Elon, Inc.

This holiday season, it would seem that Elon Musk has much to be thankful for—he even spent Thanksgiving by Donald Trump’s side in Mar-a-Lago. But last night, a Delaware judge handed him a rare defeat, rejecting yet again his enormous Tesla pay package. To discuss this and other legal matters, the Elon, Inc. team has brought on Bloomberg legal reporter Jef Feeley as well as the regular crew: Sarah Frier, Max Chakin, and Dana Hull. The gang also discuss Elon's shifting customer base. One consequence of Musk’s far-right political turn has been how consumers now have to weigh the political ramifications of buying products from his companies. This has been the case at Tesla for a while now (a market for anti-Elon bumper stickers has flourished) but there’s a huge debate about the meaning of using X post-election.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There have been a lot of raised eyebrows over Elon Musk’s “DOGE” (not the cryptocurrency), short for Trump 2.0’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” It’s Donald Trump’s project for Musk: he’s assigned his wealthiest donor the task of cutting government spending by about $2 trillion (most of which is constitutionally up to Congress, but anyway...), in part by gutting or eliminating key regulatory agencies. The DOGE will be co-led by former presidential candidate, fellow tech entrepreneur and now full-on Trump acolyte Vivek Ramaswamy. Recent reporting has revealed a whole team of Trumpian billionaires, investors and tech personalities willing to join the feeding frenzy—a veritable Avengers team of MAGA fiscal expenditure. On the latest episode of Elon, Inc., David Papadopoulos and Max Chafkin break down who’s who behind the scenes of the DOGE team, and try to figure out what, if anything, it can do or what Musk’s end goal is.  The episode also includes a live recording in London from October with Papadopoulos, Chafkin and social media expert Devika Shanker-Grandpierre. The trio discuss the global consequences of Musk’s lax content moderation on X. To top things off, David confronts Max with Musk’s latest ploy: a suggestion that the billionaire should buy MSNBC. It may sound far fetched but, as David points out, didn’t the purchase of Twitter also start out as a joke? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this limited series, Odd Lots explains some of the thorniest issues facing the US economy through the medium of … chicken. Chicken occupies a unique position in the US diet, but issues facing the poultry industry illustrate wider points about the development of the US economy and the decisions being made about how it's structured and who benefits from it. So why has the chicken industry evolved in the way that it has? What’s been driving the price increases in eggs and meat? And what does it all say about things like inflation, the labor market and the nature of American capitalism? Check out Beak Capitalism on Odd Lots wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Donald Trump claimed victory, early in the morning of Nov. 6, he did so not only for himself, his campaign staff and the voters who backed him–but also for the billionaire industrialist and media mogul who’d become his most unlikely supporter. “A star is born: Elon,” Trump said, his mouth lingering on the name. “He’s an amazing guy.” In this episode, we talk to journalists, academics and a historian about how to measure the scale and scope of Musk's win. Can anyone, or anything, hold someone as rich and now politically power to account? It might be up to the people.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.