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Peter Thiel Audio

TYPE III AUDIO

Peter Thiel’s talks, interviews and essays.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 1 hr 19 min
  • English

Episodes 20

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  • Sep 30, 2024 · 1 hr 6 min

    Peter Thiel: The Iconoclast (The Aspen Institute, 2024)

    The future of technology; economic and cultural issues; AI and digital currencies; the state of America; the 2024 U.S. presidential election. --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ZXrTzskw0

  • Sep 25, 2024 · 1 hr 19 min

    Peter Thiel: Political Theology (Conversations with Tyler, 2024)

    Political theology; Calvinism and rationalism; Old Testament interpretation; Carl Schmitt's resurgence; millenarian thought; existential risks; the role of the katechon; political vision in Shakespeare; AI's impact on wordcels; Straussian messages in the Bible; concerns about Miami. --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfbndRTlsg4

  • Sep 13, 2024 · 1 hr 27 min

    Peter Thiel: Keynote Address (The Conservative and Republican Student Conference, 2024)

    Peter Thiel's keynote address at the Conservative and Republican Student Conference; discussion with Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule. --- Outline: (00:00) Introduction (00:24) Opening Remarks (03:39) "Diversity" as a distraction (04:43) 3 themes that The Diversity Myth did not address (07:38) Economic criticism of "diversity" (15:10) "Diversity" in STEM and academia (24:25) A religious or Christian's take on our woke religion (31:34) Concluding remarks (33:26) Discussion with Professor Vermeule (37:22) Nature of the late liberal regime (51:10) Puritanism's similarities to wokeness (57:29) Is the State an enemy of conservatism? (01:03:15) Is wokeness a distortion or fulfillment of post WWII liberalism? (01:07:42) On conservatives in academia (01:08:34) What policies might fix this problem? --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euzxpbBOju8

  • Sep 12, 2024 · 3 hr 30 min

    Peter Thiel: The Real Risk is Totalitarian World Government (Triggernometry, 2024)

    Progress has stagnated; the future of technology; the impact of AI; existential threats; global government; polarization and growth; social media critique; wokeness and religion; geopolitical challenges. --- Outline: (00:00) Trailer (00:40) Progress has stagnated (04:25) We need courage more than genius (10:50) What will the future look like? (15:03) The impact of AI (17:46) The main existential threats (18:44) Totalitarian one world government (23:27) What a global government would look like (27:00) 'Optimism and pessimism' - the wrong framing (30:12) What I'd change about the States (32:25) Polarisation is bad for growth (36:08) The global stagnation crisis (38:40) Is AI the solution? (40:43) Critiquing social media (43:02) Wokeness is a warped form of Christianity (45:48) The flaws of New Atheism (49:40) Two threats: Islam and China (52:38) China's thirst for dominance (58:23) We must focus on Iran (01:00:41) Thoughts on Russia (01:02:33) The Taiwan crisis (01:04:47) What's the one thing we're not talking about? --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42iVcEg5SOM

  • Sep 3, 2024 · 48 min

    Peter Thiel: The State Contains Violence (Meeting of Minds with Jerry Bowyer, 2022)

    The future of technology and society; Christianity and modern ideologies; political engagement and violence; apocalyptic thinking. --- Outline: (01:08) Girard, Scapegoating (04:00) Mimetic copies: Hitler and Stalin, Nazism and Communism, Fascism (05:30) Wokeism, Christianity, and Academia (10:40) Wokeism in cities, response to real estate costs. Structural wokeism (14:27) Winning and losing postures towards wokeism (17:10) Wokeism is Christianity without the forgiveness (18:30) Acknowledging sin even when it enables critics (21:55) Holocaust as the ultimate test of forgiveness, destroying the concept of forgiveness (25:52) Ignorance and forgiveness (27:55) Gospels as deconstruction of philosophy (32:05) Getting tangled in politics. Government and violence (33:55) Can leaders behave like Christians? (35:37) The katechon and accelerationism. Preterism and futurism. (39:10) The Antichrist as a false katechon (41:14) The Precautionary Principle: technological Armageddon (45:15) Enabling Fascism to fight Communism (46:12) Reagan coalition (49:30) Christianity and mimetic entan --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh_nxwTwKrg

  • Aug 24, 2024 · 2 hr 11 min

    Peter Thiel: US-China Relations at the Nixon Foundation (Vintage Code, 2021)

    China-US relations; technology competition; semiconductor industry; Bitcoin; military technology; intellectual property; surveillance; foreign policy. --- Outline: (00:00) Start (00:28) Introduction (00:54) The Chinese Communist Party vs The West (02:33) How much technology has China created or stolen (02:55) Google's Project Maven & China (03:43) China's rapid military product design vs The Pentagon's slow procurement (06:30) More Chinese students study in the US than vice versa (07:53) How to avoid information infiltration as an "open-country" (09:16) How to stay ahead in Quantum & AI (12:00) Why did it take us so long to wake up on the threat of China? (Tiananmen) (14:30) Do we currently have a model of what is going on in China? (15:08) Xi Jinping has absolute power (15:30) Semiconductor history (16:18) What happens when Taiwan Semiconductors or Samsung are coerced by China? (17:16) You can think of Taiwan as one company (17:49) Stagnation in Semiconductors in Silicon Valley (19:50) What is the alternative to Huawei, is 5G overrated? (21:54) How low-income countries are forced into debt by China (21:51) The space race with Russia & China (25:00) Q&A Panel (25:58) Sino–American IP and Venture Wars (34:31) Does China have a technical advantage (35:48) How to improve technology adoption at the Pentagon (38:38) Bitcoin as a Chinese Financial Weapon Against the USD (43:00) Total Surveillance (46:00) US investing in R&D (01:06:30) How Zero-to-One Competition Theory can apply to foreign policy (01:09:01) How do you see Tik-Tok (Multilateralism) (01:13:00) China Infiltrating organisations like WHO (01:18:10) How can US compete with China (01:19:20) Are you optimistic? (01:21:50) Should the world descend on Beijing? (01:03:33) Competitive advantage of the Pentagon (01:24:38) How do we benchmark US progress in AI against China? (01:29:32) Closing remarks --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJcKWtiFzIY

  • Aug 24, 2024 · 1 hr 49 min

    Peter Thiel: On the Bible (Meeting of Minds with Jerry Bowyer, 2021)

    Peter Thiel, the highly successful tech entrepreneur and author, discusses his mentor Rene Girard; the Bible, how we read it, and how it reads us; Jesus’ death and resurrection; atheism and the limitless escalation of violence towards apocalypse. --- Outline: (00:43) The Bible reads us (02:02) Cain and Abel vs. Romulus and Remus (06:05) Cross vs Resurrection (07:26) The Gospels are different from Death of Socrates (09:04) The Bible is discontinuous from pagan classics (11:30) "The idea that victims exist comes from Judeo-Christianity and nowhere else." (14:54) Was Nietzsche somehow extremely close to the truth of Christianity? (17:18) Pagan Pharmakoi, the ancient sacrificial medicine (19:48) Fascism and Communism (23:00) Girard on the Woes against the Pharisees (26:02) The cycle that leads to apocalypse (31:11) Steven Pinker and the story of progress (32:19) Is an apocalypse, such as a nuclear war, inevitable? (35:10) Being too sanguine about apocalypse makes it more likely (42:08) Is there an off-ramp? What would it look like? If we don't know, shouldn't we at least try to figure it out? --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2EUl_3ncA

  • Aug 9, 2024 · 35 min

    Peter Thiel: Competition is for Losers (How to Start a Startup, 2014)

    Business strategy; monopoly theory; capturing value; market dynamics; innovation. --- Outline: (00:00) Introduction (00:50) Outline (00:57) Capturing value (01:57) Big piece of a small pie (03:37) Perfect competition (04:31) Monopoly (05:33) Lies people tell (05:36) Differences underestimated (06:59) Narratives (07:54) British food in Palo Alto (08:40) Do the intersections make money? (08:45) Blockbuster movie (09:29) Is the intersection valuable? (09:35) Startup version (10:11) The search market (11:00) The advertising market (11:29) The technology market (12:36) Evidence of narrow markets (13:28) How to build a monopoly (13:39) The right size (14:36) Start small and expand (17:05) Start big and shrink (18:40) Last mover advantage (18:45) Characteristics of monopoly (27:10) Value of the future (27:55) History of innovation (28:28) Technological innovation (30:16) Capturing value (31:59) Success cases (37:03) Psychology of competition (38:14) Mimetic preferences (38:33) Competition as validation (42:22) Q&A (42:26) Q1 (43:01) Q2 (43:38) Q3 (44:34) Q4 (46:40) Q5 (47:55) Q6 --- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBYrcYy_dh4

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