Kind: captions
Language: en
I hope with my books I'm saying
uh this isn't a how-to guide but this is
somebody you can walk alongside you can
see
Einstein growing up Jewish in Germany
you can see Jennifer doudner growing up
or as an outsider or a Leonardo da Vinci
or Elon Musk you know in really violent
South Africa with a psychologically
difficult father and getting off the
train when he goes to anti-apartheid
concert with his brother and there's a a
man with a knife sticking out of his
head and they step into the pool of
blood and it's sticky on their souls
this causes you know scars that last the
rest of your life
and the question is not how do you avoid
getting scarred it's you know how do you
deal with it
the following is a conversation with
Walter Isaacson one of the greatest
biography writers ever having written
incredible books on Albert Einstein
Steve Jobs Leonardo da Vinci Jennifer
doudna Benjamin Franklin Henry Kissinger
and now a new one on Elon Musk
we talked for hours on and off the mic
I'm sure we'll talk many more times
Walter is a truly special writer thinker
Observer and human being I highly
recommend people read his new book on
Elon I'm sure there will be short-term
controversy but in the long term I think
it will inspire millions of young people
especially with difficult childhoods
with hardship in their surroundings or
in their own minds to take on the
hardest problems in the world and to
build solutions to those problems no
matter how impossible the odds
in this conversation Walter and I cover
all of his books and use personal
stories from them to speak to the bigger
principles of striving for greatness in
science in Tech engineering art politics
and life
there are many things in the new Elon
book that I felt are best saved for when
I speak to Elon directly again on this
podcast which will be soon enough
perhaps it's also good to mention here
that my friendships like with Elon nor
any other influence like money access
Fame power will ever result in me
sacrificing my Integrity ever
I do like to celebrate the good in
people to empathize and to understand
but I also like to call people out on
their with respect and with
compassion
if I fail I fail due to a lack of skill
not a lack of Integrity I work hard to
improve
this is the Lex Friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's Walter Isaacson
what is the role of a difficult
childhood in the lives of great men and
women great minds is that a requirement
is it a catalyst or is it just a simple
Coincidence of Fate well it's not a
requirement some people with happy
childhood to do quite well but it
certainly is true that a lot of really
driven people are driven because they're
harnessing the Demons of their childhood
even Barack Obama's uh sentence and his
Memoirs which is I think every
successful man is either trying to live
up to the expectations of of his father
or live down the sins of his father and
for Elon it's especially true because he
had both a violent and difficult
childhood and a very psychologically
problematic father
he's got those demons uh dancing around
in his head and by harnessing them it's
part of the reason that he does riskier
more adventurous Wilder things and maybe
I would ever do you've written that Elon
talked about his father and that at
times it felt like mental torture the
the interaction with him during his
childhood can you describe some of the
things you've learned yeah well Elon and
Kimball would tell me that for example
when Elon got bullied on the playground
and one day was pushed down some
concrete steps and had his face pummeled
so badly that Kimball said I couldn't
really recognize him when he was in the
hospital for almost a week but when he
came home Elon had to stand in front of
his father and his father berated him
for more than an hour and said he was
stupid and took the side of the of the
person who had beaten him that's
probably one of the more traumatic
events of elon's Life yes and there's
also veld school which is a sort of
paramilitary camp that young South
African boys got sent to and at one
point you know he was scrawny he has
very bad at picking up social cues and
emotional cues he talks about being
Asperger's and so he gets uh traumatized
at a camp like that but the second time
time he went he'd gotten bigger he had
shot up to almost six feet and he
learned a little bit of Judo and he
realized that if he was getting beaten
up he might it might hurt him but he
would just punch the person in the nose
as hard as possible so that sense of
always punching back has also been
ingrained in Elon I spent a lot of time
talking Arrow musk his father Elon done
talked to Meryl musk anymore his father
nor does Kimball it's been years and uh
Errol doesn't even have elon's email so
a lot of times Arrow will be sending me
emails and arrow had one of those Jekyll
and Hyde personalities he was you know a
great mind of engineering and especially
Material Science I knew how to build a
Wilderness Camp in South Africa using
Micah and how it would not conduct the
heat but he also would go into these
dark periods in which he would just be
psychologically abusive and of course
May musk says to me the his mother who
divorced Daryl early on said the danger
for Elon is that he becomes his father
and every now and then you've been with
him so much LAX and you know him well
he'll even talk to you about the demons
about Diablo dancing in his head I mean
he he gets it he's self-aware but you've
probably seen him at times where those
demons take over and he goes really dark
and really quiet and uh Grimes
says you know I can tell a minute or two
in advance when demon Mode's about to
happen and he'll go a bit dark I was you
know here at Austin wanted dinner with a
group and you could tell suddenly
something had triggered him and he was
going to go dark I've watched it in
meetings where somebody will say we
can't make that part for less than 200
or no that's wrong and he'll berate them
and then he steps out of it as you know
that too the the huge snap out where
suddenly he's showing you Monty pythons
get on his phone he's joking about
things so I think coming out of the
childhood there were just mini facets
maybe even many personalities the
engineering mode the silly mode the
charismatic mode the Visionary mode but
also the demon in dark mode I'll quote
you cited about elon's really stood out
to me I forget uh who was from but
inside the man he's still there as a
child the child's standing in front of
his dad that was Tallulah his second
wife
and she's great uh she's an English
actress they've been married twice
actually and Tallulah said that's just
him from his childhood he's a drama
addict Kimball says that as well
and
I asked why and he said and Tallulah
said
you know for him love and family are
kind of associated with those
psychological torments and in many ways
he'll Channel I mean Tallulah would be
with him in
2008 when the company was going back or
whatever it may have been or later
and he would be so stressed he would
vomit and then he would Channel things
that his father had said use phrases his
father had said to him
and so she told me deep inside the man
is this man-child still standing in
front of his father
to a degree is that true for many of us
do you think
I think it's true but in many different
ways I'll say something personal which
is I was blessed and perhaps it's a bit
of a downside too but the fact I had the
greatest father he could ever imagine
and mother they were the kindest people
you'd ever want to meet I grew up in a
magical place in New Orleans my dad was
an engineer an electrical engineer and
you know he was always kind
perhaps
I'm not quite as driven or as crazed I
don't have to prove things so I get to
write about Elon Musk I get to write
about you know Einstein or Steve Jobs or
Leonardo da Vinci who as you know was
totally torn by demons and had different
difficult childhood situations not even
legitimized by his father so sometimes
those of us who are lucky enough to have
really gentle sweet childhood
we grew up with fewer demons but we grow
up with fewer drives and we end up maybe
being Boswell and not being Dr Johnson
we end up being the Observer not being
the doer and so I always respect those
who are in the arena I don't you know
you don't see yourself as a man in the
arena I've had a gentle sweet career
and I've got to cover really interesting
people but I've never shot off a rocket
that might someday get to Mars I've
never moved us into the era of electric
vehicles I've never stayed up all night
on the factory floor
I don't have quite
those
either the drives or the
uh addiction to risk I mean elon's
addicted to risk he's addicted to
Adventure
me if I see something that's risky I
spend some time calculating okay upside
downside here uh but that's another
reason that people like Elon Musk get
stuff done
and people like me write about the Elon
musks one other aspect of this given a
difficult childhood whether it's Elon or
da Vinci
I wonder if there's some wisdom
some advice almost that you can draw
that you can give to people with
difficult childhoods I think all of us
have demons even those of us who grew up
in a magical part of New Orleans with
sweet parents yes and we all have demons
and
rule one in life is harness your demons
know that you're ambitious or not
ambitious or you're lazy or whatever
uh Leonardo da Vinci knew he was a
procrastinator you know I think
it's usual to know what's eating at you
know how to harness it
um
also know what you're good at I'll take
musk as another example
I'm a little bit more like Kimball musk
than Elon I maybe got over endowed with
the empathy Gene and what does that mean
well it means that I was okay when I ran
Time Magazine it was a group about a 150
people on the editorial floors and I
knew them all and we had a jolly time
when I went to CNN I was not very good
at being a manager or an executive of an
organization
uh I cared a little bit too much that
people didn't get annoyed at me or
um mad at me and Elon said that about
John McNeil for example who was
president of Tesla it's in the book I
talked to John McNeil a long time and he
says uh you know Elon just would fire
people be really rough on people he
didn't have the empathy for the people
in front of him and Elon says yeah
that's right and John McNeil couldn't
fire people he cared more about pleasing
the people in front of him than pleasing
the entire Enterprise or getting things
done being over endowed with a desire to
please people can make you less tough of
a manager and uh that doesn't mean there
aren't great people over in doubt Ben
Franklin over endowed with the desire to
please people the worst criticism of him
from John Adams and others was that he
was insinuating which kind of meant he
was always trying to
get people to like him uh but that
turned out to be a good thing when they
can't figure out the big state little
State issue at the Constitutional
Convention when they can't figure out
the Treaty of Paris whatever it is he
brings people together and that is his
superpower so to get back to the lessons
you asked and you know the first was
harness your demons
the second is to know your strengths and
your superpower
my superpower is definitely not being a
tough manager after running CNN for a
while I said okay I think I've proven I
don't really enjoy this or know how to
do this well
uh you know do I have other talents yeah
I think I have the talent to observe
people really closely
to write about it in a straight but I
hope interesting narrative style that's
a power it's totally different from
running an organization it took me until
three years of running CNN that I
realized I'm not cut to be an executive
in a really
High intense
situations Elon Musk is cut to be an
executive in highly intense situation so
much so that when things get less
intense when they actually are making
enough cars and
Rockets are going up and Landing
he thinks of something else so he can
Surge and have more intensity he's
addicted to intensity
um
and that's his superpower which is a lot
greater than the superpower of being a
good Observer but I think also
uh to build on that it's not just
addiction
to like Risk and drama there's always a
big mission
above it so I would say uh it's an
empathy towards
people in the big picture
it's an empathy towards Humanity
Humanity more than the empathy towards
the three or four humans who might be
sitting in the conference room with you
and that's a big deal and you see that
in a lot of people you see it uh Bill
Gates or Larry Summers uh
Elon Musk
they always have
empathy for these great goals of
humanity
and at times they can be clueless about
the emotions of the people in front of
them or callous sometimes
musk as you said
is driven by Mission more than any
person I've ever seen
and it's not only Mission it's like
Cosmic missions meaning he's got three
really big missions
one
is to make humans a space-faring
civilization make us multi-planetary or
get us to Mars number two is to bring us
into the era of sustainable energy to
bring us into the era of electric
vehicles and solar roofs and um battery
packs and third is to make sure that
artificial intelligence is safe and is
aligned with human values and every now
and then I'd talk to them and we'd be
talking about startling satellites or
whatever or he would be pushing the
people in front of him in SpaceX and
saying if you do this we'll never get to
Mars in our lifetime and then he would
give the lecture how important it was
for human consciousness to get to Mars
in our lifetime and I'm thinking okay
this is the pep talk of somebody trying
to inspire a team or maybe it's a type
of of uh pontification you do on a
podcast but on like the 20th time I
watched them I realized okay I believe
it he actually is driven by this his
frustrated and angry that because of
this particular minor engineering
decision
the big mission is not going to be
accomplished it's not a pep talk it's a
literal frustration
and impatience of frustration
and um
it's also
just probably the most deeply ingrained
thing in him is his mission he joked at
one point to me about how much he loved
reading comics as a kid and he said all
the people in the comic books they're
trying to save the world but they're
wearing their underpants on the outside
and they look ridiculous and then he
paused and said but they are trying to
save the world and whether it's starlink
in Ukraine or Starship going to Mars or
trying to get a global new Tesla I think
he's got this epic sense of the role
he's going to play in helping Humanity
on big things
and like the the characters in the comic
books it's sometimes ridiculous but it
also is sometimes true
when I was reading this part of the book
I was thinking of all the young people
who are struggling in this way and I
think a lot of people are in different
ways whether they grow up without a
father whether they grow up with
physical emotional mental abuse or
Demons of any kind as you talked about
and it's really painful to read but also
really damn inspiring
that if you
sort of
walk side by side with those demons if
you don't let that pain break you
or somehow Channel it if you can put it
this way that you can achieve you can do
great things in this world well that's
um an epic view of why we write
biography which is more epic than I'd
even thought of so I say thank you
because in some ways what you're trying
to do is say okay
I mean Leonardo you talk about being a
misfit he's born illegitimate in the
village of Vinci and he's gay and he's
left-handed and he's distracted and his
father won't legitimize him
and uh
then he wanders off to the town of
Florence and he becomes the greatest
artist and engineer of the early
Renaissance of that part of the
Renaissance
I hope this book inspires Jennifer
Dowden of the gene editing Pioneer who
discovers helps discover crispr Gene
Eddington which my book The Code Breaker
she grew up feeling like a misfit you
know in Hawaii in a Polynesian Village
being the only white person
and also trying to live up to a father
who pushed her so if people can read the
books
and I should have said about Jennifer
dad and my point was that she was told
by her school guidance counselor no
girls don't do science you know science
not for girls you're not going to do
math or science and so it pushes her to
say all right I'm gonna do math and
science let's just interrupt real quick
but uh Jennifer Donna you've written an
amazing book about her uh Nobel Prize
winner crisper developers just
incredible one of the great scientists
in the 21st century right and I'm
talking about when Jennifer doudner was
young and she felt really really out of
place like you and me and a lot of
people when they feel in that way they
read books they go into they curl up
with the book so her father drops a book
on her bed called the double helix the
book by James Watson on the discovery of
the structure of DNA by him and Rosalind
Franklin and Francis Crick and
she realizes oh my God girls can become
scientists my school guidance counselor
is wrong
so I think
books
like she read this book and even if it's
a comic book like Elon Musk read
books can sometimes inspire you
and every one of my books is about
people who are totally Innovative who
weren't just smart because none of us
are going to be able to match Einstein
and mental processing power but we can
be as curious as he was and creative and
think out of the box the way he did or
Steve Jobs put it think different and so
I hope with my books I'm saying
uh this isn't a how-to guide but this is
somebody you can walk alongside you can
see
Einstein growing up Jewish in Germany
you can see Jennifer doudner growing up
or as an outsider or a Leonardo da Vinci
or Elon Musk you know in really violent
South Africa with a psychologically
difficult father and getting off the
train when he goes to any apartheid
concert with his brother and there's a a
man with a knife sticking out of his
head and they step into the pool of
blood and it's sticky on their souls
this causes
you know scars that last the rest of
your life
and the question is not how do you avoid
getting scarred it's you know how do you
deal with it Einstein too
uh one of my and it's hard to pick my
favorite of your
um biographies but Einstein I mean you
really paint a picture of another
I don't want to call him a misfit but a
person who doesn't necessarily have a
standard trajectory through life of of
success
so absolutely and it's that's extremely
inspiring
I don't know exactly what question to
ask there's a million well I'll talk
about the misfit for a second because
you know we talked about Leonardo being
that way you know Einstein's Jewish in
Germany at the time when it starts
getting difficult uh he's slow in
learning how to talk and he's a visual
thinker so he's always daydreaming and
imagining things
the first time he applies to the Zurich
Polytech because he runs away from the
German
education system because it's too much
learning by route
he gets rejected by the Zurich Polytech
now it's the second best school in
Zurich and they're rejecting Einstein I
tried to find but couldn't the name of
the admissions counselor at the apology
yeah like you rejected Einstein uh and
then he doesn't finish in the top half
of his class and once he does and he
goes to graduate school they don't
accept his dissertation so he can't get
a job he's not teaching it he even tries
about 14 different high schools
gymnasium uh to get a job and they won't
take him so he's a third class examiner
in the Swiss patent office in 1905.
third class because they've rejected his
doctoral dissertation
and so he can't be second class of first
class because he doesn't have a doctoral
degree and yet he's sitting there in the
stool in the patent office in 1905 and
writes three papers that totally
transform science
and if you're thinking about being
misunderstood or unappreciated in 1906
he's still a third class Patrick in 1907
he still is it takes until 1909 before
people realized that this notion of the
theory of relativity might be correct
and it might upend all of Newtonian
physics how is it possible
for three of the greatest papers in the
history of science to be written in one
year by this one person is there some
insights wisdoms you draw plus he had a
day job as a patent examiner and there's
really three papers but there's also an
addendum because once you figure out
quantum theory and then you figure out
relativity and you're understanding
Maxwell's equations and the speed of
light
uh he does a little addendum that's the
most famous equation in all of physics
which is E equals m c squared so it's a
pretty good year
it partly starts because he's a visual
thinker and I think it was helpful that
he was at the patent office rather than
being the acolyte of uh some professor
at the Academy where he was supposed to
follow the rules and so at the patent
office that doing devices to synchronize
clocks because the Swiss have just gone
on Standard time zones and swiss people
as you know tend to be rather you know
Swiss they care if it strikes the hour
in Basel it should do the same and burn
at the exact answer so you have to send
a light signal between two distant
clocks and he's visualizing what's it
look like to ride alongside a light beam
he says well if you catch up with it if
you go almost as fast it'll look
stationary but Maxwell's equations don't
allow for that and he said he's making
my palm sweat that I was so worried and
so he finally figures out because he's
looking these devices to synchronize
clocks that if you're traveling really
really fast would look synchronous to
you or synchronous eyes to you is
different than for somebody traveling
really fast in the other direction and
he makes a mental leap that time
that the speed of light's always
constant but time is relative depending
on your state of motion so it was that
type of out of the box thinking those
leaps that made 1905 his miracle year
likewise with Musk
I mean after General Motors and Ford
everybody gives up on electric vehicles
to just say I know how we're going to
have a path to change the entire
trajectory of the world into the era of
electric vehicles and then when it comes
back from Russia where he tried to buy a
little rocket ship so he could send a
experimental Greenhouse to Mars and they
were poking fun of him and actually sped
on them at one point in a drunken lunch
this is very fortuitous because on the
ride back home on the plane on the you
know Delta Airlines flight he's like
doing the calculations of how much
materials how much metal how much fuel
how much would it really cost and so
he's visualizing things that
other people would would just say is
impossible it's what Steve Jobs's
friends called the reality Distortion
field and it drove people crazy it drove
them mad but it also drove them to do
things they didn't think they would be
able to do you said visual thinking I
wonder if you've seen parallels of the
different styles and kinds of thinking
that uh
that
operate the minds of these people so if
uh is there parallels you see between
Elon Steve Jobs
Einstein Da Vinci specifically in how
they think I think they were all visual
thinkers perhaps coming from slight
handicaps as children meaning you know
Leonardo was left-handed a little bit
dyslexic I think
um and certainly Einstein had a career
he would repeat things he was slow in
learning to talk
um so I think visualizing helps a lot
and with Musk
I say it all the time when I'm walking
the factory lines with them or in
product development where he'll look at
say the heat shield under the Raptor
engine of a Starship booster
and it'll say why does it have to be
this way couldn't we trim it this way or
make it or even get rid of this part of
it and he can visualize the material
science isn't small anecdotes in my book
but at one point he's on the Tesla line
and they're trying to get 5 000 cars a
week in 2018. it's a life or death
situation and he's looking at the
machines that are bolting something to
the chassis and he insists that Drew
Bagley uh not Drew but Lars moravi one
of his great lieutenants come
and they have to summon him and he says
why are there six bolts here
and Lars and others explain well for the
crash tests or anything else the
pressure would be in this way so you
have to and they were blah blah blah
blah blah and he said no if you
visualize it you'll see if there's a
crash it would the force would go this
way and that way and it could be done
with four bolts
now that sounds risky and they go test
and they engineer but it turns out to be
right I know that seems minor but I
could give you 500 of those where in any
given day he's
visualizing the physics of an
engineering or manufacturing problem
that sounds pretty mundane
but for me if you say what makes him
special there's a mission-driven thing I
give you a lot of reasons
but one of the reasons is he cares not
just about the design of the product but
visualizing the manufacturing and of the
product the machine that makes the
machine and that's what we failed to do
in America for the past 40 years we
Outsource so much manufacturing I don't
think you can be a good innovator if you
don't know how to make this stuff you're
designing and that's why musk puts his
designer's desk right next to the
assembly lines and the factories so that
they have to visualize what they drew as
it becomes the physical object so
understanding everything from the
physics all the way up to the to the
software it's like end to end well
having an end-to-end control is
important certainly with Steve Jobs I'm
looking my iPhone here it's a big deal
that Hardware only works with Apple
software and for a while the iTunes
Store and only what worked you know so
he has an end to end that makes it like
a Zen Garden in Kyoto very carefully
curated but a thing of beauty
for musk when he first was at Tesla and
before he was the CEO when he was just
the executive chairman and basically the
finance person person funding it
they were Outsourcing everything they
were making the batteries in Japan and
the battery pack would be at some
barbecue shop in Thailand and that sent
to the Lotus Factory in England to be
put into a Lotus Elise chassis and then
that was a nightmare you did not have
end-to-end control of the manufacturing
process so he goes to the Other Extreme
he gets a factory in Fremont from Toyota
and he wants to do everything in his the
software in-house the painting in-house
you know the the the
uh battery he makes his own batteries
and I think that end-to-end control is
part of his personality I mean there's a
but it also what allows Tesla uh to be
Innovative yeah I got to see
and understand in detail one
example of that which is the development
of the brain of the car in autopilot
going from mobileye to in-house building
the autopilot system to uh basically
getting rid of all sensors that are not
uh rich in data to make it AI friendly
sort of saying that we can do it all
with vision and like you said removing
some of the bolts so sometimes it's
small things but sometimes it's really
big things like getting rid of radar
well Vision only getting rid of radar is
huge and everybody's against everybody
and that's still fighting it a bit
they're still trying to do a Next
Generation some form of radar but it
gets back to the first principles you're
talking about visualizing well he starts
with the first principles and the first
principles are physics uh involve things
like well humans drive with only visual
input they don't have radar they don't
have lidar they don't have sonar and so
there is no reason in the laws of
physics that make it so that Vision only
won't be successful in creating
self-driving now that becomes an Article
of Faith to him and he gets a lot of
pushback
but now and he's by the way not been
that successful in meeting his deadlines
of getting self-driving he's way too
optimistic
but it was that first principles of get
rid of unnecessary things now you would
think lidar why not use it like why not
use a crutch it's like yeah we can do
things Vision only but when I look at
the stars at night I'll use a telescope
too
well you could use lidar but you can't
do millions of cars that way at scale at
a certain point you have to make it not
only a good product but a product that
goes to scale and you can't make it
based on maps like Google Maps because
it'll never be able to you know then
drive from New Orleans to Slidell where
I want to go when it's too hot in New
Orleans uh take for example full self
Drive
he has been obsessed with what he calls
the robo taxi we're going to build the
Next Generation car without a steering
wheel
without pedals because it's going to be
full self-drive you just summon it you
won't need to drive it
well over and over again all these
people I've told you about you know Lars
maravi and Drew backlino and others
they're saying okay fine that sounds
really good but
you know it ain't happened yet we need
to build a 25 000 Mass Market Global car
that's just normal with a steering wheel
and yeah he finally turned around a few
months ago and said let's do it and then
he starts focusing on how's the assembly
line going to work how are we going to
do it and make it the same platform for
robo taxi so you can have the same
assembly on likewise for full self Drive
they were doing it by coding hundreds of
thousands of lines of code that would
say things like if you see a red light
stop if there's a blinking light if the
two yellow lines do this there's a bike
lane do this if there's a crosswalk do
that well that's really hard to do now
he's doing it through artificial
intelligence and machine learning only
fsd12 will be based on the billion or so
frames from Tesla each week of Tesla
drivers and saying what happened when a
human was in this situation what did the
human do and let's only pick the best
humans the five star drivers or the Uber
drivers as Elon says and so that's him
changing his mind and going to first
principles but saying all right I'm even
going to change full self-driving so
there's not rules based it becomes AI
based just like chat GPT doesn't try to
answer your question who are the five
best popes or something by study chapter
by having
ingested billions of of uh pieces of
writing that people have done this will
be AI but real world done by ingesting
video sometimes it feels like he and
others they're building things in this
world successfully are basically uh
confidently exploring a dark room
with a very confident ambitious Vision
with that room actually looks like
like they're just walking straight into
the darkness there's no painful toys or
Legos on the ground I'm just going to
walk I know exactly how far the wall is
and then very quickly willing to adjust
as they run into they step on the Lego
and or their their body uh is filled
with a lot of pain what I mean by that
is there's this kind of evolution that
seems to happen where you discover
really good ideas along the way that
allow you to Pivot like to me
since you know since a few years ago
when you could see with Andre carpathy
the software 2.0 evolution of autopilot
it became obvious to me that this is not
about the car
this is about Optimus the robot
this this is like if we look back 100
years from now
the car will be remembered as a cool car
nice Transportation but the the
autopilot won't be the thing that
controls the car it would be the thing
that allows embodied AI systems to
understand the world so broadly and so
that kind of approach and it's and you
kind of stumble into it well Tesla be a
a car company
will it be an AI company will it be a
robotics company will it be a home
robotics company will be an energy
company and you kind of slowly discover
this as you confidently uh
like push forward with a vision so it's
interesting to watch that kind of
evolution as long as it's backed by this
confidence there are a couple of things
that are required for that one is being
adventurous one doesn't enter a dark
room without a flashlight and a map
unless you're a risk taker unless you're
adventurous the second is to have
iterative uh brain Cycles where you can
process information
and do a feedback loop and make it work
the third and this is what we failed to
do a lot in the United States and
perhaps around the world is when you
take risks you have to realize you're
going to blow things up
you know first three rockets that the
Falcon rocket that must does they blow
up even Starship three and a half
minutes but then it blows up the first
time
so I think Boeing and NASA and others
have become
unwilling to enter your dark room
without knowing exactly where the exit
is and the lighted path to the exit
and the people who created America
whenever they came over you know whether
the Mayflower is refugees from the Nazis
they took a lot of rest to get here and
now I think we have more referees than
we have Risk Takers more
lawyers and regulators and others saying
you can't do that that's too risky then
people willing to innovate and you need
both
I think you're also right on 50 100
years from now
what musk will be most remembered for
besides space travel
is real world AI
not just Optimus the robot but Optimus
robot and the self-driving car
uh they're they're pretty much the same
they're using
uh you know GPU clusters or Dojo chips
or whatever it may be to process real
world data we all got and you did on
your podcast quite excited about large
language model you know generative uh
predictive text AI That's fine
especially if you want to chit chat with
your chat bot
but the Holy Grail is artificial general
intelligence and the tough part of that
is real world AI
and that's where Optimus the robot or
full self Drive
or I think far ahead of anybody else
well I like how you said Chit Chat uh I
I would say for for one of the greatest
writers ever it's funny that you spoke
about language and the Mastery of
languages as merely chit chat you know
people have fallen in love over some
words people have gone to Wars over some
Wars I think Wars have a lot of power
It's actually an interesting question
where the wisdom of the world the wisdom
of humanity is in words or is it in
visual in visual is it in the physical I
don't really it's in mathematics it
might maybe it all boils down to math
and in the end this kind of discussion
about uh real world AI versus language
is all the same maybe I've um
gotten a chance to hang out quite a bit
in the metaverse with Mr Mark Zuckerberg
recently and boy
is the realism in there or the new like
the the thing that's coming up in the
future is incredible I got uh scanned
uh in uh Pittsburgh for 10 hours into
the metaverse and there's like a
a virtual version of me and I got to
hang out with that virtual version do
you like yourself well I I never like
myself
but it was easier to like
that other guy that was interesting
because I like you
he didn't seem to care much it's
actually lack of the empathy
but that was you know it made me start
to question even more than before like
well how important is this physical
reality because I I got to see you know
my myself and other people in that
metaverse like the details of the face
the like all the all the things that you
think maybe if you look yourself in the
mirror are imperfections all this kind
of stuff
when I was looking at myself and then
others all those things were beautiful
and it was like
it was real and it was intense and it it
uh it was scary because you're like well
are you allowed to murder people in the
metaverse because like are you allowed
to because what are you allowed to do
because you can replicate a lot of those
things and it's you start to question
what are the fundamental things that
make life worth living here as we know
as humans have you talked to Elon about
his views of we're living in a
simulation maybe and how you would
figure out if that's true yes there's a
constant light-hearted but also a
serious sense
that this is all a bit of a game one of
my theories on Elon a minor theory is
that he read Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy once too often
yeah and as you know there's a scene in
there that says uh that there's a theory
about the universe that if anybody ever
discovers the secrets and meanings of
the universe it will be replaced by an
even more complex universe and then the
next line Douglas Adams writes is and
there's another theory that this has
already happened so I'm gonna try to get
my head around that but I know that Elon
Musk tries to well there there's a humor
to that there's an enormous humor to
Hitchhiker's Guide I really think that
helped musk out of the darkest of his
periods to have sort of the sense of fun
of figuring out what life is all about I
wonder if this is a smaller side we
could say just uh I haven't gotten to
know Elon very well because the the
silliness
the willingness to engage in the
absurdity of it all
and have fun
what is that what is that uh is that
just a quirk of Personality or is that a
fundamental aspect of a human who's
running six plus companies well it's a
relief valve just like video games and
politopia and Elden ring or release
valves for him
um and he does have an explosive sense
of humor as you know and the weird thing
is when he makes the abrupt transition
from dark demon mode and you're in the
conference room and he has really become
upset about something and not only their
dog Vibes but there's dark words
emanating and he's saying your
resignation will be accepted if you die
you know Etc
and then something pops and he pulls out
his phone and pulls up a Bonnie Python's
get you know like the school of silly
walks or whichever John Cleese and he
starts laughing again and things break
so it's
it's almost as if he has different modes
the emulation of human mode the
engineering mode the dark and Demon mode
and certainly there is the silly and
getting mode
yeah you've actually opened the Elon
book with the quotes from Elon and from
Steve Jobs so elon's quote is to anyone
of offended I just want to say this is
an SNL I just want to say I reinvented
electric cars and I'm sending people to
Mars on a rocket ship did you also think
I was going to be a chill normal dude
and then the quote from Steve Jobs of
course is the people who are crazy
enough to think they can change the
world are the ones who do so um
what do you think is the role of the old
uh Madness and genius what do you think
they're all crazy in this well first of
all let's both stipulate that musk is
crazy at times I mean and
then let's figure out and I try to do it
through storytelling not through
highfalutin preaching
uh where that craziness works you know
give me a story tell me another go tell
me where he's crazy
and
you know the almost final example uh AI
but him shooting off Starship for the
first time
uh and between an aborted countdown and
the shoot-off he goes to Miami to an ad
sales conference and meets Linda
yaccarino for the first time make sure
the CEO I mean there's a very
impulsiveness to him then he flies back
they launch Starship
and
you realize that there's a drive and
there are demons and there's also
craziness
and
you sometimes want to pull those out you
want to take away his phone so he
doesn't tweet at 3am you want to say
quit being so crazy
but then you realize there's a wonderful
line of Shakespeare and measure for
measure at the very end he says even the
best are molded out of faults
and so you take the faults of musk for
example which includes a craziness that
can be endearing but also craziness
that's just like effing crazy
uh as well as
this drive and Demon mode
I don't know that you can take that
strand out of the fabric and the fabric
remains whole
I wonder
sometimes it saddens me that we live in
a society that doesn't celebrate even
the darker aspects of crazy in
acknowledging that it all as comes in
one package it's the man in the arena
versus the critic and the Man in the
rain versus the regulator and to make it
more prosaic
um
well let me ask about not just the crazy
but the cruelty so in um
you've written when reporting as Steve
Jobs was told you that the big question
to ask was did he have to be so mean so
rough and cruel so drama addicted uh
what is this answer for Steve Jobs did
he have to be so cruel for for jobs I
asked was at the end of my reporting
because that's what he asked said at the
beginning we're doing the launch of I
think
the iPad 2 it may have been Steve is
emaciated because you know he's been
sick and so I said it was what's the
answer to your question and he said well
if I had been running Apple
I would have been nicer to everybody
everybody got stock options and we've
been like a family and then I I don't
know if you know Wise he's like a teddy
bear he paused he smiled and he said but
if I'd been running Apple
I don't think we would have done the
Macintosh or the iPhone so yeah you have
to
sometimes be rough and job said the same
thing that musk said to me which is he
said people like you love wearing velvet
gloves no I don't know that I've worn
velvet cloths often but you like people
to like you you like to sweet talk
things you sugarcoat things he says I'm
just a working class kid
and I don't have that luxury if
something sucks I got to tell people it
sucks or I got a team of B players well
musk is that way as well and it gets
back to what I said earlier which is
yeah
I probably would wear velvet gloves if I
could find them at my haberdasher uh and
I do try to sugarcoat things but when I
was running CNN it needed to be reshaped
it needed to be broken it needed to have
certain things blown up and I didn't do
it you know so
bad on me but it made me realize okay
I'll just write about the people who can
do it well that thing of saying I think
probably both of them but Elon certainly
saying things like that is the stupidest
thing I've ever heard
by the way I've heard Jeff Bezos say
that I've heard Bill Gates say that I've
heard Steve Jobs say it I've heard Steve
Jobs saying about a smoothie they were
making it a whole food or something I
mean people they use the word stupid
really often and you know who else used
it Errol musk he kept making Elon stand
in front of him and saying that's the
stupidest thing you're the stupidest
person you'll never amount to anything
um
I don't know you know as John McNeil the
president of Tesla said
do you have to be that way probably not
there are a lot of successful people who
are much kinder
but um
it's
sometimes necessary
to be much more brutal and honest
brutally honest I would say than people
like
or when Boss Of The Year trophies
well as you said this kind of idea did
also send a signal this idea of Steve
Jobs of eight players it did send a
signal to everybody
it was a kind of encouragement to the
people that are all in right and that
happened to Twitter when we went to
Twitter headquarters the day before the
Takeover he was having Andrew and um
James as two young cousins and other
people from the autopilot team going
over lines of code and musk himself sat
there with a laptop on the second floor
of the building looking at the lines of
code that had been written by Twitter
engineers and they decided they were
going to fire 85 percent of them because
they had to be all in and this notion of
psychological safety and mental days off
and
working remotely he said either and then
it came up uh actually one of his um
I think it was one of the cousins or
maybe Ross Nordeen came up with the idea
of let's not be so rough and just fire
all these people let's ask them do you
really want to be all in because this is
going to be hardcore it's going to be
intense you get to choose but by
midnight tonight we want you to check
the box I'm hardcore all in I'll be
there in person I'll work you know as
much or that's not for me I've got a
family I got work balance
and you got different type of people
that way and different stages of their
life I was a little bit more hardcore
and all in when I was in my 20s than
when I was you know in my 50s and you
write about this it's a really nice idea
actually that there's two camps and you
find out I don't I wonder how true this
is it it rings true you can just ask
people which Camp are you in are you the
kind of person that Prides themselves
and enjoy staying up to 2 A.M
programming or whatever or do you see
the value of quote-unquote you know
about life work life balance all this
kind of stuff and it's interesting I
mean you like you could people probably
divide themselves in different stages in
life and you can just ask them and it
makes sense for certain companies in
certain stages of their development to
be like uh we always have teams it
doesn't even have to be whole company
and you're right it goes back to what I
was saying about rule the first secret
is sort of know thyself obviously comes
from Plato and uh everything comes from
Plato and Socrates but
um
and decide on this stage of my life am I
do I want to be a hackathon all in all
night and change the world or do I want
to bring wisdom and stability but also
have balance I think it's good to have
different companies with different
styles the problem was Twitter was at
almost one extreme with yoga studios and
mental health days off and uh enshrining
psychological safety as one of the
mantras that people should never feel
psychologically threatened and he a
member of the bitter laugh he Unleashed
when he kept hearing that word he said
no I like the words hardcore I like
intensity I like a intense sense of
urgency as our operating principle well
yeah they're people that way as well and
so know who you are and know what type
of Team you want to build versus
psychological safety and too many birds
everywhere oh yeah a lot of times musk
did things I go what the hell yeah and
among them was changing the name Twitter
and getting rid of the birds hey man
there's a lot invested in that brand
but when I watched him he thought okay
these sweet little chirpy birds tweeting
away in the name Twitter it's
not hardcore it's not intense and so for
better and for worse I think he's taking
Acts
into the hardcore realm with people who
post hardcore things with people with
hardcore views
it's not
a
a polite playpen
for
the blue checked
anointed Elite
and I thought okay this is going to be
bad the whole thing's gonna fall apart
well it has had problems but the
hardcore intensity of it is also meant
that there's new things happening there
so it's very Elon Musk
to not like this sweetness of birds
chirping and tweeting and saying I want
something more hardcore
as you've written in uh referring to the
the previous Twitter CEO Elon said
Twitter needs a a fire breathing dragon
I think this is a good opportunity to
um maybe go through some of the
memorable moments of the Twitter Saga as
you've written about extensively in your
book like from the early days of
considering the acquisition to uh how it
went through to the details of uh like
you mentioned the engineering teams well
at the beginning of 2022
he was riding high but as we say he's a
drama addict he doesn't like the ghost
and you know Tesla told a million
vehicles I think 33 boosters you know uh
uh Falcon nines have been shot up and
landed safely in the past few months
um
and he was the richest person on Earth
and times person of the year
and yet he said you know I'm still want
to put all my chips back on the table I
want to keep taking rest I don't want to
savor things he had sold all of his
houses so he started secretly buying
shares of Twitter
January February March becomes public at
a certain point he has to declare it
and we were here in Austin
that gigafactory on the mezzanine and he
was trying to figure out well where do I
go from here
and at that time it was early April they
were going to offer him a board seat and
he was going to do a standstill
agreement and stop at 10 or something
now remember you know we were standing
around it was Luke nozick whom you know
well Ken howery some of his friends on
that mezzanine here and all afternoon
and then late into the evening at dinner
is like should we do this
and I didn't say anything I'm just the
Observer but everybody else is saying
excuse me why do you want to own Twitter
and Griffin his son joined it down in
May for some reason was in town and like
everybody says no we don't use Twitter
why would you do that and may said well
I use Twitter and it's almost like okay
the demographics are people my age or
May's aide
um and so it looked like he wasn't going
to pursue it they offered him a board
seat
and
um
then he went off to Hawaii
to Larry Ellison's house which he
sometimes uses he was meeting a friend
Angela Bassett an actress and instead of
enjoying three days of vacation
he just became supercharged and started
firing off text messages including the
fire breathing dragon on me I think you
know he used that phrase a few times
that parag wasn't the person who was
going to take Twitter to a new level and
then by the time he gets to Vancouver
where Grimes meets him they stay up all
night playing Eldon ring he was doing a
TED talk and then uh at 5 30 he finished
his playing the Eldon ring and sends out
that I've made an offer
uh even when he comes back people are
trying to intervene and say excuse me
why are you doing it
um and so it was a rocky period between
late April and October when the deal
closes and people ask me all the time
well did he want to get out of the deal
I said which Elon are you talking about
at what time of day because there'll be
times in the morning when he'd say oh
the Delaware Court's going to force me
to do it it's horrible talk to his
lawyers you can win this case get me out
of it
he met here in Austin with three or four
investment bankers Blair Ephron it's
interview Bob Steele at perella Weinberg
and they offered him opt