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All right, we're ready. Yeah.

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Five weeks ago I sat down with biographer

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Walter Isaacson to try and unpack his

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new six hundred page biography of Elon

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Musk. Already some

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stories had jumped off the page.

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That night, he was deciding whether or not to

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allow starlink to be enabled

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to allow a sneak attack on Crimemea.

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When Isaacson set out to write this biography,

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he believed he was taking on a world changing

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figure. Must turns to his security

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guard, said you got a pocket knife, and

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he takes off the flow aboard himself. He just prized

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it open. What he got was

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a subject who was also volatile, increasingly

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so in chaos and conspiracy. I

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mean, I'm thinking it's any artic to buy Twitter

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because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social

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emotional networks. And

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so Isaacson did what he'd done with Steve Jobs

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and tried to capture it all through

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stories. And I said, I want to

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be by your side at all times, and I want

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for two years to have nothing off limits.

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In a very low mono, Tony goes

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Okay. It allowed him to see up

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close, for better and worse, how

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Musk operates. Musk is probably

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the richest councher forever. So he

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would stay with Larry Page and they'd stay

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up all night, and Musk would talk

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about how we have to be careful

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of AI, and believe it or not,

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these fights caused him to quit

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speaking to each other. He'd see

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some calm on a factory line or

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at a launch pad, and he'd be unhappy.

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He'd say, I've got to stir things up

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getting to Mars. Done. Excuse being

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a total but I want

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the reader to see it in action and

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to examine as Isaacson did, what

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gave Musk as boy Wonder a reputation in the

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first place. Musk

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and this cadre around him, they

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have Kansas spray paint and

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they're just putting big xes on

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machines and it's almost like

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kids playing on playground. These

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people are standing there overlooking

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the Gulf of Mexico in

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this god forsaken place, and

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all they can focus on is

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how are we going to get a colony to Mars.

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He gets a very lean team

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that's willing to put up with him

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being cold and angry for

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those amazing moments

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where they feel like they're changing the world. My

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name is Evan Ratliffe and this is On Musk

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with Walter Isaacson. Join

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us in this four part series as Isaacson breaks

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down what he saw shadowing Elon Musk,

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the speed and the drama that fuel

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Musk's accomplishments, and the wreckage

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she leaves behind. We'll discover how

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Isaacson clung on to this tornado for

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just long enough to capture a vivid portrait of

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a polarizing genius. Well. I like

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the fact that people who say I'm not as

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tough on Musk as I should be are always

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using anecdotes from my book to show why

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we should be tough on Musk. Listen

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to On Musk on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

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podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.