IPO to the Moon
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is Elon Musk’s SpaceX leading humanity to Mars? Or is that just grandiose window-dressing for an A.I. company leading several other A.I. companies to IPOs?
Guest: Max Chafkin, reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek and cohost of the Everybody's Business podcast.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Madeline Ducharme, Patrick Fort, Rob Gunther and Paige Osburn.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name is Max Chaffkin. |
| 0:07.6 | I am a reporter with Bloomberg Business Week. |
| 0:11.3 | I'm also the co-host of the Everybody's Business Podcast. |
| 0:14.8 | And I guess for the purpose of this conversation, |
| 0:16.6 | I have covered Elon Musk for a very long time, for almost 20 years. |
| 0:20.9 | And for this podcast, I gave Max some homework. |
| 0:25.2 | Let me pull up the S-1 just so I can read the... |
| 0:29.7 | I asked Max to come prepared with one interesting thing from the SpaceX prospectus. |
| 0:35.6 | That's the paperwork the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. |
| 0:39.7 | We true nerds know it as the S-1. |
| 0:43.0 | So there's a section in the S-1, page 136, why this matters now. |
| 0:50.0 | Quote, we do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs. |
| 0:55.0 | So I guess, like, we're going to, you should invest in this company because it's, |
| 1:01.1 | SpaceX is helping to make life multi-planetary. |
| 1:04.0 | If we do not make life multi-planetary, we will be like dinosaurs, I suppose. |
| 1:10.3 | But I don't know. It's funny. I go with one that is right near there. To make life |
| 1:16.4 | multplanetary, to pick up on this thread, understand the true nature of the universe and extend the light of |
| 1:23.3 | consciousness to the stars. This S-1 is also full of mentions of human history. You know, |
| 1:30.6 | Elon Musk is a guy who loves to talk about his own life and his own kind of life's work, |
| 1:36.9 | you know, in the grand scope of history. They claim to have identified the largest market |
| 1:42.0 | in human history that the technologies that the company makes, |
| 1:46.8 | which include, you know, an anti-woke chatbot and satellite communication for |
... |
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