Peter Thiel

**Josh Boerman** (0:00)
In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan tells Beelzebub that it's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. And modern day billionaires have generally been okay with this trade-off, making our world a measurably worse place while reaping the benefits for themselves. But reigning in hell isn't enough for Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of data and analytics platform Palantir. His intention is to defeat the Antichrist. And the way he's going to do it? Well, that involves birth rates. My name is Josh Boerman.

**June Sternbach** (0:31)
I'm June Sternbach.

**Josh Boerman** (0:32)
And this is Ill Conceived, a podcast about natalism. God, we are so fucking back, and I am so back on my bullshit.

**June Sternbach** (0:50)
What's your bullshit? I mean, you have a lot of bullshit. There's all sorts of bullshit. You're always on, you love going to the theater. You're a theater kid.

**Josh Boerman** (0:58)
Yes.

**June Sternbach** (0:58)
What bullshit are you on?

**Josh Boerman** (1:00)
Reading the news and wanting to die.

**June Sternbach** (1:05)
You know, I do know that New York has a bit of controversy right now. You guys are, you've been in the news.

**Josh Boerman** (1:09)
That's true.

**June Sternbach** (1:11)
Zoran Mamdani, he, you know, it's a big deal. He wanted a bidet.

**Josh Boerman** (1:16)
Yes.

**June Sternbach** (1:18)
I think I have to retract my support. It's a little bourgeoisie for me. That's a little, to have a non-stinky ass, that's like, I don't know, man.

**Josh Boerman** (1:25)
Thank you for mentioning this, June. This is exactly the news that I was thinking of when I said that.

**June Sternbach** (1:31)
I know.

**Josh Boerman** (1:32)
I am just apoplectic with rage that he dare do that. And simultaneously, giving us universal childcare? I don't think so, bud. I'm going to pay for that shit like a real American.

**June Sternbach** (1:48)
No handouts.

**Josh Boerman** (1:48)
That's right.

**June Sternbach** (1:49)
And no clean, no clean asshole.

**Josh Boerman** (1:51)
No. I want my whole dirty and my children expensive.

**June Sternbach** (1:57)
That's the New York we've come to expect.

**Josh Boerman** (1:59)
That's right.

**June Sternbach** (2:01)
But yeah, no, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Everything's beautiful.

**Josh Boerman** (2:05)
Everything's beautiful.

**June Sternbach** (2:05)
Everyone's normal. Things are fine.

**Josh Boerman** (2:07)
And I've prepped a very fun episode for you today about a very cool, very normal man who is in no way, shape or form, terrifying. A man known as Peter Thiel. But before we get to him, I feel like we should just address a little bit of opening business, a little bit of housekeeping.

**June Sternbach** (2:23)
Absolutely.

**Josh Boerman** (2:24)
First big thing. We are amazingly now managing to do a release schedule that is sustainable, that doesn't kill us.

**June Sternbach** (2:34)
You know, we did that at first, but it was slowly draining our life force in a positive way. I would never complain too much about learning about some of the worst people and organizations. But it was becoming a little unsustainable, sadly.

**Josh Boerman** (2:48)
And we're now settled in. Every Friday, you can expect new episodes.
And that means that in another two weeks, you're going to have the next Main Feed episode, which June is going to be preparing. And next week will be a new Patreon episode. That's right, folks, the Ill Conceived Patreon. We've managed now to upload all of the episodes, including the Main Feed episodes, to the Patreon. So it is now your one-stop shop, if you want all of the stuff that we do. It's available there.

**June Sternbach** (3:18)
Sorry, I just want to say I love the name of it. The logo for the feed is beautiful, but also the name, it's the Blessed Feed. I think, is that what it's called? The Blessed Feed, it's beautiful.

**Josh Boerman** (3:28)
Ill Conceived colon the Blessed Feed. That's really important because, you know, I think that if you're paying a little extra money to get access to our premium product, you ought to feel premium. So if you want that fancy logo, if you want the fancy sort of sun blasted version of the logo, the holy version of the logo, and you want to just be able to access all of our episodes in one feed, both of those things will be available to you when you go to patreon.com/illconceived and join us as a standard baby. Or if you're really feeling frisky and you have $999 to throw around.

**June Sternbach** (4:03)
Maybe Peter Thiel? Maybe Peter Thiel.

**Josh Boerman** (4:05)
Peter, you listen to this, bud. You can be our first and contractually only chonky baby for the low, low price of $999 a month. But yeah, I'm very excited about this. I feel like we finally sort of have something that is very clear and very cohesive. And the last thing that I wanted to note about the Patreon feed is just to really clarify what you are getting with those extra episodes. We are changing the name of them to the B-sides because we realize like, yes, we are reading mail. Yes, we are chilling, but it's also an opportunity for us to sort of bring in other thematic information and just any notes that we might have had, things that we like maybe forgot about or weren't able to get to in the main episode. Again, none of this is taking away from those main feed episodes. It's just a little extra, if that's the kind of thing that you want.