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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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***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)

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Dr. Oz expects a Trump baby boom in 2026. We're talking about it.

Plus, we read your mail from the Matt Yglesias episode, including:

Natalcon 2025 featured a number of high profile speakers whose speeches weren't recorded. One of these speakers was Balaji Srinivasan, a technologist who made his fortune in pre-pregnancy genetic testing and now preaches the gospel of cryptocurrency and decentralized "Network States" to anyone who will listen. This week, Josh and June discover what Balaji's whole deal is and end up deeply confused and repulsed by it.

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EPISODE ART: Balaji Srinavasan at TechCrunch Disrupt. After graduating from Stanford and co-founding genetic testing company Counsyl, Srinivasan joined the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and later worked at Coinbase. In 2024 he founded Network School, an incubator in Malaysia that seeks to develop applications for his concept of the Network State.

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

In 2020, Vox cofounder Matt Yglesias published a book entitled One Billion Americans which ostensibly sought to lay out a liberal argument for dramatically increasing the population of the United States. This week, June and Josh read the book. Hoo boy, do we have thoughts about it.

***BIG NEWS: WE HAVE A PATREON NOW! We'll be recording bonus mailbag episodes that will release at the beginning of each week. The main show will continue its regular release schedule at the end of each week and will stay free to all of you, our beloved babies. Come check us out at Patreon.com/illconceived!***

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

EPISODE ART: Matthew Yglesias, the author of One Billion Americans. In 2014, Yglesias cofounded the news website Vox alongside Ezra Klein and Melissa Bell. He departed Vox in 2020 to join the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank. Yglesias also publishes a newsletter called Slow Boring. 

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