Speaker 1: So he's at Twitter the night before Christmas Eve, December
Speaker 1: twenty third, and they've got three server farms and if
Speaker 1: they keep them going, it's going to be a few
Speaker 1: million dollars each year. He says, let's get rid of
Speaker 1: the Sacramento one. And people have been working at Twitter
Speaker 1: a long time, engineers. He hasn't yet fired them, and
Speaker 1: they say, no, you can't pull out those servers. It'll
Speaker 1: take six months to move those out of Sacramento. And
Speaker 1: there are rules and regulations. I know, demon modes about
Speaker 1: to strike, but they were trying to argue with them
Speaker 1: on it, and finally he just goes really angry and leaves.
Speaker 1: The next day, Christmas Eve, he's on his plane flying
Speaker 1: from San Francisco to Austin, bringing these two cousins, and
Speaker 1: as they're flying over you know, Nvaada, one of them says,
Speaker 1: why don't we just take those servers out ourselves, and
Speaker 1: Bust goes into Gudea mode and turns the plane around,
Speaker 1: goes right to Sacramento. They get to the server facility,
Speaker 1: it's the afternoon of Christmas Eve, so nobody's really working
Speaker 1: and it's a facility that has servers of other companies.
Speaker 1: As well, so it's hard to get into. But being Musk,
Speaker 1: he just finds somebody and makes them let them in.
Speaker 1: And he says, we're going to take these servers out,
Speaker 1: and they said we can't have You need electrician to
Speaker 1: open the floorboard, and somebody to cut off the cables,
Speaker 1: and somebody who can handle the dollies. Must turns to
Speaker 1: his security guard, said you got a pocket knife, and
Speaker 1: he takes off the floorboard himself. He just pries it
Speaker 1: open from event. Then he gets a pair of pliers
Speaker 1: I think they had gotten at home depot, and he
Speaker 1: cuts the cable to the servers and waits and nothing happens.
Speaker 1: It's fine. So they start in a friend see moving
Speaker 1: these servers out on racks on Dolly's into this rental truck,
Speaker 1: and he proves to everybody that yes, you can do it.
Speaker 1: You said it was gonna take six months. It took
Speaker 1: us six hours and we got a third of them move.
Speaker 1: So he gets to prove people he's hardcore and he's intense.
Speaker 1: And then he has Ron DeSantis announcer president, and there's
Speaker 1: no backup servers, there's no casing, so the service Twitter
Speaker 1: goes down for twenty minutes or more, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I guess it was a mistake taking the service out,
Speaker 1: But like a lot of things, it's not clear this
Speaker 1: was a total mistake or totally brilliant. And for me
Speaker 1: it's a metaphor. He tends to take risks, and he
Speaker 1: tends to leave rubble in his wake.
Speaker 2: When Walter Isaacson set out to write a boutography of
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world
Speaker 2: changing figure, certainly a visionary, maybe a genius. At Tesla
Speaker 2: and SpaceX, Musk had attracted some of the most brilliant
Speaker 2: engineering minds of our time to his side. His relentless
Speaker 2: vision and exacting standards had driven those companies beyond what
Speaker 2: many people thought possible. But Isaacson quickly came to see
Speaker 2: what everyone else close to Musk already knew. Working with
Speaker 2: him came with a cost. Musk's management style included utter
Speaker 2: derision for work life balance, a belief that any camaraderie
Speaker 2: at work only weakened employees' judgment, A lack of empathy
Speaker 2: so pronounced that Musk might tear someone down in front
Speaker 2: of everyone just because things had gotten too calm for
Speaker 2: his comfort. And then instantly forget about it. He was
Speaker 2: also busy seemingly squandering his legacy by the day on Twitter,
Speaker 2: then of course buying Twitter, swapping out his lofty ambitions
Speaker 2: of interplanetary colonization and combating climate change for you check
Speaker 2: policies and content moderation, all while getting wrapped up in
Speaker 2: a battle with what he called the quote woke mind virus.
Speaker 2: I'm Evan Ratliffe and on this episode of On Musk
Speaker 2: with Walter Isaacson, we write shotgun as Isaacson encounters the
Speaker 2: darker parts of elon the earthword pull that threatens to
Speaker 2: ground his highest aspirations, Episode two Demons. All right, ready, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are moments in the book where he is just
Speaker 2: reaming out someone. It's sometimes hard to tell the ones
Speaker 2: where you're there and you're not, because you have such
Speaker 2: comprehensive access to information that you can paint scenes that
Speaker 2: you didn't actually witness through these various eyes. Did you
Speaker 2: personally witness those things?
Speaker 1: Like absolutely all the time. And I was stunned because
Speaker 1: I thought of the Heisenberg principle that is something being observed,
Speaker 1: it's going to change its velocity or its position. And
Speaker 1: I thought by being in the room. He wasn't going
Speaker 1: to ream somebody out, and people were amazed, the people
Speaker 1: around him that he was just as tough and as
Speaker 1: bad and as much of an asshole or as much
Speaker 1: of a genius when I was around that. It did
Speaker 1: not calm him down, did not keep him from going
Speaker 1: into demon mode.
Speaker 2: Some of the targets on who Musk trained his fury
Speaker 2: were people who'd gone the furthest for him, like one
Speaker 2: executive named Brian Dawe, who'd been a hero of one
Speaker 2: of Musk's so called surges. That's when Musk brings everybody
Speaker 2: into the office for days or weeks of insane hours
Speaker 2: to hit some target he's deemed crucial.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty seventeen, when Musk went into total fury
Speaker 1: about the battery factory in Nevada and lived there for
Speaker 1: about three months, saying you've got to speed up this
Speaker 1: battery line, he brings in this guy, Brian Dawe, who's
Speaker 1: a can do person. Yes, Boss, we can get rid
Speaker 1: of this machine. Yes, Bosh, we can do it. He
Speaker 1: was so eager to help. And then I was there
Speaker 1: sitting in mush little house when he calls up Brian
Speaker 1: down says, I'm moving you to run the solar roof division.
Speaker 1: It's like, I can do it. I can do it.
Speaker 2: Chief Now, the solar roof division was a Musk project
Speaker 2: that hadn't paid off so well. The basic idea was
Speaker 2: that instead of retrofitting solar panels on houses, they would
Speaker 2: make the roof tiles themselves into solar panels. Muskeet invested
Speaker 2: in and then had Tesla buy a solar roof company
Speaker 2: started by his cousins, not the cousins on the airplane,
Speaker 2: but the other cousins. There were some accusations of nepotism
Speaker 2: swirling around Musk. As you might imagine anyway, Musk is
Speaker 2: trying to turn Tesla into an electric energy everything company, batteries, cars,
Speaker 2: solar roofs, but the solar roofs are not getting installed
Speaker 2: fast enough to scale the business. He's burned through three
Speaker 2: executives there already. Incomes Brian Dow to Boca Chica where
Speaker 2: ISAC's and is lurking nearby in his airstream trailer.
Speaker 1: And one day Musk became driven by the fact that
Speaker 1: they had to install solar roofs faster, just like the
Speaker 1: assembly line of the car or the rocket. He says,
Speaker 1: how can we speed up this step? This step, this step,
Speaker 1: And finally he says, all right, we're going to do
Speaker 1: the roofs of my house and these other little tracked
Speaker 1: homes down in the south tip of Texas. And Dow
Speaker 1: is up in I think Seattle or wherever he was based,
Speaker 1: and it's his birthday. But Musk said, okay, I need
Speaker 1: you back down in Boca Chica. Things aren't going well,
Speaker 1: and he abandons his family, but he misses the connection
Speaker 1: in Houston, has to get a car and drive six hours,
Speaker 1: gets there late at night.
Speaker 2: It was another surge the task to get the time
Speaker 2: it took to install one roof down from three or
Speaker 2: four days to just twenty four hours. So Dow is
Speaker 2: leading his team of fellow designer, engineers and roofers to
Speaker 2: meet the challenge.
Speaker 1: And I remember one day it must have been one
Speaker 1: hundred and five in the shade and there was no shade,
Speaker 1: and these roofers are working and they have to get
Speaker 1: it done within twenty four hours. Musk goes on over
Speaker 1: to this little subdivision by about nine at night, and
Speaker 1: there's big industrial lighting and cables, and there's twelve people
Speaker 1: scrambling on the roof and he climbs this rickety ladder
Speaker 1: to the top of the roof, and I of course
Speaker 1: have to climb up with him, you know, standing on
Speaker 1: the peak of this roof, clinging on for dear life
Speaker 1: as these people are scurrying around. And as always, Elon
Speaker 1: has his little son X who is at about two
Speaker 1: years old, and he's just starting to toddle on the
Speaker 1: ground amid all the cables and the lights and the
Speaker 1: moving equipment, and I'm petrified for him. I'm petrified for myself.
Speaker 1: And there's Elon standing at the peak of the roof saying,
Speaker 1: why do we need four fasteners for each of the
Speaker 1: roof tiles. Couldn't it be done with two? And they say, well,
Speaker 1: if a hurricane comes, and he's like, okay, here would
Speaker 1: be the strength of the winds, here's how much it
Speaker 1: would take. And he's looking at the wiring and how
Speaker 1: it works and trying to simplify it. And there's somebody
Speaker 1: there who's supervising and must get furious because he believes
Speaker 1: that every person working on a solar roof team should
Speaker 1: be on the roof installing it. And if you're not
Speaker 1: installing it, with your own hands, You're not really going
Speaker 1: to understand what the problems are. And this guy is saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've done many roofs. I've watched it. Says,
Speaker 1: how many of you actually installed with your own hands? Well? None,
Speaker 1: I'm a designer. I knew that was going to be
Speaker 1: one of those triggers. And for about an hour standing
Speaker 1: on that roof, on the roof, and then finally we
Speaker 1: come down on the ladder and we're standing next to
Speaker 1: the house, and it continues for another thirty minutes. He's
Speaker 1: reaming this guy out and finally says to Brian Dow
Speaker 1: that he had to be fired. We came back a
Speaker 1: couple days later and there's another house they're doing, and
Speaker 1: then yet another house, and I remember once it was
Speaker 1: so hot that people were fainting, they were throwing up,
Speaker 1: and yet they worked all day to install it within
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. And finally Musk is satisfied, but not
Speaker 1: until he fires Brian Dowe, the guy in charge of
Speaker 1: the division, as well as many of the people who
Speaker 1: were helping do the roofs. And Brian talks to me
Speaker 1: afterwards and says, I tried so hard. I was so eager.
Speaker 1: He knew I would walk through walls with him, and
Speaker 1: yet he fired me. And that's the type of toughness
Speaker 1: that I don't find easy to stomach. It really really
Speaker 1: turned me off when I was watching it, but I
Speaker 1: tried to describe it. And also the fact that after
Speaker 1: he kept pushing, he was able to get them to
Speaker 1: do a solar roof per day.
Speaker 2: Even after that, by the way, solar roofs still not scalable.
Speaker 2: After the vomiting and the passing out and the firing,
Speaker 2: it didn't really matter. The gold Musk had set of
Speaker 2: twenty four hours to install. The roof didn't move the needle,
Speaker 2: at least not by Silicon Valley standards. And Isaacson returns
Speaker 2: again and again to these episodes trying to tease out
Speaker 2: what they mean for the people involved in them.
Speaker 1: And as you'll see in the book, not only did
Speaker 1: I report those I think in the full fury of
Speaker 1: it all, I'm not sugarcoating. I also went back to
Speaker 1: the people who got totally reamed out. I'd go back
Speaker 1: a day later and sometime six months later, say what
Speaker 1: did you learn? Like, why couldn't you take it? And
Speaker 1: there's a scene in the book of a Friday Night
Speaker 1: at Star Base, where he just reams out this wonderful
Speaker 1: southern guy, Andy krabs for not having enough people working.
Speaker 1: Just choose him up, left, right, and center, and then,
Speaker 1: like Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde, a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: he doesn't even remember it, and he promotes Andy. But
Speaker 1: then it keeps happening, so Andy leaves. Recently, I was
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles and I'm signing books at the LA
Speaker 1: Times book event. I see coming over for me. Say
Speaker 1: that's Andy. I said, Andy, how you doing? He says,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to go back to SpaceX. I've
Speaker 1: had the choice of being burned out or being bored.
Speaker 1: I decided I'd rather be burned out on such a mission.
Speaker 2: That's amazing because the one that stuck with me was
Speaker 2: the guy who was thought to have caused one of
Speaker 2: the failed launches or crashes, because he had like turned
Speaker 2: a nut on the rocket and that had disrupted something.
Speaker 2: And Musk actually publicly said it was him, and then
Speaker 2: he quit. And then Musk was sort of good ridden,
Speaker 2: so he wasn't that great of an engineer. And then
Speaker 2: you sort of end that section by saying it turned
Speaker 2: out it was not the turning of the night. It
Speaker 2: wasn't him, I know.
Speaker 1: I try to show both the fierce urgency of these
Speaker 1: things that Musk feels, and that without this crazed urgency
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have gotten Tesla lines working as well. But
Speaker 1: I also sometimes show where it was just awful the
Speaker 1: way he did these things. And it happens on the
Speaker 1: Tesla assembly line where somebody who's totally innocent, you know,
Speaker 1: must then fires him. And that brings up the question
Speaker 1: that so many people ask in the book, is is
Speaker 1: it worthwhile? Do you make that trade off? And by
Speaker 1: the end of the book, I kind of pretty clearly
Speaker 1: say no, you don't really make that trade off that
Speaker 1: getting the done excuse being a total asshole, But I
Speaker 1: want the reader to see it in action.
Speaker 2: And right after the break, Musk manages to create a
Speaker 2: truly unique level of Thanksgiving drama as we get into
Speaker 2: just what makes this guy tick. There's a personal aspect
Speaker 2: which I have experienced myself as a reporter because I
Speaker 2: tend to spend time around relatively unpleasant people and the
Speaker 2: stuff that I write about. But the moment that you
Speaker 2: have to experience him reading someone out him, yelling him
Speaker 2: being an asshole. You know, it's not all the time,
Speaker 2: but what kind of persona do you go into in
Speaker 2: that moment. I mean, this is not something I assume
Speaker 2: you would choose in your life to be around people
Speaker 2: who are behaving in this way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's some people who love conflict that go
Speaker 1: to world wrestling, you know, matches and stuff, and I'm
Speaker 1: the opposite. I don't like seeing people fight and be
Speaker 1: really mean, So at those moments I kind of shrink
Speaker 1: back a bit. I try to be a bit invisible.
Speaker 1: And then there were a lot of personal things that
Speaker 1: had to figure out whether to put in the book,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to his complex relationship with women
Speaker 1: and the women who are the mother of his children.
Speaker 1: Right before Thanksgiving of twenty twenty two, Claire Bouchet, the
Speaker 1: performance artist on his Grind, is in the hospital with
Speaker 1: the surrogate who's having their child, but in the same hospital,
Speaker 1: Chavon Zillis, who runs Neuralink, is having twins that are
Speaker 1: from Elon as a sperm donor, and they don't know
Speaker 1: that the other is actually in the same hospital. Even
Speaker 1: though they know each other, they don't know they're both
Speaker 1: having kids of Elon's at the same time, this is
Speaker 1: complicated emotionally, and Elon flies off Thanksgiving and says, I've
Speaker 1: got a crisis happening with one of the engines they
Speaker 1: were building, and I have to go focus on it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It's like Thanksgiving Friday, you don't have to focus on it.
Speaker 1: But it was like rocket engines were simpler to him
Speaker 1: than human emotions. After the book is published, you can
Speaker 1: go on x or Twitter and see Grimes posting and
Speaker 1: Chavon posting and how they're all mad about this scene
Speaker 1: in the book. But I felt that that was all
Speaker 1: key to understanding the turmoil right around the time he's
Speaker 1: trying to get Starship launched, right around the time he's
Speaker 1: getting this new huge factory done in Austin, that he
Speaker 1: loves drama, that he lives for turmoil, and that the
Speaker 1: personal side is in turmoil as well. And I kind
Speaker 1: of felt you had to know it all to understand
Speaker 1: what was swirling around him and inside as he's doing
Speaker 1: all this.
Speaker 2: For Isaacson, Musk's approach to life seemed rooted in his upbringing,
Speaker 2: what he describes in the beginning of the book as
Speaker 2: a violent childhood with an alternately neglectful and cruel father.
Speaker 2: At what point in your reporting did you sort of
Speaker 2: start to get those stories and understand that you were
Speaker 2: going to use those stories as a way into understanding
Speaker 2: sort of the psychology behind his work.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk had never really talked about his childhood or
Speaker 1: about the difficult relationship with his father, and there'd been
Speaker 1: profiles of him and Rolling Stone in which he says,
Speaker 1: is something I just can't say. And so I knew
Speaker 1: there was a key there, and so I kept pushing
Speaker 1: on it gently, month after month. Tell me about your dad,
Speaker 1: tell me about your childhood, tell me about being beaten up.
Speaker 1: And he go silent, stoney faced, and I'd stay silent.
Speaker 1: I'd try to outlast him, occasionally give me a little something.
Speaker 1: And then finally, on the tenth attempt at the conversation,
Speaker 1: we were flying somewhere actually, and you said, tell me
Speaker 1: about your father, and tears came to his eyes, and
Speaker 1: then it started to tumble out. After that, I was
Speaker 1: able to get more and more, and of course from
Speaker 1: his brother Kimball, and from his father who I talked to,
Speaker 1: and from his mother, who said, the danger for Elon
Speaker 1: is that he becomes his father, And so that's how
Speaker 1: that theme developed. But it wasn't something I could do
Speaker 1: in one, two, three, or four interviews. It was really
Speaker 1: a year into the reporting that slowly that door began
Speaker 1: to open.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that makes a big difference to me,
Speaker 2: at least in how you read the book in a way,
Speaker 2: knowing that, because I think he has a difficult and
Speaker 2: in some ways horrible father, you start out with these
Speaker 2: scenes of violence, in him being bullied in different ways,
Speaker 2: And it feels different to me to know that on
Speaker 2: day one he didn't say to you, let me explain
Speaker 2: myself to you. The reason I'm a jerk is because
Speaker 2: I had this difficult up bringing, rather than that being
Speaker 2: something that you pulled out of him.
Speaker 1: I sometimes think, and this will sound a bit arrogant,
Speaker 1: that I understand him better than he understands him. He'll
Speaker 1: tell me I've got emotions buried under concrete, and I
Speaker 1: didn't blast through them, but I slowly, slowly bore through
Speaker 1: them and dug through them. And yes, it's a lot
Speaker 1: about the demons of childhood. It's also about being wired differently,
Speaker 1: which is complicated, meaning he says he has aspergers, which
Speaker 1: isn't even used in medical realm. That much anymore. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have very good input output signals for human emotions,
Speaker 1: and that means he was socially awkward and beaten up
Speaker 1: as a kid all the time. And since the book
Speaker 1: came out, one of the things that surprises me is
Speaker 1: how many people come up to me. I'll say one
Speaker 1: of them Andrew Yang, because he did it on his podcast,
Speaker 1: But certain TV hosts will say, I have a kid
Speaker 1: with Asperger's, and what I have to do is I
Speaker 1: keep my arm around him at all times when we're
Speaker 1: on baseball games or out somewhere, and I say, look
Speaker 1: the person in the eye when he hands you the popcorn,
Speaker 1: and do this. And then I realize that Musk's father,
Speaker 1: instead of putting his arm around him and helping him,
Speaker 1: said you're stupid, You're a loser. You deserve to be
Speaker 1: beaten up. And that doesn't excuse all of musk behavior.
Speaker 1: And sometimes we confuse explaining something with excusing it. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to explain it.
Speaker 2: I want to note here that this is all pretty
Speaker 2: tricky territory. For one thing, Asperger's, as Walter notes, is
Speaker 2: an outdated diagnostic term for one form of autism spectrum disorder,
Speaker 2: but It's a term that some people still use to
Speaker 2: self identify, including Musk and ASD in general, and what
Speaker 2: people call aspergers specifically, are both frequently misunderstood. Someone having
Speaker 2: trouble with social cues obviously does not mean they lack empathy,
Speaker 2: but challenges with social interactions can sometimes be confused for
Speaker 2: narcissism and vice versa. Part of what I wanted to
Speaker 2: know from Isaacson was how he tried to navigate this
Speaker 2: territory when it came to Musk and his previous subject,
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs. I was also struck by the contrast between
Speaker 2: the Jobs book and this book, because Jobs, also you
Speaker 2: describe has the lack of empathy. That's something that comes
Speaker 2: up in the Job's book a few times. But his
Speaker 2: ex girlfriend identifies it as narcissistic personality disorder, and she
Speaker 2: says something like, I realized that telling him to be
Speaker 2: more less self centered was like telling a black man
Speaker 2: to see And.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is true of Tallulailey, the second
Speaker 1: wife of Elon Musk, and it's true of Grimes. Is like, no,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just can't tell must be a different way
Speaker 1: because that is the way he's wired. Or you look
Speaker 1: at some of the great disruptors, I mean Bill Gates
Speaker 1: early days of Microsoft. No empathy, you know, Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: could be that way.
Speaker 2: And it is such a delicate issue because I feel
Speaker 2: like you're careful to say he says that he has
Speaker 2: Asperger's and it's not your job I believe to challenge that.
Speaker 2: But in this case, it makes a difference whether he's
Speaker 2: right in terms of the explanation versus the excuse.
Speaker 1: He has ever been diagnosed, but his mother said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely has Asperger's, and his brother Kimball says it
Speaker 1: and one of the things that had happened since the
Speaker 1: job's booked to Now, as we start using terms like
Speaker 1: neurodivergent as opposed to chark or as opposed to trying
Speaker 1: to slap a broad label like Asperger's, Musk knows he
Speaker 1: goes into multiple personalities and almost forgets what he has
Speaker 1: done when he's dark depressed, or when he's, as Grimes
Speaker 1: puts it, in demon mode, or when he gets back
Speaker 1: into just being engineering mode personality. There are times when
Speaker 1: he's friendly and joking, in times when he's inspirational, in
Speaker 1: times when he's laser focused like an engineer and a
Speaker 1: monotone with a specific problem. And he also has talked
Speaker 1: to both me and the people around him about being bipolar.
Speaker 1: It would be useful with all of these semi awarenesses
Speaker 1: if he would go to a doctor, get analyzed, get treatment.
Speaker 1: But as he said, these things are buried under layers
Speaker 1: of concrete, and I don't want to blast through them.
Speaker 2: So when you started connecting with the family and you
Speaker 2: end up talking to his father, and from a journalistic
Speaker 2: point of view, this seems like a very difficult character
Speaker 2: to be entangled with in terms of like his connection
Speaker 2: to the truth but also his beliefs. How do you
Speaker 2: sort of manage that relationship.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm still in contact with Erl Musk, who's not
Speaker 1: really in contact with Elon. Elon doesn't take his emails,
Speaker 1: doesn't speak to him. But Eryl Musk is a really
Speaker 1: good engineer, has a real feel for the physical properties
Speaker 1: of everything from you know, Micah to steel. He's also
Speaker 1: somebody who has been successful at times, even once owned
Speaker 1: a Rolls Royce in South Africa and built a wilderness
Speaker 1: camp with his kids, and at times goes through this.
Speaker 1: Doctor Jekyl too miss high transition and has lost a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money. He's a fabuloust, which means he
Speaker 1: fabricates things. I mean, he makes himself the hero of
Speaker 1: some of his own adventures. On the other hand, he
Speaker 1: understands that his own son has many of these traits.
Speaker 1: And he'll say, when I ask him about taking this
Speaker 1: side of the person who beat up Elon, he'll say, well,
Speaker 1: Elon deserved that, or el was stupid. And he will
Speaker 1: say I applied a very strict authoritarian attitude towards Elon,
Speaker 1: and he does that with other people as well. So
Speaker 1: in unraveling the mystery and the enigma inside of Musque,
Speaker 1: you start by peeling back the layers that come from
Speaker 1: his father, and you keep in mind his mother's admonition
Speaker 1: to be which is that the danger for youe Elon,
Speaker 1: is that he becomes his father.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that she says that because there's also this
Speaker 2: other side, which is he has a very supportive mother,
Speaker 2: so he it's not just the father. And without becoming
Speaker 2: too much of an you know, armchair psychologist, I guess
Speaker 2: because he's got these let's just say, unusual relationships with
Speaker 2: women over time, and he's got this supportive mother, what's
Speaker 2: the decision to sort of ground it more in the
Speaker 2: in the Bad Father than in the in The Good Mother.
Speaker 1: Well, the mother is a wonderful character throughout the book,
Speaker 1: but both with her, with May the Mother and with Elon,
Speaker 1: they're attracted to dramatic relationships. And May will say of
Speaker 1: her son that he can't relax and smell the flowers.
Speaker 1: He's always attracted to the storm, to the drama. And May,
Speaker 1: who I really like she has, hasn't been in life
Speaker 1: very good at relationships. He's attracted to people who cause problems,
Speaker 1: and so too is it with Elon. You know, his
Speaker 1: first wife a truly stormy relationship, but they thrived on
Speaker 1: fighting all the time. And he said, there's just something
Speaker 1: about the flame. I'm always attracted to the flame and
Speaker 1: drama and relationships. And I ask him why, And I
Speaker 1: ask to Lula's second wife why, and Tallulah says, there,
Speaker 1: he was growing up with his father and his father
Speaker 1: is mentally torturing him. And somehow you internalize storm and
Speaker 1: drama with your childhood nurturing. That's probably overthinking it. Because Kimball,
Speaker 1: his brother, you know, he's much more stable in his
Speaker 1: relationships and his ability to show empathy, whereas Musk he
Speaker 1: would see some calm, he'd see some calm on a
Speaker 1: factory line or at a launch pad, and he'd be unhappy.
Speaker 1: He'd say, I've got to stir things.
Speaker 2: Up up next Twitter. And whether Musk did ever turn
Speaker 2: his demon mode on Isaacson.
Speaker 1: In April of twenty twenty two, when he's kicking around
Speaker 1: the idea of buying Twitter, he's starting to buy the
Speaker 1: stock and he's going a bit dark on management, thinking
Speaker 1: maybe I'll make a hostile offer. It was a day
Speaker 1: he opened the Giga Texas factory, amazing, big event. And
Speaker 1: he goes out to dinner that weekend at a club
Speaker 1: called the Pershing, very quiet and private in an upstairs room,
Speaker 1: and it's him, his artistic son Saxon, his young three
Speaker 1: year old ex Grimes comes in a little bit late
Speaker 1: May Musk. She's at the dinner and it's myself and
Speaker 1: a couple of other people. I'm asking, why are you
Speaker 1: thinking of buying Twitter? And I'm my own mind, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking that's a bad idea, but I'm just asking, and
Speaker 1: then everybody else is chiming in, like why do you
Speaker 1: really want it? And what you do with it? And
Speaker 1: at some point he says to Griffin in one of
Speaker 1: his teenagers. Do you use Twitter? He said, no, Dad,
Speaker 1: none of my friends use Twitter, and may Musk, you know,
Speaker 1: his mother says, well, I use Twitter. I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: this may be an indication of the demographic that they're
Speaker 1: heading towards. And everybody is trying to nudge him away
Speaker 1: from going down this path, really hurting his reputation, but
Speaker 1: sucking up his time of trying to fix Twitter, and
Speaker 1: all this keeps coming out of the dinner. By the
Speaker 1: end of the dinner, I realize, okay, he's gonna go there.
Speaker 2: So now Isaacson has a subject on his hands who
Speaker 2: isn't just an innovator, a Silicon Valley darling with some
Speaker 2: libertary inflect politics. Now he's got someone gearing up to
Speaker 2: fight a war over free speech and right wing censorship
Speaker 2: on Twitter, where he's about to try and manifest his
Speaker 2: original X dot com Everything platform vision.
Speaker 1: When I first started working on the Elon Musk's book,
Speaker 1: he was very well known, but not quite as controversial.
Speaker 1: He wasn't quite as toxic or as canonized. Then the
Speaker 1: Twitter deal happened, and that changes things. It really increases
Speaker 1: by at least two orders of magnitude, how controversial he is,
Speaker 1: and also how famous he is. So suddenly the narrative
Speaker 1: becomes much more of a roller coaster. So it's good
Speaker 1: for the book, but there were parts of it that
Speaker 1: I kind of wish, Hey, he was a calmer personality,
Speaker 1: But he says, I got to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: the mission is getting to Mars. It's not absolutely caring
Speaker 1: about the psychological pleasures and safeties of everybody. I can
Speaker 1: remember the time he walked into Twitter headquarters, right before
Speaker 1: he has officially acquired it, and they're telling him what
Speaker 1: a nurturing place it is to work, and they're saying,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got quiet rooms, and we have mental
Speaker 1: health days off, and we have yoga studios so people
Speaker 1: can stay in balance. And then they say, and we
Speaker 1: really value psychological safety. And must sort of had that
Speaker 1: raspy laugh, and he says, psychological safety, that's our enemy.
Speaker 1: That's an impediment. We have to have a fierce sense
Speaker 1: of urgency. We aren't aiming for psychological safety.
Speaker 2: The other reason Musk gives for buying Twitter, one that
Speaker 2: he seems to get a lot of play for in
Speaker 2: some corners of the world, is that he's fighting against
Speaker 2: quote unquote wokeness. Musk has his own term for it.
Speaker 2: When he talks about anti woke mind virus, he uses
Speaker 2: that phrase, and that really touches on things that have
Speaker 2: become you know, third rails in society in terms of
Speaker 2: how they're discussed. I'm curious how you kind of engaged
Speaker 2: with that idea with him. I mean, he's someone who
Speaker 2: grew up in aparteight South Africa, so obviously, like his
Speaker 2: views on race and other societal issues are going to
Speaker 2: be colored by that. Like what does he mean when
Speaker 2: he says something like that.
Speaker 1: Well, the way I engage with it, and you see
Speaker 1: it in the book is I question it. I say,
Speaker 1: why are you following this particular conspiracy? And I'll even
Speaker 1: talk about Okham's razor, which is the simplest explanation may
Speaker 1: be the best one. Instead of thinking there's a vast
Speaker 1: conspiracy of drug makers and COVID vaccines, or people trying
Speaker 1: to lock down so they control government, or any of
Speaker 1: these things that he goes to, I'm not that way.
Speaker 1: I'm not conspiratorial, and I find that anti political correctness
Speaker 1: and wokeness. It's a little hard for me to explain
Speaker 1: because my head's not there, you know. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: what we call being woke is being polite and sensitive
Speaker 1: to other people's feelings. And I'll ask him about that.
Speaker 1: I say, hey, understand, you've got a daughter who transitioned.
Speaker 1: Why do people care about pronouns? And he'll say things
Speaker 1: when he's in a more rational mood of why don't
Speaker 1: mind people using pronouns? But it gouges my eyes out
Speaker 1: when I see it too much. I'm going, why, what's
Speaker 1: the problem. But it's when he's in his dark mood.
Speaker 1: This eats away at him. And I describe his political
Speaker 1: evolution from being an Obama supporter to being supporting Bobby
Speaker 1: Kennedy than Ron DeSantis, people who are worried about wokeness
Speaker 1: or worried about conspiracy theories. And I never try to
Speaker 1: excuse it in the book, I don't excuse the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole going down these rabbit holes of conspiracy. I do
Speaker 1: try to explain it from his childhood, from his father, whatever.
Speaker 1: And then I'll tell a story about a particularly horrible
Speaker 1: tweet he did, like prosecute fauci are my pronouns? I mean,
Speaker 1: just in a few words, is able to attack transgender
Speaker 1: pronouns and Anthony Fauci, and I talk about his father
Speaker 1: having said all these sort of things, being in a
Speaker 1: hot box room in Twitter, and he's going dark and giddy,
Speaker 1: and one of the people in the room starts joking
Speaker 1: about Fuci and pronouns. And until you read the book,
Speaker 1: I think critics can have a difficulty saying is he
Speaker 1: explaining it or is he excusing it? But if you
Speaker 1: read that anecdote or that story, you're not gonna say
Speaker 1: Walter excused it. You're going to see the rawness that's there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Must begins purging Twitter employees based on their relative quote hardcorenice.
Speaker 2: When Twitter's finally down to a quarter of its previous size,
Speaker 2: he's created the ultimate test for his delete, Delete, delete
Speaker 2: management algorithm.
Speaker 1: And it's a hardcore, small cadre and that cadre of
Speaker 1: people and you now see it at Twitter. He whittled
Speaker 1: down eighty percent of the staff. But it's a very
Speaker 1: hardcore cadre that will march through walls for him. And
Speaker 1: I think he tests people. He drives them there, but
Speaker 1: also drives them to do things they didn't think they
Speaker 1: could do.
Speaker 2: Did he ever turn his anger on you?
Speaker 1: Did?
Speaker 2: You experience demon mode directed at you as you describe it.
Speaker 1: Everybody told me he was going to turn demon mode
Speaker 1: on me. The people worked for him, plus crimes and
Speaker 1: his former wives. They'd all say, is going to happen
Speaker 1: to you. And if there's one small mystery, I can't
Speaker 1: quite figure out why it never did happen to me.
Speaker 1: But I didn't fill the silences when he went dark
Speaker 1: and he went silent. I would just sit there. When
Speaker 1: he would say something provocative, I just ask a question.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I did anything that would have
Speaker 1: triggered that demon mode, but I must say, as I
Speaker 1: watched it get triggered by people around me, I always said,
Speaker 1: at some point, this is going to happen to me,
Speaker 1: where he tells me I'm stupid or whatever, like he
Speaker 1: did to some other people who worked with him. I
Speaker 1: didn't really want it to happen, but in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind I knew if it did, it would
Speaker 1: be a pretty good passage in the book. And I waited.
Speaker 1: I waited, and I was pretty clear having watched him
Speaker 1: after the first few months, I knew what brought on
Speaker 1: the storm. I knew the type of things that would
Speaker 1: just set him off, and sometimes I'd see it happen.
Speaker 1: I'd see it happened on an assembly line where some
Speaker 1: poor young worker. There's a scene in the book where
Speaker 1: Musk is saying, did you design this process here? And
Speaker 1: the young guy can't figure out what he's talking about, said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean design it? And you could tell
Speaker 1: Musk was about to go ballistic, and he does and
Speaker 1: he fires the guy for no real reason. And I
Speaker 1: watched over and over again. Must get triggered by people
Speaker 1: giving opinions not backed up by data, or not understanding
Speaker 1: what he was saying, or trying to make excuses.
Speaker 2: Isaacson did find a few people who always seem to
Speaker 2: dodge Musk's flamethrower, Mark gi and Kosa, the California surfer
Speaker 2: type who was a key SpaceX engineer, and Gwinn Shotwell,
Speaker 2: the president of SpaceX for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: I also watched people like Mark o'gwynn and I learned
Speaker 1: how they did it, which wasn't being a yes person.
Speaker 1: It was just slowly and methodically making factual arguments, and
Speaker 1: when Musk made a decision, say fine, I get it,
Speaker 1: but then presenting him over and over again with more
Speaker 1: facts and saying, all right, we're going to try it
Speaker 1: that way. But here's what we learned when we tested
Speaker 1: it this morning. Because they're people who've been there almost
Speaker 1: twenty years at SpaceX or at Tesla, who have never
Speaker 1: really been the object of his flamethrowing personality. But as
Speaker 1: a few people in the book said, Yoel roth It
Speaker 1: was in charge of moderation at Twitterit. Yoel told me
Speaker 1: over and over again those first few weeks how he
Speaker 1: had learned to deal with Mosk, how it worked out fine,
Speaker 1: and he said, I know these type of people. He
Speaker 1: basically saying, I know bosses that can turn into assholes
Speaker 1: all of a sudden. I've dealt with this before. And
Speaker 1: then finally Yoel doesn't get fired, he doesn't get reamed out.
Speaker 1: He finally says it's just too much. I'm leaving. It's
Speaker 1: time for me to go.
Speaker 2: It kind of highlights this aspect. I think if you
Speaker 2: only hear about the incidents where Musk mistreats people. He's
Speaker 2: an asshole, he doesn't have any empathy, you kind of
Speaker 2: wonder why would anyone work for him?
Speaker 1: Over and over again, he would do things like force
Speaker 1: a surge to stack a rocket on a launch pad,
Speaker 1: even though there was no rush to do it or
Speaker 1: force a surge at one of the manufacturing plants, and
Speaker 1: people would go through hell for about a week to
Speaker 1: do it, and it was exhausting, and a few would
Speaker 1: fall by the wayside, and a couple would quit and
Speaker 1: then decided, I'd rather be burned out than bored. And
Speaker 1: so he's able to get those twenty percent of the
Speaker 1: people in any workforce who are totally inspired by somebody
Speaker 1: always in battle, and he gets a very lean team
Speaker 1: that's willing to put up with him being cold and
Speaker 1: angry for those amazing moments where they feel like they're
Speaker 1: changing the world.
Speaker 2: In the next episode of Von Musk, we turn our
Speaker 2: lens on Isaacson and his process, teasing out exactly how
Speaker 2: he wrote this behemoth biography, how he resists hot takes
Speaker 2: even as he's surrounded by them, and how he sorted
Speaker 2: out what was going on with the supposed Musk family.
Speaker 2: Emerald mind, I mean.
Speaker 1: It's just so brutal. They hate each other, he said.
Speaker 1: I'm just a middle class kid trying to build a company,
Speaker 1: and when people do things at sock, I've got to
Speaker 1: tell them it socks. And if I'm too collegial, We'll
Speaker 1: never get things done. Well, I thought that was going
Speaker 1: to be the end of all my access, and I
Speaker 1: had violated what he may have thought was just a
Speaker 1: private comment. But there were moments as the book was finishing,
Speaker 1: I'd get up in the morning and just turn on
Speaker 1: my phone. Is it still there? It was? It like
Speaker 1: the rocketship? Did it blow up? On?
Speaker 2: Musk with Walter Isaacson is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeart.
Speaker 2: This show is based on the writing and reporting of
Speaker 2: Walter Isaacson. It's hosted by me Evan Ratliffe, produced by
Speaker 2: Lizzie Jacobs's assistant Production from Serena Chow, mixing and sound
Speaker 2: design by Rick Kwan. Thomas Walsh did the engineering from
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts. The executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry.
Speaker 2: For Kaleidoscope, it was executive produced by Manges Hatikador, with
Speaker 2: an assist from Oz Walishan Kostaslinos and Kate Osbourne. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Bob Pittman, Connell Byrne, will Pearson, Nicki Etour,
Speaker 2: Kerrie Lieberman, Nathan Otoski, Ali Gavin and the folks at
Speaker 2: WWNO who let us use their beautiful studio in New Orleans.
Speaker 2: If you like stories about writers in their process, check
Speaker 2: out my other show, The Long Form Podcast. If you
Speaker 2: want a story about a different South African programmer who
Speaker 2: became one of the world's biggest criminals, you could check
Speaker 2: out my book, The Mastermind. And for more shows from Kaleidoscope,
Speaker 2: be sure to visit Kaleidoscope dot NYC. Thanks so much
Speaker 2: for listening.