THIS IS A PREVIEW OF A BONUS B-SIDE EPISODE. For access to the full length version of this and every other biweekly bonus B-side, go to Patreon.com/illconceived

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We didn't get a lot of mail about surrogacy this week. But you wanted to hear more about weird Silicon Valley Christians and we wanted to talk about them, so we read from an interview with the founder of a Peter Thiel-connected organization called ACTS 17 that hosted the "Code and Cosmos" event we mentioned in last week's main feed episode.

Plus, an update on Trump Accounts.

An increasingly popular childbirth option for couples who cannot easily naturally conceive is to utilize a surrogate who gestates and births the pregnancy on behalf of the intended parents. And as of late, surrogacy is also being used by some especially wealthy people, particularly in the tech industry, as a way for them to avoid pregnancy altogether. This week, June and Josh look at the history of surrogacy, the moral disagreements among the religious right about the practice, and some of the ethical and legal complications that can result.

***REMINDER: WE HAVE A PATREON! Every other week, we release B-side supplements to the main episodes where we read your e-mail responses and discuss things further. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to [email protected]***

EPISODE ART: Cindy Bi, a venture capitalist who attempted to give birth via surrogacy. When the pregnancy resulted in a stillbirth, Bi sued her surrogate and went to the press to disparage her further.

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ILL CONCEIVED THEME SONG BY: Caleb (Linktree / Bluesky)

THIS IS A PREVIEW OF A BONUS B-SIDE EPISODE. For access to the full length version of this and every other biweekly bonus B-side, go to Patreon.com/illconceived

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Palantir employees are in their feels about their company's complicity with ICE and we're talking about it. We also issue a couple corrections about the Peter Thiel episode (28 is the number of days in a menstrual cycle and it turns out that Thiel does have children), then dig into the world-famous mailbag for your thoughts on:

The way that Ashley St. Clair and other right-wing media figures have influenced children to develop a conservative worldview from a young age, both recently and in the past

The privacy and data tracking implications of period tracking apps

The paradox of the non-identity problem and how it applies to IVF

If you haven't listened to June and Matt's interview with Ashley St. Clair, go check it out!

Big data controls our lives like never before, and few people are more responsible than Peter Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of Palantir who made the bulk of his fortune by investing early in Facebook. But it turns out that beyond his obsession with data, Thiel is equally fixated on the end times, the rise of the Antichrist, and the recent trend of declining birth rates in the West. This week, Josh and June try to figure out why Peter Thiel has the worldview he does and how it bears out in his investments in natalist technology.

CHECK OUT OUR RECENT PODCAST GUEST APPEARANCES!

***REMINDER: WE HAVE A PATREON! Every other week, we release B-side supplements to the main episodes where we read your e-mail responses and discuss things further. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to [email protected]***

EPISODE ART: Peter Thiel in a 2016 address to the Republican National Convention. Born in Germany, Thiel spent the bulk of his childhood in an apartheid settlement in South West Africa. After graduating from Stanford and briefly attempting a career in law, Thiel co-founded PayPal, Palantir and numerous venture capital funds, also making a critical early investment in Facebook that now represents the core of his fortune.

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ILL CONCEIVED THEME SONG BY: Caleb (Linktree / Bluesky)

THIS IS A PREVIEW OF A BONUS B-SIDE EPISODE. For access to the full length version of this and every other biweekly bonus B-side, go to Patreon.com/illconceived

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is now going to allow young women to go on their mission starting at the age of 18 in the hopes of getting young Mormons married even younger. We're talking about it, plus we read your letters responding to our Masturbation & Pornography episode regarding:

How age verification works for restricted websites in Australia

How anti-pornography action reflects the natalist agenda

Resources and organizations that are fighting online CSAM, including the Canadian Centre for Child Protection's Project Arachnid

The important differences between the Kellogg brothers

From here on out, you can expect Mailbag & Chill episodes every other Friday where we read your letters responding to the previous week's episode. (And we'll eventually get around to doing a dramatic reading of the Zootopia abortion comic.) Thanks as always for being a subscriber!

Moral panic about masturbation and pornography is nothing new, but in the wake of Donald Trump's re-election, numerous conservative groups—many of whom have deep ties to the natalist movement—have started to ring the alarm bell once again. This week, June and Josh take a look at the early history of fear of masturbation, then jump forward to the present day to see how the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) reflects many of these paranoias and introduces problems of its own.

There's also a pretty significant detour into talking about the Zootopia abortion comic, if that's your thing.

***REMINDER: WE HAVE A PATREON NOW! We record bonus mailbag episodes and release them at the beginning of each week. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to [email protected]***

EPISODE ART: John Harvey Kellogg, a physician who founded the Kellogg Company with his brother Will in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1906. Kellogg believed that bland food such as unsweetened corn flakes could aid in reducing the urge to masturbate. He also was a notable eugenicist and co-founded the Race Betterment Foundation in 1914 to discourage interracial relationships.

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ILL CONCEIVED THEME SONG BY: Caleb (Linktree / Bluesky)

Josh was really sick the past couple weeks so we haven't been able to get new episodes out. But we wanted to get you something before the end of the year, so we talked about sperm racing and read some more mail.

New episodes in the standard format will resume on a biweekly schedule starting Friday, January 2. Thank you for being our wonderful babies and we'll see you in the new year.

***REMINDER: WE HAVE A PATREON NOW! We record bonus mailbag episodes and release them every other week. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

EPISODE ART: A charming LEGO mailman who is holding a brick of mail.

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ILL CONCEIVED THEME SONG BY: Caleb (Linktree / Bluesky)

Charles Murray & Richard Herrnstein's book 1994 The Bell Curve caused tremendous controversy on its publication by positing a link between intelligence and race. But this certainly wasn't the first time someone had made this argument, nor would it be the last. This week, Josh and June take a look at the foundation of the eugenics movement in North America, track its close relationship with the development of IQ testing, and discover some surprising links to German, Italian, and American fascism.

***REMINDER: WE HAVE A PATREON NOW! We record bonus mailbag episodes and release them at the beginning of each week. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to [email protected]***

EPISODE ART: Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve. Murray, a Harvard and MIT-trained political scientist, is strongly opposed to social welfare programs and has made dismantling the welfare state a central goal of his project. He has been in residence at the American Enterpise Institute since 1990 and currently holds the F. A. Hayek Chair Emeritus in Cultural Studies there.

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ILL CONCEIVED THEME SONG BY: Caleb (Linktree / Bluesky)

THIS IS A PREVIEW OF A BONUS B-SIDE EPISODE. For access to the full length version of this and every other weekly bonus B-side, go to Patreon.com/illconceived

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NYC Subway's Broadway-Lafayette station is now full of apparently eugenicist ads for an IVF and genetic testing company called Nucleus. We're talking about it, plus:

A screenshot of the embryo selection grid on Nucleus's website: https://imgur.com/a/bfV9Hay

The White House will likely soon release a large set of documents about convicted pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein further detailing the depths of his crimes. Alongside this, a line of rhetoric seems to be developing in certain right-wing circles: although what Epstein did was morally abominable, not all of it was criminal, and it's certainly categorically different from preying on "real children." But what exactly is childhood, and why are certain reactionaries making this argument now? This week, June and Josh look into the history of the concept of childhood in the United States to try and figure out why.

***REMINDER: WE HAVE A PATREON NOW! We record bonus mailbag episodes and release them at the beginning of each week. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to [email protected]***

EPISODE ART: Richard Hanania, a writer and online right-wing personality whose work includes 2023's The Origins of Woke, published by HarperCollins under their Broadside Books imprint. Hanania is a co-author of Project 2025, previously wrote for white supremacists publications under the pen name Richard Hoste, and recently wrote about how pedophilia is a moral panic.

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ILL CONCEIVED THEME SONG BY: Caleb (Linktree / Bluesky)