Pearl - February 26, 2026


Surrogacy Won An Olympic Gold Medal


Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

174.1639

Word count

1,781

Sentence count

80

Harmful content

Misogyny

18

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Elissa Liu is an Olympic Gold Medalist Figure Skater. She was born in China and raised in the United States by a single dad who had 5 kids with the help of surrogates. She went on to become a world champion at the age of 18 and has since gone viral for being a feminine figure skater.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 did you know that okay so there's this figure skater right and this figure skater 0.98
00:00:04.880 is like she's honestly an average looking asian girl but she's so feminine that she's just going 1.00
00:00:11.040 oh my god these stupid ads she's going viral because she's just this cute young like 18 year 1.00
00:00:16.480 old girl and or young woman right and honestly i'd say she's a 6.5 but she's just so adorable 1.00
00:00:24.000 and smiley and happy this woman this young woman right until she was 16 she became a she won like
00:00:33.120 the world figure skating competitions whatever she wanted at like 14 15 16 then at 16 she decided to
00:00:39.820 quit and think about it well how many mothers would let their daughter quit where if she said 1.00
00:00:44.060 hey I don't want to do this anymore I want to live a normal life after her dad spent a million
00:00:49.540 dollars on her on her figure skating career and then at 18 she said I want to come back and then
00:00:54.400 she won gold this is what happens when men raise children they had they raise well-rounded like
00:01:00.360 does this look like a daughter that's like think about this she is she's going viral for being 1.00
00:01:07.400 feminine when she did not have a mother okay Alyssa Liu's dad spent nearly a million dollars
00:01:14.460 on her figure skating career I spared no money and I thought about it okay so I looked it up
00:01:20.220 a donation getting your own like egg or whatever is about 60k Megan you sent me 100 bucks thank
00:01:28.940 you you shouldn't have Megan I didn't know I had a female fan that liked me enough to donate that's 1.00
00:01:35.140 crazy okay let's say you get 800 a month on child support and the woman leaves you when the when the
00:01:42.640 kids five times 13 that's 124 000 and it could be more right or it could be less the kids like 60
00:01:51.660 grand up front and you could you could get you know i was thinking about this the i i have a
00:01:58.560 prediction that men that get surrogates are going to have better children and we're going to see all
00:02:05.140 these elon musk babies come out because in this society no men have authority over their kids 1.00
00:02:11.060 unless they're doing surrogacy, right? Oh my God. Like, look how cute this is with the dad.
00:02:16.420 He has five kids. I didn't know he had five kids. What? Wait, hold on. Let me, let me, there's a
00:02:22.640 video. Oh, wow. He did an interview. Okay. We're going to, we're going to watch it. Or is it for
00:02:27.640 her? We can watch it. Fuck it. You know, but I didn't know he had five kids. I was thinking
00:02:33.200 about it. He probably was ostracized because 20 years ago, everybody I'm sure told him he was
00:02:38.360 stupid for doing like a surrogate and look who's laughing now his kid is an olympic gold medalist 0.99
00:02:44.760 feminine and i bet she'll get married like look at this cute you can't tell me this kid doesn't 1.00
00:02:49.360 look well-rounded shock is back turn to the senior championship final skater of the night
00:02:55.740 a world title hung in the balance within seconds it was clear she was up to the moment
00:03:03.220 as donna summer's disco beat pulsated elissa liu blissfully dashed around the ice weaving 1.00
00:03:10.260 intricate jump i was like this is everybody already standing up oh my god i was like this is wild
00:03:18.500 that was all right so she's got that little piercing right now think about it a mother would 1.00
00:03:23.540 nag you into eternity and be like and just nag you and that like my mother nagged me into eternity 0.98
00:03:29.300 about tattoos and it was the biggest deal if he ever did what she didn't want you know do you
00:03:33.220 think her dad likes that no but dads give kids the freedom to like make mistakes and learn from it
00:03:39.220 you know most hype i've ever felt in my entire life it's a crazy sensation alissa you had seized
00:03:45.940 the night she was the world champion unheard of in women's figure skating because you has come back 0.97
00:03:52.660 But now, as a growing woman, here's what I have to do.
00:03:59.220 It was Alyssa's father who was the engine of ambition.
00:04:03.140 He was really in your business when you were younger.
00:04:06.000 I mean, it was basically his business. It wasn't even really mine.
00:04:10.000 Arthur Liu had no skating background.
00:04:12.780 In his native China, he had organized demonstrations
00:04:15.700 during the time of the Tiananmen Square protests and was forced to flee.
00:04:20.840 He came to America with nothing.
00:04:23.100 Arthur built a law practice and a family in the Bay Area.
00:04:26.760 A single dad, he had five kids with the help of surrogates.
00:04:31.000 You know what, if you do surrogacy, you could just say,
00:04:34.680 oh, the mother didn't want to be a part of the kids' lives, 1.00
00:04:37.920 and that would be technically true.
00:04:39.400 That would be technically true.
00:04:41.000 Child.
00:04:41.720 And her figure skating career became his second full-time job.
00:04:46.480 I took her everywhere.
00:04:47.640 I took her to Japan to learn from the top coaches there.
00:04:52.340 I took her to...
00:04:53.160 How many mothers would give up their Botox 1.00
00:04:55.660 so the daughter can have skating lessons? 1.00
00:04:59.900 Like, I like want to cry listening to this.
00:05:02.400 How much do you think you spent
00:05:04.120 to help her become the figure skater that she is? 0.95
00:05:07.860 I would say half a million to a million dollars.
00:05:12.120 Arthur!
00:05:12.780 I spared no money, no time.
00:05:16.840 that is the cutest thing i ever heard and notice how when he tells the story like the the praise
00:05:22.440 isn't towards himself it's just like a matter of when women say it's like well all i did for her
00:05:28.200 i did this i did you know it's just a different vibe just why i i just saw the tannin with so
00:05:36.760 much at stake arthur began cycling and recycling through coaches how many times did he fire you
00:05:43.480 me once i think three times three times once in person two via text i think yeah your services
00:05:50.440 are no longer needed some coaches tried to keep arthur away from the rink but one afternoon he
00:05:57.240 just couldn't help himself just one time i sneaked into the ice rink jacket sunglasses head covered
00:06:07.080 entered that strike from the back not from the front so i was sitting there up in the bleachers
00:06:14.440 watching and i didn't like what i saw standing around for 20 minutes skated around the rank
00:06:20.600 that's the other thing fathers are much better at picking up if the kids are being abused or
00:06:26.360 something's wrong because they pay attention to their kids they're much more protective
00:06:30.040 mothers will give their kid to damn near anybody like they'll literally give their kids to complete 1.00
00:06:35.720 strangers. I mean, Michaela Peterson, she was on Instagram looking for a babysitter.
00:06:42.980 Isn't that incredible? Incredible. And someone said that he's liberal. I don't care if he's
00:06:47.600 liberal. Guys, look at liberal men still make good fathers because they're men. Gay men make 1.00
00:06:54.960 better fathers than mothers. Just my opinion. Just my opinion. If they're not, if they're not 1.00
00:07:00.220 into the diddling stuff, they will make a better dad. And I would bet money because men bring 1.00
00:07:05.060 structure men bring wisdom men learn from their mistakes women don't no it's true random babysitters 0.92
00:07:12.800 she was asking for a babysitter on instagram a few times that's where my money was going 0.96
00:07:18.340 and how did that go down we stopped working with that coach these stories yes make it sound like
00:07:26.260 you were like this tiger dad who was all over her career and pushing her is that fair not quite 0.52
00:07:33.480 Not quite. I was lazy fair.
00:07:36.920 A lazy fair dad doesn't bring a radar gun to the skating rink.
00:07:41.280 Well, I mean, you know, the radar gun is to measure her speed.
00:07:46.500 Alyssa says everything changed when the pandemic hit in 2020.
00:07:51.100 Her rink in Oakland closed, allowing her to catch her breath.
00:07:55.420 I was like, wow, this is what a break feels like.
00:07:58.300 And then I was like, I really like not skating.
00:08:02.240 The pandemic hits, most people are like, oh, this is such a bummer.
00:08:05.400 Honestly, I was hoping, like, the rinks wouldn't open.
00:08:08.880 Like a happy kid.
00:08:10.340 Did open, Alyssa reluctantly returned to the ice.
00:08:13.980 She made the 2022 U.S. Olympic team, finishing sixth in Beijing.
00:08:18.920 But she'd had it with figure skating. 0.90
00:08:21.440 And then I was like, yeah, I'm calling quits right now.
00:08:24.280 She did it on Instagram, catching the sport by surprise. 0.96
00:08:28.900 So tell me about the decision to retire.
00:08:30.760 it was a crucial time in my life i was 16 and college was coming up like i wanted to do so much
00:08:37.880 i went to nepal and i trekked to ever space camp me and my friends do tons of road trips yeah i
00:08:44.120 mean i was really just living it up i would say it was my best life at any point are you like gosh
00:08:49.240 i kind of miss skating no not at all you're not thinking about it at all not a thought i deleted
00:08:54.520 in my Instagram, so I wouldn't see any skating. No one ever brought it up, so I never even had
00:09:00.880 the chance to think about it. But nearly two years into her self-imposed exile, she secretly laced
00:09:07.640 up her skates. And did you tell your family you were putting her skates back on? I mean,
00:09:12.640 I wasn't planning to return to competition at this point. I just wanted quick hits of dopamine,
00:09:17.100 basically. Soon she wanted more. She pestered one of her many former coaches, Philip DeGuglielmo.
00:09:24.380 And so I call up Philip and I tell him like, hey, I think I want to go back to skating.
00:09:29.500 And I said, oh, that's fun. And I thought, I thought like, oh, you want to do collegiate
00:09:35.660 competitions? And she goes, no, I want to, I want to compete again. And I said, let me call you back.
00:09:41.820 i go and i grab a bottle of red wine and i open that bottle and i pour myself a really big glass
00:09:48.760 and are you thinking this is a terrible idea this is a terrible idea terrible idea two and a half
00:09:54.320 hours later of conversation with me trying to talk her out of it and everything you just cannot
00:10:01.280 look at i would trust these two gay guys they seem gay i don't know if they are i would trust 1.00
00:10:06.180 them more with a kid than I would trust a woman. Sorry. Don't care. I don't care. I don't care what 1.00
00:10:12.840 everyone says.