112. The Elon Musk Episode: Time Person of the Year

I'M THE VILLAIN

In 2021, Elon Musk was named the Time Person of the Year. A contentious choice, given the events of this past year, and maybe that was the point. After all, print magazines are rapidly going out of business and vying to stay relevant and this is pretty much the only time of year you see headlines about TIME in the rest of the mainstream media. So maybe they chose someone intentionally controversial to stir up chatter, but regardless, we use this episode to talk about whether the pick was merited, given that Elon has been breaking ground: he has now definitively put electric vehicles on the map, despite Tesla's dubious labor practices, and he can move the markets with one Tweet (though maybe not always in the direction he wants them to go). We will have yet to see if he manages to put humans on Mars, but if he does succeed, it will undoubtedly be historic.
Links:
Wikipedia Page on the Time Person of the Year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year
Time article on Elon Musk as the Time Person of the Year: https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk/
Wait But Why Article on Elon Musk: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html
Wikipedia page for the Long Tailpipe Theory of Electric Vehicles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tailpipe#:~:text=The%20long%20tailpipe%20is%20an,those%20from%20non%2Delectric%20vehicles.
Our World in Data Chart of Emissions by Sector: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

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