For most people, forgetting to buy your spouse a Christmas present might end with a sheepish apology and a promise to make it up later. But Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was simultaneously trying to launch rockets to orbit and cars to the masses, turned his oversight into an epic midnight quest through subzero snow—barefoot, no less.
Talulah Riley, his wife at the time, shared the story in the 2022 BBC series "The Elon Musk Show." It was Christmas Eve in Boulder, Colorado, where they were surrounded by "loads and loads of snow." Musk, stretched thin across his budding empire, suddenly remembered his blunder. He turned to her and said, "It's not that I don't love you—I do really, really love you. It's just that my brain is exploding."
