4.4 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Last week, we met Paige: a bright-eyed engineer who joined SpaceX believing she was helping to save humanity. In Part 1, we followed her through the seduction — the mission, the 80-hour weeks, the Elon slogans on the walls, the slow loss of self until the job became the identity.
This week, the mission meets the myth. Paige helps organize an open letter — a polite but radical act of collective dissent in a cult-like workplace. And almost everyone is too scared to sign it.
What begins as a measured plea for change becomes a window into just how deep the fear-mongering and punitive control at SpaceX really run.
And soon, Paige learns what every defector from a high-demand system eventually does: that questioning the leader isn’t seen as courage — it’s seen as betrayal.
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| 0:11.4 | The views, information, or opinions expressed by the guest appearing in this episode solely belong to the guest and do not represent or reflect the views or positions of the hosts, the show, |
| 0:21.6 | podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. |
| 0:33.5 | Welcome to the show. |
| 0:34.7 | Was Ina Kalt? I'm Tyler Miesim. |
| 0:36.3 | And this gal is Liz Ayakousi. |
| 0:39.3 | You know, I tried to bring the energy up a little bit. And you just like, you meld it right down. I tried. And then I was like, I'm going to do cool girl voice. Okay. And I'm Liz Ayakuzi. You know, you do whatever you want to do this. I don't like saying my name. |
| 0:53.6 | It's not easy to say. |
| 0:55.7 | Liz Ayacuzi. |
| 0:57.2 | You could change it. I mean, go Hollywood and be like, Liz Sunsets. My Hollywood name was going to be Liz Quayle. Welcome to the show. Was I an occult? I'm Tyler Meeson. And I'm Liz Quayle. It's positivity week, Tyler, according to you. It is positivity week, and it's also a late afternoon coffee week. It's also Cubs Celebration Week. There's a lot of good things going on. It was a good game yesterday. At the time of recording, it was a good game yesterday. Yeah. We don't know what this weekend holds. By the time you hear this, the Cubs will have lost and we'll be crying. Game one is a tough one. They got their best pitcher of brewers. A lot of ground rule doubles, right, Rob? It's my favorite thing to happen in baseball. Now, today is part two of pages, Travailsails working at a little known place called SpaceX. |
| 1:47.0 | And if you didn't listen to the first part of her story, go back, start there, of course. |
| 1:53.0 | But for those who did catch last week's episode, here is a quick recap. |
| 1:58.0 | My name is Paige. I'm super passionate about space. I went engineering school. Applied to |
| 2:02.7 | SpaceX. That initial interview went really well. And I got the offer like a couple of days later. |
| 2:07.2 | Elon would talk about his maniacal sense of urgency. You're expected to work 50 or more hours a week. |
| 2:14.2 | I'm always tired. I have no joy. A lot of people had sexual harassment experiences. |
| 2:19.2 | People reported getting groped. Harassment comes from the CEO himself. This is actually a problem. |
| 2:25.4 | We're told to focus on the mission. I just was fed up. We need to do a walkout and we decided to |
| 2:30.6 | like instead write a letter. Maybe they'll like actually want to make some changes. |
| 2:35.4 | Well, that seems like it covered it quite well. Why spend 50 minutes listening to an entire episode, |
| 2:40.8 | just give the people, you know, the podcast version of TikTok. Yeah, it's much like the Reader's Digest |
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