in control and sort of believing in something not, you know, not even necessarily a higher power. Like it's a 12 steps kind of a thing. Although that certainly is helpful for a lot of people too, because the sort of like the ability to believe in something beyond yourself and to sort of maybe use religion to get out of the human urge towards solipsism. It feels like this is like, no, I'm actually using religion to become more self centered than ever. Isn't that great?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, it's just like the idea that, yeah, you're, you're so scared of death that you can't even, even the idea of heaven, you can't even be avoidable. You have to find a fix for that. Yeah, right.

[Sarah Marshall]

You'd rather be like a death becomes her, you know, person just walking around getting hairline fractures and gluing yourself back together.

[Robert Evans]

And again, Ross, who is a useless thinker and a useless writer and a waste of column inches for the New York Times, can't even question that. There's only one really valuable thing about the article that he writes about interviewing Teal, which is that it includes a fascinating segment where Peter talks about his early attempts to secure eternal life for himself. And I'm just gonna read, I'm gonna read a long quote from the interview here. Please do, Peter. I remember 1999 or 2000 when we were running PayPal, one of my co founders, Luke Nosek, he was into Alcor and cryonics and that people should freeze themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a freezing party. You know, a Tupperware party. People sell Tupperware policies at a freezing party. They sell. And Ross butts in here. Was it just your heads? What was going to be frozen Teal? You could get a full body or just a head. Ross. The just ahead option was cheaper. It was Disturbing. When the dot matrix printer didn't quite work and so the freezing policies couldn't be printed out.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay, I miss dot matrix printers.

[Robert Evans]

That's funny. I think a critical and thoughtful interviewer might have said something like, hey, it kind of seems like a lot of companies in the life extension space, like the guys who were selling you youthful blood to inject into your body, are, like, questionable and sketchy. And maybe con men has repeatedly encountering stuff that doesn't work or is sketchy, like Alcor not being able to make a printer work. Has any of that made you reevaluate whether or not you're just falling for a series of cons? Like the old pharaohs of Egypt taking fucking strychnine or whatever to make themselves live forever? Or like, are you still good? You still following all that? Like, Ross doesn't ask this at all.

[Sarah Marshall]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Instead, when Peter talks about how this cryonics company couldn't even get a printer to work, Ross nonsensically adds technological stagnation once again. Right?

[Sarah Marshall]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Which is like, no, that's not what that's an example of at all. Period. But Peter responds, but in ret. Kind of ignores Ross. But in retrospect, it's also a symptom of the decline, because in 1999, this was not a mainstream view, but there was still a fringe boomer view where they still believed that they could live forever, and that was the last generation. So I'm always anti boomer. But maybe there's something we've lost even with this fringe boomer narcissism, where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure all their diseases. No one who's a millennial believes that anymore.

[Sarah Marshall]

I don't even know what that aside was about.

[Robert Evans]

What is that even about? So you're anti boomer because they thought they could live forever, but you can?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Or just like, you know, say more about. What did it feel like to think about getting your head sawn off by these people? How much did just the head cost versus the body say more about that?

[Robert Evans]

Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

Would they give you someone else's limbs or put you on a big robot body like Robocop?

[Robert Evans]

Right. Yeah. So we're almost done here. I want to end by talking a little bit more about Rene Girard and Schmidt and some of Thiel's philosophical beliefs. But first, let's have an ad real quick.

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[Maggie Freeling]

What do you think makes the perfect snack?

[Hari Kondabolu]

Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

[Maggie Freeling]

Could you be more specific when it's cravenient?

[Hari Kondabolu]

Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter available right now in the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in.

[Robert Evans]

Just a second at AM pm.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm seeing a pattern here.

[Hari Kondabolu]

Well yeah, we're talking about what I.

[Maggie Freeling]

Crave, which is anything from AM pm.

[Hari Kondabolu]

What more could you want?

[Robert Evans]

Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient.

[Hari Kondabolu]

That's Cravinience ampm. Too much Good stuff on the podcast Health Stuff we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician.

[Hari Kondabolu]

And I'm Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled Do I have scurvy at 3am on health stuff, we're.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Talking about health in a different way.

[Hari Kondabolu]

It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

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[Hari Kondabolu]

Like our episode where we look at.

[Robert Evans]

Diabetes in the United states.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

I mean 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Hari Kondabolu]

How preventable is type 2?

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

Extremely. Or our in depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are.

[Hari Kondabolu]

Oh, it's hard to explain to rest of the world that like your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible but like you don't even know.

[Sarah Marshall]

You don't know.

[Hari Kondabolu]

You don't know.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in.

[Hari Kondabolu]

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

[Robert Evans]

All I know is what I've been told.

[Sarah Marshall]

And that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Maggie Freeling]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

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I'm telling you, we know Quincy.

[Maggie Freeling]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

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I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Robert Evans]

That y' all said.

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They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.

[Maggie Freeling]

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[Hari Kondabolu]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Maggie Freeling]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[Robert Evans]

All right, so we're back. And I talked up at the start about Carl Schmidt, who's the Nazi philosopher who discussed how to destroy democracies in a way that Peter Thiel followed. And Rene Gerard, who is this, he's this big belief in sort of like this mimetic theory of mimetic rivalry, right? Where people, once they cover their basic needs, still want things. And so they kind of pick, well, what does this other guy who seems to be doing better than me have? And that's kind of mimetic rivalry. But it doesn't make people happy. So they need scapegoats. And Gerard's attitude was like, Christianity should have brought an end to that. It's certainly evidence that we need to bring an end to that. It's bad to scapegoat groups of people. And Christ was kind of like, that's why he was killed, right? He was made into a scapegoat. And that's like the final evidence that it's wrong to do that. You know, that's Gerard's attitude. Peter claims to be a major follower of Gerard's and he's gone to a bunch of gatherings and in fact, in 2004, he and one of his mentors organized a week long seminar on Rene Girard at Stanford. And they invited Gerard, who was alive at the time. And they also invited a scholar of Carl Schmidt, who is also like a peer of Rene Gerard named Wolfgang Palaver, who is. Palaver is one of Peter Teal's favorite intellectuals.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's a hell of a name.

[Robert Evans]

It's quite a name. And Teal is very like, is a huge big fan of this guy and a major, like, cites him quite frequently and has invited him to a number of these different events. Right. This 2004 seminar on Gerard is right after Peter Thiel got rich, after he like sold PayPal. So he, he funds this thing. And the theme of the conference is Politics and the Apocalypse. And that theme was suggested by Wolfgang Palaver while they were planning the event. So this is obviously, it's a couple years after 911 and people who are what you'd call memetic theorists, these folks who buy into a lot of Gerard's beliefs about mimetic rivalry are trying to figure out, was 911 like an example of like planetary memetic rivalry? This, like, was it, did it come out of anger from one part of the world at like all of the things that the west has that they don't have? Which is very much kind of in line with like a lot of what Bush was saying, you know, not exactly, but that you can see some people, they're jealous of our freedoms, right?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yes.

[Robert Evans]

So kind of one of the questions that these Gerard fans, these mimetic, you know, theoreticians are talking about is like, like, is that kind of, does that explain what was going on there or is there something else for us to take out of this? And Thiel's attitude was that the primary thing that 911 showed us is that the west can't protect itself. He wrote a paper right before this event in which he stated, the brute facts of September 11th demand a reexamination of the foundations of modern politics today. Mere self preservation forces all of us to look at the world anew, to think strange new thoughts. Thoughts and thereby to awaken from that long and profitable period of intellectual slumber and amnesia that is so misleadingly called the Enlightenment. And his big attitude here is that like Osama bin Laden is thinking rationally in a modern political sense, but the west is not right and we haven't realized the actual nature of the fight. And if Carl Schmitt were in charge of things, Our response to 9 11, the just response would be to call for a crusade against Islam. Right, of course. That's the rational response.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. It's very rational to try and eradicate a religion, I find, generally, I mean.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And that is like, literally, like, Teal's argument is that, like, this is where this is like, the fundamental irrationality that the west indulged in is not seeing it as a holy war, is not seeing it as a fundamental clash of civilizations. We didn't do that enough. Which, like, I mean, we did. The people you would have supported then, George W. Bush, like, that is how they framed it, and it failed.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's very much how Alan Jackson was describing the situation. Again, he's like, really recommending Antichrist y behavior, we must say. I also realize I keep saying it like antipasto, but, you know, and I.

[Robert Evans]

Think that's the right thing.

[Sarah Marshall]

What if it was delicious?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. What if the Antichrist tasted better? Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

What if there were some olives but.

[Robert Evans]

Was less filling at the same time?

[Sarah Marshall]

Just a nice cold snack on a summer's day when you've got pasta coming later.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, like a Montucky cold snack. Yes, exactly. So Wolfgang, Peter is a huge fan of him, specifically because of how Wolfgang interpreted a lot of Carl Schmitt's writing and some essays that he wrote on what Carl Schmitt meant and kind of how his concept of the political functions. And that's what he bases a lot of his, like, well, we're doing the wrong things after 911 on is his ideas of, like, how Schmidt would have handled things instead, and I want to quote from an article in Wired kind of summarizing this journey. It would quickly become apparent that Thiel had spent some time considering the paper Palaver presented the day the two men met in 1998. The strange new thoughts Thiel wanted his audience to entertain were, it turned out, largely those of Karl Spencer. But where Palaver had been repulsed, Thiel extolled Schmidt's robust conception of the political in which humans are forced to choose between friends and enemies, and everything else is delusion. The high point of politics, Palaver quotes Schmidt as saying, are the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy. In Thiel's mind, Osama bin Laden was capable of this kind of politics. The west, with its fetish for individual rights and procedures, was not so. Palaver is quoting Schmidt as being like, this guy believed that the high point in politics was the defining of an enemy and getting a group of people, getting a community to recognize an enemy. And that's A lot of. I mean, that's where Schmidt kind of goes in with Gerard, is they both had this concept of, like, scapegoating as being important. But Schmidt is like, this is how you gain power. This is actually how you destroy democracy, is by finding an enemy, defining them as not part of the community, and excising them. And then you continually push that barrier.

[Sarah Marshall]

And if you don't do that, you're a moron. Right, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And Palaver is saying, that's what Schmidt believes because he was bad. Right. And that. That's like. That's an awful thing to believe. But, like, this is what Schmidt was advocating. And Teal is like, no, that's awesome. And Palaver, like, their relationship over the last 20 years has been Palaver gradually realizing Peter Thiel likes him because he describes accurately what a monster believed. And Peter Thiel is the same kind of monster. Yep. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

What a fun day at Stanford.

[Robert Evans]

It's. It's awesome. To continue from that Wired article, Schmidt, Thiel conjectured, would have responded to 911 by calling for a holy crusade against Islam. But the west was instead slipping beyond politics altogether. Thiel seemed to fear towards the creation of a bland world embracing economic and technical organization. This was Schmidt's nightmare scenario. And such a world, Thiel said, a representation of reality might appear to replace reality. Instead of violent wars, there could be violent video games. Instead of heroic feats, there could be thrilling amusement park rides. Instead of serious thought, there could be intrigues of all sorts, as in a soap opera. But that counterfeit reality, Thiel argued, would be just the brief harmony that prefigures the final catastrophe of the apocalypse. The harmony in Schmidt's telling of the Antichrist. Thiel's discussion of Schmidt didn't mention the Hitler or the Nazis once.

[Sarah Marshall]

Irrelevant. Who cares?

[Robert Evans]

Great. Yeah. Why does it matter that this guy was a Nazi and arguing for Nazis? And what matters is that we need to take his idea about picking an enemy. And it's actually a really bad thing if, like, people are playing video games instead of fighting in real wars. That, like, that is the path to the Antichrist. Like, we're replacing the real heroism with fictional heroism. It's a very fascist idea. It's fundamentally a very fascist idea.

[Sarah Marshall]

So basically he's like, yeah, like, if we don't become fascists, we're gonna. We have to become fascists to protect ourselves from the Antichrist, sweetie.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And kind of the conclusion Thiel draws from Palaver's writing about Schmidt is that cause Schmidt fundamentally suggested, like, we have to have these dramatic solutions to the problem. To deal with the enemy, we kill them. Right. A fight. He's enough Nazi. Right. Thiel pulls back from that. But his solution is you have to fortify the modern west, and you can't do that through democracy. Right. So you have to hide. You have to trick people in order to get around democratic institutions, because those aren't going to, like, you can't actually work through them. So I'm going to quote from Thiel directly. Instead of the United nations filled with interminable and inconclusive parliamentary debates that resemble Shakespearean tales told by idiots, we should consider the secret coordination of the world's intelligence services as the decisive path to a truly global Pax Americana. In other words, what we need to do is develop one world government. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Just a one world surveillance super system controlled by Peter Thiel. Not a one world government. No, no. We need. We do need, Thiel says, a political framework that operates outside the checks and balances of representative democracy. But that's not a one world government. Right, Right. It's just a surveillance state that I'm in charge of.

[Sarah Marshall]

You know, so basically he's saying, it would be terrible if somebody did the things that I want to do myself. It has to be me.

[Robert Evans]

Right? Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

God.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It's awesome. You know, that Wired article does a really good job of talking about Palaver's kind of dawning horror as he realizes that, like, he's been reading all these old papers of mine about Schmidt, but interpreting them as, like, this guy's awesome and I want to do all the things he's suggesting.

[Sarah Marshall]

Like when Oliver realized all these guys were getting into finance because they loved his movie that they never saw the last quarter of, apparently.

[Robert Evans]

And it's been like, Girardians in general, like, people who are followers of Rene Girard in his intellectual tradition have, like, this has been kind of a growing horror for a lot of them. And I think they probably should have started earlier because, like, it has often been said that Rene Girard was kind of the inventor of the like button on Facebook for good reason. Because Peter Thiel has justified him betting on Facebook by saying, quote, I bet on mimesis. Right. Like, on mimetic. This idea that, like, mimetic rivalry is the underpinning of Facebook. Right. It's the underpinning of social media. The I'm going to both people being jealous and wanting to imitate the lives of other people they see on. Right. And so people have been saying since the early 2000s that, like, Gerard is kind of Gerardian philosophy is kind of baked into a lot of the most toxic stuff about social media. But what really fucked a lot of these people up is kind of more recently. Cause JD when they saw JD Vance during the 2024 election, start lying about Haitians and, like, spreading. Knowingly spreading, like, lies about, like, Haitians eating dogs and stuff. Because this is classic scapegoating, right?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And this is, again, Gerard was saying it's bad to do that. Vance, who calls himself a Gerardian, is clearly just saying, like, oh, Gerard kind of explained how scapegoating works. And I like that. Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

It feels like reading a book on or an article on child abuse and, like, the psychological effect that, like, beating your child has on them. And your takeaway is like, wow, if I beat my child, they're gonna be a lot more obedient and do more chores. I'm gonna do that. Hey, everybody, this article says you should beat your child. And the person who wrote it is like, what?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. And it's this. It's so, like, I'll quote, like, here's. Because Vance has directly stated that coming to understand Gerard influenced his Christianity. Quote.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He spoke of mimetic. His theory of memetic rivalry that we tend to over the things that other people want spoke directly to some of the pressures I experienced at Yale. But it was his related theory of the scapegoat and what it revealed about Christianity that made me reconsider my faith.

[Sarah Marshall]

It made me realize that I could be a Christian and an absolute dickwad who didn't care about human beings or human suffering. And that was very inspiring to me.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Gerard's saying Christ was killed because he was turned into a scapegoat by these powers, doing the thing that authoritarian monsters always do, which is create and destroy scapegoats, distract people from the fact that the system is unjust in making them unhappy. And Vance is like, yeah, this changed. Like, the idea of Christ as a scapegoat made me realize that I could lie about Haitians to become the vice president. Like, that's basically what Vance is saying.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's nice. Yeah, it's. There are.

[Robert Evans]

It's cool. J.D.

[Sarah Marshall]

Vance could have had less education and would have been just fine.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Less access to education for one Apple action.

[Robert Evans]

Right. To continue from that Wired article, for some Girardians, this was a breaking point. The memetic theorist Bernard Perret lambasted Vance and his billionaire mentor in a French political journal, accusing them of casting a Shadow over Girard's legacy. Within months, several more prominent Girardians followed suit. It's difficult to claim Girard, who fundamentally believes that violence is linked to exclusion and at the same time accuse Haitians of eating dogs. Girardian scholar Paul Dumoucher told a Canadian newspaper, either you didn't understand Gerard or you're a liar.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, when he put it that way.

[Robert Evans]

And I guess this is where we'll kind of close, you know, calling the.

[Sarah Marshall]

Burn unit for Peter Thiel in this very satisfying little way.

[Robert Evans]

And J.D. vance. Yeah, this little. I mean, fucking Palavers apparently emailed him a few times, being like, how are you okay with this? You know, how is anyone okay with it?

[Sarah Marshall]

And it's like, they may have way too much power, and it may be horrifying to contemplate, but nothing will ever make them less idiotic than they clearly are. And there's something nice about that. It's scary, but at least we can feel superior.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, there's a good bit at the end of that Wired piece where I think Palaver kind of reveals that he has Teal's number. What I've observed are traces of deep fear, he told me. Fear of death, fear of terrorism. And it all comes down to a lack of trust and a craving for security. Palaver suspects there are so many cases where he expresses fears and concerns and need for protection. Palaver says, and if your main thing is seeking protection, you play with fire.

[Sarah Marshall]

Huh?

[Robert Evans]

And I guess that's.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's like Beavis and Butthead.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I would say Peter can recognize that fears of the Apocalypse and the End of Days could allow an Antichrist to take power, but doesn't understand that in his own life. Your own fear of that is leading you to embrace what is effectively the Antichrist. Right. You're so scared of dying that you are embracing apocalyptic, like, just Extremely Dangerous. You're playing with fire. You are embracing authoritarianism. You are welcoming the Antichrist in because you're so scared of killing death.

[Sarah Marshall]

And there you go. And because you're so rich, everyone else has to welcome the Antichrist along with you, apparently.

[Robert Evans]

And none of your weird, like, hoax medicine attempts to extend your life have proven to work. And you're just going to blame Greta Tunberg by saying she's anti science. Because you can't just acknowledge that the thing you wanted is something that rich, powerful people have always wanted and never gotten, because it's impossible. And you're no different from the Pharaohs.

[Sarah Marshall]

And they're never gonna get it?

[Robert Evans]

Nope, nope. You will die and be forgotten too.

[Sarah Marshall]

And, you know, and that's kind of nice.

[Robert Evans]

That's good. It's good. That's why I'm fundamentally optimistic. Because of death. Right. I think it's a good thing in the long run that people die and that we're never going to like, immortality is not real. And I don't think it ever will be.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. None of these people are ever gonna be around forever and a lot of.

[Robert Evans]

Them are gonna like, no, nothing will be.

[Sarah Marshall]

Choke on a bit of toffee or something. And sure, you know, not enough of them, but.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no, not enough, but they all. Something will get all of them. Like, it will. Everyone. And that's good. It's good that people die. If someone actually created an immortality cure, I would want to stop that. I think that that's broadly. I don't think it's possible. It's a silly thing to even theorize, but it would be bad if it was real.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, and also, like, even if that did existed, it would only exist for like the worst people in the world, you know?

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. Yes. And it would be the end of progress fundamentally if, like, people stopped dying, you know, like, that's just. It's not even good, theoretically.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I get. People get angry whenever I bring this up where they're like, so you don't want to cure cancer? I'm like, if you cure cancer, people will still die. You won't cure cancer. Also.

[Sarah Marshall]

But like, Also, there's like 8 million cancers to cure. You know, you just pick one and just keep going until you got a banker.

[Robert Evans]

No, I believe if we do cure. If we were to cure all of the current cancers, then we would start seeing different weird cancers that people don't get right now because they just don't live long enough for them to happen. But we'll keep experiencing new cancers.

[Sarah Marshall]

Start getting the biblical patriarch, 800 year old guy cancer.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And also it's like, think about how bored people are now and how much more bored we would be if we were immortal.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Again, that's the thing. And that's the thing, Gerard, like, that's kind of something Gerard was dealing with is like this, you know, when people's needs are met and they're still unhappy.

[Sarah Marshall]

Like, God, imagine the trouble we would cause for each other if we lived forever.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. How much worse mimetic rivalry would be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anything else?

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, thanks for telling me about someone so horrible and embarrassing that they. I have come around here. Moral of well, let's embrace death, because at least he's gonna get that guy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I love it.

[Robert Evans]

Let's embrace death. Like, let's all cheer death on as it goes after Peter Thiel.

[Sarah Marshall]

Death wielding a sickle like a polo mallet, galloping towards another billionaire.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. You know, and let's all encourage Peter Thiel to explore the ocean floor like those other guys.

[Sarah Marshall]

I hear there's a lot of good stuff still down there. You could find those other guys, bring up their vaporized rain.

[Robert Evans]

You could save them. No, they need to be rescued. They're all still down there.

[Sarah Marshall]

They're playing Parcheesi.

[Robert Evans]

Only you, Peter. Only you can save them with Poseidon. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

The Antichrist is down there.

[Robert Evans]

Pluggables. Before we roll out here.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. So. Well, I. You can find me at my show youw're wrong about where we talk about the folly of man and iconic bimbos and misunderstood history and all kinds of fun stuff. And also my new show, the Devil you Know, which is from CBC Podcasts. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. And it's about the satanic panic and also all the horrible things that people do and use Satan as an excuse to do, which is, of course, very relevant to today. And we got to talk to some amazing people. And I'm so happy to get to share their stories with everybody.

[Robert Evans]

I'm happy, too. Both for that and because the episode is over and so I get to not work anymore. All right, everybody, you stop working, too. I don't care what you're doing. If you're a heart surgeon listening to this. Cut. Stop. Walk away. Walk away. Jesus Christ, Are you raising a bridge? Get out of there, pilot. Jump out of the plane. You know, put on your backpack with the thing in it and get out of there. Everyone quit working right now.

[Sarah Marshall]

Quit everything. Whatever thing you do, that'll be it. Whatever Robert Antichrist Evan says.

[Robert Evans]

Here we go.

[Sarah Marshall]

If you're the Antichrist, stop Antichristing this minute. Get a foot bath going.

[Robert Evans]

I would be such a good Antichrist. Yeah. But unfortunately, Greta Thunberg took the job from me, you know?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, she's pretty good, too.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. The podcast is over. 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.

[Sarah Marshall]

Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube.

[Robert Evans]

New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

[Maggie Freeling]

Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebastards.

[Robert Evans]

On.

[Hari Kondabolu]

The podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

I'm Dr. Priyanka Wali, a double board certified physician.

[Hari Kondabolu]

And I'm Hari Kundabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled do I have scurvy at 3am and on our show we're talking about health in a different way. Like our episode where we look at.

[Robert Evans]

Diabetes in the United states.

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

I mean, 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Hari Kondabolu]

How preventable is type 2?

[Dr. Priyanka Wali]

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

[Robert Evans]

On this podcast Incels we unpack an emerging mindset.

[Sarah Marshall]

I am a loser.

[Robert Evans]

If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point.

[Sarah Marshall]

Tomorrow is the day of retribution.

[Robert Evans]

The day in which I will have my revenge. This is Incels.

[Sarah Marshall]

Listen to season one of Incels on.

[Robert Evans]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maggie Freeling]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Hari Kondabolu]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Maggie Freeling]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most important importantly, victims, family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Sarah Marshall]

This is an iHeart podcast.