4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Walter Isaacson, author of the new biography Elon Musk, spent two years following the world’s richest man in an effort to understand what drives him. Isaacson joins Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to explain what he learned about Musk’s reach and power, how his childhood shaped him, and why he has weekly meetings about colonizing Mars.
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0:00.0 | This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemita Basu. Today, what drives Elon Musk? |
0:17.0 | Walter Isak. Walter Isixen has spent the past two years shadowing the richest man in the world. |
0:26.0 | He is zigzagged from the factory floor at Tesla to the desert for SpaceX rocket test launches |
0:32.0 | to weekly meetings about a future city on Mars. |
0:36.0 | All to write his latest book, a biography of Elon Musk. |
0:40.2 | Isixen had two rules when he took on this project. |
0:43.2 | I said if I do this book I don't want to do it just based on a few interviews. |
0:47.1 | I want to be by your side for two years. |
0:49.3 | I just want to see you in operation the way no biographer ever been as up close or intimate to anybody else. |
0:55.8 | And rule number two was, you don't get to read the book in advance, you have no control over it. |
1:00.8 | I was somewhat surprised when he said, sure, let's go. |
1:03.8 | The book called Elon Musk is out now. |
1:06.8 | If you're listening in the Apple News app, stick around after the episode to hear an excerpt. |
1:11.7 | It falls in line with Isaacson's biographies of other innovators, people |
1:15.6 | like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Jennifer Dowdna, who pioneered CRISPR genetic |
1:20.6 | editing technology. I was eager to talk to Walter Isakson about |
1:25.1 | what he learned about Elon having spent so much time examining his personal and |
1:29.7 | professional life up close and what to make of his influence, his reach, his power. I |
1:36.6 | started by asking Walter how he would describe Elon Musk. |
1:41.0 | Well I think that Musk is one of the most important innovators of our time, but he's also |
1:49.2 | absolutely crazy, infuriatingly crazy half the time. |
1:54.2 | And so what I tried to do in this book |
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