Elon Musk’s Mom’s memoir. Ahh! (with Becca Platsky and Chris DeRosa)

Glamorous Trash: A Celebrity Memoir Podcast

The Glamorous Trash hosts and correspondents critically dissect May Musk's memoir, Timeless: The Art of Reinvention and Resilience at Any Age, finding it a shallow pamphlet lacking emotional depth or genuine introspection. The

Key takeaways

• May Musk claims to be the first model with gray hair and the first female dietitian on a Special K box, but hosts note these achievements lack context or verification and seem inflated for memoir purposes.
• Errol Musk is described as an apartheid supporter, conspiracy theorist, and leader of a fringe technocracy movement, whose abusive behavior toward May was legally unactionable in 1970s South Africa due to restrictive divorce laws.

Main topics

• Memoir critique and narrative authenticity
• Domestic violence and 1970s divorce law constraints

Notable quotes

I slowly pieced together that Errol had gone back to Pretoria and told my family that he asked me to marry him.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a sharp cultural critique of celebrity memoirs that prioritize self-mythologizing over

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) Welcome to Glamorous Trash. This is a podcast that book clubs celebrity memoirs, trashy discourse, and all things literary to elevate your life. I'm your host, Chelsea DeMontes. I'm a tea writer, comedian, filmmaker, author, and sometimes I'm in stuff too. And today we are book clubbing Elon Musk's mother's mom-war, monster memoir, memoir. We'll find out. It is titled Timeless. The Art of Reinvention and Resilience at Any Age by May Musk, published September 15th, 2026. So, you know, hot off the presses. And we wanted to review this book. You know, I don't know if the woman who birthed Satan wrote a memoir. I'd be like, she speaks. Let's hear her truth. Let's hear what it's like. We are obviously going to find out if this is a monster mom memoir like Kris Jenner or Drew Hammer or worse. I also really wanted to see if we could get some extra insight on Elon ahead of the huge documentary coming out about him by director Alex Gibney. I'm sure you've read reports that Elon Musk is like trying to stop this and losing his mind and melting down over this, which. I love. I will be there. Front row. Gibney is probably most famous for directing Going Clear, the documentary about Scientology, which is a phenomenal documentary. And the Elon Musk documentary is set to hit theaters in the U.S. on October 9th. Now. I must give a trigger warning because there are going to be discussions around child sexual abuse, domestic violence, racism, and a lot of other difficult topics. Several of those trigger warnings all coming from simply discussing Elon Musk's dad. Isn't that fun? Fun. Sure, sure. Listen, listen, like I said, Satan's mom wrote a book. We're going to read it. Please take care while listening. Now let's dive in. My very special guests today are two of our star correspondents here at Glamorous Trash. And the only two people who could read this book, of course, we need our monster memoir correspondent, Chris DeRosa from Fixing Famous People. What is up, Chris? Oh, Speaker 1 (2:14) Chelsea. Oh, Chelsea, we got a live one here. We got a live one is what I'm going to say to you. Speaker 2 (2:20) Chris, thank you for taking another one for the team and reading. This Speaker 1 (2:24) was, okay. Do you remember when we did Kris Jenner? And I was like, I also listened to like Faye Resnick's book about Nicole Brown Simpson. And I was like, it was only five hours long. And you were like, that was a pamphlet. Like what you read was a pamphlet. And I said, yes, it was. And this is another pamphlet that we're going to. Speaker 2 (2:39) This one is a pamphlet? It was Speaker 1 (2:41) so short. You don't even know. Why did she? P.S. Thank God. Speaker 2 (2:44) P.S. Thank Speaker 1 (2:45) God. Thank God. Thank God. But. Thank Christian or God, but yes. The Speaker 2 (2:50) Christian or Christian God, otherwise known as probably Satan. Okay. And here to help Chris recap the book, we could not do this episode without our problematic girl boss business correspondent, Becca Platsky. You know Becca as the host of the podcast, Corporate Gossip, the business podcast that covers all juicy Wall Street scandals. Becca. Wow. Are you alive? Speaker 3 (3:12) How are you doing after the pamphlet? I really did think that the Olivia Newsy book was going to be the worst book I read this year. And I would add it's five hours long and she speaks in the slowest pace I've ever heard a human being speak. I think it was Chris who said every word is a mountain and Speaker 1 (3:28) you Speaker 3 (3:28) should be reading it. or listening to it probably at 1.3x is the appropriate speed. So then you cut it down to like four hours. Speaker 2 (3:36) Wow. I love that she was just milking it. She was like, I get my 15 minutes and I'm going to take every second. So Becca, you read Olivia Newsy's memoir with me this year, which was The Journalist Who Had an Affair with R.F.K. Jr., whose book was gobbledygook. Chris, you've read Ilaria Baldwin's book for this podcast. Both of you. Is Mae Musk's book better or worse than those that I just mentioned? Speaker 1 (4:01) Worse. What? Speaker 2 (4:03) Yeah, I kind of have been Speaker 3 (4:04) describing it as like, if you have a neighbor that you talk to for like three minutes a day while you're walking your dog, like the type of stuff that she would tell you is the exact stuff that's in this book. We're like, gotta go. And she just keeps going. She's just going to tell me a little fact about her life and then... I'm going to move on. Speaker 1 (4:19) Yeah. And we never really get anywhere at all with anything. At least Hilaria was like, although we were like railing against her, she was like making points. And like, I was disagreeing with those points. You know what I mean? Like at least a point was made. There are parts where it is somewhat compelling, but then there's times when she's like, and then we went to the Met Gala. That's all. She isn't even like triumphant whenever like good things happen to her and be like, look, I've like taken myself out of this horrible life that I had. And now it's great. You know what I mean? Speaker 2 (4:47) Wow. Are there photos? Is there a photo section? I Speaker 1 (4:50) don't, I, I listened to the book, so I'm not unaware. Speaker 2 (4:52) Yeah. Yeah. I found some on my own. Yeah. Speaker 1 (4:57) Becca has a whole, like she has some photos. All right. If Speaker 2 (5:00) you're on Patreon, we're going to get Becca's pictures and put them in the Patreon post. Okay. Speaker 3 (5:04) Take me to your first highlight, I guess. Take us to hell. Yeah, we kind of organized it into a couple buckets. I love buckets. The first bucket is trauma. Cool. Speaker 2 (5:16) Yeah, that's Speaker 3 (5:17) always the first bucket on this podcast. She moves from Canada to South Africa at a very young age. I think they're like elementary school age, her and her twin sister. And then she has two other siblings. The dad and the mom decide that they're, I think they're in Saskatchewan, somewhere in the country in Canada. They moved to South Africa. Now she says it's because our parents wanted us to have this adventure. We were going to go on safari. She describes a lot of like camping that she does with her parents who are armed against hyenas. I just. pulled this little segment. You know, we knew we were safe on the platform. This is when they're camping. And we had no doubt that our armed parents could defend themselves. I grew up feeling like the world was welcoming and safe for me, the ultimate privilege. She describes her childhood as so happy, yet sheltered in my ways. And I wonder if that prevented me from anticipating how bad a marriage to the wrong person can be. This is foreshadowing. To my armed parents. Speaker 1 (6:09) Well, because they're like in the bush. You know what I mean? And they're like, there's hyenas coming around. And so they have a gun to like ward off the hyenas. It's just very. Sure. Speaker 2 (6:17) It's like Lion King meets Elon Musk's family. Speaker 1 (6:19) Yes. Speaker 3 (6:20) Totally. But what she doesn't share in the book, also unclear if this is in the previous book that seemed to be. the exact same book that she already just published in 2019 that has like, if you read the description, it's the same book. Anyway, what she doesn't describe is the fact that the reason her father actually moved them to South Africa is because he loved apartheid. No, Speaker 2 (6:39) I was going to make the joke like he was like, let's go check out this apartheid. But I was joking. This is real. Yes. He was like, sick apartheid. Let's let's go. OK, so I have some stuff from his Wikipedia that his dad, not from her book, but from your. Speaker 1 (6:52) Yes. No, she doesn't mention this. And are you kidding me? Speaker 2 (6:55) She's like, they love to camp and shoot Speaker 3 (6:57) hyenas. Yeah. And it's great and it's fun. No, he was a leader in a fringe political movement called the technocracy, which basically advocated for a couple of smart, technologically savvy people running the government instead of anybody democratically elected. LOL. Speaker 1 (7:14) This Speaker 3 (7:14) is heritage. Speaker 2 (7:15) This is grandfather apartheid lineage running, coursing through Elon Musk's. veiny little vein veins. Yep. Speaker 3 (7:23) He repeatedly expressed racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic views in South Africa. He's a supporter of apartheid and promoted a number of conspiracy theories. He wrote a book of conspiracy theories. I'm Speaker 2 (7:34) sorry. I can't get over, like, you're not in the region and apartheid happens and you're like tourism destination. Brutal genocide happening. We should move there and help. Speaker 1 (7:44) Yeah. And also too, it's like, I could just Google and find out why you went there. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, we just Speaker 2 (7:50) like, Speaker 1 (7:50) Becca went to wikipedia.com. Like, right. It wasn't like we had Speaker 2 (7:54) to Speaker 1 (7:54) go into like some vault to find out this out. Like all we needed to do is Google her father and all these things came up because he was like. Elon 1.0. You know what I mean? Like negative 1.0, basically. Speaker 2 (8:06) Yeah. You know what I always say on this podcast? When we see someone really famous and have like true global power, it's often because they had a parent or family member go first. Like Mariah Carey's mom wanted to be an opera singer. All 12 of Celine Dion's siblings tried to have recording careers before Celine Dion launched. Elon Musk's granddad was trying to be a technocrat. Yeah. And like passed it down to baby boy. Horrifying. And Speaker 3 (8:32) he was arrested for it. Like he was convicted of felonies. He described apartheid South Africa as leading white Christian civilization and the bulwark against evils of internationalism. As you internationally immigrate, you fucking idiot. Okay. But her dad and brother-in-law end up dying really tragically on the same day. May Musk's dad and brother-in Speaker 2 (8:54) -law. Speaker 3 (8:54) Yeah. In a plane crash together. Okay. Speaker 2 (8:57) May's dad and her- twin sister's husband both die on the same day in this plane Speaker 3 (9:01) crash. Speaker 2 (9:02) Okay. Speaker 3 (9:02) Wow. Speaker 2 (9:02) And I think she has like a two year old at the time. And they're like adults as this happens? Speaker 3 (9:07) Young adults. I mean, she has Elon, I think when she's like 21. So this, maybe she was 23. Well, yeah, that's the other Speaker 1 (9:13) part of this is that she's very like, could you believe that I had all these kids and then I was also a model. And it's like. yeah, you had your kids when you were like 20 years old. I'm obviously paraphrasing this, but it's like, yeah, you're only 40 years old. Like you're not. She's like, I have like adult children and I look incredible. I'm like, yeah, cause you're 42. Like that's why you look good. Like what? Speaker 2 (9:36) Also like what an asshole thing to put in your memoir. Does she list her exact weight? Speaker 1 (9:40) No, sadly. No, she Speaker 2 (9:42) does talk about weight a lot. She just doesn't give numbers. Well, Speaker 1 (9:45) we'll get, we'll get there. Okay. Speaker 3 (9:47) All right. Speaker 2 (9:48) Continue on. Let's Speaker 3 (9:49) talk Speaker 2 (9:50) about Errol and Mae Musk. So Errol Speaker 3 (9:52) and Mae date in high school a little bit. She had broken up with him long ago because she had witnessed his volatile personality and how insulting he was to everybody, including me. So she gets a degree. She moves to Cape Town. And then all of Speaker 2 (10:03) a Speaker 3 (10:03) sudden, Errol shows Speaker 2 (10:04) up at her apartment. Her teen boyfriend. Yes. Speaker 1 (10:08) They Speaker 2 (10:08) knew each other as teenagers. Yes, as teenagers. And they hadn't been dating in years. Okay. And Speaker 1 (10:12) he is like, you should be with me. She's like, no question mark. Speaker 2 (10:17) And then Speaker 1 (10:19) he eventually is like, we should be together. And she's like, no, I don't want to. And then he just goes back to her hometown and tells all of her family that they're engaged. Speaker 3 (10:31) I got to read you this because it's crazy. I want to marry you, he said, and pulled out an engagement ring. I was shocked, to say the least, and backed away. No was my clear response. I'd broken up with him long ago. I saw how volatile he was and how insulting he was to everybody, including me. The next I heard from him was secondhand from my parents a few months later. They sent me a telegram that says, congratulations on your engagement. My parents were calling me back to Pretoria, I read, in time for a double wedding with my twin sister Kay and her fiancé. Invitations were out. Gifts were arriving. Everything was planned. I slowly pieced together that Errol had gone back to Pretoria and told my family that he asked me to marry him and I had said yes. They were shocked. They had never liked him, but they took him at his word that I had already said yes. No one in my family would ever think someone would lie about such a thing. I called my parents to tell them the truth. But before I could get a word in, my mother started going on about all the people who were coming to the wedding, how happy Kay was, how she and Errol's mother were sharing the catering, how beautiful it would all be. I lost my nerve. Physically, I was overweight and troubled with painful back problems. So basically, that's why she was like, could a marriage really be that bad to Errol? I guess I'll just go through with it. Speaker 2 (11:46) Marriage via propaganda. Speaker 1 (11:48) Yes. Speaker 2 (11:50) Okay, this feels like a good time to take a quick break. Speaker 2 (11:58) Okay, welcome back. Let's continue the conversation. Speaker 2 (12:02) He put out the propaganda that they were engaged. It worked on her own family. And then rom-com style, she calls her mom to be like, I am not engaged to my abusive teenage high school boyfriend. And her mom's like, the gas, the catering, your double twin weddings. You better get here. And she's like, well, I'm overweight. Guess I'll go. Speaker 1 (12:21) Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:21) That's what I heard. Speaker 1 (12:22) That's exactly the truth. As she tells us. She's like, well, we already paid the caterers. Speaker 2 (12:27) And it's a double twin wedding. And Speaker 1 (12:29) she's like, I didn't want to. P.S. Becca's reading of that is, when I tell you, exponentially better than May's own reading of her own problem. There were certain times when I was like, is this being read by the mom in Schitt's Creek? What was her name? Moira Rose. Moira Rose, like truly. There are times when it was like this, like when she would read it. Chelsea, seriously, I'm going to pretend like I'm her and I'm going to read one of the paragraphs that Becca just read. Speaker 2 (12:54) Okay. Speaker 1 (12:55) I slowly pieced together that Errol had gone back to Pretoria and told my family that he'd asked me to marry him. Becca, am I wrong? It's Speaker 3 (13:08) so Speaker 1 (13:08) bad. Am I wrong? Speaker 3 (13:10) That's accurate. Wow. It's Speaker 2 (13:13) worth listening Speaker 3 (13:13) to for two seconds on Spotify. Just to hear it. I'm actually, I'm going to take Chris's impression at face value. Wow. Speaker 2 (13:19) Okay, a devastating way to begin your marriage. A devastating way to recap it years later. Speaker 3 (13:25) And she says that the abuse basically started right on the honeymoon. Like she said, the wedding was great. The abuse started at your wedding invitation, my friend. Speaker 1 (13:34) Before when, you know, the abuse started in when they were kids, probably when they were teenagers, she broke up with him because he was so volatile. Speaker 2 (13:41) Right. Right. Okay. So what happens from their honeymoon and on? It gets worse. Oh my, Speaker 1 (13:46) yes. It Speaker 2 (13:47) is Speaker 3 (13:47) really bad. I mean, it's definitely worse. Then you guys have probably read worse in memoirs, but it's the worst I've ever read just in terms of like the physical descriptions of the violence. Chelsea, it's Speaker 1 (13:57) exactly what you think it