Now about our featured attraction Walter Isaacson. Id be surprised if. If you havent already seen him on tv in the past few days or or read a bit about his new book because, well, hes been everywhere and for good reason. The release of another biography by Walter Isaacson has become an event in itself. Hes staked out a wellearned reputation as the preeminent biographer of geniuses and whether hes writing about brilliant people from from long ago, like leonardo da vinci, Benjamin Franklin and albert einstein, or more contemporary, innovative figures of our age, like steve jobs, jennifer, Jennifer Doudna or henry kissinger. You can bet the result will be a fascinating, revealing, comprehensive and vividly told book. Walters take on elon musk is certainly all that and the story turned out to be even more than walter bargained for when he set out a couple of years ago to do the biography. Back then, walter thought hed be writing mainly about moscows technological trailblazer, a leader in the fields of electric vehicles and private space exploration. Then came musks impulsive purchase of twitter and his central role in providing ukraine with satellite communiques and links during the war with russia. And the questions and controversies about musk only grew. All of which has enhanced the timeliness and importance of walters indepth portrait of musk and of the demons that drive him now, predictably. Walter himself has come in for some criticism about what he decided to put in the book or leave out, or the extent to which he refrains from judging musk. Legitimate questions have been raised about both the risks and advantages of access journalism and and about how far a biographer should go in offering personal opinions about the person that hes writing about in public appearances. So far, walter has certainly not shied away from addressing such matters. And im sure he he wont this evening. But i also know that if you read musk biography, which i encourage all of you to do, if you havent already, youll find it presents a full account not only of musks influential and consequential achievement, but also his dark, mercurial and offensive sides. And then you can make your own judgments about musk, which is what walter has intended. In conversation with walter this evening wont be Michael DuffyOpinions Editor at large at the washington post, where hes been for nearly five years. Before that, he spent several decades with Time Magazine and various positions as a correspondent and editor. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Walter Isaacson and mike duffy. Mean the life of. Start. Hi michael. Came all the way from missoula. Well, some events matter. This is one. Yes, youre welcome. Thank you for coming. And thank you, walter, for coming. Thank you. Were here to talk about the new elon musk book by walter. This is an important one. Sorry, ill get used to it. Ive read this book. I love it. I, i dont know. I didnt know very much about elon musk when i started reading it. Now i feel like i know a great deal. Its hard for me to imagine Going Forward without having read it now that ive read it. So i recommend it. Walter, talk to us first about your arrangement with musk, how it happened, how you found out that it happened, and whether your relationship with him about writing the book changed over the course of writing it. You know, i always like doing people who are pushing the edge of innovation and elon musk. He was bringing us into the era of electric vehicles and he was bringing us into the era of space travel again, space adventure. I thought, well, thats really cool. And we had a mutual friend and put us together on the phone and we talked about an hour and a half. And i said, look, id love to do this, but not based on interviews. I want to be by your side. I want to spend weeks on end. You know, just living in the airstream trailer down in boca chica, texas, near his launch pad, a walk in the factory lines with it. He said, fine, you can be with me all the time. Nothings off limits, really. And i said, the other thing is no control over the book. You dont even im not even going to send it to you first. I dont even know if hes read it now. And he said, fine. I said, okay, thats pretty amazing. And because he controls things. And i went back with kathy, we were visiting somebody and we went to the main house because we were houseguests and a Little Cottage and after a while i said, my god, youre doing it. I said, what do you mean . He said, well, he just tweeted out and it was like in the middle of the conversation. He tweeted out, i was going to do it. So i said, well, i guess im on for the ride. And did that relationship stay the same in that, or was it still the same . Really interesting. Yeah. He has never asked to see the book. He never pushed, pressured anything. And he just didnt. I thought id be subject it would be the heisenberg principle. By observing him, it would change him. But all of his material moods, his, you know, in spirit, all things that are dark, things they all were in full. And he never seemed to notice me. I mean, i would just always be by his side. He never tried to spin or do anything. Sometimes wed sit in the Conference Room after meetings and thered be a break and sit there for 15, 20 minutes, half of it in silence. And then he would Start Talking in a monotone, telling me about his childhood and telling me about other things. The biographies you written before franklin einstein, kissinger do nut jobs . Did any of them prepare you for this . Well, you subject steve jobs and a little bit like that, somebody really strong willed, had a reality distortion field, as does mask somebody that just meaning that he drove people to do things that they were sure were impossible and he drove them crazy. But then they eventually were able to do it. And he had a strong will with steve jobs. He had been taught by his guru in india to just stare without blinking and say, dont be afraid, you can do it. And so even early on, when was he and Steve Wozniak are trying to do the original apple, too . Was i cant code it, you know, by the weekend he said we have to code it fast. We got to get back to the apple farm work and henson, they are the company they found and finally was said to me. He just stared without blinking and said, dont be afraid, you can do it. I got so freaked out. I did it over and over again, even to the end with a guy named a guy who runs corning glass. Linda weeks jobs wanted a really beautiful piece of glass for the iphone he was thinking of and described it. And linda weeks said, maybe we used to do a formula for gorilla glass and jobs said, i want this much by october. And we said, well, theres no way weve not started it. And weeks said to me, he just stared at me without blinking and said, dont be afraid, youre going to do it anyway. Thats the reality distortion field. Take elon musk. One order of magnitude up. He just was always pushing people driving them crazy, but driving them to do things they didnt think they could do and had the stair to. He definitely has the stair, but hes mercurial. Much more than steve jobs was and he can be really cold. Elon musk and he can be nasty at times and he could also be giddy and funny and inspiring, but the weirdness is he would shift moods almost on a dime and you could see it. I remember once walking at the launch pad down in south texas where theyre doing the biggest movable object ever made by humans, which is starship. And it was a particularly late friday night, and there were a couple of people working on the pad, and all of a sudden i see his face. His girlfriend, claire bouchet, known as grimes, says, you can just see it come right across his face and suddenly got into what she calls demon mode and just started berating andy krebs, who was working that side, saying, where is everybody . You know, we need to have, you know, dozens of people working 24 on tuesday. Yeah. And he said is a friday night. We dont have any launches scheduled and he just got so mad. He just and then he said, i want to sort. And by the next day, there were 200 people flying in from cape canaveral, los angeles. And for a week, they worked around the clock to stop the rocket, even though they didnt need to. But he wanted that first urgency. Okay. The next question is a statement. His father. Oh, yeah. Yikes. Discuss his father. When elon was young, he was scrawny. He was socially awkward, and he got beaten up all the time, especially they would send him off to these wilderness camps and they would have to kids would beat him up with the food he was way. Finally he said, i learned to punch people in the nose, which you still see today. And even though they beat me up, at least id punch them in the nose and theyd think twice. Once he got pushed down the steps of his school, this is not like sidwell the school. This is in pretoria, south africa. And they push him down the steps, concrete steps, and pummel his face. And hes in the hospital for four or five days. His brother campbell says you couldnt recognize when he gets home. He has to stand in front of his father for an hour and a half. And his father just berates him and tells him hes stupid, hes weak, hell never mount anything and takes the side of the kid who beat him up. So those scars from childhood dancing in his head. Still he goes really silent when the subject of his father comes up and then eventually starts talking in a monotone about the pain he still feels. And if his worst relationship is with his father, he has this a very unusually close relationship with campbell, the brother you just mentioned. He has a very close relationship with campbell, who says, im the one who got the empathy gene in the family. And, you know, campbell is true. I mean, and this is somewhat complex to talk about, but out of this book, one of the things that surprised me is that because musk doesnt have that what youd call incoming recep for Human Emotions or outgoing doesnt have the antenna he calls himself aspergers, which, you know, is a broad name, but it makes him so he doesnt have a good face, a callous person who can be very intense with you, but has that lack of receptors of emotion, whereas Campbell Campbells the opposite. I mean, campbells always hugging and things. And so theyre almost joined at the hip, although they fight really badly. And when they first started their First Company together, they once fought on the floor until campbell had his ear bitten off almost and had to go get stitches. And everybody else is kind of appalled. They said, dont worry, their brother, they just do that. At one point, a sad part in the book after 2018, campbell, which is the worst year of musks elon musk life, he goes into almost production. Hell, weve talked about the tailspin. He even talks to people about whether hes bipolar, all the problems. He talks about he made up. And campbell sells all of his stuff gives up his business, takes all of his money out of his bank account to keep tesla afloat. And then afterwards, he says, okay, i need money for my restaurant business. And at first, elon wont do it, says its not going to work. And campbell doesnt speak to him for six months and finally says, i didnt want to lose my brother. So we started speaking again. And eventually you learn helped london. They reconciled, but he only gave him five of the 10 million. As i remember. He didnt give my i. Im glad you read the book. I havent read it yet. Okay. 5 million. So much easier interviewing someone who has tried bullying between brothers. Okay. So the first several hundred pages of this book are about his childhood. And then walter turns to space x and tesla. So well take these in order because theyre just too much fun. Musks starts building rockets. How come . You know, he had made a lot of money on his first two companies and he said, i dont like to try to enjoy my money. I dont put my chips back on the table. I want to do something big. Hes driving on the long island expressway with a friend and he says, man, we went to the moon 50 years ago. Lets say, and now were were going to go next one. We go to mars. And he looks on the website of nasa. Theres no plans even to go back to the moon. And hes appalled. He said, you know, were a nation and the u. S. Because he had immigrated here of people who took risks to get here, you know, whether they came on the mayflower or they came across a real grand river, these are people who are risk takers and weve lost the ability to take risk. So he decides hes going to do a mission to mars. Now, there are many reasons. One is this incredibly elevated reason. If somebody i think you read too much sci fi comic books as a lonely child in the corner of the bookstore, which is that if were not a multiplanetary species, eventually something will happen in the light of human consciousness will be lost. And we dont know if theres any other consciousness in the universe. We have to do it. I used to think that was like the type of pep talks you give to teams or the podcast or something, but he would intone it over and over again. The importance of being a space faring species. And i came to believe he was honest and he believed it. He also thought in venture that we have to have adventure back. And he said theres nothing grander than traveling to other planets. And he was able to build at first hes going to try to buy a rocket from russia or something. And thats a really funny couple of scenes in the book where he goes to russia and theyre spending on him in and on the way back he goes to first principles, which is how much of the material in a rocket costs, how much of the fuel cost. And we can get it 90 cheaper if we can do it this way. And he decides to build his own rockets and they start eventually. They have three of them blow up his first attempt, but eventually he has now sent more mass into orbit than every other country and every other company combined. So if saving human consciousness was the rationale behind space x . Yeah. Whats the reason for tesla . He had three great goals coming out of that corner of the bookstore, which was not as well led as politics and prose. And it was sort of dark thing. And he would read the sci fi sections he had three Great Missions in life that he especially in college, he focuses on. One is making a subspace ferrying civilization to a sustainable energy. Basically batteries, solar roofs, power packs and of course electric vehicles. At this point in the early 2004 General Motors, everybody gotten out of the electric vehicle. Theyre crushing this every bolt because they want to just get rid of it. And hes saying, no, weve got to do it. And the third one, which you can get to later, is he reads Isaac Asimovs robot series and he says, we have to have safe Artificial Intelligence, otherwise our robots will turn upon us. These are not the things i worried about in college and growing up in new orleans, not causing my palms to sweat. But okay, so the book is, among other things, something of an Industrial Engineering handbook. And you think, oh, that sounds really dull. Its anything but an example is he so he reengineer is how we build rockets. But more significantly, perhaps he re engineers, how we build cars. You know, in america we got out of the habit of manufacture our own stuff. We outsourced it all over. And you can see what its done to our politics. When he first was creating tesla with Martin Abbott and others by top earning the original roadster, had the batteries made in japan. They were being shipped to thailand. Some former barbecue pit factory to make them into battery packs, eventually shipped to england where they were put in lotus taxis and the panels came from france. They were shipped back to the us anyway. It was a mess. And he said, if you dont manufacture your what you design, you cant innovate. Your designers have to be right next to the assembly line. And so he spends more time walking the factory floor and figuring out the assembly line. And so he brings it all inhouse else. And he at that point, i think 70 of the intellectual property of Car Companies had been outsourced, and now hes got it. So its a car most made in america, most made in his own factories. What the emotional . Emotional high point of this engineering handbook, which is really one of my favorite parts of the book, comes when hes up musk is up against it, and he has he makes a promise wittingly or unwittingly, to produce five or 5000 cars a week. How does he do it . Well, theres an enormous number of short sellers in 2018. This is what i said was a hell period. He had people betting against tesla stock and the only way he was going to survive, he felt he did did the calculation. You had to get to 5000 cars a week. They short sellers had drones flying over the factory counting with the to Assembly Lines could do they had inside information they were going nuts. Its the most shorted stock in history and they figured out correctly that those two Assembly Lines could not do 5000 cars a week and it would take a year to build another factory. And hes a military history addict. And he remembers in World War Two that they used to build fighter jets in the parking lots in Southern California because they had to do it. So fast. So he looks at the parking lot and he says within a week, i want a test. That would be three times the size of this room. And were going to build a Third Assembly line. And of course, this is not exactly legal. I mean, hes always breaking rules and regulations, but there was a small thing in the law in california. You could put up a temporary ten to do auto repair. It was like for a muffler shop, he said they can fine us later. They build this huge tent. They dont even have an ability to do an assembly line. But they take an old Conveyor Belt and put it on a slope and theyre able to hit 5000 cars a week. And tesla becomes the most valuable car company in the world. And the slope is because the Conveyor Belt wouldnt otherwise work. Right . Its how they move car move the cars down and it was when he just lived on the factory floor that whole time and really, really went bonkers. I mean, theres a