Big boosts to fill: SpaceX’s giant IPO
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elon Musk has launched the largest stockmarket listing in history. The accompanying space mission remains grounded. Our correspondent weighs SpaceX’s extraordinary ambitions. The Republican party trades on its masculine image, but some young men are turning away. And, after a blind tasting 50 years ago unleashed a new wave of wine drinking, the market is drying out.
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Guests and host:
- Tim Cross, senior science writer
- Robert Guest, Economist deputy editor
- Alexandra Suich Bass, culture editor
- Rosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”
- Jason Palmer, co-hosts of “The intelligence”
Topics covered:
- SpaceX, Starlink, XAI, Elon Musk
- Donald Trump, Republicans, masculinity
- Wine, Judgement of Paris
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:09.6 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:13.4 | I'm Rosie Bloor. |
| 0:14.6 | And I'm Jason Palmer. |
| 0:19.2 | Today on the show, why a young men souring on Donald Trump |
| 0:23.1 | and how the judgment of Paris changed the world of wine. |
| 0:33.5 | But first... |
| 0:51.3 | ... But first... Later today, SpaceX are going to try to launch the third version of their enormous, powerful and very troublesome starship rocket. |
| 0:56.0 | Tim Cross is a senior science writer at The Economist. The launch has been postponed over and over again. |
| 0:59.0 | It was supposed to happen on Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday. |
| 1:02.0 | We got the vehicle totally loaded. |
| 1:04.0 | We hit a couple of different holds as we worked through that count. |
| 1:08.0 | Again, new rocket, new pad. |
| 1:10.0 | We're learning a lot about these systems |
| 1:12.2 | as we execute them for the first time, and we're not able to basically troubleshoot all of these |
| 1:17.7 | issues in those final seconds to get to launch. The aim of the mission, which is Starship's 12th test |
| 1:23.2 | flight, is to try out a whole series of upgrades that are supposed to make it easier to recover |
| 1:28.3 | the second stage of the rocket from orbit. |
| 1:31.3 | And if that works, it'll be a big step towards SpaceX's goal of eventually building |
| 1:35.6 | a vast fleet of these things. |
| 1:37.5 | SpaceX's launches often get a lot of coverage, but this one gets even more than most. |
| 1:41.6 | And that's because earlier this week, the company kicked off the countdown towards another historic launch, this time of the biggest IPO ever. Next month, |
... |
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