In 2022, I got a tip about Elon Musk, who even as recently as that was misunderstood—and underestimated—by the media: He had embarked on a mission to singlehandedly try to repopulate the Earth with his children, a source told me, passing along a quiet rumor going around Austin.

It led me to a shocking discovery. He had fathered twins with an executive at one of his companies, Shivon Zilis, who had worked at Tesla and then gone on to Neuralink, Musk's brain chip startup. A few weeks after the twins' birth, Musk became a father yet again with the arrival of his and musician Grimes' second child, carried via a surrogate.

Musk belongs to what's called the pronatalist movement, a belief that Western civilization will evaporate if we don't all start having more kids. (Musk himself has at least 11 children.) Pronatalism has grown in prominence since, partly thanks to Musk, partly thanks to JD Vance's embrace of the topic on the campaign trail.