Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
This is Later with Lee Matthews TheLee Matthews Podcast. More what you hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. BenMezrick is a New York Times bestselling author.
You might remember The Accidental Billionaires,which was adapted into the screenplay for
the Social Network, also Bringing Downthe House. His newest creation, breaking
Twitter, Alon Musk, and themost controversial corporate takeover ever in history.
(00:27):
I want to start Ben Mesick withwhy was it the most controversial takeover?
Well, I mean, first ofall, it's at the center of our
global conversation. So we had aman who had built rocket shifts and automatic
cars come in through the front doorcarrying a sink like a barbarian at the
(00:48):
gate, a reluctant barbarian because hedidn't want to be there. He had
been food and forced into it andstarted trashing the place. And so because
of what Twitter is, it's immediatelythe biggest sort of loud thing in the
corporate world, and he made adisaster of it. He was forced into
it. You say, was itbuyer's remorse when he started the process.
(01:11):
Yeah, he came in with thenoble ideal that he was going to save
the world from this woke mind virus. He really believed that there needed to
be a place for freedom of speechand that Twitter was moderating too much.
But he made this incredibly large offer, which was forty four billion dollars fifty
four to twenty a share, andit was way more than the value of
Twitter. And he got pushed backimmediately from all of the Tesla faithful because
(01:37):
they realized he was going to haveto sell Tesla stock and he regretted.
He didn't want to go through withit, so he tried to get out,
and he said there were too manybots on the site, and Twitter
sued him, so he had notwanted to actually take it over anymore.
He had buyer's remorse for sure,and did Twitter wanted the money I gather
that's why they were willing to sell. I mean, it was so much.
It was such a huge valueuation thatthey did wanted to make him.
(02:01):
You know, it would have beenthe board had to make him do it,
honestly, because it would have beenagainst their own interests and not.
So they forced him in. Andthen he was so angry when he came
through the doors that he reacted intensely. He started firing everybody with cause,
trying to not pay anybody bonuses.He wanted to restructure everything rather than just
(02:22):
fixing sort of the idea that itwas being too moderated, and he makes
mistake after a mistake that things startto spiral out of control. But the
bigger story to me is that Elondidn't just break Twitter, but Twitter broke
Elon because he starts to get anincredible pushback from basically half the country,
and it's the first time in hislife where he's sensing that people don't like
(02:42):
him, and this hits him veryhard. Is Alon And we're talking to
Ben Mesurick of the New York Timesbestselling Arthur His newest book is Breaking Twitter
Elon Musk and the most controversial corporatetakeover in history. Was he like a
child having a temper tantrum. Imean there's some extent it's like that.
I mean, he's a guy wholives in memes and jokes. He's got
(03:04):
a very sort of vicious sense ofhumor, and he gets what he wants.
But it's more that he sees theentire world as a simulation that he's
the main playing character in and allof us are non playing characters, and
so it's the main character in hisown video game upset that all of the
little people are set at him.So there is something childish about it,
(03:27):
but it's really built into who heis and how he acts. It's that
he really thinks he's the most importantthing in the story and people should not
be standing up to him. We'retalking to Ben Mezrich and the new book
is breaking Twitter now. In someways people thought, okay, Twitter was
getting a bit big for its bridgesand needed somebody to knock it down a
couple notches. Yeah, I mean, it's totally fair to say that Twitter,
(03:51):
first of all, was a bloatedcompany. It had a huge number
of employees who didn't do anything.There were people taking three days a week
off. There were people who weremore upset about the smoothie bar being taken
away at work, and they wereabout anything going on Twitter, and it
was moditoring the heck out of likeright wing conservative voices. There was no
question that, you know, theNew York Post posting about Hunter Biden's laptop
has suddenly you know, moderated andsuspended. The Babylon Bee was thrown out
(04:15):
from making a joke that maybe wasa bad joke, but you know,
there were things like that going onthat I think was isolating people who had
a certain point of view. Sohe came in for probably the right reasons,
but he found very quickly that freespeech is incredibly complex and if you
just let it go, you endup chasing all the advertisers away because it's
(04:35):
there's a lot of really, there'sa lot of teenagers. The bottom line
is, if you dig deep intoany social media site, you're going to
find some teenager in his basement,and that's someone who needs to usually be
moderated. He's confessed to having beendiagnosed with Aspergers or at least is on
some part of that spectrum. Whatdo you think that had anything or what
(04:56):
effect that had to do with allof this? Yeah, I mean he
calls himself on the spectrum. Ithink that he definitely does not see social
interaction the same way most people do. I think there's something similar with him
in Zuckerberg in that respect, butElon lashes out a lot more. I
mean, I think he's definitely oneof those people who uses humor and uses
(05:19):
his charisma and his size to getpast that. He doesn't really understand how
social interaction works, but he does. He is aware of how hyper intelligent
he is. I mean, he'sincredibly brilliant and he knows it. And
he also is very charismatic. Imean, if you put him in front
of advertisers, they love him.But then he goes back to his room
(05:40):
and at two in the morning tweetssomething horrible and they realize they can't go
anywhere near him. So he needsto rain in the sort of toxic side.
But he really doesn't want to,and I don't think he has.
He's the richest man in the world. So unfortunately Twitter is becoming like his
yacht, his plaything that he's goingto sort of crash into the breaking Twitter.
Ben Mezerick is with us Alon Muskin the most controversial corporate takeover in
(06:03):
history. The way you describe AlonMusk, he sounds a lot like and
has a lot in common with DonaldTrump. Well, it's kind of amazing
that we're having that conversation. AndI agree that it seems like, you
know, Elon doesn't like Donald Trump. He's someone was not going to support
Donald Trump. But there are alot of similarities in terms of how he's
(06:26):
running Twitter. And how he's respondingto critics and uh and it's interesting.
It's a little scary, but Ithink that Elon, you know, has
that authoritaryan kind of mindset, especiallyat his companies. So yeah, well,
I you say it's it's it's scary, but it's scary in a dark
comedy kind of way. Yeah.I mean it is a comic story.
(06:49):
If you read the book, ThingEfterything happens that is just completely bizarre and
hilarious. Uh and and you knowit's it's the oddest and most complex takeover
you've ever seen. Smoothie bar.Huh. I count myself lucky if we
have a candy bowl in the middleof the conference room floor. I know
(07:09):
you got to you gotta get thatsmoothie bar. I would like a smoothie
bar. They used to have acoffee machine, a latte machine that would
draw pictures of Jack Dorsey, theformer CEO in the phone. That's great.
Yeah, Ben Mesick is with us. And the name of the book
is Breaking Twitter. Elon Musk andthe most controversial corporate takeover in history.
(07:30):
What what's the future of of nowX does or or does em? Yeah,
I mean he's turning it into thiseverything app, so he's kind of
walking away from his original view ofmaking it the most true place on the
Internet in this global town hall.It's really becoming the chat room of this
big other thing. And he's talkedabout putting dating on it. He's turked
(07:54):
about turning it into a payment app. He's got Ai running around it now,
so Twitter It's help is gone awayand x is taking over. Unfortunately,
what we used to have is sortof dwindling into sort of this outrage
engine where everyone should angry at eachother and it's full of misinformation while he
tries other things. I brought inLinda Yakarino to be the adult in the
(08:16):
room. She's supposed to bring backthe advertisers, but she's working with her
hands tied behind her back because Elon'sstill tweeting horrible things. That is just
making it very, very hard toanyone to take it seriously. And Ben
Masrick, I I gather when youwere researching this book, you did not
get particular access to certain things.You had to go out there and play
investigative. I mean, I hadto work around it. Elon did not
(08:37):
want to talk to me about thisbecause he was doing the Walter Isaacs and
biography and totally understandable. I workedaround him in his inner circle. I
had lots of intersources at Twitter,people who he was working with in the
room, face to face, theone on ones, and yeah, you
know, with the Facebook story,I didn't have access to Zuckerberg and networked
out. It's sometimes the main characteris not the most credible source for a
(09:00):
story, and in this case itwas. It was drawing it from all
the sources around. Well, alot of times they're too close to the
product anyway. Well they have theyhave, they have a story to sell
you, and they're gonna make yougo in that direction. And we've seen
it with you know, Michael Lewisand SBF. We see it with Walter
and Elon. If you have accessto a main character at that degree,
often you fall in love with thatmain character because that's what they're trying to
(09:24):
do. So it gets tricky,you'll fall in love with breaking Twitter.
Ben Mesrick is the author New YorkTimes best selling author of Dumb Money,
It's Alon Musk, and the mostcontroversial corporate takeover in history. Thank you
for joining us, well, thankyou for having me appreciated. Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews,the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoonsfrom five to seven. And I Heeartsmedia presentation
This is Later with Lee Matthews TheLee Matthews Podcast. More what you hear
weekday afternoons on the Drive. BenMezrick is a New York Times bestselling author.
You might remember The Accidental Billionaires,which was adapted into the screenplay for
the Social Network, also Bringing Downthe House. His newest creation, breaking
Twitter, Alon Musk, and themost controversial corporate takeover ever in history.
(00:27):
I want to start Ben Mesick withwhy was it the most controversial takeover?
Well, I mean, first ofall, it's at the center of our
global conversation. So we had aman who had built rocket shifts and automatic
cars come in through the front doorcarrying a sink like a barbarian at the
(00:48):
gate, a reluctant barbarian because hedidn't want to be there. He had
been food and forced into it andstarted trashing the place. And so because
of what Twitter is, it's immediatelythe biggest sort of loud thing in the
corporate world, and he made adisaster of it. He was forced into
it. You say, was itbuyer's remorse when he started the process.
(01:11):
Yeah, he came in with thenoble ideal that he was going to save
the world from this woke mind virus. He really believed that there needed to
be a place for freedom of speechand that Twitter was moderating too much.
But he made this incredibly large offer, which was forty four billion dollars fifty
four to twenty a share, andit was way more than the value of
Twitter. And he got pushed backimmediately from all of the Tesla faithful because
(01:37):
they realized he was going to haveto sell Tesla stock and he regretted.
He didn't want to go through withit, so he tried to get out,
and he said there were too manybots on the site, and Twitter
sued him, so he had notwanted to actually take it over anymore.
He had buyer's remorse for sure,and did Twitter wanted the money I gather
that's why they were willing to sell. I mean, it was so much.
It was such a huge valueuation thatthey did wanted to make him.
(02:01):
You know, it would have beenthe board had to make him do it,
honestly, because it would have beenagainst their own interests and not.
So they forced him in. Andthen he was so angry when he came
through the doors that he reacted intensely. He started firing everybody with cause,
trying to not pay anybody bonuses.He wanted to restructure everything rather than just
(02:22):
fixing sort of the idea that itwas being too moderated, and he makes
mistake after a mistake that things startto spiral out of control. But the
bigger story to me is that Elondidn't just break Twitter, but Twitter broke
Elon because he starts to get anincredible pushback from basically half the country,
and it's the first time in hislife where he's sensing that people don't like
(02:42):
him, and this hits him veryhard. Is Alon And we're talking to
Ben Mesurick of the New York Timesbestselling Arthur His newest book is Breaking Twitter
Elon Musk and the most controversial corporatetakeover in history. Was he like a
child having a temper tantrum. Imean there's some extent it's like that.
I mean, he's a guy wholives in memes and jokes. He's got
(03:04):
a very sort of vicious sense ofhumor, and he gets what he wants.
But it's more that he sees theentire world as a simulation that he's
the main playing character in and allof us are non playing characters, and
so it's the main character in hisown video game upset that all of the
little people are set at him.So there is something childish about it,
(03:27):
but it's really built into who heis and how he acts. It's that
he really thinks he's the most importantthing in the story and people should not
be standing up to him. We'retalking to Ben Mezrich and the new book
is breaking Twitter now. In someways people thought, okay, Twitter was
getting a bit big for its bridgesand needed somebody to knock it down a
couple notches. Yeah, I mean, it's totally fair to say that Twitter,
(03:51):
first of all, was a bloatedcompany. It had a huge number
of employees who didn't do anything.There were people taking three days a week
off. There were people who weremore upset about the smoothie bar being taken
away at work, and they wereabout anything going on Twitter, and it
was moditoring the heck out of likeright wing conservative voices. There was no
question that, you know, theNew York Post posting about Hunter Biden's laptop
has suddenly you know, moderated andsuspended. The Babylon Bee was thrown out
(04:15):
from making a joke that maybe wasa bad joke, but you know,
there were things like that going onthat I think was isolating people who had
a certain point of view. Sohe came in for probably the right reasons,
but he found very quickly that freespeech is incredibly complex and if you
just let it go, you endup chasing all the advertisers away because it's
(04:35):
there's a lot of really, there'sa lot of teenagers. The bottom line
is, if you dig deep intoany social media site, you're going to
find some teenager in his basement,and that's someone who needs to usually be
moderated. He's confessed to having beendiagnosed with Aspergers or at least is on
some part of that spectrum. Whatdo you think that had anything or what
(04:56):
effect that had to do with allof this? Yeah, I mean he
calls himself on the spectrum. Ithink that he definitely does not see social
interaction the same way most people do. I think there's something similar with him
in Zuckerberg in that respect, butElon lashes out a lot more. I
mean, I think he's definitely oneof those people who uses humor and uses
(05:19):
his charisma and his size to getpast that. He doesn't really understand how
social interaction works, but he does. He is aware of how hyper intelligent
he is. I mean, he'sincredibly brilliant and he knows it. And
he also is very charismatic. Imean, if you put him in front
of advertisers, they love him.But then he goes back to his room
(05:40):
and at two in the morning tweetssomething horrible and they realize they can't go
anywhere near him. So he needsto rain in the sort of toxic side.
But he really doesn't want to,and I don't think he has.
He's the richest man in the world. So unfortunately Twitter is becoming like his
yacht, his plaything that he's goingto sort of crash into the breaking Twitter.
Ben Mezerick is with us Alon Muskin the most controversial corporate takeover in
(06:03):
history. The way you describe AlonMusk, he sounds a lot like and
has a lot in common with DonaldTrump. Well, it's kind of amazing
that we're having that conversation. AndI agree that it seems like, you
know, Elon doesn't like Donald Trump. He's someone was not going to support
Donald Trump. But there are alot of similarities in terms of how he's
(06:26):
running Twitter. And how he's respondingto critics and uh and it's interesting.
It's a little scary, but Ithink that Elon, you know, has
that authoritaryan kind of mindset, especiallyat his companies. So yeah, well,
I you say it's it's it's scary, but it's scary in a dark
comedy kind of way. Yeah.I mean it is a comic story.
(06:49):
If you read the book, ThingEfterything happens that is just completely bizarre and
hilarious. Uh and and you knowit's it's the oddest and most complex takeover
you've ever seen. Smoothie bar.Huh. I count myself lucky if we
have a candy bowl in the middleof the conference room floor. I know
(07:09):
you got to you gotta get thatsmoothie bar. I would like a smoothie
bar. They used to have acoffee machine, a latte machine that would
draw pictures of Jack Dorsey, theformer CEO in the phone. That's great.
Yeah, Ben Mesick is with us. And the name of the book
is Breaking Twitter. Elon Musk andthe most controversial corporate takeover in history.
(07:30):
What what's the future of of nowX does or or does em? Yeah,
I mean he's turning it into thiseverything app, so he's kind of
walking away from his original view ofmaking it the most true place on the
Internet in this global town hall.It's really becoming the chat room of this
big other thing. And he's talkedabout putting dating on it. He's turked
(07:54):
about turning it into a payment app. He's got Ai running around it now,
so Twitter It's help is gone awayand x is taking over. Unfortunately,
what we used to have is sortof dwindling into sort of this outrage
engine where everyone should angry at eachother and it's full of misinformation while he
tries other things. I brought inLinda Yakarino to be the adult in the
(08:16):
room. She's supposed to bring backthe advertisers, but she's working with her
hands tied behind her back because Elon'sstill tweeting horrible things. That is just
making it very, very hard toanyone to take it seriously. And Ben
Masrick, I I gather when youwere researching this book, you did not
get particular access to certain things.You had to go out there and play
investigative. I mean, I hadto work around it. Elon did not
(08:37):
want to talk to me about thisbecause he was doing the Walter Isaacs and
biography and totally understandable. I workedaround him in his inner circle. I
had lots of intersources at Twitter,people who he was working with in the
room, face to face, theone on ones, and yeah, you
know, with the Facebook story,I didn't have access to Zuckerberg and networked
out. It's sometimes the main characteris not the most credible source for a
(09:00):
story, and in this case itwas. It was drawing it from all
the sources around. Well, alot of times they're too close to the
product anyway. Well they have theyhave, they have a story to sell
you, and they're gonna make yougo in that direction. And we've seen
it with you know, Michael Lewisand SBF. We see it with Walter
and Elon. If you have accessto a main character at that degree,
often you fall in love with thatmain character because that's what they're trying to
(09:24):
do. So it gets tricky,you'll fall in love with breaking Twitter.
Ben Mesrick is the author New YorkTimes best selling author of Dumb Money,
It's Alon Musk, and the mostcontroversial corporate takeover in history. Thank you
for joining us, well, thankyou for having me appreciated. Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews,the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoonsfrom five to seven. And I Heeartsmedia presentation
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