Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how Stuff,
Speaker 1: What's coom? Hey there everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Strickland. I am one of the
Speaker 1: two hosts of this podcast. The other host of this
Speaker 1: podcast is Lauren Vogelbaum, and that is the person speaking
Speaker 1: right now. In case you didn't figure that out, Alright, awesome,
Speaker 1: we've got that under control. So today we wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on another personality and technology. Uh you know, we
Speaker 1: did an episode not that long ago where we talked
Speaker 1: about the Internet Darling Tesla Tesla, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a guy who runs a company called Tesla. Mr.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, Yeah, Elon Musk, and uh, he's sort of
Speaker 1: he's an interesting iconic figure. I would say he's he's
Speaker 1: a wee bit like Tony Stark. Yeah, a little bit
Speaker 1: like Tony Stark, a little bit like Steve Jobs, a
Speaker 1: little bit like uh well, one Esquire article I read
Speaker 1: said that it was a bit Tony Stark and a
Speaker 1: bit Donald Trump. Okay, Yeah, and supposedly he's actually friends
Speaker 1: with the director of the current uh iron Man movies
Speaker 1: and that they sort of based that character a tiny
Speaker 1: bit on him. Interesting I have never met the man,
Speaker 1: so I am going to try my best to not
Speaker 1: make any sort of assumptions. Um I say try, because
Speaker 1: there's certain things about this man's life that I find
Speaker 1: particularly interesting, and it might be difficult to avoid editorializing
Speaker 1: because I'm an opinionated idiot, But like like like many
Speaker 1: big famous billionaires who have started really fascinating companies that
Speaker 1: you know, go into space and create fancy electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: you know, like all of those people in the world,
Speaker 1: all those with those other guys, He's a very driven,
Speaker 1: very very big personality. He's a sort of nerd rock star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's why we're doing this profile, and it's there's
Speaker 1: and there's some great articles that are out there, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you wanted me to one on Forbes. There's an Esquire
Speaker 1: profile that is phenomenal. There's some great information out there.
Speaker 1: If you really want to know about this guy's life,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you kind of an overview. And we
Speaker 1: also want to point out we're not going to dive
Speaker 1: too deeply into each of his ventures because frankly, they
Speaker 1: would each you know, Merrit their own podcast, so so
Speaker 1: maybe maybe later for all that, and I would I
Speaker 1: would really love too, because I didn't. I honestly had
Speaker 1: to keep tearing myself away from everything that SpaceX is doing.
Speaker 1: And I would love to revisit that right. And we
Speaker 1: should also point out we're recording this just a few
Speaker 1: days after another SpaceX launch. There was a Falcon nine
Speaker 1: launch vehicle that launched the Dragon spacecraft out to rendezvous
Speaker 1: with the International Space Station, which it did. It's successfully docked.
Speaker 1: It's the first private vehicle, I believe to successfully Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's done this before. This is not the first time
Speaker 1: that the Dragon spacecraft has done it, but it is.
Speaker 1: The Dragon spacecraft was the first private spacecraft to dock
Speaker 1: with the International Space To This came with the headline
Speaker 1: happy Birthday birth b r H Well and and that
Speaker 1: was that was a big deal because while the launch
Speaker 1: went went fairly well, like there wasn't anything majorly wrong
Speaker 1: with the launch, it was discovered pretty soon after the
Speaker 1: launch then not all of the systems aboard the Dragon
Speaker 1: spacecraft were working properly, and there was some question for
Speaker 1: a while as to whether or not they would be
Speaker 1: able to dock with the International Space Station. But we'll
Speaker 1: get into that or at least mention it again. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's start with his birth, the Elon Musk's birth, which
Speaker 1: was on June nineteen seventy one in pre Torria, South Africa. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the South African accent. Yeah. Yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: do it other than say South Africa. That's a be
Speaker 1: as close as I can get. So I apologize to
Speaker 1: all South Africans out there. But his father, Errol, was
Speaker 1: an engineer and his mother, May was a neutri still
Speaker 1: is a nutritionist and model. Yeah she Yeah, she's a
Speaker 1: very popular model. Actually there. I looked at a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures of her and I was like, oh, you
Speaker 1: know that lady. Yeah, she's still modeling today in fact Um.
Speaker 1: And he has siblings. He's got a brother named Kimball
Speaker 1: and a sister named Tosca. And his childhood was a
Speaker 1: little rough. I mean, for one thing, he was growing
Speaker 1: up in South Africa, which, for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: it's an area that has a history with with some
Speaker 1: big social problems and things like violence. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: apparently bullied at school quite a bit. His brother Kimball,
Speaker 1: has said that he was He got to a point
Speaker 1: where he really hated the idea of going to school.
Speaker 1: He loved learning. Elon Musk has always shown that he
Speaker 1: just he devours information right right. Well, And I think
Speaker 1: I read one thing from I think it was from
Speaker 1: his brother Kimball saying that that Elon tended to correct
Speaker 1: people factually even when he was a child, and that
Speaker 1: that maybe is what led to some of that bullying. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was one of those things where from Elon's point
Speaker 1: of view, he wasn't trying to behave in a way
Speaker 1: that was superior to other people, but rather that, oh,
Speaker 1: you made a mistake, you probably don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I will help you. But the problem is that when
Speaker 1: you help people by pointing out they make mistakes, they
Speaker 1: can get a little they might not like you. And
Speaker 1: I've done the same thing, and I've had the same
Speaker 1: thing done to me because I'm human, I make lots
Speaker 1: of mistakes, and yeah, he can get pretty irritating. And
Speaker 1: yet I still do it when to other people, And
Speaker 1: I don't know what that says about me. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so he had a kind of rough childhood at eight
Speaker 1: when he was eight years old, his well, depending upon
Speaker 1: how you read the story, because he's also a fairly
Speaker 1: private man about his own personal details. His either his
Speaker 1: father left or his mom took the kids and left,
Speaker 1: but in either case he no longer was having a
Speaker 1: day contact with his dad. Eight years old, uh and
Speaker 1: he very much wanted to get out of South Africa.
Speaker 1: When he was seventeen years old, he left South Africa
Speaker 1: for ontary O, Canada. His mother was a Canadian national
Speaker 1: by the way, so um and And the story goes
Speaker 1: that he mostly left because he was fleeing compulsory service
Speaker 1: in the South African Defense Force. Yes, and that specifically
Speaker 1: he was doing it not because he really objects to
Speaker 1: military service, but he objected to the kind of military
Speaker 1: service that they were engaging in a k A. Pressing
Speaker 1: black people right. Yes, that was his His stance on
Speaker 1: the military has been that he's pro military when it
Speaker 1: is quote in the service of good um And, so
Speaker 1: he you know, you could draw the conclusion that he
Speaker 1: saw South Africa's military as being uh not aligned with
Speaker 1: that and so he did not want to participate. Also,
Speaker 1: I have read that he had aspirations to become an
Speaker 1: American citizen early early on. He really wanted to be
Speaker 1: an American, but he also thought that it would be
Speaker 1: easier to become an American if he first went to Canada. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he leaves for Ontario. Yeah, I was. I was to say,
Speaker 1: I wonder if if part of part of that ambition
Speaker 1: to be an American was was he was a very
Speaker 1: enterprising child. He had written a code for a video
Speaker 1: game called a blast Star. I believe that he sold
Speaker 1: to a computer mag for five hundred bucks, which isn't
Speaker 1: bad when you say twelve. Yeah, yeah, he he was,
Speaker 1: and that was one of those things. He was immediately
Speaker 1: interested in computers. He had begged his family to get
Speaker 1: a computer essentially as soon as personal computers became a thing,
Speaker 1: and uh and yeah, he just soaked it up. It
Speaker 1: was one of those things that he really had an
Speaker 1: affinity for. He tried to open an arcade I read
Speaker 1: with with his brother when he was thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 1: that they abandoned the plans when they realized that they
Speaker 1: would have to get an adult signature to obtain a
Speaker 1: permit to open this arcade, so they wound up just
Speaker 1: making homemade chocolate and selling it to their classmates instead. Yeah. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the story I read says that he and his brother,
Speaker 1: without any permission on the part of their parents, decided
Speaker 1: to have this plan to make an arcade. Then they
Speaker 1: ran into the problem that they would require this adult
Speaker 1: signature and realized that this was not going to work out,
Speaker 1: and so essentially they you know, they hit a bureaucratic obstacle.
Speaker 1: And then their parents were furious when they found out
Speaker 1: that these two kids that just actually, I guess mom
Speaker 1: mainly was furious that these these kids had decided to
Speaker 1: just often started a business, started business, you know, on
Speaker 1: their own, without any adult supervision. Now granted, of course
Speaker 1: it didn't go very far in that case, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it shows that Musk was not really uh interested in
Speaker 1: having to get permission to do things, which I thought
Speaker 1: was a running theme in his life. Absolutely. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went to school. Uh, well, he had relatives in
Speaker 1: Canada because his mom was from Canada. So he goes
Speaker 1: over to Canada and he enrolls in school in Queen's University,
Speaker 1: and uh he starts studying physics there. Uh. But then
Speaker 1: he ends up transferring as well to the University of
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and uh gets degrees in uh, in physics and
Speaker 1: in business. He actually gets two different bachelor's degrees. Here's
Speaker 1: a quote from him. My areas of interest was cross disciplinary,
Speaker 1: focused on the physics of high energy density capacitors, which
Speaker 1: is a mixture of quantum physics and materials science plus
Speaker 1: business um. While he was in college, he met a
Speaker 1: young lady. Actually this would be back in Queen's University. Uh,
Speaker 1: he would eventually marry her. That young lady's name was
Speaker 1: Justine J. Wilson. So we'll talk about her in a
Speaker 1: couple of years. I believe I believe she's a writer
Speaker 1: or novelist. I was going to yes, yes, and also
Speaker 1: a blogger as well, but yes, a novelist and uh,
Speaker 1: very interesting writer. I've I've read some of her work
Speaker 1: and she turns a good phrase. I will say I
Speaker 1: enjoyed reading what she had to write. So he went
Speaker 1: to school, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with the
Speaker 1: degrees in physics and business, and he began to work
Speaker 1: on ultra capacitors at Pinnacle Research in Silicon Valley. And
Speaker 1: essentially from why I understand, he was doing this so
Speaker 1: that he could understand their potential as an energy storage
Speaker 1: mechanism for electric vehicles, because even at that time he
Speaker 1: was already interested in the idea of electric vehicles. So
Speaker 1: he was going to go to Stanford. Yeah. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was accepted to Stanford for a grad degree. He dropped
Speaker 1: out from what I read after two days on campus.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, he he was he had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: co found a company, and the problem was that he
Speaker 1: did not have the time to devote both to graduate
Speaker 1: studies and to launch this this company at the same time.
Speaker 1: And he asked to Stanford if he could get a
Speaker 1: deferral for a quarter. They were on the quarter system,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to get one quarter deferral because he said,
Speaker 1: he realized that startup companies have a habit of not
Speaker 1: always succeeding. And he thought, Okay, if the company succeeds,
Speaker 1: I'm in great shape. But more likely than not, that
Speaker 1: company is not gonna work out. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it'll maybe it's a time, So maybe I'll just ask
Speaker 1: for a deferral, and that way I can really concentrate
Speaker 1: on this company for one quarter worth of time and
Speaker 1: then go back to school. He did not get that deferral,
Speaker 1: so really it was an all or nothing. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, land the ships on the shores of America
Speaker 1: and burned them. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, that's
Speaker 1: I think that's the same year that that Netscape had
Speaker 1: just quintumpled in value the day that it went public,
Speaker 1: and that was launched by someone who was even younger
Speaker 1: than him at the time, and that's you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Internet man, the Internet. So the company he founded
Speaker 1: or co founded back was called Zip two and it
Speaker 1: served as a platform for delivering ads and directories on
Speaker 1: the Internet. So he co founds this company, he starts
Speaker 1: building it up, and it's doing really well. It starts
Speaker 1: to increase in value year over year, and then and um,
Speaker 1: he ends up marrying his college sweetheart, Justine J. Wilson.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. He marries her in two thousand and
Speaker 1: then he ends up while he's engaged to her, Actually,
Speaker 1: he ends up selling zip too to Compact. They bought
Speaker 1: the company for three hundred and seven million dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: and that was the biggest sum paid for an Internet
Speaker 1: company ever at the time, and he got twenty two
Speaker 1: million of that. Yeah, so he was twenty years old
Speaker 1: when that happened, So he became a millionaire overnight. Justine
Speaker 1: was was in a relationship with him at this time.
Speaker 1: She actually has written about that in one of the
Speaker 1: articles which I'll cite a little bit later. Um, and
Speaker 1: so that was a phenomenal time, I mean, like its transformative.
Speaker 1: He ended up they moved out of this little apartment
Speaker 1: into a nice house, and he got a really really
Speaker 1: fancy car, uh, a McLaren F one, which is the
Speaker 1: fastest production model car made. So it had the highest
Speaker 1: top speed of any production model car. So he so
Speaker 1: he literally bought the fastest that he could possibly going
Speaker 1: doors too. Just like my favorite car in the world,
Speaker 1: the DeLorean, uh favorite for all the nostalgic reasons. Obviously
Speaker 1: it's of course performance. It's not that great of a car.
Speaker 1: I did a full episode about that. So we do
Speaker 1: have a delirian episode of tech stuff way back in
Speaker 1: the archives if you really want to listen to it.
Speaker 1: But he then also founded a company that would eventually
Speaker 1: be called PayPal. He co founded originally it was it
Speaker 1: was called the company that he founded was x dot com.
Speaker 1: It was an online financial services thing that enabled people
Speaker 1: to make payments first first off by via email. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was again a very disruptive business because
Speaker 1: it was an idea of you know, there was this
Speaker 1: big notion of doing huge amounts of business online like
Speaker 1: the Internet, held limitless possibility when it came to uh
Speaker 1: conducting businesses. But one of the issue was how do
Speaker 1: you process payments? How do you create a payment system,
Speaker 1: especially when you're talking about people connecting with other people
Speaker 1: and wanting to transfer payments over the Internet without having
Speaker 1: a big company in between, like right, and and Musk
Speaker 1: said he'd a quote from him is that banks are
Speaker 1: terrible at innovation, and financial services is a huge sector.
Speaker 1: So I thought, now there should be something there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he did that. He the company acquired actually kind
Speaker 1: of merged with another company called Confinity, and together they
Speaker 1: became PayPal. Uh. And uh that was where you had
Speaker 1: the online point of sale functionality that was so important
Speaker 1: for those those early days. I mean it really it
Speaker 1: meant that people who were selling things uh personally could
Speaker 1: get paid for it without having to go through some
Speaker 1: other retailer to send their stuff to them and then
Speaker 1: get a cut of it. Uh, even if you're providing
Speaker 1: a service. You know, for example, I I do some
Speaker 1: freelance editing, and so if I want to do that
Speaker 1: and I also want to get paid for it then
Speaker 1: which I do. Yeah. Well, and then uh that that
Speaker 1: company was bought by a little company called eBay, and
Speaker 1: at the time, Musk was the chief product officer and
Speaker 1: was also the largest shareholder in PayPal and eBay paid
Speaker 1: them at one point five billion dollars. Yeah, so at
Speaker 1: this point Musk goes from being rich to whoa is
Speaker 1: that the official term? Scientific? Yeah, it was two thousand
Speaker 1: two when eBay bought the company for one point five billions,
Speaker 1: So he's been married for two years at that point. Uh.
Speaker 1: He experienced some tragedy in his life at this time
Speaker 1: as well. He and his wife. Uh He and Justine
Speaker 1: had their first son, and their first son, at ten
Speaker 1: weeks old, passed away from sudden infant death, and it
Speaker 1: was it was obviously devastating for Justine. She says in
Speaker 1: an article that she wrote for Marie Claire that, uh
Speaker 1: Ellen really internalizes things like loss, and so there wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of outward emotion. Now, I am sure Mr
Speaker 1: Musk suffered unimaginable loss at this but but there wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of outward sign of that. Justina, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was very expressive of her grief as as
Speaker 1: is understandable. But they ended up pursuing some in vitro
Speaker 1: fertilization techniques so that they could have another child, and
Speaker 1: they they had five of them. They end up with
Speaker 1: one set of twins and one set of triplets, all boys,
Speaker 1: so all sons. Uh. And so it's a pretty amazing thing.
Speaker 1: And and we'll get more into his family in a
Speaker 1: little bit. It was around this time as well, after
Speaker 1: he was seeing this amazing amount of success and had
Speaker 1: reaped in quite a bit of money from those early ventures,
Speaker 1: that he first started talking about the idea of privatized
Speaker 1: space exploration, and that in fact, he started chatting about
Speaker 1: this with a friend of his and they were they
Speaker 1: were just talking about why was it so expensive to
Speaker 1: go out in space? And how expensive could it be?
Speaker 1: And could a private company do this? I mean, is it?
Speaker 1: These were these were new conversations. Like you know, before
Speaker 1: it was essentially governments that were sending up rockets. Right.
Speaker 1: But but but around this time was when you know,
Speaker 1: everyone was terribly losing funding. Yeah, they were having you know,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk had had this fascination with space exploration. Some
Speaker 1: might call it an obsession with space exploration and the
Speaker 1: idea of eventually colonizing other planets or maybe a moon
Speaker 1: or something, Mars being one of those destinations that he's
Speaker 1: absolutely fixated upon. And so it began this this really
Speaker 1: passionate discussion about well, if no one else can do it,
Speaker 1: why couldn't private individuals do it? And Uh, the first
Speaker 1: company that he made to try and go after this
Speaker 1: goal was called Life to Mars. Life to Mars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was an idea that he had where the the
Speaker 1: goal would be to send a rocket with a payload
Speaker 1: that has some sort of life form on it, and
Speaker 1: the the life form was a matter of debate. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a point where it was going to be
Speaker 1: a mouse, and then there was a point where it
Speaker 1: was just going to be a plant. But the idea
Speaker 1: would be to send this thing to Mars as kind
Speaker 1: of an unmanned but life bearing mission as a step
Speaker 1: toward the eventual landing on and possible colonization of Mars
Speaker 1: by human beings. Yeah, he's he said that that this
Speaker 1: is a direct quote. I'd put the extension of life
Speaker 1: to another planet slightly above the transition from life in
Speaker 1: the oceans to life on land. Yeah. He also said,
Speaker 1: I've always thought that space is important to the future
Speaker 1: of humanity. I think it's important that we one day
Speaker 1: become a spacefaring nation, and I just didn't see that
Speaker 1: happening by itself. I just didn't see that from Boeing
Speaker 1: or Lockheed or big aerospace companies. So that's why I
Speaker 1: started SpaceX. So if you heard about SpaceX, I that's
Speaker 1: that's the company that, again Musk was behind. And uh,
Speaker 1: the early days of SpaceX we're kind of interesting because
Speaker 1: at first he was thinking, you know, I got a
Speaker 1: lot of money because because eBay bought my stuff, uh
Speaker 1: and not on an auction. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: a company I made, So I'm gonna take this here
Speaker 1: money and I'm gonna buy myself some rockets. And that
Speaker 1: was originally his plan was that he was gonna buy rockets.
Speaker 1: He wasn't he wasn't making a company to build stuff.
Speaker 1: He wanted to buy things. But then he realized that
Speaker 1: that really, you know, those other rockets were kind of crap.
Speaker 1: Well beyond that, it was the people that were crap. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is according to the Esquire article and
Speaker 1: uh so full disclosure. This is just based upon what
Speaker 1: Musk's experiences were. So Musk goes to Russia because Russia,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, had a pretty big supply of
Speaker 1: intercontinental listic missiles on its hands that no longer really
Speaker 1: needed anything for any reason. And originally it looked like
Speaker 1: he would be able to purchase said missiles at seven
Speaker 1: million dollars a pop. So he thought, oh, that's reasonable
Speaker 1: by a BYBM, So I'll use that as my launch
Speaker 1: vehicle for for whatever you know, spacecraft I design. So um.
Speaker 1: The story in Esquire tells tales of corruption and bribery
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of vodka and uh and I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding it really does. I mean, when we read this,
Speaker 1: it's both entertaining and kind of infuriating. But essentially, Musk
Speaker 1: felt like he was getting jerked around by the Russian
Speaker 1: officials that he was dealing with, that that they would
Speaker 1: quote him one price, and when he was finally ready
Speaker 1: to move on it, that price would suddenly triple. So
Speaker 1: saying oh no, no, no, not twenty one million for
Speaker 1: three of them, twenty one million for one. And so
Speaker 1: at that point that's it. I'm building my own and
Speaker 1: he left. So it's like, so he decided at that
Speaker 1: point that's space X was going to manufacture its own rockets,
Speaker 1: and he started looking around for people who would help
Speaker 1: him do that. One of those was a guy named
Speaker 1: Thomas Mueller, who was an engineer, part of a group
Speaker 1: of people who were really kind of rocket enthusiasts. They
Speaker 1: called themselves the Reaction Research Society. Only Mueller was not
Speaker 1: like an amateur rocket scientist. He was an engineer with
Speaker 1: Northrop Grumman, so he actually had a pedigree in rocket
Speaker 1: and rocket science. Like when you say it's not rocket science,
Speaker 1: he says, no, it totally is. Rocket science is what
Speaker 1: I do rocket scientists. Um. But he he was the
Speaker 1: one that must contacted to be the guy to design
Speaker 1: the engine that he wanted to propel spacecraft into the stars. Um,
Speaker 1: not literally into the stars, but because that would be
Speaker 1: very that would be low, low cost efficiency for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't, you know, you don't get any reusability once
Speaker 1: you shoot it into the stars. And actually he thought
Speaker 1: that the reusability thing, and I think he still does
Speaker 1: really argue that reusability is key to making space travel
Speaker 1: economic because you know, to to use these things one
Speaker 1: time and then have to build a new one is
Speaker 1: not efficient at all. Yeah. Yeah, And and what he's
Speaker 1: really arguing with SpaceX of about performance versus reliability and
Speaker 1: says that what he's looking for is really reliability. He
Speaker 1: he said that he aspires for SpaceX to be the
Speaker 1: Southwest Airlines of space. Interesting. So he Musk was personally
Speaker 1: involved in the design of two different launch vehicles that
Speaker 1: SpaceX developed. First was called the Falcon one and the
Speaker 1: second was the Falcon nine. And he was also instrumental
Speaker 1: in the design of the spacecraft, which they called Dragon,
Speaker 1: whereas Mueller designed the engine which was called Merlin. Now, um, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about SpaceX some more
Speaker 1: in a second, but before we get into that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick moment to thank our sponsor Alright, getting
Speaker 1: back into space Tex. So, the early days of SpaceX
Speaker 1: did not go so well for for Mr Musk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had they had a bunch of early failures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've got to understand, like this, this whole process
Speaker 1: of him searching out the possible sources for rockets, deciding
Speaker 1: to go with building rockets on his own, having to
Speaker 1: work with various vendors for the various parts that he
Speaker 1: needed to build the rockets, and the stories that about
Speaker 1: him dealing with vendors are kind of like carbon copies
Speaker 1: of his experience with the Russians in the vodka, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but eitherwise a little bit. In fact, Esquire says the
Speaker 1: exact same thing, like it's not as much vodka, but
Speaker 1: otherwise very similar in the sense that he would get
Speaker 1: quoted one price and then end up being told another
Speaker 1: when it was time to actually deliver, and that his
Speaker 1: decision was, well, heck, I will find a way to
Speaker 1: do that on my own. He eventually started running into
Speaker 1: some hard obstacles they couldn't easily get around, like where
Speaker 1: do you get your aluminum if they tell you that
Speaker 1: the price has gone up? But anyway, he was having
Speaker 1: to sink a lot of his money into this, so
Speaker 1: the success of this venture could have very much determined
Speaker 1: whether or not he would have maintained his status as
Speaker 1: internet billionaire or gone bankrupt. Right because he was funding
Speaker 1: most of this himself. It wasn't you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: he did have some money from investors at that time.
Speaker 1: He had he had a there's like a hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars of investment money there was, And then later on
Speaker 1: NASA would end up giving a huge contract. But in
Speaker 1: those early days, nothing was certain and and three well
Speaker 1: publicized failures launch failures did not help the Yeah, the
Speaker 1: first one failed twenty nine seconds after lift off, the
Speaker 1: main engine caught fire. Yeah. Yeah, and uh and apparently
Speaker 1: the the ride home with Musk and Mueller in the
Speaker 1: same car was intense. Yeah, like, why did your engine
Speaker 1: catch fire like that? That is that is a level
Speaker 1: of intensity that I've very rarely encountered in the workplace.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I gotta say, I've never been
Speaker 1: in a car that I think would have had that
Speaker 1: much tension in it. I mean, there's there's one thing
Speaker 1: that comes to like, you should have turned back there
Speaker 1: that level of tension to your engine caught fire, and
Speaker 1: my billion dollar industry may crumble as a result. That
Speaker 1: that's a whole different level. Yeah. But then the second
Speaker 1: launch also suffered a failure, and the third launch was
Speaker 1: particularly costly because the the UM payload included stuff from
Speaker 1: NASA and the Department of Defense, as well as the
Speaker 1: ashes of one James Dowon, better known to some as
Speaker 1: Scotty from Star Trek yes literally irreplaceable, Yeah, as someone
Speaker 1: that I had actually had the pleasure of meeting in person.
Speaker 1: Um Yeah, full disclosure, had breakfast with the man very
Speaker 1: charming and entertaining guy that was at a science fiction
Speaker 1: convention because my dad's a science fiction author. So yeah,
Speaker 1: when I heard about that failure, I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 1: that's just so that's personally that's very sad. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean all of these, of course are sad for the
Speaker 1: whole industry of private space exploration. Right, of course, it
Speaker 1: was putting all of that at risk. In fact, there
Speaker 1: were people who were already saying, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: why there isn't private space exploration. It's too hard, it's
Speaker 1: too hard, it's impossible. Yeah, you just can't get the
Speaker 1: money and the right Yeah. So it was getting to
Speaker 1: the point where this the fourth attempt was was pivotal.
Speaker 1: It was sort of a make or break situation. If
Speaker 1: the if the launch vehicle did not performed successfully, it
Speaker 1: might have meant that Elon Musk would have gone bankrupt.
Speaker 1: But it did successfully launch, so then, uh, that was
Speaker 1: pretty much the beginning of the real space X story.
Speaker 1: Two thousand eight, NASA awarded space x a one point
Speaker 1: six billion dollar contract for twelve cargo flights to and
Speaker 1: from the International Space Station. So essentially at that point,
Speaker 1: SpaceX becomes the replacement for the Space Shuttle program. So
Speaker 1: that that ended up being discontinued. So it was the
Speaker 1: first private company to launch a private spacecraft that later
Speaker 1: docked with the International Space Station, and that that first
Speaker 1: uh successful docking was on May in a sense repeated that,
Speaker 1: so it's slowly getting to its way of those twelve
Speaker 1: cargo flights, but you know, it does take time between
Speaker 1: launches for this to happen. And the most recent one,
Speaker 1: who was March one, I guess because we were originally
Speaker 1: going to record this episode on March first, and then
Speaker 1: we thought maybe we should wait and find out if
Speaker 1: that launch is successful and then we can talk about
Speaker 1: it and much yea, much better than sitting there and
Speaker 1: going like, well, it's going on right this very like
Speaker 1: at the moment we're recording this, but as by the
Speaker 1: time you listen to it, it has already either happened
Speaker 1: or spectacularly not happened. As it turned out, the launch
Speaker 1: did go off pretty much without a hitch until it
Speaker 1: became apparent that a couple of the thrusters on the
Speaker 1: Dragon spacecraft we're not responding properly, and there was some
Speaker 1: concern that there wasn't enough control for it to dock
Speaker 1: successfully with the International Space Station. But fortunately for everyone involved.
Speaker 1: It worked. It worked well enough for them to be
Speaker 1: able to dock. So um, it definitely again brought more
Speaker 1: scrutiny to space X and probably to those kind of
Speaker 1: statements about you know how safe versus reliable kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, this idea that we really need this to
Speaker 1: be uh as as close to um too perfect as possible,
Speaker 1: especially once we get to the point where real live
Speaker 1: human beings. But at a certain point, performance is in
Speaker 1: fact a measure of reliability and so yeah, so uh
Speaker 1: in SpaceX began to work on spacecraft to actually carry
Speaker 1: astronauts and that was part of an ANASA award, and
Speaker 1: their first man flights are expected sometime in Yeah. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously that performance reliability issue needs to be
Speaker 1: worked out for that, because when you're talking about human life,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's you know, the NASA has had its
Speaker 1: own share of tragedies as far as the space program
Speaker 1: is concerned, and no one wants to see a repeat
Speaker 1: of that, certainly not so. So all of this started
Speaker 1: off when U the Dragon was actually also the first
Speaker 1: privately owned ship to return safely from Earth's orbit, which
Speaker 1: again is a big thing that must go Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: and again very important because you want that reusability. You
Speaker 1: want to be able to reuse as much as you can. UH.
Speaker 1: And you know, ideally he Musk wants to be able
Speaker 1: to reuse the rockets themselves, not just the spacecraft, and
Speaker 1: spacecraft is important, but to be able to reuse the
Speaker 1: rockets would mean a dramatic decrease in the cost of production.
Speaker 1: Uh And Forbes had an interesting thing. They said that
Speaker 1: Musk is the space equivalent of a nineteenth century railroad
Speaker 1: tycoon poised to make a fortune in private space industry,
Speaker 1: because you know, when when you're the main game out there.
Speaker 1: And I've seen a lot of criticisms directed towards ace X,
Speaker 1: saying that it's not really a private space company because
Speaker 1: it's funded by NASA. Yeah, because NASA is their chief client, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like, really from their perspective, their point is
Speaker 1: saying that SpaceX is really just a different contractor, so
Speaker 1: that instead of NASA paying one group of contractors like
Speaker 1: Lockheed and Boeing, it's now paying a different contractor, SpaceX,
Speaker 1: and so that really the companies have changed, but the
Speaker 1: game is the same now. Musk, for his part, denies that.
Speaker 1: He says that No, No, you're looking at this far
Speaker 1: too narrow a field. Yes, right now, NASA is our
Speaker 1: main client, but that's not how this is going to
Speaker 1: be in the future. Right, That's only because NASA is
Speaker 1: the only the only company that really has a company,
Speaker 1: the only organization that has the amount of dollars to
Speaker 1: toss it kind of thing. Right, It's like, the reason
Speaker 1: this NASA is my customers because it's the only customer
Speaker 1: to have right now. That's kind of the point that
Speaker 1: that Musk is making, But that in the future his
Speaker 1: customers will be anyone who has the you know, whatever
Speaker 1: the base prices for you to take a rye it
Speaker 1: up to Mars or whatever. Um. So Meanwhile, while all
Speaker 1: this SpaceX stuff is going on, other stuff is going
Speaker 1: on in his life. In two thousand and eight, he
Speaker 1: filed for divorce from Justine Musk, and she does keep
Speaker 1: that surname. She's known as Justine Musk. And then six
Speaker 1: weeks six weeks later, six weeks after he falls for divorce,
Speaker 1: he sends a text message to her that says that
Speaker 1: he's engaged to British actress to Lula Riley. I think
Speaker 1: it was twenty three at the time. And he was
Speaker 1: maybe what was that like thirty seven something around there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then Justine ended up writing up her experiences with
Speaker 1: the divorce for Marie Claire I mentioned earlier, Um, it's
Speaker 1: a really it's a really oh snap kind of article.
Speaker 1: If you guys enjoyed that sort of thing, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's heartbreaking to read too. I mean you you hear
Speaker 1: like apparently at their wedding, in the first dance he
Speaker 1: said to her like, I am the alpha in this relationship,
Speaker 1: and she just kind of shrugged it off at the time,
Speaker 1: not realizing that he meant it. He apparently meant it, uh,
Speaker 1: and that, um, you know, she has her own perspective obviously,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the perspective that article is written in,
Speaker 1: of course. And again, Musk is a very private person
Speaker 1: about about his own life. And so even though even
Speaker 1: when he's enjoying enormous attention from the press, which he
Speaker 1: does frequently, he's he's pretty standoffish about these personal details.
Speaker 1: So we don't really have his perspective exactly. So we
Speaker 1: have one side of the story, but it's it's a
Speaker 1: pretty eye opening and grim story. I mean, here's one
Speaker 1: quote from her Marie Claire article. Elon's judgment overruled mine,
Speaker 1: and he was constantly remarking on the ways he found
Speaker 1: me lacking. I am your wife, I told him repeatedly,
Speaker 1: not your employee. If you were my employee, he said,
Speaker 1: just as often I would fire you. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 1: not the happy household that you would hope. And apparently, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they share joint custody of their sons, and
Speaker 1: apparently she deals with his assistant when it comes to
Speaker 1: anything that deals with their children. Yeah, so apparently she hasn't.
Speaker 1: She has next to no contact with him. She has, though,
Speaker 1: struck up a friendship with Telula Riley. Yeah, apparently the
Speaker 1: two women get along very well, and she she had
Speaker 1: written to her. This is paraphrasing. I don't have the
Speaker 1: quote in front of me, but she wrote to her
Speaker 1: saying that I hope that we can be like a
Speaker 1: French film where the two women in a man's life
Speaker 1: can be perfect friends with each other and no one's
Speaker 1: the bad guy, so not like an American film where
Speaker 1: you have one person who's clearly the good guy and
Speaker 1: one person who's clearly the the the buttress, the home
Speaker 1: wrecker or whatever. And Tellula Robec said let's do as
Speaker 1: the French do, So it was kind of kind of
Speaker 1: cute and sweet. We'll talk more about Telula in a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh, but uh, yeah, there was a there's
Speaker 1: a lot in that that article, the Marie Claire article
Speaker 1: that that is very personally revealing, both for Justine and
Speaker 1: for Elon. And if you are interested more in that
Speaker 1: story and sort of the personal side of Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. It's a great read. You do
Speaker 1: see that just he's a very good writer, but it
Speaker 1: is heartbreaking. Well, we'll toss out a couple of links
Speaker 1: on our social media. Yeah. Now back to Elon Muskin
Speaker 1: and his professional life. He he's involved in a couple
Speaker 1: of other companies besides SpaceX. One of them is called
Speaker 1: solar City. He's the chairman of solar City and that's
Speaker 1: a company obviously that's very concerned with solar power. He
Speaker 1: provides strategic direction for the company, and he conceived this
Speaker 1: company to help combat global warming and minimize air pollution. Right.
Speaker 1: What he did was combined several solar power companies, I believe,
Speaker 1: starting in California, but they've spread out across the country
Speaker 1: um to offer solar panel installation on the cheap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know that. At a recent TED talk, he
Speaker 1: said that within twenty years he would expect solar power
Speaker 1: to become a primary source of energy, which is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Uh, if you know anything about solar power,
Speaker 1: it's not the most efficient, efficient way of generating energy.
Speaker 1: So in order for that to happen, not only will
Speaker 1: we need to create huge solar farms to harness this energy,
Speaker 1: but we'll have to improve efficiency on a pretty grand
Speaker 1: scale to make it useful. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, just to just to get people in the door.
Speaker 1: If if what you're spending on it costs more than yeah,
Speaker 1: it's never going to catch on, right exactly. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and there are other elements literally that are a concern,
Speaker 1: like uh, like like rare earth minerals that are Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's there's a lot of issues that need to
Speaker 1: be worked out. But he's he's very much a well,
Speaker 1: at least he's an evangelist for solar power. Whether or
Speaker 1: not his vision becomes reality remains to be seen, but
Speaker 1: he's definitely passionate about it. And another one of those
Speaker 1: great quotes from from him is that he wants to
Speaker 1: do for solar energy what Del did for computers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty that's a pretty good quote. He's also he's
Speaker 1: known for generating quotes like that, No, I love it.
Speaker 1: Lots of lots of buzzwords and buzz phrases and very punchy,
Speaker 1: very twitter iff. Yeah, and he does. He does tweet
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So in July July, suppose I do
Speaker 1: as my southern coming out. In July eleven, he donated
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty thousand dollars via his philanthropic Musk Foundation,
Speaker 1: which is a charitable organization, not some place where they
Speaker 1: keep a lot of musk, which is what it's what
Speaker 1: I first thought when I read it. But they offered
Speaker 1: they offered grants for research and educational endeavors. Right, but yes,
Speaker 1: And through that foundation he donated two or fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to fund a solar power project in the city
Speaker 1: of so Much, Japan, which was which is one of
Speaker 1: the locations that it's hit by the tsunami, yes, the
Speaker 1: earthquake and tsunami, and in fact was also in the
Speaker 1: pathway of the fallout from the nuclear power plant. So
Speaker 1: this was sort of a way that he saw of
Speaker 1: alleviating some of the distress in that area and to
Speaker 1: help with the energy problems that that area was encountering. Um.
Speaker 1: And then of course we get to the other company
Speaker 1: he's known for, probably one of the you know, along
Speaker 1: with SpaceX. I would say that this is the most
Speaker 1: visible of all of his second perhaps too SpaceX, and
Speaker 1: and that you know, it's not launching things into space,
Speaker 1: which carries with it a necessary amount of journalism. But yes,
Speaker 1: Tesla Motors. Yeah, so, Tesla Motors known for creating electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: and not just electric vehicles. The very the very first one,
Speaker 1: the Tesla Roadster, was known as like the super sexy
Speaker 1: sports car electric vehicles and and and Musk argues with
Speaker 1: the with the concept that they're an electric car company.
Speaker 1: He said that they're luxury car company that happens to
Speaker 1: make electric vehicles. And I think that first one was
Speaker 1: what a hundred thousand dollars, uh, baby, there was would
Speaker 1: have something. You know, I don't have the figure in
Speaker 1: front of me. It seems to me like that might
Speaker 1: even be on the low end, but and it was
Speaker 1: probably right around there, but yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: known as being the super sexy, sleek, fast, silent car
Speaker 1: that that was the thing that a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, really focused on was not only was this
Speaker 1: thing fast, but it was quiet, so it wasn't like
Speaker 1: other you know, supercharged cars that have these incredibly powerful
Speaker 1: engines in them, and had this very quite um and
Speaker 1: and you know, the whole Tesla story again, we'll probably
Speaker 1: do a full podcast on it someday, the Tesla Motors,
Speaker 1: not Nicholas Tessel. You already did that one, um all.
Speaker 1: But another little thing to keep in mind about Elon
Speaker 1: muskis if he buys your company, that doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: you're in good shape. Because he invested in Tesla in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, then he took control of the board
Speaker 1: of directors, and in two thousand seven he deposed the
Speaker 1: founder of the company, Martin Eberhard. So yeah, he said
Speaker 1: I like this, I want it, and now, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's us paraphrasing editorializing. For a while there, he was
Speaker 1: looking for I think someone to take over as the
Speaker 1: CEO and uh and and couldn't couldn't find anyone. Well,
Speaker 1: there there was a time where he had a different
Speaker 1: CEO in place, Okay, but there were issues between what
Speaker 1: Tesla was promising Tesla Motors was promising and what they
Speaker 1: could deliver. Essentially, they were getting they were getting orders
Speaker 1: for Tesla roadsters, and they were having trouble meeting the
Speaker 1: demand that they were and it was a limited demand.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying like thousands of people were by it, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it was still difficult for the company to
Speaker 1: meet that demand. And as a result, the company was
Speaker 1: starting to get into some financial trouble and so as
Speaker 1: a response to that, Musk began to do things like
Speaker 1: layoff employees and he even ended up firing the CEO
Speaker 1: he had hired to replace the former CEO, and then
Speaker 1: he assumed the role of CEO. And it was all
Speaker 1: in an effort, you know, from Musk's point of view,
Speaker 1: I assume, to keep the company alive. UM. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the roadster that they developed. They developed some
Speaker 1: other vehicles as well, including an suv and the Models
Speaker 1: which was the pre first world's first premium electrics sedan,
Speaker 1: the Model X was the suv minivan and UM and
Speaker 1: he's guiding the development of that, yeah, so he he
Speaker 1: definitely is still very much in uh involved in that. Recently,
Speaker 1: there's been a bit of a some controversy. The Tesla
Speaker 1: Roadster has been the victim of some poor press, as
Speaker 1: has the the the models, and there's some dispute about
Speaker 1: how accurate that was in fact outright indignation on the
Speaker 1: part of Musk. Well, it was. It was a It
Speaker 1: was a New York Times reporter. That was the most recent.
Speaker 1: Before that, there was an episode of Top Gear where
Speaker 1: they drove a Tesla Roadster and then showed people pushing
Speaker 1: the roadster back to the studio and then uh Elon
Speaker 1: Musk said, I called shenanigans on this because, um, all
Speaker 1: the data from the car shows that there was plenty
Speaker 1: of energy for it to get back to where it was.
Speaker 1: They were just doing this for the purposes, for the
Speaker 1: purposes of showing, like what happens when your electric car
Speaker 1: and solve juice. I don't know what happens when your
Speaker 1: car runs out of gas. Maybe you should watch your
Speaker 1: charge on it and make sure that you don't, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean that. That was one of the goals
Speaker 1: of Tesla Motors was to create an electric vehicle that
Speaker 1: could run on a full charge about as far as
Speaker 1: a comparable car would on a full tank of gasoline.
Speaker 1: You know, to get that as close as possible, because
Speaker 1: I mean that's clearly a big concern that people have
Speaker 1: with electric cars is the idea that you would run
Speaker 1: out of juice halfway back from going out and then
Speaker 1: do you know, Yeah, and since you don't have a
Speaker 1: you don't have an electric car station every you know,
Speaker 1: two miles like you do a gas station, right, what
Speaker 1: do you do? And and so this was sort of
Speaker 1: playing on those fears, and Tesla was like Shenanigan. There
Speaker 1: was plenty of juice in that. I mean, I understand
Speaker 1: what your your concerns are, but we are meeting those
Speaker 1: concerns by building up these charging stations, particularly in the
Speaker 1: United States. Well, the New York Times piece that Lauren
Speaker 1: referred to was an article that also went into detail
Speaker 1: about the Tesla. I think this the Models. That was
Speaker 1: like a specific um. Yes, the Tesla Models test drive,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was John M. Broder who wrote the
Speaker 1: piece and wrote that it did not perform up to
Speaker 1: standards and that in fact, the car died on part
Speaker 1: of one of the legs of the journey and it
Speaker 1: had been too Yeah, there's a photo of it getting
Speaker 1: up onto a flat that. Yeah. And then Elon Musk
Speaker 1: again said Shenanigans park too, and then pulled all the
Speaker 1: data off the car and showed earlier. You know, he
Speaker 1: wrote a blog post that he produced this data and
Speaker 1: showed it off to everybody. Whether or not the data
Speaker 1: is accurate, I can't say, but it was from his
Speaker 1: his blog post, he said, this guy did not charge
Speaker 1: the car as long as it needed to be charged.
Speaker 1: He was told how long by the car, like you
Speaker 1: need to charge this much in order to go that far,
Speaker 1: and then he stopped charging prematurely. That he still went
Speaker 1: further than what was projected. So the car outperformed what
Speaker 1: it should have been able to do, but it still
Speaker 1: wasn't able to get through the full leg of the
Speaker 1: journey because it had not been charged all the way.
Speaker 1: And that he was doing things like driving around in
Speaker 1: circles in a parking lot right right, and and generally
Speaker 1: not um not adhering to the best practices. I mean,
Speaker 1: because electric cars will tell you everything about you know,
Speaker 1: you can really micromanage how you're using it synergy, and
Speaker 1: he was not. He was not doing that thing. That's
Speaker 1: that's what Elon Musk says. Because again we don't have
Speaker 1: the full story here. Mark Margaret Sullivan, who was the
Speaker 1: editor in charge of this story, says that she looked
Speaker 1: into this and that she felt that Broder was not
Speaker 1: being dishonest, but that he might have been less accurate
Speaker 1: then he needed to be like he wasn't taking careful
Speaker 1: enough notes and he wasn't paying enough attention to what
Speaker 1: he was doing, but that but that she was not
Speaker 1: she did not think that it was intentional, That's what
Speaker 1: she says. Elon Musk, on the other hand, says that
Speaker 1: John Broder had just a grudge against electric vehicles in general,
Speaker 1: and that this was him carrying a bias over into
Speaker 1: a test drive and that that was what was guiding
Speaker 1: him and doing these things. Response was really quite strong,
Speaker 1: and he got a little bit of flak in the
Speaker 1: press for that. For yeah, well, there's and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of back and forth in the blogosphere between
Speaker 1: Musk and Broder and as well as with Margaret Sullivan.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: trash throwing. It's kind of interesting to read. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's entertaining. Uh And honestly, honestly, I don't know who's
Speaker 1: in the right in this. I mean, uh, I would
Speaker 1: like to think that the electric vehicles are really well
Speaker 1: made and can perform as advertised, because I think electric
Speaker 1: vehicles could be a wonderful, wonderful future, assuming that we
Speaker 1: find a way to produce that electricity cleanly, like if
Speaker 1: we do the solar stuff that Tesla must imagine. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm calling your besties. Um. I guess that brings
Speaker 1: me around to the final bit about Elon Musk. He
Speaker 1: got divorced from Tallula Riley in he had married her
Speaker 1: back in a twenty Yes, supposedly he they were loaned
Speaker 1: with the Google judge for their honeymoon. Yeah, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is friends with a lot of people in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: a lot of celebrities as well. But anyway, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they got divorced in twelve. She got four point two
Speaker 1: million dollars out of it. Keeping in mind that Musk
Speaker 1: is worth a couple of billion. Yeah, yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: in fact, there were there was at least some reports
Speaker 1: like she only got four point two million, And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you add up all the money I've ever made in
Speaker 1: my life, and I don't come close to that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: four point two million dollars. But there's a weird happy ending.
Speaker 1: They're reunited apparently back. Yeah, she's trying to make him,
Speaker 1: prevent him from going King crazy, which she says is
Speaker 1: a thing in England, like when you become king, you
Speaker 1: go nuts. That seems like it's a common phrase back
Speaker 1: where I'm from. Like, really, I'm an anglophile, and I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever heard anyone say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: preventing him from going King crazy or King nad. I
Speaker 1: know the You've had your share of you know, e centric,
Speaker 1: eccentric royal. Yeah, eccentric is I think a mild term.
Speaker 1: But sure, I mean, but but I mean England has
Speaker 1: its own way of dealing with them, right, They just
Speaker 1: put a parking lot over them, all right. Well, that
Speaker 1: that wraps up this this profile on Elon Musk. Like
Speaker 1: we said, we'll probably do profiles on some of the
Speaker 1: specific companies, I mean everything from you know, PayPal would
Speaker 1: be a good one. SpaceX and Tesla Motors are all
Speaker 1: great candidates for future episodes. But if you guys have
Speaker 1: your own suggestions for episodes we should tackle in the future,
Speaker 1: I highly suggest you get in touch with us and
Speaker 1: let us know. Our email address is tex Stuff at
Speaker 1: discovery dot com, or you can let us know on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or handle at both those locations. Is
Speaker 1: text stuff H. S W and Lauren and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit has staff works dot
Speaker 1: com