Podbit · PBD Podcast
Ultra-wealthy men including Pavel Durov (100+ children via sperm donation), Elon Musk (14 known children), and Stefan Soloviev (22 children) are using surrogacy and IVF to spread their DNA at scale. The crew asks the hard question: is this fatherhood or a vanity project?
Where this was said
At 1:07:00 · chapter starts 1:03:40
Patrick reads the New York Times 'kidmaxing' story, detailing how men like Pavel Durov, Elon Musk, Greg Lindbergh, and Stefan Soloviev are using IVF and surrogacy to father unprecedented numbers of children as an extension of their legacy and genetic ambition. [1] — Patrick Bet-David "Ultra-wealthy men including Pavel Durov (100+ children via sperm donation), Elon Musk (14 known children), and Stefan Soloviev (22 children…" 1:07:00 Elon Musk reportedly joked that Durov's 100+ children represented 'rookie numbers,' and Jeffrey Epstein's interest in Nobel Prize winner sperm banks and blue-eyed donors is cited as the darker end of the same impulse. Tom wonders aloud if the New York Times realizes that 'kidmaxing' is the opposite of abortion. Adam says this is just evidence that rich men with options exercise them, but introduces a roleplay where Patrick pitches spending $10 million on 100 surrogacy babies. [1] — Patrick Bet-David "Ultra-wealthy men including Pavel Durov (100+ children via sperm donation), Elon Musk (14 known children), and Stefan Soloviev (22 children…" 1:07:00 The crew pushes back: Vinnie argues from a Christian perspective that children are a blessing to be raised, not trophies; Tom asks why not just adopt 100 children already alive; Adam invokes the 'any man can be a father, but it takes a special man to be a dad' aphorism. Patrick delivers his own philosophy: it's not genetics that shape a child, it's '500 five-minute conversations' over years of presence. [2] — Patrick Bet-David "You don't raise great kids through occasional grand gestures. It's 500 small conversations when they need you. Patrick Bet-David argues DNA…" 1:10:40 He references a Father's Webinar where 20 rules for fatherhood — including whether your children 'yearn your company years after they no longer need you' — produced the highest webinar show-ratio in Valuetainment history.
You don't raise great kids through occasional grand gestures. It's 500 small conversations when they need you. Patrick Bet-David argues DNA matters less than the consistent presence that shapes a child's worldview — and no kidmaxing billionaire can replicate that at scale.
Most people confuse things they value instrumentally (because they get them other things) with things they value intrinsically (for their own sake). Greenberg's friend stayed in a miserable relationship for years because she was living by her parents' values, not her own — the values map made the mismatch instantly visible.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
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