Long Reads: Trillion Dollar Baby w/ Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff (Part 1)
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last week after the record-breaking IPO of his company SpaceX. Musk presents the firm’s economic take off as the necessary means to a wider end for humanity, to become a multi-planetary species.
“That’s what SpaceX is all about,” Musk recently said at the company’s headquarters. “To take the fiction out of science fiction.”
While Musk was looking to the stars, the people of Belfast were still reeling from several days of racist violence. The Belfast pogrom drew strength from the far-right ecosystem that Musk has nurtured with the money from SpaceX, Tesla, and other companies. Musk himself repeatedly called for anti-immigrant protests and boosted the messaging of Britain’s neofascist right. His social-media platform generated the atmosphere of a frenzied lynch mob.
Over two episodes, Long Reads will explore the two sides of Elon Musk and his impact on the world. Our guests are Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. This interview was conducted a few days before the SpaceX IPO.
Read Jacobin’s reviews of Muskism here: https://jacobin.com/2026/03/muskism-futurism-fordism-sovereignty-technology
And here: https://jacobin.com/2026/03/musk-slobodian-tarnoff-neoliberalism-right
Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies with music by Knxwledge.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, you're very welcome to Long Reeds, a Jacoban podcast where we look in depth of political topics and thinkers. |
| 0:08.0 | My name's Daniel Finn, I'm the features editor here at Jacobin, and I'll be presenting the show. |
| 0:14.0 | Last week, SpaceX launched its IPO after more than two decades in business. The success of the IPO transformed its founder Elon Musk into the world's first trillionaire. |
| 0:27.6 | Speaking to his employees, Musk presented the firm's economic takeoff as the necessary means to a wider end for humanity. I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all. |
| 0:44.3 | In fact, I told people this. |
| 0:46.3 | I said, look, we're probably going to fail, but we should give it a try because if we don't, |
| 0:51.3 | if there's not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly |
| 0:55.2 | space-bearing civilization. |
| 0:57.6 | You know, while the other aerospace companies, they build good rockets and everything, they |
| 1:02.3 | were simply not pursuing the technology that's necessary to make life multi-planetary. |
| 1:07.8 | To make Star Trek, to make the exciting science fiction futures that we've read about |
| 1:13.2 | real. |
| 1:14.2 | And that's what SpaceX is all about, is to take the fiction out of science fiction and create |
| 1:21.5 | an exciting, inspiring future for everyone. |
| 1:25.3 | We want to be able to take anyone who wants to go to the moon, anyone who wants to go to Mars, or anywhere in the solar system, and maybe beyond the solar system at some point, we want to be able to take you there. There are always problems on Earth. There are always problems on Earth. There are always things that we wish to be better, that we want to solve here on earth, and we should solve them. |
| 1:48.5 | But there also have to be things that get you excited about the future, |
| 1:51.8 | that make you glad to wake up in the morning, |
| 1:55.0 | because you can't wait to see what happens next. |
| 1:59.7 | And that's the future that SpaceX wants to bring to you. |
| 2:08.6 | While Musk was looking to the stars, the people of Belfast were still reeling from several days of racist violence. ITV carried this report on the disturbances. |
| 2:12.6 | In a capital city in the British Isles, people are forced to flee their homes by a mob |
| 2:20.3 | which was intent on causing havoc and setting fires. |
... |
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