Kimbal Musk: The Art of Cooking, Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, and Family | Lex Fridman Podcast #417

For me, cooking is an art.

What's your favorite ingredient to cook with?

There isn't one. It's more like when there is one, it really is one. You know, like those peaches on the- on the cover of this cookbook. Those peaches, those were in August, Colorado peaches. It just doesn't get any better than that.

On that day, at that moment, that was the best ƒ ingredient, yeah? (laughs)

That was the be- But that only lasts for a week.

(laughs) Yeah.

And then they don't taste so great.

Yeah. (laughs)

(laughs) But damn, are they so good in that moment, and you just can't stop wanting to use that ingredient.

The following is a conversation with Kimbal Musk, a longtime entrepreneur and chef, and author of a new cookbook called The Kitchen Cookbook: Cooking For Your Community. You should check it out. It is, in fact, the first cookbook I've ever owned. I've already made stuff from it, and it's delicious. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Kimbal Musk. Growing up in South Africa, you said it was a violent place. What are some formative moments that you remember from that time?

South Africa was... So I grew up in, uh, ap- apartheid South Africa, but more specifically, the fall of apartheid. So it was- it was the '80... I was a teenager in the '80s. And, uh, our community would- would, um... Part of our social life, frankly, was the anti-apartheid protests and to go be with white people, Black people, kind of mix- mixing it all together. The most formative experiences, frankly how much I appreciate a place like America where we have value for human life. So there was a country where- where bl- li- human life was not valued. It was a... it's a weird thing to come from that to here where- where we- we take it so seriously if someone dies in a war or something like that. And, um, we just didn't take it seriously in South Africa that people died, that people were killed. I saw someone killed in front of me. Um, was, uh, was getting off a train, and it's a very violent train, known- known for violence. We were stupid kids. We didn't really listen to our parents. We went on this train, and, uh, the doors opened, and I had people trying to get off the train. And in front of me, uh, two Black people, one Black guy just stabbed this knife in the side of this other Black guy's head. And you're like, "What the fuck?" And you just... I've- I'm tr- I feel, I gotta get off the train.

How old were you at this time?

Probably 16 or 17. And I gotta get off the train, and everyone is trying to get me to get off because, you know, they're all behind me. So I step off, and I step into the pool of blood with one foot, and then I just walk for about 100 paces while the stickiness of the blood just kind of on my sneakers just on one foot just, like, leaves a footprint behind me. And you just walk on. You just walk on.