Quillette Cetera

← Quillette Cetera6 aug · 1 u 14 min

Crémieux on Fertility Collapse, Ozempic, IQ & Why Pit Bulls Are the Way They Are

Crémieux on Fertility Collapse, Ozempic, IQ & Why Pit Bulls Are the Way They Are6 aug1 u 14 min

Zoe Sankey sits down with Crémieux (the pen name of researcher Jordan Lasker), the formerly anonymous X writer-researcher whose data threads on genetics, demographics and metabolic drugs have drawn a following of more than 260,000 — including some very prominent readers.

It's a wide-ranging conversation. They cover collapsing fertility rates and the Victorian obscenity trial he argues helped set them falling; his case that dog breeds — pit bulls especially — behave the way they were bred to, and why he thinks people resist that; what he makes of the evidence on GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and retatrutide, microplastics, and the wellness industry; El Salvador's transformation under Nayib Bukele; IQ testing, genetics and embryo selection; populism, personality and politics; free will; and being Jewish and atheist at once.

⏱️ Chapters:

00:00 Intro — who Crémieux is and how he built his following

02:24 Fertility collapse and the Bradlaugh–Besant trial

05:00 Silphium, abortion and the long human history of family planning

06:00 Strong convictions, and why he wants to live forever

07:49 Brian Johnson, longevity and the wellness-hype problem

10:56 Microplastics: what the evidence actually shows

13:24 Zinc, Accutane and the biology of acne

18:08 Ivermectin, Demodex mites and skin

20:22 Pet rats, lab rats, and which animals we call "cute"