Opus Dei: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church | Gareth Gore

21:37They're kind of fighting against this. they're fighting for a more traditional kind of family values, kind of family life. And so, you know, I think that's the thing that really guides them. You know, whether they have a policy on the Iran war or on taxation is something different. But, you know, they're really kind of fighting for very traditional family values. This is a group that's absolutely obsessed with sex and sexuality and, you know, sin, carnal sins. and so that's kind of one of the major things and so of course abortion is a big issue but also premarital sex and and that kind of thing like why do people care about what everyone else is doing in the whole world well yes i mean i would certainly agree agree with that but i think for them it's kind of a signaling mechanism in a way it's a you know harking back to traditional family values is it's almost like a dog whistle kind of thing you know if you agree with these kinds of things, then you're kind of our kind of person.

22:38And you probably agree with us on, you know, these other important issues as well about the church's role in things like, you know, education and universities. And, you know, I think it's a, yes, I think it's a bit of a kind of dog whistle thing and has been for many years. I think even the issue of abortion has kind of become so wrapped up in kind of more general conservative values. It's no longer about that one single issue, I think. It's about identity and identifying against something, identifying against wokeism, identifying against progressive values, identifying against the left in general, I think.

23:16I think that's kind of what it's about.

23:18James Altucher:You know, Dan Brown, who wrote The Da Vinci Code, why do you think he chose Opus Dei as his organization to basically, you know, and he had a completely different story for them, which is that in The Da Vinci Code, he was basically saying They were protecting this enormous secret that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had kids and the bloodline still existed today, which is not necessarily a progressive view to take. Why did he single out them to kind of say, okay, he didn't make up an organization, he used a real one. I mean, you know what? I mean, I'm not an enormous fan of Dan Brand books, although they have been extremely successful.

23:56You know, hats off to him. He's done far better than I have, at least financially as an author. But, you know, he was onto something. You know, even then when he was writing The Da Vinci Code in the late 90s, early 2000s, there was already this kind of whole series of scandals that surrounded Opus Dei. People knew, obviously, about the kind of the corporal mortification, them whipping themselves and wearing these chains around their legs. But also, you know, the attitudes towards women had already been kind of publicized quite heavily. And there were all kinds of rumors about how, well, not just rumors, but, you know, established facts about how they cozied up to regimes like the Franco regime in Spain.

24:41And so, yeah, I think Dan Brown saw the potential, I think, in this movement as, you know, the great baddie of the Da Vinci Code story. You know, he, of course, went on to kind of invent a lot of stuff and project all this fictional stuff onto the group. But I think, you know, he had done his homework. He knew the group was controversial. He knew there were, I guess, dark aspects of this group's history. And he chose to kind of, I guess, pants on that and build on that in order to create this fictionalized version of August A.

25:13James Altucher:So now let's look at what they're actually doing. So you were investigating this collapse of this bank in Spain, Banco Popular. and you found that, A, it had previously been run by, from the CEO on down, many Opus Dei members, and they were kind of giving preferential treatment, either loans or direct gifts to Opus Dei organizations. This fractured the bank enough that when there was an actual real estate collapse, the bank collapsed. Yeah, I mean, it's important to say that when I never set out to write a book about Opus Dei, I had zero intention of writing a book about Opus Dei. I knew next to nothing about them.

25:53You know, when I came to this story in 2017, I hadn't even read The Da Vinci Card. I kind of was vaguely aware of it because, you know, it was impossible to escape it at the time. Although I kind of refused to read the book at the time. I subsequently had to read it as part of the research for this book. But yeah, I mean, what happened was a bank in Spain literally collapsed overnight and I was sent a report on it. And, you know, I kind of did my initial reporting and wrote what was a very kind of financial heavy story. And it was the same story that everyone else was writing as well. You know, basically, these bank executives had taken on too many risks, allowed things to get out of control, and then it had all kind of snowballed and kind of all come crashing down.

26:36So that's the story that I wrote and that everybody else wrote. But there was just something about it that didn't quite make sense. So all of these kind of loose ends to the story that I just couldn't let go of. And so it kind of became a hobby for me. So I was a finance reporter by day, and then I'd come home at night and be digging into the history of this Spanish bank and trying to make contact with people that work there and was kind of digging through what had been written previously. And what interests me in particular was that the bank had this very unusual kind of shareholder structure when it collapsed.

27:13And there was this one particular entity at its biggest shareholder was this thing called the syndicate. And it was this kind of mysterious, almost kind of set of Russian dolls. It was one company inside another company, inside another company. And there was quite large financial flows. The bank was paying dividends. More than$100 million were kind of flowing through these companies each year in the form of dividends from the bank. And I was like, this is really an odd structure. And also, many of the companies shared the same directors. They were all registered at the same address. And I was like, something isn't right here.

27:52And I just began to dig into that. And what I discovered was that basically these companies were a front for Opus Dei and that they were conduits for all of these financial flows, which they then passed on to all of these Opus Dei projects around the world. And as I kind of totted up the sums of money, You know, hundreds of millions of dollars had been kind of siphoned off the bank and paid through dividends and all kinds of other stuff through these shell companies over the years. The bank had basically been a cash machine for Opus Dei since the 1950s.

28:26James Altucher:And so why wouldn't they just say, hey, Opus Dei is a large shareholder? Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think, you know, this is the way that the organization tends to operate. even you know the schools that it operates the university residences that it runs the think tanks and pressure groups that it's linked to it never says overtly that these are opus day initiatives and i think what that does is you know i think there's a number of reasons for that one it allows the organization to continue pumping out the marketing that it does that we're just an organization that wants to help ordinary catholics to go deeper into the face That's all we want to do.

29:05You know, if you then discover that it has all of these business interests, that it operates 300 schools around the world, has a presence at Princeton and the rest of it, then people are going to be like, just a minute, aren't you a bit more than that? So it kind of allows them to kind of continue pushing this spiel, this kind of false marketing. It also allows the organization to say that it's poor. You know, we're not a wealthy organization. And that way, it can extract maybe more money from its members if they assume that it's not already wealthy or whatever. But also, I mean, by having all of these kind of arms-length foundations, it creates a certain deniability so that whenever something goes wrong or crimes are exposed, wrongdoing is exposed, the organization, and this is what it always does, is say, well, you know, XYZ has nothing to do with us.

29:58These are independent foundations that have nothing officially to do with Opus Dei. Opus Dei is just a collection of individuals that want to help other Catholics. And so I think it has an interest in having this system that's designed to enable it to deny any kind of connection or whatever. And this is kind of something that was designed by the founder himself. Beginning in the 60s, by the 60s, they'd already kind of built quite a substantial business empire in Spain. And they had something like 120, 130 companies that were directly or indirectly owned by Opus Dei, this kind of huge financial machine that was generating all of this cash, including the bank.

30:35And at some stage in the 1960s, the founder just said, we can't have our fingerprints or any of this stuff. It's causing too much trouble. You know, there are other people in the Franco regime who are beginning to ask questions. And so that's kind of when they started to, you know, up until that point, they'd kind of not made too much of an effort at hiding this stuff. But that's when they started to kind of try to have all of this stuff at arm's length rather than be directly connected to them.

31:03James Altucher:I guess at any point, like, are there parts of Opus Dei that you consider like good pieces of the organization? Or do you think like through and through, they're up to something? No, you know, like Opus Dei is made up of many good Catholics who have joined the organization in order to do good things. But the organization itself is founded on, you know, the founder himself, after he decided that Opus Dei was going to evolve into this very politicized organization that would seek to infiltrate the corridors of power and try to kind of push this reactionary agenda. he then wrote down in meticulous detail how that was going to work he wrote you know the rules for recruiting young kids you know decide you know kind of came up with all these kind of methodologies for surreptitiously recruiting people he wrote these instructions about how people were to extract information things that they were allowed to do things they weren't allowed to do and those rules still govern how the organization operates today.

32:04And so, you know, many, almost everyone joins Opus Dei with good intentions because they believe that the organization is going to help them. You know, even the people that go on to become priests in Opus Dei or preaching the seal of confession, people who go on to become these celibate recruiters who are going on to recruit young kids and recruit the rich and the powerful, you know, I think they all initially joined the But because this is an organization that's built on these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of rules, this kind of system of abuse and control and manipulation, all written by the founder, you know, at some stage that kind of takes over.

32:47It's a cult. And, you know, bit by bit they're drawn in and they justify to themselves that what they're doing, even if they have some misgivings about what they're doing, you know, maybe I shouldn't be recruiting. this 10-year-old kid or whatever. You know, even if they're having misgivings, they tell themselves that this is what God wants because the founder told his followers that these rules, the system that he designed, had come to him in this vision from God. And so the true followers of Escriba, the true members of Opus Dei, believe that they're doing quite literally God's work. And so I've spoken with many people who've been in the organization and later come out.

33:26And the process of kind of washing away these crimes, these sins, the dark stuff that goes on as a member, you know, a lot of them kind of go through a reversal of that process. You know, they gradually, the kind of, the scales are removed from their eyes and they see what they're doing is actually evil. is bad, is very deeply unchristian. And that's the point at which many of these people leave when they kind of realize that what they're doing is not part of the Catholic Church in any way.

34:01James Altucher:And like in other cults, when someone leaves or when a high standing member leaves, there's usually a lot of oppression and suppression towards that former member from the cult. Did you see that pattern occurring here as well? Quite often, when people leave, They're completely ostracized from the Opus Dei community. You know, members who are continuing inside the organization are told not to make contact with these people. You know, they're told that, you know, the devil has taken hold of them or whatever. And so, and also, you know, people inside are told that, well, people that leave are deeply unhappy.

34:36Some of them become suicidal. all, you know, that kind of spun this whole kind of series of lies to basically try to prevent anyone else from kind of following in the path. And yes, I mean, there absolutely have been threats made against former members and also attempts to kind of disparage them and to kind of, you know, to as punishment for having left this high control group.

35:02James Altucher:What is the connection between Oba's Day and Robert Hansen, the American FBI agent who was secretly working for the KGB. Do you think his duplicity was related to his being in Opus Dei? Like, were they telling him, hey, spy for the KGB? Or was that separate? Or what happened there? I mean, it's hard to tell. I mean, he kind of basically married into Opus Dei. His wife's family had been in Opus Dei for many years, and he converted, became a devout follower of Opus Dei. In fact, you know, at the FBI, he tried to recruit a number of his kind of colleagues to the movement whilst he was there. Now, his reasons for switching sides, spying for the Russians, I don't know.

35:42I think he was feeling a certain amount of financial pressure. I think his FBI salary wasn't quite good enough to support the kind of lifestyle that he had become accustomed to. And so I think that was partly to do with it. I think the interesting element in terms of his membership to August Day is what happened when his wife discovered what he was doing. So basically his wife found out that he was spying for the Russians in the early 1980s. I think at this stage he'd been maybe spying for like four or five years or whatever. And she confronted him and she said, look, we need to go to our priest, to our August Day priest, to get advice about what to do about, you know, and what do we do?

36:26Do we kind of come clean or, what do we do? So they went, they kind of, he confessed to the priest. They had a discussion about what he ought to do. And they collectively decided that the right thing to do was for Robert Hanson to turn himself in. So Robert Hanson and his wife went back home that evening, I guess, presumably thinking that that was his last evening, you know, with the family and that the next day he was going to hand himself in and he would probably be locked up for many, many years to come. And instead, the next morning, they get a call from the Elpus Dei priest, who presumably, by this stage, has discussed this conversation with other higher-up members in Elpus Dei.

37:06The priest that they confessed to, by the way, was one of the most high-ranking members of Elpus Dei in the United States at the time. And so he called up the Hansen family and said, remember what I said yesterday about the right thing to do would be to confess and come clean? well actually I've kind of changed my mind I think what you need to do is stay quiet you need to stop what you're doing you need to give any money that you've been given from the Soviets to give the charity presumably Opus Dei charities and you just kind of need to move on with your life and forget this now Robert Hansen kind of went on to spy for the Soviets for another 20 years you know had that Opus Dei priest not made that phone call that morning you know he could have been you know many there were people killed as a result of the information that Robert Hansen provided to the Soviets.

37:53You know, many Soviets who were, had been recruited by the Americans who were kind of passing on information about the Soviets were kind of, were caught thanks to information provided by Hansen. They were took back to Moscow and shot. And, you know, all of that could have been prevented. I don't think Obus Dei had any interest in him continuing to spy for the Soviets, But I think what the organization was doing, and we see this time and time again whenever scandal erupts around Opus Dei, is the organization was thinking of itself. It was trying to protect itself. It knew that by that stage, it was already starting to gain a bit of ground in Washington.

38:32And it knew that if this FBI officer was exposed, a member of Opus Dei was exposed as spying for the Soviets, that would have implications on its ability to recruit from the Washington elite. So I think my reading is that Opus Dei took the view that it's better that he stays quiet about this in order to protect our reputation. And of course, the repercussions of that were pretty horrendous.

39:00James Altucher:Yeah, no, it was the biggest kind of secret agent stuff in US history, I think. There was actually a really great podcast, a kind of documentary series about the whole Hanson episode. And I'd recommend to your listeners and your viewers to go out and check that out. It's pretty good.

39:28James Altucher:okay so you're you're invested in this bank you find all this kind of scandalous stuff about opus day what what happened next like why you know obviously they denied and pushed back things the main denial they had was is that the ceo of that bank who had been an opus day member had died 11 years before the bank collapsed. So they tried to kind of separate themselves out that way. Yeah, and look, I mean, the collapse of the bank was not kind of directly because of Opus Dei. You know, as happened with many European banks during the late 2000s and during the 2010s, you know, these huge, ill-fated kind of bets on real estate that were made, particularly by Spanish banks, that's what brought them down.

40:13But, you know, Well, the point I make in the book is that actually this kind of very unusual ownership structure, it created a disincentive for the executives to really clean up. So, I mean, I don't know how much kind of financial detail you want to go into here, but normally when a bank's in trouble, when it's got a kind of big black hole that it needs to fill, what a bank does, what any company does, is go out and sell new shares to new shareholders. They want new capital to come in to fill that black hole. or they do a rights issue or do whatever in the kind of financial parlance to fill that hole.

40:48Now, my argument is that Banco Popular was unable to do that, dissuaded from doing that, because inviting in new shareholders was going to upset this already kind of delicate power balance, that stranglehold that Opus Dei had of the bank. That would have been put into question if they'd invited outside shareholders to come in. It was very much not in the interests of Opus Dei. for institutional investors to be invited into the bank because they might start to ask a few too many questions. Some of the, you know, OpenStay was benefiting not just from the dividend streams from the shares that it owned in the bank, but also they were getting kind of soft loans.

41:30They were getting huge donations from the bank's social works arm. And so it risked all of that coming to a halt. And so, you know, I think, you know, the bank dragged its feet on sorting out its financial problems, partly as a result of this kind of strange governance and ownership system that was in place. And so, yes, this one particular CEO who died previously, of course, he did die 10 years before the bank eventually collapsed. But the structures that he put in place that guaranteed these financial flows to Opus Dei were one of the reasons that I believe contributed to the eventual collapse of the bank.

42:08James Altucher:And then, you know, just recently, you've met with Pope Leo to show your findings about Opus Dei. Did the Pope reach out to you and say, hey, come on over next time you're in the Vatican? Or what happened there? Well, kind of. I mean, I was actually on a work trip. I'm a financial reporter by background. And after writing the book, I've gone back to writing about finance. And one of the biggest stories right now is all these huge amounts of money being raised by these AI companies. And so I was actually in San Francisco doing some reporting on that story. And I get a call from someone who says that Poblio is basically, he knows about your book, he knows about your work, and he's very keen to meet.

42:49Would you be happy to kind of go to Rome to meet him? My first thought was, is this kind of like some prank or like, is this for real? And, you know, over the next couple of days, as it became apparent that, you know, it was real, I kind of was pinching myself of like, oh my goodness, I'm going to meet the Pope. And it was kind of extraordinary. I didn't really, like no information was really given to me before the meeting about why he wanted to meet with me or what he wanted to talk about. And so I was kind of slightly left kind of scratching my head thinking, is this like just some PR stunt?

43:24He just wants to be kind of photographed with me, kind of to almost send a signal to open. I don't know what the hell is going on. But, you know, I kind of very quickly came to the realisation that this was a unique opportunity to really hammer home to Pope Leo, you know, how this group had basically abused the legitimacy conferred upon it by the Catholic Church, how it was abusing good Catholics, how it needed to be reined in. And so I went there with, you know, a pile of papers, internal documents that I got from inside Elper's Day. I had a report that had been written by public prosecutors in argentina who've been investigating claims of human trafficking there and things you know and so i you know went with him with this dossier of information basically saying like look mr pope you need to know this and you need to do something about this and i you know i i didn't really know how the meeting was going to go i was very polite with the pope but i'm not sure many people go into the pope and basically kind of thump this kind of ward of paper onto his desk and say, look, you need to absolutely redo something about this.

44:32You know, I half expected him to be pressing like his buzzer under the table to summon in people to get, have me taken away after five minutes. But actually the meeting couldn't have gone any better. I mean, he was hugely receptive to what I was saying. You know, I had the impression that he'd had his own run-ins with Opus Dei in the past. He was kind of vaguely aware of the abuses that had been taking place. and you know he had a lot of very insightful questions that he asked me and you know i basically asked him implored him to launch an independent investigation to really get to the bottom of this and he promised me that he would you know take everything i'd said on board he would read the documents that i provided him with and i guess we will see what he will do i don't know i mean that meeting was like six weeks ago we're now waiting i mean that the vatican famously it's a 2 ,000-year-old institution, it doesn't work.

45:28It's not like a newsroom that has to act immediately. I think it could be weeks, months, even a couple of years before we see what steps probably I might take against this group.

45:39James Altucher:And the biggest thing right now would probably be not just this kind of influence they use to have their views taken up by various countries and governments, but this abuse of children. They're recruiting all these poor girls to, like you said, be servants or practically slaves all around the world at these Opus Dei homes and stuff. That's this big abuse that I'm sure he wants to confront. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, this is also a grooming scandal, a grooming of minors. And it's not just these kind of slave girls that they want to attract. But Opus Dei operates a number of quite prestigious schools around the world that are kind of concentrated in very wealthy areas because, of course, they're not just trying to recruit the kids, they're trying to recruit the parents.

46:25And so if you're a Catholic parent or you're just a parent who wants like a good kind of traditional education for your child, you might be Jewish or non-religious or whatever, you know, these Opus Dei schools are set up to kind of cater for these kind of, you know, elite parents. But inside the schools, you know, there's a whole grooming operation that's directed towards the kids. I mean, the recruiters, these celibate members often fill many of the posts in these schools. And the whole reason for them being there is not for the welfare of the kids or the education of the kids, but it's to spot potential recruits.

47:00And right from the age of 10, 11, 12 years old, these celibate members of Opus Dei are compiling lists of potential kids to recruit into the movement. And, you know, the way they operate is that, you know, when they begin to identify potential recruits, these kids are invited into kind of mentoring programs. They're invited to these kind of after-school clubs. You know, it might be a photography club or a computing club, coding club or sports club, but there's a hidden agenda. You know, not all the kids are being invited to these things. It's specifically geared towards the kids that they think, you know, might be potential recruits.

47:42And, you know, bit by bit, and this is done without the knowledge of the parents, the parents just believe that the kids have been invited to some nice club after school, whatever. They don't know what's going on there. You know, but bit by bit, the recruiters, these celibate members are kind of chipping away at these children, their children. And, you know, what's going on is child grooming. It's illegal under canon law. It's illegal under many, you know, state laws and national laws around the world. But this is, you know, effectively what's going on. And, you know, I've spoken to these recruiters who were operating in schools in the US, you know, in DC, Opus Dei has two very prominent schools there.

48:21JD Vance sends one of his eldest son, goes to the Opus Dei school in, you know, just outside of Washington. This is happening right now in those schools. You know, I've spoken with current and former teachers who, you know, will attest to these kind of grooming activities that are going on. And, you know, on the one hand, again, like we discussed in the beginning of the call, the original message, the original motive seems like a positive one.

48:48James Altucher:Like Pope Leo should just say, hey, yes, this is a valid way to pursue spirituality and even holiness is to, you know, live a good life in your work and kind of dedicate your work and your labor to God and holiness. and you don't have to be a nun or a priest to have this special connection with God, which is sort of the original message of Jesus anyway. So, so, hopefully they're a whole separate organization. You can just say, yeah, this is part of, this is what Catholicism is about. You know what? I mean, I would kind of disagree with that. And this is why. And actually I had a very similar conversation with the Pope because, okay, so yes, what you say is partly true, that yes, the kind of foundations of this movement are positive.

49:34You know, these are values that we should celebrate. People should kind of do their best. They should do the, you know, people should aspire towards holiness. You know, whether you're religious or non-religious, we should aspire to be good people and to, you know, serve our, you know, be nice to our fellow citizens. But, and this is a very big but, this system of control and abuse and manipulation is kind of tied up with this supposed divine vision. that the founder of Opus Dei supposedly received from God. So if you're a true believer of Opus Dei, it's impossible to dissociate one thing from the other because it's all part of the same vision.

50:17And so they quite literally believe that this kind of system of control that's been handed down and all of these rules that they have to follow, that that kind of came, that was divinely inspired. And so, you know, and I was making this point to Pope Leo that it's, it would be extremely problematic. You can't just say to Opus Dei, look, guys, you need to stop doing all of this bad stuff because, you know, these rules will still exist. You know, these writings of the founder, this supposed divine revelation will still exist. And so I think it's, in my mind, it's impossible to allow Opus Dei to continue to exist without there being the possibility of some of these abuses and manipulation continuing.

51:03And what makes it even more complicated, and this is something that you mentioned earlier, is the fact that John Paul II decided to canonize the founder of Opus Dei. The founder of Opus Dei is now a saint. He's revered as a saint inside the Catholic Church. He's known as Saint Josemaria, the saints of ordinary life, they call him. And so that is almost an additional kind of validation of this divine revelation in a way. not only did he go around telling everyone like god had spoken to him but the catholic church then kind of came along 80 years later and kind of rubber stamped that and gave him the seal of approval and so you know i think pop leo has a real problem on his hands like i said um just now i think it's impossible just to say you guys need to stop doing xyz because that's to say you should ignore the writings of the founder who by the way is a saint so i think they kind of need to revisit the whole thing which is opening a whole new can of worms because no one has ever been decanonized in the entire history of the catholic church you know the church has kind of maybe recognized that certain saints were problematic and they've kind of taken them off the kind of official calendar and that kind of thing, but still saints.

52:22And so ideally, the sainthood for this guy would be revoked. And, you know, one suggestion I had for the Pope was that, look, I recognize this is problematic and that this has never been done before, but what you could do is reopen the canonization. And the way that you would do that is because it's since become apparent that the canonization process was deeply flawed. There were many people who had evidence who wanted to testify against him becoming a saint, who were basically dismissed, who were ignored, who weren't allowed to testify. And that's not the way the process is meant to work. And so you could basically say, well, actually the process didn't play out as it was supposed to.

53:04We're going to reopen the process of canonization. And that might be a route to addressing the holiness or otherwise of this guy who basically created an abusive cult.

53:15James Altucher:Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see what happens. And you just mentioned earlier that you were working, and this was six weeks ago, you were in San Francisco, you were looking into the large sums of money being raised by these AI companies. Do you see any similarities between kind of, let's call it the cult of AI and Silicon Valley specifically? I'm not saying anything bad about AI. AI is this great, marvelous thing that's happening in technology. But do you see any similarities between what's going on in AI and Opus Dei? um you know what it's kind of it's funny you say that i mean when i was in silicon valley i felt that so many elements of the valley had a kind of very cultish feel to them and you know there were various kind of pyramids or ecosystems and atop many of these pyramids are the big venture capitalists you know the people like peter teal mark andreessen you know even you know sam outman his time at the Y coordinator or whatever.

54:19And I think there is a certain amount of questionable behavior that goes on. I think these figures that sits atop this pyramid, they're these great oracles. They're the guys that decide which are going to be the next great technologies, the next great companies. They're the guys that dish out the investments. If you're close to them, you're almost guaranteed a great job whether your company does well or not. And, you know, and I think within those ecosystems, it's become increasingly difficult to challenge the philosophy of the leader. And kind of reinforcing that as well is the fact that, you know, many of these people, Founders Fund, A16Z, have almost created these media echo chambers where, you know, the only time you'll ever see someone like Thiel or Andreessen talking is when they're talking to, on a podcast.

55:13for people who are kind of supportive of their particular philosophies. I think the power as well, the power dynamics here. Opus Dei bases its power on the legitimacy that it has from the church. It kind of pounces on people's spirituality and desire to go deeper into the faith. Silicon Valley derives, or at least the VCs kind of derive the power, I think, from the money they have and from the networks that they've created, that they can insert you into particular parts of that ecosystem. And the power they have over people is because people naturally have a desire to get rich or to be part of this industry.

55:57And so I think there are a lot of parallels. I mean, they're very different in many ways, but there are many parallels. And in fact, there's a direct connection between Opus Dei and Peter Thiel. I mean, like when Teal was at Stanford, he became very friendly with an Opus Dei priest. They used to go on walks together and discuss the world. And the two of them remained in close contact until the priest passed away. I think it was around 2016, 2017. And so, you know, there is a, I don't believe that Teal is a member of Opus Dei. I think his sexuality would be extremely problematic for the group. I don't think they would allow in an openly gay man.

56:36But I think there's a certain kind of overlap in terms of philosophy, the way the world works, and certainly the kind of political agenda that Thiel has pushed in the past and which is pushing today. I think there's a certain overlap there, yeah.

56:52James Altucher:So interesting. Well, look, this has been fascinating. And I guess organizations like this exist throughout history and throughout the world now. I mean, Opus Dei is probably not the only one. there's probably other organizations with high up in every religion or controlling body and, or, or institution like that. So it's, it's fascinating, you know, again, your, your book Opus, The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church is a riveting read. It's almost as riveting as a Dan Brown Da Vinci Code novel, which I did actually, I was like you, I had first, when I, when the book first came out, I didn't want to read it.

57:30James Altucher:I was like, oh, this is going to be just some thriller. And I was kind of looking down on it. But then when I read it, he was so good at keeping the tension right up until the last page. It was really an impressive job. Absolutely. I mean, at the time when it came out, I was actually kind of studying literature at Cambridge University. And so I was very kind of snooty about, you know, I was kind of looking, very much looking down on this book. But, you know, I read it as part of my research for the book. because actually one of the chapters is dedicated to how Opus Dei kind of approached the whole Da Vinci Code scandal.

58:05I'm not sure scandal is the right word, but the whole Da Vinci Code thing. And yes, I mean, like you, I was kind of blown away with just how much of a page turner it was and how skillful Bran was at kind of just kind of keeping my attention and wanting me, you know, making me flick to the next chapter.

58:23James Altucher:well again Gareth Gore author of Opus The Cult of Dark Money Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church thank you so much for this I hope Pope Leo pays attention to you and does something because it sounds very I mean this is obviously very important for the church and for everybody so thanks for coming on the show thank you so much for having me on it's been a pleasure

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