Part Four: How Peter Thiel Became the Gravedigger of Democracy

Robert and Noah conclude the story of Peter Thiel, who just might get the corporate god king he's dreamed about.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Podcast A Bastard with
Robert Evans and Noah Shack. Noah, how are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
A good question?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Mark?

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good question Mark?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
How good can one feel? In part four of the.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Great Question?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
No, I feel great there.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, great question, Noah contributing writer at Rolling Stone, contributing
editor at Wired. You did it. You did that, so sable.
I did it last time, too unbelievable. Yeah, so I
think we should. I want to start here by saying, uh,
there's yet another post on the one of the subreddits

(00:53):
accusing now Garrison and me both of sounding like we
always have a nasal infection and like, I'm sorry those
of you who don't have a low grade sinus infection
every year, but the rest of us have allergies. Robert's
allergic to grass. The world is poisoned to me. I
don't know what to tell you, Like I have eggs,
I'm allergic to my own fucking skin. Get off, get

(01:16):
off my back, thank you, thank you. Noah, it's true.
My relentless toughness, Robert, Robert and.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
I are allergic to so many things.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, it's us incredible. People imagine being being really like
this is. This is I'm the person who has most
been victimized by the Internet because of how people are
to me about my nose. It's it's I'm the main
victim of cancel culture.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
You know, are you in a bubble currently?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I live in a bottle. Yeah. I have to like
taze anyone who tries to get closer than ten feet
from me because I'm just a fragile little flower boy.
So I noted last episode that Peter was simpatica with
the Bush administration when it came to surveillance. The only

(02:08):
real issue with them is that they weren't mean enough
to Muslims. In two thousand and seven, though, he gained
another issue with the Bush administration, which was that, if
you guys can remember back this far right. At the
end of his last term in office, w announced massive
support for a new immigration reform package, which today, unfortunately

(02:29):
we would call like hopelessly live leftist right like the
George W. Bush two thousand and seven immigration reform package
is like so much more progressive than you could get
away with now and part it included a path to
citizenship for undocumented Americans. Bush's attempts to fix immigration as
he saw it again. This was not seen as great

(02:49):
by progressives in the day, but it's just kind of
more than you could get away with. Now didn't work out,
and it didn't work out because there's this massive ground
swell of rage from the fight flank of his own
party right that is furious that Bush is suggesting any
mercy for people who had entered the country illegally. Teal
saw this movement as promising, and he credited the failure

(03:11):
of Bush era immigration reform on an unprecedented internet campaign.
Teal money started to flow towards anti immigration organizations reaching
people online was called. One was a nonprofit called Numbers USA,
which argued that the US needed to reduce the number
of immigrants allowed in every single year. Numbers USA was
founded and operated by Roy Beck, who himself had once

(03:33):
worked for a guy named doctor John Tanton, who had
founded other earlier anti immigration groups. Beck had worked for
Tanton's US Inc. That's the anti immigration organization for a
decade and had helped Tanton organize a book They Vacation together.
These guys are very close ideologically and personally. Now, once
Roy starts his Numbers USA foundation, which is backed by

(03:56):
Peter teel. He starts to downplay his relationship with Tanton
because John Tanton, in addition to being Roy's friend, is
a white supremacist. Here's the Southern Property Law Center writing
about tantin as long ago as nineteen eighty eight, A
set of internal memoranda to the staffs of two groups
he founded, the Federation for American Immigration Reform FAIR and

(04:16):
US English were leaked and showed and showed Tanton warning
of a coming latin Onslaught, questioning whether Latinos were as
durable as others, and worrying that Latinos were outbreeding whites.
A decade later, he told a reporter that whites would
soon develop a racial consciousness and the result would be
the war of all against all. He hired and worked

(04:36):
alongside Wayne Lutton, who has held other leadership positions in
four white supremacist hate groups. He published and endorsed a
racist book on immigration, and he published numerous white supremacists.
Tanton compared immigrants to bacteria that will continue growing until
the population crashes, and sneered at immigrants defecating and creating
garbage and looking for jobs. There's a lot that's messed
up there.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
You know. Yeah, the Latin Onslaught is the name of
a six Spanish language metal band.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
It's also latinot is the term I use for that
that period where Emilio x Estevez and uh Charlie Sheen
we're both really starting to hit it in a big
in a big way, you know. I believe that was
the Latinslot. Yeah, it's Latin enough.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
This show. This peer tell is an immigrant to this country, right.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Born in Germany. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Sure he's an anti immigration immigrant.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Yeah, I mean to be honest though, Like that's the
thing that people always get like flipped out by. But
that's like the core of the hardest anti immigrant chunk
of the US population is immigrants and children of immigrants, right,
Like you know, the Cuban community in Florida being one example,
but like half of the fucking border patrol is Latino,
you know, and those guys are yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Am I right? Remembering that Til has said it like
his citizenship is here, and then also New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yes, he kind of fudged getting New Zealand citizenship. People
will argue that he wasn't actually there long enough to
get it. But if you have enough money, you can
get the citizenship and like, you know, New Zealand, if
you want to offer me citizenship too, I'll take it,
but it's kind of messed up that you give it
to Peter. Yeah, man, I could really use the New
Zealand citizenship right about now.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Citizenship if you found enough companies that are named after
a Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yes, yeah, there's a certain if you founded three companies
named after Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Game, you get to go to New Zealand. No, seriously,
is he pro immigration to New Zealand too?

Speaker 2 (06:42):
He's pro him having a say, a safe valve. You know,
that's I think all that it is, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Also, how do how come all these people or some
of these people hardcore Catholic but also hardcore against the
biggest hardcore Athlics on the planet aka the uh South
and Central American populations.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Uh. You know, that's a good question, in part because
a lot of these guys actually kind of hate what
most Catholics see as Catholicism, like the kind of trad
cath the trad cath movement today. They're all converts, they're
all into aspects of like my whole family's Catholic, and
like the kind of shit these people will say about like, no,
the pope is valid because this is seven hundred years ago.

(07:28):
It's like like Catholics are like, now he's the pope.
You like, you listen to the pope, you know, that's
all that matters, is like you know, it's this, it's this,
this kind of separation between what cultural Catholicism is and
like the fact that right now the fucking in a
I think it's a in Pennsylvania. The Republicans are going
after this nunnery because like a bunch of nuns are

(07:50):
registered to vote there and they're like none of them
live there. They're like, the nuns are talking about counter
suing them, and man, if the nuns are suing you,
no born Catholic I have ever known would fuck with
a group of nouns terrify you go get their uns.
They're frightening people.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah, but even this Jew knows that.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, these guys are not like they're they're not Catholic
in the sense that Catholics are Catholic. They're Catholic in
the sense that like people who become fans of Warhammer
forty thousand because they don't get the joke, are fans
of Warhammer forty thousand. That's the kind of Catholics they are,
right anyway, I feel.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Like that was a very alien fore moment.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Again.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
No, no, no, no, everyone understands Warhammer.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Do you have some sort of endorsement deal with Warhammer
forty thousand?

Speaker 2 (08:33):
No, I wish I did. I would take more money,
but Games Workshop does not give out money. That is
the last thing that company does.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah. I feel like if you could socourre some that
sweet sweet Games Workshop yeah money, Yeah, you might be
able to find a cure for your.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
ALLEGI I can do a whole podcast and all of
the characters that are based on nineteenth century gay poets
in Warhammer forty thousand, more than you'd think.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Go ahead, So go off, Ken.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah. So, Peter Teal, he is this guy John Tanton
is directly connected to the dude. Teal's not backing Tanton,
but he's backing his protege Roy Beck at Numbers USA. Right,
And that's not all I'm going to continue that quote
from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The report revealed that
over the course of some twenty years, Tanton had corresponded

(09:24):
with Holocaust and ires, former clan lawyers and leading white
nationalist thinkers. He introduced leaders of FAIR, on whose board
he still sits today, to the president of the Pioneer Fund,
a racist outfit set up to encourage race betterment. At
a private club, he promoted the work of an infamous
anti Semitic professor, Kevin MacDonald to both FAIR officials and
a major donor. At one point, pursuing his interest in eugenics,

(09:45):
the utterly discredited science of breeding a better human race,
he tried to find out if Michigan had laws allowing
forced sterilization. His concern, Tanton wrote in a letter of inquiry,
was a local pair of sisters who have nine illegitimate
children between them. And again, Peter Teal is putting money
into all of the people adjacent to this guy, right

(10:05):
like he is backing a lot of organizations that are
next to him like this, this is just you can see,
and this is he's very much Tela is very happy
when like this Bush era immigration reform package goes down
in flames, because he has been one of the things
he's most consistent on again since like the two thousand
and seven eight is wanting massive restrictions and particularly non

(10:27):
white immigration into the United States, which is not a
libertarian stance and is really just kind of a far
right racist stance.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
While bankrolling this like yeah, weirdo neo monarchist who's trying
to like convince yeah, the blogosphere right wing to abandon democracy.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, and this is actually a writer around the same time,
because it's like two thousand and eight and nine that
he starts getting involved with Yarvin, and it's two thousand
and eight that he's sends a million dollars to Numbers
USA through an intermediary, according to Chafkin, who notes Teal
didn't comment on the report at the time, but several
sources familiar with his political activities have told me the
reported donation was real, So you know, it doesn't look
like a thing that's absolutely confirmed, but there's definitely like

(11:16):
ties between him and Roy Beck, and Beck is tied
to Tanton, and this is all kind of part of
this very long process of Teal backing different explicitly racist
anti immigration organizations. Now, the next year, right around the
time that JP Morgan started experimenting with Pallanteer, Peter Teal
published an article in the Cato Institute's Journal with his

(11:37):
Sea stetting buddy this is the guy that he's backing.
At the Sea Steatic Institute. The theme of that issue
was the idea of creating libertarian enclaves outside of existing states.
Teal submitted an essay, The Education of a Libertarian, where
he channeled his friend Curtis Jarvin to write, I no
longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible. He wined that

(11:57):
the nineteen twenties where the last gasp of hope for
liberty because Americans then gave women the right to vote
and created the welfare state, and these two innovations had
made political victory impossible for libertarians. Libertarians can't win elections
because women can vote and there's welfare, and we'll never
get those people to give us any votes. Right, That's

(12:17):
why he's so angry about this ship.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, so I can't play this game. Yeah, this game
is over. This game is stupid.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
I find whining about this shit so fascinating because we
have all seen Peter and guys like him. They've only
gotten wealth and power through the system that they claim
to be oppressed by. It is the only place that
they have ever been or wouldever be a success. These
guys are the winners of our society. They are elevated
by a system that is designed to produce and support them,

(12:51):
but they still can't feel help, but feel like losers
all the time, no matter what they do, and so
they turn their rage against the system that is the
only reason they're special.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
Don't act like a loser.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Don't act like a fucking.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
There you go. Don't act like a fucking loser. It's
just it is the most loserus shit to complain that
we couldn't possibly win on an election because fifty.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Girls too many girls will Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, it's like they're like we won our D and
D games and there were no girls.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
In yeah those, Yeah, you know win D and D
win just by playing. But yes, I get your point.
Peter's frustrations were amplified by a public outcry against his
complaints about women voting. Right, Like, people get angry at
him for saying this, and he is forced to come
out and kind of backpedal, be like, I don't want
to take away win's right to vote. I just recognize
that this is a problem, right, and I want to

(13:43):
find a shortcut to avoid democracy cramping my style. Right.
I don't want to stop women from voting, but we
have to agree, this is a problem that guys like
me can't win as many elections because the girls now.
Another constant teel irritant was the free press, as we
talked about last episode. I do think his initial irritance
with Valley Wag comes from a semi understandable place, but

(14:06):
it took years of them reporting on his actual doings
in a manner that I think was generally responsible journalism
before Teal acted. Here's the shadowy, inciting incident of the
Gawker lawsuit. According to Derek Thompson in an article with
The Atlantic where he interviews Ryan Holliday, he's the guy
who wrote the book on this. In twenty eleven, he
is in Berlin and he takes a meeting with a
then twenty six year old Teal devotee, who you might

(14:29):
call mister A. The young man essentially tells Teal, I
know you're obsessed with Gawker, and I have an idea
to destroy them. He says, Teal should create a show
company to fund investigators and lawyers to find causes of
action against Gawker and ultimately sue it into oblivion. He
estimates that the plan will take up to five years
and up to ten million dollars in funding, which is prophetic.

(14:51):
So it's this mysterious mister A who nobody knows the
real name of, allegedly who is the guy who sits
down with Teal and is like, Hey, I think if
you find if you just keep putting it, put money,
you know, put it towards some people, maybe I can
help you with this the feeling this guy's kind of
angling for a gig, Like we will figure out when

(15:11):
gawker slips up and we will use that to stick
the knife in them.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Right, maybe that's the lawyer or something like that. I mean,
like maybe that's like a lawyer just trying.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
To Maybe maybe it's Ryan Holidays again. The reporter revealed
this describes mister A as a professional son, in other words,
someone who sought out and wormed his way into the
confidences of father figures who could advance his career and Teal.
Some people will say this is in part because he
has crushes on some of these guys, but Teal has
a habit of finding generally handsome young men and putting

(15:44):
them into his inner circle. Backing this kind of how JD.
Vance and Blake Masters get into his circle, right, and
I don't know how much. I'm trying to just kind
of like stay out of it, because what matters is
he's backing these people, not whether or not he thinks
they're hot. But that is an allegation. You'll hear that's
made about this, right, And I don't know, I'm sure that,
I'm sure that's not a non factor. Sometimes you hear

(16:06):
out this guy who like goes out and targets older
men to try and like embolden his career and is like,
I know how you can destroy Gawker, And maybe Peter,
he's frustrated, he's angry that he can't do anything about
this thing that's hurting his business, and then like this
hot dude comes up with a plan to kill them, right,
Maybe that's some of what's going on. According to the

(16:27):
version of the story told by Holiday, Peter compared to
complain to mister A over their meal that he couldn't
just outright destroy Gawker, and mister A said back, Peter,
if everyone thought that way, what would the world look like?
Right if people didn't just destroy journalistic outlets like because
they could, where would we be as a society. So

(16:48):
if this is accurate, that is kind of a not
a I don't know if it's a big if, but
it is an if. Peter. This guy is who succeeds
in getting Peter to fund this operation to find a
way to kill Gawker, and they eventually find the way
to kill Gawker in an unlikely place, the office of
a Florida DJ named Bubba the Love Sponge. Here we go,

(17:10):
Here's where Bubba the Love Sponge comes in. Everyone's been
waiting for this since we started talking to you. You know,
speaking of Bubba the Love Sponge. You know who is
a love sponge?

Speaker 4 (17:22):
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Speaker 2 (17:24):
That's right, the sponsor of this podcast. I think that's
a cum joke. So everyone enjoy that and go over
there please before just come yeah, one of the two.
We're back, and boy, I hope we all enjoyed that
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(17:49):
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(18:09):
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Speaker 3 (18:24):
Howboult give us one of those like sheepish? Like fuck?
I have to do this house read conversion of hymns.
Sometimes I may or may not hear a podcasts.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Do you feel bad about your body? Well you probably should,
so get on ozimbic, the drug that is probably fine
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Speaker 3 (18:45):
Try it out, ye see what happens.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Anyway, Back in two thousand and six, Whole Cogan had
been depressed over the state of his marriage. I love
where the story starts, which is I had again, just
casually hearing it. I had thought that it was a
case of like he was just cheating on Bubba with
Bubba's wife. No, no, no, Hulk comes over because he's
getting a divorce and he's just in a dark place.
And he needs his friend, Bubba the Love Sponge and

(19:10):
bubbas a bad place. I really need some comfort, and
Bubba the Love Sponge is like, Holkster, you know it'll
cheer you up fucking my wife. Why don't you go
into my bedroom and fuck my wife? And the Hulk said, okay,
but you're not going to film this, are you? Brother?
I know you always film people who have sex in

(19:30):
your house. You're not going to film the hulks dick,
are you? And Buba was like, of course, I'm not
going to film you, And then of course he films
the whole keving sex and he takes the recording made
in his house and he puts the recording in his
desk at the radio station where he works. Incredible, did

(19:51):
you do amazing?

Speaker 3 (19:53):
Shit? Yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
So funny. This is such a funny case, Like a
lot of good people lost their jobs, but this part
of it's really funny. Some people. Yeah, not all good
people lost their jobs, but a lot of good people. Then,
so fast forward about six years. Obama is on his
way to term number dose and Bubba gets in a
conflict with a guy who Ryan Holiday describes as Hey,

(20:16):
this is the funniest term in the world, rival DJing
nothing sadder than the words rival DJ.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
Florida.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, rival Florida DJ. If this is and again there's
some debate, I'm not saying this is absolutely what happened,
but this is probably the most It's certainly the most
entertaining and probably the most credible story as to why
this all happens. If this is accurate, the whole destruction
of goker thing started because Bubba the Love Sponge at
a rival Florida DJ had an argument over who was

(20:48):
going to like get which time slot, and the rival
DJ broke into his desk and stole the videos to
like hold him for like them for ransom basically, and
ultimately leaked the videos to Gawker to embarrass Bubba the
Love Sponge. Hulk was only ever an accidental casualty in
the It was collateral damage. The poor ulkster. That's in

(21:12):
the Great Florida the Great Game of Florida DJs. He's Afghanistan.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Is the DJ. Mister A is the secret maybe the
rival DJ.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
You know what I'm gonna say, Definitely. I'm going to
say definitely in a way that makes iHeartMedia legally responsible.
If I'm absolutely.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Because if there's one DJ all radio up the radio.
iHeartMedia boom.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Right, of course we've got to be tied into this.
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, get.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Call the CEO. We're gonna blow this thing wide open. Yeah.
So yeah, anyway, Gocker now here is where Gaker? Because
I may I mentioned how it's questionable their choice to
out Peter, but probably in a court of law defensible
because of who Peter is, you know, politically, because of
how influential he is. Like you again, that's why he does.

(22:13):
Peter doesn't sue over that this. This is something they
probably could have defended. What Gawker does next is something
that is it still was potentially defensible. We'll talk about
Gacker makes some mistakes in their legal representation here, but
it's deeply questionable. This is a thing that I can
say I'm leaning on this not being newsworthy, right, And

(22:34):
what's not newsworthy is they publish the video. They don't
just report on the fact that there's a whole Cogan
sex tape. They published the video under the title even
for a minute, watching Hull Cogan have sex in a
canopy bed is not safe for work, But watch it anyway,
and that's just hard to defend in court that you're
going to have to defend that.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Right, although an incredible headline, an incredible headline, incredible headline.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Nobody said they were bad at headlines, I mean an
incredible headline.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah, publishing sex tapes is probably not it's on the edge.
It's on the edge.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
It's on the edge. Yeah, So this is something that
is again, this is potentially defensible. I'm not saying it's
blanket not, but it is something you were probably going
to have to defend in court. Right, you have crossed
a line that is going to open you up to
some potential injury here. Now, one reason why is that
the sex that Hogan had with Bubba, the love Sponge's

(23:28):
wife was not as a part of his job. As
you know, Hulk Hogan the public figure. Right, this is
not something he did with his subordinate. This is not
something he did on company property, right, Like, this is
not something you can argue as an abuse of power
on the Holkster's part. You know, this is a consensual
non monogamy. I guess you could call it. Really that

(23:50):
just happened to get filmed. So Hulk has an argument
that what happened was a violation of his privacy. Now
gocker Again, I think if they had just reported on
the tape's existence, could have defended it. Making it a
vai le is a lot harder to defend. Teal's people
set legal wheels in motion. And it's again, it's like
twenty twelve when this article, when this video gets released,
so that's like six years after the sex tape was filmed,

(24:11):
and for a few years, the case kind of grinds forward.
And part of what it grinds forward is Gawker doesn't
know that Teal is backing hul Cogan and you know,
the Holkster's got money, but the Holkster does not have
a major media company money. And the smart play if
you are a big corporation like Gawker sued by a guy,
even a rich guy, is delay make it as expensive

(24:34):
for them as possible. Right, You run out the clock
and eventually they will not want to keep burning cash
in order to keep fighting you.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
I mean, if I may, I'm not sure Gawker was
ever that big of a company. I think it was more.
And listen, I got a little bit of skin in
this game. Yeah, Gawker's lawyer at the time, and then
they're pressure. Yeah, I work with afterwards, But I would
just say at the dly East rabble truck together for
a compleaders is like, look, I think in general, you

(25:03):
got the First Amendment errors on the side of publishing, right,
even creepy ash absolutely like all Cogan's dick and so
I mean, I think what they were more pursuing was
a uh, you know what happens in any of these
First Amendment cases where they're they're they're trying to put
up their best defenses against getting sued, and those defenses

(25:25):
take a while. And I don't think it was I mean,
this company was never particularly a huge company. They had
insurance that protected them against litigation at some points, and
and and you know they had you know, depending on
where the case landed, whether it's in New York or
Florida or whatever, they had better defenses against the walk
because a lot of the stuff is weirdly state by state.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
And this is an early judge shopping case. Like the
fact that they wind up in a Florida district with
a very sympathetic judge is a big part of what
hurts them. If it had been in a different district.
They probably probably would have gone better for them. I
should know that. Yeah, it's kind of like a holiday
is argument as to how this went badly is that
Gawker takes the standard strategy you would take, which is

(26:07):
a bad strategy if Hogan has the kind of financing
behind him that they couldn't have known he had, right,
like the fact that there's so much more money behind this,
which starts to become clear later in the case, Like,
it's the kind of thing people do not initially know.
Gocker doesn't initially know that Teal is backing them, and
what Holiday will argue, And I think I think you're

(26:29):
probably right, But I don't think it's wrong that if
Gaker had known who was supporting the lawsuit, there are
probably changes they would have made and how they pursued
their defense, or at least how they pursued publicizing that
Teal was involved. Right, Yeah, Like maybe maybe you try
to make that clear earlier, right, Right, you.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Know, Hulk Hogan sues company that publishes dictape is one thing, right,
you know, weirdo right wing billionaire ye shoes media company
for no particular reason. Yeah, but you know happens to
use the sex sape as an excuse. That's a totally
different thing.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, it's a totally different thing. And yeah that's and
again i Holiday, I quote him a lot because he's
the guy who like wrote the book on this case.
He is kind of more on Teal side than I am.
And then I think most reporters are. Although the Teal
side more and a goacker made a lot of major mistakes.
And I don't entirely agree with Holiday here, but they
do make a number of mistakes. Right, there are some

(27:27):
like issues with the way this legal defense goes down.
But also it's one of these things where well, if
you have Peter Teal money and the ability to judge,
shop and shit in a way that a guy Teal does,
it's it's hard to imagine he wouldn't eventually have gotten
them on something. Right.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Well, certainly you're going to operate differently if you know
that there's a right wing billionaire that's built trying to
kill you. Yeah, exactly, shine to destroy the planet. Like,
that's a very different kind of way to operate. And look,
I think also just like growing up in the same
era of media is like I think we all a

(28:06):
lot of us were like kind of self taught and
kind of like relearning the rules as we went along, right,
you know, Like you know, this was you know, a
major object lesson and and we would have all rolled
a little bit differently if we had known that there

(28:26):
are these like you know, kind of like autocratic gazillionaires
that were kind of out to destroy what we were about.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
And this is the thing, this is one of the
things that's so sad about this is that like a
lot of the a lot of the issues that you know,
in terms of like we can when we talk about
like the areas in which Gawker made mistakes, a lot
of them are just due to how young the company was,
how new this whole branch of the media was, and
that we are all because I was a part of
a digital media company there, I like definitely I was learning,

(28:58):
and like learning by breaking a lot of the rules
of journalism early on in my career too, Like we
were trying to figure out how these things worked in
a new era where there was suddenly both opportunity and
money in a way that journalists had not been used
to for a while, but also brand new pitfalls and threats. Right,
And this is well said, I don't think. I don't

(29:19):
think it was you know, Gawker, if they had done
things differently, might have been able to survive. But someone
was going to go down in flames for something like
this as a result of the different period that we
had entered into, Right. I do kind kind of believe
that maybe it wouldn't have had to be Gawker, but
it was going to be somebody because there was just
so much being tried that was new and that hadn't

(29:42):
been adjudicated, you know, like that that was always good,
and it was the same thing I think most of
us expected. It was going to come down over like
whistleblower stuff, you know, WikiLeaks kind of shit, as opposed
to Bubble the Love Sponge. But it was going to happen, right, right.
So a big part of why the case goes against
God is there's this. One of kind of the leading

(30:03):
moments of this court case is that in court, Gacker
editor in chief Aj Delario, in a deposition kind of
jokes that the only celebrity sex tape he wouldn't have
considered news whethy was one that featured a preschooler. That
does not go over well in court. It's not a
great moment, although I don't think it actually changes the
It's just why would you say that. I don't know anyway,

(30:24):
I'm not gonna He's suffered enough, But it doesn't. This
all goes very badly, right, I mean, it goes as
badly as it possibly could. Even though the case had
not initially gone super well for Hulk. Ultimately, you know
the fact that this judge is very sympathetic, it all
goes their way in the case, the plaintiff is awarded
one hundred and forty million dollars in damages. Goker, as

(30:46):
you have said, was never that big as a media company,
and this absolutely drives them into bankruptcy. Nick Denton sold
the company off to Univision, which shuddered the embattled flagship site.
And that is the end of Gaker, except for it's
kind of sort of back. I don't know, I don't
know how we want to like it didn't all die out, right,

(31:06):
But yeah, it's a and this is a scary moment.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
Live on in one in one way or another.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
My old site lives on in one way or another. Zombie, Yeah,
the zombies of our youths as writers, So Teal, you know,
he gets one of the things that happens kind of
at the tail end of this is that it becomes
clear to the people involved in the case and the
people paying attention to it that Teal is the guy
funding this. I think it might have been Vogue, I

(31:37):
think that published I maybe getting that wrong, but it
wasn't Gager that published the first article being like, hey,
Teal's behind this. But right as the case is ending,
it comes out that Peter Teal is the guy who
had backed this right, and so Teal is able there's
this like backlash against him, but he's also able to
kind of go out in the open and take a
victory lap. He tells The New York Times. It's less

(31:58):
about revenge and more about pacific deterrence. I saw Goker
pioneer a unique and incredibly damaging way of getting attention
by bullying people even when there was no connection with
the public interest. And like you back guys like JD. Vanson,
Blake Masters whose politics is entirely dedicated to attacking little
people who have no power right destroying their lives for

(32:21):
cloud like, you don't believe any of this shit, Peter. Now,
the Gocker case was the first thing to put Teal
on my radar in a big way, right. You know.
I wish I could say I was one of those
guys who from the early days of pallunteer and knew
he was dangerous. But it wasn't until this that I
was like, oh shit, there's this Peter Teal guy, and
he seems like a real problem. Right. It's also notable that, like,
it's not entirely I think that the surface summary of this,

(32:44):
which is that Gocker outed Teal and then he destroyed them,
is not entirely what happened.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Gocker was damaging to his business interests for years, and
so he laid out a painstaking and slow, in funded
a pains taking some slow path to taking them out right,
which I think is a scarier story, you know, just
than that he was angry that they'd outed him and
so he slapped them down. The time that he waited,
how long this took, you know, the inevitability of it

(33:13):
in some ways, that like once this was set in
motion it couldn't be stopped, is much more upsetting to me.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Yeah, And also it's not just his I think it's
more just like his class, you know that like the
burgeoning tech oligar class. Yeah, they really were made deeply uncomfortable, Yeah,
by by a brand of journalism that that was sometimes
fucked up and sometimes you know, question their power, and

(33:43):
you know that that threatened them a lot more than
the journalism that played by the rules one hundred percent
of the time and never threaten their power.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, and this this idea too, that journalism is has
a chance at surviving. Now there's suddenly like because in
this new media era, there was a lot of money
comparatively for journalists, not money, a lot of money on
objective terms, but there's a lot of money coming into
journalism based on what journalists had gotten used to after
like the early Craigslist era had killed local newspapers. And

(34:14):
so there's suddenly this lifeline for reporting and you have
this explosion in sights that had started as kind of
less legitimate. Gaker's early days is no One's p finest hour,
just like the earliest days of BuzzFeed, right, you know,
it's kind of a clickbait site. And then they start
this very serious, groundbreaking news organization that really does great work,

(34:37):
and it's terrifying to these guys who are like, oh shit,
maybe we're going to deal with more of this than
we ever had as opposed to it all being on
the out and dying, and so they kind of commit
themselves to killing it. And this is that Silicon This
is Peter Teele is the first of the Silicon elite
to start flexing their muscles to destroy the independent media, right.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
And I'd say more than just Silicon Valley. I mean, look,
you know this is now in the era when you know,
I was running The Daily Beast and and and you know,
basically there would be no major story about a rich
person that didn't come with a massive legal threat. Yeah. None.

(35:19):
Like the time, you could not write about a rich person.
I'm not talking about like their personal life. I'm talking
about any company that they were involved in, Yeah, their
business interests. Nothing would come without a legal threat. And
so it was just a regular part of the publishing
process which was deal with legal considerations. And often it

(35:40):
was the very same lawyers that were connected with the
Gawker case that were then being hired by everybody else
because they had, you know, they had learned this one trick.
So yeah, that's one weird trick. Yeah yeah, And so
you know that stuff was real, and I don't know
that it stopped us from publishing any stories, but it

(36:02):
definitely stopped like, it definitely slowed down the pace of
stories for sure. And it definitely I know, I definitely
know of others where you know, big stories got killed off. Yeah,
because of the because of the legal threats.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
A chilling effect, right, it has this chilling effect, And
it's one of these things where this is part of
what this is part of what's so scary about doing
media right is you have to in order to stay relevant,
to survive, you have to explore things, you have to
try new things. And that also means, you know, it
doesn't necessarily mean I'm not saying every journalist would have
published the bub Bubba the love Sponge video, but you

(36:39):
are going to do things that are new and that
you can't say are covered under the laws that supported
you in the past when you're trying to adapt to
changing circumstances, and that's always going to create opportunities for
people to destroy you if they're scared by what you're doing. Yep, fair, Yep, Yeah,
I think that that that gets at it. I hope
in a way that's pretty fair. Speaking of destroying your enemies,

(37:01):
you know who my enemies aren't.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Noah, the people who advertise on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
That's right. None of them are my enemies. None of them. Whatever.
Sue journalists for reporting on their personal business, you know,
and if they have, no, they didn't. You didn't see that,
deny the evidence of your rise in ears. That's the
behind the mastards promise. Ah, we're back. So one of

(37:29):
the results of the Gawker lawsuit is that Peter gets
put thrust in the public awareness and gets criticized in
a much bigger way after this, right he is no
longer is kind of like, oh, he's just this smart founder,
he's kind of a libertarian. He probably has a couple
of different stances like, oh, this guy's like a dangerous
right wing ghoul. Right, Like, that's that's really people. And
this happens right May of March twenty sixteen is when

(37:53):
the Gawker case, you know, gets closed in court, and
obviously Peter becomes like the Republican parties bigger single funder
I think during this period, and it's our capped. I
think he's at least one of them. Because of the
way money works in all of this, it's kind of
hard to say that for a statement. But he's a
major donor and he speaks at the twenty sixteen RNC

(38:14):
where he endorses Donald Trump, and he makes a big
deal about the fact that I am a gay Republican.
The Republicans are welcoming now, you know, they'll accept you,
unlike these evil liberals who aren't really tolerant. The Republicans
accept me a gay man. And obviously, like that was
the thing that Republicans were doing at the time, like
Trump because the Pulse Nice club shooting was like a

(38:35):
Muslim who did it, Like I could really, you know,
pretend to be defending gay people and anti isis credentials
and it works because people are make bad decisions a
lot of the time.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
It's amazing. I mean, but it was such transparent bullshit
at the time.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Oh it was. It was so if you paid any attention.
But most voters are like most people listen to podcasts,
they're hearing every fourth word while they're doing the law
and right, so they miss ship.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
You know, yeah, okay, yes, I mean, it was just
it was complete, trans It was transparent.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
I watched him give that speech at the r n
C and it was like the I felt coded in
a thick layer of sick. It was nasty, man.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, And it was also like, sure, dude, the party
of of of anti gay policy and rhetoric for fucking
decades is all of a sudden doing a made just
because because they've got a candidate in a wig. It's like,

(39:40):
come on, dude, like that is just not true. And
it was just so obvious at the time. And this
is like, you know, a couple of years after gay
marriage was was legalized.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Not even a couple, it was just like a year, right,
and Peter Marriag Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah, and it's like, you know, such a major advancement.
It's just it's wild to me. It's wild. I don't
believe any I do not believe one single person actually
believes that stuff.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
I'm sorry, I don't know. It's hard to And like
Peter is I think the the caveat do all of this.
We talk about these philosophers he likes, and these visions
he as of the future, and it's like, maybe all
he really believes in is that Peter Thiel should always
be on top, right, Maybe maybe that's all you actually
need to know. That said, I also think we all

(40:35):
make up in elaborate justifications for the selfish things we
want to do. You know, that's being a person too,
So it's not it's not worthless to look at like, well,
how does Peter do that?

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Right?

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Because he has much more money and power than us, Right.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, it's like, oh, this guy's a weirdo with authoritarian tendencies.
I'm a weirdo with authoritarian tendencies. We got to get
together somehow. Let me justify this by somehow claiming that
because he's a New Yorker and he's not totally afraid
of gay people, like ye know, the rest of the
people up on that Republican stage, therefore I'll go with him,

(41:11):
and therefore it's fine.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
I think I think Peter's probably correct in a meaningless
way that I don't think Donald Trump personally is bigoted
against gay people, right, I don't think he gives a fuck.
But I think Donald Trump is willing to kill every
gay person in this country for Donald Trump's power, right yeah,
right now, yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah, he's running more ads about like demonizing trans people
he is about any every other topic combined. That is
his number one closing massive kill trans people.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
It's crazy and it's you know, This is as much
as because like it's kind of out Peter Teel's not
supporting the Republicans in twenty twenty four. He's not making
like public donations, right, And the reporting around it is like, well,
it's because of how angry he is that in twenty
twenty two they launched everything into these culture war crusades,
and like he's really disappointed in that, and like the
focus and on gay people. There's stories that like has

(42:03):
now deceased boyfriend like kind of talked him into stopping
supporting Republicans because of how you know, crazy they were
at the Andy gay stuff at the same time, guy
is exactly and Blake Masters are both two of the
biggest anti gay like Christian fucking lifestyle crusaders out there.

(42:23):
And these guys are total teal creatures. So do I.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Believe any no vaccies? Man, It's not like like if
this guy's the uber genius, he likes to betray himself
as he can't be like, oh whoops, how could I
possibly know what you're doing?

Speaker 2 (42:38):
You know what you're doing. Yeah. So, now this period
after twenty sixteen, when Peter has has really gone a whole
hog for Trump, people start reporting a lot more on
all of these other weird investments He's doing right, and
they start reporting on his life extension fixation. Now all
of his life extension investments are made through his a
lot of them made through his nonprofit Breakout Labs, which

(43:00):
is supporting, like you know, unconventional solutions to major problems,
and one of those major problems is extending human lifespan
and ending aging. Now people think this is kind of
quirky of Peter, so they start looking into it and
reporting on it, and Peter starts getting asked by journalists
in interviews about this. In one interview with The Washington Post,
he explained, I've always had this really strong sense that

(43:22):
death was a terrible, terrible thing. I think that's somewhat unusual.
Most people end up compartmentalizing and they're in some mode
of denial and acceptance about death. They both have the
result of making you very passive. I worry the FDA
is too restrictive. Pharmaceutical companies are way too bureaucratic. A
tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of NIH
spending goes to genuine anti aging research, the whole thing
gets treated like a lottery ticket. Part of the problem

(43:44):
is that aging research doesn't always lend itself to being
a great for profit business, but it's still a very
important area for philanthropic investment. And you know, one thing
Peter comes around on is that government funding is okay
if it's supporting things like anti aging research that I
might benefit from, right, Like, we don't need roads or schools,
but I don't want to die. But also I love
this idea that like, well, normal people aren't scared of death.

(44:06):
Everyone's scared of death, Peter, We're just not going to
baby's about it. Deal with it, man, fucking take it
on the chin, motherfucker. God.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
No, Look, you can argue. I think there's plenty of
great arguments that, like the way drugs are kind of
okay in this country.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Is saying there's not ways that the FDA could be better. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Yeah. One of my favorite Peter Teel medical stories from
that era that we reported on at the time was
he was very upset with how the FDA was handling
herpies drugs, and so he bankrolled a series of quasi

(44:49):
legal certainly sidestepping around US safety rules. Let's just call
them gray market market in the Caribbean.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
I think it like, oh man, that's fun that's good.
That's just good stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Objected with like off, you know, with like untried non
anti virus.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, awesome, awesome, he's your black market val cyc Lavie
for his fucking awesome so good.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
At the time, was a dying doctor Peter Teel and
a rogue herpes vaccine trial gone wrong?

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Oh man, that's so funny. No, no, rogue herpes vaccine
trial not an attractive series of words to have attached
to your name.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
No touch to your and so you definitely don't want
it to all go wrong.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
No, no, no, no, your rogue vaccine trial you really
want to work out.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Yeah, you want that to go excellently.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah, you don't want to have made everyone at your
fucking creepy beach parties take a bad vaccine? Did he
give everyone herpes? What happened there?

Speaker 3 (45:58):
I'm trying to remember. I'm just looking through the name
of the company was Rational Vaccines, which.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
I haven't Oh, I like that.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Rational vaccines.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Yeah, all the irrational ones out there.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
No Institutional Review board or i RB to monitor the
safety of the trials. That No, Yeah, you definitely don't
want to have a safe purpose control group.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
What's that useful for?

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Yeah, didn't know how aware was manufactured, whether it needed
booster shots. Yeah, no, this was.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
All all all the things that you would hope that
they would know.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
Yeah, yeah, you know. Now, but look, I mean I
think a lot of billionaires, uh do I think that
that is something not completely uncommon in the billionaire classes,
Like you know, I'm going to do you know, I'm
going to hack science or I'm or the science industrial complex.
You know, I'm going to really disrupt science. And what

(47:08):
better way to do that than with the herpes?

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, disrupt herpees, I guess, not hurting it at all.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Let's say one trial recipient started getting ringing in his
ears and squirred speech.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Oh my god. Yeah, let's just give everyone something worse
than herpes.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Then, a Colorado woman in her forties said she got
flu like aches and numbness soon after the second shot.
Numbness not a good thing to get after her now.
The symptoms were followed by a quote excruciating thirty day
outbreak of herpes.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Great, wow, thirty days. That's a long time to have
a herpes out break.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
I have new symptoms every day. That one later told Halford,
this is terrifying.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Disrupted herpes. You know, before it was an incredibly manageable
viral illness that can be easily handled with medication, and
now people have month long outbreaks. You did it again, Peter.
You moved fast and you broke herpies.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
It sounds like they broke quite a few other things too, jeess.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, so funny, okay. So in August of twenty sixteen,
the same month that Peter shows up at v r
N see Maya Kossoff published an article titled Peter Teal
wants to inject himself with young people's blood. Now this
is not the first reporting on Peter Teal's interest in blood,
but I think because of the title, this is one
that has like a big impact on you know how

(48:44):
people like how that rumor starts to spread. Now, the
actual ultimate source of this was an article published in
the same week for Ink magazine by Jeff Berkovici, who
put out an old interview he'd done a year before
with Teal that touched on Peter's interest in what's called
a biosis quote, which includes the practice of getting transfusions
of blood from a younger person as a means of

(49:05):
improving health and potentially reversing aging. I'm looking into parabiosis stuff,
which I think is really interesting. This is where they
did the young blood into older mice and they found
that it had a massive rejuvenating effect. And so that
is one that Again it's one of these very odd
things where people had done these studies in the nineteen
fifties and then it got dropped altogether. I think a
lot of these things have been strangely under explored. Now.

(49:26):
The reason parabiosis was under explore under explored is that
it doesn't really work right. Blood transfusions are amazing medicine
for the reasons that you would think, like when people
lose all their blood, right, great to be able to
give people a blood transfusion when they have been shot
and bled out. It's not going to make you young, because
of course, it doesn't work that way, because that's stupid.

(49:46):
It's stupid that it would work that way. That's not
how blood works, and it's not how aging works, and
you're silly for thinking it. Oh no, no, Unfortunately, nothing
can stop aging, except apparently taking lots of HGH and testosterone.
Huh you don't, noah, do you have twelve thousand dollars
a month because I could. I can help you out

(50:08):
with a plan here.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
Oh yeah, I definitely got that.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
His name is his name is Vito. He will meet
you at the gym with a trash bag, and yeah,
you too could have a trash bag.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
I can drain him of his blood, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Sure, when I don't care what happens to Veto, like
he's a steroid dealer, like his life has no value.
Like we're good either way. There, I can I can
do both.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
I could be I could be Belton Suspenders.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Yeah, you can take Vito's blood, although Vito's blood is
going to be even more HGH in testosteron and I'm
going to warn you about that right now. Your your
hgh gut is going to have its own gravitational pull
like the moon or like Joe Rogan's HGH gut.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Oh I know, I know that's really that is really unfortunately. Okay,
So you're telling me so veto take his blood.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Take pre hghd you don't need anymore. You literally can't
fit more HGH in your blood than Veto has in his.
And then you just sell that sack of gear to
somebody else who wants to spend twelve grand on gear.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
You know it's a beautiful So I'm gonna do ya
d The next time we do this podcast, I'm gonna
be ripping this fucking lapt.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
You're gonna be deadlifting eleven pounds, Yeah, bursting your colon
out and she gets your Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
It's going to be the size of a thimble.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Yeah. Yeah, you can read the Lord of the rings
and braille and the acne on your back.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
It's going to be incredible, man.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yeah. So, Brocovicci reported that a Teal Capital employee who
was also Peter's personal health director had ties to Jesse
car Mason, the founder of Ambrosia LLC. And I would
if we had more time, there's so much Peter to
get into, we would talk more about all of these
different grifters. Carmesan is very fun. Legally, I'm not calling
him a grifter. I just don't think what he was

(52:03):
trying to do really works. But he did provide the
product that he claimed. Ambrosia LLC was looking for volunteers
over the age of thirty five to receive blood transfusions
from the young Goker reported around this time that they
had gotten a tip and again, this is right after
the lawsuit has concluded that Teal spent forty thousand dollars
a quarter to get blood transfusions from an eighteen year old. Now,

(52:23):
is Gker just trying to take a shot at Peter
because of what happened? There's not outside evidence of this, right,
nothing's ever come forward to make it clear that Teal
definitely was taking the blood of the young right. In interviews,
Peter has always been consistent that he had he never
got around to starting it, right. He told a reporter
that he hadn't quite started yet, and he has since

(52:46):
denied ever taking the blood of the young, telling that
Andrew Sorkin at Deal Book on the record, I am
not a vampire, which I have to say, is something
a vampire would say. He's like Alla on one hand,
only a vampire would say that, because normal people don't
have any reason to deny being vampires. Yeah, right, I.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Mean that's that is that's pretty that still kind of rules.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
So I think there's a good chance he never actually
did this, not because he wouldn't, but just because I
think it became clear pretty early on that this didn't work. Right.
Brian Johnson, The Big Life extension guy taught like took
his son's blood for a while, and I think has
stopped because it just doesn't do anything. Peter is not.
I don't think Peter would care that people were calling
him a vampire if this worked, right, because he's open

(53:30):
about that. He takes HGH as like a life extension thing, right, Like,
I don't think he would hide it if he was
on it. I think maybe it just the science was
not there in any real way, and Peter's not going
to do something like this, like it's it's not pleasant,
probably like you wouldn't want to get constant blood transfusions
if you weren't convinced it. Did something.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Speak for yourself.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, some of us just like blood. From an article
in Business Insider quote, Teal told Bloomberg TV in twenty
fourteen that he was taking Human growth home on pills
known as HGH. Teel toad Bloomberg TV that he believes
HGH can help maintain muscle mass, so that's less likely
to get bone injuries and arthritis and stuff like that
as you get older, which is true. I'm sure there

(54:11):
are some problems of aging that HGH helps you avoid.
But HGH has side effects. You can get carpal tunnel
from it, you can get muscle and joint pain, you
get an increased risk of cancer. Research has shown that
people in animals whose natural levels of HGH are high
are likely to die at a younger age than those
with lower levels of HGH. So I don't know that

(54:33):
I would take this gamble. I think this may just
be a case of Peter wanting the cosmetic benefits of HGH.
It makes you look jacked, even if you don't spend
all that much time working out as opposed to, Peter
truly believes this is a life extension technology. I think
it's probably more accurate that he convinced himself it's keeping
him young because it has cosmetic benefits that he appreciates. Right,

(54:57):
My stance and all this life extension stuff is that
Peter Teal will die one day, and as is the
case with all of us, he will probably die sooner
than he expects, because that's just the way shit goes. Sorry, Peter,
I recommend making peace with it. That's the only real
way to handle this. Now. I went back and forth
with myself for how much to cover of each of

(55:18):
Peter's evil interests For example, in twenty sixteen, Peter was
a mega donor to the Republican Party, but like most
people who get involved with Trump, he soured on him quickly,
and he avoided donating to Trump's reelection campaign in twenty
twenty out of what he described as frustration with Trump's personality. Right,
I don't disagree with any of his policy, but I'm
angry at how much he's become the story. Right. In

(55:40):
twenty twenty two, he got back in the electioneering saddle,
and he backed Jdvance and Blake Masters with unprecedented donations.
He gives more money to jd Vance than a single
candidate had ever received for a congressional seat. In all,
Peter Teel put thirty five million dollars in twenty twenty
two into sixteen federal level Republican candidates, and twelve of

(56:00):
them win. But the overall performance of the GOP in
those midterms is famously poor. And it's famously poor because
a big part of their campaign rhetoric was spurred by
irrational bigotry against LGBT and particularly Tea Americans. Peter would
publicly state that this frustrated him. I think this has
to do with the fact that there's a guy he's
dating at the time who is a like a gay

(56:24):
male model and who will give later interviews. I think
these are kind of we're actually right around this point
where he says that, like, yeah, I talked to him
about this and like convinced him to stop right because
I think these people are toxic and they're bad for us,
and I didn't think he should be doing this. This
model's name was Jeff Thomas, as we'll talk about. He's

(56:46):
deceased now, but you know he would claim that, like
I talked to pee, and I don't see why Jeff
would have necessarily light about this other than that, I
think Jeff was getting shit for his associated with Teal
because of how much more aggressive Republicans were being at
gay people. So maybe that's was Jeff's reason to want
to say this. Teal is going to set out twenty

(57:08):
twenty four, but he does. It's kind of worth noting
if you're trying to take seriously this idea that he
stopped backing Republicans because of a toxic they were getting.
He backs the most toxic of them in twenty twenty two.
So I just don't know how much to take that
I don't think I should take that very seriously. Now
I could say more about how teal c steading ambitions
have metastasized to a broader quest by some Silicon Valley

(57:30):
elites to create an independent network state rule by big
tech in a place like California. I probably should, but
we'll leave it with this, which is that one of
the major advocates of the network state movement is an
investor named Belaji Shrinevasen, whof Teal suggested to Trump should
lead the FDA in twenty sixteen. Thankfully, Lash didn't wind

(57:51):
up leading the FDA. But this guy is a really
dangerous dude, and he's taken some of these ideas, these
Curtis Jarvin ideas that heel started to mainstream, and he's
been twisting them into very dark directions. In twenty twenty two,
his book The Network State described a plan for tech
oligarchs to make their own countries, escaping democracy. At the

(58:12):
same time, one of his chief plots was to conquer
San Francisco. Here's a repoet from an article in The
New Republic on Blaji's current advocacy. What I'm currently really
calling for is something like tech Zionism, he said, after
comparing his movement to those started by the Biblical Abraham,
Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, Theodore Herzel,
the spiritual founder of the State of Israel, and le

(58:33):
Kwan Yu, former authoritarian ruler of Singapore. What a collection.
Bolaji then revealed his shocking idea for a tech governed
city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a
new political tribe clad in gray shirts. And if you
see another gray on the street, you do the nod,
he said during a four hour talk on the Moment
of Zen podcast. You're a Fellow Gray. The gray shirts

(58:54):
would feature Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos
white combinators, a good one for the city of sam
says go In particular, Grays would also receive special ID
cards preventing access to exclusive Gray controlled sectors of the city.
In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the
police department, funding weekly policemen's banquets to win them over.
Gray should embrace the police. Okay, all in on the police,

(59:16):
said schmid Nevawsen. What does that mean? That means, as
I said, banquets, That means every policeman's son, dotter, wife, cousin,
you know, sibling, or whatever. She'd get a job at
a tech company in security. In exchange for extra food
and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Shrinivasen
recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their
political leanings. For example, did you want to take the

(59:37):
sign off Elon's building? Some shit, absolute loser. Shit is stupid,
fucking X sign incredibly fun.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
This is like it's like as if no Nazi ever
got a blowjob. Hmmm, this is what. Yeah, they would
come up with.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
The fucking Grays.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
So's we'll talk about like.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
He deserves more all of this. We're having the YadA
YadA so much just because like Peter is involved in
so much. You know, I can't responsibly. This is like
I think I'm trying to just give as much of
an overview as I can here. You should do more reading.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Do you think the Grays thing is like some kind
of aliens thing, Like, yes, we're the Grays?

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Like I think, I mean, I think he's he's recognizes
that it takes advantage of kind of that symbology. But no,
I think it's not even that creative.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
We're gonna have something cool on our shirts, like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
We got a picture of fucking Elon or a doze.
I'm sure, my god.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):
We're gonna have the wide Combinator, and all the cops
are gonna love jobs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
You're gonna give the cops kids jobs. Their failed sons
will get to work at our security companies. Yeah, they'll
keep it safe. Yeah. So I'm gonna move on to
talk a little bit at the end here about Peter's
war on higher education. He started his public life by
all authoring a book with David Sachs on the intellectual
corruption in American academia. As a multi billionaire, he launched
a program to prove higher education unnecessary, the Teal Fellowship.

(01:01:12):
The idea behind the much ballyhooed Fellowship was that Peter
would pick twenty students per year and give them each
one hundred thousand dollars to drop out of school and
do their own thing trying to start a business with
some support from the Teal Foundation. Basically, Peter pays for
you to figure out a company you want to start,
and your association with him makes it easy for you
to get VC bucks and keeping with his supreme weirdness

(01:01:33):
as a dude. Teal announced the initiative by attacking the
Catholic Church kind of, if you get into the right college,
you'll be saved. If you don't, you're in trouble. As
I've said, colleges are as corrupt as the Catholic Church
was five hundred years ago. They're sort of charging people
more and more. It's the system of indulgences. You have
this priestly or professorial class that doesn't do very much work,
and you basically tell people that if you get a diploma,

(01:01:54):
you're saved. Otherwise you go to hell. And like, that's
such a weird way to look at it, because it's
it's not the professor who have made college expensive. In part,
it's like the same reason people like you, these VC
ghouls that you know who are part of the administrator
class we're sitting on the boards of these colleges, want
more money. Like, it's not a random Marxist professor who

(01:02:16):
has decided that college is going to cost eighty thousand
dollars a semester. That guy doesn't benefit from that situation, right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Not at all. They get paid the same amount of money.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Yes, I mean, yeah, look, I remember when.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
This came out and I was like, you know what
it like. I can sort of get down with.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
The idea of like circumveying your I don't think college
is best for it. I drop down, right. A lot
of people benefit from not doing college. But this, this
going to war with college is such a weird movement,
such a weird thing to do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
He said, Hey, this isn't worth college isn't worth it.
Take my money, that's worth it. See, but like college
is a Catholic church.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
I don't Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Now,
depending on who you ask, the program could be viewed
as a success or a failure, because the program that
comes out of this is that like Peter's going to
pay one hundred grand per student if you try to
drop out of college. Right from an article on the

(01:03:19):
website Education Surge. A columnist for Bloomberg who is himself
a venture capitalist, Aaron Brown, recently did an analysis of
the two hundred and seventy one people who have received
a Teal Fellowship since the program began, and it turns
out eleven of them have gone on to start new
companies now valued at more than a billion dollars, making
them what are called unicorns in the industry. He sees
that as a pretty remarkable record for finding unicorns. It's

(01:03:41):
not like colleges aren't trying to encourage their students to
start companies through various programs. Brown says, none of those
have been anywhere near as successful as giving these kids
one hundred thousand dollars and sending them out into the world.
So that's one analysis of the program. Max Chafkin, you
won't be surprised to hear, gives a more critical summary
of things. First off, he alleges the foundation was started

(01:04:02):
in part for the media attention it would get, which
would distract people from the fact that Peter's Founder's Fund
has lost a lot of investors after his hedge fund
fell apart. Peter launched the Fellowship with a characteristic five
thousand word essay on what happened to the Future written
by his partner at the Founder's vund, Bruce Gibney. It
includes the line we wanted flying cars, and we got
one hundred and forty characters. Thus, the Fellowship was a

(01:04:24):
small attempt to get the future back on track by
encouraging ambitious geniuses to take big swings and not just
work for the man making fake technologies solving fake problems.
Chaefkin points out that these kinds of fake technologies were
precisely where the Founder's Fund had invested its money for years.
Founder's fund backed Facebook, a social network just like Twitter,
as well as path, Gowala, and slide, which were all

(01:04:45):
social media companies. The last one, which had been started
by Teal's PayPal co founder Max Levchin, was known for
something called super Poke, which have allowed users to virtually slap, punch,
and grope their Facebook friends, and was about as far
from the randy and ideal as one good man imagine.
The fellowship did connect some young men with funding that
wound up leading to profitable companies, but none of them

(01:05:06):
gave us the flying car or anything but more of
the same overvalued Silicon Valley bullshit, and Schafgan argues the
program than damage to some of the young people in it.
For one thing, the program tossed kids into the Bay
Area with little mounted to a small sum of money
and very little social support or institutional support. Ironically, the
kinds of things that universities are decent at providing. Quote,

(01:05:27):
they showed up in California, only to find out that
the actual execution of the fellowship was basically an afterthought.
Once Teal had achieved its marketing goal, there was no
structure to speak up beyond that suggestion and the requirement
that they not enroll in school or take a full
time job. Some former fellows talked to Schaefkan and made
the very interesting point that the actual benefit of the
fellowship was essentially the same as what you got out

(01:05:50):
of an Ivy League school, access to powerful people in money.
The Teal program, one fellow told, promised libertarian capitalism in
a supportive community that would reward creativity rather than Machiavellian maneuvering.
What I found was comically not that he said. It
was college without the classes, a residential community, or studying.
In short, most of what was enriching about college. It

(01:06:11):
wasn't an attack on a credentialing system. It was another
credential And of course, yeah, yeah, I think that gets
it right. The greatest privilege of wealth is the ability
to be taken seriously as a diletant. Right. You don't
have to know anything, you don't have to earn your
way in to show up with a bunch of money
and be a serious player. Now, sometimes this works out.

(01:06:31):
That's what James Cameron does with deep sea exploration. But
he's a real he becomes a legitimate expert, right, Like,
No one can argue that at this point, But James
Cameron very rarely is that how it works out. Usually,
usually it works out like this, right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
It's usually more like the difshit who've got everybody killed
in the.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Exact right, Stockton Rush. Yes, Peter represents the other side
of the coin, and perhaps his longest lingering danger next
to the career of JD Vance is his company Pallantier,
And we're close by talking some about Palenteer. In the
year since JP Morgan signed on and saw their whole
c suite get spined on, Palenteer has spread over the globe.

(01:07:09):
It gained a great deal of influence after the US
killed bin Laden, and some people insinuated that Pallenteer's tech
had helped track the terrorists down. This appears to be untrue,
but it spread far and wide enough that you can
find plenty of critical reporting on the company that will
point out its alleged connection to bin Laden's death. After
Trunk took office, Peter saw his most nativest dreams come
true in a way that meant big bucks for Palenteer.

(01:07:30):
They made a contract with ICE and Homeland Security Investigations
for thirty eight million dollars. This led to them providing
software for a twenty seventeen operation that targeted unaccompanied children
and their families tried to enter the United States. This
was the Kids in Cages scandal. And I'm going to
read an excerpt from the Intercept next. I think Ryan
Grimm wrote this one. Documents obtained through Freedom of Information

(01:07:52):
Act litigation provided to the Intercept show that this claim
that Palenteer software is strictly involved in criminal investigations as
supposed to deport tiations is false. The discrepancy between the
private intelligence firm's public assertion and the reality conveyed in
the newly released documents was first revealed by Mihinte, an
advocacy organization that has closely tracked Palenteer's murkey role in

(01:08:13):
immigration enforcement. Far from a detached support in cross border
criminal investigations, the materials released this week confirmed the role
Palateer played in facilitating hundreds of arrests, only a small
fraction of which actually led to criminal prosecutions. The document
makes it clear that the operation which would directly target
the parents and other family members of children apprehended at
the border, all with help of Palateer's case management app.

(01:08:35):
The document continues to instruct that if sufficient information on
parents or family members is obtained while investigating an unaccompanied child,
a collateral case would be sent to the affected team
for action. The instructions make it clear that enabled inquiries
could result in charges against a child's family. Teams will
be available immediately to conduct database checks and provide and
contact super a suspected sponsor, parent or family members to identify, interview,

(01:09:00):
and if applical, seek charges against the individual and administratively
arrest the subjects and anybody encountered during the inquiry who
was not who was out of status. So the Palenteer
aided campaign to hunt down and arrest family members of
children who crossed the border alone was touted by the
Trump administration's top immigration hardliners as a necessary measure to
de tear asylum seekers from making the journey north. According

(01:09:23):
to figures ICE provided the intercept on Monday, the twenty
seventeen initiative led to four hundred and forty three arrests,
including thirty five criminal arrests. Prosecutions, however, were much more
difficult to come by, with ICE, acknowledging that the campaign
led to just thirty eight prosecutions related to alien smuggling
or re entry of removed aliens. Karp, the avowed neo Marxist,
had initially expressed frustration at his company being involved in

(01:09:46):
government overreach. In twent and thirteen, he told Forbes, I
didn't sign up for the government to know when I
smoke a joint or have an affair. But in the
wake of reporting on his company's involvement in ICE, when
some employees that Pallunteer pushed to divest themselves from work
with ICE, Karp pushed to renew a forty two million
dollar ICE contract and attacked workers at Google and other
Silicon Valley companies that had protested contracts with the military

(01:10:09):
and law enforcement. In the first couple years after Trump
took office, Pallanteer acquired contracts potentially worth hundreds of millions
of dollars more than the total revenue they perceived from
the US government during Obama's entire second term. Palenteer has
at varying points explored deals with the Saudis, and in
January Karp flew to Israel to express solidarity with the

(01:10:29):
Israeli government, and one presumes make the case for why
the IDF should buy his company's products at the moment.
Pallenteer's technology is also heavily used in Ukraine, where by
some accounts, it plays a major role in targeting decisions. Now,
I am hesitant to rely on a lot of reporting
that basically asks iftise acts as advertisements for Palenteer's technology,
but there is some evidence that their algorithmic analysis has

(01:10:52):
been useful in allowing Ukraine to more efficiently target and
expend munitions on the battlefield. It is not really possible
for me to analyze how how effective Palateer's technology is here, right,
in part because information siloing in a war with this
kind of stuff is so effective. I do worry about
how much a lot of the reporting on the efficacy
of Palateering Ukraine, how much of it sounds like an

(01:11:14):
ad And I'm always very questionable about early reports that
military and intelligence products are like game changingly effective, right,
because a lot of the time that winds up being overblown. Right,
I can't say that it is. I don't know. This
is something that will be adjudicated in the march of time. Right,
this is still all going on.

Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
There was an article today from Reuters. Did you read
that one?

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
No? No, I mean no nothing today.

Speaker 4 (01:11:40):
Yeah, there was an article that came out today that
that Paleteer was dumped by their Norwegian investor over their
work with Israel.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
That's interesting and there I could we should probably talk
more about that. It's just this is all coming out.
Like Karp recently visited Israel earlier at the start of
this year to kind of make overtures directly to the
Israeli government. Israel most of their like AI targeting that's
gotten so rightly covered is not through Palenteer, but Palaeer

(01:12:07):
clearly wants to be in that business with Israel, right,
Like they're seeing what's going on in Gaza and like
this is a place where we can make a lot
of money. You know. It's just a case where I
think they kind of got beaten to the punch on
some of this stuff. When it comes to what they've
been doing in Ukraine, Pallanteer has played a big role
in turning the war in Ukraine into what center for
Security and Emerging Technology analyst Rita Konev described as an

(01:12:31):
AI war lab. It's possible that their technology has been
helpful to Ukraine, but even in the most defensible use
of Palenteer's tech, there are troubling questions. From a write
up by c SET, national security officials and experts caution
that these new tools may end up in the hands
of adversaries. Rita Kane have raised significant concerns about the
long term implications of the demployment of advanced technology in Ukraine.

(01:12:51):
She stated the prospects for proliferation are crazy. She also
post critical questions about the future implications. Most companies operating
in Ukraine right now said they align with US national
security goals, but what happens when they don't? What happens
the day after, right, and you know what happens with
governments who are engaged in stuff that's a lot more questionable,

(01:13:11):
you know, than what Ukraine is doing right like what
we're talking about with them shopping around Israel. You know,
there's a lot of a lot of unknown questions about
how this is going to work out. This is not
I hope this is like a ground level overview of
what Palainteer does of why you should, you know, be
paying attention to them. Nobody should take this as the
final word on everything Palanteer gets up to. That's too

(01:13:32):
big for even four parts of a podcast. But I
think we've laid the groundwork and I think, Noah, that's
where we're going to have to roll out for the day.
Yeah wow.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
You know, usually these Behind the Bastards series they end
on such a positive note.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
Yeah, when the guy's still alive, it's a bummer.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
Yeah. When it's more like the AI machine is coming
to kill you, yeah, yeah, not as positive.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Peter's going to help build the AI death machine that
gets you targeted because you were once friends with a
guy who looked up the wrong thing on the internet.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
I should note that in April of last year, Peter's
quote unquote boyfriend. You know, he's married, but I think
just kind of had probably probably was a consensual sort
of sleeping around thing. There was this male model, Jeff Thomas,
that he had been seeing. He put him up in
a thirteen million dollar mansion, he bought him a sports car.
Thomas is the guy who claims he talked Peter out
of supporting the Republicans in twenty twenty three. It's kind

(01:14:34):
of unclear what was going on with him. Teal has
always been famous for throwing these very lavish, very decadent
parties right, very much at odds with the whole religious
conservative image that he had. There's definitely some texts and
stuff that have come out about like the parties that
he would plan with this guy. There's some evidence they
had a fight, or maybe he had a fight, Peter
at a fight with his husband. It may have been

(01:14:55):
that Jeff got angry at him over his support of
the right, and that like that's part of why he
pulled away from Teal because he like moved out of
the house. I just don't know who was on what
side of this. But in twenty twenty three, Jeff committed suicide,
and we do not know why. We don't know what
happened here. I'm bringing this up just because people are
gonna be like, why aren't you talking about this? But like,

(01:15:16):
there's really not enough for me to say what happened here, right,
But it is like a thing that you'll run into
with Peter. I didn't want to just leave it out
because you know, that would seem like a weird hole
to have in the story too. Yeah, yeah, it's cool stuff.
It's also it's part worth noting for like the ethics

(01:15:38):
of Pallanteer that when Peter was interviewed about like how
Israel has been using AI and a lot of their
targeting those resulted in heavy, massive civilian casualties, his basic
statement was like, I don't think it's worth criticizing them
on this. You have to assume they know their business, right, which, like, man,
a lot of innocent people have died as a result
of this AI targeting shit. And I think that tells

(01:16:00):
you where Peter sees the ethics in his industry, right,
it doesn't really matter, you know. Uh anyway, sorry, YadA YadA,
so much there, But like, how how do you cover
all of this in four episodes? We're already over time?
So thank you, Noah. I appreciate you sitting here with
us for this.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
Thank you. I think, yeah do I thank you? Am
I thanking you?

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
I haven't thought, I never do, never will.

Speaker 4 (01:16:29):
Yeah, okay, but thank you Noah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
And people people can follow you on the internet by
you're at your game.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
Yeah yeah, okay, goodbye.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Goodbye, joy love.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(01:17:15):
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