QAA Podcast - Premium Episode 151: Peter Thiel feat Max Chafkin (Sample)

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

Paypal, Palantir, and the destruction of Gawker media over the Hulk Hogan sex tape. We explore the oeuvre of conservative tech mogul Peter Thiel, who has had a big influence on the MAGA movement. In the process, we interview Max Chafkin, author of ‘The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power’. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week: http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Max Chafkin: http://twitter.com/chafkin Max Chafkin's book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/609711/the-contrarian-by-max-chafkin/ Episode music by Pontus Berghe Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: http://qanonanonymous.com

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Premium Chapter 151 of the Q&Nan anonymous podcast, the Peter Thiel episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View. This week's topic is a longtime listener request. we're going to be tackling the dark archangel of tech investors himself, Peter Thiel.

Among his crowning accomplishments, co-founding PayPal, the infamous Palantir Technologies, and shutting down media outlet Gawker with the help of Hulk Hogan. Our guest is Max Chaffkin, author of The Contrarian, Peter Thiel, and Silicon Valley's pursuit of power. He'll help us understand how Thiel evolved into a key player in Silicon Valley during the Trump administration and what he's been up to these days. I did not know that Peter Thiel was involved in the Hulk Hogan sex tape with Gawker. Have you guys ever watched that sex tape? No, no.

No, but Jake has, and he's about to tell us about sushi. I have many times. My whole friend group quotes it consistently. Sushi and sweat. It is one of the funniest sex tapes that's ever. The more you watch it, the more late. And it's not about the set. There's barely any.

really no sex in it. It's what Hulk says. Go ahead. Throughout the course. I know you want to say it, so tell us what he says. Throughout the course of the tape. I mean, there's just so many amazing things. I mean, like, after they get done fucking, like, Hulk can sits up and he's like, oh, man, I just stayed

an hour ago. I'm sweating like a pig. Like, he's sweating. And he ate too much sushi specifically, right? He gets a phone, he gets a phone, like, he's like, I got to go meet Nick at midnight, which is his son. Like, he's talking about having to like go meet his son at midnight like there's just oh there's so many like incredible like weird moments in like an insight into his psyche i don't know what what you don't

understand is that bubble the love sponge is both a fan of having his wife fucked but also a fan of absurdist theater and so he was like Hulk you do your best you're meeting your son at midnight you've eaten too much sushi you're sweating i mean this is great stuff you know i just ate like a fucking pig an hour ago. Oh, Schwent. Beckett presents the Hulk Hogan sex tape. It really is more of an absurdist play than it is a sex tape. That's an accurate. That's an accurate call. Listen, you know, I think that already so many of my childhood memories have been ruined. So I'm not going to let anyone take away WrestleMania for me anymore. I'm not

going to let anyone take away the earthquake Hulk Hogan storyline away from me. So I think think I'm just going to skip this one. Are you a Hulkomaniac? I mean, I was, I would, as a, as a kid, of course, I was like enthralled by WWF, the bizarre showmanship, the massive bodies and the dramatic storylines, of course. It was one of the few things, you know, on television that wasn't a cartoon that was like flashy enough for a young child's sort of attention span. Us Ultimate Warrior fans love to bully and beat up people like you. with your crosses saying oh eat your vitamins say your prayers you know I never got into wrestling it was always like too macho for me I love I don't know I never really I never got into

it I had a lot of friends who were into it you're just too straight dude but you know what I was more into the pink like polyurethane like wrestlers that came in like the can do you guys remember those they were like basically these like flesh colored little like rubber muscle men that like came in a big fucking, you know, big fucking can. And you could buy, like, booster packs, like little, little bags of a few of them and you would try to collect them. Yeah, no, there were so many. Yeah, that's what I, I was into that.

Oh, yeah. They had collections of those, like fantasy ones and all kinds of weird ones, but it was always that format, the little rubber dolls. I loved little guys, you know, just having, like, collections of, like, you know, little guys. How many can I fit under my armpits? How many can I put in my nose? So, anyway, I recently felt inclined.

to increase my understanding of our tech overlords to watch over us and determine what we can say and how many people are allowed to hear it. So I picked up the contrarian because it is so far the most comprehensive biography of the man, Peter Thiel, the man who is described as the conservative conscience of Silicon Valley. This is, of course, based on, I think, a fairly flawed belief that Silicon Valley is populated by a bunch of like hippies or or lefties or something when it seems to be mostly people who are just sociopathically sort of libertarian or you know just just hate any kind of regulation at all and think that they are the masters of the universe conscience is really wish casting he's way more like the id yes you know it's

I always say it is really fascinating read because he's a really inscrutable guy And he's not, like, he's not really, it's not like an Elon Musk who, like, likes be on line or likes be on camera a lot. He's very private, which made reporting on it kind of a challenge, but I think that Max Chafkin does a really great job. So you don't think Peter Thiel would ever, like, go on SNL and do any skits about himself for anything? No, no, Peter Thiel literally shut down a massive news outlet for basically saying, outing him

as gay, which, you know, not obviously, you know, whatever. no comment on like that outing or whatever, but that's what he did in response. Yeah, but yeah, it's also like, you know, reading this book, you get really an appreciation of this guy as secretive as he is, just has a massive impact on like the technological and political world we now live in every single day. Yep. So before we speak to the author, I thought I'd go over some of the more fascinating tidbits I picked up from the book and related reporting.

So Peter Thiel attended Stanford University in the 80s, which he just hated. He was good at chess, apparently, but he was also really, really pissy whenever he lost. He was at one point nationally ranked. Wow. But he was very, very introverted, didn't have any close friends. What really infuriated him, though, was university's supposedly liberal, politically correct ethos. And this led him to found the Stanford Review in 1987. This was a conservative, and still is a conservative libertarian publication that also worked to troll liberal.

and their detested values. Yeah, these people pioneered the diaper. In these early days, along with Stanford Review alumnus David Sacks, he wrote the book, The Diversity Myth, Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus. So this was part of the, I guess, the early version of the political correctness scare, which has been happening like forever and ever. There's another one called God and a man at Yale. It's just there's always this general fear that the universities are where weirdo, liberal ideas breed,

and then make conservatives feel bad about themselves. I had no idea that that shit has been going on this long. Like, why do they pretend it's new? It's like... They got to rebrand it. You got to sell the next toothpaste. It has a slightly different flavor. This one's more tooth whitening, but every year people have to buy fucking toothpaste.

Guys, wait a minute. Hold on. Have we been fighting the same dumb shit, like, culture war, like, for the last, like, 70 years? Jake is like the Sisyphus who doesn't notice the wrong. rock rolling back down. You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of Q&ONANANIUS. We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to keep it that way. For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week, and our entire

library of premium episodes. So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous, and subscribe. Thank you. Thanks. I love you. Jake loves you. Thank you.