Peter Thiel’s off-the-record antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon

Silicon Valley titan desperately tries to detach self from power in amateurish talks attempting to ape his favorite philosopher

• Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel's off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

Peter Thiel famously isn't into academia. And yet, in four recent off-the-record lectures on the antichrist in San Francisco, the billionaire venture capitalist has made a good case for credentialing.

In these meandering talks, Thiel is clearly aiming for the kind of syncretic thinking he so relished in the books and lectures of the philosopher and professor Rene Girard, whom he knew at Stanford University and whose work he has long admired. Unfortunately, more often than not, Thiel ends up with something that reads like Dan Brown.