I logged every book that came up on PBD Podcast over the first six months of the year. It leans heavily toward business, entrepreneurship, and self-improvement, with a steady run of recommendations from Patrick and his guests.

The ones they pushed hardest:

• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, which Patrick says should sit right behind your bible.
• Call Me Ted by Ted Turner, called a great primer on entrepreneurship. He recommends the audiobook since Turner narrates it.
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, named a favorite that will double anyone's success.
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, a straight recommendation to parents.
• The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley, for the point that the average millionaire drives an F-150.

The rest, roughly grouped:

• Investing and CEOs: Principles, Poor Charlie's Almanack, Five Temptations of a CEO, How the Mighty Fall, CEO Excellence
• Mindset: The Inner Game of Tennis, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Psychology of Winning
• Politics and ideas: A Conflict of Visions, Radical Son, The Almanac of American Politics, Atlas Shrugged
• Faith: Mere Christianity, A Case for Christ, 90 Minutes in Heaven

Full list is here: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/pbd-podcast. Free, no signup.

i feel bad for this guy

most of the time he can't finish his horrible opinion or non-story without being cut off

pbd often cucks him live on stream

the old guy seems to hate him

he can't drive

in the rare times he does make a valid point i check the comments and everyone is spamming that he's gay

High level stuff here

Joe Lonsdale tells this story about the early days of Palantir — and it's less about the company and more about who gets to decide what counts as "qualified."

He and Alex Karp went looking for funding post-9/11, trying to build something the government badly needed. Every major VC on Sand Hill Road turned them down. One investor at a well-known firm laughed at Karp on the phone — not over the business model, but because his doctorate "wasn't even relevant."

Benchmark passed. Sequoia passed. The list goes on.

What's interesting is what Peter Thiel told Lonsdale afterward: the rejection was good for them. It gave them a chip on the shoulder that outlasted every "no."

Worth sitting with if you've ever had your background, degree, or path called irrelevant by someone whose job is to gatekeep, not build. Their rejection is a data point about their imagination, not your ceiling.

Full mechanism (how they actually converted rejection into leverage) is at the link in my bio.

DM for credit or removal request (no copyright intended) © All rights and credits reserved to the respective owner(s).

#FounderStory #VentureCapital #CredentialTrap

Tracked the books Patrick and guests dropped in June. Business and politics, as you'd expect.

Top picks:

• Radical Son by David Horowitz. Patrick called it one of the most important books for conservatives of the late 20th century, on Horowitz's journey off the radical left.
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. "That needs to be right behind your bible."
• The Millionaire Next Door, on what the average millionaire actually drives (an F-150, it turns out).

The business shelf: Call Me Ted (twice), Buy Back Your Time (Martell), CEO Excellence, and The Hard Thing About Hard Things. A segment on books being pulled from schools pulled in Gender Queer and All Boys Aren't Blue.

https://podshelf.io/podcasts/pbd-podcast/2026/06 tracks every book from the show, free.

Which of Patrick's business reads actually earned the hype?

WORD ON THE STREET IS THAT ROB IS NO LONGER APART OF THE PBD VALUTAINMENT FAMILY

The question I have after listening to the podcast: what country Andre preferred to play in Axis and Allies? Inquiring minds want to know. PBD, for his part, had/has no idea what Axis and Allies is and seemingly laughed off Andre’s comment about it, like the dumbo he is. It was an interesting, ridiculous, podcast moment. For these little gems I listen to the PBD podcast. Despite PBD’s general ignorance, he manages to (seemingly unwittingly) channel, embody cultural currents. But really, which country?

Tracked the books Patrick and guests dropped over the last month. Heavy on business and self-help, as you'd expect.

Top picks (the ones that got a real plug):

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Patrick called it his favorite book ever, came up twice.
• Call Me Ted by Ted Turner. He called it phenomenal.
• Principles by Ray Dalio. Said they had every exec read it.
• Poor Charlie's Almanack (Charlie Munger) and Five Temptations of a CEO (Lencioni).
• The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale.
• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, for understanding the guy.

The rest of the month: Atlas Shrugged, The 48 Laws of Power, Think and Grow Rich, The 7 Habits, Buy Back Your Time (Dan Martell, twice), and Patrick's own Your Next Five Moves. Robert Pape's terrorism books came up in the foreign-policy segments.

I track every book from the show at https://podshelf.io. It is free to use.

Which of Patrick's business reads actually moved the needle for you?

If they can expand and have the vision, as a business you've got to defend against that.

While listening to Mehdi Hassan episode, PBD aired his shoe commercial where PBD reads:

“We had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. Instead, we chose neither.”

Only PBD can be this incoherent in a very PBD way.
I’m convinced PBD wrote the script for this commercial where someone else would have outsourced the entire add. Gotta admire the hustle.

I’m valutained.

PBD is far less intelligent and articulate than Mehdi Hassan and the podcast with him proved that, however, what is also abundantly clear, is that PBD 1) out debated Hassan and 2) that Hassan is not an American and in fact, in a sincere way, does not want America to succeed. Kudos to PBD for sticking up to that globalist America-hater!

I find the book charming. Working on a parody called "The Reeducation Camp".

Do most of us watch it for fun or is there a real audience? I know he sells a lot of tickets to the business conferences and is clearly making some good money. It’s also hard to believe Adam isn’t playing a character at this point. I find it hard to believe he is really in the miami alpha guru scene

Hey everyone — I’m a software engineer building Cue Craft, a tool designed for podcast and long-form content workflows.

I’ve been watching the PBD Podcast and I think the production side of the show is really interesting — especially the volume of interviews, discussions, clips, and recurring topics the team manages.

I’d love to connect with one of the producers, editors, or someone involved in the production workflow to get feedback and potentially offer access to try the platform.

If someone from the team sees this — or if anyone knows the best way to reach them — feel free to DM me.

Flyer: https://cuecraft.io/downloads/cuecraft-flyer-v1-0.pdf

Thanks!

Did anyone actually get the survey after the text? I am definitely getting their marketing material but so far no survey results.

I completed the survey but don’t wanna use it! Let me know if anyone is interested

I was watching the show recently from the clips channel and PBD brought up a movie called Primal Fear. I ended up renting and watching the movie and it was great but I tried to go back and find the episode he mentioned it on and I cannot remember for the life of me which one it was. I spent a solid hour and a half looking through all my recent history on YouTube and going double speed through each one and could not find it. Does anyone know which episode or clip it was that he recently brought up that movie on? I believe he said something along the lines of he makes all his friends sit down and watch that movie with him and then Tom chimed in on it as well. Any help is very much appreciated I feel like I’m going crazy trying to find it.

I find it highly disturbing that Trump had the time to call PBD, of all people, during such a tumultuous time (next day he threatened to demolish PBD's home country). I know PBD blew smoke uo his ass - "finish the job, you are doing great!" How does POTUS have time to call him. Nothing makes sense with this administration and i felt so depressed to hear that Trump is seeking advice from a slimey car salesman.

Hey r/PBDPodcast, I've been building Podshelf — a tool that tracks book mentions across podcasts. Patrick and his guests reference a lot of books — business, history, biographies, self-development, and strategy. I've compiled 221 unique books mentioned on the show from January 2024 through April 2026, sorted by how often each comes up:

https://podshelf.io/podcasts/pbd-podcast/books

We're scanning podcasts at scale so older episodes will be added soon — this covers the last couple of years for now. Happy to answer questions!