Kimbal Musk
speaker
257 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2024
last heard Mar 2024
Kimbal Musk’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I would say that I still do that, but I call those forcing functions instead of destinations. Sure. Because you're just forcing people to crank on some code or cookbook or whatever because you have a date. And sometimes there's a reason. I mean, it's the 20th anniversary. You want to get the cookbook out. We have a reason. We didn't make this up out of thin air. And so, yeah, that does push you.
But just because we have the cookbook doesn't mean it's a destination. It means it was a forcing function to get it out there. Now we're on the journey.
Seriously, to talk about a journey, that is incredible.
One of the hardest times in SpaceX was... We were in the mid-Pacific in Kwajalein, and my brother had sold PayPal. He'd done well financially, but in the rocket world, that money goes away really quickly. And we were in this military base in Kwajalein, and I think it was the second rocket that blew up. I'm not sure, but we didn't have infinite resources. I certainly didn't have the resources.
I mean, I'm there to support, brotherly support. But the... So every rocket launch was do or die. And the first one had blown up. And so the second one, I think it was the second one, blew up. And it was so depressing. It was just like, oh, there's nowhere to go. You're in the... There's no distraction. You're just... You're on this military base. You don't re-socialize.
So it's just we're all together. And I had gotten to know, you know, for me, I'm not part of the team. I'm just there for emotional support or whatever because it's cool. And so I got to know a couple of people locally and got to know this one guy who had a mobile home. Best view in the world, but it's just a mobile home with a patch of grass next to it.
And I was just desperate to find food that wasn't from the cafeteria because this is the worst food you can imagine. And so I met him and he showed me this little tiny little grocery store which had a few things like canned tomatoes. And this is, again, you're in the middle of nowhere, so it's nothing fresh.
And I made this dish that was kind of a version of a, like an Italian version of chili, you know, just baked beans and sweating onions and then tomatoes. And it was a big pot of food, because it's a group of people. We didn't even have a table. And we just put the big pot in the middle and we had our little paper plates and took a scoop as we needed it.
And it was really the gathering place of like food brings people together. in the most difficult times. And it was one of my favorite memories because I was able to bring my gift to this group of incredible people that their hearts were broken, you know, and to sit there and share a meal and feel the life kind of come back into us. And by the end of the night, we're actually having a good time.
A communal, vulnerable connection. Like we mentioned vulnerability earlier, the most vulnerable place, actually that's when you have some of your most beautiful meals.
If you look at how things have changed over the past, say, 50 years, you can clearly say, oh, wow, poverty rates have gone down. Infant mortality has gone down dramatically. All these things have gone down a lot. So if you look at it on a daily basis, you can tell that life is very dramatic, whether it's something's blowing up on X or from the newspapers or whatever.
and you can really get caught up into it. But if you look back over the past few decades, things are getting better. And I mean at the fundamental level, like are less people hungry? Are more people, are there, I mean there is war going on, of course, but are there less wars? Yes.
And so I think that, I think if we all just step back a little bit, it's less about hope, it's more perspective and reflection. And if I do see a problem, like in case of the obesity epidemic, I work really hard to help with that. Our nonprofit's called Big Green, and we work with 150 nonprofits around the country to help Americans grow food again, get connected to their food.
Because I really believe growing food changes your life. And so, okay, let's go do that. So I'll help out where I think we really can make a difference. But if you step back a little, things are actually getting better. It's just a bumpy ride.
Actually, that's a really nice point. I have learned that you really want to celebrate your successes because even in the greater scheme of things, I've learned this in the startup world where you're constantly facing death. Why should you even exist? Do your customers want your product or whatever? And then something will happen where you're like, wow, we really nailed that. That's really great.
We got a product released or got some good kudos from something. All right, everyone, we're going to go celebrate. And actually everyone's still like, no, no, we've got all these other problems. Nope, we're going to go celebrate and then we'll go back to the problems. But if you don't do that, then it starts building on this kind of, you never really get to celebrate.
Thank you for having me.
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