LinkedIn presents.

I'm Rufus Griscombe, and this is the next big idea.

Today is Elon Musk a genius, a charlatan, or a little bit of both.

I want to come clean. I'm a fan of Elon Musk.

Yes, he's reckless, sometimes tone deaf, sometimes irresponsible,

but I've always seen his defiance as part of an earnest effort to change the world.

In his own sometimes clumsy way, largely for the better.

I'm reminded of the George Bernard Shaw quote,

the reasonable man adapts himself to the world.

The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Musk is, without a doubt, an unreasonable man.

And that unreasonableness has seemed to be to be in the service of progress.

Even if some of that progress, specifically of the obsession with getting to Mars,

seemed lacking in practicality.

But then I heard an extraordinary podcast series called The Evening Rockin,

written and hosted by Jill LaPore.

I listened to it over a series of mornings while taking my kits to school,

and I was spellbound.

Jill, a historian at Harvard, contributing writer at the New Yorker,

and author of more than a dozen books,

is interested less in Musk than the man,

...