There’s a name that’s hard to escape these days, particularly if you’re in the technology world—Elon Musk. He’s involved with Tesla electric cars, home solar and battery installations, SpaceX rockets, Starlink satellites, and the company that once was known as Twitter. Woven through his array of enterprises is a mix of technical savvy, confident ego, and sometimes impulsive decision-making.

Biographer Walter Isaacson has tried to sort through the competing influences behind the entrepreneur and his mercurial behavior in a recent book titled simply Elon Musk. He joins Ira to talk about the business magnate’s origins, his management style, and the incessant appetite for risk and drama that drives his successes—and, sometimes, his dramatic failures. 

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