Walter Isaacson

And every now and then I'd talk to him and we'd be talking about Starlink satellites or whatever.

Or he would be...

pushing the people in front of him at SpaceX and saying, if you do this, we'll never get to Mars in our lifetime.

And then he would give the lecture how important it was for human consciousness to get to Mars in our lifetime.

And I'm thinking, okay, this is the pep talk of somebody trying to inspire a team, or maybe it's a type of pontification you do on a podcast.

But on like the 20th time I watched him, I realized, okay, I believe it.

He actually is driven by this.

An impatience, a frustration, and it's also...

Just probably the most deeply ingrained thing in him is his mission.

He joked at one point to me about how much he loved reading comics as a kid.

And he said, all the people in the comic books...

They're trying to save the world, but they're wearing their underpants on the outside and they look ridiculous.

And then he paused and said, but they are trying to save the world.

And whether it's Starlink in Ukraine or Starship going to Mars or trying to get a global new Tesla, I think he's got this epic sense of the role he's going to play in helping humanity on big things.

And like the characters in the comic books, it's sometimes ridiculous, but it also is sometimes true.

Well, that's an epic view of why we write biography, which is more epic than I had even thought of.

So I say thank you, because in some ways what you're trying to do is say, okay,

I mean, Leonardo, you talk about being a misfit, he's born illegitimate in the village of Vinci, and he's gay, and he's left-handed, and he's distracted, and his father won't legitimize him.

And then he wanders off to the town of Florence, and he becomes the greatest artist and engineer of that part of the Renaissance.

I hope this book inspires.