Why does Elon Musk believe he can save the world by colonizing Mars? When PayPal was bought for $1.5 billion, Elon Musk and other company founders made huge personal fortunes. Musk used his to start the rocket company, SpaceX. He also began talking about very big plans for the future of humanity. He wanted humans to become ‘a multi-planetary species’ and said he was accumulating resources to 'extend the light of consciousness to the stars’. Soon he was talking about humans moving permanently to Mars. Future-of-humanity questions used to belong to religion and philosophy. Under ‘Muskism’ they belong more to engineering and entrepreneurship. Jill Lepore traces the history of Silicon Valley's fascination with existential catastrophism. In the second of five programs, strap in to head to Mars.

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Why does Elon Musk believe he can save the world by colonizing Mars? When PayPal was bought for $1.5 billion, Elon Musk and other company founders made huge personal fortunes. Musk used his to start the rocket company, SpaceX. He also began talking about very big plans for the future of humanity. He wanted humans to become ‘a multi-planetary species’ and said he was accumulating resources to 'extend the light of consciousness to the stars’. Soon he was talking about humans moving permanently to Mars. Future-of-humanity questions used to belong to religion and philosophy. Under ‘Muskism’ they belong more to engineering and entrepreneurship. Jill Lepore traces the history of Silicon Valley's fascination with existential catastrophism. In the second of five programs, strap in to head to Mars. Learn more about your ad-choices at <a href="https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com">https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com</a>

Elon Musk's visions of the future all stem from the same place: the science-fiction he grew up on. To understand where Musk wants to take the rest of us - with his electric cars, his rockets to Mars, his meme stocks, and tunnels deep beneath the earth — Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore looks at those science fiction stories and helps us understand what Musk missed about them.
The Evening Rocket explores Musk's strange new kind of extravagant, extreme capitalism — call it Muskism — where stock prices are driven by earnings, and also by fantasies. Follow along on Twitter @ElonMuskPodcast.
From Pushkin Industries and BBC Radio 4. Pushkin Industries may use this feed in the future to debut new podcasts from our catalog. If you'd like to hear more from Jill Lepore, check out her podcast The Last Archive.

Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket

The Evening Rocket: Planet B

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/1cfc5c93-5b93-4956-933a-ae39004f377b/transcript

What happens when artificial intelligence comes for the novelists? Journalist Stephen Marche investigates in Death of an Author, a gripping speculative mystery that was written 95% by AI, aka “Aidan Marchine,” and 5% by Marche, who skillfully crafted the story outline and machine prompts. You can get Death of an Author now at https://www.pushkin.fm/audiobooks/death-of-an-author or wherever you get your audiobooks and eBooks.

What happens when artificial intelligence comes for the novelists? Journalist Stephen Marche investigates in Death of an Author, a gripping speculative mystery that was written 95% by AI, aka “Aidan Marchine,” and 5% by Marche, who skillfully crafted the story outline and machine prompts. You can get Death of an Author now at <a href="https://www.pushkin.fm/audiobooks/death-of-an-author" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pushkin.fm/audiobooks/death-of-an-author&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1683641073199000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0B7dRxNyC7dobHfzy6kNYq">https://www.pushkin.fm/audiobooks/death-of-an-author</a> or wherever you get your audiobooks and eBooks.

Introducing Death of an Author, A Groundbreaking AI Mystery

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/0c0b0f12-37eb-4bdc-8527-affc00f6483f/transcript

At the start of 2021, Elon Musk briefly became the richest man in the world. The global pandemic was a boom time for American billionaires, many of whom saw their wealth rise even as much of the world was locked down. As Musk, Bezos, Gates and others jockeyed for first place in the world’s richest-man contest, the rise of cryptocurrencies was generating headlines about the fictive quality of money. “All forms of currency are acts of imagination”, says Jill Lepore: they require communal belief in their value - what economists sometimes call the Tinkerbell Effect. Musk started tweeting about Dogecoin - a cryptocurrency started as a joke, based on a meme about a dog - even dubbing himself 'The Dogefather'. Although Musk’s tweets looked ironic, jokey, irreverent, they seemed to be having a very real and destabilizing effect on financial markets.

 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

At the start of 2021, Elon Musk briefly became the richest man in the world. The global pandemic was a boom time for American billionaires, many of whom saw their wealth rise even as much of the world was locked down. As Musk, Bezos, Gates and others jockeyed for first place in the world’s richest-man contest, the rise of cryptocurrencies was generating headlines about the fictive quality of money. “All forms of currency are acts of imagination”, says Jill Lepore: they require communal belief in their value - what economists sometimes call the Tinkerbell Effect. Musk started tweeting about Dogecoin - a cryptocurrency started as a joke, based on a meme about a dog - even dubbing himself 'The Dogefather'. Although Musk’s tweets looked ironic, jokey, irreverent, they seemed to be having a very real and destabilizing effect on financial markets. Learn more about your ad-choices at <a href="https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com">https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com</a>

The Evening Rocket: Robin Hood

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/5034a278-8086-41c1-ae59-ae39004eac01/transcript

The science fiction that Silicon Valley techno-billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel adore often concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically powerful and often immensely rich men colonize other planets. In this episode, Jill Lepore takes a look at the science fiction that’s usually left out of this vision. New Wave, feminist, post-colonial science fiction. Including the story of Baby X, a story from the 1970s about a child - like Musk’s youngest son - named X.

 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

The science fiction that Silicon Valley techno-billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel adore often concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically powerful and often immensely rich men colonize other planets. In this episode, Jill Lepore takes a look at the science fiction that’s usually left out of this vision. New Wave, feminist, post-colonial science fiction. Including the story of Baby X, a story from the 1970s about a child - like Musk’s youngest son - named X. Learn more about your ad-choices at <a href="https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com">https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com</a>

The Evening Rocket: Baby X

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/d9eff446-ebd8-45d4-82f9-ae39004eaceb/transcript

The Evening Rocket: Planet B

Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket

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Elon Musk: The Evening Rocket

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