I first spoke to Elon Musk in 2008, long before he became the second most controversial American. His public image is now an odd hybrid of Willy Wonka, Dr. Strangelove and Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil, but back then he was just like any other 37-year-old billionaire.
He’d cashed out of the dotcom boom twice and was busy trying to relocate the human race to Mars on rockets he’d designed while simultaneously reducing our dependence on fossil fuel with electric cars, also largely of his own design. I don’t know what we found to talk about.