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Why does Elon Musk believe he can save the world by colonising Mars? When PayPal was bought for $1.5 billion, Elon Musk and other company founders made huge personal fortunes. Musk used his to start the rocket company, SpaceX. He also began talking about very big plans for the future of humanity. He wanted humans to become ‘a multi-planetary species’ and said he was accumulating resources to 'extend the light of consciousness to the stars’. Soon he was talking about humans moving permanently to Mars. Future-of-humanity questions used to belong to religion and philosophy. Under ‘Muskism’ they belong more to engineering and entrepreneurship. Jill Lepore traces the history of Silicon Valley's fascination with existential catastrophism. In the second of five programmes, strap in to head to Mars.

The Evening Rocket is presented by Jill Lepore, Professor of American History at Harvard University and staff writer at The New Yorker. Her latest book is If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future. She is also the host of The Last Archive, a podcast from Pushkin Industries.

Producer: Viv Jones
Researcher: Oliver Riskin-Kutz
Editor: Hugh Levinson
Mixing: Graham Puddifoot
Original music by Corntuth