Elon Musk

  • Author: Walter Isaacson
  • Narrator: Jeremy Bobb
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Duration: 20:26:25
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Synopsis

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.

At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said.

It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

Chapters

  • 001 ElonMusk Open

    Duration: 22s
  • 002 ElonMusk Epigraph

    Duration: 30s
  • 003 ElonMusk Prologue MuseOfFire

    Duration: 18min
  • 004 ElonMusk Chapter1 Adventurers

    Duration: 11min
  • 005 ElonMusk Chapter2 AMindOfHisOwn

    Duration: 13min
  • 006 ElonMusk Chapter3 LifeWithFather

    Duration: 12min
  • 007 ElonMusk Chapter4 TheSeeker

    Duration: 12min
  • 008 ElonMusk Chapter5 EscapeVelocity

    Duration: 09min
  • 009 ElonMusk Chapter6 Canada

    Duration: 05min
  • 010 ElonMusk Chapter7 Queens

    Duration: 09min
  • 011 ElonMusk Chapter8 Penn

    Duration: 08min
  • 012 ElonMusk Chapter9 GoWest

    Duration: 10min
  • 013 ElonMusk Chapter10 Zip2

    Duration: 15min
  • 014 ElonMusk Chapter11 Justine

    Duration: 08min
  • 015 ElonMusk Chapter12 Xcom

    Duration: 19min
  • 016 ElonMusk Chapter13 TheCoup

    Duration: 15min
  • 017 ElonMusk Chapter14 Mars

    Duration: 12min
  • 018 ElonMusk Chapter15 RocketMan

    Duration: 09min
  • 019 ElonMusk Chapter16 FathersAndSons

    Duration: 07min
  • 020 ElonMusk Chapter17 RevvingUp

    Duration: 09min
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