Who's Elon Musk’s Biggest Fan? His Mom
Uncanny Valley | WIRED
WIRED
4.1 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
She sits in on his business meetings, defends him on X, and travels to give talks about how she raised him, the richest man in the world — but who is Elon Musk’s mother? Today on the show, we learn all about the model, influencer and author, Maye Musk, while dissecting her most recent travels to China and her possible influence on foreign politics.
Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.
You can follow Michael Calore on BlueSky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on BlueSky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky @zoeschiffer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey Zoe, what does your mom call you? I feel like I'll erode a lot of my credibility if I tell you. So I'm just going to say that a lot of people call me Zoe for short, which is what my name looks like. If you don't have the umlaught over the E, it just looks like Zoe. Yeah, I feel because it doesn't have the Y. So people always get confused. And I'm like, oh, no, my parents call me Zoe. |
| 0:21.9 | Don't worry about it. |
| 0:23.0 | Oh. |
| 0:23.9 | Right, right. |
| 0:25.0 | Like Zoe DeC Chanel, she has the Y, right? Yeah. But she's Zooey. I thought about that before. She's Zooey? No, she's Zoe. And like Franny and Zoe is spelled Zui, but it's, it's Zoe, |
| 0:36.9 | Rani and Zoe. |
| 0:37.5 | Anyway, Mike, what is your mom? |
| 0:39.5 | What are your parents? |
| 0:40.4 | What did they call you? Ranny and Zoe is spelled Zui, but it's Zoe, Rani and Zoe. Anyway, Mike, what is your mom? |
| 0:39.5 | What are your parents? What did they call you when you were little? She's deflecting really hard. |
| 0:45.8 | She doesn't want to tell us the real name. I can't. I just feel like I already have too much |
| 0:49.1 | imposter syndrome. I'm like, for a very long time, my mother referred to me by my full name, Michael. And so did my father. What's your middle name? Seth. Did they call you Michael Seth? Very, very rare occasions. Seth really could be your first name, too. I feel like that kind of feels like it almost fits. You're a Seth. Do I present to Seth? A little bit. |
| 1:11.2 | Seth rising. Okay. Yeah. Seth goes to a lot of live music shows. Yeah. Seth's a guy, you know. What about you, |
| 1:18.8 | Lauren? My name is Lauren Good. Yes. I have a hard time pronouncing my name. You know this from years of |
| 1:24.4 | doing podcasts with me whenever it comes to that moment of I'm a Lauren good |
| 1:29.0 | sometimes when I go to order coffee and they ask for my name they end up writing at M because I |
| 1:34.7 | struggle to say the L so I feel like I should just change my name what do you think your psyche is telling |
| 1:40.1 | you when I was a kid sometimes my mom calledren. And so I feel like I should be a |
| 1:46.6 | ren. I really like that. I think that's a sweet name. I feel like if we were at the Joe Rogan podcast, |
| 1:51.5 | which we're all devout listeners of, we would be asking Grock right now what your name should be, |
| 1:55.5 | and then you would be called that. It would just be Ren. But the thing with Ren Good is it's two really hard single syllable words. That's true. What's your middle name? Margaret. It's like a spondy though. Ren good. Ren good. It is kind of cool. Ren Margaret. Maybe I should just be Ren Margaret. Now if anyone really wants to docks me. |
| 2:19.3 | Would you like my social security number? |
... |
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