Video: https://youtu.be/rQI2Ls32b80

In July 2022, podcaster Johnna Crider invited me, Gail Alfar, to join her for a relaxed, wide-ranging conversation with Elon Musk at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory. The chat was recorded for Johnna’s show Getting Stoned.

The three of us talked about some of the biggest ideas facing humanity: why we should make life multi-planetary with real urgency, the declining birth rate and its risks to civilization, poverty and homelessness, the power of internet access and education, Starlink’s role in disaster relief, Tesla Energy (including Megapacks), and the future of AI and Full Self-Driving.

It was a candid, unscripted discussion full of big-picture thinking and personal stories — including a memorable moment when Elon directly addressed the shadowbanning I was experiencing on Twitter (now X).

This cleaned-up transcript captures the full conversation exactly as it happened — easy to read and understand for anyone, no matter their background. (Elon even invited Johnna back for a Part 2 because we didn’t have time to cover every question!)

Full Verbatim Transcript

Elon: This is Getting Stoned. It’s a podcast about gems and minerals and I am not your host.

Johnna: This is Getting Stoned. It’s a podcast about gems and minerals and I am your host, Johnna Crider. On today’s episode we have a very special guest. Thank you, Elon Musk, for joining me.

Elon: All right.

Johnna: So Elon, I always find it inspiring when you talk about the light of consciousness. What does consciousness mean to you?

Elon: To the best of our knowledge, the only conscious life we’re aware of is on Earth. I’m conscious in the sense that I think I have self-awareness. We’ve never found microbial life anywhere else in the solar system, though it’s possible we might find some under the ice of Europa.

According to the geological record, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. It’s odd that only very recently has life evolved that can talk, write, and communicate sophisticated ideas. And only now has civilization reached the point where we can send life to another planet. A lot of people think Moon landings are fake. They’re not.

Johnna: I don’t think they’re fake.Yeah, they’ve actually brought back some cool minerals from the Moon and I kind of have one in my collection. 

Elon: I actually have a slice of a Moon meteor — a chunk of Moon that was hit by a meteor, smashed a bunch of Moon rocks, and some of the Moon rocks landed on Earth. And I’ve got a segment of one of them.

Johnna Crider: The Apollo mission brought back some Tranquilityite. And up until 2011, it’s called that because of the Sea of Tranquility. Yeah, and there was none found on Earth and then in 2011 some deposits were found in Australia. 

So I have a friend of mine sent me some deposits and it broke. And so it had big chunks and two little pieces, so I made the other two little pieces into art. 

Elon: But I mean it’s crazy how old the rock is. It’s like billions of years old. 

Johnna: That shungite I just gave you, that’s over two billion years old. 

Elon: That’s a long time, you know. Don’t hold your breath (laughter)

Elon: I mean it’s hard to even wrap your mind around that kind of time scale. A billion years — our lifespans are a flash in the pan. That’s true. Just like that. Shorter than a flash in the pan compared to galactic time scales.

So there are much things that one could say, or at least appear to be likely, which is that it appears that consciousness is rare. And it takes a long time for it to arise. And so, like I said, to the best of our knowledge we are alone. And so we have to accept the possibility that we may be it — at least in this sector of the galaxy or in the Milky Way perhaps. And if we’re it and this is the only little candle in a vast darkness of a little light of consciousness that got us lit, then we should really try to make sure that life does not go out. And we can’t take it for granted that it won’t. So we want to try to make it last as long as possible.

Elon: And I think we also want to try to understand the nature of the universe, meaning of life, where is it going, what does the future hold, just find out what’s going on in the universe. And so that means the more that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, the more we’re likely to understand the fundamental questions around the meaning of life and nature of the universe. And so I think that’s a good goal to have. And it’s a goal that I think can unite humanity because it’s a common goal as opposed to sort of infighting and “I want this big field of ice, I want this piece of land.” No, I want this piece of land. Well, you know, there’s a lot of land out there. There’s a lot of planets with nothing on them. How about those ones? Why fight over the little pieces when there’s entire planets out there and solar systems and stuff?

Elon: So I think it is a philosophy that withstands reason. I think there’s a solid reasoning basis for it. It’s really just a philosophy of curiosity, I would call it. And it’s also exciting, you know. If you think like… I mean the happy reasons when you wake up in the morning that you’re excited to be alive and you look forward to the future. And it can’t just be solving one sad problem after another. You know, what the hell’s the point? There’s no point like that.

Johnna: Right.

Elon: This is the first time in history that the window of opportunity has been open for life to become multi-planetary. It may stay open for a long time or a short time, but I think it would be wise to assume it will be open for a short time and take action now.

We don’t need to spend a huge amount of resources on it. Less than one percent of our resources would be enough to make life multi-planetary. We should be life’s steward in that sense, because the other creatures can’t build spaceships but we can.

This isn’t about abandoning Earth. We need to make Earth as good as possible. That’s what Tesla is about, making a good future for Earth. SpaceX is about making life multi-planetary. We need to do both.

Johnna: You would not believe what my cats can do. That’s all I’ve got to say about that! But seriously, I think we have a responsibility to protect the rest of the creatures on Earth too.

Elon: I completely agree. A reasonable approach would be to spend about one percent of our resources on making life multi-planetary and ensuring the long-term survival of consciousness and life as we know it. Tesla’s goal is to help ensure a good future for Earth. SpaceX’s goal is to make life multi-planetary and ensure the long-term survival of consciousness. Those are awesome goals.

Gail: Happiness.

Elon: I’ve mostly talked about the defensive, protective reasons for becoming multi-planetary. But what actually gets me most excited is the sense of adventure and possibility. It would be the greatest adventure ever, exciting and inspiring to see it happen.

Johnna: What you and SpaceX have done in Ukraine with Starlink inspires a lot of deep respect. You also helped Saint Charles Parish in my state after Hurricane Ida, as well as the villages of Tango. What role do you see Starlink playing in disaster relief? We’re going to have a lot of disasters. They’re predicting more hurricanes in my area this year.

Elon: In general, Starlink is not dependent on any ground-based infrastructure, so it can provide internet connectivity to areas hit by floods, fires, or earthquakes where the ground infrastructure has been destroyed. That’s extremely helpful for rescue operations. When people are stranded, they need to be able to say “I need help” or “I need rescue.” Starlink has provided that in a number of situations.

Johnna: When we had Ida, my power was out for a week. Communications in southeast Louisiana were completely wiped out. It just made me think Starlink would definitely help organizations like the Cajun Navy as well as others to communicate better, especially with government.

Elon: Yeah.

Johnna: The Musk Foundation has done a lot of good work. About a month ago I made this really long list of everything you guys are doing. What you did for Lake Charles after Hurricane Laura was phenomenal and saved lives. How do you see the Musk Foundation helping charities, especially toward disaster relief, in the next few years as the effects of climate change continue?

Elon: We try hard with the foundation to give away money in ways that are actually useful. Maximum number of cents on the dollar actually helping people in need. It’s way harder to give away money than you think if you care about it actually doing good. We’re scaling up more personnel in the foundation to go through fewer intermediaries so we can have the shortest path to helping people.

Johnna: Would you consider grants that help organizations that focus on disaster relief?

Elon: Yeah, we do provide grants to organizations that work on disaster relief.

Johnna: Last year you donated 100 million dollars for the XPRIZE competition to fight climate change. Which of the four categories, air, land, ocean, or rocks, do you feel needs the most work?

Elon: The larger problem is getting the parts-per-million level of CO2 in the atmosphere down. We’re going to have to pull it out of the air and store it somewhere. I think storing it in a solid form makes sense. The energy to do that has to come from renewables, solar, wind, geothermal. I’m actually pro-nuclear as well, except in locations prone to natural disasters.

Johnna: There’s a company called Project Vesta that uses peridot to do that, and some diamond companies are making lab-grown diamonds with carbon from the air.

Elon: I don’t think that scales very well, but it is cool to think about.

Johnna: Would you consider doing another XPRIZE when this one closes?

Elon: Yeah, absolutely. We’re constantly looking for highly effective ways to spend money for general social good.

Johnna: What accomplishments of the Musk Foundation are you most proud of?

Elon: We funded a literacy XPRIZE to figure out the best software on a low-cost tablet to teach people to read. If you can improve literacy, you improve everything about a society. That’s probably the best thing we’ve done so far.

Johnna: The declining birth rate. You often talk about this problem. It is a real problem. But there’s another problem I think plays a major role, and that’s poverty. What actions do you think need to be taken toward solving poverty that would help relieve some of that issue with the declining birth rate?

Elon: The declining birth rate is somewhat counter-intuitive, but generally the wealthier someone is, the fewer kids they have. I’m an exception, but it’s quite rare. It’s not really a money thing. In fact, it seems to be the opposite.

Even someone living at what we consider the poverty level in 2022 has access to things the richest person on Earth didn’t have 100 years ago.

Johnna: I’ve been homeless before while working two jobs. The idea of having a kid in that situation would terrify me. You can’t just throw money at it and solve it. There’s a lot of trauma involved. From my own experience, trauma is the number one cause of homelessness. That’s why I was asking what ideas you have that could point toward a real solution.

Elon: Literacy and access to the internet are fundamentally helpful. We have to think beyond just the United States. There are billions of people who have no internet access at all, or it’s very low bandwidth and insanely expensive.

These days you can learn almost anything online. MIT has all their lectures available, and many other universities do the same. You can literally have access to all the world’s information using just a simple phone or an old tablet.

Elon: This fact is really underappreciated. Before the internet, if you wanted to learn a skill you had to go to a specific school, get the exact books, or visit a library that might not even have what you needed. A few hundred years ago books were rare and expensive. The improvement in access to information is truly remarkable.

Johnna: I can’t imagine not having books! Google teaches really well, especially when I go to gem and mineral shows and have to look things up. Do you have any other thoughts on how to reverse population decline?

Elon: The population decline problem is possibly the biggest risk to civilization. A lot of people still think there are too many humans on the planet. That is absolutely not true. We could double the world’s population without any meaningful damage to the environment.

You could fit every single human on Earth inside the city of New York on just one floor. Earth is actually very sparsely populated with humans. There are not enough humans, far from being too many. Last year we had the lowest birth rate in recorded history.

Gail: Wow, yeah. I saw the statistics on your Twitter account.

Johnna: Yeah, so I don’t even see all your tweets half the time, even though I follow you. That’s the crazy part.

Elon: If you have the latest tweets? Because you have to switch because of the algorithm?

Johnna: I do switch.

Gail: I’m totally deboosted on Twitter. I’m everything bad. Search ghostban.

Elon: Are you serious?

Johnna: Yeah, shadow banning is crazy. It’s really bad.

Elon: What the heck’s going on?

Gail: I don’t know. I tweet really nice things but…

Elon: Exactly. You’re not like a hate monger. You’re the furthest thing from it. You’re obviously a super nice person. So what the heck are they doing?

Johnna: She got shadowbanned when she replied to me with a heart. It was you or Kristen. They replied with something really nice and got shadowbanned.

Johnna: Oh, it was you.

Gail: Lots of lots of love.

Johnna: Yeah.

Elon: It really sounds like someone on Twitter is doing something shady. That’s not cool.

Elon: Whoever’s doing that on Twitter, shame on you!

Johnna: Right, y’all need to stop! (laughter)

Elon: That’s not cool.

Johnna: Yeah, don’t shadowban Gail. She’s awesome.

Elon: Yeah, that’s so totally messed up.

Johnna: Alright, so let’s talk Tesla. There’ve been quite a lot of bills that have been kind of anti-EV or anti-Tesla going through state governments. What are your thoughts on how dealerships are trying to preserve their way of life instead of evolving with the market?

Elon: It’s to be expected that incumbents will oppose a new entrant. If they can’t win a fair fight, they’ll try an unfair fight. But if we have the people on our side and strong customer support, I think we’ll win most of the battles.

Johnna: Tesla Insurance is making a difference for customers who switch, and Louisiana has the highest average cost of car insurance in the nation. When will Tesla Insurance expand to all 50 states and Canada? And when will Louisiana get it?

Elon: Insurance is regulated primarily at the state level, so it’s a state-by-state thing. You have to jump through a lot of hoops in every state, and those hoops take a long time.

Johnna: …and the weakest part of Texas is the grid, and here comes Tesla trying to strengthen that weakest part.

Elon: The batteries are helpful even without sustainable energy because they can load-balance the grid. Power spikes, dips, fluctuations. The batteries can smooth it all out. The Tesla Megapack and Powerwalls can be really helpful for stabilizing the grid.

Gail: Could you talk a little bit about Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and if Gigafactory Texas could be protected in the event of an emergency?

Elon: In terms of batteries, this is going to be a combination of large utility-scale batteries with very big installations like the one we did with PG&E at Moss Landing, and then at the local level the Powerwalls that collectively can stabilize the grid within a neighborhood. The combination of centralized Megapacks and distributed Powerwalls can have a very positive effect in making sure the power stays on.

Johnna: …and then we also touched upon AI.

Elon: On the AI front, Tesla is doing a lot with AI for Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. We’re making good progress. The goal is to make the car safer than a human driver, and in many situations it’s already safer. There have been cases where the car saved someone’s life because the driver had a seizure or was unconscious and the car pulled over safely.

Autonomy is going to be a huge benefit to society because over a million people die every year in car accidents. I think we can reduce that by at least a factor of 10.

On the broader AI front, we’re working toward artificial general intelligence. AGI. It’s not there yet, but progress is being made. Eventually digital intelligence could exceed human intelligence, and I think we need to be careful because AI could be an existential risk if not handled properly. So some regulatory oversight as a public safety measure makes sense.

But overall, I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to have AI that is beneficial to humanity. Optimus, the humanoid robot, is also powered by the same AI tech. So that’s another big thing.

Johnna: Wow. Well, thank you so much, Elon, for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it. And thank you to everyone at Giga Texas for making this possible. You’ve inspired so many people. Thank you.

Elon: All right. Thank you.

Johnna: And Elon did invite me to come back since I didn’t get to ask all my questions, so there will eventually be a Part 2. Thank you again.