the people who are trying to game it. But it's just so unethical it's almost hard to keep it in your head.

Anyway there's this new book on Musk. It's a biography by Walter Isaacson. And Musk himself must be happy about it because I saw him sending a post in which he was recommending an interview with Walter Isaacson without even seeing it. Because he said everything that guy says is kind of interesting. So they like each other apparently. So that's good to know. Just when you're trying to evaluate how true the biography is it's good to know that the biographer and the subject got along.

And yeah I guess Walter Isaacson was talking to Lex Fridman on a podcast which probably be quite interesting I would imagine. There's a few anecdotes coming out. And one of them is about the relationship between Elon Musk and Bill Gates which you might know is not ideal.

Now the funniest thing about this was that they didn't always know each other. Isn't that weird? That only a few years ago they seemed to have met for the first time. How is that even possible? How did Elon Musk and Bill Gates not end up in the same room just naturally a bunch of times without even trying?

Yeah. So by the way my trigonometry podcast is up today apparently. Trigonometry. Look for that if you know that. It's one of the best podcasts.

So here are some things we learned from the biography. That Musk was really mad at Gates for shorting Tesla stock. Now if you're not an investor a short is a bet that the stock will plunge and go down and then you can make money by betting against the stock. So you can either buy a stock and make money when it goes up or you can do what's called selling a short where you make money when it goes down. But that's considered putting pressure on a stock. Like if somebody buys a big short it makes other people say well what do you know that I don't know? So it's a big pressure on the stock price. So it's kind of a messed up thing to do if you're the person who owns a lot of stock in that company.

And so Musk apparently challenged him when Gates wanted to bring one of his children to watch a launch. Oh here's a subcategory. There's part of the story that's also interesting. When Gates wanted to schedule with Musk to bring Gates' kid to see launch or see a rocket or something, Musk told him that he fired his schedulers because he didn't like them having too much control over his schedule. So that to schedule with him you'd have to call him directly. Like call his phone number. So Bill Gates wanted to schedule it and have his secretary set it up but he couldn't send his secretary to call Musk directly because it would just sort of be inappropriate. So he had to schedule it himself. So Bill Gates called Musk and scheduled it.

So apparently when they got together one of there was some disagreement about whether there could ever be a Tesla semi truck. I just saw one. So Musk said it would be impossible to use battery power to make the big semi trucks. And I think Musk was saying that they were already running at the time that he said that it were impossible. They were like already up and running and you know and now they're in lots of places. I saw one yesterday or the other day. So I guess Gates was completely wrong about the capability of the batteries. And it turns out that Musk knew a lot more about batteries than Gates does. Surprise. And that Gates was just totally wrong about everything about Tesla and his potential.

Now Musk's problem is that Gates is not just a guy who's investing to make money. And so he asked him reportedly, Musk asked Gates why he would have a short on the one company that is doing the most to get us away from fossil fuels. And Gates basically said he did it to make money. He bet against the most important anti-fossil fuel company, the one that would be doing the most to make fossil fuels unnecessary. He bet against it in a way that could damage it like severely to make money. And he said it directly. Yeah he just did it to make money.

So and then I guess the quote from Musk after learning this was, Musk said in a note to somebody at this point I am convinced that he, meaning Gates, is categorically insane. And then I then parenthetically in an aside to the core Ed buff said I did actually want to like him. So in person Elon Musk says he's either crazy or just an asshole who doesn't care about anything.

So now I know you're going to extend this and you're going to say but Scott Adams you said he doesn't invest just to make money. You said he's using his fortune to make the world a better place. And haven't I been telling you that he's evil and he's trying to destroy the world? I don't think you could use this example to make that case. Here's why. You don't think that the previous richest person in the world has any bad feelings about the current richest person in the world? You don't think that Gates and Musk have a personal situation that is primarily what's driving them and that has nothing to do with anything else that Gates does anywhere else?

Yeah to me it just looked personal. It just looked like Gates lost his mojo to Musk. Musk is now the better Gates basically. Because when I grew up Bill Gates was the standard of high-tech entrepreneurial success. But he's not at the moment. At the moment that's Musk. So imagine going most of your life being the guy like you're the guy for technology and now there's another the guy. And you're getting all this trouble for your personal behavior etc. I don't know. To me it just looked personal. I think that Gates would have been happy to see a Tesla go down because it would have made Gates look smarter. But I don't think you could take that which is pretty ugly and extend it to the reason he's making toilets in Africa is to make money. That's a pretty big stretch. But people are complex so they're neither all good nor all bad. Yeah yeah it just seems personal to me. So I'd say I doubt he's insane but to the core appears to be consistent with what people have said about Gates from the first days.

I would never argue that he's not an asshole. You didn't hear that did you? I've never made that case. I'm not saying that if you were there in person you'd be a good guy. I doubt it.

I was watching last night I was watching a special on Frank Sinatra. And here's something I didn't know about Frank Sinatra. In my opinion his greatest accomplishments we never talk about. Like if you think of Frank Sinatra you think oh you know a great singer and he was in movies and successful and stuff. But it turns out that his maybe most awesome accomplishments had nothing to do with those things. Those things allowed him to be Frank Sinatra so he could do the other things.

For example he had in his rat pack you know his group of guys included Sammy Davis Jr. Now in the days in the 50s Sammy Davis Jr. couldn't even stay at the hotels where they performed. He wasn't allowed to stay there or to eat there or something. Yeah because the racism was so bad. But because Sinatra was so powerful he would just go in and say yes you are. You absolutely going to change that. You know no discrimination when I'm here. Sammy is going to be treated like eve