If Books Could Kill

Elon Musk

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Michael: This is not a bit. I genuinely don't have a singer. The only thing I could come up with is be straight do Grimes. 


Peter: That's really offensive to straight people. [Michael laughs] I feel like. By the way, the beverage center has maintained some element of meme status.


Michael: It's escaped containment. 


Peter: I have people posting it at me. [Michael laughs] I'm like, “Shit.”


Michael: Just photos of beverage centers. 


Peter: Well, I think that they're trying to make the accurate point that I am a bougie young man. 


Michael: Well, yeah.


Peter: I also don't know how many people realize how bougie I can be. 


Michael: Yeah, that's also they don't know about your sweaters or your watches. 


Peter: They don't know about the sweaters. [Michael laughs] They don't know that I'm the light jacket king of New Jersey. 


Michael: And you and you have a podcast with a gay man who only shops at Goodwill. [Peter laughs] I feel like we're doing gender is a social construct. 


Peter: We're combating stereotypes so effectively. 


Michael: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have one. I have one. Okay. I finally came up with a zinger. Peter. 


Peter: Michael. 


Michael: Peter.


Peter:  What do you know about Elon Musk? 


Michael: All I know is that I'm happy to finally have a reason to get a bumper sticker that says, “I made this podcast after Elon went crazy.”


[If Books Could Kill theme]


Peter: This is Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography of Elon Musk. Do you know anything about Walter Isaacson? 


Michael: He did the Steve Jobs book, right? 


Peter: Yeah. He is a journalist, spent many years at Time Magazine, became the CEO and chairman of CNN in 2001 for a bit. 


Michael: Oh, I didn't know that. 


Peter: He bopped around after that. But what he's really known for is these great men biographies. He wrote one of Kissinger in 1992. He did Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs. And so, this is his latest foray into the great man biography, this massive biography of Elon Musk. 


Michael: A big book about a very small man. 


Peter: I imagine that you've heard of this book. 


Michael: Yeah, I thought it was too fawning of an account, like, the Michael Lewis, Sam Bankman-Fried book. 


Peter: I wouldn't say that Isaacson is fawning. He correctly identifies the vast majority of Elon Musk's issues. He doesn't seem to weigh them that heavily against, the good aspects of Elon Musk as he sees them. 


Michael: But what are those? I'm so ready to hear what the good aspects [Michael laughs] of Elon Musk are. 


Peter: How dare you? He's the richest man in the world. 


Michael: I'm also so proud of myself for being early on the Elon Musk hate train. 


Peter: I was also early Elon Musk hater, although I don't know if I just got lucky on that. 


Michael: What was it? What did it for you? 


Peter: I just don't like how he is, [Michael laughs] I just don't like the way that he carries himself in the world.


Michael: Seems weird, undefeated. 


Peter: Other issues with Isaacson's portrayal. Musk himself is obviously an unreliable narrator. Not just in terms of like what happened and when, but also his motivations. And Isaacson seems to both know this and not fully process it. He will point out that Elon has been misleading in certain ways, but he doesn't act like Elon is lying to him consistently. And at various points he just sort of tells Elon's story. He interviewed many, many people for this, but he also spent a huge amount of time with Elon. A lot of the stories you're hearing are just sort of Elon side of things. 


Michael: I feel like we see this with powerful people all the time where there's like, “Yeah, he lies.” But anyway, here's a thing that he said that we're going to take credulously for no particular reason. 


Peter: The big thesis here is that Elon is a weirdo asshole, but also, he couldn't have accomplished everything that he's accomplished if he wasn't.


Michael: Oh.


Peter: I'm actually going to send you the final lines of the entire book. 


Michael: So, Isaacson says, “But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as a Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk seeking man children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world. Yeah, this reads like a defense of him. 


Peter: Crazy enough to think they can change the world. Are you in 10th grade? [laughs] Please calm down with this. This is like a very common theory of great men, right? That their excesses are necessary to achieve these incredible things. And I think that we are meant to believe that the tradeoff is worth it. That it's worth tolerating someone like Elon because we get electric cars and space travel. I think that's a coherent thesis. I don't agree with it, but it's coherent. But if you want to make that case, you have to reckon with what that trade off really is. And I think this is the real big problem with Isaacson's book is that he is not very willing to engage with what those tradeoffs are. He very quickly references them and then skips over them and I think that leaves this book feeling incomplete.


Michael: I think you also have to reckon with all of the things that he promised and didn't pan out as well. 


Peter: And we will, and we will. 


Michael: You specifically, you have to reckon.


[laughter]


Michael: You in the next four hours. 


Peter: Let's dive in to the prologue here. Send you something else. 


Michael: When he was 12, he was taken by bus to a wilderness survival camp known as a Veldskool. It was a paramilitary Lord of the Flies, he recalls. The kids were each given small rations of food and water and they were allowed, indeed encouraged to fight over them. Bullying was considered a virtue. His younger brother Kimbal says, “The big kids quickly learned to punch the little ones in the face and take their stuff.” Elon, who was small and emotionally awkward, got beaten up twice. He would end up losing 10 pounds. Near the end of the first week, the boys were divided into two groups and told to attack each other. It was so insane, mind blowing, Musk recalls. Every few years, one of the kids would die. The counselors would recount such stories as warnings. Don't be stupid like that dumb fuck who died last year they would say. Don't be the weak dumb fuck.”


Jesus, did he grow up in like the 1500s? 


Peter: So, right off the bat you're being met with a story that just seems like it has to be bullshit. Like, let's put our thinking caps on here. There was a camp in South Africa where the children of well-off families frequently died.


Michael: This is probably just an urban legend that, like the kids told each other that Elon has changed in the retelling over the years. 


Peter: Eve Fairbanks, who wrote a piece about the portions of the book that pertain to South Africa. She says that Veldskool was a wilderness camp that most white South African children attended under apartheid. She interviewed South Africans to see if anyone had a recollection similar to Elon's. She said, nobody with whom I spoke remembered hearing about deaths at Veldskool. Veldskool was all about discipline designed to prepare boys to join the military and, “Fighting was discouraged.” There are other suspect stories here. 


Isaacson says that as a teenager in the 80s, Musk and his brother Kimbal were going to antiapartheid concert and, “Had to wade through A pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife still sticking out of his brain.” 


Michael: Oh, my God. [laughs]


Peter: Fairbanks spoke to a journalist who covered Johannesburg in the 80s. They said that this was almost certainly a fabrication.


Michael: Because it would be enough of a news story that you'd be able to find evidence of it. It's like a really big deal. 


Peter: Presumably, there was a lot of violence in apartheid South Africa, but there are some weird things here. It's notable that there were no official antiapartheid concerts in South Africa due to the government censorship. This was not a free society. In 1985, there was the concert in the park, which wasn't openly political, but was a big concert that had a protest vibe because it wasn't segregated. It was also famously peaceful. Elon would have been 13. It doesn't quite line up. In general, though, Isaacson seems to want to convey that Elon's childhood in South Africa was very brutal and dangerous. He does it without ever really examining how much of this might have happened or not happened. And he doesn't dive into, the racialized elements of this, which is fucking crazy when you're talking about apartheid South Africa. 


Here's a passage about why Musk's maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, moved to South Africa.


Michael: From the Netherlands, what were they originally? 


Peter: He was in Canada. 


Michael: Oh, okay. With his quirky conservative populist views, Haldeman came to believe that the Canadian government was usurping too much control over the lives of individuals and that the country had gone soft. So, in 1950, he decided to move to South Africa, which was still ruled by a white apartheid regime. Okay, so he's a make Canada great again guy. 


Peter: In this day and age, when someone says quirky, conservative populist views and the year is 1950.


Michael:  And he loved to go to South Africa.


Peter: Alarm bells should be blaring in your fucking head when you read something like this. His grandfather was living in Canada. In the 40s, he was an avowed anticommunist who appeared to be a Nazi sympathizer. He was active in the Technocrat political movement until he resigned his position in the organization he was in after they expressed support for the Soviet Union following the German invasion. He then joins the Social Credit Party of Canada, where he defends their party newspaper's decision to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.


Michael: Oh, my God. 


Peter: We actually know a good amount about his beliefs because he self-published, a mini booklet in 1960. According to reporting by the Atlantic from a couple years ago, he moved to South Africa because, “He believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead white Christian civilization in its fight against the international conspiracy of Jewish bankers and the hordes of colored people they controlled.” 


Michael: That sounds out of context, Peter. I don't know if we can conclude anything from that. 


Peter: Let's just say that it's quirky and move on. He also ignores the timing of the move. He says that they moved when South Africa “Was still ruled by a white apartheid regime. But the Atlantic piece pointed out that in July 1950, South Africa instituted arguably its foundational apartheid laws, one requiring people to register their race and the other segregating urban housing by race.” The family moved one month later. 


Michael: Holy shit. 


Peter: So, to say that they were moving to South Africa, which was still ruled by an apartheid regime. It's like, “No this guy, who we know is a weird racist, moves there right on the ground floor.”


Michael: It is notable that these are the politics that he came to eventually. So, it is important context for the kinds of conversations that they were presumably having at the dinner table as a kid. 


Peter: I feel like it's important context regardless. [Michael laughs] Isaacson does not see Elon's upbringing in this extremely reactionary place by this extremely reactionary family as a meaningful part of his story. 


Michael: And also, it's clear that Elon has this narrative about himself that he overcame bullying and this really rough upbringing. But it also sounds like a lot of the bullying doesn't actually hold up to scrutiny. 


Peter: I'll say this, regardless of what is or is not true about his experience of South Africa, what is true almost certainly is that he was subjected to pretty brutal abuse at the hands of his father, Errol Musk. 


Michael: Yeah. Yeah. 


Peter: Errol would brutally berate Elon on a regular basis. There's a story where Elon is beaten so severely by bullies at school that he's hospitalized. And here's what Errol says about it. 


Michael: After the school fight, Errol sided with the kid who pummeled Elon's face. The boy had just lost his father to suicide, and Elon had called him stupid. Errol says, “Elon had this tendency to call people stupid. How could I possibly blame that child?” Oh, this is fucked. So, he's basically my kid deserved it to get kicked down the stairs or whatever. Although it is fucked up to do that to a kid whose father just died. 


Peter: Here's the thing. We have two competing unreliable narrators here in Elon and Errol, both of whom are known bullshitters. So, it's hard to say, but it seems like both parties agree on a basic story here that he was beaten so severely that he was hospitalized. He returns home from the hospital and Errol berates Elon for an hour. Isaacson says that both Elon and Kimbal Musk, who no longer speak to their father, say that his claim that Elon provoked the attack is unhinged and that the perpetrator ended up being sent to juvenile prison for it. 


Michael: Oh, wow. 


Peter: They say that their father is a volatile fabulist, regularly spinning tales that are larded with fantasies, sometimes calculated, at other times delusional. 


Michael: This also sounds like Elon now. 


Peter: So, who does that sound like? Like you don't want to do too much armchair psychology here. 


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Peter: But a volatile and delusional fabulist.


Michael: With racist views. 


[laughter] 


Peter: Right. One way or another, it is pretty clear that Elon is molded by the abuse that he endured at the hands of his father. Different people in his life frame it in different ways, but all of them say that this is left to him with limited empathy and that he goes to dark places mentally. His second wife, Talulah Riley, said that he would wake up thrashing and recount abusive things that his father said to him. She said, “He's retained a childlike, almost stunted side. Inside the man, he's still there as a child, a child standing in front of his dad. Both of his ex-wives said that Elon would say abusive things to them that had been said to him by his father.


Michael: I hate that you're drumming up emotions in me of feeling bad for this person. 


Peter: It'll fade over time. 


Michael: It would be such a sad human story if he wasn't one of the most powerful people in the world and inflicting this garbage on other people. 


Peter: If he was just a guy, you'd be like, “Yeah, sad.” 


Michael: Somebody like this is just never going to have a stopping point because he's trying to fill some fucking hole within himself that just can't be filled. 


Peter: A quote from his friend, “He was not hardwired to have empathy.”


Michael: [laughs] Jesus Christ.


Peter: And this is a big part of Isaacson’s theory of Musk, that he just has limited empathy. And it's very interesting how little this basic observation seems to factor into his analysis of Elon's claims about wanting to better humanity. All of Elon's big projects, going into space, electric cars, hyperloop, all that shit. Elon tells a story where he is trying to get humanity to this very important next stage that we need to get to and it's all for the betterment of humanity. And yet Isaacson admits that Musk is not an empathetic guy. What does that tell you about his claim that he's just trying to help out the human race? 


Michael: Because what you're actually looking at is a pattern of selfish behavior, but somehow, you're believing his narrative, that it's like it's all for the greater good. 


Peter: I'll lighten the mood a little bit. There we go, a little more. 


Michael: The science fiction book that most influenced his wonder years was Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The jaunty and wry tale helped shape Musk's philosophy and added a dollop of droll humor to his serious mean. The Hitchhiker's Guide, he says, helped me out of my existential depression and I soon realized it was amazingly funny in all sorts of subtle ways. 


Peter: Elon Musk trying to figure out The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is my favorite B plot in the Isaacson biography. Have you ever read it? 


Michael: No. 


Peter: He's like, I soon realized it was amazingly funny in all sorts of subtle ways. The Hitchhiker's Guide, I haven't read it in 30 years, but it's like a comedy. It's like overtly-- it's satirical. Alright, keep going. 


Michael: He says the denizens of the galaxy are trying to figure out the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. They build a supercomputer that after 7 million years spouts out the answer 42. When that provokes a befuddled howl, the computer replies, that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is. That lesson stuck with Musk. I took from the book that we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe. Oh, that's dumb. What is he saying? 


Peter: What is he talking about? So, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a sci-fi satire of capitalism. Like the entire thing is predicated around the demolition of the Earth to build an interstellar superhighway. The whole 42 thing, the idea that the answer to everything is 42, it's meant to be an absurdity. This really simple number is the answer to this grand question. Douglas Adams has said, “I just thought of like, what would be the silliest number.” Anyway, so now we have this guy choosing presidents for us because he's too stupid to understand. [Michael laughs] Like a book that is widely read by children. I was 12 years old when I read this. 


Michael: Nobody shows Elon Musk Starship Troopers. It's like robocop, [Peter laughs] like these other-- [laughs]


Peter: Anyway, he's into computers and programming. At a young age, he programmed a rudimentary video game at the age of 12. At the age of 17, he leaves South Africa on his own for Canada. I just sent you something. 


Michael: A myth has grown that Musk, because his father was on and off successful, arrived in North America in 1989 with a lot of money, perhaps pockets filled with emeralds. Errol at times encouraged that perception. But in fact, what Errol got from the Zambian emerald mine had become worthless years earlier. When Elon left South Africa, his father gave him $2,000 and traveler's checks, and his mother provided him with another $2,000 by cashing out a stock account she had opened with the money she won in a beauty contest as a teenager. Otherwise, what he mainly had with him when he arrived in Montreal was a list of his mother's relatives he had never met. 


Peter: There is a storyline around Elon that you'll see floating around that he comes from real wealth. That does not appear to be true. 


Michael: All right, the emerald mine thing that people always talk about is an urban legend, because it didn't actually produce that much money, right? 


Peter: Yeah. I mean, it existed. And Elon at times has entirely denied the emerald mine thing. A couple years ago, he tweeted, “The fake emerald mine thing is so annoying. Like, where exactly is this thing?” But in an interview in 2014, he said, “My father had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia.” So, the fact that he denies parts of it, I think has fed the story that he actually did come with a bunch of money. 


Michael: Right. 


Peter: Errol gave an interview to the sun where he claimed that he sent Elon to the States with plenty of money. He also said that this was his idea, which Elon denies. It's hard to know what's up, because both of these guys are serial liars. But it's pretty safe to say that Elon wasn't particularly wealthy when he arrived in Canada. 


Michael: And he's not the heir to an emerald mine in the way that people do sometimes throw that around. He definitely grew up fine, but he wasn't one of Trump's kids or something. 


Peter: So, the thing about Errol is that he had some money, but he was up and down. He was not consistently successful in business. He was also a degenerate gambler. There's anecdote about a time when he thought he could beat roulette, and [Michael laughs] I think it was Kimbal came down to the kitchen, and he's got a model roulette wheel, and he tells him, like, I'm seeing how microwave waves affect the meal. 


Michael: What? Isn't that the least beatable game at a casino? 


Peter: Unless you get the microwave waves [Michael laughs] flowing in the right direction. 


Michael: Unless you're cheating, yeah. 


Peter: Elon does well on the SATs, but nothing insane. 730 math, 670 verbal. That's a 1400, folks. 


Michael: Better than I got. 


Peter: I did better, baby. 


Michael: Wait, you got better than that? Really? 


Peter: Yeah. I'm, like, smart as shit, dude. 


Michael: Now you host a podcast-- and now you live in New Jersey and host a podcast. 


Peter: My life is a series of downward trajectories and then a standardized test on the left. [Michael laughs] A lot of people are like, “We need to bottle standardized testing.” I'm like, “Please, no. You will leave children like me behind.”


Michael: The smart yet lazy kids, yeah. 


Peter: If you tell me, you must perform consistently over the span of three years, it will never happen. But if you tell me, you've got a test Saturday, I am on it. 


Michael: This is such a good dynamic for the podcast because I was very hardworking, but also dumb. 


Peter: [laughs] Is this why we work so well? 


Michael: Yeah. 


Peter: So, he goes to Queens College, Canada. He likes gaming. He tries to network with important people, him and his brother Kimbal. Does a summer internship at Scotiabank. And then in 1992, he transfers to Penn, double majors in physics and business.


Michael: Isn't that your alma mater? Didn't you go to Penn? 


Peter: I went to Penn for law school, yes. 


Michael: Oh, okay. 


Peter: Isaacson says, “He had conceived by then a life vision that he would repeat like a mantra. I thought about the things that will truly affect humanity.” Musk says, “I came up with three. The Internet, sustainable energy, and space travel.” 


Michael: Whatever. 


Peter: You read this and you're like, this feels a little convenient, right? That in the 1990s, Elon identified these three things that happen to be the three things that he works on now as the most important things in the world. I found an interview that Musk did with GQ in 2008 where he told the same story, except in that interview, he said they were space travel, electric cars, and solar power. 


Michael: Nice. 


Peter: So, no mention of the Internet. It seems like he's just telling variations of this story depending on what he's working on. 


Michael: This is like us doing our Worst Takes of the Year episode and just the three most recent articles that were published. 


Peter: Right. I came up with three space travel electric cars, and not enough racism. Michael laughs] And I've decided to fix all of them. Elon and Kimbal, his brother, head to Silicon Valley at this point to try to materialize an idea that they have to basically put the Yellow Pages online. They put a directory of businesses online with maps that provide directions to them. The company is called Zip2. I'm going to send you a bit.


Michael: It says from the very beginning of his career, Musk was a demanding manager, contemptuous of the concept of work-life balance. At Zip2 and every subsequent company, he drove himself relentlessly all day and through much of the night without vacations. And he expected others to do the same. His only indulgence was allowing breaks for intense video game binges. The Zip2 team won second place in a national Quake competition. They would have come in first, he says, but one of them crashed his computer by pushing it too hard.” This also sounds fake, but the part about him being a terrible manager seems true. 


Peter: So, the part about him being a demanding manager is the substantive portion here. But I do want to talk about him being good at Quake for a second. Elon has elsewhere claimed that he was one of the best Quake players in the world at the time. Quake was one of the first-person shooters. 


Michael: Yeah. I was a big Quake head that was the Grandson of Doom, basically in Wolfenstein 3D. Yeah. 


Peter: The consensus best player in this era was a dude who went by the online handle @thresh and he has basically said Elon was one of the early players who played a lot, but that he, “Wasn't very good.” 


[laughter] 


Michael: Brutal. 


Peter: The competition story is basically unverified. The idea that their team won second place in a national Quake competition. It's hard to believe that someone crashed a computer and that's why they lost. 


Michael: My computer has never played Quake before. 


Peter: E-gaming was not a thing in the 90s, and so there weren't really national competitions the way there are now. But, yeah, this is just another thing where I think Isaacson's like, “Wow, yeah.” And he has zero interest in whether or not this is actually true. 


Michael: Because he's actually missing what should be a big thread of the biography that, like, this is a guy who cannot tell the fucking truth and lies about the weirdest things. 


Peter: Yeah, exactly.


Michael: You can just say, “I was really into Quake at the time and I was pretty good.”


Peter: I was one of the best in the world.  You don't have to say that shit. 


Michael: Yeah, no one cares. 


Peter: I know it feels like I'm nitpicking because I'm skipping past the fact that he's like an awful manager who hates work-life balance and talking about how he's lying about Quake. But yeah, this is what I think Isaacson is missing, that there's this B plot that is always happening that Isaacson isn't even aware of where Elon is just constantly throwing in little lies. 


Michael: He needs something from this. It's fulfilling some weird emotional need and it deserves some exploration. 


Peter: Yeah, we've seen this more recently too, with newer video games but he has to believe that if he were to do something, he would be one of the best in the world at it.


Michael: Oh, it's so-- God, it's such loser energy. 


Peter: It really is. 


Michael: I like video games, but also, it's so pathetic to have this be your thing that you have to lie about. 


Peter: Exactly. 


Michael: I would say as the world's ninth best Ball x Pit player, I don't have to [Peter laughs] lie and say that I'm the second best. I'm happy with my standing. 


Peter: So, the Zip2 business gets bought out, big buyout and it leaves Elon with $22 million.


Michael: And he becomes a worse person. 


[laughter] 


Peter: That’s right.


Michael: Every dollar just makes him like 1% shittier. 


Peter: His next venture in 1999 is X.com, not the one today but the original.


Michael: Isn't like a PayPal payments something, something. 


Peter: Yep. I'm going to send it to you, send this to you. Do not click the link. It automatically created a link to X.com? 


Michael: Oh yeah, of course. 


Peter: That will bring you to a hardcore pornography site [Michael laughs] formerly known as Twitter. 


Michael: Okay. His concept for X.com was grand. It would be a one stop everything store for all financial needs, banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments and loans. Transactions would be handled instantly with no waiting for payments to clear. His insight was that money is simply an entry into a database. And he wanted to devise a way that all transactions were securely recorded in real time. If you fix all the reasons why a consumer would take money out of the system, he says, then it will be the place where all the money is. And that would make it a multi trillion-dollar company. Honestly, I wish this existed. [laughs]


Peter: Well, yeah, but that's the thing is-- sometimes he will say something that's actually insightful about business and he does. He's not a total dipshit, but then sometimes he'll say shit like this where it's just like, “Well, yeah, but you have to actually do this.” Transactions will be handled instantly. What does that mean? How? If you fix all the reasons why a consumer would take money out of the system, then it will be the place where all the money is. It's like, yeah, I guess that's an idea. If there was a place and no one ever took their money out. Well, then eventually all the money would be in there. It's like, “Elon, you are the smartest man in the world.”


Michael: This is also such a pattern for him because with the Hyperloop, he was like, “Well, it's basically the same infrastructure as a high-speed rail, but you just need to take out all of the parts that cost a lot of money. Magically saying it would be cheaper to do it, cheaper, yes.” 


Peter: After taxes, he has $16 million from the sale of Zip2. He invests 12 million of it into X.com. 


Michael: Oh, wow. 


Peter: This is a very important Elon thing. As rich as he is, he doesn't seem to care about his own personal wealth in and of itself. He was very willing to just keep risking all of it on the next venture over and over and over again. This next anecdote we've actually discussed before in the context of the Sam Bankman-Fried episode, but it is so funny [chuckles] that I'm going to share it again. And also, I think it's relevant to this episode because it's in this book. 


Michael: I hope it's polycule related. [Peter laughs] Some people were playing a high stakes game of Texas hold’em. Although Musk was not a card player, he pulled up to the table. There were all these nerds and sharpsters who were good at memorizing cards and calculating odds, Levchin says. Elon just proceeded to go all in on every hand and lose. Then he would buy more chips and double down. Eventually, after losing many hands, he went all in and won. Then he said, “Right, fine, I'm done.” It would be a theme in his life. Avoid taking chips off the table. Keep risking them. [Michael laughs]


Peter: This is just the story of someone losing over and over again at Texas hold'em. 


Peter: For people who aren't card players, what they're describing is a situation where you put in, say, $100 and you lose it four times consecutively and then the fifth time you win, what does that mean? It means you're down 300 bucks.


Michael: [laughs] Yeah. 


Peter: It's such an interesting part of the book because it does feel like a microcosm of what Isaacson is bad at. It's like he doesn't know quite enough about this to know that Elon just sucks at poker and that all this anecdote is. Is the tale of a dipshit who doesn't understand poker. 


Michael: He's like a rich sucker story, basically.


Peter: Exactly. But Isaacson is like, “He loves risk.” Like that's all he takes from it, because he doesn't really know what he's looking at here. 


Michael: Because the story is also about somebody who just refuses to change their strategy given new conditions. It's clear that wasn't working. And he just kept doing the same thing. 


Peter: I have seen people do this, and the only thing they have in common, generally, is that they're action junkies, that they just want to keep gambling. They have a gambling addiction. 


Michael: Right. 


Peter: All right, I am going to send you bits. 


Michael: One of Musk's management tactics then, as later, was to set an insane deadline and drive colleagues to meet it. He did that in the fall of 1999 by announcing in what one engineer called a Dick Move, that X.com would launch to the public on Thanksgiving weekend. In the weeks leading up to that, Musk prowled the office each day, including Thanksgiving, in a nervous and nervous making frenzy and slept under his desk most nights. One of the engineers who went home at 2 AM Thanksgiving morning got a call from Musk at 11 AM asking him to come back in because another engineer had worked all night and was not running on full thrusters anymore. Such behavior produced drama and resentments, but also success. 


When the product went live that weekend, all the employees were marched to a nearby ATM, where Musk inserted an X.com debit card, cash word out and the team celebrated. 


Peter: This is very important to process. Something that consistently comes up, is that Elon seems to only be able to really get things done himself when there's like a crisis, an imminent deadline or something else high stakes. And so, when there isn't one, he will create one. If you read this story, Isaacson's like, it produced results, but what results? They launched this product Thanksgiving weekend and so was that better than launching it a week later? 


Michael: It also seems like he's someone who, because he does this, like “I'm willing to work through the night.”


Peter: Yeah, exactly. 


Michael: He expects other people to do it, but he's the owner of the company, so if the company does well, he makes millions and millions of dollars. 


Peter: The framing that this is success is capitalism brain rot.


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Peter: The question is whether this was necessary to achieve their goals and whether those goals made sense and also whether these people were adequately rewarded for their sacrifices. This is one of Isaacson's big errors. He really seems to believe that this sort of cruelty is a necessary component for great men building great things.


Michael: The only person I will let get away with this behavior is James Cameron. I'm canceling everybody else. [Peter laughs]


Peter: Well, yeah, because he went down to the Titanic though. [Michael laughs] That's real results. So, after a bit, X.com merges with the company that would shortly become PayPal, and Musk becomes CEO of the resulting company. This is the beginning of what's now referred to as the PayPal mafia, the group of early PayPal employees and founders, many of whom went on to much Silicon Valley success Peter Thiel, David Sacks. I'm now going to share with you a story that has no purpose other than being fucking hilarious. 


Michael: Which video game is he lying about now? 


Peter: So, this is a story about Peter Thiel getting into Elon Musk's McLaren, which is the fancy car he bought himself after his Zip2 sale. 


Michael: “So, what can this car do?” Thiel asked. “Watch this.” Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the accelerator. The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. [laughs]


Peter: Watch this. And it immediately crashed. Both of them are fine. I am now going to send you a famous drill tweet. 


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just about to say this. Yeah.


Peter: Just read it, the drill tweet here. 


Michael: So long suckers I rev up my motorcycle and create a huge cloud of smoke. When the cloud dissipates, I'm lying completely dead on the pavement. Yes. 


[laughter] 


Peter: I immediately thought of this tweet. 


Michael: Oh, my God.


Peter: Watch this.


Michael:  Watch this. 


Peter: Watch this and just immediately crashes the car is so fucking good. 


Michael: That's also a metaphor for what he did, but buying Twitter and stuff. He's like, “Watch this.” 


Peter: Exactly.


Michael: And then completely runs it into the ground. 


Peter: It's not just a dunk. That's actually an important metaphor. [Michael laughs] Alright, I sent you another thing. 


Michael: Musk insisted that the company's name should be X.com with PayPal as merely one of its subsidiary brands. He even tried to rebrand the payment system X PayPal. There was a lot of pushback. PayPal had become a trusted brand name, like a good pal who's helping you to get paid. Focus groups showed that the name X.com, on the contrary, conjured up visions of a seedy site you would not talk about in polite company. But Musk was unwavering and remains so to this day. “If you want to just be a niche payment system, PayPal is better,” he said. But if you want to take over the world's financial system, then X is the better name. It sounds like a porn site.


Peter: Dude. It's not good. His belief that X is a cool name. 


Michael: It's weird. 


Peter: Is so funny. It's classic Elon. The things that he thinks are cool are generally speaking, things that like a 12-year-old thinks is cool. 


Michael: Also, X PayPal sounds like he used to be my friend, my ex-pal. 


Peter: I can't even talk. This is just common sense. When you hear X.com, it's like, what? What is that? 


Michael: Yeah.


Peter: He's like, “If you want to take over the world's financial system, then X is the better name.” No, it's not. Dude. 


Michael: Do you know where he got this from? Because didn't he name one of his kids X as well? 


Peter: Yeah, he just likes sci-fi shit and his brain is trapped in childhood [Michael laughs] to some degree. I mean, that's all there is to it. Later on, Thiel and the other PayPal mafia guys secretly commission a study that shows that the PayPal brand is more valuable. And then they show it to Musk and he gets mad and he retaliates by stripping the brand from the website. 


Michael: Really? God. 


Peter: Isaacson says during the merger, Musk kept insisting that X.com had close to twice as many users as PayPal. And Levchin who's one of the PayPal guys, would check with its engineers and get the real number. “Elon didn't just exaggerate, he made it up,” Levchin says.


Michael: No way. 


Peter: It was what his father would have done. That's Isaacson. Levchin also says, “Elon will say crazy stuff, but every once in a while, he'll surprise you by knowing way more than you do about your own specialty. I think a huge part of the way he motivates people are these displays of sharpness, which people don't expect from him because they mistake him for a bullshitter or goofball.” 


Michael: I've never heard him say anything that shows any expertise. 


Peter: Maybe not, but I actually think this is really important to understand because Elon is a serial bullshitter, but he is in some ways very smart and capable. He's a very fast learner and he will hyper fixate on shit and focus on understanding it until he does. And the result is that he will often have a very detailed knowledge about certain projects and certain aspects of companies and the bullshitter and the guy who knows a lot of rocket science are the same guy. 


Michael: Because he has the same amount of confidence whether he's lying or telling the truth. 


Peter: I actually think that almost like the magic of his appeal. When I look at the widespread appeal of Elon Musk circa 2015 or whatever, I'm a little bit baffled. But I think what's happening is a lot of people view his bullshitting and his like big dreams and the things that he's capable of as like part of like a mosaic. And I think that's how Isaacson views him too. 


Michael: It feels to me from the outside that the ratio of knowledge to bullshit has also shifted over time. 


Peter: His ego has reached a different place, right?


Michael: Right, right.


Peter: So, Musk was too difficult to deal with as CEO and so they coo him out in 2000. Per Isaacson and this seems true, he doesn't really hold a grudge about this. He seems to accept that he was outmaneuvered. 


Michael: That is actually interesting. 


Peter: But he becomes very interested in control of his companies in future projects.


Michael: Because he still friends with Sacks and Thiel and stuff? 


Peter: Yeah, he maintains ties with them. In 2002, PayPal is acquired by eBay and Musk of course still has shares and that leaves him very rich. Something in the ballpark of 250 million. And so, at this point he's sort of adrift. He has a bunch of cash and grand ambitions. He claims that he realizes that NASA has no plans to go to Mars and that shocks him. He does some early research and then he founds SpaceX in 2002 and he starts hiring competent engineers. 


Michael: People are so obsessed with Mars for like no fucking reason. I just don't get like there's no reason to do it other than like dick measuring. 


Peter: No, it's the next step in human civilization, obviously the next planet to go to. The key is to start ruining this one as quickly as possible. [Michael laughs] He's actually doing an incredible PR move of making himself so prominent on Earth that the planet itself becomes intolerable and that we're like, “Just send me to Mars.” 


Michael: It is very funny that all these guys, like we have a habitable planet and they don't seem to care about like the fact that we're destroying it. They're really excited about this like, radioactive dust ball that's fucking six months on a spaceship away. 


Peter: This is from Isaacson, SpaceX's goal, he said in an early presentation, was to launch its first rocket by September 2003 and send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2010. Thus continued the tradition he had established at PayPal, setting unrealistic timelines that transformed his wild notions from being completely insane to merely very late. 


Michael: And also, he gets a bunch of headlines about these goals that he sets, which makes him seem a visionary, but he never actually delivers on anything. 


Peter: He is laser focused on keeping down costs early on. Isaacson says his focus on cost, as well as his natural controlling instincts led him to want to manufacture as many components as possible in house rather than buy them from suppliers, which was then the standard practice in the rocket and car industries. At one point, SpaceX needed a valve, Mueller recalls, and the supplier said it would cost $250,000. Musk declared that insane and told Mueller they should make it themselves. They were able to do so in months at a fraction of the cost. 


Michael: Right. So, you do see him producing some genuine results here. 


Peter: This is something that Elon is very good at. He seems to have a good instinct for where costs can be drastically cut. And I think a real key component of Elon's business success is it just leads to a lot of vertical integration. Vertical integration is where you consolidate your supply chain in your own company. So instead of buying parts from a supplier, you make them yourself.


Michael: Which is what NASA used to do before it started outsourcing everything to suppliers. And that is one of the things that caused the challenger explosion.


Peter: What was happening to them is that first they would find cheaper sources for their parts, but then those suppliers would catch on and jack up prices. So, Elon's like, “Let's just start building this stuff ourselves.” The downsides of vertical integration, it requires a bunch of upfront costs. But you can keep costs and hassles down later. Once again, Elon fosters a culture where everyone is subjected to brutal deadlines. Send you this.


Michael: Musk insisted on setting unrealistic deadlines even when they weren't necessary, such as when he ordered test stands to be erected in weeks for rocket engines that had not yet been built. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. He repeatedly declared the sense of urgency was good for its own sake. It made his engineers engage in first principles thinking. But as Mueller points out, it was also corrosive. If you set an aggressive schedule that people think they might be able to make, they will try to put out extra effort. But if you give them a schedule that's physically impossible, engineers aren't stupid, you've demoralized them. It's Elon's biggest weakness.


Peter: Isaacson says that this is similar to what Steve Jobs did. And he says although the practice demoralized people, they ended up accomplishing things that other companies couldn't. 


Michael: This ideology is so weird because you could also say they make their workers work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. 


Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Michael: It would work in some industries to employ children. But there's reasons we don't do that. We wouldn't lionize somebody who just like, base their company on essentially illegal behavior or certainly immoral behavior. 


Peter: Yeah. He imagines that there's a magic to this. But it's not magical. They're getting together some really talented people. Like, Elon hires top engineers and then he just is fucking do this in three days. And, yeah, sometimes they accomplish a lot. I don't really understand what Isaacson thinks the magic is. And I went into this willing to engage with the idea that Elon has some real genuine talent. I think that there are too many people who are Elon haters in the Elon hater space. People who imagine that he's just a total bumbling fool.


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Peter: And I just think that's obviously not true. Like, there is something here. There are things that he's genuinely good at. Some of what he's good at is just abusing his employees, right? He also like I said has a really good instinct for where costs can be cut. He will look at certain designs and think, “We don't need that.” There are real strengths here. But I don't know why Isaacson insists on believing that just like cracking the whip on your employees is a talent or there's a mystical quality to it almost.


Michael: I mean, he did get to Mars in 2010. 


Peter: That's true. 


Michael: This did pay off. You can't deny-- [crosstalk] 


Peter: The fact that I'm recording this from Mars does undermine. [Michael laughs] So over the course of the next few years, SpaceX gets production going, they get a factory, they're able to secure some smaller government contracts to launch satellites. Part of how they do that is with some Elon showmanship. They built a rocket prototype and literally bring it to DC. and it gets the attention of some NASA folks. They get a $278 million contract to attempt to put some shit into orbit. But they burn through that and by 2008, SpaceX is essentially out of money. They've attempted to send a rocket into orbit three times. They have failed. Elon reaches out to the PayPal guys for some investment to keep them afloat, which he gets. Their fourth launch is successful. That ends up securing them a big contract with NASA. 


Musk is well connected within the first Obama administration, especially with Lori Garver, who is deputy administrator at NASA. In 2010, Obama makes a publicity visit to the SpaceX launchpad and then that summer, they land the biggest ever commercial space deal. Almost half a billion dollars to send up satellites for a communications company.


Michael: Oh, I thought you were going to say that this is when they sent Katy Perry to space, [Peter laughs] which is going to be the crescendo of this episode. 


Peter: No that is Bezos, I believe. 


Michael: Oh, that makes me feel like a plastic bag. 


Peter: This is really the early stages of a media honeymoon that lasts until about 2018. Between the rise of SpaceX and Tesla. Elon is able to portray himself as like this mogul/innovator who is invested in advancing the cause of humanity. He is going to get us off of fossil fuels with Tesla and he's going to get us to Mars with SpaceX. He has cameos in Iron Man 2, on The Simpsons, in Rick and Morty, I guess I'll send you this. Here is a sampling of headlines and news coverage from this era. 


Michael: GQ 2015 How Elon Musk Plans on Reinventing the World (and Mars). Rolling Stone, 2017. Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow inside the inventor's world changing plans to inhabit outer space, revolutionize high speed transportation, reinvent cars, and hopefully find love along the way. That one did come true. [Peter laughs] Well, he found 12 unwanted babies. The Guardian, 2018 Elon Musk: The Real Life Iron Man. A December 2008 profile of him from GQ said that Elon was endeavoring to give the human race its biggest upgrade since the advent of consciousness. Ooh, that one's really bad. [laughs]


Peter: The advent of consciousness. 


Michael: Since we were like fish. 


Peter: Step one, consciousness. Step two, cars without gas. What are you talking about?


Michael: Like, we've already gone to space.


Peter: We already went to the moon which, for the record, is more than SpaceX has done at the time of recording. Elon likes to speak in dramatic terms like this that the way he speaks about shit is often both really dramatic and also really nerdy, which makes me think that “He said that?”


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Peter: I don't know. 


Michael: I remember when I was living in Berlin. I had a German tutor, a guy that I would go speak German with, who was like a big Elon Musk stan. And so, all we would do is argue in German about Elon Musk. And all he would ever present was things Elon Musk was going to do. 


Peter: Yeah, yeah. 


Michael: He is the Hyperloop is going to be amazing. Soon everybody will have an electric car. And I was like, “This is all things that he has not done.” It's things that he's promised. But other people promise outlandish stuff too and don't get media coverage like this. 


Peter: There was a really good esquire piece in 2012 that focuses on Musk's relationship with NASA and his desire to get to Mars, but seems to understand his personality a little bit more than most people did at this time. They are basically talking about his willingness to take on risks and dangers in the context of trying to get people to Mars. And so, they say this.


Michael: It says, “But you should know something about him.” In 20 years, he plans to ask you to sell everything you own and to give him the $500,000 he figures will be the price of a trip to Mars. Whether such a price is impossible or laughable is immaterial. He will ask you to leave everything you own and everything you know. He will ask you to start a colony on a planet that exists as a red star in the night sky. He doesn't want you to come back, but he doesn't want you to die either. For a long time, he thought you would have to risk death to accomplish his dream. But now he's decided he doesn't want you to. You don't have to die for Elon Musk. For you to be willing is more than enough.”


Peter: In this piece, they put together like, well, are you going to be able to safely get people to Mars?


Michael: Yeah. 


Peter: And initially, Elon had been realistic about this, where he's like, “Obviously, this space travel is very dangerous. People might die.” And then he realizes that from a PR perspective, maybe you need to walk that back a little bit. And so that's what they're talking about here. These plans all sound nice, but at the end of the day, what he's actually talking about is you pay a huge sum of money and then he sends you off to Mars where you will end your life. 


Michael: Just say he loved Big Brother. This is taking forever. [Peter laughs] It's also not clear what anyone is supposed to fucking do on Mars. Mars is just a giant desert. 


Peter: Obviously, if you look at a camera shot of Mars from a rover, you're like, “Wow, beautiful.” By year two, you're going to be like-- [crosstalk] 


Michael: By hour two, there's literally nothing there. There's nothing to do. It's not like you can go hiking or something. 


Peter: You can play board games. 


Michael: [laughs] Yeah, you can do anything that you can do in Seattle in the winter when you're stuck inside. But you are stuck inside. And also, it takes six months to get there. I cannot get over this detail. 


Peter: I'm going to skip over a lot of the much more recent SpaceX stuff, mostly because this story gets really boring. It's no longer like a startup. And so, Isaacson is just telling you stories of business, and it's just, who could possibly care? 


Michael: Does he have a sense of whether the company is I don't know still promising or has it kind of stalled out? 


Peter: It hasn't stalled out in the business sense because the United States government has moved over huge portions of their space program to the private sector, right? And SpaceX is the most prominent company. But the rest of the story here is the same thing over and over again. Like a problem emerges and Elon enters crisis mode to fix it. And that's it. 


Michael: Right. Right.


Peter: In broad strokes, SpaceX continues to work closely with NASA. They put a civilian crew into orbit in 2021, the first private company to do so. The last big event that Isaacson witnesses is the failed launch of the starship, which is the latest SpaceX rocket, in April 2023. And so, the story just trails off. There is a story that is very important. I need you to read it. It's from a book called LIFTOFF by Eric Berger. LIFTOFF: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX. I'm going to send you a quick excerpt here. 


Michael: Eventually, Musk realized that Pop Tarts were best enjoyed toasted. So, he opened a package and put two of them into the toaster. Only Musk made the rookie mistake of inserting the pastries horizontally rather than vertically. When they popped back up, he had to stick his fingers into the toaster to grab his breakfast. This was a problem. And at about 6 in the morning, Musk proceeded to scream at full volume, fuck it burns, fuck it burns. 


[laughter]


Rich guy encounters eating. You just put your fingers in the fucking toaster, dude. 


Peter: It's like Bart getting shocked and getting increasingly angry and going back for it.


[laughter]


Oh God, it's so beautiful. 


Michael: This is the person who's in charge of 80% of the government right now. Grab a fork, Elon. Just dig around. 


Peter: That's SpaceX. Let's talk about Tesla. We're going to rewind. In the mid aughts, just a couple of years after getting SpaceX up and running, Elon starts aiming to meet people in the electric car space. He meets some guys with prototypes. Eventually, he meets two guys who had a company called Tesla. Martin Eberhard is the guy who created the Tesla Corporation. He had seen an existing prototype of an electric car and he invested in it. But he basically decided that the guys involved, were not serious about building and selling cars. So, he brings in a friend, Marc Tarpenning. They hatch a broad plan to develop an electric roadster and they create Tesla in 2003. They do not have any money, but someone hooks them up with Elon and they get going. I am going to send you a bit here.


Michael: Both Eberhard and Musk consider themselves to be the main founder of Tesla. In Eberhard's mind, he had come up with the idea, enlisted his friend Tarpenning, registered a company, chosen a name and gone out and found funders. Elon called himself the chief architect in all kinds of things, but he wasn't, Eberhard says. He was just a board member and investor. But in Musk's mind, he was the one who put Eberhard together with CTO JB Straubel and provided the funding needed to start the company. When I met Eberhard and Wright and Tarpenning, they had no intellectual property, no employees, nothing. All they had was a shell corporation.


Peter: It's a pretty commonly held belief that Elon took over Tesla after its founding and then started calling himself a founder. I actually think that's a myth or at least a half truth. These guys, they had a preexisting idea, but Elon got in so early. He was involved from the early planning stages in everything from design to tech.


Michael: So, it wasn't there was a factory and they were making products. It was it was literally just an idea.


Peter: He's right. When they said they didn't have IP, they didn't even have a patent. Let alone like a prototype. 


Michael: Right. 


Peter: It's safe to say that he did not literally found the company in the sense that like the corporate entity was established before he got involved, but that's literally all there was also. 


Michael: It sounds like he's really involved in the company from then on. So, it's not like he just gave them money and was call me in five years when you have a car.


Peter: He's super involved. I think that he probably pissed off Eberhard with how involved he was, but he's involved nonetheless. Long time point of sensitivity for Elon. He got into legal disputes about being called an investor early on. Eberhard is ousted a couple years later after much tension. Isaacson described them as very similar hard-headed engineer types. Eberhard sued him for libel in 2008, which ended in a mutual non-disparagement agreement that Musk violates constantly to this day. 


Michael: It's so weird that he hates this Eberhard guy, but he doesn't hate Thiel and the other guys that pushed him out of his company. 


Peter: You'll see, you'll see. Just read this bit. 


Michael: Eberhard, after being ousted, launched a little website called Tesla Founders Blog where he vented his frustrations about Musk and accused the company of trying to root out and destroy any of its heart that might still be beating. Board members asked him tone it down, which didn't work. And then Tesla's lawyer threatened to withdraw his stock options, which did. There are certain people who occupy a demon's corner of Musk's headspace. They trigger him, turn him dark and rouse a cold anger. His father is number one. But somewhat oddly, Martin Eberhard, who is hardly a household name, is second. Getting involved with Eberhard was the worst mistake I ever made in my career, Musk says. That's how I talk about getting involved with a bougie in New Jersey, a bougie lawyer. 


Peter: I was in New York City at the time when went into business, when we permanently intertwined our fates.


Michael: You had no IP. You had nothing. 


Peter: [laughs] I had tons shitloads of IP dude, [Michael laughs] swimming in IP. I think it's very clear that Eberhard, A, talked a bunch of shit early on and B, wants to undermine the image of Elon as a founder of Tesla. And they're both arguing over it. The argument is over who's the founder is beside the point. Like, they both have a real claim to that word, whatever it might mean. But yeah, it just seems it's two egomaniacs who hate each other. 


Michael: This is an everyone sucks here situation, to put it in Reddit.


Peter: And again, very similar to SpaceX what really sets Tesla apart is the extent to which he pursues vertical integration. Isaacson says one of the most important decisions that Elon Musk made about Tesla was that it should make its own key components, rather than piecing together a car with hundreds of components from independent suppliers. 


Michael: That's also why it was hella expensive, probably too. 


Peter: Yeah. Getting off the ground, right? 


Michael: Yeah.


Peter: Yeah. This not only allows for control of costs and control of supply chain logistics, but also it prevents their competitors from easily replicating what they're doing. If you're Ford, you can't just call up Tesla's suppliers and be like, we'll have what they're having because Tesla is the supplier. So, the first car that they produce is called the Roadster. It launches in 2007. It's a two-door sports car and it's meant to be everything that a two-door sports car traditionally is, just electric. The idea is that you put out this expensive sports car and its proof of concept. Your sort of dream car could be electric. So, you get some publicity, you sell a few of these, and then you have the cash to produce a more affordable version which you can sell to the mass market. 


Michael: And also, I wonder-- I do think Elon was important to this because he was cool. He was seen as cool. And electric cars at the time were like hippies and kind of like a joke, like a punchline. 


Peter: And that was very intentional. They were like, this needs to be cool in a way that electric cars have not been. But also, he had a knack for certain types of PR. They got like celebrities on their wait list. George Clooney was on the waitlist. Schwarzenegger was the governor of California at the time, which is where the factory was. He's at the prototype unveiling. So, this puts them on the map. They only sell like 2,500 of these but the point wasn't to sell a ton of. 


Michael: Right. 


Peter: In 2012, they launch the Model S, which was their attempt at a fully electric family sedan. It's more affordable than the Roadster. It's still expensive. Base cost is 57 grand. But the Model S gets some great reviews. It sells very well, and so now they're sort of a household name. 


Michael: Yeah. 


Peter: Brief interlude the factories where they make all their shit. Elon calls them gigafactories. And the worst part about reading this book is he's obviously into this nerd shit and thinks it's cool. The giant arms that the SpaceX rockets sit in. He calls that contraption Mechazilla.


Michael: Okay. 


Peter: And you're just forced to deal with this as the book goes on-


Michael: Oh god.


Peter: -where Isaacson is like Mechazilla and [Michael laughs] you can tell that Isaacson thinks it's charming or something. It's so embarrassing and cringy. 


Michael: I'll bet he had to cut like 300 Lord of the Rings references. 


Peter: Yeah.


Michael: Oh, you call your conference room Tom Bombadil? Wow.


Peter: This is actually an interesting blind spot for Isaacson that I think is material. And I'm not just trying to dunk. He doesn't understand that Elon is cringe. [Michael laughs] I think he takes for granted that Elon is funny and cool in a way that he has this appeal that he doesn't. Here's a really good example I'm going to send you. 


Michael: His humor has many levels. The lowest is his puerile affection for poop emojis, fart sounds programmed into the Tesla and other discharges of bathroom humor. Say the voice command open butthole to the console in a Tesla and it opens the electric charging port at the rear of the vehicle. He also has a mordant ironic strand of humor, demonstrated by a poster on the wall of his cubicle at SpaceX. It shows a twinkling dark blue sky with a shooting star. When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true it reads. Unless it's really a meteor hurtling to the earth, which will destroy all life, then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteorite. Oh, God. I'm like in an Airbnb by the airport. 


Peter: Like, Isaacson is yeah, he's got these poop jokes, but then he has this unbelievably hilarious, [Michael laughs] ironic sense of humor. It's like, no, these are just different types of cringe ass try hard humor, dude. 


Michael: He has two kinds of Family Circus cartoons that he recites, Jesus Christ. 


Peter: It's very important to understanding Elon Musk that he is a cringe ass dork. But Isaacson is not young or hip enough to understand it. 


Michael: And also, a lot of his joking seems to be very approval seeking. It's sort of simpy.


Peter: It's pathetic, dude. 


Michael: Yeah. 


Peter: And I think it's even changed our perspectives on other billionaires. Like, now I look at Bezos and he's like, obviously on the light steroids and shaving his head and stuff. And I'm like, “Oh, are you doing this for me, Jeff?” You want me to think you're cool. 


Michael: Or Mark Zuckerberg going on Joe Rogan, right? 


Peter: Like Zuckerberg with a big gold chain. I'm like, “Zuck, if you want me to like you, just tell me.” [crosstalk] [Michael laughs] Elon has almost fostered, brought about this era.


Michael: Like the cringe billionaire, yeah.


Peter: Yeah. Let's talk about one of the big Elon promises, self-driving vehicles. 


Michael: God. 


Peter: He starts pushing this in the mid 2010s. I'm going to send this to you. 


Michael: As with his other mission driven obsessions, including travel to Mars, he made what would turn out to be absurd predictions about timing. On his October 2016 call with reporters, he declared that by the end of the following year, a Tesla would be able to drive from Los Angeles to New York without the need of a single touch on the wheel. When you want your car to return, tap summon on your phone, he said it will eventually find you, even if you are on the other side of the country. I look forward to getting fucking rear ended by one of these. 


Peter: We are building towards a future where a lot of people are going to die and like your last thought's going to be Elon Musk killed me. 


Michael: Yeah. [laughs]


Peter: This sucks so bad, dude. There's one incident that Isaacson does not discuss. In 2016, Tesla released a video of a car driving ostensibly by itself. The video has text reading, “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” Musk tweeted the video saying there was “No human input at all, but the car was following a predetermined route that they established by doing a 3D map of the area, which is not something the Tesla software is inherently capable of. And during recording, it crashed once, which they edited out. [Michael laughs] This was initially reported in the New York Times in 2021, and then it was confirmed when testimony from a 2018 deposition of the Director of Autonomy was leaked. 


Michael: Again, the actual story in the biography here is like, this is someone who's willing to lie to boost the stock price and get positive PR. 


Peter: No, the story is that this is what's necessary to make the magic happen. [Michael laughs] Sent you a little bit more. 


Michael: Almost every year, Musk would make another prediction that full self-driving was just a year or two away. When will someone be able to buy one of your cars and literally just take their hands off the wheel and go to sleep and wake up and find that they've arrived? Chris Anderson asked him at a TED Talk in May 2017. “That's about two years,” Musk replied. In an interview with Kara Swisher at the Code Conference at the end of 2018, he said Tesla was on track to do it next year. In early 2019, he doubled down. I think we'll be feature complete, full self-driving this year, he declared on a podcast with Ark Invest. I would say I'm certain of that, that's not a question mark. 


Peter: That is not a question mark. 


Michael: Yeah, Jesus, fucking right.


Peter: Isaacson says as Musk pursued his autonomous vehicle ideas, he stubbornly and repeatedly exaggerated the autopilot capability of Tesla cars. That was dangerous. It led some drivers to think they could ride in a Tesla without paying much attention. 


Michael: Of course.


Peter: There have been wrongful death lawsuits and so forth from this. Isaacson does not dive into it, which-


Michael: That’s because he doesn't bike.


Peter: -is part and parcel with my primary critique here, which is if your whole book is predicated on the idea, the whole thesis is that there's a tradeoff. Yes, he's a total freak and an asshole, but it produces these results. Then like you actually need to talk about the details of that trade off. You actually need to talk about the wrongful death lawsuits. 


Michael: His statements arguably have gotten people killed. You see a press conference with him, you're like, “Oh, it's safe for me to play on my phone while I'm on the freeway.” And then you fucking kill somebody. 


Peter: I mean, look, Tesla has paid out money to people because of these lawsuits, right? 


Michael: Oh yeah. 


Peter: The fact that Elon Musk has not been held personally responsible is mostly just an artifact of our criminal laws. 


Michael: And our quirky right-wing legislators. [Peter laughs] Is quirky the right word? I say quirky. 


Peter: In 2019, Musk hosts an Autonomy Day where the goal is to provide a demonstration of a partially self-driving car. They're able to get the car to do a short-predetermined route and then he says once again that full autonomy is about a year away. After which he says Tesla will unleash a fleet of 1 million robotaxis for public use. I think this is a good place to talk about history of broken promises and his general willingness to bullshit the public. Isaacson, you can tell by the excerpts, is aware of this, but he sugarcoats it. He says about the autonomy stuff Musk mixed, as he often did, vision and hype. Even in his own head, he blurred the line between what he believed and what he wanted to believe. 


Michael: Yeah, vision and hype are both just ways of saying bullshit. He blurred bullshit and bullshit. 


Peter: This makes it seem like, almost like it's not conscious. Or it's not done to deceive. Like, oh, he's just a dreamer. He's just dreaming. But I think it's beyond that. He knows he's bullshitting. He said in 2018 that they were going to place small rocket thrusters around a new roadster model and that it could potentially fly. Do you remember when he said the Cybertruck might be able to double as a boat? 


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs] Briefly, to act briefly as a above. 


Peter: Yeah. He bullshits about the Mars timeline, of course. In 2011, he said we'd have a man on Mars within a decade as a best case, 15 to 20 as a worst case. In 2022, he tweeted that he hoped to have men on Mars in 2029. Just this year, he said there'd be an unmanned mission to Mars in 2026, which, if I pause long enough while speaking, will be right now. 


Michael: Also, didn't he famously say the COVID pandemic would be over in April 2020-- in March of 2020? 


Peter: But, yeah, no there's a lot of evidence that Elon knowingly lies to the public with frequency, and I think you have to reckon with that. 


Michael: And he does it for financial gain too. This pumps up his stock price. It's not like he's doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Even if it is unconscious, he's making money on these fucking lies. 


Peter: Like, to wrap up the car portion of this, I think most people are aware that Tesla's had a rough couple years. We will talk about Elon's political shit in Part 2, but obviously he has alienated what was once his primary target demographic of environmentalist lives. 


Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Peter: That has resulted in pretty notable sales declines. And on top of that, if you want to get a little more businessy, competition has gotten a lot more robust. That has put pressure on Tesla's margins, which were once its strong point. Then you have the complete flop of the Cybertruck, launched a couple years ago just the ugliest piece of shit in history. It has sold something 50,000 in the entire country. 


Michael: There's no other physical object that screams I am an asshole like a Cybertruck. 


Peter: That’s right.


Michael: There's no T shirt you can wear. There's no other thing you can buy. It's like, I'm a huge dick. 


Peter: There was a Cybertruck in our local target parking lot, and I saw multiple people laughing and taking pictures. [Michael laughs] There's no other car where people will just demonstrate visible disgust. 


Michael: That's what I do when I see them. I try to make sure they see me being like, “Bro.” 


Peter: Despite these struggles, Tesla's stock price has remained high. The company is worth one and a half trillion dollars. And that is mostly because Elon continues to weave various tales for investors. One of them is autonomous driving and the prospect of robotaxis. But the other is humanoid robots. 


Michael: Oh, that's a Tesla thing. I thought that was a separate company. 


Peter: This is under Tesla, so there's a chapter in this book called Optimus is Born. We haven't talked about the format of this book, but it's semi chronological where he's going approximately chronologically, but also bouncing back and forth between the companies. 


Michael: Like this podcast will. 


Peter: Yeah. But he bounces back and forth so much that there are 90 chapters, so each one just a few pages. It's a nightmare, dude. Isaacson covers the beginnings of this initiative, this humanoid robot initiative, when he talks about Tesla's AI day in 2021. The big announcement is this humanoid robot named Optimus. 


Michael: [01:05:40] Isn’t this a kind of cringe name.


Peter: As you might expect, they did not have a working prototype at the time. Instead, they dressed an actress up like the robot and she danced around on stage. 


Michael: Really? 


Peter: Yep. Again, the chapter is called Optimus is Born, but the robot does not exist. 


Michael: Does he say why I would want a humanoid robot? 


Peter: Yes. Yes. 


Michael: Like, what is the purpose? 


Peter: Yes, you will see. Musk gave one directive. It was to be a humanoid robot. In other words, it was supposed to look like a person rather than the mechanical contraption with wheels or four legs like Boston Dynamics and others were making. If we're able to produce a general-purpose robot that could observe you and learn how to do a task that would supercharge the economy to a degree that's insane, he said. 


Michael: Would it though? 


Peter: This is a Musk quote, “Humanoid robots will uncork the economy to quasi-infinite levels. [Michael laughs] The well-known concept of quasi-infinity, folks.


Michael: Also, isn't this just like he wants a personal assistant? That just seems like a weird rich guy thing. 


Peter: At no point in the book does the phrase robot butler appear. But it's robot butlers. There's no other way around it. Musk says this means a future of abundance, a future where there is no poverty. We can afford to have a universal basic income. 


Michael: Wouldn't a robot do the opposite? 


Peter: You're listening to Jesus Christ himself speak, okay? [Michael laughs] Show some respect. It really is a fundamental transformation of Civilization. Recently, he said there will be billions of them. 


Michael: His entire role in public life now is making poverty worse. He's cutting fucking food stamps. So, whenever these guys are like, “We can solve poverty.” We'll solve poverty now, bitch. 


Peter: Just because he cut USA and can't killed 10 million people doesn't mean that his dream of robot butlers that do surgery is not real, Michael.


Michael: This is again, the vision thing. He's promising a vision. Like, I'm about to become a good person. 


Peter: Once my mass murder spree is over, you'll all see how nice I am. 


Michael: What would you even do with a robot butler? I would have it chop sweet potatoes for me. But then it would just sit idle in the corner like my fucking robot vacuum does now. 


Peter: I would become one of the problematic consumers in Wall E. Just like my robot just bringing me soda [Michael laughs] and chips all that. And I'm just like playing video games. 


Michael: Because what problem does this even solve? Yeah, you have to like get up from the couch every once in a while, fizz some water and then sit back down. But is that a major thing, like a major issue in society? 


Peter: Look, obviously if there were real humanoid robots that could do shit, it would be very useful.


Michael: Professional stuff, I guess not for like personal. 


Peter: Well, I would make it clean my house all the time. 


Michael: That would actually be nice. 


Peter: And then I would use that free time to think of ideas. [Michael laughs] So, big picture as concern about the core business of Tesla is rising, he very loudly pivots to this big new thing that's going to change the world. It's hard not to see through this where car sales are down and he's like, “Car sales don't matter.” Robot butler's for everybody. 


Michael: And also gets a bunch of earned media from it too. Yeah. 


Peter: Elon has been interested in AI for a while, and Optimus is an offshoot of this. He helped found OpenAI back in 2014 with Sam Altman. Although they've been at odds in recent years, he resigned from the board in 2018. Isaacson says that Elon helped found OpenAI because of, “The possibility that someone might create intentionally or inadvertently AI that could be harmful to humans.” 


Michael: Yeah, I'm really worried about the next pandemic. That's why I'm creating super aids in my laboratory. 


Peter: Elon says that this is all based on a conversation he has with Larry Page at Google, who is working on AI. And he decides that Larry Page is not sufficiently concerned about the prospect of AI turning on humanity or damaging humanity or whatever. And based on the conversation he relays, it actually does sound like Larry Page is a psychopath who says like-- [crosstalk]


Michael: Oh yeah.


Peter: “Well, who cares if computers take over? It's just the next stage in evolution.” 


Michael: Oh man, Jesus Christ.


Peter: That’s like some superstition like that. 


Michael: Let my robot butler live my life for me. 


Peter: So, when the Optimus idea comes about, Isaacson says this about it. 


Michael: An ultimate expression of safe AI, especially for someone who imbibed sci-fi as a kid, would be creating a humanoid robot. One that could process visual inputs and learn to perform tasks without violating Asimov's Law that a robot shall not harm humanity or any human. While OpenAI and Google were focusing on creating text based chatbots, Musk decided to focus on artificial intelligence systems that operated in the physical world, such as robots and cars. 


Peter: Why would AI in the form of a physical robot be safer than a chatbot? 


Michael: It seems significantly worse because then it can like slap you in the face. 


Peter: Like, how is this safer than a chatbot? This is just a chatbot that can physically kick your ass.  Like even in Ex Machina, the robot stabs him. 


Michael: It's tidying your house by pushing you out the window like you're actually detritus. 


Peter: The robot decides that you are dirty and then you're in a fight for your life. 


Michael: Or those insane cases where chatbots have encouraged people to kill themselves. This could be like tying the noose. 


Peter: He's like, “Oh, I'm interested in a safe AI and what's safer than a robot?” And Isaacson is like, “Yeah, what's safer than a robot?” And just writes it down like, “A lot of things, dude, a lot of things are safer than a robot.” I think Isaacson buys the pitch that at his core, Elon does in fact simply want to help save humanity from these perceived threats. But I think that gets it wrong. There's a great quote from Sam Altman in a New Yorker interview where he said, “Elon desperately wants the world to be saved, but only if he can be the one to save it.”


Michael: Right? That's like with all these guys, it's all an ego thing. That's the Mars thing. There's no fucking reason to go to Mars. But it's just like he wants to be able to say, “I sent people to Mars.” 


Peter: And yeah, I think that's right. Like Elon isn't interested in saving people. He's interested in being the savior. And that's why whenever he does something, he couches it in those terms. He's founding SpaceX to give us access to Mars and save civilization. He's founding Tesla to save us from fossil fuel dependency. He's founding OpenAI to save us from being destroyed by AI. He's buying Twitter to save free speech. Everything gets pitched in these terms and I think Isaacson just buys it. He just sort of buys it even though in my mind it's just obvious bullshit.


Michael: When clearly, I think it's a story he's telling himself. Because nobody wants to think that they're a piece of shit. But there's no reason for a journalist to look at this and just, like, repeat it. 


Peter: Here is a quote about these robots from the latest Tesla earnings call. 


Michael: My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army? Not control, but a strong influence. I don't feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence. 


Peter: Not disconcerting at all that he's talking about controlling a robot army. [Michael laughs] And so, I think you see this stuff and it's obvious that his concern isn't saving humanity, it's power. It's having leverage over humanity. Think about how wrong Isaacson is getting this right. He believes in Elon's grand aims. His whole thesis is like, “Yeah, he's a damaged asshole, but he's doing these incredible things.” And now Elon is openly like, “I want control of this robot army.” 


Michael: Right? [laughs]


Peter: So, Elon has some smaller projects in the pre 2020ish era, and we're going to go over them quickly. I think the way that Isaacson covers them is indicative because they both get covered very briefly in a chapter or two. The first is Neuralink. This is Musk's company dedicated to creating a computer brain interface, which would be achieved by an implant in the brain. 


Michael: Which previously could only be achieved by getting a vaccine. [Peter laughs] A rich person putting a microchip inside of you. 


Peter: So, Musk unveils an early version of the device that he has in mind in 2020. It's implanted into a pig and you could watch a computer pick up her brain signals. Musk said, “I could have a neural link right now and you wouldn't know. Maybe I do.”


Michael: In fairness, if Elon Musk said he was being controlled by a pig this entire time, I would believe him. 


Peter: Right. 


Michael: What is the actual purpose of this thing in my brain. 


Peter: So, they teach monkeys to play Pong with their brains. So, there's one purpose right there. So, write that down, Michael. 


Michael: I can teach a monkey video games, okay? 


Peter: Isaacson barely spends time on this, and he skips the fact that the testing on monkeys was an awful dystopian nightmare. 


Michael: Yeah.


Peter: This stuff came out after the book was ready for publication, I think. So, I don't know how much claim Isaacson deserves here, but it was reported that a bunch of monkeys died. Musk said online that the deaths were not the result of the implant and that they purposefully chose subjects close to death for ethical reasons. Both of those things are untrue. Several monkeys were euthanized after complications from the implant. Wired talked to an employee about the close to death comment, and the employee said it was ridiculous, if not a complete fabrication. The monkeys needed a year of training before they could get the implant-


Michael: Oh wow.


Peter: -so, they could not have been chosen if they were close to death. 


Michael: Those monkeys were no angels. 


Peter: Again, Isaacson talks about Musk's dishonesty as if he's just always bloviating, making these big promises and he's like, “Well, it's not entirely dishonest.” He just says unrealistic things, but he believes them to some degree. But he doesn't really explore things like this that are just flat out lies to the public. 


Michael: Also, even if this information was not available, you should know that this guy has a pattern of over promising things and lying in these tests. They lied in the prototype of self-driving cars. So, if they're having this prototype of monkeys playing Pong, you should just assume that it's a fucking lie to get publicity. Like he does this over and over again. 


Peter: Right. 


Michael: Also, what if my robot butler learns to control me. 


Peter: Using the Neuralink? 


Michael: Then I'm cleaning up after my robot butler.


Peter:  Black Mirror episode, your robot is making you play Pong with your brain. [Michael laughs] The other thing that Isaacson spends almost no time on is the Hyperloop. The Hyperloop, of course, an idea Elon had for a tunnel where a car would descend into a sled that would be shot through the tunnel using magnets. 


Michael: Well, there were a couple different ideas because there was also one where you would be in a pod and the pod would be going through, and then eventually it became you're in the car. He watered it down 50 times. 


Peter: That's right. Musk publishes a white paper about the idea in 2013, but nothing really comes of it, it sort of devolves from there. And you said it gets watered down. I think that's putting it pretty lightly. It devolves from there into [Michael laughs] a more mundane plan to build tunnels more efficiently. And this is how the boring company comes about. This is how Isaacson describes it. [laughs]


Michael: On a trip to Hong Kong in late 2016, Musk had a jammed day of meetings and, as was often the case, needed some minutes of downtime when he could recharge, check his phone, and just stare blankly. He was doing that stare when John McNeil, Tesla's president of sales and marketing, came over to break him out of his trance. “Did you ever notice that cities are built in 3D, but the roads are only built in 2D? “Musk finally said. McNeil looked puzzled. “You could build roads in 3D by building tunnels under cities.” Musk explained. [Peter laughs] This is why I'm so skeptical of the stories where people are like, oh, he had such technical proficiency because this is like a child. 


Peter: No, but this is what's funny about Musk is that I do believe that the stories of his technical proficiency, at least some of them, but I believe that it has led him to a place where he also occasionally rediscovers really basic, simple things and thinks that he's the first person to think of it. It's like he didn't invent tunnels just now. Did you think that you just invented tunnels right now? We should do a dig underneath a city that's really big. We should pick a city like Boston to try it out. I don't know.


Peter: But what would you call the dig? [Michael laughs] Maybe Isaacson thinks that this anecdote speaks for itself, but it is weird to just glide past Musk acting like he's the first person to think of tunnels. 


Michael: Right? 


Peter: Surely you have something to say about this. Right? 


Michael: And also, where did the conversation go after that? Because you'd think this guy who's like a functioning adult would be like, “Ah.”


Peter: You notice, Elon, how you had a word to describe what you're thinking of, and that word is tunnel. That's because they exist already. 


Michael: [laughs] I immediately got a mental image. How did that happen? 


Peter: So, when Musk is initially discussing the Hyperloop, he's discussing this really futuristic thing that could span the length of California or the Northeast Corridor, and then it turns into what he ends up calling future tunnels that would have sleds but move slower than he originally envisioned. The only thing that is ever actually built is a 1.7-mile tunnel in Las Vegas. [Michael laughs] There are no magnets. It is a little tunnel with Tesla’s in it. We're going to watch some news coverage. 


Michael: Wait, are we? [laughs]


Peter: Hell, yeah, dude.


{Video starts here]


Female Speaker: As you descend the escalator into the loop station, you see the Tesla’s waiting to whisk you into a tunnel 43 feet below ground. Now, you might think, “All right, it's like a subway,” but this is more like a highway underground. [Michael laughs] And because it's Las Vegas, this is also a thrill ride.


The Las Vegas-- [crosstalk] 


Peter:  The cars are going. so slow, it's crazy. 


Female Speaker: Thrill ride, park, light and sound show. 


Michael: They have to speed up the footage to make it look like it's going fast.


Peter: Yeah.


Female Speaker: Just a commute across a sprawling convention center. 


[laughter]


[01:18:59]: It's a car driving in a tunnel.


Male Speaker: It can be a 45-minute walk from one end to the other. 


Michael: What.


Female Speaker: The loop gets you there in less than two minutes. Here's how it works. You enter the station and call for a Tesla. 


Male Speaker: The system operates like an Uber or a lift where you have an app on your phone. You say, “I'm here, I want to go there.” Car comes up, has an identifier on it that matches with what is on the app on your phone. 


Female Speaker: Passengers don't have to make it-- [crosstalk]


Michael: [01:19:23] just run on a set schedule.


Female Speaker: There are multiple exits. You go directly to your station of choice. The convention center has three. But plans are in the works to build a loop system citywide. [applause] Construction on this loop was completed in two years for a cost of less than $53 million including the stations, it's designed to handle 4,400 people an hour with 62 cars, right now with drivers but soon there'll be a ton of this.


[laughter] 


And what happens-- [crosstalk]


Michael: They need drivers to go to a fucking straight line in a tunnel.


Female Speaker: Likely won't stay in Vegas. 


Male Speaker: Any place that has congestion issues needs to move people and really can't just keep expanding roadways.


Michael: Why hasn't anybody thought of this before? 


Male Speaker: [crosstalk] want to look at a system like this because it really makes a difference. 


[music]


[video ends here]


Michael: God.


Peter: This is just a little tunnel. They're flashing different colored lights in the tunnel. And so, when she's like, “It's part thrill ride, all she's showing is cars moving through a tunnel at like 10 miles an hour with flashing-colored lights.” 


Michael: From one end of a convention center to the other end of a convention center. 


Peter: And they're like, “It only costs $50 million.” Yeah, that's because it's just a mile of tunnel. 


[laughter] 


Michael: What's also so amazing to me is like, why does the media run interference for this? Because a much better story is just the city spent money on this thing is dumb. But she is basically operating as an advertisement.


Peter: Part thrill ride? What do you talking about. 


Michael: Yeah. [laughs] 


Peter: She's describing things to you that you've seen a thousand times as if no one's ever seen them before in history. 


Michael: It's a car in a fucking tunnel going 6 miles an hour.


Peter: It's a car in a tunnel, but this one is underground and [Michael laughs] there are cars in it. 


Michael: I just noticed that the Kryon is Tesla-powered loop tackles traffic. It's from one end of a convention center to another end. It's not tackling traffic. 


Peter: Well, it's tackling. 


Michael: It's tackling foot traffic. 


Peter: I want to talk about what I think is the biggest substantive omission from the book-


Michael: Substantive.


Peter: -which is Elon's treatment of workers. I'm going to send you a bit. 


Michael: The United Auto Workers had failed to unionize Tesla's Fremont plant partly because of what the National Labor Relations Board deemed to be illegal antiunion actions by the company and partly because its workers, as at the other new electric vehicle companies, Lucid and Rivian, got stock options, not usually part of union contracts. 


Peter: This makes it seem as though the fact that these workers got stock options somehow prevents them from unionizing. But that's not true. If you're in a union, you don't automatically forfeit stock options. That could be part of the union contract. They're allowed. It could be part of a union contract that they're forbidden. Anything can be part of a union contract. What actually happened was that during the union vote, Elon tweeted, “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? which the NLRB said was illegal because it sounded a lot like he was threatening to eliminate their stock options if they unionized.” It really seems like Isaacson doesn't understand what happened here and that he doesn't bother to look into it at all. 


Tesla was also said to have targeted union activists for termination prohibited workers from talking about wages and working conditions, which is illegal. Isaacson doesn't talk about any of it. He also does not touch on the discrimination lawsuits that came out of Tesla factories in the late 2010s, which we've actually discussed before. 


Michael: Egregious stuff. Yeah. 


Peter: Really egregious. The California Civil Rights Department alleged that black employees in the Fremont, California Tesla factory were subjected to discriminatory treatment in pay and promotions. There are allegations that supervisors use the N word and all sorts of bigotry. The EEOC, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, brought a similar case alleging extensive discrimination. One man was awarded over $100 million initially based on the severity of the treatment. There were several lawsuits filed in 2021 alleging rampant sexual harassment. No mention from Isaacson at all. 


At one point, he mentions in passing that the injury rate at Tesla factories was about 30% higher than the rest of the industry, which is based on a report from like 2017 or so. But he doesn't dig into it. Why? What's happening? Is it still true? Like, what do we know? 


Michael: It's always telling who these authors speak to as sources. It sounds he's reached out to these other CEO types that Musk worked with. But why didn't you reach out to someone who worked there? Why didn't you reach out to somebody at the UAW? You could have also reached out to people who were on the ground in these disputes and could have talked about them. 


Peter: I just don't think he's interested in this shit which again, I think it's like a fatal flaw in his book. 


Michael: Because thesis of the book is like, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” And so, you're not going to look into the eggs all that much. You're like, “Well, it's just another thing that he did. 


Peter: Right? But that's the thing. And I know I'm repeating myself, but how can your whole-body book be about the trade-off between the broken eggs and the omelet? And you're not even going to glance at the eggs. 


Michael: Exactly. It's not like he made Terminator 2, something for which any number of eggs is totally worth it. 


Peter: One of the best quotes in the book comes from an employee who is berated by Elon after not knowing certain information and Isaacson reveals that the employee may have been distracted by the recent death of his infant daughter. 


Michael: Oh, wow. 


Peter: Elon himself has lost a child. One of his babies died of SIDS when he was in his first marriage. Isaacson talks to the employee about it and the guy says, “Elon cares a lot about humanity, but humanity in more of a very macro sense.” I think it's such a good encapsulation of it. Elon is not truly kind to anyone in his life. And yet here are all these people who buy into his vision about wanting to better humanity. And maybe if you just took a step back and you looked at how he treats the people around him, you'd conclude that the simplest explanation is that he doesn't actually care about humanity. 


Michael: Right. 


Peter: And it speaks to the world that he envisions. Because when are we going to suddenly manifest this utopian world where workers shouldn't be treated like that? Right. Does Elon Musk believe in a future where one day we don't need to treat workers like that? No, he doesn't believe in that future. It's something that Isaacson doesn't think about at all. 


Michael: It's kind of like the full self-driving. It's always 10 years down the line, this care for humanity is going to happen. 


Peter: I have skipped one thing, which is the women in Musk's life. 


Michael: Yeah, I was going to ask because we're at the part of the Wikipedia article where it should be like personal life. 


Peter: He's had four prominent relationships. His first wife, Justine, his second wife, Talulah Riley, and then he dated Amber Heard and Grimes. 


Michael: I forgot about Amber Heard. Jesus Christ. 


Peter: I don’t think that these relationships are particularly interesting in and of themselves in the context of the Elon biography. But I do think that Isaacson fumbles them enough that we should mention it. Everyone in Elon's life says Justine was crazy and toxic. Just about everyone says the same thing about Amber Heard. But then we are told outright that he's verbally abusive in ways similar to his father. There's a bit where Elon nearly calls off the wedding with Justine because she won't sign a last second prenup. His family and friends portray it like, “Oh, he seeks out these toxic and chaotic women” and it's like, “Okay, maybe but it feels like a subset of this mode of analysis where Musk himself has no agency when he's doing shitty things. 


When he's being verbally abusive to these women, it's the output of his father's abuse. But when they're being toxic towards him these women, his mother says about his first wife that she had no redeeming qualities. 


Michael: Oh my God. 


Peter: I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, I do not believe the story being told by Elon Musk and his best friends and family. Because I don't think that they are reliable narrators. 


Michael: It is very funny to be like this narcissistic man child with temper issues, happens to have dated two women in a row who are just crazy and toxic. Yeah. Weird how that happens. 


Peter: As I have mentioned before Elon's extended media honeymoon really comes to an end in 2018, when a series of humiliating mishaps changes the course of his life and public image forever. All that and more on the next If Books Could Kill. 


Michael: Oh, yeah, we're ending with a cliffhanger. 


Peter: Yeah, I thought that would keep people in. 


Michael: Tune in to find out all of the stuff you know already. 


Peter: That's right.


[music]


[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]

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Michael Hobbes

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Peter Shamshiri

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