This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alder, and this is Clear and Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

Tesla had almost gone bankrupt in 2018. He went into a catatonic state.

But all of a sudden, Tesla is worth more than the next nine car companies combined.

In the previous six months, he had shot up I think 33 orbital missions and become the richest

person on the planet. And I thought, okay, he's now going to rest on his laurels a bit.

He said, no, I got to keep taking risks. I need that drama. If there's calm seas,

I've got to sail to the storm. And that's when he starts buying Twitter.

That's Walter Isaacson talking, of course, about Elon Musk. Walter has written brilliant

biographies of people as varied as Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein.

And now, as new book and international bestseller, is the result of Walter spending two years

shadowing Musk as his subject launched rockets, built electric cards, decided to save humanity,

behaved badly, became the richest man in the world, bought Twitter and turned it into X.

What a book, Walter. What a book. And you got one of the most interesting people on the public stage

to be the subject of a really detailed look at his life. How do you do that? What's the inside story?

Well, you know, like you, I'm interested in science and technology. And I thought, here's a dude

who's shooting rockets in the space. We landing the boosters unlike any other company or country can do.

And he's moving us into the transition to electric vehicles and solar roofs and power packs.

I thought, wow, technology, it'll be sort of like the Jennifer Doudna book or the Steve Jobs book.

So I started thinking about it and a mutual friend put me in touch with him. And we talked for about

an hour and a half. And I said to him, you know, if I'm going to do this book, I don't want it to be

...