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