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You know, every day on Up First, NPR's Golden Globe-nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story, our questions, what really happened, what really

mattered, what happens next. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow up first wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why.

From KQED. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. You know, Fordism was somewhat easy to explain. It was mass production plus mass consumption. You work in a factory, get paid a decent wage, spend that money on things made in your own factory and others, and it underpinned a few generations of industrial society.

Muskism, by contrast, is harder to explain.

In a new book, Muskism, a guide for the perplexed, Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian

do their level best to create an overarching framework for understanding how Elon Musk

sees the world.

This intellectual history shows how his ideas, often incoherent, often

baldly racist, have evolved not just inside his own brain, but in a recursive loop with the

broader techno-political moment. The authors join us here in the studio this moment. Tech writer

Ben Tarnoff, welcome.

Hi, thanks so much for having us. And University of Boston University,

history professor Quinn Slobodian.

Welcome.

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