Camp Gagnon - Billionaire's Secret Bunker Meeting and Peter Thiel's Antichrist with Professor Douglas Rushkoff

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Today, we sit down with Rebel Tech Philosopher, Media Theorist, Author and Professor Douglas Rushkoff. We’ll review his secret bunker meeting with the world's ultra-wealthy, their billionaire escape fantasies, and the dark reality of their end-of-the-world preparations. Welcome to Camp! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors: Mars Men & GLD -New Customers get 40% OFF With Promo-Code: "CAMP" When They Visit: https://GLD.com Check out Douglas's book 'Survival of the Richest': https://www.amazon.com/Survival-Richest-Escape-Fantasies-Billionaires/dp/0393881067 Subscribe to Douglas on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCJdUEh2Wh4fnswTLmqoEnhg Support Team Human: http://patreon.com/teamhuman Want the even WILDER theories? SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon 👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com 🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:38 Professor Rushkoff In The Tent 7:24 The Secret Bunker Meeting 16:16 Danger of Climate Change 17:54 Pyramid Scheme of Consumerism 29:38 Peter Thiel's Antichrist 38:11 Transhumanism 55:03 Epstein Funded Billionaire Party 57:01 Influence on The Elites 1:02:58 Epstein's Role w/ The Elite 1:15:03 Check Out Rushkoff's Book #CampGagnon #DouglasRushkoff #BillionaireBunkers #Transhumanism #TechElites #SurvivalOfTheRichest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

These five guys come into the green room and they sit around this little round table. And I really, this is it. This is the talk. It's just these five guys. Bitcoin or Ethereum. And then finally, one of them says, so Alaska or New Zealand, where should they put their bunker in case of the event? What if the richest people on Earth know something that the rest of us don't? Right now we have billionaires buying remote compounds, tech executives building underground bunkers, private islands, escape plans,

and this growing obsession among the ultra-wealthy about surviving what they call the event. Well, our guest today knows all about this and what the elites are planning and how they're trying to survive because they asked him how to do it. Yeah, this is Douglas Rushkoff. He's a professor and author of the book Survival of the Riches. And Douglas tells a story of being flown into the desert to meet a group of billionaire investors who weren't interested in making more money. They wanted to know how to protect themselves when everything was.

falls apart. Are these just eccentric rich people with too much time and money on their hands? Or are some of the world's most powerful figures quietly preparing for climate disasters? Economic collapse, mass migration, and social unrest? So if you were interested in billionaire bunkers, the future of AI, elite escape plans, and what happens when the people at the very top start preparing to disappear from public view and what the regular people like you and I can do about it, well, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax. and welcome to camp.

Douglas, how are you? Good, good to be here. Thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to chat with you. I'm glad to be in the tent, man. Yes, you made it. I know, no, no, we're outside, deep in the woods somewhere. No, in the tent.

I know we're deep in the woods. I think we're near like the Adirondacks or something. Yeah. But this is a beautiful serendipitous moment, not only because I'm a huge fan of yours. I listen to you on Danny Jones's show, which was brilliant, and I thought what you guys jumped into was just so fun.

And I want to talk about the books, Survival of the Richest, But also the fans and the listeners of this show are very familiar with my pal Christos here. Oh, good. And you and Crestos know each other. We do. This is a beautiful thing.

Like, Crestos brought this up to me and he's like, hey, one of my professors actually is a brilliant guy. He's written a bunch of books that really align with what we're doing here at the campsite. And on top of that, he was just on Danny's show. And I was like, what? Exactly. My plan worked.

This is why I became a professor. So someone like him would become a student and then get me on a show like this. So it's all finally worked. Yeah, it's weird. No, I run this master's program at CUNY, City University of New York, Queens College, and media studies. And media studies just means kind of what you talk about, you know, taking apart the world. Because what's not media?

It's all media. Nowadays. Yeah. And even before then, I mean, everything's a medium for human cultural interactions. Right. Now, how was Douglas as a professor? He's brilliant and too smart for me. Oh, really?

Yeah. But you still pass? just barely by the skin of my teeth and now look at him he was actually kind of barely in a certain way not in the class he was great

but there was like he was concerned when you were doing the thesis because he was doing his thesis on basically on podcasts and a bit on broculture and podcasts and stuff and I mean

I was cool with it but the rest of the faculty they're like traditional more traditional so it was a little a little up but also it was a matter of him bringing

a different kind of rigor to that he had like he had all the insights into the world, but it's like, how do you express this in a way that, you know, makes full on sense? But no, he was great. And he's a master's student that wrote a thesis on podcast. And now he works on, I mean, my favorite podcast. Yeah. So look at that. I mean, how many master students are working in the field that they actually wrote their thesis about? Not a lot. That's

what I'm saying. He's climbing the ranks. He's doing it. I know. You wrote a book called Survival of the Richest. I did. Escape Fantasies of the tech billionaires. We've heard about this a lot. There's things that are happening where you'll see a headline. You'll see something on Twitter, I've referred to us Twitter, I don't believe in the term X, but you see stuff pop up on the internet and you go, okay, so Zuckerberg has a bunker in Hawaii and then this other billioners building a place in Australia and this other guy, I mean, now we see Ivanka's got an island in Albania and there's just all these little things where the richest people are building these hideaways and maybe the mainstream, the less skeptical sort of accepting worldview is like, yeah,

of course rich people like escapes. They've always liked a place, whether it's summering in the Hampton's going to Nantucket, but this feels different. Right. They didn't used to have, like, gun turrets and stuff. We're seeing things where there's underground bunkers and food cachets and, you know, like, packageable things. It's much more falling into, like, the prepper territory of the old conspiracy trope. And this book, it seems, was predicated on an event where you were asked to speak with some of the wealthiest, most powerful, connected people in the world and the conversations that you had there. So could you take the audience through what that experience was and who

these people were generally. Yeah. I mean, you know, so I've written a bunch of books, like a media technology, society and stuff, and they, people kind of, rich people see me as a futurist, you know, but I'm really not. I'm really just a presentist, but people don't usually figure out what's going on until five years after it's happened. So they think I was, I was a future, but, you know, it's the now. But, um, so I write about all those things. And, uh, I sometimes get invited, even though I'm a weird-ass anarchist bottom-up psychedelic head, whatever, I'll get invited by big companies or banks or VCs to come and talk to them. And almost like an intellectual dominatrix or something, you know,

just come in and punish us for all of our evils and tell us what we're doing wrong with tech. Well, they do this, right? They invite people in just to kind of tell them how bad they are. Exactly. They'll bring like an ecologist. to talk about the environment. They're like, yeah, all these AI companies are destroying the environment. They're like, yeah, we are.

You know, it's self-flagellating. It is a little bit. Thank you, sir, man. Please have another. Exactly. And you're one of these people they bring. Yeah, you know, but fuck it. I'll take their money, right?

And this was a big, big one. You know, so it was way out in the desert. But it was like, it was literally between a third and a half an annual professor's salary at CUNY, right? Wow. It was a lot of money. Business class air, the whole thing to go out to do like, future of digital economics or something.

One talk. One talk, yeah, for a bunch of bankers. So, you know, I'd, I'll scrawl to talk on the plane. I mean, I got this stuff already. I got the, it's almost like your bits, you know, I've got, I'll just do, okay, do these six bits in this order, and that's 27 minutes. Exactly. So, you know, I got, and I'd land in this in the, in airport out, and let's just say,

near the Grand Canyon States, one of those. And getting this limo for a, and. like literally like two two and a half hours driving out there. I'm like what kind of rich bankers are going to go to something this far and then they don't do that. But it's like as we go over the last bluff, I see these little like G5s landing on this private air strip. I'm like, oh shit, this is that. And go to this giant resort. I get my own like cabana thing with my own outdoor stone hot tub and I don't see any other people. They finally pick me up in a golf car the next day to bring me to do my talk.

I'm in the green room, getting ready, you know. And usually, you're in the green room, some guy comes with the lavalier to clip on you and stuff. And instead of these five guys come into the green room and they sit around this little round table. And I'm really, this is it. This is the talk. It's just these five guys.

And I'm like, what's going on? Do you want me to like do my talk to you guys? And there's like, no, no, we just want to talk. And so they start asking these like, I guess the kind of questions I would usually get like virtual reality or augmented reality

like where should they you know put their money you know all these kind of binary questions you know Bitcoin or Ethereum and then finally one of them says so Alaska or New Zealand like huh

and it's like where should they put their bunker in case of the event meaning the event is the word they use for it like the nuclear disaster or economic unrest, revolution, or climate change or a pandemic or something, the place that they should go. And I'm like, dude, I'm a frigging media theorist. I don't know where to put the thing.

You're you really building? You can build bunkers in these places? And yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to build bunkers. And I'm like, well, what about, you know, water and topsoil and this, you know, and this guy shows me these plans that he's got for this bunker. It's an underground bunker thing and it's got a heated swimming pool in it and all this. And I'm like, okay, you know, there's someone down the block from me that's got a heated swimming pool. And all summer, there are these vans pulling up, like with replacement parts for the filter. And this is like, how are you going to be getting

replacement parts for the filters on your, and he's like writing down in his little moleskin book or replacement parts for, you know, for heated pool? And then I started asking them like, well, how are you going to guard your bunker from the rest of us. Right. You know, when we're coming, and they go, oh, don't worry. We got Navy SEALs, like on speed dial, sitting by copters right now, you know, they're ready and warm. Yeah.

They're going to call them and pick us up. If you've read Roman history, I mean, the biggest concern for the Caesar is, you know, his own guards. Right. And as I said, well, how do you control your Navy SEALs once your Bitcoin is worthless? And you're like, huh? And they go, well, you know, the apocalypse happens. Your money's worthless.

you got these Navy SEALs in there. And then when they start, they start scrambling, like, basically with the intelligence of a second-level walking dead fan in terms of scenario planning. So one guy's like, well, what if I'm the only guy who knows the combination to the lock, to the food supply? It's like, oh, Navy SEALs, they don't have any experience getting information. And you're going to spend the entire apocalypse getting waterboarded. Yeah. this thing. Or then someone's, oh, we can have, you know, chips. Everyone has to have a chip that will give them permission to various places and it could also be used as a shock, like a shock collar. So, oh, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, they just love, they just love, they're going to yank the thing out and fucking kill you. So they, they were, I mean, I left them kind of in, I hopefully, in a state of doubt about whether the thing would work. But, you know, what it left me realizing was, you know, these were the richest, most powerful people I had ever been. And with. And this was early. This was 2018.

Now, these guys, just to kind of paint the picture, would you know, did you know them prior to them walking to the room? I had heard of one of them, but no, they weren't like musk level because I had said to them, why are you building? Why don't you just go on your rocket ships? Because these were billionaires, you know, why don't you just go on your rocket ships? And then one of them said, well, we're not that level billionaire. We're like low level billionaires. You know, the best we could get a seat on Branson's plane maybe. Right. Or his thing. But, but we don't, we can't bill our own. That's like an ultra. So the average net worth of these five gentlemen you're speaking with.

One to five billion, yeah. I mean, pennies. Pennies. I mean, you can't build a rocket for that. Right. You can't, you've got to be at Bezos level. Bezos is, you know, rocket explode. I mean, one of the biggest explosions in aviation history.

Oh, really? Yeah. Did you see it? No, no. I mean, don't be too happy about it. No. I know. No one was in it, right?

No. No, exactly. But it was a crazy explosion. I mean, billions of dollars going up in flames. You're anarchist. Yeah, and that's not, you know, but they were all, you know, they all have the bigger billioners, they all have some escape fantasy of one kind or another, like upload their brain or get to Mars or something. And, you know, the low-level ones just want to build a fortress of some kind or a castle.

And, you know, what I realize really what's going on is that, you know, these people believe they have to earn enough money to escape from the reality they've created by earning money in this way, right? or acquire enough technology to escape from the impact, the environmental or social impact of the technologies they created. So they're in this weird effort to like accelerate development so they can get away from what they've done. Like build a car that could go fast enough to escape from its own exhaust. Right. Hey, real quick, most people who watch this channel aren't subscribed.

And when you subscribe, you help the channel grow and you stay in the loop with every new drop. religion camp, history camp, and camp gagnon. Now, let's get back to it. They've developed a, I guess, an economic system, whether just by their involvement in capitalism at large or literally in the companies that they build that has created an inhospitable, or an in-hospitable.

Yeah. Social environment, where now they have to escape. They've developed such a gross wealth inequality that perhaps a revolution could brew. Right. And then what? Exactly. And then what?

And then I started, so that was then I put on my kind of more, more author professorial had to look at, where does this really come from? Right? So I looked at, you know, both capitalism and how capitalism works. And capitalism is not just business. People think capitalism is business.

It's not. Capitalism is a particular kind of business where you make other people do the work and you extract value from it doing as little as you can. Where you go meta. So there's a guy working. You become his boss.

And then the boss, you become an investor in that boss. And then you become an investor in the investor. or you become someone buying futures on the investor or someone building the exchange, that capitalism is about getting away from the actual work and leveraging other people's work and others people and so on and so on.

So there was that, which is sort of this almost slightly sociopathic thing, where you're moving away from reality towards abstractions and you're letting the abstractions run reality. And then on the other hand, the technological history, which goes all the way back, I talk about Francis Bacon, you know, the founder of empirical science, who said that science and technology will let us take nature by the forelock, hold her down, and submit her to our will. So that technology is basically a way to control and nature. So there's that mindset, too. We're going to just, you know, use up this place in order to become Uber, mensch, Superman, you know, some kind of great, great thing. And what I really learned was that this escape thing. This moving to a armed castle with like lasers and robots protecting it is not a prepper nightmare for them.

This is the goal. That's that's the dream, you know, and that's what gets you to that whole kind of transhumanism thing. That they see us, us regular humans as like the maggots, the larvae living on the piece of dung that is planet Earth. And we're just, ugh. And they're the few that are going to sprout wings like real flies and get off. Mm-hmm. And we're only required to the extent that we can be the fuel and the labor for them to become the next thing. Right.

Now, there's like this undergirding philosophy, which you've touched on a bit that I want to jump into. But I guess what is precipitating this concern about building a bunker in the next five or ten years and perhaps even sooner? Like, what do they know? Right now it feels like we're watching Noah build an arc. Right. Like, what impending thing are they aware of that we are still in this malaise? Oh, we're aware of it, too. I mean, they've just been aware of it longer and with greater certainty.

I mean, if you want to play conspiracy for a second, look at who is funding climate change denial propaganda? those people If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it.

Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life and supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-214. Please play responsibly. People are the ones who are building the bunkers. Those are the people who believe most in climate change. The only reason you really pay for climate change denial is for you to have a head start on doing the things you need to do in order to prepare.

You know, you don't want the land in northern Canada and Siberia and Greenland, those places. You don't want that land to get expensive before you've bought your shares and the things that you want. So they're positioning for it. So what do they think is happening? Climate is one of them. And, you know, it's not that the climate itself will get so bad wherever they are. It's that climate change will lead to hundreds of millions of refugees. You know, and once you have, you know, 500 million Bangladeshi and a billion Africans and coming up, then what do you do?

You know, what happens, you know, what happens to the Eurozone? What happens to the border at Mexico? I mean, why build a wall? Is it really to stop a few, you know, drug cartels or fentanyl? Or is it preparation for a mass migration from the global south if that's where it goes? I think some people look at the ecological change and climate change. And their thing is like, oh, rising water levels like the coast or something like that. It's bigger than that.

It's human migration, which is ultimately the broader concern when it comes to climate change. Exactly. Even if you look at it. So even if it's right. even if it's not where you are in Ohio or Buffalo, although it will be. I mean, so there's that. The other big one they understand is the pyramid scheme of Western capitalism is going to collapse. Right.

Again, I'm not saying all business is pyramid scheme, but there's also a pyramid scheme. They've built a pyramid scheme on the real commerce that we do. I mean, and they don't know what's going to. finally be the tipping point. It could be the SpaceX, you know, trillion dollar valuation. IPO. It's coming out. And just jamming that into the S&P and seeing how that goes. Breaking SEC guidelines and forcing all these index funds to buy it. Yeah. I know.

It's scary. There's certainly, eventually the, the container breaks, right? And we've been in a pyramidal civilization really since, you could say since since the pyramids, but really since the Renaissance, central currency, the chartered monopoly, you know, the things that they did in 11th and 12th century to put people out of business and to force us to be employees for these chartered monopolies, these officially mandated monopolistic corporations, that it's been building since then. You know, we live in an economy that's optimized for growth and accumulation. And the idea is you try to accumulate so that you're not in the bottom layer.

If you're in the bottom of the pyramid, you're poor. You're destitute. So you want to get up and insulate yourself as much as you can. But the top's gotten so heavy. There's a real surplus of elites. There's kind of it. I know we talk about division of wealth, but there's too many billionaires to be supported by this. You know, they've got 90% of the wealth and it's way up in the top of that thing.

And so the pyramid is going to collapse and they know it. So I think that's almost more. imminent than climate change is the economic economic disaster. Yeah, I mean, that's, again, I don't want to frame the conversation like capitalism is inherently a dirge that's going to destroy that, da, da, da, I think there are. It's got to be balanced with other things. You can't have an entire economy based on investment. You have to also somehow reward the people and companies that are creating the value. Right. You can't, you can't extract 90% of the value and expect the company to function.

That's, I guess, the broader concern. It seems like a lot of the guardrails that are put on capitalism at large, because, again, I don't think any economic system is perfect. And I do think capitalism works well in many ways and has brought us into a very lush existence of convenience. And it works particularly well in growing economies. Exactly. When you're going from nothing to wealth, but once you have prosperity, do you want to keep, there's a certain point. I mean, nothing in nature grows exponentially forever except cancer and it kills its host. Right.

How do you reach a sustainable equilibrium? How do you be like a forest, even just for a while? Can we just breathe and enjoy and party for, you know, a bit or do we have to keep growing? Right. And it seems like in America for the past, you know, 10050, really, I guess, Industrial Revolution time, you have a growing economy that is its existence, fundamentally needs to continue to grow. And so we're in this production economy. We're making things.

And we're like really developing a lot of stuff. And, you know, the wealth inequality is not as spread out. And there's, you know, a time of some type of prosperity in America. And then, of course, you have World War II, which then creates another economic boom afterwards. But then it seems like around like the 60s or 70s, maybe around like Reagan time, even maybe into the 80s. We've reached a cap, it seems like, a production. And now we created a consumption economy where we all are needing to consume

and we need to continue to consume in order to prop up the Chinese economy that's making stuff in order to prop up our own economy. And so as a result, we're all just existing to consume. And I heard a great quote that consumption in these consumer economies

is the perfection of slavery. Yeah. Because we never have a need to revolt, right? Like when slaves are put into this position or like an indentured servant where it's like you work all day and you get paid virtually nothing or you just have a place to live and, you know, scraps to eat. Eventually you get so angry

and there's a resistance that builds that you eventually will revolt. But if you're placated with large TVs and maybe you buy a new car, you get a lease on a new, you know, expensive vehicle and you're just working to buy things to impress other people you don't care about and staying in this level of like

sort of mediocre economic growth, you never really will go against the, I guess, overlords that are accruing all this wealth on your behalf. And it's interesting. And even, you know, you could look at the technological story that way, that, you know, when I was a kid, and before that, you know, like 40s, 50s, 60s, the way we justified all the technology was progress. Right. We're going to do these things. Do that. The way we justify technology now is convenience. Right. You know, it makes your consumption easier. Right. Your choice of things, you know, because that is our, that is our main job.

now is to be a consumer. That's the main reason you even work is so that you have the money to consume. After 9-11, what Bush said, keep buying stuff. That's the way you can be patriotic now. You know, and of course, without getting too deep into the math, the reason why we need to consume is we have a money system that's based on you lend money to people and they have to pay it back at interest. That's the way anyone gets cash to do anything. That's the way cash is produced. back before the Renaissance 11th, 12th century, there was other kinds of money, money that was like poker chips.

It would just expire at the end of the day. You couldn't save it. You would just use it to get what you needed and it went away. There's other, we don't need to go into it, but there's other ways of doing money. But the wealthy hated that the poor people were getting rich by using all these kinds of IOUs

and money and getting less dependent on the wealthy. So they made it illegal. They killed anyone who used local currency and they said, you have to borrow coin of the realm, you know, with the king's face on it and at interest. But if everybody needs to pay back more than they borrowed, that means the economy has to grow. It has to grow to stay alive. It's the way it works. So if you have to grow, you've got to have people, I mean, at early times it was easy.

You just go to America, enslave the people, take their sugar, go to Africa. You could grow physically. But once we got to the end of the world, you know, by the end of World War II, and, you We did these things called like Bretton Woods in these conferences. We pegged everything on the dollar. And then we had to create a consumer class and get them to buy more stuff every year to the point where we can't consume. We got storage units all over. You can't consume.

And it's not stuff you need. So now you need an advertising industry to convince people that they need the stuff that they otherwise wouldn't want. They could be fucking, right? They could be, you know, playing and stuff. But it's like, no, no, no, you need. You need that. So now we've reached the peak, and this is another, we've reached the peak of our ability to consume. And we're trying to make the middle class, I mean, we're trying to take all the money from people to be able to consume.

And so this is what I was thinking. You want to really play head games. AI is going to take all our jobs, right? So let's just say, if that's really true, AI's going to take our jobs. Well, AI can become the new consumer class too. How? What do AI's need? AIs in order to work, AIs need energy.

They need data. They need processing power. How are they going to get those? Well, if you have freelance AI agents all over the net who are working for people and companies that need AI and they're being paid in the data and processing and electricity that they need to run, if you're a billionaire, already disconnected from human beings. What's the difference between there being a whole bunch of humans that are working for you and buying from you and a whole bunch of AIs that are working for you and none? There's actually none.

So then you're just competing with the other billionaires for the business of the AIs. And you'd rather have that than all these people who could revolt who are going to be unhappy or whatever. Interesting. It's weird. So they could, in their view, they could get along without us. And what would they rather do have to maintain a human population with universal basic income or something and hope they're going to be? That's that. Who are warm-blooded people are going to revolt?

No, you just need a whole bunch of AIs, robot armies and teenage girls, right? Well, how do they get rid of us? Well, how does that work? Get rid of vaccines. Don't worry about get rid of whatever it was that we were used to do to contain things like Ebola and Africa. Stop funding that. Just let it. Naturally take the call.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess if you're going to let the... And get an island in Albania with a bunch of droid armies. Let the environments slowly just take back what was taken from it. I mean, the thing is, it doesn't finally, it doesn't work, right? It doesn't work. It's a sociopath's wet dream. But finally, it doesn't work. We're, we're, one, they can't control for enough of nature's, the things nature does.

You know, the diseases, the changes, the water table, the weather system, the Kessler syndrome, you know, about that, all the pieces of the satellites in space. Breaking off. Yeah, there's just too many unknown knowns. There's too many knowns. Even, you don't have to worry about the, no, no. Right. And us and human beings and animals and plants, we're resourceful. I think eventually, I think we, there's enough real world controlled by us that, like, it's

kind of like a, at a certain point, a big agra contract on the land that you're farming may mean less at a certain point than the people that are on it. Right. Guys don't really talk about what happens as you get older. to notice it. Your energy is lower. Gym recovery takes longer. You're doing the same workouts, eating pretty well, but not getting the same results. And for a while, I just thought, all right, I'm getting older. But for men, testosterone can naturally decline as early as your 30s. And when that happens, it can affect energy, muscle, recovery, focus, and how your body stores

fat. And that is why I started taking Mars for men. I've been on it for a few months now and I've noticed more consistent energy, better workouts, better recovery, and sharper focus going into the summer. men is just a natural supplement, no synthetic hormones, no stimulants with ingredients like Tongot Ali, Sheila Jeet, zinc, boron, and a bunch of other stuff designed to support healthy testosterone levels. It's made in the USA, third party tested every batch and backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee. And for a limited time, the listeners of this program will get 50% off for life, plus free shipping and three free gifts at men go to mars.com. That is men, go to Mars.com.

And after you purchase, tell him that Mark and Creases from the campsite sent you. It really helps. Now, let's get back to the show. What can you tell me about Peter Thiel and his Antichrist sort of conferences that he's going around and why he's sort of floating this idea of the Antichrist and how we ultimately solve this Antichrist with AI? I mean, the easiest way to understand it is he wrote a book called from zero to one. And on the very surface, it's...

It's saying you have to be one order of magnitude above everybody out. So going from zero to one is if there's a whole bunch of dot-com businesses online trying to sell, pedal their wares, you want to level up, you want to aggregate those. You want to be the Amazon serving as a marketplace for all of those. Or if there's a whole bunch of people with websites online, you want to become Facebook, which aggregates so people don't build websites anymore. or now they just get a membership on there and they have something that's like a way.

You don't compete with the market. You become the market. Right, exactly. That's going from zero to one. But religiously what it means is you don't want to be one of the regular humans competing down at this level. You want to go from zero to one. You want to be a transhuman or in his mind you want to be kind of a Christ-like messianic. You want to rise transubstantiate, rise above.

as the next thing. So if he and certain other Uber Minch people, some Superman, are getting enough resources and power to actually, they're gonna, almost about to level up. And then you have these like social justice warrior, mutual aid socialists like Greta Thunberg or someone saying, oh, no, no, you've got to share some of your wealth with the others. that's dragging him down.

It's like someone was just about to transcend with $100 billion trillion and get off the thing. Now the socialist, the sharers, the empathetic compassion people are pulling him back down into the mud and forcing him to mix with the rest of humanity. That is Satanism. That is the demon pulling the one who is right. above the chrysalis of matter into pure God consciousness, how dare we prevent that assent? And he's quite literally pointed to that people like Greta Thumburg could perhaps, he floats it kind of as a hypothetical, could perhaps be the Antichrist,

and that the Antichrist is less of a person, but more this idea, this philosophy that these sort of tech gurus are, that perhaps they shouldn't be above all of us. It's the tech, and I get it. They're the philosophy that they really hate. They consider it like a Malthusian philosophy that, but it's really that are there limits? Are there limits to growth? Are there limits?

Is there is, do we keep growing? Are we, is cancer the right model for what we are that we're going to keep growing? We just got to find more host. And go, hey, keep going. or are we more like mycelia, say, you know, that we're here and we're metabolizing and we're in cycles. If you want to live forever, you know, and in some ways, even going into Christ as you, if you get to evolve into Christ consciousness while you're in this body, that's as good as uploading your mind to the cloud. But the fantasy is to take their mind exactly as it is right now, lock it down, and archive it on the dropbox in the sky, you know, and get to do that. What they don't get then is what my understanding of spirituality and existence is, which is life is temporary and precious.

It's impermanent. And it's impermanence. You realize your whole life then is kind of about preparing and training. to be metabolized in the system. You know, every mushroom trip you have, there's that moment where you realize, oh, my gosh, I'm part of this thing. That shared oneness and this consciousness

that we're all sort of participating in is already happening now. Yeah. But for many of these people, it seems like, oh, no, that is a future advent that we will usher in with technology. Right. Or it's something that I'm going to escape with technology.

They don't like the feeling of being part of the oneness and the, especially the female, It's the female mushroom goddess thing. I'm being metabolized by this thing. I mean, even your great Virgin Mary picture, which is the Virgin Mary as vagina kind of like, you know, it's that rebirth. Right. That rebirth.

It's like, I don't want to be reborn. I was born. I want to stay here. So they're resisting what to me is the most pleasurable, blissful experience is the return. Interesting. Is the being one with that. For most of us, after a mushroom trip, you have this experience of oneness, and it inspires so much empathy and joy. No, because it dissolves your ego.

And you realize all that crap was nothing. You tell someone like perhaps a Peter Thiel, which again, I don't know his personal. I've never met the guy, so I can't speak to what he truly feels. But I wonder if you tell him, like, hey, we're actually all connected. And I am you and you are me. And we're all existing on this place together. And we're here to enjoy it. And we're here to help other people.

He would probably be like, I'm not you. Look at you. Look at you. You're a long-haired hippie. Like, ew. Yeah. I don't want to be you. Right.

Or if we all are part of that thing, yes, and I'm in charge. Yeah. And it's tough to have both. It's like, hey, there's actually no, no, no, no. I've worked my whole life to be better than you. And you're going to tell me it's not that. Exactly. What I want to do.

I want to show these guys their fucking gut biome. You know, you're an information theorist. All right. Well, there's more information in your gut biome than in the rest of you combined. There's more actual. stuff going. You may just be a vehicle, a carrier for this intelligence. And the women you're attracted to may just be your gut biome wanting to mix with that gut

biome and it's telling you to go over to that one. And then it ends this romance in your brain and you think that it's you being attracted to this hot role. Exactly. It's like, no, it's your gut floor trying to smash with another role. It's also not surprising to me that many of these people, broadly speaking, again, these are generalizations are a bit antisocial, perhaps autism spectrum a bit. And improperly, improperly treated. Right.

It's not that autism, because, I mean, it sounds so weird, but I've had very intimate experiences, compassionate, empathic experiences with autistic people. It's not that. Likewise. That it's, it's, it's, it's, it can make someone more vulnerable to, to certain kinds of sociopathie that are built in to this system. Right. I think it's co-founding factors.

I think you have perhaps autism spectrum disorder as well as being beaten down by society mistreaties. Or your parents. You have a trauma that's now built into that, as well as perhaps a predisposition to sociopathy in some way. Right. And all these things sort of converging, plus an extremely high IQ. And it's no mystery to me that their experience with humankind and what they think a human

being is at its essence, I think, is misinformed. Right. They think it's information. They think they put the DNA on Mars and it's good enough. Exactly. And so their thing is like, oh, humanity is actually data points and that humans are rational and that the best version of humanity is a rational being. And that goes right to the market thing too.

Right. Because the whole, the kind of capitalism that we're talking about where there is no society is what Margaret Thatcher said. There's only this rational actor theory market thing. It goes right into the worst kind of capitalism as well. Right. When the reality is that I, as a human being, and simultaneously my rational mind

and my, you know, what I believe is my free will and my ability to sort of observe reality. But it's also simultaneously my emotional primal drive and it's my desire for sex and it's my, you know, irrationality and my compulsions and it's both. And it seems like the transhumanist agenda, which I want you to define in a second.

I think it's that idea that it's like, no, it's only one of them. It is just purely your rational being. It is purely just you, operating as an automaton in a way. And that the prime version of humanity is that we're all kind of robots. And it's like, no, no, no, you just maybe are predisposed of that because of your life experience. But the fullness of humanity is actually quite irrational and that's also beautiful.

And I think that that's what's missed a bit. Now, I'm curious, can you just explain what transhumanism is for someone that's never heard that term before? Yeah, I mean, in some sense, we're all transhumanism at its core. Or is really just the human ability to modify ourselves in order to, in most cases, survive better. Even sunglasses on your head. It's like, oh, so now you can go out and do things. You've filtered your eyes in a better way than your eyes know how to filter. I mean, your pupils know how to get small, but they can only get so small before or whatever.

This is like, oh, look at this modification. Or the cap on your teeth or braces on your, you know, all these things are. forms of body modification. You know, even you can say antibiotics are transhumanism because now you've enhanced your ability to kill bacteria. The downside of transhumanism is because they are inventions that we come up with in a very short period of time rather than painstakingly evolved modifications, they tend to be oversimplified. Right. So, you're just a very short period of time, You give someone antibiotics for a bacterial infection, and you kill some of the other bacteria that person needs. You nuke their gut flora.

Right. And that creates its own slew of issues. Right. But you weigh the pros and the cons. You say, well, you know, you not having this UTI is better than, you know, your gut flora for the next month. Right. Right. But if you keep doing these things kind of for their own sake, and if you're doing transhumanism in combination with this.

growth mandate. You know, oh, I'm going to do more, I'm going to do transhuman modification so that I can make more money on the stock market so I can, you know, enhance my brain's processing ability to do this. It's like, well, what are you adapting yourself for? Mm-hmm. You know, and are you adapting yourself in ways that are almost, you and your progeny in ways that are almost like eugenic, you know, eugenics was sort of.

the Nazi science of weeding out things you don't like. The undesirables. Right. So you now use transhumanism is when parents can pick what qualities they want their kids to have. I want them to be good in math. I want them to be aggressive. I want them to be good in sports. And it's like once we're making all of these choices about things and we're making them

kind of an impatient ways, we can end up oversimplifying who we are, but creating almost a monocrop problem in in in ourselves and believing somehow that that we need to adapt ourselves for these systems rather than adapting the systems for us it's very easy to leave behind qualities the junk DNA that you think is is out there so where we get into debates with with transhumanists is transhumanists um real transhumanists go pedal to the the metal. Let's adapt. Let's put in the chip in your head and do this and do that as if we can keep modifying ourselves. And for my experience, even in the kinds of modifications that I'm seeing and experiencing myself, they always have a drawback of one kind or another. Just, you know,

I've been thinking about electric lights a lot lately. You know, electricity, being able to have light into the night. And that's great. We can read. We can play. We can play. We can have two cards and stuff and stay up later than sunset. But what have we done by reducing the amount of darkness? You know, it feels like light is male-oriented. We're living in a male-dominated culture because we've gotten rid of a lot of the night. The moon is weaker now than the sun. What is that?

I know that sounds kind of new-agey, but all of these, you know, just like the gut biome used to sound new-agey. People didn't know it was real until, you know, five, ten years ago. So the transhumanism thing, the implication is that we should impose the human will on the human. And sure, human will on the human, but know what you want. If there is such a thing as knowing what you want, right? Because this is my concern with transhumanism. I think you did a great job explaining it. That it feels that we're pulling down fences without knowing why they were put up.

And evolution has done a fantastic job, I think, at generally creating societies and structures that function for human beings well. And then all of these technological inventions rebuke kind of that natural order and whether it's going all the way back to like agriculture. And I know people will say like, what do you mean? Agriculture is great. We're able to farm. We're able to do all this stuff.

But because of that, we build. societies that are a bit outside of the natural order for, you know, what human beings have been for most of the time. That human beings for the broad part of the Anthropocene were sort of small bands of groups kind of, you know, semi-nomadic and generally a lot of free time. Yeah? You know, living sort of in correspondence with nature, which had, of course, its own downsides. If I was given the option to go back 50,000 years to live as a human then, I don't know if I would do it because I'm very custom to the convenience of modern day.

But I... Depends where, too. Yeah, sure. Like a place with fruit on the trees and stuff, maybe. Yeah. But it's also like that. I do think that is kind of how humans have been mostly. I'm not even going to say how we should be.

No, it's a majority of the human organism, mind, psychology and all is pretty much adapted to that way that we live for however many hundreds of thousands of years. And we're pushing so quickly into an era that is completely unknown. And as a result, I mean, even going back to, you know, the agrarian societies, where we're farming and now of a sudden we're getting plagues and sickness. I mean, all of these things. We got smaller. Yeah. You know, we got smaller. Once we started farming, the people got smaller. Right. Right. Exactly. And it creates, you know, illness and, you know, these social structures for now you have kings and monarchs in charge of hundreds of thousands of people rather than, you know, two or three hundred. And what does that do to our minds or our brains even accustomed to monitoring

the, you know, the behavior of millions of people? Right. And so now we've created this paradigm that's a little tricky. And if every person in the, you know, the case of like gene editing, which sounds like science fiction, but it is, I mean, it is here and available that human beings can, you know, implant a embryo that is, you know, accounted for with eye color, account of four with, you know, different physical attributes. Obviously, gender has been developed for 25, 30 years. Oh, it's awful. Everyone's going to look like you. I hope not for their sake. But it's just an interesting question because if every person can choose what they want, does society function better when everyone chooses what they want?

Or I think when you're looking at the micro, everyone wants their kid to be competitive. They want their kid to be, you know, stubborn to an extent and stand up for themselves. Like that's what you want for your child. But is that what's best for society? And until it's not, you know, everybody in China wanted a boy. And Americans were adopting all these Chinese girls. And I don't think on all these guys without women. Right.

I mean, it's created a genuine societal issue. Yeah. And so if we're all developing children for exactly what we want them to be for us on the micro, what is the cost of the society at the market? And again, what an extension of your ego. Yeah, right. But I know best. Right.

Not evolution or God, whatever that thing is for you existentially. It's, I know what I want for my kid. When I think on a evolutionary kind of like human level, getting given something that you have to deal with is like good for human beings, like getting given a child that perhaps is, you know, more passive than you. Right. It's helpful for you as a human being. And that I think it, you know, broadly helps the society.

Right. But then also like on a spiritual level, like as a person that believes in God, I'm like, I think that I trust God's order for things. Which, well, then you get into the trickier part, you know, and I've gotten in these debates with geneticists, this woman who works at the Crick Institute. She was like, well, if you, if you had your wife was pregnant with a baby who had Downs or cerebral palsy, you know, wouldn't you terminate that pregnancy? No. And I'm like, I don't know that I would. I've got, I know some Downs kids I fucking love, you know?

and and then, you know, and they can think this is crazy talk, right? But, you know, the wisdom of a person who is experiencing reality in that way, there's stuff to learn there, you know, but no, you don't want the pain of anybody, you know, but it's like, it's always like the solution. So I remember there were these synagogues that were asking me. they were trying to debate the issue of whether it's okay for old people to do virtual Shabbat, to do Sabbath over Zoom as their way of attending synagogue, or is it bad because, you know, they're using electricity and stuff?

And I'm like, no, the problem is not bad that they're using electricity and breaking Sabbath. It's that they're denying a young person of the opportunity to go there and get them, you know, the mitzvah of that service, the, the, what they get in the half hour that it, that they're with that person bringing them there is the whole reason to have the, the synagogue Shabbat service in the first place. Yeah. You know, and that's the hard thing. And that's, again, the convenience.

Keep using it. Convenience is not good. You know, it's convenient. But it's not always good. Yeah. I think his name is Christopher Ryan. He wrote a book. called Civilized to Death, but I really like. And it's a pop sort of anthropology book that,

you know, people have criticized, of course, but I really like it because he just gives all these really practical examples of how convenience and a culture that's surrounded by convenience has created, I think, very, like, spiritually and sort of inspirationally destitute people. Yeah, this book right here. Yeah. And I think it forces us to kind of contend with this idea that the things that make our life easier, perhaps not good. Right, which is what media theory was for. I mean, this is what McLuhan does. He's the original kind of media theorist.

You look at an invention as an environment. Like, it's not the cell phone. It's what world does the cell phone engender. And then that allows you to see sometimes in advance the unintended consequences of it. It's like the automobile, you know, in McLuhan's time, they say, what does the automobile flip into when it reaches the extreme, it flips into traffic jams where you're getting places slower

than you were before the automobile. But we see what does the automobile really flip into into oil wars, you know, and Middle East and all that kind of stuff. So each of these things, you know, when you can look at the extreme, you see, oh, this thing that looks convenient

in the short term is actually really inconvenient in the long term. And that's the ones you don't know. the other ones we do back to what you were talking about you know way before you create you want to create a consumer class you know you build the suburbs were built intentionally to desocialize people you know that was the plan you look at the levitt town look at the levitt brothers letters to the fDR administration about the kind of social control you'll be able to implement over people when their houses are this far apart when the men have to have a mortgage of this much and to earn that much

and to mow the lawn on this day. It was like, oh, this was all designed to prevent the kind of community thing and turn us from people sharing and doing stuff together to individuals who everyone had to buy their own lawnmower. Yeah. It's a, I don't know, it's a tricky thing for me because I like these ideas and I live my life as much as I can in this way where, you know, my occupation is like just talking with people like you.

It's doing stand-up and connecting with people in real life. It's built around my family as much as like. can where I'm spending as much time with my son as I can, spending time with my wife. And I had this thought where I was like, everything I really love is free. Like, like, nothing I've accrued in my life or, like, you know, status or money or anything like that. It doesn't, it means very little, because I was very happy with nothing. I know, but the scarier the world gets, the more of a shell, you know, it's like, I know the tech bros are building their bung or whatever, and it seems unrealistic, but then it's like all of us still have this, well, many of us anyway, have this

calculation. How much money do I need in my retirement account to take care of myself and my family? How much do I need to insulate my child from what's going on? You know, how, how far above the teeming masses do I need to be to feel safe? Right. You know, and the more dangerous they can make the world look, you know, all the cities, they're all shooting each other and you can't even walk in. I mean, New York is so fucking safe now. It's beautiful. Um, come, come, come. Um, it's nice. Um, the, the more dangerous they can make the world feel, then the more they can get us, um, trapped in the acquisition game.

Right. We're, we're, like, paralyzed by the fear. We're like in this catatonic state where we don't know what to do. So we just kind of like insulate and consume. Right. We become back porch. Back, back deck people instead of front porch people. Yeah.

Hey, guys. We're going to take a break really quick because I want to talk to you about G. This is an awesome new company that we're working with that I'm actually wearing right now. I actually got this crucifix right here. And honestly, even just getting it, you know, sometimes like when you work with some companies, you're like, all right, I really hope the product is good. This one is. I wear it all the time.

This is actually like the new crucifix. I lost my last one at a bathhouse, literally out of sauna. I lost my crucifix, which is maybe God's way of telling me something. But I got a new one from GLD and I've been rocking it nonstop. My wife likes it. And it's got like a nice weight to it. The details actually look. better in person, the clasp is like super solid. It doesn't feel like something you bought

like in Times Square from a random dude. It doesn't feel like somebody ordered from, you know, some sketchy website on T-Moo. And they got everything, chains, penance, bracelets, watches, whether you want something subtle or something that's like, you know, I just, I just signed a deal. You know what I mean? If you want, like, the record deal chain, they got that too. Now, if I haven't convinced you yet, let me sweeten the deal a little bit, all right? For a limited time, the listeners of this program, Camp Gagnon, religious camp, history camp, and the entire camp universe, you're getting a crazy deal. If you use the code camp, C-A-M-P, when you check out, you're going to get 40% off your entire order

at gld-d.com. That's 40% off your whole order with the code camp at checkout at gld.com. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about GLD. Tell them you heard about them from, you know, the good folks here at the campsite. Mark and Christos sent you. And whenever you do that, it really helps, you know, support the show. And thank you so much. to GLD and thank you to you for tuning in.

Let's get back to the show. Now, I'm curious in your experience with these billionaires, what are some of the things that they've told you, perhaps outside of what you've already shared, that has been unsettling. One thing that was really unsettling was, I went to a, I got invited to a billionaire's party.

And they had said I could plus one, right? And there are going to be big scientists there and this and that. And I figured, oh my God, if these are going to be the smartest people in the world, I want someone really smart with me. And they said, you really make the plus one count. So I invited this woman I knew who had started a great literary zine and website and crazy, brilliant woman from Brooklyn. I bring her to this thing. And the host, as soon as I bring her, the host grabs me, pulls me aside.

I said, how dare you waste your plus one on an ugly lesbian? Wow. And I'm like, what? And he goes, look around. And it was like, apparently Epstein had paid for this dinner to happen. I didn't know until years later, he had paid for this dinner. It was before he was famous, you know, before he had done, been put in jail or anything. And there were all these really young, hot women there with these middle-aged

men. You know, and I'm in my late 20s at that point. It's a long time ago. And I'm looking right. I'm going, what the? And he goes, I invited you because you're a cool East Village kid. You're supposed to raise the quotient in the room. Is he partially joking? Is there like a...

No. He's freaking mad at me and didn't invite me in anything else again. You're supposed to raise the quotient in the room. So he figured that I was like, you know, the... I was Gen X, so I was the equivalent of Gen Z back then. I'm supposed to bring some hotty East Village

thing and raise the quotient in the room. And it was like, the thing that was most exposing to me was it made me realize that these guys are so insecure. You know, that they need to be around that to feel, you know, and they don't want some, and she wasn't ugly.

She, I mean, she may have been a lesbian, but she was not, she was not ugly. I don't know. I don't know what you. I wasn't even thinking that way. You just unfortunately saw another human being as a really bright, interesting person. You're like, oh, you'll be a massive asset. Right. But you misunderstood the assignment. I misunderstood the assignment. I thought I was raising the quotient in the room. But you didn't know what a question it was. 168 IQ, you know, and social wonderful. I mean, hmm. Yeah. You know, and that's where for me, that's where the zest is anyway. Right. You know, not in a 22-year-old vegetable.

Right. That is what they want. Yeah, but I guess it does showcase a little bit of the paradigm of what they value, right? Right. And that was the thing. It's so when you say most shocking, it was kind of, it was kind of that was seeing the overlap between the billionaires and the sort of, and the scientism of the guys I was talking about before, right? That they like guys like, like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. They like that because those guys are saying there's nothing going on here. There is no soul. There is no God. We're not, we are just, there is no society like Margaret Thatcher would say. There's just competition between genes for survival. That sounds great.

That's what I've been doing, you know? Like, that's what these guys are thinking. They go, oh, that's perfect. I've lived my whole life this way. You are now justifying my existence. If you come to me and say, like, there's actually a creator and you were made for a purpose and you're here to serve other people. And we're actually all connected in some abstract way that we don't understand.

that's sort of immeasurable so far, they're like, what the hell is that? That's not interesting to me. Like, that makes me now question and reflect on my existence in a way that's really uncomfortable and goes against what I truly desire, which is conquest and exploitation. Right. Yeah, that's a, it also, the insecurity part, I think, is so interesting. Because I don't know if it's possible to become a billionaire without this gaping hole in your psyche that you are not enough. And again, this is a broad sweeping generalization.

But I've noticed this amongst people in entertainment, people that have become very wealthy, whether it's this dissatisfaction with their relationship with their mom or, I mean, even looking at like, it's no, no mystery to me that like Bezos and Steve Jobs that I can think of had a bit of a turbulent early childhood. Oh, my God. And Musk was like beaten and stuff. Right. It was bad. this trauma that's deep-seated from your earliest years. I mean, Steve Jobs was, I think, didn't know his father and was kind of like in between and then never really knew who his dad was and had this.

And all that plus an economic and social operating system that rewards the most sociopathic tendencies. So you already have this thing. And then you see, oh, and the way to win at this game is to play it like this. Right. We set up a bad game. We set up a game that was honestly, the capitalism was rigged for the kings. So what do you want to do is become a king.

Right. And that's what Peter Thiel wants is a monarchy. Right. He says it out loud. This is a thing. It's not conspiracy theory. If they say it out loud, it's no longer a conspiracy. It's just what is.

So I guess when people question, do these ultra wealthy people, you know, are they predisposed? Is it causal with their sociopathy and their, you know, sort of disdain for humanity? or is it something that happens once you accrue large amounts of wealth? And I think the answer is both. I think you're right. I think once you do acquire, in the process of acquiring all that wealth,

you've externalized a lot of pain and suffering to others. If you're going to be the CEO of Navidia, you know there's tens of thousands of children in the Congo going into rare earth metal mines at gunpoint as slaves to get this stuff. And you've got to then, how do you go to bed at night?

It's like, well, they, They don't matter because I'm doing something else or they're... I have a higher purpose and it's rationalized in some way. You do whatever you have to. It's compartmentalized. And then once you have that wealth and that access and the power, then all of a sudden it becomes very easy to justify the things that got you there. And then it becomes a flywheel.

Right. And so I think it's both. And I don't know really if it's possible to do one without the other. Like even people that are gifted, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars later in life, that the seeds of that decision. stain and that sort of elitism, I think bleed through, right? Right. I'm willing to be experimented on, though. Right?

Do you think so? You would take it? Give me $100 million for me. Let's see how I handle it. Yeah. And I'll be transparent. How about that? That'll be the deal. Give me the $100 million. Whoever it is that's listening now with a billion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'll let you monitor everything I do and then see what the effect is on. But you would have to get chipped. I think you'd have to get chipped. Because that, You can self-report like, oh, I'm being very benevolent and I'm kind, but they need to know really what's going on with your serotonin. They need to know what's really happening there, so I think you'll have to get chip. Yeah, it ruins the experiment, though, because the chip may impact my behavior.

That's true. It could become, like, placebo. Just observing. Just cameras. It's an interesting question, though. I've heard it said that the two worst things that happen for a young child is to get nothing they want and to get everything they want. And I think that's true to an extent. And I think, unfortunately, with so much of our modern society, the levers to getting this power, you really do need to be ruthless. And you get everything you want and you give it all to your kids and then they become, you know, King Joffreys in their own right. And it just, I don't know, it creates a really unhealthy situation, I think.

Yeah. And I don't blame them for wanting to build a bunker. If I was in their position, I'd probably do the same thing. Yeah. I think it's very easy to judge the billionaires and say, like, all these people are. people are evil. If you were in that situation, you'd probably be the same. I know, and I try to, the way I try to forgive it is it's more of a hobby. You know, like Gomez Adams had his train set, you know, or people, you know, Michael Jackson had a zoo, you know, so they want to build a fort.

You know, I get it. You want a fort. I used to build forts with my brother and we were kids. And then it was just, it was fun. And then you want to imagine, okay, so what if I had a fire moat around this thing? How does Epstein interface with this entire saga? He doesn't at all anymore. Well, that's what you think. That's what you think. Unless he's somewhere else. The hand on the side of the gurney in the New York Post picture.

Well, is it really his? I don't know. I know. You know, you would think Mossad would take care of their own or whatever, right? Do you think he's in the time that he was operating? Do you think he exhibited something as far as, like his, it seemed like everyone wanted something from him, specifically the elites. I mean, even seeing his correspondence with Yon saying, like, can I come to your island?

I think what, can we hang out? I think what they liked, and this is what I learned at that party, I think what they really liked was a permission structure that made it okay to get, you know, and it's like, if you're there on the island, and it's like, you got the smartest dudes. in the world. You've got great scientists and super wealthy people saying stuff, you know, in Japan, the age of consent is 13, which it was till recently. In ancient Greece, they did this and that. You know, it's really America and the Puritan thing. Hell, we even got Nome Chomsky over here saying that, remember that Jeffrey Epstein's a note? And Nome Chomsky

is even more, you know, on the Naomi Klein, the leftist, anti-colonialist thing than anybody. It's like, dude, it's really okay. And we're out on an island. Everything's legal out here. This is the way society, at least try it so you understand, you know, and you're smart. This girl's going to then, she's going to get jobs and things because she's associating with us. It's all consent. Hmm. I think that was the attraction was it.

You could adopt a mindset where this thing was okay. And it enabled and really fed into all of your lowest. elections, these evil parts of you that you sort of hide this like youngian like shadow self. And he gives you a utopia that you can now bring out all of these terrible things and do it in the light. Right. Instead of doing the right thing, which is not abusing children. Right.

Right. And because really what they're, what they're exploiting is it's not actually. And I know they're related. But, you know, you read, you know, totems and taboos and read some Freud and learn about about. the difference between, you know, kinks and, and genuine kind of perversion, it's, I don't think, and maybe I sound idealistic, I don't think people are actually attracted to children. Because most of the, there was a lot of guys. It's like just rich people at a certain point. I think that there's a taboo on it, which then makes it exciting.

It's like people are not, well, I won't even go there. But I don't think it's an extension of our natural sexual desire. I think it's the thing that made it exciting was its forbiddenness and the wrongness and the experience of power. You know, that I am like the king of Siam. You know, I can do this. This is the, that's the, it's the thrill of power more than some. Yeah. Maybe perhaps.

I think there genuinely are people on the planet that have a attraction to children. Like it's, I think it, for some people, it is a proper sort of psychopathy, but this is their sexual predilection. But to an extent, I do think that there's some people in this billionaire class that were associated with Epstein that the power element, I think, did plan. And it's like, okay, you've got everything you've ever wanted. There's, you know, you can literally do anything. You can have orgies with however many people. You can do whatever. But this thing is forbidden.

Right. And there's weird beliefs around it. I mean, there were strange temples and rituals. There was a kind of an eyes wide shut element to it, which has two factors. One is you get compromise on everybody who comes in there because everything's taped and you do it that way. And your way in, you have to do a bizarre act with an underage person in order to be in the club. because then we've got the dirt on you and now you're one of us. That's sort of weird Bohemia grovey thing.

But then, you know, the other element of it is if you believe that these actions are almost like a version of child sacrifice that can charge a sigil to allow something else to happen, then you're doing it for power. Like the House of Lords in England has been doing it since, you know, Queen Victoria time. you know, having child sexual abuse as part of elitist power, a manifestation, to the extent that you believe that it'll work. And you don't need it to be actually true. You just need the people to believe that it is true in order for it to be an actual thing that has happened, right? And you've self-programmed. Instead of using an algorithm, you use, you know, your little ritual to get you, now you can do the evil thing. I do wonder if there's even a, you've read the most dangerous game, the short story.

This is a story that I read in high school about like a guy that lives on an island that brings humans over to hunt them. Oh, right, right. And I wonder if there's even an element of that that exists in these elite circles. I mean, I'm sure you've heard of like the billionaires in Sarajevo that were shooting like young Bosniaks. Like they were literally during the wars in Serbia. They were like just trying to kill humans. It was weird, like a year or two ago. Could you Google that and pull the article on that?

It's a bizarre thing, but it connects with the... It's real, though. I saw this movie by... And I didn't know what it was going to be. There's a guy Pascolini, this is an Italian filmmaker that he made these movies, like, in the 50s and 60s. And he did this one about Italian fascists, and they bring all these beautiful teenagers, like, to this place. And then they just keep... We get, like, and killing them and stuff.

And I was like, why the hell am I watching this? You know, this is just so awful, so often. And it's all supposed to be about fascism. power and then it's like the Epstein tapes come out and all the files and I'm like oh this is part of fascism is this this sexual control of young people this this domination and sadism right yeah it's and I think in the taboo element it's like well you can hunt anything you want you can hunt a beautiful lion you can hunt an elephant if you know the right guy you go to the right parts of africa you can just do this and then I wonder if that feeling

that power where it's like, okay, well, can I hunt a human? I wonder if people have done this. Yeah. Like I guess we know people have done this, but I guess I wonder if in the modern era, if that persists. Right. And how much of that is in, you know, when you do hear about atrocities, when you do hear about, you know, people going into the settlements and doing pogroms and things.

Right. It's partly this. I mean, certainly. I mean, I remember watching a documentary about a SS officer, just a Nazi. soldier that was patrolling one of the concentration camps. And he just spoke as a serial killer. And he more or less kind of told the people. And I don't know if this is him trying to absolve himself from guilt. But he was basically just like, I enjoyed killing people. I had an opportunity. They put me in charge. And I just killed people sort of at will because it was interesting and fun. And I was legally allowed to because of the regime that was in charge. And you see this and you're like, oh, wow. Like there was not, it was not everyone was just following orders. It was like some people enjoyed the sadism because they were proper psychopath. I mean, this article is from the BBC. Could you scroll up just to read the headline? The banality of it is the scary part.

Italian, Italy investigates claims of tourists paying to shoot civilians in Bosnia in the 1990s. And then just scroll down to the top of this article. The Milan complaint was filed by journalists and novelist Ezio Gavazini, who describes a manhunt by very wealthy people with a passion for weapons who paid to be able to kill defenseless civilians from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo. Different rates were charged to kill men, women, or children,

according to some reports. More than 11,000 people died during the brutal four-year siege in Sarajevo. I mean, I don't know what the conclusion of this was. Perhaps this is in peripheral conspiracy lands. It seems allegations. But, I mean, it's not bizarre. It's not difficult for me to fathom. If you can believe that Epstein and his cohort

sort of existed to brutalize young girls for the purpose of experiencing that power, then the idea of killing human beings for a fee, I mean, I could see, I could see this being a real possibility that is kind of an extent of everything we've kind of talked about. Yeah. I've heard that quote that everything is about sex except sex.

Sex is about power. But like, it is in a way true, like this lust for power and trying to extend and push the Overton window of what kind of power you can exert on other human beings. And there is, I mean, there's such healthier ways to play with those emotions? Like I had heard about, I was at a retreat center. I'm doing a, it was more, I did like a psychedelic, frigging workshop up at this place.

And I was like, what else do you got done here? And the guy who runs a place said, oh, you know, we've done like, a weekend long sex parties. I was like, really? He goes, yeah, we did this one thing. So there are these, I mean, I'm all new to this, but, you know, there's doms and their subs. So the doms are like, Dominator ones.

the subs or the submissive, say, yeah, we did this thing where a sub would run out into the woods and then the doms

would hunt them down. Would, like, hunt down the sub in the woods and then, you know, bring them back or do whatever,

tie them up, have sex, or then do whatever their kink was. And I was like, wow. And so each submissive went out one at a time

and then all the doms, but there's just sort of like, what's that yellow jackets kind of a thing. And I was thinking, God, but at least, I mean, is that sick or what? I would say not. I would say not because it's total consent. Sure.

But it's that it's instead of going to Bosnia and shooting people, right? Right. Go to a safe sex play thing and understand it as a fetish rather than as murder. Sure. You know, and play with it. I can see the perspective. I would, I guess I would challenge. I wouldn't go to that myself.

It's not my particular thing. I would challenge to say, I would identify this feeling inside of you that is so obsessed with conquest and domination of other human beings that perhaps it can be resolved without actually having to play it out even in a theater. I guess that would be my objection. But it's really, it's a ritualized form. If consenting adults want to do stuff, sure. The thing that's, that reason why I think we're fascinated by it is that it is a ritualized form of what, they're doing to us already. You know, you don't need Pizza Gate to know we're living in fucking Pizza Gate, you know?

Really, they're fucking us in the ass and telling us that they're parentally taking care of us. And they're not. They're fucking us in the ass. Yeah. Yeah. And we're not, we don't enjoy. We're not people who want them. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's all, yeah. Yeah, exactly. If it was consenting, I mean, financial dominance. Yeah, exactly. Even that.

Yeah. What Findoms, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's a whole new thing I found out about. Would you be experimenting on that way? I mean, you said you wanted 100 million. I've been experimented on that way, and I did not respond favorably. No, I'm not going to my ATL.

No. What's going on here? Is there anything else from the book, Survival of the Richess, that we didn't touch on that you think is important before we close out? You got to buy it. You got to buy it. You got to buy it. Get it from the library. It's like, if you don't have the experience of the book, this just.

Just hearing about it, doesn't do it. Where can people find it? Anywhere. Anywhere you get books. Oh, amazing. Yeah, yeah. Survival of the richest. But get the, you know, what, podcast people, get the audio.

It's because I read it and then it's really fun, and I'm kind of like there. Yeah. They're with you. I think what people can't get from this is kind of how funny they are. I mean, the purpose of the book was to sort of, and it funny. I wrote it at a time when people were still wanting to emulate. Musk when all the you kind of alt-right kids are going on X

you know and I'm calling it X for a purpose there to like be like him and to Keck and to Pepe and to whatever and to troll and really to see these guys as the fools you know look at how scared they are look at how

dominated they are by the shit they watch on Netflix that they think that's reality you know that we are smarter than these people and certainly we're more emotionally advanced than they are. So I guess, you know, it's that, it's sort of the tone to see how silly, how silly these people are and where that mindset comes from and how we sometimes fall into it, particularly hard times. Like during COVID, a lot of us got a little bunkery.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the Epstein class will continue. They're not going to, they're not going to rule us, though. No. You can, you can, I mean, and that's really what I do in the last couple of chapters of this book is so what can you do instead? Like, meet your neighbors. Yeah. You know, I tell this story about borrowing a drill, you know, that I was, had to hang a picture of my daughter for a graduation.

My first impulse, go to the Home Depot, buy a minimum viable product drill, use it one stick in the garage, take it out, it won't recharge and throw it away. Look at all the toxic waste and children going into mines and rare earth metals and shit to make this thing I use once. all because I'm like afraid to go knock on my neighbor's door and say, Bob, can I borrow your drill? You know, and what is that about? And that is, that's the society that we live in that leads to this isolationist escape fantasy. Yeah, I guess the way I look at is any time I feel isolated, if I feel disconnected from nature, from my fellow humans, if I feel depressed or sad, I recognize that that is the point. And that this is not a mistake that I feel this way. and that my feelings are legitimate,

and that feeling of sort of disillusionment is real, and that this is a part of the system that I've been birthed into. And my way of sort of subtle rebellion is, in the words of Mother Teresa, to love my family. And the way that means to me is like, take them to Target. Yeah, exactly. Get a free sample of Costco.

I invest in my family and try to invest in my local community and really try to get connected to the people around me as best I can and focus on my purpose, and the things that I can control and ultimately consuming less. Yeah. Consuming financially, consuming the internet, consuming less. Sit in silence, sit with your own thoughts and sit with the people that you love. And I think that is the quickest way to happiness.

Log off. Totally. Stop listening to this podcast. Turn it off right now and go outside. Or if you do, I mean, that's been my whole, my main life project is this thing called Team Human, right, which is a book, it's a podcast, it's YouTube, and it's just that. It's about realizing that being human is a team sport. When you try to go it alone, you're unhappy.

But find the others and actually do this thing. Yes. Thinking about human beings 100,000 years ago, living in a small band of 100 people, depending on each other, needing each other, talking to each other, and often spending some time with your own thoughts and not filling it constantly with music and social media and porn and all this other stuff that is meant to, you know, capitalize on your attention. And perhaps in my own sort of metaphysical woo-woo way, you know, mine your energy. It goes back to the thing you were saying at the beginning.

really, which is that, you know, we have these potentially liberating connecting technologies. And we decide, instead of giving them to people to create the world they wanted, we use them on people, right, to exacerbate the problems of this moment. Some people are so poor. All they have is money, you know? Exactly. So liberate yourself. God bless. Stay human. Douglas, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. Let's do it again soon. Yeah, back in the tent. Hey, we have a brand new channel that is a part of the camp universe, and we made it specifically with you in mind. And I personally think that you're really going to like it. So check it out.