Body Snatchers from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story

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Pushkin Industries

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and renamed it X. When asked why he wanted to own the social media network, Musk talked a lot about something he called the “woke mind virus.” Where does the idea of a mind virus come from? Jill Lepore looks to Cold War science fiction and the recently uncovered writings of Elon Musk’s grandfather in South Africa.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin.
0:07.0	Tesla CEO Elon Musk offering to buy Twitter for $43 billion.
0:15.0	Musk has accused the social media platform of limiting free speech.
0:20.0	In April of 2022, Elon Musk launched his takeover of Twitter,
0:25.6	offering $44 billion for it.
0:28.0	Why make that offer?
0:29.3	Well, I think it's very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech.
0:37.8	He'd also started talking a lot about something he called the woke mind virus.
0:44.4	Musk didn't coin the term, but he popularized it.
0:47.9	Musk is a man of many interests and many masks.
0:51.1	There is the Batman mask, and then there's the would-be philosopher hat. In making
0:55.6	his bid for Twitter, Musk wore both of these. So online he'd troll, complaining that the
1:01.8	science fiction on Netflix, for instance, had gotten too woke. But in conversations with
1:07.4	serious people, at a TED Talks event in 2022, he talked about the stakes of
1:13.4	buying Twitter in grander terms.
1:15.7	It's important to the function of democracy. It's important to the function of the United
1:21.2	States as a free country and on many other countries and to help freedom in the world.
1:25.6	Civilizational risk is decreased.
1:28.7	The more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform.
1:33.3	People in the media talk about Twitter all the time, but that's because they're on it.
1:38.6	Most other people aren't.
1:40.3	In the U.S., only about one in five American adults even have accounts.
	...

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