Lifestyle
Elon Musk to discuss Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter and more on 80-minute Recode podcast
On Friday, November 2, 2018, Elon Musk would be featured in an 80-minute Recode Decode podcast, hosted by famed tech journalist Kara Swisher. In a series of tweets on Thursday, Swisher provided some teasers of the upcoming episode, stating that she and Musk would be talking about several topics, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, the Saudis, Artificial Intelligence, Twitter regrets, and more.
Needless to say, this upcoming podcast would most certainly be filled with notable tidbits and updates on Elon Musk’s numerous ventures. Lightheartedly referencing Musk’s controversial appearance in the Joe Rogan Experience podcast earlier this year, Swisher assured her followers that yes, Elon Musk would be talking about a lot of topics, and no, there would be no alcohol or cannabis involved. A follow-up post further teased that the upcoming podcast would feature a “more rested Elon Musk,” which bodes well for the quality of the 80-minute session.
Podcast secured. (@elonmusk approved of this joke — well, he laughed at least) pic.twitter.com/d7yOY3Z5AE
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) November 1, 2018
If any, followers of Elon Musk’s several ventures would likely get more notable updates and tidbits of information from Swisher’s upcoming Recode Decode episode than they did in Musk’s 2-hour-plus interview with Joe Rogan last September. Between the two podcast hosts, after all, Kara Swisher’s knowledge in tech and her background on Musk’s projects is incomparable with Joe Rogan’s. During Musk’s sessions with Rogan, for one, there were notable periods when Musk took some time explaining the basics of his work and his company’s products to the MMA enthusiast and comedian. Such instances would likely not happen in the upcoming Recode Decode episode.
Recode, particularly Swisher, and Elon Musk have a rather long history together. The noted tech journalist, after all, has written about Elon Musk in the past. In her opinion column in the New York Times this past August, for example, Swisher gave her take on Elon Musk’s behavior on Twitter and their repercussions, dubbing the serial tech entrepreneur as the “Id” of tech. Swisher and fellow Recode founder Walter Mossberg have also interviewed Musk on numerous occasions, featuring him on the D11 conference back in 2013 and in the 2016 Code Conference.
Oh hai — a more rested @elonmusk talks Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, Saudis, AI, tweet regrets, he has a few, and more on 80-min Recode Decode podcast coming Friday pic.twitter.com/54Ya8AP8IV
— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) November 1, 2018
Elon Musk’s year has been rife with notable ups and equally grave downs. This year included milestones such as the Falcon Heavy’s inaugural flight as well as Tesla’s transition into a profitable electric car company (it surprised Wall Street by posting $6.8 billion in revenue and beating earnings estimates with a GAAP profit of $312 million), while The Boring Company, a startup founded as a result of a pun on Twitter, won a high-profile bid for the upcoming Chicago-O’Hare high-speed transport line. That said, Musk has also attracted a notable amount of controversy, including an SEC lawsuit over his “funding secured” tweet last August that cost him and Tesla a total of $40 million as part of a settlement, and a series of Twitter altercations with the media that negatively affected Tesla stock.
Elon Musk’s podcast with Kara Swisher tomorrow could be accessed here (for Apple devices).
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026

