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Rating
3.6from
This podcast has
8 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Pushkin Industries and BBC Radio 4Explicit
No
Date created
2021/10/20
Latest episode
2025/03/27
Average duration
28 min.
Release period
0 days
Description
The story of Elon Musk, the way it's often told, makes him sound like a fictional character, a comic-book superhero – or, especially lately, a supervillain. As the world's richest man, the US President’s right-hand man, and the owner of X, he’s possibly the world’s most powerful man. Musk wants to build robots and colonise Mars and appears to be dismantling sizable parts of the US government. His vision of the future seems to stem from the science fiction that has fueled his imagination since he was a boy. But what's the real story, the true history, behind Musk’s sense of destiny? Back in 2021 Harvard history professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore became fascinated by this question. So she made a podcast that tried to explain Musk through the science fiction he grew up with. A lot has happened in the four years since. So she’s gone back in to bring the story up to date. “X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story” is a production of the BBC and distributed by Pushkin Industries.
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Podcast episodes
Check latest episodes from X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story podcast
Episode 1: The Dark Knight
2025/03/27
Elon Musk’s origin story keeps changing. First, he was Tony Stark, or Iron Man. Not too long ago, he compared himself to Batman. Arguments started online over whether or not Musk is a real-life Bruce Wayne. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at the original ‘Caped Crusader’, created back in 1939. Batman’s origin story is bound up with fascism. And every time Musk is compared to Batman it raises a very old question about the Dark Knight: is Batman fighting fascism, or is Batman — a brooding, fabulously wealthy vigilante — somehow, himself a fascist?
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Episode 2: Dimension X
2025/03/27
Elon Musk is reinventing himself as a kingmaker for the United States and the world. He wants to shape the future. But in this episode, Jill Lepore goes back to his past — to his childhood, his strange family history, and his fascination with Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
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Episode 3: Planet B
2025/03/28
Elon Musk is a rocket man. He wants humans to become ‘a multi-planetary species’ and talks about establishing human settlements on Mars. As President Trump talks up the Mars program while dismantling aid initiatives around the globe, Jill Lepore traces how Silicon Valley's existential catastrophism led to Musk’s extraterrestrial vision of capitalism.
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Episode 4: Iron Man
2025/03/28
In 2008 Tesla Motors launched its first car, the completely electric Roadster. Tesla was a great story — something genuinely new, an engineering marvel. Musk became a media darling, on the cover of countless magazines under headlines like ‘Elon Musk, AKA Tony Stark, Wants to Save the World’. Within the logic of Muskism, talking about saving the world was a business strategy, a way to sell cars without ads. Why did so many people buy what Musk was selling?
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Episode 5: The Dogefather
2025/03/29
In 2021, Elon Musk started calling himself The Dogefather to signal his support for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on a joke meme about a dog. That dog is now wagging the tail of the world’s economy. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at Silicon Valley's cryptocurrency craze through the lens of some very old science fiction. Like everything else about Muskism that purports to be futuristic, this idea is a relic, whose history serves as a warning.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Episode 6: Baby X
2025/03/29
The science fiction that Silicon Valley techno-billionaires like Elon Musk adore concerns gleaming futures in which fantastically powerful, immensely rich men colonize other planets. In this episode, Jill Lepore looks at some of the science fiction that’s usually left out of this vision — science fiction by and about women.
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Episode 7: Body Snatchers
2025/03/30
In 2022, Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and renamed it X. When asked why he wanted to own the social media network, Musk talked a lot about something he called the “woke mind virus.” Where does the idea of a mind virus come from? Jill Lepore looks to Cold War science fiction and the recently uncovered writings of Elon Musk’s grandfather in South Africa.
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Episode 8: The Terminator
2025/03/30
Elon Musk has claimed that AI is humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” Paradoxically, Musk is also working to create artificial intelligence. Why? Jill Lepore tours through a century of imagined robot rebellions, and argues that these stories are never only about robots. So what’s Elon Musk really afraid of when he wrings his hands over AI? In this final episode, Lepore argues that while Musk may be a visionary, “every piece of Muskism has origins in a future foretold in science fiction, long, long ago, as a cautionary tale.”
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Podcast reviews
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AnnieBlank 2025/06/01
Elon Musk has no degrees
Elon Musk did not graduate from Penn with any degrees much less graduate at all. Also, Technocracy, Inc was fascist. It was deemed illegal in Canada d...
Jamaaaaalbowman 2025/10/05
Great example of why no one trust the media
Just another hit job from a deranged leftist university professor. It’s wild that she is a professor at a university When will these people go away?
Nardwuar Sr. 2025/06/01
As if comic Man children weren’t cringe
Musk is GOAT, The Writer want his C@CK. Why do the nerds that obsess over comic books A. Think they are capable of writing and B. Think that aligning ...
Listenerrrr😁 2025/04/17
Enjoyed the series with a dose of salt
The writing is really fantastic and speaking engaging. Love the research that is done and connecting the dots.
Seems like there is a biased against ...
Mac an tSionnaigh 2025/06/01
Drawn-Out
Episode 1 & 2 are interesting but you started to lose me at episode three 3️⃣.
Oldhipgal 2025/05/31
Excellent
I was pleasantly surprised by this show. It was more intellectual and well researched than I expected. I liked having a fascinating theory presented t...
RussLafond 2025/05/14
Hit Piece
I did not expect this to be a hit piece on Elon Musk.
Johntdowney 2025/04/26
Yawn
Meh.
Sjvivi22 2025/04/21
Poor reporting
Rather poor reporting and storytelling. It’s as if she just read his Wikipedia to us and adding some sound effects.
Andydabossupinhere 2025/04/19
Very one sided
I was hoping for a life review with facts from both sides. Her distaste for Elon shines through and skips most of historical information
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