In my upcoming interview with Peter Thiel, we will really hit the ground running, so you might benefit from re-listening to the one from last year to get you up to speed and ready for Peter's next set of insights, which are coming shortly. No discussion we've ever had has received as many requests by listeners for a follow-up.

....

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.

Timestamps:

0:43 The Bible reads us
2:02 Cain and Abel vs. Romulus and Remus
6:05 Cross vs Resurrection
7:26 The Gospels are different from Death of Socrates
9:04 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?