This year, Peter Thiel’s Hereticon conference changed lives. Some attendees left with fresh tattoos and piercings, others with a newfound belief in UFOs. But Delian Asparouhov and Nadia Eghbal arguably made the greatest leap of all: Between speeches about sex rings and sessions on hypnosis, the couple squeezed in a wedding.
From the start, Hereticon promised to “get weird.” The four-day conference, which was launched in 2019 by Thiel’s Founders Fund and returned to Miami Beach, Fla., this January for its second iteration, is a safe space for the tech world to loudly voice opinions they previously whispered. This year featured lectures like “You’re Probably a Eugenicist” and “How to Pay for Sex,” and a fireside conversation between Thiel and economist Tyler Cowen ominously titled “Apocalypse.” But the sweetest event was unplanned: On the third day of Hereticon 2021, Asparouhov and Eghbal got onstage at the open mic night inside the Faena Hotel and vowed to spend the rest of their lives together.
