´óÏó´«Ã½

In 2008 Tesla Motors launched its first car, the completely electric Roadster. Tesla was a great story - something genuinely new, an engineering marvel. Elon Musk as CEO was an even better story. He had already disrupted banking and aerospace. Now the automobile industry. That same year, the superhero film Iron Man was released, featuring Tony Stark, a billionaire arms dealer who believes everything is achievable through technology and private enterprise. Musk became a media darling, on the cover of countless magazines under headlines like ‘Elon Musk, AKA Tony Stark, Wants to Save the World’. Within the logic of Muskism, talking about averting human extinction was becoming a business strategy--and Silicon Valley CEOs the new superheroes.

Jill Lepore is the Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She’s also a staff writer at The New Yorker and an acclaimed author.

Series Producer: Viv Jones
Researchers: Simon Leek, Oliver Riskin-Kutz, Thomas Farmer
Editors: Richard Vadon, Hugh Levinson
Sound design and mix: James Beard, Graham Puddifoot
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke
Original music by Corntuth
Production Coordinators: Jack Young, Maria Ogundele

CREDITS
Comments by Stan Lee from "The Hero Initiative, Very Very Live: Marvel Then and Now: An Evening With Stan Lee and Joe Quesada Hosted by Kevin Smith", 2007
Musk interviewed on Wired Science, PBS, 2007