On with Kara Swisher - Inside 'Musk': Power, Family and the Making of a Tech Demagogue

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

In his new documentary, "Musk," filmmaker Alex Gibney set out to answer two big questions about the world’s first trillionaire: How has Elon Musk assumed so much power, and why have we given it to him so willingly? Over nearly four hours, the film connects the dots between Musk’s various ventures — SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink, X, xAI, and Neurolink — to tell a bigger story of the unique threat he poses to democracy. The film also includes revealing interviews from people who know Musk personally, including his first wife, the writer Justine Musk, who hasn’t spoken publicly in years. Kara sits down with Alex and Justine to talk about making the film, Musk’s obsession with being seen as an “engineer,” and Alex’s use of a computer-generated Elon as a stand-in for an interview with him (Musk declined to participate in Gibney’s film and declined to comment on this interview). They also talk about Musk’s hard shift toward right-wing politics and what it means for the midterms and future U.S. elections. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I kept thinking, well, this is America. You're supposed to be able to... Say your peace. Yeah, say your peace, you know, free speech. And this is my experience and this is my viewpoint. And I didn't want to be intimidated into silence. Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network,

this is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. The story of how Elon Musk went from an average tech entrepreneur to the richest man in the world has been told many times over the years, including by yours truly. But even I sometimes struggle to really comprehend it all. How did this man, with a reputation for failing, to deliver on so many big promises, become the world's first trillionaire? How do you become such a dominant force in so many vital industries, tech, yes, but also automobile, space, and communications?

And now politics, too. And why do we let him amass? much power and influence. And what does it all add up to? And also, why does he want so many kids? Filmmaker Alex Gibney wanted to answer some of those questions. His new documentary, Musk, tries to connect the dots between Musk's many companies to tell a bigger story about the unique threat he poses to democracy. Of course, I'm in the film, and so is Musk's first wife, Justine. She's speaking out for the first time in years. Both are here with me to talk today about the film, which clocks in at four hours. There's an intermission.

Gibney is also no stranger to difficult subjects. His past films have covered Scientology, Enron, Elizabeth Holmes, WikiLeaks, and the U.S. policy on torture during the war in Afghanistan. He's won Emmys and an Oscar, but the media environment is a lot different today because of how much power people like Musk have over the way information gets shared. And Gibney is facing a lot of headwinds to get this film out. I think this is a really terrific film. It is very long, but he manages to knit it together,

and it is worth the time you spend on it because this is the singular, most important figure in politics, in business, and in our society today. It's really revealing to put it all together, and especially for those who don't know the story. And then I think Gibney's been very fair to him. Musk says it's a hit piece. It is not. It's really important. All right. Let's get into this conversation with Alex Gibney and Justine Musk. Our expert question comes from Kirsten Grind from the New York Times, who's covered Musk an awful lot and done some astonishing stories. This is one I promise you're not going to want to miss. So stick around. Support for this show comes from Odu.

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Search Technology at Capital One, Canada. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Alex and Justine, thank you for coming on on. I really appreciate it. Great to be here.

Thank you for having me. all, amazing movie, an astonishing documentary, very long, obviously. And I will say, Justine, I find you to be at the center of it. I thought what you were saying was really important for people to understand, especially in the context of this very long story. Thank you. I appreciate that. So let's begin. Alex, you started work on this film in 2022, a little after Elon Musk first became the richest man in the world before he got involved with Trump. I'll also say when I was speaking to him. Why did you want to make a film at the outset and talk about the changing nature of it when you were making it? Obviously, the big question for a lot of people that ask me is, why does it

need to be four hours? Well, it became a much, much bigger story. I mean, to be honest, we were ready in early 2024 to finish the film as a less than two-hour film. And, you know, that film was about 21st century power, but it's mostly economic power, not necessarily political power. And then when Trump was nearly assassinated and Elon Musk hitched his wagon to Trump, the story changed. And HBO actually were the ones who came to me and said, don't finish it, expand it, because the story has gotten a lot bigger. So we expanded it. And obviously, the political dimension was huge. huge, even though I didn't really appreciate or understand that his political shift had really

taken place in 2022. I just hadn't seen it or didn't know about it yet. Right. A lot of people hadn't. So, Justine, you've largely stepped back from the public eye in the year since your divorce in 2008, with a handful of notable exceptions. You're a well-regarded writer. Interestingly enough, so is McKenzie Scott. There's a lot of really amazing writers. I'm assuming you're still doing that, correct? I am. Yeah. And talk a little bit about that and why you decided to participate, because you have been not in the public eye. And I know it's not a place you feel as comfortable in. Yeah. I sold three novels to traditional publishing companies in my early 30s. And the last one came out, I think just when Yilan and I were divorcing, separating. And it, and then the publishing world. was changing and I became really interested in blogging and so that took me away from novel writing

and I think I became aware that I just wasn't quite sure of the kind of writer I wanted to be after what I went through with Elon. He really did change my perspective in a lot of ways and he's still doing that. You can't really get away from him. Right. Right. How do you mean change your perspective? I don't think that I would have been exposed nearly as much to some of the same things if I had not married him because he really took me in deep into a world where my own interests and talents would have taken me elsewhere. And so I often felt like a stranger in that world, definitely an outsider and an observer. And like when you're living in a foreign country, it takes you a while to find your feet. And I don't think I really started becoming fascinated by it

until after the divorce, actually. And I started to get more of a framework for what was happening and the kind of moment that I was in. And then I feel very lucky for that. And I, um, I like the way that Alex talks about 21st century power. Watching the arc of some of these guys, because I knew Elon in college. I knew his brother in college. And his friends I met, we were all in our 20s, you know, mid to late 20s, early 30s.

So just the rise of them. And I didn't know that they were going to take that turned to the right. That was a surprise. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Why did you decide to participate, though? Because you've been relatively quiet. I was hesitant about it for a while, and I had several long conversations with Alex, and I felt comfortable with his worldview. And I knew at some point that I wanted to come out in support of Jenna, my daughter. And there were things that I wanted to express to make sure that they were on the public record, so to speak. I'm not so sure I can control the narrative or that I would try to control the narrative, that I would try to control the narrative.

But I wanted the narrative to be something that I at least recognized. Yeah. Elon's a little loud. A little loud. Yeah. Yeah. And he tends to reshape things. as he goes. Yeah, he tells the story to his own. He tells the story.

To the way he wants it done. Alex, talk a little bit about bringing in the personal part because Justine's really at the fulcrum of that, like discussing that. So people understand Elon as a person. He's sort of formulated this character that he plays on television, essentially, and now he's become that person, I think, in many ways. And that happens a lot. Trump is that way, too. There's obviously a similarity. Talk a little bit about how you were thinking about that, Alex from a personal point of view, because this is a living person. Well, I mean, the first film before it expanded

was really about his professional and business life, and it dealt with certain issues. But there was this idea of storytelling that was terribly important even in that iteration of the film and how he was telling stories that weren't necessarily true and grew further and further away from the truth. But when Justine and I started talking, because it's always interesting, I mean, character matters, and you're trying to understand who this person is and how he does what he does. She said a couple of things to me that were very powerful that I felt that I needed to dig in.

One is she said, you know, the personal is political and that in the sense that you have to understand the person in order to stand their political journey. And then she also talked a lot about the challenges that she had. She says something which she says in the film very articulately, which is that I first learned about gaslighting from Elon. That was a very powerful line. Which is to say even in her personal life, she was dealing with somebody who was trying to redefine the reality around him. And I felt that that was a very powerful and potent notion

in terms of how you understand what ultimately he did, both in the economic and the political sphere, this kind of fiction making or even science fiction making. And then the other thing that was interesting to me was trying to understand whether or not he changed over the course of time as he created more power to himself. And that's something that Justine really had a lot of perspective on. Talk about that line of gaslighting.

I thought that was a really important line because it does extend everywhere. It's a little like a PT Barnum. Edison did this too, by the way, in his time as an inventor. And so did Franklin. You know, they all sort of tell their own stories in that regard and disregard reality. Why did you think of that, both the personal and as it moved into the public space? You know, my mind immediately goes back to something I said to Elon when we had separated, officially separated, and there were lawyers involved, but we were still

in the same house, and we were arguing a lot. And at one point I said something to him along the lines of, you know, this thing that you do with the truth. Like, I'm not having it. And I didn't really have a word for it because it's not necessarily a lie, but it's not the truth. And it's a way of pushing and pulling the truth and pushing and pulling or reframing things so that what you're trying to say has been twisted into something that you didn't mean and that suddenly becomes the conversation. And so it's like having the rug jerked out from under you over and over and over again and it's very difficult to live with and it's very difficult to have a conversation with somebody when you're talking at cross purposes and I became aware that he communicates in order

to control and it's all about control and it's all about having power you know over you it's all about dominating the room in fact I think that whole I don't know what to call it philosophy or worldview is about, you know, freedom through the domination part. And they don't really see any other way to be, especially when he's talking to a woman or a wife or a girlfriend or something along those lines. So that was crazy making. When you think about that, because it does set up, it's a bigger picture of what Silicon Valley does, create great things and at the same time lie, feel the need to lie about their efficacy or their damage. Zuckerberg does it around Facebook. There's some good things, but he doesn't tell you a part that's damaging or wants to pretend.

They're victims of something that you misunderstand them in a lot of ways. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm just that victim thing. They're so quick to accuse other people of having a victim mentality, but they love to be the victims. I always say every accusation is a confession for these people, which is interesting. So this is the most powerful man on the planet, as far as I can tell, in terms of money, access, power, astride, a number of key industries, right? A lot, important industries. It's not like he's running the taco stands of America or something that's not going to really affect people, but it's space, it's communications. It's all manner of media. How scared were each of you to do this? Why don't you start Alex and then, Justine? I was foolishly not scared at the beginning because it felt like in continuation of a lot of the stuff that I had done. I mean, I had done an investigation in the Church of Scientology, the Roman Catholic Church, you know, the guys at Enron, the U.S. government. So foolishly, I just thought, well, I'll just do my thing. And it didn't occur to, you know, once Elon Musk essentially became the shadow president

or had this weird symbiotic relationship with Donald Trump, suddenly it was a, that was a different kind of power. And you realized that even the rule of law was not going to save you. And so then I began to be concerned. But it didn't stop me. How did it manifest the concern? It's something I'm asked all the time. How can you say such things about Elon?

I'm like, what? Like, I don't even think about it, but I should probably. But how did it manifest for you? Well, you know, once you realize that in a way, because he has the ear of the president, and this president is uniquely kind of transactional and has turned the Department of Justice into his own kind of revenge mechanism, suddenly you begin to wonder, like, is that, mechanism going to turn toward me. And, you know, and I mean, there's history to this, right?

But never so bald or blatant. I mean, obviously there was co-intel pro with the FBI back in the day. But now you have somebody who's literally, you know, turning his sort of searchlight, looking for enemies or enemies of friends of his friends. It's called the Eye of Soron, just in case you interested, among this high-five book. This group loves Tolkien, as I do, though typically they all completely misunderstand Tolkien. They think they're the hobbits and they're really Soron and Sauron and Sorrowman. But that's another story.

So anyway, it just occurred to me that, wow, not only might I be sued because that's the other fatal problem we have in this country, which is that the legal system, is in many ways rigged for the rich, particularly in the civil context. And then you have suddenly a man who has the ear of the president of the United States and is willing to be vengeful. So it was, I think, rational to be somewhat concerned. Are you still concerned? We'll get into more specifics in a minute. Yeah, I mean, of course.

I mean, look, he threatened to sue. It's still possible to sue. other stuff could happen. And yes, and to be honest, I've taken certain precautions. But I think the best precaution is, as I think you've discovered, Kara, is sometimes you can hide in plain sight by simply speaking your mind. Speaking of your mind turns out to be terribly important because other people tend to agree. And these people care deeply in a way that I find interesting about what others think of them. And so speaking out is the best defense, I think. It often, it often is. One thing someone told me, because I've been pretty hostile to a lot of tech people, is like,

how can you do it? I said, well, they're going to have to shoot me in front of everybody. That's what's going to have to happen here. So people can see, and that's one thing or another. It's not going to be quiet. Talk about this with you, Justin, because you have a personal issue of children, and you're going to have a lifelong. I am blessed with the fact that my ex-wife is lovely, and we've gotten along really well.

But this is like the ex from hell in this regard. You have five kids, correct? Talk a little bit. Were you nervous about saying something? Because you have been quiet and I don't begrudge anybody. Like I know others in his universe that have been quiet. And they often call me and say, I'm really sorry, I can't say. I'm nervous.

That kind of stuff. I hear from all manner of people that have been close to him and then are not. Yeah. Well, he's a scary dude. And, yeah, I was nervous. I'm nervous now. But that also really annoyed me because I kept thinking, well, this is America. You're supposed to be able to say your peace.

Yeah, say your peace, you know, free speech. And this is my experience and this is my viewpoint. And I didn't want to be intimidated into silence. And, you know, I haven't been... feeling well over the last six years. I mean, you know, long COVID or whatever it was. So that was a big part of it. And then everything that happened with my daughter, I mean, I was watching that. And of course, I have opinions about it. And it was more like, you know, at some point I'll speak when I'm ready to speak. But watching her, you know, get out there and, you know, take the blows and the isolation. I mean, it's hard. It's a little bit like, um, Yeah, I'm sorry, I have to. It's okay.

I have to reset a little bit. I did, you know, remind myself, I'm not here to trash him or, you know, be bitter or anything like that. It was just, I don't like what's happening with language. As a writer, you know, watching everything get, you know, abstracted into algorithms and then the personal details, the things that make you, you, the way that they can kind of get. you know, stamped out or contaminated with other things. I just it just seemed to me like there's something here about truth and there's something here

about storytelling that is really important and shouldn't be left to the hands of people who are trying to control the narrative instead of trying to explore it or, you know, surfacing the missing pieces. We'll be back in a minute.

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Lisa.com promo code Kera. Alex, right off the bat, Musk refused to sit for an interview with you, obviously. But in place of him, you and your team created a database of everything he'd ever said using technology to do so. And then used his words to create a computer-generated simulation of Elon, which is kind of fun, given how he's obsessed with simulation. The words are all his. It's not a bot. Tell us how you landed on that decision and the ethical considerations you took into account as a documentary filmmaker. And obviously, it's all his words.

It's not anticipating what he might say. It's what he did say. Yeah, and it's not a manufactured replica of his voice. It's all his voice. It's audio recordings of what he said. I mean, you know, to some extent, I've had an experience in terms of trying to put people who didn't want to speak for one reason or another

or couldn't speak or couldn't show themselves, you know, in other films. In Client Nine, there was an escrow. who I, who agreed to talk to me but didn't want her identity revealed. Right. So in shadows. I got, no, I got an actress because I felt that that would be more compelling. I didn't want to do her in shadow because that would have made her look like a kind of, I transcribed our interview and then had an actress performed.

I revealed it in the film, but I felt it was more human and more compelling. In another case, in zero days, a film about the Stuxnet. computer worm. I got a number of people from the NSA to talk, and then I created a composite character with their transcripts in and had it voiced by an actress who was kind of weirdly digitized in ways that seemed appropriate for that film. In this one, I thought, well, okay, he's not going to talk, but I really want to present his point of view. And in some case, I want to have an argument with him. So I'll create this character, but I was fascinated how much He went back to this idea of the simulation.

He's obsessed with that idea for all sorts of reasons, I think. And so I thought, well, okay, how about a simulated interview? That would be interesting. And we went and designed, you know, two camera angles with my partners on visual effects called Make Make. And decided what he would be dressed like and, you know, he would be in a gamer chair because he's obsessed with the video game thing. And that that would become the interview. And interestingly, that also feathers into issues of AI and how we feel about AI and this weird personal transference that takes place with AI bots or LLMs. Because people have told me as they watch the film, they know that the interview of Elon, which I should say makes them look pretty good, I think.

But that after a while that I forget that it's not. It's very flattering. I forget that it's not real. He's smooth. And they start to identify and engage with it as if, oh, my God, I'm, because we purposefully have the avatar look directly into the camera. So for all those reasons, it seemed to make sense to me cinematically. And yet I could have defended journalistically because those are Elon's words.

You also dressed him in his typical way, which is, I think, a late 1980s lesbian kind of look he has to. That's his kind of clothing these days. I just realized it was the eye contact, I think, in the movie because he often is, like, his simulation is often looking at the camera and he's looking directly at you. And in real life, he's usually often, like, he's distracted, he's on his phone. So I think it's, I mean, the word uncanny keeps coming to mind. And it was strange. It was him and not him, something about his eyes and his manner. I was often reminded of Errol, his father.

And so there was that there was that element. in terms of, I definitely recognize the words, I recognize the attitude. And it just made me realize that the thing about AI and the thing about large language models and all of that is that you don't really get to say anything new. You know, there's a point where the evolution of the thinking, you know, stops. And it like freezes from place. And so it seems like an interesting possibility that you can kind of like tell when that, when that conversation froze, we'll be able to, to, track that person's... Yeah. No, I thought it was really interesting. At first, it's uncomfortable. You're right.

It's because he is looking at the camera and he doesn't. That's another thing. But at the same time, it feels simulated. It has a simulated feel to it. The empathy part, you know, that was kind of a little bit of a revelation for me. I wasn't... Explain. This idea that empathy is the suicide of Western civilization. Yeah, that's their new thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Pope is doing his level best to push back, but they all have that version.

I think it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You know. Thank you. I think it's really, really intellectually vapid, but that's, you know, another conversation. Well, they say a lot of things that are like what. It's just nonsense is what I feel like. That said, the film is still making Hollywood and tech nervous. Universal has denied reports it's getting cold feet about releasing the film outside of North America. They have international rights. Alex, you've expressed fears about the Paramount Warner Brothers merger.

It is being bought by a man who is close friends with Elon Larry Ellison. As much as you want to talk about David Ellison, Larry Ellison is the wizard behind and the money behind it all. The film is supposed to hit HBO early next year. HBO is owned by Warner Brothers. Of course, there was a recent incident about ads on platforms where some of them have reversed themselves. I can believe they made a mistake in some cases at the other times you do start to get in the conspiracy theory that they wanted to see how far they could push it.

Semaport reported the Ellison's may ask Musk for money to help finance the merger. Alex, you start, what does it say about the state of the documentary business that a filmmaker with your reputation is facing these kind of headwinds? And then I'd love to know what you think about the use of power here in media. Well, I mean, it really shows you

the level of consolidation, whether it's soft consolidation, which uses a series of rules to enforce a certain permitted kind of discourse, or hard consolidation, which is basically we're putting our foot down and we're either going to censor stuff we don't like or we're not going to allow it to be seen. So it really brought home in a very personal way just how pernicious this consolidation is. And also, to some extent, and I can't, I mean, Universal's on side now, and they, and we're going to have a discussion with them later this week about their release pattern. Great. But, you know, for a long time, they, they were kind of missing in action. And I think in part because they were sort of, I don't want to speak for them, but it may be

that they were concerned. Like, do we, do we want to go up against this oligarch? And, And at this point, they're kind of the good guys in a weird way. Right. Sure. They are. Because they're not in sort of the transactional camp. In other words, we'll make our peace with Trump and we'll do what he wants. And then he'll look the other way when we want to do what we want. Like have this ridiculous merger, which clearly violates all sorts of antitrust and free speech principles. But it's going to go through anyway because you have a. a justice department that just doesn't care so long as Trump says it's what he wants. So you really see the face of power and how it's defining discourse and how the rest of us have to find sort of offbeat ways of speaking back. To getting through. So are you worried about HBO, which has a stellar reputation among documentaries and everything else, not releasing this?

Well, I am. I mean, first of all, I should say that HBO has been great. I mean, the people who are there now, are just magnificent. They're so supportive. They're the ones who encourage me to make it longer, which is rare for a director. Make it longer, please. And they've been great on the lawyering side. I went through the trial of fire with them

with Scientology. So they've been awesome. But, you know, I'd have to be a fool not to think that something bad might happen. If Elon Musk were to help the Ellison and then suddenly the guy who's an owner in the platform is now the subject of a critical documentary about him. So I'm concerned. But the benefit that we have is it's about to open in theaters.

So you'd be trying to put something that's already been seen back into the box. And so that's the benefit of the Bleaker Street release, which I should say, they've been great too. But, you know, now we're back in this era where suddenly theatrical distribution becomes a mechanism for saying stuff that you can't say on these services, which are conflict diverse or actually or literally propagandistic. Yeah, you're not getting ads on X or Twitter, correct? Anyway, that's okay. He can do. It's his. He bought it and he can do whatever he wants on it. how do you look at this? Because you just were talking about you wanted to say the truth and you thought we live at America.

When you think about the consolidation of power here, it does feel disturbing, the non-ability to tell the truth or being censored in a lot, which is, of course, what they complain about themselves, again. Well, it goes back to what you were saying about they don't want to let anybody else talk. And I just remember dinners when I was married. Elon's family had this, they would talk about his father, Errol, and how Earl, or there was this, Toska was joking about it at Kimball's wedding, that's his sister. Elon's sister, yeah, that in the Musk family, women are in the same category as dogs and children, you know, to be seen and not heard, basically. And so it's, again, it's that overlap of the personal and the political where you see this idea that there's only one group of people who get to express their narrative because it's my way or the highway.

It's my story. And it's not just, you know, my story, but it's my. It is the story. Yeah, it is the story. And then as you, you know, and then there are like more and more and more layers put in between that and the actual, you know, assembly. of facts that you experienced. I mean, it's, it's, it's not just the, the map being confused for the territory, but it's like the, the map becomes, becomes the territory, and then the map is going to be drawn beneath your feet, and they can only do that if, if they lock other people

out of the conversation. So just, I mean, that's, that's not democracy. I mean, democracy is a conversation. And if anything, it's, it's, it's the responsibility to, you know, protect the parts of the conversation that are not, you know, the dominant forces in the culture. When you talked about that dinner table, you're not like this. Was this something that was surprising to you or did it get worse over time? Oh. You don't seem to be a shrinking violet, that's what I would say. That comes and goes. There were times when I would, I would, oh god yeah i would get so bored and i and i wouldn't be able to hide it and uh you know i'm get angry with me afterwards and i'm you know and then i i want to apologize for that i want

to apologize a lot but um it's uh but it was always uh men talking and men monologuing and i don't mean to say that as like a feminist rant because i've been accused of doing that been there. Yeah. Yeah. But it's like, it, it, you could really see where the power is at those tables. And it's always the same people saying the same things. Yeah. And then the inability to listen to other viewpoints becomes those other viewpoints don't exist. Yeah. I mean, you're either like a friend of mine recently said something along the lines of, oh, he's a non-Republican. And that didn't mean Democrat is just, well, and then she said, well, nobody's really a Democrat anymore. And I was thinking, well, you know, you're saying this in California. But it's like if you're a Republican or a non-Republican, then, like, Democrat, like, as a word or as a concept, like that no longer exists. It's just a way of shaping the conversation.

Let me move on to something else. Elon's also obsessed with the ideas. of presenting himself as an engineer, he fetishizes it. I have noticed this for many years. Why do you think that's so important to him? I mean, obviously, it's an imposter syndrome thing happening there because he's not the greatest technologist in most of the rooms he's in, but he presents himself as thus. And there are some very significant engineers around, by the way. Certainly he's technical, but how much of that image he projected was real? Because it reminds me of him trying to sort of play Steve Jobs. But Steve Jobs never did. that. He was very clearly not the

technologist. Wozniak was he never presented himself that way. He certainly was tech savvy, but he never needed to say, I made this, I'm the engineer. I think I'm not an engineer. So that was completely outside of my

my ken always. It is the way he likes to see himself, or at least that was always my view on that. But I always saw his genius and how he puts things together. You know, he pulls ideas from different domains and he pulls people from different domains. And then he really drives it towards a very, very particular result.

It's very Henry Ford like, actually. That's who he is in a lot of ways. It's not Edison, it's Ford. Yeah. Which is a very different talent, right? And I agree with you. I think that it's an astonishing talent to find things, put them together and shove them through. It's a real talent.

But he really does need to be seen as a techie in a lot of ways when in fact that's not his greatest asset. But I think, you know, tech rules, like especially in that world, I mean, if you're a non-tech, you're a lesser being. And he considers himself hardcore. And I think, you know, the hardest of the hardcore is tech. And so I think that's just the essence of how he sees himself, especially when he has to justify his lack of empathy. by saying, well, you know, empathy is, you know, the ruin of civilization itself. And this is what he does. He kind of like engineers reality or the reality around him to fit him and to fit the version

that he's selling to you. Right, exactly. So, Alex, let's talk about that. One of the main takeaways from your film, and I think you got this correct, is Musk's great invention is really himself. And he used his cult of personality to reward hack the market. It's an idea that he can defy economic fundamentals because people want to invest in him. Even if things he's promising aren't based in reality like going to Mars, fully autonomous cars.

So talk about that, the constant lie. And lie is probably a harsh word, but I think that's the correct word here. Well, it starts out with fibs and then it becomes big, big, big lies. And that was one of the interesting things I discovered. Early on, you know, I made contact with a guy named Ed Niedermeyer, who's in the film, briefly, who had written a book called Ludacris, which really looked at the vast disparity between what Elon Musk said Tesla was and what Tesla really was. And it's not like there aren't great cars. I mean, I still talk to people who rhapsodize about their Tesla S, you know, and great,

you know, but it doesn't nearly justify the stock price. But he learned early on to do certain things in order to be able to find the money to be able to float Tesla. Because I think in a way, his genius is his talent for risk and also his ability to sculpt this story, which allows him access to the equity markets that otherwise he wouldn't be able to get. Or to reward hack, because that's the other important part of this. In other words, explain reward hacking is this idea that you fulfill the conditions of a government reward, like, you know, doing battery swaps, which is the idea that you could pull into a gas station and have somebody swap out of a thousand pound Tesla battery in a matter of minutes. It was just ludicrous, but he convinced people that it was

possible. And that would have solved the biggest problem that everybody has in an electric car, range. But then he said, oh, no, once, but it was tethered to this inducement from the government of California that if you could prove that you could do it once, you'd be the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars of tax benefits. So essentially you're saying, tell them, tell them what they want to hear. Tell them what they want to hear and come up with a fib or a wink and a knot. You know, fake it to you make it. That's it, you know. So I think that that, that is. It was the creation of these larger and larger fictions, which was, and one of the biggest fictions was this idea that he was an engineer. Because when I talked to people at Tesla, I said, is he a great engineer?

They would, like, laugh. But they wouldn't ever say it on camera because they were afraid of Elon. I've heard that over and over again. Yeah. But that idea, then, if you don't see the reason to, you know, buy in to Tesla's stock. through the economic fundamentals, there's always Elon, and Elon is Leonardo da Vinci. And then it's a stock play, and then it's a stock play that why not get in on it and then make it go up. Justine, talk about that idea of like performative versus real, because there are real things here.

Like, as you said, he does put it together. Nobody was doing the car before him, and one of the things that I found really interesting is these were big ideas. Space, cars, solar, climate, big ideas. And everyone else was doing like a digital dry cleaner. It was exhausting, and he wasn't. And some of these things did result in real products that were terrific. Why was that not enough that the slow-moving acceleration, it had to be, we're going to live on Mars? And then you say, well, you know, you have to be underground in Mars, and it's this way to get there.

And we will lose our bone structure. We'll probably become dumb. No, no, we will be living there. Like, why the need to take it to the, you know, put the volume up to 12 when 7 was fantastic? Mm-hmm. He's impatient. I just, you know, it's just, I think he has a different sense of time. I really, you know, Elon time. It's, it's... Elon time.

Like, I can't explain it. It's one of those things that sometimes you can feel when you're with them or around him. But there is this other humans seem to fit very often. operatively into the reality that, you know, he is sculpting. And, you know, like there's that joke that he used to make, like, safety third. And, you know, when we're going into the era of AI, you have to wonder about that because of his sense that, you know, it has to be now, now, now, no matter the cost. And the pain and the trauma that other people go through because of, of the way reality gets wrenched around

or the way that value gets determined, who has it and who doesn't. Like, that doesn't matter. That's just, you know, feelings. So we'll just, you know, brush that aside. Collateral damage. Yeah. I think this is who he is,

and this is what he's comfortable with. And so if he's comfortable with it, then full speed ahead. And he doesn't want to spend any time in those areas where, you know, his strengths aren't necessarily on full display. So those are the unnecessary areas. That has to move on.

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In the film, Justine, you said you understood him so much better after you met Errol. Oh, gosh, a little bit of a sensitive topic. Errol is a lot of silence around him and the family. Nobody wants to talk about him, and I think journalists have commented on that. The stories around Errol, when I first entered, you know, that world. The Musk universe. Yeah, they were hard to believe. And they were just, you know, my tendency was to assume that, oh, because May was the one who was telling them while she's exaggerating or she's distorting. This is Musk's mother, May Musk.

His mother, yeah. And then he visited us in Palo Alto, and I spent a couple of days, like, you know, walking around and talking to him. And first impression, he's, you know, like a nice guy. He's charming. He compliments you. He seems to be willing to get along. But then, you know, over time, things start to slip a little bit. And Elon would say that, you know, Errol can behave himself for three days, you know, at the most. And then he turns me. And what I noticed was that when Errol would get insulting, he would use the same language that Elon would use to insult me. And so that was a direct and powerful lesson in how patterns, you know. Yeah, they just pour through other relationships. Well, you become what you hate sometimes. Yeah.

And I was thinking about that, actually, because there's a moment in the movie when I think Errol is saying, yeah, Elon, he's, he's, he's, just like me. He's just like me. And when I was married, there would be certain relatives of the family who would try to rein Elon in a bit when he was being difficult or, you know, when somebody was having an Elon problem, as Kimball once described it. They would tell him that he was being like Errol or he was turning into Errol or, you know, there was something there that Elon did not want to be. Which he didn't want at the time. Which he did not want to be. Alex, talk a little bit about this.

You know, he has become his father in a way that I think he tried to avoid. I do believe he had disdain for him. I thought that was genuine when he said it to me, at least. Well. And I don't want to blame his father. He's an adult fucking man. Like he can get some mental help if he really wants to not be that way. Sure. And it could be an explanation.

it's turned into an excuse perhaps. And I do think, I mean, one of the reasons I included a section on Arrow in the film was because, you know, I felt there was an element of the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He has become his father to some extent. Yet at the same time, I think it's fair to say that, as Elon did say, that he suffered greatly at the hands of his father in terms of this kind of psychological abuse that Kimball also talks about. And Kimball also talks about in the film. This is an audio recording that we found about how you could never believe anything that Elon's dad said, which I felt I had to put in there as if to say, like, don't believe everything that Errol says because he's a gaslighter. Well, that was interesting because what happened to Elon? He became a gaslighter.

There was also this very uncomfortable moment where I asked Errol Musk about this incident. where intruders came into his house. And he claimed that he killed three of them, or three intruders with two bullets from a 357 magnum. But then went on and on and on, which is some of which is included in the film, about the different colors of the blood that spilled out onto the floor,

as if he was still all these years later reveling in the violence. So his complicated character, but I included him because he clearly, feels very strongly about the fact that he and Elon are the same, and I think in many ways they bear an uneasy resemblance to each other. Yeah, I would agree. Now, one of the ways, which I think, Justine, and I'd love you to comment, one of the things that really got me, soured me, lots of things, but two was the obsession with insulting gay people and trans people, and then it extended to Jenna in a way that was,

shocking, violent, heinous. I don't know what I would do as a parent. I mean, I know I would do what you have done. Can you talk about it a little bit? Because I think part of your speaking out has to do with your children, presumably. Well, I mean, I recognized at one point that Jenna and Elon were on a collision course.

And I would send Elon Long text about it, you know, kind of like warning him or, you know, saying, like, you have to recognize who she is. You have to accept her for who she's. You know, respond to her differently. But he, you know, I wasn't really interested in my parenting opinions. I mean, at one point, he kind of like dismissed it all as maternal spam and, and, uh... Maternal spam. Maternal spam, yeah.

But, you know, I wanted the kids to have the best relationship possible with their father for us. long as possible and I wanted to protect any ability that they had to do that. I think fatherhood is crucial. Absolutely. And I certainly don't take it lightly. But she was in Japan when he gave that interview with Jordan Peterson and that was really a game changer. And when he came right out and said, you know, I was tricked into signing this release. I mean, I felt like that while that was, you know, directed at me, I was supposed to react to that, and I felt like I might be being baited a bit. But his decision to sign that form was actually an act that made me respect him more.

You know, it gave me some hope. Yeah. And then I think he had to fix it. the narrative, like, going into this increasingly Republican direction. And he says in the film that he's socially progressive, which was another thing that confused me because there were times when I was like, like, he doesn't really care. You know what I mean? Like, this is the kind of thing where...

No, I don't think progressive is... He doesn't care. You're right. One of the things that was interesting was I, what struck me is someone who liked having children or bearing children or creating children, but didn't really like the children. part. Or the mothers. Or the mothers. Yeah. He doesn't really seem to have much use for motherhood. You know, he wants the mother influence, kind of like sidelined and neutralized. So when that happened with Jenna, who was not in the film, I mean, obviously it would anger you. But, and it certainly,

when I started to see it, it was really astonishing, largely because I recall a conversation we had, He called me in the middle of the night when Trump was going to put an executive order against gay and trans people. And he said, I'm going to do everything to battle this. Now, I'm not sure why he needed to perform for me on that at all. But did it shift or was just that not true either, any of it true? I don't know. Maybe he's trying to find a way to explain it to himself to kind of like heal some whatever kind of cognitive dissonance he might be experiencing. He feels he has to, you know, believe and promote.

a very particular perspective that really has caused him, you know, his daughter and created like a lot of division and pain in the family and the extended family. I mean, so I don't know, but the, I mean, the whole wokemind virus thing too. It's part of it. Yeah, I was like, oh, this is the origin story of my, you know, rise as a Republican. I'm getting revenge for, like, the evil that it's done me. And it was a WTF moment for me. Yeah.

You know, like. And you weren't expecting it. No. No. You know, and he was reacting more to Jenna's rejection of him, but Jenna's rejection on him was based on her rejection. I mean, sorry. Of his rejection of what she was.

His rejection of her at a young age. You know, like, like she has to say what she feels. and she has to be who she is. She's one of the most authentic people you'll ever encounter. And so... That must terrify him. The price that being in his presence

was demanding of her was too high. And there are people, and I am one of them, that when you spend time in his presence, you come away feeling really terrible about yourself, and you're not sure how that happens.

But he communicates his disdain. Alex, talk a little bit about this because it does manifest itself politically, too. It's this you may not be the way you are. There's a woke mind virus. You're being controlled when, in fact, they're trying to control you. Well, yeah, and he's always been somebody who doesn't want any constraints. And he wants to be able to exert his power and to control people.

And if you have a child who's learning to be herself, that's very natural. It's what every kid does, ultimately, it's break free of their parents' control. It's part of growing up. But he couldn't accept that. Because it can't be personal with him. It's got to be bigger than that. So it becomes this rationalization for why he's going. Using Jenna as a vehicle.

Using Jenna as a foil to explain why he's going MAGA. But, you know, we now know why he went so hard MAGA. And it had nothing to do with that. It was much more transactional. It was an existential crisis, if come, Harris had won, you know, in that regard. He needed the protection. He could have gone to prison, not to mention all the civil investigations into his companies, which have now been utterly swept aside, you know, so. I actually said that at the time and all his minions went after me.

They're like, no, no, it's about a bigger, I was like, no, it's about money. Like, it's about investigations. Well, that's what they're all in it for. I mean, he's not unique in that way. It's just he came up with a different rationalization for it. Right. So in that, the shift towards conservative of politics. And again, it happened. COVID was when it sort of seemed to happen. But I think he knew the jig was up on many things, like, or it was moving that direction. He obviously got angry at Biden over, over the car stuff. I remember him calling me over and over again that he wasn't invited to some dumb get-together, which you chronicle in the film. But he buys Twitter in 2022. He becomes extremely online, which is an expression. He's like in a way that I think he went down that

rabbit hole of online conspiracy theories, combined with a number of other things well reported in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal about drug use. But it's more, it's all of them together, it seems like. But Twitter seemed to be the sort of fulcrum of that kind of stuff. Eventually he teams up with Trump. He spends nearly $300 million to help get him elected. His reward is the creation of Doge. Alex, on its face, Doge was a failure. It cost the government more money than it saved. And Musk went on to say the government is, quote, unfixable. But you argue he did fix the government. He fixed it to work for him and other tech leaders. Talk a little bit about this. Well, I mean, we now know, you know, in 2022, he was putting

his money all in for the Republican Party, you know, way before, which, of course, bears out the theory about COVID. But to take your point about Doge, I mean, it was never about waste, fraud, and abuse. I think it was about destroying the government. And if you destroy the government, you destroy any constraints on you, meaning you, the businessman, you, the person who needs and wants power. The other interesting thing that we discovered was that these doge boys who went into agency after agency and had zero understanding of how those agencies worked and didn't seem to care. But they were very sophisticated about one thing. And that was how they access the data. and they were granted something called super admin status,

which meant that they could, they had total access to the data of those agencies, which meant in many cases our data. Which had never been collected together. Ever. This is something I talked about at the time. I was like this has never been. It's been in all kinds of places.

And we can, we don't know that it was taken to SpaceX, but we do know that if you have that kind of super admin and status, taking that data to SpaceX would be as easy as taking a computer file and putting it in a folder. You don't need to hack in. You have complete and total access to all the data of the government, which is our data, which is purposefully siloed in order to protect us. And so it raises the question, as is raised by Jeffrey Hinton, you know, the godfather of AI

and also Katie Drummond from Wired, of whether if he has that data. and I suspect he does, but I can't say for sure, then what happens if he's training an AI on that data? And what is that going to do for our midterms coming up? So there's always bank shots with Elon. In other words, there's always the stated idea, and then there's something else that he discovers. Just like in Twitter, you know, I think he brought Twitter on a dare. It was sort of fun and wacky. But then he turns it into a propaganda machine for himself.

Yeah, I think so. One of the things I was told by Mark Cuban at the time whenever he was talking about, he just likes being online. He likes tweeting. Mark Cuban actually called me. He said, no, he's buying it for influence. That's what he's doing. Kara, just understand that when he goes into a meeting in India as the head of Tesla, it's one thing. It's just like going in as the head of Ford or whatever. When he goes into the head of Twitter and Tesla, it creates a whole new thing. Justine, when this started happening, obviously the first indication was Jenna, right, was the beginning of it. When you saw that rightward shift, did you think it was transactional when he realized that Trump was a coin-operated president? I think he saw somebody that he knew he could work with. You know, I think there were a lot of affinities there. You know, Jeffrey Epstein is kind of like a ghost in the background. But they, you know, Jeffrey says, some things about women that mesh really well with things that Arrell has said about women. And when you kind of like extend that outwards, I think you have a philosophy on how to live

and how to, you know, create order that not only makes a lot of sense, but, you know, starts to seem like the only sensible way to live. To live, yeah. And the only future to bring into being. So it's the future, the only future. It's the dangerous future that's going to destroy us all unless they are put in charge of it. Right. Right.

It's monarchical. And you are an NPC, right? Which is one of Elon's favorite things. These people are NBC. These so many times. They're not religious. But they're the messias. Yeah.

So one of the things, he was one of the earliest people to voice skepticism about AI. First person I heard say anything negative. Most tech people are up and to the right. He was not. He was very smart about this, as I recall. At the same time, of course, he sees to get while the getting's good and developing his own AI through XAI and his chatbot GROC. It's not keeping up as much as the others. But he's going for it.

He's going for it. One of the things you do well in the film, Alex, is you connect all these dots, AI. with space, with cars, with government power, government ties, and Starlink. Another, I remember when you discussed that idea for the first time, great idea, great big idea, kind of thing. That data, of course, is routed through SpaceX. Tesla's cameras and microphones can be used to collect data. What do you think it's all adding up to each of you at this point where we are in the game? Alex first. Well, one of the scariest things is that he sees, to be a person who's psychologically unhinged, and I think he grew into that, with an enormous power, enormous power.

But power that he doesn't really know what to do with. There's a kind of chilling moment toward the end of the film where one person says, well, why is it so important, Elon, for you to accrete all this power with the satellites, the space, and everything else, into one sort of global, business. And there's like a two-minute silence. He can't answer that. It's like Ted Kennedy being asked, why are you running for president? He has enormous power, but no idea what to do with it, which is maybe the most chilling thing of all, because the hardest thing to do in this film was to at once communicate the deadly seriousness of this massive accression of power. And at the same time, understand that there is fundamentally something so unsurious about him, you know, in terms of his perspective or his ability to see the world in some kind of holistic fashion. Yeah, one of the things you wrestle with these two contradictory ideas, the public has of him.

One is that he's a genius set out for world domination. The other, that he's kind of a hapless chaos agent. it cannot pay attention to details and succeeds in spite of himself. How do you reconcile them, Justine? I once described him, this was many, many years ago, but this is what comes to mind. I once described him as somebody who can, like, jump off the edge of a cliff and, you know, invent a parachute on the way down.

Like, he, I think he thrives on chaos. I think when you read about PTSD, when you get to know more about how that reshapes the brain, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, because if you, you know, listen to the language that he uses and, like, even taking into account that a lot of it is a pitch, it's performative. But, you know, everything is, it's very, very urgent, you know, we're going to die. The world is going to, you know, be destroyed. It's a suicidal, almost a suicidal apocalyptic. Yeah, everything is life and death. And I think he, you know, he really lives like that. He really lives with that pitch of intensity and that's a place where he feels comfortable. And so if he's too comfortable, he looks for that chaos. And he brings it with him and he has a way of sucking you into it.

And at first it can look a lot like excitement. It's that intensity. I think he really needs that. And so I think I always assume that there's a method to his madness. A lot of sleight of hand sometimes. You know, oh, look over here and then he's doing something. Right, a trickster, yeah. Yeah, and, you know, I think there's a lot of engineering of language, you know, engineering of belief systems.

You know, like to take that from that kind of systems thinking is like working with something physical and tangible, then, you know, if you've put rockets into space, then let's go after human minds. I mean, that's such a key idea in science fiction. So every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here is yours. Hi, it's Kirsten Grind. I'm an investigations reporter at the New York Times, and I've covered Elon Musk for a lot of years now. My question for you is about his legacy, actually. I'm wondering if at this point, with everything that's happened with him at the helm of X, with everything that's happened in Washington, with his problematic reputation, does that at this point outweigh whatever contributions he, made to society and technology along the way. Thanks. This is a point made to me by a lot of people. Well, he makes rockets. Well, the good outweighs

the bad. Alex, why don't you go first, then Justine? So I would say two things about that. I mean, I would say in general, the damage he's done does outweigh the good that he did, particularly when you look at Doge and the catastrophic thing and also what he is effectively done by finding a way to surround himself with this much power through reward hacking, which started with the Obama administration and ends with a transactional president like Trump. But I would say one other thing, too, because I get this to some extent from, you know, in Q&A's from the fanboys. So like, can you imagine a world, you know, without Elon?

And here's what I would say to that. I mean, I give him tremendous credit for creating a sense of mission at Tesla. and SpaceX. And that sense of mission attracted a lot of very talented engineers and executives who've done a pretty good job of running those companies. Elon didn't, you know, he didn't screw in every screw. He's not the inventor. He's the investor. Sort of the Willie Wonka idea.

This idea that he is the only person in those companies and everybody else is, as you say, an NPC, I just think is a wrongheaded way to think about it. he was an important catalyst for getting these companies off the ground. And I guess that would include, you know, the satellite business. Starlink. Starlink. But it's not the only person. There are a lot of talented people that made these companies. And yet we've lived in a world where the only person that's important is Elon. And you've got to accept the bad with the good, which is sort of the theory behind Walter Isaacson's book. You know, it's like he did so much good. So you have to. to accept the fact that he's cruel. No, I don't accept it. And the cruelty took us to a terrible place in terms of where we are in this country, the damage that is going to have to be undone at some point in terms of what was done during Doge is really capitalism. Yeah, the conflation of Trump and Elon is really a one-two punch for our country in a lot of ways. What do you think? Two of the favorite, you know, quotes, they always come across in Silicon Valley. The future is here already. It's just unevenly.

distributed and then the best way to predict the future is to create it to invent it. So what is the future that he is deliberately trying to create? And one of the things I noticed about Elon is that he is often guilty of the things that he's accusing you of. All the time. Yeah, it's the best defense is a good offense or something along those lines. And when he announced on, it was Twitter at the time, when he announced on Twitter that he was a Republican now, he accused the Democrats of being like incredibly polarizing and divisive and the party of, you know, hate and anger. So then, like going along that theory, you know, is he playing to his strengths as a warrior, you know, as a storm god come down from the mountains?

If there's no war, you don't need a war god. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. You're absolutely right. Yeah, that war stuff is strange. This is sort of my last question. It's two parts. At one point in the film, you ask Alex a series of questions. What are Elon's goals? What are his actual motivation? And do we actually know the man at all?

Are either of you closer to answering those questions, Alex? We're closer to knowing them in some ways and yet maddeningly unable to answer them at a fundamental level. You know, what does he really believe? If he's the trickster, what do you really believe? And at some moment, you know, is he honest enough with himself to... Or can he be given he has enablers around 24-7? To go there. And I'm not sure that he is. Yet at the same time, I think we have a much better understanding of the levers that he pulls in order to create the Oz-like image of himself. And so in that sense, I think we do know him better.

Justine? I used to think I knew him really well. You know, he has a way of commanding focus. Like even now we're sitting here and we're talking about, you know, Elon, Elon, Elon, but, you know, Elon comes with a group. Well, the film is called Musk. Oh, of course. Yeah, but even like Musk, it's, you know, Musk could be many people, but it's, there's only one Musk and it's Elon. Thank God.

But he, you know, he's surrounded. by a cast of characters, and they are remarkably consistent. And, you know, they bring in their set of influences, and there's a very definite worldview that's emerging. But I think, you know, you can go back now, and when you know what you're looking for, you see the tracks and the traces early on. How you got there. Yeah.

And I do wonder about that. I wonder about, you know, those leverage points when it could have gone in a different direction. Absolutely. That's what I think about all the time. Yeah. It could have. It could have. That's what a lot of people give me a hard time for liking him back then. I'm like, you don't understand where it could have gone.

There's unique individuals that can change things for the better. Yeah. And then they become villains. And you're like, it didn't have to be that way, which is what I think about a lot. I think ultimately, I mean, he has this incredible energy that needs something to work on. Otherwise, like, you know, not his own ankle off. He needs to be working on a giant, massive problem. But it removes him from people.

And when you think about, you know, those accumulating layers of tech space, the world gets smaller and smaller. And the people get smaller and smaller. And then you get to a point where everything looks like your toy chest and people are your toys. And the one thing about Elon is that he absolutely cannot stand being bored. you know, and part of him really does want to play. So, you know, I think Trickster might be a good, a good word.

So my last question, how does the story end? All stories end. Or maybe they don't. I don't know. I don't know how it ends. You know, Elon has hitched his wagon to somebody who benefits his short-term goals. What happens when that person is no longer. in power. He's created a lot of damage and created a lot of enemies for himself. Does the pendulum

swing back or is it too late? That's sort of Katie Drummond's point in the film. He's greeted so much power, it may be too late. I hope it's not. Justine, you get the last word. How does it end? I don't know. I think we're heading into

a new type of 1984. I know. Eyes everywhere. and, you know, Einstein has that quote about how imagination is more important than knowledge. What separates us from animals, our ability to imagine a future that's different from the past. And so I guess now the challenge to men like Elon is what can you imagine for us that is different from the past? You know, all these empires that have crumbled and they've died, you know, all these wars that have destroyed. Ozzy Mandus.

World. Yeah, Babylon was. Babylon was. Yeah. How can you create Babylon is? That's a great way to end. Thank you so much, both of you. It's a wonderful film, and you would particularly, or a standout, I have to say, in a film of standouts.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Kara. Thank you for the conversation. We reached out to Elon Musk for comment. He did not respond. Today's show is produced by Vicki Vergolina, Michelle Alloy, Catherine Millsop, Madeline. LaPlante Dubey and Megan Bernie.

Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Annika Robbins, Jim Mackle, and Manolo Moreno. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Requan, and our theme music is by Tracademics. If you're already following this show, you're living in reality, not a simulation. If not, we're sending you to Mars, go wherever you listen to podcast, serves for On with Caras Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Caras Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

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