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.

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.

SOURCES:

• “Christianity and Eugenics: The Place of Religion in the British Eugenics Education Society and the American Eugenics Society, c.1907–1940” by Graham J. Baker (Social History of Medicine, 2014)
• “The Pioneer Fund: Financier of Fascist Research” by Steven J. Rosenthal (American Behavioral Scientist,1995)
• “The Pioneer Fund: Bankrolling the Professors of Hate” by Adam Miller (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 1994)
• “Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss” by David Pegg, Tom Burgis, Hannah Devlin and Jason Wilson (The Guardian, October 16, 2024)
• “A Company Says It Can Predict Your Baby’s IQ Before Birth. But Where’s the Science?” by Darren Orf (Popular Mechanics, August 7, 2025)
• The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Charles A. Murray and Richard Herrnstein (Free Press, 1994)
• Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and our Fight for an Independent Future by Anita Say Chan (University of California Press, 2025)
• “The Pronatalism of Silicon Valley” by Emma Waters (The Heritage Foundation, August 22, 2024)
• “The influencers who want the world to have more babies - and say the White House is on their side” by Stephanie Hegarty (BBC, April 1, 2025)
• “The Education of a Libertarian” by Peter Thiel (Cato Unbound, April 13, 2009)

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

THIS IS A PREVIEW OF A BONUS MAILBAG EPISODE. For access to the full length version of this and every other weekly bonus mailbag episode, 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:

• The parallels between Balaji Srinivasan's ideas and the novels of Neal Stephenson
• Other sci-fi that predicts other futures
• Electrical engineers and why they're Like That

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

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

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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:

• Regional visas in Australia and how they compare to Matt Yglesias's city visa concept
• The U.S. economy's shift toward health care as a core industry in response to an aging population
• Large families as a status signifier
• The difference between a Park & Ride and a Kiss & Ride

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.

***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 illconceivedpod@gmail.com***

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.

AUDIO CLIPS:

• 48:23 – Balaji Srinivasan's "Ultimate Exit" talk at Y Combinator Startup School in 2013
• 51:56 – ibid.
• 1:04:11 – Balaji Srinivasan's talk at Natal Conference 2023
• 1:10:45 – Balaji Srinivasan at Token2049 in Dubai, 2025
• 1:20:29 – ibid.
• 1:22:17 – ibid.

SOURCES:

• SAAWA 2013 Honorees profile of Dr. Bhavani Srinivasan
• "NY Physician is Fellow of Royal College of Physicians in London" (The Indian Panorama, July 23, 2016)
• PDF of the March 2006 issue of State Magazine
• Balaji Srinivasan's LinkedIn profile
• Crunchbase profile of Counsyl
• MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 profile of Balaji Srinivasan
• "The Blockchain is the Internet of Money" by Tunku Varadarajan (The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2017)
• "The Turnaround" by Balaji Srinivasan (Medium, April 16, 2018)
• Network School website
• Praxis Nation website

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• Other podcast: Kill The Computer
• Writing: June's Substack

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 illconceivedpod@gmail.com***

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.

SOURCES:

• One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matthew Yglesias (Portfolio, 2020)
• “The boring journey of Matt Yglesias” by Dan Zak (Washington Post, January 11, 2023)
• A Bluesky post about JD Vance by @helldude.bsky.social
• “MTV cancels ‘Ridiculousness’ after 46 seasons, star Rob Dyrdek’s price tag became public” by Taijuan Moorman (USA Today, March 31, 2025)

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• Website: illconceivedpodcast.com
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FOLLOW JOSH:

• Website: joshboerman.com
• Bluesky: @bosh.worstpossible.world
• Other podcast: The Worst of All Possible Worlds
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In March 2025, 200 natalists and their closest friends assembled in Austin, Texas for the second gathering of NatalCon, a convention intended to discover the core causes of declining birthrates and come up with solutions to address those problems. This week, Josh and June watched videos recorded from that convention to see what they were cooking. Turns out that it was mostly fascism.

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEKLY MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to illconceivedpod@gmail.com***

EPISODE ART: Kevin Dolan, the founder of Natalcon. Dolan posts on X under the pseudonym "Bennett's Phylactery" and was fired from his position as a data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton after being doxxed in 2021.

FURTHER READING:

• "Surprise! Even Tradwives Like to Share Nudes, Talk About Sex, and Be Single" by Erin Vanderhoof (Vanity Fair, October 21, 2025)

AUDIO CLIPS:

• 34:48 – Kevin Dolan in his opening remarks at NatalCon 2025
• 44:02 – Jack Posobiec's speech at NatalCon 2025
• 47:42 – Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad)'s speech at NatalCon 2025
• 57:45 – Indian Bronson's speech at NatalCon 2025
• 1:08:56 – Peachy Keenan's speech at NatalCon 2025
• 1:10:54 – Peachy Keenan's speech at NatalCon 2025, continued
• 1:17:29 – Carl Benjamin's speech at NatalCon 2025, continued
• 1:23:29 – Raw Egg Nationalist's speech at NatalCon 2025
• 1:35:24 – Michael Seifert's speech at NatalCon 2025
• 1:42:02 – Raw Egg Nationalist's speech at NatalCon 2025, continued
• 1:48:13 – Carl Benjamin's speech at NatalCon 2025, continued

SOURCES:

• The Natal Conference YouTube channel – contains links to all of the speeches mentioned in this episode
• “Giving entrepreneurs an 'EXIT' from cancel culture” by Matt Himes (The Blaze, June 7, 2024)
• “#4: You're going to be doxxed.” by Kevin Dolan (July 20, 2021)
• “The Eugenic Circus Comes to Town” by Brant Bingamon and Maggie Quinlan (The Austin Chronicle, November 2, 2023)
• “Revealed: US pro-birth conference’s links to far-right eugenicists” by Jason Wilson (The Guardian, September 4, 2023)
• “Tech bros and tradwives are unlikely allies in a little-known movement that’s gaining momentum” by Catherine E. Shoichet, Deborah Brunswick and Meena Duerson (CNN, April 10, 2025)
• “Eugenics Controversy Looms Over Natal Conference at UT’s AT&T Center” by Lucciana Choueiry (The Austin Chronicle, March 20, 2025)
• “Reflections on Natal-Con” by Bryan Caplan (March 31, 2025)
• “They say they want Americans to have more babies. What's beneath the surface?” by Lisa Hagen (NPR, April 25, 2025)

Next week we're recording our first in-person episode together and Josh is still prepping, so it's time for another mailbag episode. This week's topics include Elon Musk's super-sperm, Warhammer 40K, adoption as a tool of natalism, the pitfalls of accelerated home learning, and how we've discovered the flow and format of the podcast as we've gone along.

***COME SEE JOSH IN CHICAGO THIS MONDAY... Josh will be performing as part of Genius Night: A Night For Geniuses on Monday, October 20 at 7pm... This free event (with a $5 suggested donation) will be at Cafe Mustache, located at 2313 N Milwaukee Avenue... SEE YOU THERE????***

***WE WANT YOUR THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEKLY MAILBAG! Send an email with feedback about this week's episode to illconceivedpod@gmail.com***

EPISODE ART: The cover for the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly except it's been edited to say The Good, the Bad and The Mailbag

FURTHER READING:

• Law Banning Child Sex Offenders From Homeschooling Stalled After Nine Child Sex Offenders Testify Against It by Tony Delvecchio and Fennick Nym (The Spoon, Belt & Rod, October 9, 2025)

FOLLOW THE SHOW:

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• Bluesky: @bosh.worstpossible.world
• Other podcast: The Worst of All Possible Worlds
• Stream: Traditional Scrench

FOLLOW JUNE:

• Bluesky: @junlper.beer
• Other podcast: Kill The Computer
• Writing: June's Substack