Happy new year, Origin Story listeners. We’ll be releasing regular bonus episodes between now and the launch of season seven in April and we’re kicking off with a sequel to the finale of season three: Elon Musk and the Death of Twitter. With jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes information from two recent books, Dorian explains how and why the richest man in the world wrecked its most influential social media platform.

In October 2022 Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and set about remaking it in his own image. He gutted the payroll, cluttered the timeline with crud, welcomed back trolls with open arms and rebranded the corpse as X. At the same time, his breakneck self-radicalisation made him the new lodestar of the international far right. In due course the “global town square” became a playground for conspiracy theorists, grifters and extremists.

Musk used to agonise that the Twitter takeover was a ruinous mistake but he’s ended up with a seat in the Trump administration and more billions than ever. It’s everyone else who’s paying the price.

Why was Musk so determined to own Twitter in defiance of all financial logic? What role did the platform’s eccentric founder Jack Dorsey play? Why does Musk’s professed love of free speech only cut in one direction? (Trick question.) How does all this play into his messianic delusion that he is the saviour of humanity? And can Bluesky redeem the failed experiment of social media?

NOTE: This episode was recorded in December, before Musk escalated his attacks on the Labour government and his support for Germany’s AfD, but he was already dreadful beyond belief.

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Reading list

Axios – How It Happened: Elon Musk vs. Twitter (2023)

Kate Conger, Mike Isaac, Ryan Mac and Tiffany Hsu – ‘Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter’, New York Times (2023)

Kate Conger and Ryan Mac – Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed

Twitter (2024)

Sheon Han – ‘What We Lost When Twitter Became X’, New Yorker (2024)

Katie Harbath – ‘Elon Musk’s Takeover’, Lawfare (2024)

Walter Isaacson – Elon Musk (2024)

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Neil Burger: 6/24/14