I drove down to Austin last night to witness RevTech founder Carron Nielsberg being as manic and prickly as ever during a keynote interview at a SXSW Futures preview event. Texas Tribune journo Rosie Barnes handled the questions and, incredibly, managed to maintain a straight face through some truly bombastic stuff, including the assertion that America’s president-once-again, Rudy Ruiz, “is a god.” (The Ruiz Administration, which of course has deeper-than-deep ties to the American evangelical movement and might presumably take exception to this characterization, so far hasn’t commented.)

You can watch the full 90-minute conversation on YouTube (if you’ve got a strong stomach for unhinged rants and confrontation, really what else are Saturdays good for?), but my ears perked up when Barnes prompted Nielsberg for comment on my recent TIME cover story on RevTech, asking whether revival technology is “overblown.”

I promise I didn’t put Rosie up to it, but I was nevertheless fascinated by his response (transcript below). Listen in:

[moments before: Texas Tribune reporter Rosie Barnes asks Nielsberg: “Well, is TIME magazine right? Is RevTech the end of death as we know it, or are, as some critics say, your claims overblown?”]

NIELSBERG: Sorry, did you say overblown? If anything, the way people are talking about RevTech is under-blown. We’re the fucking future, man! Or woman, I guess, sorry, I didn’t ask what your ‘woke’ pronouns are. 

[Nielsberg pauses for laughs, which don’t come.]

Wow, tough crowd. Okay. I’ll be serious. RevTech isn’t just the future, it’s everything. What does the “future” mean when death is out of the equation? I mean, really think about it. Who cares what the ‘future’ holds when you’re never running out of time? We’re the future, the past, the present. We’re not beholden to the limitations of the time-space continuum, to the laws of physics, to the laws of man or religion. Pastor Kathy won’t like me saying that, but it’s true. Yeah, yeah, we have to market this like a medical treatment, but that’s only because you people with your tiny brains — no offense — literally cannot conceive of what we’re doing, like, we are ending the end. 

That’s why there’s all this political drama. The politics of it. The political is bullshit, man. Is Rudy Ruiz the president? [Nielsberg puts on a silly, mocking voice] Can a ‘zombie’ be president?

That’s what you ask all day long, you media people. Like the question fucking matters. Rudy Ruiz is a god, dude! Maybe that makes me one too. So yeah, dude, it’s the end of death as we know it. [The crowd applauds.]

Next question, this one was boring.

It was a weird room to be in, as I’m sure you can hear from the tape. The crowd seemed alternately enamored of Nielsberg and terrified of him. The next-day commentary has so far fixated on Nielsberg’s assertion that Ruiz is a “god,” but I think the “zombie” thing is more telling — and perhaps concerning. I wasn’t surprised to hear Nielsberg call the audience stupid (“tiny brains”) or make a number of “woke” related cracks (that thankfully fell flat), but the fact that he’d utter the word “zombie,” even as a joke, within a million miles of a conversation about RevTech is pretty shocking. Then again, it might be precisely because RevTech has been extremely careful to situate itself in the biomedical/scientific sphere that he dipped into the supernatural, if only to deride the idea.

I’d wondered if the TIME cover illustration of my story would set something off in Nielsberg — if you haven’t seen it, the cover features a mock-up of a distinctly dead-looking Ruiz standing in a graveyard. I guess maybe it did!

I’ve been hesitant to get into the broader reactions to my TIME cover, but I guess now’s as good a time as any. As a journalist, I’ve usually tried to stay pretty middle-of-the-road when it comes to politics, even in the face of increasing, and outright, hostility from the American right. And I’ve never really engaged with critics, who will always have something negative to say any time you don’t print what they want to hear about their side of the aisle.

But now that I’m a free agent (not that I chose this life), I guess I have some leeway to weigh in.

I can’t say I was caught off guard by this tweet from Faith J. Descartes, the leader of the far-left Young People’s New Freedom Movement (YPNFM), who has emerged as one of the top critics of the Ruiz and Grantham Administrations. In a series of threaded tweets, they wrote that they felt I didn’t express enough skepticism of RevTech and do enough to connect America’s longer-term political decline to what’s happening now.

I like Descartes and, frankly, am more sympathetic to the YPNFM (which is officially a #FreezeRuiz coalition member) than not, though I think they’ve been slow to recognize their own extremist tendencies. But they’re right that I didn’t focus predominantly on politics for TIME, because I think revival technology transcends politics. As Nielsberg said last night, his company’s ability to resurrect people — to correct “mortal events,” as RevTech puts it — transcends the laws of man, religion, physics. I’m not sure it does matter whether the president is a “zombie” if it’s possible for the president to be a “zombie” at all.

I was more stung by this criticism from W.K. Garron over at Trash Tabs:

Whither (or perhaps … wither) the take-no-prisoners Pulitzer nominee we once knew in Jasmine Rebuke? Her TIME feature, billed as a blockbuster investigation behind the scenes of Carron Nielsberg’s zombified biotech outfit in Bumfuck, Texas verily sucks at the RevTech teat. But it’s worth a read? Question mark? Many question marks. I like Minne, so I won’t say more. I don’t have to! It’s my newsletter! But I will be 👀 reading the comments 👀 very closely to see whose opinions are right and who thinks the story answered all our questions about how the fuck a batshit billionaire Fin came to be raising presidents from the dead.

I know as well as anyone else that what I wrote doesn’t answer “all our questions” about RevTech, but I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that I was “sucking at the teat” of anyone or anything. I spent months reporting this story, and it’s still the only look we have at RevTech’s compound inside the Treetops Trailer Community. I made a journalistically sound deal to get inside, and I reported what I found — including strong criticisms from Linda Lyle and members of the New Life Church of Turner Falls. This obviously won’t be the last thing I (or anyone) write about RevTech, and I’m a little miffed to have been expected to write the book about the most massive shift in human technological and medical understanding in history.

So all I can say is what I always say: stay tuned. (NB: Texas is gearing up for another big freeze this coming week, so I’m likely going to be wrapped up in preparations and, if it comes to it, coverage of any major weather-related news. So stay tuned on that front, too.)

What Else I’m Reading Right Now:

• “Texas Says Its Power Grid Is Strong. It’s About to Get Tested.” (NYT)
• “Ken Paxton and aides ordered to answer questions under oath in whistleblower case” (Texas Tribune)
• “Kelly Siegler: The Prosecutor and the Snitch Ring” (Texas Observer)
• “Strange light over Central Texas identified” (Fox44)
• “We Salute the Spore-Spewing, Star-Shaped Mushroom Hissing Across Texas” (Texas Monthly)

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