What Next: TBD | Why Tesla Is Paying Elon a Trillion Bucks

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tesla shareholders just approved a trillion dollar (with a t!) pay package for Elon Musk. Is it enough incentive to keep him around the company and away from verbal spats with government officials? Because the whole Musk empire is still reeling from that dalliance. Guest: Faiz Siddiqui, tech reporter at The Washington Post and author of Hubris Maximus: the Shattering of Elon Musk. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Late last month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was giving CNBC a little update on the state of the next moon mission.
0:13.0	Now, SpaceX had the contract for Artemis 3.
0:17.0	By the way, I love SpaceX. It's an amazing company.
0:20.0	The interview started off fairly benign, but then the question turned towards SpaceX, namely,
0:26.6	was Duffy happy with SpaceX's development of NASA's next lunar lander?
0:32.6	The problem is they're behind.
0:34.6	They push their timelines out and weren in a race against China. The president
0:38.9	and I want to get to the moon in this president's term. So I'm going to open up the contract.
0:46.4	And this sets Musk off. That's Fez Siddiqui, a tech reporter at The Washington Post.
0:54.7	He is also the author of Huberous Maximus, The Shattering of Elon Musk.
0:59.9	He was watching Musk's meltdown while it was happening.
1:03.6	So he responds with a juvenile meme, as I've described it.
1:10.7	People on the internet might be familiar with the news anchor asking his guest,
1:16.2	Why Are You Gay?
1:18.2	That's the meme that Musk goes for.
1:22.1	And then he starts peppering Duffy with all kinds of, let's also say, juvenile nicknames, one of them being
1:32.2	Sean Dummy.
1:34.0	Musk said Duffy had a two-digit IQ.
1:37.7	He also wondered, should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running
1:43.1	the space program?
1:49.8	That was a reference to Duffy's past as a contestant on reality shows like The Real World and ESPN's The Great Outdoors. Musk pinned the tweet to his timeline.
1:58.0	SpaceX has long been the premier space company in the country, so much so that NASA relies on them
	...

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