Whether you love Elon Musk or hate him, Walter Isaacson wants us to be amazed

Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.

Jerry Portwood: Hey, listeners, I'm Jerry Portwood, an editor here at Audible. Today, I have the honor of speaking with author, journalist, and professor Walter Isaacson. Over the years, Isaacson has celebrated genius with biographies of Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein, as well as tackled contemporary subjects such as Steve Jobs and Nobel Prize-winning biochemist, Jennifer Doudna.

Now he's back with another epic tale—this time about tech titan Elon Musk. Not only does Isaacson do a lot of myth-busting regarding the self-made billionaire's origins, he also provides seat-of-your-pants scenes of diehard rocket scientists blowing up stuff in the desert, holiday server heists, romantic entanglements, and surprising regrets. It's quite a journey, so thanks for joining us to discuss it, Walter.

Walter Isaacson: Hey, it's great to be with you, Jerry.

JP: Well, I'm gonna jump right in because I have a lot of questions, and I'm sure you're going to have some fascinating answers. My first question is, which do you prefer more, the dead guys or the people who are still making headlines?

WI: [Laughs] You know, after I did Henry Kissinger, I said, "Man, I'm gonna go back and do somebody who's been dead for 250 years 'cause these living people are so much of a pain to deal with." I did Ben Franklin. And then after Steve Jobs, I said, "All right, now I'm gonna go back 500 years," and I did Leonardo. But, you know, I like reporting. I like talking to people.

And the cool thing about doing Elon Musk is, I said, "This isn't gonna be based on interviews—it's gonna be based on me spending two years by your side. You got to let me in every meeting. You got to let me be at every meal. You got to let me walk the assembly lines with you." And so, you end up learning a lot more when you got a living person who's willing, unbelievably, to be transparent and open.

JP: Absolutely. And there is a lot of biographical material in the book and in the audiobook. But you were there for so many of these moments, like the purchase of Twitter and many of the public gaffes. So, I was wondering, do you consider this a biography or is it another genre of storytelling?

WI: Oh, I think it's a biography because it begins with childhood and the demons that happened when he was beaten up on the playground and his father took the side of the bullies and that violence of growing up in South Africa. And you watch a person grow through the years and either be able to harness those demons, as Musk sometimes is able to do, or sometimes the demons take control of his head. And so, it's a narrative biography filled with storytelling. It's not an analytic book. Every paragraph is, "Let me tell you this story," and I hope the stories are interesting.

JP: You mentioned that that you were embedded for two years during this maelstrom of activity that took place, and by the end, you actually seemed like you were part of the inner circle. He's texting you and calling you and asking for your counsel. Tell me a little bit about that. Did you feel like, "What's going on?"

WI: Well, no, not really, 'cause he never really asked me for advice. He'd be texting me things. I was pretty careful. Every now and then, I'd ask questions and maybe he would take that as a piece of advice. Like I'd say, "Why are you labeling all the media outlets on Twitter in a certain way?" But those were mainly questions. I felt I had to keep my role in mind, which was to represent the reader, not him. The goal of the book is to tell stories to the reader. So I'm hoping to be brutally honest in this book and very open. And I don't consider myself a pal or an advisor to Elon Musk. He didn't get to read the book before it was finished, and he had no control over it.

"I think there are many Elon Musks wrestling inside his brain."

JP: But there must have been a point where you and your editor were like, "Enough," because things just kept happening and you had to deliver the book. How did you know when it was done?

WI: I think we have a full picture now of who Elon Musk is, how he got there, how he's shot off the biggest rocket ever made and bought Twitter and moved into the world of artificial intelligence and brought us into the age of being a space-faring civilization and into the era of electric vehicles. It's all happened.

And it ends with him getting into artificial intelligence and me sitting in Austin, Texas, as he's starting his own artificial intelligence company and then applying it to self-driving cars at Tesla and Optimus, the robot, and his Neuralink company. So I think all the elements are in there. There'll be a lot more news—he'll do a lot more crazy tweeting and stuff like that—but this is the story of who he is. And I think you'll get it by the end of the book.

JP: While listening to the book, it was clear to me that you do admire Elon's achievements, and there's a lot of them. But there must have been moments where you found yourself judging some of his rash and chaotic actions, right? I mean, it's like being a documentary filmmaker—you wish that you could get involved, but you can't. Tell me about that conflict.

WI: Oh, there were times that were brutal, where he would be awful to the people in front of me. He would get into what his girlfriend, Claire Boucher, known as Grimes, calls “Demon Mode.” And I would sit in the corner and just take notes. So, there were times when I found it, you know, just kind of difficult to watch him and deal with him. And other times when I was totally amazed at both his engineering skills and how he could inspire people.

So, this is a person with more light and dark strands and ups and downs than anybody I've ever written about. And it's why the book is a storytelling roller coaster. It's not one piece of assessment that says, "Here's exactly what you should think of him." It's like, "Let me show you the stories and we'll weave it together, and you come to your own conclusion of what to make of this guy."

I think Musk is driven by three epic missions. One of them is to make us a space-faring civilization, to get us to Mars. The other is to bring us into sustainable energy. And the other—having read Isaac Asimov's stories as a kid—he's worried about robots turning on us. So, we have to make sure that artificial intelligence is done safely.

I used to think when I first heard him talk about these missions that this was sort of the pep talks you give to a team or on a podcast. They couldn't really believe it. But after hearing him talk over and over again, I realized he kind of has this epic hero sense of himself—almost as if he's read comic books once too often—but those, rather than just making money, are the missions that drive him.

JP: You mentioned the Steve Jobs book, the complexity of that, and you compare Elon to Steve several times. And you also note that Jobs was focused more on making one company dominant, whereas Musk now is running six or maybe seven companies simultaneously, and he has this overall maniacal mission to go to Mars. I'm just curious, despite the similarities, and this drive and this treatment of employees, it seems as if they couldn't be more different when it comes to core beliefs. Or am I wrong in that?

WI: Oh, I think that they're the two most important innovators of our era, along with Jennifer Doudna, who helped figure out the tool for editing our own DNA, editing our genes. And so we'll be living in the digital revolution of Steve Jobs and the life sciences revolution of Jennifer Doudna, and now the third great innovator, Elon Musk, in artificial intelligence, space travel, and sustainable energy. They're all very different, and that's why I love biography, because it's not, "Here's the seven secrets to success." A Steve Jobs is different from an Elon Musk is different from a Jennifer Doudna.

JP: You make many connections between Elon and the mental health issues of his father, Errol, as well as how he's gone down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. How do you think those comparisons will be taken? Are you concerned that his “Demon Mode” will erupt on you?

"Mae Musk says, 'The danger for Elon is that he becomes his father.' So yes, there's a difficulty he has dealing with the demons of his father."

WI: Elon goes very dark when he talks about his father. And his mother, Mae, told me—as I say in the introduction of the book, and I also end with Mae hugging him after the Starship launch—Mae Musk says, "The danger for Elon is that he becomes his father." So yes, there's a difficulty he has dealing with the demons of his father. He doesn't speak to his father; they haven't spoken in years. And yet, I communicated with his father quite a bit. So, I think that Musk will be self-aware enough to know about his father's influence, but it certainly upsets him.

JP: I was curious, since Elon is such a huge gamer and you talk about the video games quite a lot in the book, did you play Polytopia or any of the other video games so you could understand it better?

WI: Yeah, I tried to deal with Polytopia, which is a gorgeous game, and the one I love most is Elden Ring. Clearly, I'm not the gamer that could get on and compete with him, 'cause he's about as hardcore as you get ever since the age of 15. But gaming is actually an important aspect of his—it's a safety relief valve of his brain.

When he gets over pressured in the brain, he just pulls out his phone and plays video games like crazy. And he's learned lessons. In the book, we have the lessons of Polytopia and then the lessons of going through Elden Ring. And it was playing Elden Ring all night one night till 5:30 in the morning. And after he finishes, he puts it down and sends out a message, "I made an offer." And that's when he buys Twitter, after an all-night gaming session with Elden Ring.

JP: Yeah, I know Elon sees himself as the hero in this epic clash of wills to save humanity. But I kept thinking, especially by the end of your book—What if he turns out to be the villain? And I don't wanna give away how you end it, with a summation, but I'm curious, what do you think? Is he gonna get the last laugh, or is he his own worst enemy?

WI: Well, I think there are many Elon Musks wrestling inside his brain. There's the “Demon Mode” Elon, and then there's the “Epic Hero Mode” Elon, who wants to make us multi-planetary. And they've always been wrestling with each other, especially for the past 30 years or so. And in the end, Elon's innovative streak always comes out on top. You know, after he did Zip2, his first business, he thought it wasn't gonna work. He almost went bankrupt. He had to live on the floor of his office, and yet it succeeds and so does X.com, his original financial services and social media platform, which becomes PayPal.

Then, in 2008, as we see in the book, that December, both SpaceX and Tesla had totally run out of money and everybody thought they were gone, but he pulled the rabbit out of his hat. Same thing at the end of 2018 when he has a mental breakdown and goes crazy and both companies are having real problems, but he pulls it out. Likewise, we see that struggle now with X, the company he's built out of Twitter, which he wants to make into a financial services app.

And boy ... I was there when he fired 85% of the people his first week, and then went to Sacramento and ripped out the servers 'cause he thought there were too many servers. I'd get on each morning and say, "I guess, Twitter won't be working this morning." And there were problems with Twitter, but now it adds more and more features. So, I definitely would not bet against Elon Musk.

JP: I mean, some of those moments where you were there while employees were being fired and then you followed up with them afterward and you talk about them having “post-Musk stress disorder.” I was worried ... do you feel like you have a little bit of that?

"It's like when you get off of the most amazing roller coaster and all you wanna do is tell the stories. I think there are just so many stories that are head-snapping, astonishing ... But no [post-Elon] stress disorder at the moment."

WI: Well, no. It's like when you get off of the most amazing roller coaster and all you wanna do is tell the stories. I think there are just so many stories that are head-snapping, astonishing. And if you like Elon Musk, you'll be amazed, and if you hate Elon Musk, you'll also be amazed at the stories. So, I'm having a little bit of a "Uh, gee, I've just gotten off this wild ride" feeling. But no [post-Elon] stress disorder at the moment.

JP: There are a lot of hidden gems in this. There're so many stories, and a lot of it, I know, is going to be breaking news for certain people. Are you worried about any sort of reaction? Are you going to put your head down for a while and stay off of social media?

WI: Oh, I don't think I'll be answering every social media post. But I'm gonna do some interviews and some podcasts and maybe Spaces on X and try to talk about the book, because I do think that there's gonna be a large number of people who just hate him immensely and, unless they read the whole book, they won't don't understand the narrative story. And likewise, there are sort of fanboys who believe he can do no wrong. I've got a tale that's a lot more interesting than either of those two takes.

JP: I do want to ask you about your decisions on how to handle the tricky subject of Elon's daughter, Jenna. She came out as trans and had her name legally changed. It's a tricky moment in the book. She never spoke to you directly, did she?

WI: You know, when talking about the children, I try to make sure that I keep in mind, "What does the reader need to know to understand the tale?" but [also] how to be sensitive about young people. In the case of Jenna, Elon's daughter, who had been named after the X-Man comic that Elon loved that contributes so much to Elon's political drift, I thought it was important. But I don't overdo it. I don't dox her; I don't say where she is. I refer to her respectfully because I think he still loves her and is pained by the rift that happened. So, I try to deal with that in a way that you understand and respect both. But I do have to talk about, you know, her original position in the family and how it changed.

JP: There does seem to be the sort of hubristic irony that Elon Musk could be manufacturing the problem that he purports to be seeking to save human civilization from with the AI robot and Neuralink chips. It just starts feeling like, could Elon actually be creating the problem that he thinks that he's saving us from?

WI: I think Musk's strong belief on artificial intelligence is that the way to make it safe or aligned with human values is to connect us to our machines more closely. You look at Steve Jobs, what did he do? He created user interfaces that were graphic and easy to do so we could feel more connected to our computers. And then Siri, so we could talk to our computers. You know, Amazon Echo, all of these devices that allow us to interact with our computers more.

For Elon Musk, the ultimate connection is a way to connect your brain directly to your computer. And that's what Neuralink is about. It's a mind meld where there are chips in your brain and you can make sure that you know exactly the intentions of your computer and that humans remain in control.

JP: It's been 30 years since your biography of Kissinger, another famous immigrant who started with nothing and gained everything. Which do you think will have a more lasting impact on the United States?

WI: When I was editor of Time, we used to believe that politicians and statesmen would have the most impact on history. And when I was picking Person of the Year, it was always the secretary of state or the president of Russia that would come to the top of the list. And I felt that technologists and business leaders actually affected us more. We made Jeff Bezos man of the year. We made Andy Grove, for the advent of the microchip, man of the year. And I've come to believe that 50 or 100 years from now, the ripples of history done by Steve Jobs or Jennifer Doudna or Elon Musk are going to be a lot greater than the most famous secretaries of states or even presidents.

JP: Any other final words or things that you wanna—

WI: I think the difficulty of writing about Elon Musk is everybody's got a pretty strong opinion of him. Just the opposite of writing about, say, Jennifer Doudna, who helped invent the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR. And so I've got to be able to connect to readers and be their advocate, you know, be on the side of the reader and say, "Here, let me help you understand this person you think you know." And the best way to do that, in my mind, is just through pure storytelling.

I grew up in Louisiana and had a mentor, the novelist Walker Percy. He said that two types of people come out of Louisiana—preachers and storytellers. He said, "For heaven's sake, be a storyteller. That's the way the Bible does it. That's the way we understand morals and lessons." And so, I hope people approach this book as a way to hear the inside stories of a person that—and I think everybody would agree—is one of the most interesting and compelling people around. And so, whatever their opinion, whether they love him or they hate him, I'm sure they'll find this an interesting ride.

JP: Walter, thank you so much for talking to us today.

WI: It was great being with you, Jerry. Thanks.

JP: And listeners, you can get Elon Musk on Audible now.