Elon Musk shares partner Shivon Zilis’s Indian roots, son's Indian middle name in conversation with Nikhil Kamath

Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, has released a highly anticipated episode of his podcast series WTF featuring a wide-ranging and candid conversation with Elon Musk, now streaming on Kamath’s YouTube channel, where the duo delved into technology, entrepreneurship, innovation and Musk’s personal life in an unusual degree of detail.

During the discussion, Musk informed Kamath that his partner Shivon Zilis has Indian heritage, stating that she is half Indian and adding that one of his sons with her carries the middle name Sekhar in honour of Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Kamath said he had not been aware of this, and Musk stated that Zilis grew up in Canada and had been given up for adoption as a baby, noting that her biological father was believed to have been an exchange student at a university, although he was not entirely certain of all the specifics.

At another point in the conversation, Kamath mentioned that he does not have children, to which Musk stated that he should consider it, adding that he would not regret the decision. When Kamath asked what Musk considers the best part of having children, Musk replied that raising a child offers an entirely new lens through which to see the world as they grow from a baby with no awareness to a young person capable of walking, speaking and forming thoughts, and he remarked that humans fundamentally need to have children to avoid extinction.

Shivon Zilis is a Canadian businesswoman and an executive at Neuralink, the neurotechnology company co-founded by Musk, and she was born to a Punjabi mother and a Canadian father.