Elon Musk, who’s chainsawing the federal government, is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore, the best-selling author of “These Truths” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We’re at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,’ he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means . . . ‘I need to take these rockets to colonize Mars and that’s only going to happen through Trump.’ ” The massive-scale reduction in social services he is enacting through DOGE, Lepore thinks, is tied to this objective. “Although there may be billions of [people] suffering here on planet Earth today, those are miniscule compared to the calculation of the needs of the billions of humans that will one day ever live if we can gain escape velocity from planet Earth. . . . That is, in fact, the math that lies behind DOGE.” Lepore’s BBC radio series on the SpaceX C.E.O. is called “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story.” Plus, an organizer of the grassroots anti-Musk effort TeslaTakedown speaks with the Radio Hour about how she got involved, and the risks involved in doing so. that poses. “It’s a scary place we all find ourselves in,” Patty Hoyt tells the New Yorker Radio Hour producer Adam Howard. “And I won’t stop. But I am afraid.”
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From the online spectacle around Leo XIV's election to our favorite on-screen cardinals. This week on Critics at Large, we're talking all things Pope.
The Catholic Church was made for this moment. I think 2,000 years ago, the Catholic Church basically anticipated TikTok, Instagram, X. You don't have those little Swiss guard outfits and think they're not being photographed. Oil painting is not enough.
I'm Vincent Cunningham. Join me and my co-hosts for an episode on what can only be described as Pope Week. New episodes of Critics at Large drop every Thursday. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. It may take us many years to understand fully what's happening in America right now. This attempt by Donald Trump, as well as Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, the authors of Project 2025, and so many others to radically reshape this country and its institutions as quickly and as brutally as possible.
We've been talking a lot on the radio hour about the colossal upheaval of the first hundred days of the Trump administration and what could be more important. But today, the subject that we're going to drill down on is an appraisal of Elon Musk and his vision of our future.
Of the many politicians who have tried to position themselves as Trump's heir and closest advisor, really only Elon Musk rivals the boss. And in some ways he exceeds him. There's that astronomical untold wealth. There's his delight in trolling his enemies and his contempt for government and its rules. And there's a deep belief in him that what's good for Elon Musk is precisely what matters.
And yet the thing is, Elon Musk is not just a chaos agent, as he's sometimes called. He's driven by a distinct ideology, or at least a clear set of obsessions. And to find out more about this, I called up Jill Lepore, the best-selling author of These Truths and other works of history.
And I called her because she's written about Elon Musk for The New Yorker, and she's also produced a podcast about him called X-Men. She's a professor at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. We spoke last week. Jill, Elon Musk is only recently a MAGA figure. He supported Obama. He supported Biden in 2020. He was strong on climate change and the shift away from fossil fuels.
So to what degree do you understand him as a self-interested agent where Trump is concerned, or is he really sincere in his turn to the right?
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