It's Monday, January 23rd, 2017, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.

I'm Indravis Gantis.

And I'm Kishorehari.

Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor. We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

You can find us online at motherjones.com or inquiringshow

dot tumber.com. You can also find us on Twitter at inquiring show and on Facebook. And you can

subscribe to the show on iTunes or any other podcasting app. So if you're in the U.S. or at all affected by the U.S., there's a lot of changes that are in the midst of happening.

And the question is, who are going to be the people who are going to be the big influencers moving forward?

The people that we thought would be the influencers, or at least that I thought

would be the influencers, are not the case. So I've been interested in seeing what the next

leaders of our country and of our various sectors are going to do in the next few years.

So this actually led me to take a second look at a book by Alexandra Wolf called Valley of the Gods,

a Silicon Valley story, because she really tracks the influence of one person in particular,

Peter Thiel, who is one of the people who financed Donald Trump's campaign.

So I wanted to see if there was anything in this book that could perhaps give me

some view as to how Peter Thiel sees the world and what he might want to accomplish with

this new administration. Wow, Peter Thiel is not a unifying figure, let's just say. He is one

that there is a lot of controversy around, especially his role in the Gawker demise,

and his statements are a bit off-putting to certain individuals, let's just say.

Yes, he's definitely a creative, and he's a disruptor, and that's what Silicon Valley is all about. And, you know, some people talk about

how we're in another big tech bubble and when is it going to burst. And, you know, those of us like

...