** Daily Newsletter: October 1, 2025
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** In today’s newsletter:
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PETER THIEL, SAM WOLFE: Voyages to the End of the World ([link removed])

FRANCIS X. MAIER: Course-Correcting the Sexual Revolution ([link removed])

GEORGE WEIGEL: An Important Civics Lesson, Well Taught ([link removed])

Welcome to the new and improved Daily Newsletter from FIRST THINGS. Our content isn’t going to change drastically—we’ll still bring you the new articles each day, straight to your inbox.

This newsletter will now also situate each new article within the larger conversations FIRST THINGS has been leading for thirty-five years. While concern for public life and currents shaping it is the daily focus of our publication, we must not lose focus on the religious and spiritual center of society and the soul. Even as we delve into the particulars, we contemplate the whole.

And if you don’t want to read all that, the new articles are listed at the top.
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Voyages to the End of the World ([link removed])
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** Peter Thiel, Sam Wolfe
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From the November issue: Peter Thiel thinks often about the Antichrist. The billionaire venture capitalist has a unique vantage on the dark side of technology. In much-discussed interviews and lectures, Thiel has outlined a vision of the near future where humanity’s increased reliance on technology results in existential threats that can seemingly only be countered by one world government. The head of this totalitarian regime, or the regime itself, will be the Antichrist foretold in the book of Revelation—the final and greatest opponent of Christ and his Church before the end of the world.

His essay, co-authored with Sam Wolfe, takes a voyage through different literary portrayals of the Antichrist archetype, from Francis Bacon’s positive vision in The New Atlantis and Jonathan Swift’s satirical take in Gulliver’s Travels, up to modern portrayals in the comic series Watchmen and immensely popular manga One Piece. Forewarned is forearmed, and knowing how the Antichrist may appear could give us time to reach a third way between Armageddon and his rule.

For more about the enigmatic figure waiting at the end of history, check out our 1995 review ([link removed]) of a book titled Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination With Evil.
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** Course-Correcting the Sexual Revolution ([link removed])
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** Francis X. Maier
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This review from our consulting editor Francis Maier is worth reading for its colorful opening anecdote alone. Nathanael Blake’s new book Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All “explains in persuasive detail how the sexual revolution of the late twentieth century ‘liberated’ millions of people to be miserable, in bed and out. And he offers a path forward with strong reasons for hope.”

For readers interested in a complementary piece that takes a wider look at changing cultural mores, look no further than Louise Perry’s essay “We Are Repaganizing ([link removed]) ,” from the October 2023 magazine. In it, Perry argues that paganism is reawakening as Christianity retreats. This is most notable in the sexual realm and all that proceeds from it. Readers will be pleased to know that Perry, who identifies as agnostic in the article, recently announced ([link removed]) that she has been convinced of the truth of Christianity. She reasoned her way to it by noticing the fallout of ignoring Christian sexual ethics. So as Blake points to in his book, there is reason to hope indeed.
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An Important Civics Lesson, Well Taught ([link removed])
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** George Weigel
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It’s Wednesday, which means we have a column from the eminent George Weigel. This week is a reflection on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new book Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution. He calls it a “tacit display of public service lived vocationally: not as a matter of career enhancement, not as a means of acquiring wealth, and certainly not as performance art.”

This reputation has followed Justice Barrett since before she was confirmed to the highest court. In 2020, as her confirmation battle was raging, one of her former students wrote a moving personal essay ([link removed]) about her help as she faced challenges in law school due to her blindness: “The warmth and compassion that Judge Barrett has shown me on so many occasions flow from the same wellspring of faith for which she is now so excoriated.”

Until next time.
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** VIRGINIA AABRAM
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Newsletter Editor
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