Electric-car-inventor-slash-space-colonizer Elon Musk was on The Joe Rogan Experience last night. The conversation included what you might expect when two dudes with a penchant for theorizing about the future get together: talk of electric planes, flying cars, and the stupidity of fossil fuels.
Was the move part of an effort to redeem himself after his recent string of strange beefs with everyone from rapper Azealia Banks to the cave diver who helped rescue the Thai soccer team? Or that whole Tesla-might-go-private-funding-secured-JK Twitter debacle? Maybe he just wanted to drink nice whiskey with Joe Rogan and pontificate about how AI will change everything. Who knows? As Vox accurately observes: Rich people are weird.
Amid the substance (and there was plenty of that, during the two-plus hour conversation), there were also all of the ridiculous moments you’d expect. Here are the most extreme:
1) The thing the internet cares most about—because of course it does—is Musk’s one tentative puff of a joint around two hours and ten minutes. “Is that a joint?” Musk asks. The Wall Street Journal devotes an lengthy article to every aspect of what happens next. Spoiler alert: Not much. But did he “pull a Bill Clinton” and not inhale?
2) That time Musk admitted to being an alien. (A favorite joke, perhaps, OR IS IT PROOF?)
3) When Rogan (a conspiracy theory fan himself) asked Musk about people who think the earth is flat.
4) When Musk calls his flamethrowers (sold by his troll-iest business called The Boring Company) a “terrible idea.” He also recommends that no one purchases them. Too late.
5) Finally, some weird calculations about transporting dead horses. Yeah, idk.