0:00

Zoe Hello,

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I'm Zoe. I'm David's producer

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on David Tennant Does a Podcast With. I'm

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excited to share the newest podcast from The

0:08

New Yorker, Critics at Large. Join

0:11

Vincent Cunningham, Nomi Fry and

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Alexandra Schwartz as they discuss their

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current obsessions, find unexpected

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connections to classic texts, and

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debate the latest in books, TV,

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film and pop culture. It's everything

0:24

from Salman Rushdie to the real housewives.

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Each episode of Critics at Large looks

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at the big moments and ideas which shape our

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culture. In this premiere episode, the

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hosts take on the new Elon Musk biography

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and ask why so much of our culture

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mythologizes tech founders.

0:41

Keep listening for a preview and make

0:43

sure you're following Critics at Large wherever

0:46

you're tuning in right now.

0:52

Welcome to Critics at Large, a new podcast

0:55

from The New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm

0:57

Alex Schwartz. And I'm Nomi Fry. Each

1:00

week, the three of us come together to make

1:02

sense of what's happening in the culture right now and

1:06

how we got here.

1:12

So

1:12

today we're going to discuss a new biography of

1:15

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

1:17

It's an interesting read because it

1:19

comes at a time where Musk is like everywhere.

1:21

His cars are on our roads. His

1:24

satellites are in our skies. Deciding war

1:27

outcomes, by the way. His tweets

1:29

are on our phones. But it

1:32

also struck me as I read this book that it doubles

1:34

as a study of the myth of

1:36

the tech founder that's so much with us

1:38

these days. Could

1:40

we play a quick game? Please.

1:44

Games, yay. Well, you're welcome.

1:48

I'll start first, too. What is one word

1:50

that comes to your mind when you think of like the

1:53

tech genius? Just a word. I'll start. Turtleneck.

1:55

Oh my god, that was my word. Well,

1:58

get another one, quick.

1:59

Arrogance, that's boring.

2:02

Turtle knife is my word. Dang. Psychopath.

2:04

Mm. Too

2:07

much? Yeah, no, no, no, it's not true. Too

2:10

far.

2:11

Like fake hippie. Dr.

2:14

Strangelove. Awkward.

2:17

These are all valid, and

2:19

maybe they'll come up later. There are no wrong answers

2:22

in this game. There's no wrong answers. Today we're gonna

2:25

look at Musk for as long as we can

2:27

stand to, but then we'll go beyond him to think about

2:29

this architect, the lone founder, somewhere

2:32

near Silicon Valley, who, against

2:34

all odds, changes our lives and the

2:36

history of our culture. Musk typifies

2:39

this, but how much of that is just myth-making?

2:42

Why do so many of us cling to this idea? So

2:46

maybe let's just start with the book. Let's start with Isaacson's

2:48

biography, which, by the way, just

2:51

to tell a quick story, it caused a lot of trouble

2:53

for me this week. I

2:55

first, I accidentally, while moving

2:57

my daughter into her dorm room, brought

3:00

it into her dorm room, and it caused a big problem.

3:03

What was the problem? The problem was I hadn't

3:06

taken off the dust jacket yet. The cover

3:08

of this book is Musk with his hands

3:10

in prayer hands looking out at you, very

3:14

fake Steve Jobs looking, trying

3:17

to reach some sort of profundity. And

3:20

my daughter was like, is this for me? And

3:22

I was like, no, no, no, no. She's like, because

3:24

she's a computer science person. Because you don't think I

3:26

like him, do you? I was like, no, no, I'm sorry. And

3:29

then when I got on the plane where I read the bulk of

3:31

this book, I took off the dust jacket. It

3:34

was a weird source of shame for

3:35

me. It did not occur to me until

3:38

I came into this recording room and saw your

3:40

naked book that I could have done this, because

3:43

interesting, I too have had a great amount of shame merely

3:46

walking around in public trying to find places

3:48

to read it. I mean, yesterday, as I was finishing,

3:50

I was camping next to a bush at

3:53

a local coffee shop, and I just felt

3:55

very shaded by the presence of this bush from anyone

3:57

who might be walking by. Why

4:00

it's like reading it's like reading porn in

4:02

public or something. Yeah, I just want people Well,

4:06

I think it's for me reading porn I

4:09

mean

4:09

Vincent like for you I guess your daughter was was

4:11

just you know

4:12

Not wanting to be associated with Elon Musk at

4:14

the beginning of her And

4:17

girl yeah, yeah the most girl famously loves

4:19

a lot right senior year

4:20

everyone's like remember when your dad brought

4:22

that

4:22

biography Exactly.

4:24

That's interesting though because I think also

4:26

I mean it's so

4:28

Context based right so

4:31

in in these spaces where you guys

4:33

you know Vincent in

4:35

this dorm

4:36

room and Alex you and you know

4:38

Brooklyn We're

4:41

feeling also a little bit bashful about

4:44

this But of course we should remember that

4:46

this biography is flying off

4:49

the show Yes, and bought

4:51

not as a hate read of a person

4:53

who it's embarrassing to be you

4:55

know Pursuing his life

4:58

path, but as an ideal

5:00

a model Yeah by so many people

5:03

and and hence here lies one

5:05

of the tensions right that this is a person

5:07

who is extremely divisive and Where

5:11

does this biography stand? In

5:13

relation to this divisiveness how how

5:15

close is Isaacson? To musk

5:18

and how far is he

5:20

from us? You know so let's live

5:22

story Yeah, yeah, let's start with the text

5:24

then let's just like go straight into the book. Yeah What

5:26

did you think of where your initial impressions of the book?

5:29

Well, okay first of all I just want to briefly not

5:31

start with the text I'm going to go back to the text But I just

5:34

think people have not seen this book should know that the

5:37

cover is exactly as Vincent described with

5:39

this kind of cult like Portrait of

5:41

Elon Musk with his hands

5:44

in prayer position, but the back is to

5:46

me You know of a

5:49

whole agreement the back back is a picture of

5:51

a rocket It's true. I mean, I'm sorry very

5:53

stangart called it a penis and Yeah,

5:57

it's just like basically I mean And

6:01

the expectations set up by the cover of this book are

6:04

of a hagiography. That's what we're

6:06

getting.

6:08

This approach to biography to me is

6:10

like writing a mechanical bull. You

6:12

can feel Walter Isaacson just trying

6:14

to hang on to the details of the life.

6:17

There are a lot of details. Elon Musk has done a lot

6:19

of things. He's founded a lot of companies. He's launched

6:21

a lot of rockets. He's created a lot of

6:24

products. He's caused a lot of turmoil. The

6:27

approach is very straightforwardly chronological.

6:30

We're going to begin at the beginning. We're going

6:32

to advance bit by bit up

6:34

through every year. We're going to detail the relationships,

6:37

the divorces. We're going to go to Tesla,

6:39

to Starlink, to Twitter,

6:41

now called X, whatever. And

6:44

I felt at a certain point that the

6:46

real thread and the plot was

6:49

getting lost. I felt that this

6:51

was almost like notes for a biography in a weird way.

6:54

There's no perspective here.

6:55

Yeah, the perspective, I think I agree with

6:57

you, Alex. As I was reading, I felt

6:59

the perspective was getting lost as well.

7:04

There's no real questioning,

7:07

again, not even in a negative way,

7:09

but there's no questioning if the

7:12

axioms that Musk

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is presenting and Isaacson is

7:17

ventriloquizing in this book and

7:19

their validity. So for instance, just

7:21

one example, there's a constant

7:24

return to Musk's devotion to

7:27

the idea of interplanetary

7:31

expansion. We have to do this

7:33

because we have to save

7:35

the human race. And it's just presented as fact. We

7:38

have to

7:38

be a multi-planetary species. We have

7:41

to be a multi-planetary species.

7:44

And this is worth everything else. I'll

7:46

do anything in order for us to get

7:49

there. And it's just kind of accepted

7:52

as gospel. I'm like, wait,

7:54

is it—I get that Musk is

7:56

saying it, but the book is just presenting it

7:58

as truth.

7:59

essentially, you know? I felt

8:03

quite impressed

8:05

and certainly it's not something I would

8:07

ever be able to do in

8:09

the kind of like reporting and information

8:12

and gathering and organizing

8:14

of this book. And I think you'd be able to

8:16

do it.

8:16

Well, I think it is. I'm sorry

8:18

to say, I'm not saying it's a wall-tire, I think you

8:20

can do it. No, no, thank you. But

8:22

it's just, it's a large project

8:25

that is executed. I just

8:27

want to give

8:29

props. You know what I mean? It is executed.

8:32

That sounds really bad. If

8:33

my editor wrote that to me, I would crawl

8:35

into a hole and die. It is, it is large.

8:37

No, but you have executed it. But

8:39

you know what I mean. Well, this is what I mean about the mechanical

8:41

bull a bit. I felt like there were moments when I did not

8:43

and I really don't. It's a large project that isn't in sight.

8:46

No, you're right. And I know what you mean. There's

8:49

a ton of information to try to metabolize. Yeah,

8:51

exactly. However, I felt frequently, and

8:54

I really don't mean this as shade to Isaacson, actually,

8:56

I kind of do. I just didn't feel he metabolized

8:58

it. I wasn't sure if he knew what a bee nut was when he

9:01

said that the bee nut might be to

9:02

blame for the failure of the second

9:04

launch,

9:06

off the Marshall Island at

9:08

all. Like,

9:09

I don't know if he knows what that is. A lot

9:11

of it felt to me, you could hear Elon

9:13

in the room quickly explaining what

9:15

this or that thing was. The sources,

9:17

the main sources of the book are Brother, his

9:20

brother, Kimball.

9:22

Friends, lovers. Kimball, I wouldn't say Kendall

9:24

because succession is the best thing. I mean, it's really,

9:27

it's so ever close. Yeah,

9:29

there are a lot of facts. A lot of things that happen,

9:31

but there are so many facts, but they're

9:33

all unsynthesized. Like, for just

9:36

one thing that you can notice through this is like,

9:38

the total acceptance as

9:41

like, sure, that makes sense, of like

9:43

giving over things

9:45

that used to be public to the private sector, right?

9:47

Yeah. It's like, okay, we

9:49

do these things faster than Boeing and we do

9:51

these things faster than these other aerospace companies

9:54

sucking on the teat of government, I think Elon

9:56

says at one point, and SpaceX can

9:58

do this better. And that is... something

10:00

that you notice throughout the book, but it's never tied together

10:03

by Isaacson. It's something that is a theme

10:05

of Elon's, but Isaacson

10:07

never intervenes as a, to

10:09

your point, Alex's critical presence to say, to show

10:12

us, like, there's politics around this. The other thing

10:14

he never really shows us is, okay, your

10:16

grandfather decided to move to apartheid

10:20

South Africa and you grew up in that milieu. What

10:22

does that mean about how you think about other people?

10:24

Like, we don't see him

10:26

as a product of history. We only see him as like a maker

10:28

of things, but we never see what currents

10:31

he's subject to. Oh, so totally. Yeah.

10:33

I would argue not only does he not notice

10:36

this or acknowledge it, I think Isaacson

10:38

is actively obfuscating the history.

10:40

I mean, I know Jill Appore made this point in her review

10:43

for The New Yorker that she wrote of the book,

10:46

but, you know, to pick up on that detail that you're

10:48

mentioning, Vincent, about the history and the context

10:50

for, for Elon's

10:53

family. Yeah, his maternal grandparents

10:55

moved to South Africa in 1950 and

10:57

Isaacson says, and I noticed this the second

11:00

I read it, you know, Isaacson says apartheid

11:02

was still the law of the land. No, no, no. Apartheid

11:05

had just been

11:06

instituted as the law of the land two years before.

11:08

We're

11:08

not talking about moving to South Africa in 1989. And Jill Appore

11:13

also published a really fascinating piece

11:15

on the website about the deep antisemitism

11:19

and the specific beliefs of

11:22

the grandfather. Which Isaacson calls quirky

11:25

political beliefs. Yeah. He likes to fly planes.

11:28

So we have a problem. We have a problem. Big problem. This,

11:30

this issue of Isaacson and his framing

11:33

maybe helps us

11:34

move to what

11:37

is this archetype that we're dealing with? What

11:40

kind of person is Musk

11:42

supposed to be in his own eyes and in ours? We're

11:50

going to take a quick break and when we're back,

11:53

what do Musk and Batman have

11:56

in common? You're only going

11:58

to find out here.

11:59

Brown.