I've got levels on me. All right, we're ready.

Five weeks ago, I sat down with biographer Walter Isaacson to try and unpack his new 600-page biography of Elon Musk. Already, some stories had jumped off the page.

That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

When Isaacson set out to write this biography, he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure.

Musk turns to his security guard, said, You got a pocket knife? And he takes off the floorboard himself. He just prized it open.

What he got was a subject who is also volatile, increasingly so in chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a finger-tip feel for social, emotional networks.

And so Isaacson did what he'd done with Steve Jobs and tried to capture it all through stories.

And I said, I want to be by your side at all times, and I want for two years to have nothing off limits. In a very low monotone, he goes, Okay.

It allowed him to see up close, for better and worse how Musk operates.

Musk is probably the richest couch surfer ever, so hewould stay with Larry Page and they'd stay up all night. And Musk would talk about how we have to be careful of AI. Believe it or not, these fights cause him to quit speaking to each other. He'd see some calm on a factory line or at a launch pad, and he'd be unhappy. He'd say, I've got to stir things up. Getting to bars doesn't excuse being a total. But I want the reader to see it in action. And to.

Examine, as Isaacson did, what gave Musk his boywonder reputation in the first place?

Musk and this cadre around him, they have cans of spray paint, and they're just putting big X's on machines. And it's almost like kids playing on the playground. These people are standing there overlooking the Gulf of Mexico in this God-forsaken place. And all they can focus on is how are we going to get a colony to Mars? He gets a very lean team that's willing to put up with him being cold and angry for those amazing moments where they feel like they're changing the world.

My name is Evan Ratliff, and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down what he saw shadowing Elon Musk, the speed and the drama that fuel Musk's accomplishments, and the wreckage he leaves behind. We'll discover how Isaacson clogged on to this tornado for just long enough to capture a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius.

I like the fact that people who say, I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be, are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk. Listen to.

On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.