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Episode Transcript
All right, we're ready.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah. Five weeks ago I sat down with biographer Walter
Isaacson to try and unpack his new six hundred page
biography of Elon Musk. Already some stories had jumped off
the page.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow
starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimemea.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
When Isaacson set out to write this biography, he believed
he was taking on a world changing figure.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Must turns to his security guard, said you got a
pocket knife, and he takes off the flow aboard himself.
He just prized it open.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
What he got was a subject who was also volatile,
increasingly so in chaos and conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I mean, I'm thinking it's any artic to buy Twitter
because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
And so Isaacson did what he'd done with Steve Jobs
and tried to capture it all through stories.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And I said, I want to be by your side
at all times, and I want for two years to
have nothing off limits. In a very low mono, Tony
goes Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It allowed him to see up close, for better and worse,
how Musk operates.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Musk is probably the richest councher forever. So he would
stay with Larry Page and they'd stay up all night,
and Musk would talk about how we have to be
careful of AI, and believe it or not, these fights
caused him to quit speaking to each other. He'd see
some calm on a factory line or at a launch pad,
and he'd be unhappy. He'd say, I've got to stir
(01:34):
things up getting to Mars. Done. Excuse being a total
but I want the reader to see it in action.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
And to examine as Isaacson did, what gave Musk as
boy Wonder a reputation in the first place.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Musk and this cadre around him, they have Kansas spray
paint and they're just putting big xes on machines and
it's almost like kids playing on playground. These people are
standing there overlooking the Gulf of Mexico in this god
forsaken place, and all they can focus on is how
(02:12):
are we going to get a colony to Mars. He
gets a very lean team that's willing to put up
with him being cold and angry for those amazing moments
where they feel like they're changing the world.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
My name is Evan Ratliffe and this is On Musk
with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four part series
as Isaacson breaks down what he saw shadowing Elon Musk,
the speed and the drama that fuel Musk's accomplishments, and
the wreckage she leaves behind. We'll discover how Isaacson clung
on to this tornado for just long enough to capture
a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Well. I like the fact that people who say I'm
not as tough on Musk as I should be are
always using anecdotes from my book to show why we
should be tough on Musk.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Listen to On Musk on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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