Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Elon Musk (Part 2)

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

What happens when a billionaire tech mogul starts to look less like a CEO and more like a modern-day messiah? This week, Chelsea, Amanda, and Reese team up with historian and authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) to explore the cult of personality surrounding Elon Musk. The man behind Tesla, SpaceX, X, and a growing empire of followers who treat his every post like prophecy. From the mysterious emerald mine origin story to estranged family ties, secret children, and that whole “saving humanity by going to Mars” thing, we unpack how Musk has cultivated a mythos that feels more like a belief system than a business plan. What does it mean when a company’s success is inseparable from the quirks of its leader? And how does social media supercharge a fanbase into a digital congregation? We’re breaking down the doublethink, the brand loyalty, and the bizarre Twitter-era sermons that keep the cult of Elon alive. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/st3nalv7 #CashAppPod *Referral Reward Disclaimer: As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account.   Head to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code CULT Please consider donating to those affected by ICE activity in the LA Area. Team SLAC are donating to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, an LA-based immigrant rights organization providing legal services, policy advocacy, and direct aid to those most impacted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I've been lucky enough to do quite a bit of traveling this summer with friends. And obviously, when you travel with pals or with family, splitting bills becomes a priority, but also an inconvenience. And in those moments, I am so glad that Cash App exists. Whether the amount is big or small, it just makes making money moves easy and secure. Nothing ever feels sketchy. If for whatever reason you don't already have Cash App, just download it from your phone's app store, sign up, and then enter our code sounds in your profile. Send $5 to a friend,

and then you'll get $10 just for trying it out. For a limited time only, new Cash App users can use our exclusive code to earn some additional cash for real. There's no cash. Just download Cash App and sign up. Use our exclusive referral code, Sounds, in your profile. Send $5 to a friend within 14 days and you'll get $10 dropped right into your account. Terms apply. That's money. That's Cash App. Anyone who owns a home knows how much work it takes. Luckily, Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for 30 years, and they've made it easier than ever to tackle home projects. Angie's nationwide network has experts in over 50 categories, from plumbing and landscaping,

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Prime Day is coming from July 8th through 11th. It's four whole days of epic deals on Amazon. Have you ever had your eye on something for a while? Maybe some new noise canceling headphones, an amazing new camera, or that one tech gadget that you've low-key been stocking for months. Well, get ready because Prime Day is coming. Mark your calendars, set your reminders, and shop great deals this Prime Day, July 8th

through 11th. Trust me, you do not want to miss this. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. He sees people as props, and this is Trump does, of course, too. They have no respect for individual life.

It's just what can you do as a part of a population to be manipulated, exploited? And that's very typical of the way that dictators think. They have no respect for individual dignity. They end up creating situations of mass suffering, mass casualties. Oh my God, you're saying so many things that parallel some of the cult analysis that comes up frequently on this show. It's blowing my mind how Elon is able to separate himself in the eyes of pop culture from all of this mass death and still have

people essentially groveling on his social media platform to be his buddy. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host, Amanda Montel, author of some books, including Cultish. And I'm your cohost, Chelsea Charles, an unscripted TV producer and a lifelong student of pop culture, sociology. And I'm your other cohost, Reese Oliver, sounds like a cult's coordinator and holder of one bachelor's degree in rhetoric and theater. Every week on this show,

we discuss a different zeitgeist-y group that puts the cult in culture, from Lululemon to Harry Potterheads, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? A literal life? A watch your back?

Or a get the fuck out, after all? Cultish influence falls along a continuum these days, and it does not always look the same. Some modern day cults seem like super fringy and very ritualistic, but are actually relatively harmless, like horse girls love them, Jeep owners. All right. Um, the cultiness doesn't- Okay.

Okay, your boys are allowed to. Um, the cultiness doesn't necessarily mean they're always super destructive, but then you've got modern cult leaders whose influence is so omnipresent that you don't even stop to scrutinize the chokehold it has on us. And that is what the show is all about, analyzing and even poking a wee bit of fun at the ways cultishness shows up in places so prominent that you might not even think to perceive

them as cults. Like a tech empire built on electric dreams, engineered charisma, and the promise of radical innovation. With more than a few eyebrow-raising twists along the way, it is high time we revisit the cult of Elon Musk. The megalomaniacal entrepreneur who's positioned himself as a kind of techno-oracle for the modern age. Whether he's building cars that drive themselves or tweeting from his private jet at 2 a.m., Elon's influence stretches across industries, ideologies, and imaginations.

Kids, strap in. Houston, we have a problem. Get in the Tesla, if you can figure out how the door handle works, because I can never when my Uber is one. Literally. I can't even get in and that will probably protect us all. Today we are covering Elon Musk part two.

We covered Elon Musk in 2022 and holy macaroni has his cult expanded since then. I think he was even a get the fuck out when we analyzed him three years ago, but his power has only exploded since then. So we're in desperate need of an update. Yeah, because we are expanding on a topic we have covered previously, I'm just going to give everyone a wee little run of show. We are taking it all the way back to the beginning and we are talking about how Elon's tragically spoiled childhood as the son of Emerald Miners contributed to his growth into the cult of personality leader that we know him to be today, including all of the good old venture capitalism we know of via Tesla. We're gonna get into the magnification of it all.

Ugh. Tesla, we're going to get into the magnification of it all. There's going to be a lot of groaning throughout this part two. Now, I will make the disclaimer that because this is an entertainment podcast and we only have an hour or so, we're not going to be able to cover absolutely everything that is culty about Elon Musk these days. Not to mention there's some new bullshit surrounding Elon Musk's tomfoolery dropping every single day. So if there is something happening in headlines currently that you don't hear us analyze in this episode, assume that it's only because we recorded this before it happened. But stick around because later in the episode, we're going to get some expert help contextualizing the true danger of today's cult leader from Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

She's a historian and author and an expert on authoritarianism, propaganda, and strongman politics. Ruth is a professor of history at NYU, the school where Reese will soon be attending for her graduate degree, okay? This news is- Also your alma mater. That's true, that's true.

And the listeners don't know this, but Ruth and I have known each other since I was at NYU because I babysat her daughter when I was in college and her daughter was only 10 years old, but I, well well 10 and then 11 and 12 and 13 and she was really my best friend when I was in New York. Like I really regarded her as that and Ruth was like kind of a second mom to me while I was there and it's kind of this free coincidence or maybe not that she studies fascism and then I went on to write this stuff about cults

and it's just cool. So I love her so much and I'm excited for her to be here later. Ruth is amazing. She is the author of books, including Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present, where she explores how powerful figures craft their image, control narratives, and amass devoted followings. Her work is all about understanding the psychological and cultural machinery behind charismatic rules. So she's really the perfect guest to help us analyze the world of Elon Musk. And the reason I knew I wanted to have her on this

episode was because you know how wired does those YouTube videos where some expert will answer the internet's like most urgent questions about a topic, whether it's like wellness or real estate. They did one about fascism like a month or two ago and Ruth was the expert and I was like starstruck or just proud. I don't know to know her when I saw her in the YouTube video. It got like over a million views in 24 hours and she addressed Elon Musk in that video. So I was like oh my oh my god of course. We've all been thinking about who we should get as a guest on our Elon Musk part two episode.

So I'm so excited for all the culties to become acquainted with her and get to meet her later. But first, off the dome, I was wondering if we could each express how we think Elon's role as a cult leader of sorts has changed or grown in the last three years. Okay, so first I just wanna say, in addendum to the disclaimer that you said at the top

of the episode, I just want to add that it's going to be really hard for me to take out my bias in this because that's what we try to do. We try to... Oh, no, don't bother. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I just want to say, this is an Elon disgust account, okay? So first and foremost, I love how Elon positioned himself as just progressive and forward thinking with the emergence of Tesla specifically. And there's not a lot that I guess the general public knew about his politics and his intentions.

And I think the cultiest thing is that we know everything that he's done publicly, but I guess we disregard everything that we have now learned and just let him do whatever. And that to me is a little culty. Yeah, the hypocrisy. That has become even clearer over the past three years. Absolutely.

I think the kind of elephant in the room would be Doge, obviously, that Elon is a bona fide part of our current government, or I mean, leaving as he claims. That's very obviously culty. To be overly literal, I think he's popped out a few more children in the past few years. So his cult leader in that regard, yeah. Popped out. They cover up his mouth. The whole Ashley St. Clair of it all, if you're in the know. He is really going to the Donald Trump school of making yourself a figure of public reality TV level scandal and using that to just like gain power over people.

Will you explain that for people who like aren't famil? I will try. Elon sleeps with a lot of women. A lot. At the same time. I read a New York Times piece about this yesterday. Full disclaimer. He sleeps with a lot of women at a lot of times and he basically fathered a child with this woman and he was not honest with her or the other woman he was with at the time and she

sued him? He tried to place like a gag order on her and that didn't go through and then Elon didn't want to publicly claim ownership of all of his seedlings and it got him in some drama especially because the one of his little seedlings he likes to tote around quite a lot and that's also been a point of controversy. Yeah. In 2025, it was reported that Musk offered influencer Ashley St. Clair $15 million to keep the birth of their child confidential. St. Clair declined the offer, expressing concerns about the implications

for her son's legitimacy. Yeah. Just one more thing I'll add is that I think he's just gotten increasingly flashy and kind of cares less about appearing as like a good person Yeah, just one more thing I'll add is that I think he's just gotten increasingly flashy and kind of cares less about appearing as like a good person or a leader of merit. And it's kind of more about the image now. It's not just Tesla that like it's a new improved way of reality. Now it's Cybertruck. It's just it just looks cool and aggressive and is like the biggest car on the road.

And like, there's not really even an illusion of a greater good anymore, I feel. And cyber trucks are fucking ugly. Ugly. They're dangerous. They're the ultimate troll. Like that is rage bait in car form. And it represents his attitude that he is beyond reproach, which we will get into in a more scholarly way later. But I think that quality

is at the basis of everything we're discussing is that he has officially transcended into untouchable land in his mind and also like kind of he literally has. And so he can just get away with anything. And I mean, there are so many things I could name, but one little thing I'll mention now that didn't come up in our episode three years ago was his increased drug use and how that has contributed to his chaos and mania. Increased drug use is seen in the escalation and downfall of a lot of cult leaders from history, including Jim Jones. But I definitely think that just the like increase in power matched with the lack of self-control has created one of the most terrifying cult leaders of our time and Elon Musk. Now we have so much updated analysis we want to get into. But before we can go there, I do think it is important to revisit Elon Musk's origin story as a cult leader,

because that lore and that seldom spoken of background explains so much. Yeah, so before Elon Musk became the space cowboy CEO, the walking Reddit thread, and the guy who thinks he's going to save humanity with memes and Mars rockets. He was just a kid growing up in apartheid era, South Africa, in a household that was, let's just say, complicated. He was born in 1971 to a model mother named May Musk and an engineer slash pilot slash problematic father named Errol Musk.

Elon has since described his dad as quote, a terrible human being, but he also allegedly owned a part of an emerald mine in Zambia. Elon has tried to deny or downplay this detail over the years, but his dad's like, no, you literally knew where we kept the emeralds. According to Errol,

Elon's entire career was funded from that mine, to the point where he'd walk around with emerald-generated cash during his time at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The Musk household was wealthy, white, and deeply entrenched in the privilege of the time. Elon was the kind of kid who'd rather build a computer than make friends. He taught himself to code by the age of 10, sold his first video game by 12, and was already dreaming of alternate realities. After his parents split, Elon chose

to live with his father, yikes, and that decision apparently haunted him for years. He was also viciously bullied at school, like hospitalized, beat down bullied, and that only pushed him further into his own isolated, techie headspace. Fascinating. So much privilege. So much privilege. Some pain, which are separate, famously, but can combine to create one entitled motherfucker.

Yes. Yeah. The Emerald Mine is my favorite part of his origin story because of how much he tries to deny. And then Arrow's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no course you're like, no, that's not what it is. Right. No, it is. It's literally like a Pixar villain, except not cute and real. He is Mojo Jojo in the flesh. Oh yeah. He's like the kid who wants to be Mr. Incredible's sidekick syndrome and then he turns evil.

That's what he's giving. But yeah, I think him just living in these extremes, like we're saying, like he's very spoiled but also was very lonely and not really having a healthy lens or like circle to process that through, like you said, just really pushed him further into his own narcissism and his own just like delusion. So, circling back to this whole Emerald Mine thing really speaks to the kind of socioeconomic head start that Elon Musk had, which at the time helped set the stage for him to launch all of his many, many companies like Tesla. The narrative surrounding Elon Musk's family's involvement in Emerald Mining is really

complex and often debated, but during that period miners often worked under really hazardous conditions facing risks such as exposure to diseases like malaria and yellow fever, as well as potential accidents due to the lack of formal safety protocols. Errol Musk himself recounted that many of his colleagues suffered severe illnesses and even lost their lives during these ventures. Injuries and fatalities were not uncommon. I mean, to me, it sounds like he just became accustomed to dehumanizing and sacrificing human life from a very young age. I think we talk a lot about the issues with gen alpha being that they're so constantly

overstimulated and that the human condition essentially means nothing to them. And I think Elon kind of just experienced a very analog version of that. Maybe he's just trying to catch everyone up to speed. Oh, he does remind me of the skibbity toilet guy. Okay, so we talked about the emeralds, the origin myth and the empire. But what about his inner circle? Because if there's one thing that often reveals the cultiest cracks about a leader's image, it's the family. And Elon's family dynamic is a lot.

His father, Errol Musk, has his own controversial legacy from alleged abuse to fathering a child with his former stepdaughter. And I'm sorry, that's not alleged. That's not alleged. That is a thing. That is anti-alleged. That is confirmed. It's the count of boundary blurring behavior that while tabloidy on the surface, it also raises deeper questions about power, patriarchy, and what Elon may have learned, or inherited, Shay, from the environment that he grew up in.

So first is Elon's relationship with his estranged daughter. Vivian Jenna Wilson, born in 2004 to Elon Musk and Justine Musk, publicly came out as transgender in 2020. In 2022, she legally changed her name and gender, expressing a desire to sebertize with her father. Vivian has been vocal about her estrangement, citing his lack of support during her transition and his public statements on transgender issues

as contributing factors. Here's an interesting fact that the public seems to choose to not see. Elon Musk has fathered at least 14 children with multiple partners. We will get into an analysis of his seed spreading later because at first blush,

it just seems like gross and icky boy fuck boy vibes. Yeah. But it's actually cult leader-esque in a very sinister way. And we will get into that with Ruth. Let's talk about Angie. Anyone who owns a home knows how much work it takes. Whether you're dealing with daily maintenance, emergency fixes, or even a dream renovation, it is so hard to find the right help.

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Okay, so getting a little further along into Elon Musk's comeuppance as a cult leader of sorts, obviously, most of the public got to know him as a business leader, a cult-followed figure in that capacity, but there's so much deception and steamrolling throughout his entire story. One thing that a lot of us fail to look at squarely in the face is that Elon Musk didn't actually found Tesla. He positions himself as this transcendent genius,

this like prescient forward thinking innovator. But the company was started actually in 2003 by two engineers named Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning. They had the idea, the early tech and the name. Musk didn't come around until 2004, bought his way to the top of the organization hierarchy. And eventually the origin story got rewritten, which is a trajectory that I think a lot of us take for granted. So over time, Elon went from major investor to CEO to full blown profit of the electric revolution. In that Tesla became less about the cars and more about the mission, a mission to save

the planet and look cool doing it. And like any good cultish system, there was hierarchy, belief, and a whole lot of branding. And Elon was annoying even then. Like I remember in our part one episode, we would talk about these like Elon apologists, these Elon bros who like could never get into a conversation with because they would just shut you down. They would steamroll you the way that he does and that alone felt cultish and frustrating but now

Elon Musk due to his association with MAGA and Trump and his new like political persona He has violated so much of the mission that he claimed to stand for with Tesla But one thing that's always been true of Tesla and could have been a red flag from the start is that their marketing never focused on accessibility, which you think would be a fit if your ultimate mission is to save the world. It focused always on sleekness, status and belonging to something smarter than the rest of the world. Owning a Tesla wasn't just about owning a car, it was about being a part of a movement.

And Elon wasn't just the face of that movement, he became its belief system. For me, Elon is textbook, charismatic leader. Truly. So in the October, 2024 Fortune article titled, Tesla Musk and the Cult of Personality, Diane Brady and Joey Abrams delve into how Elon Musk's

personality brand has become deeply intertwined with Tesla's identity. It notes that while Musk's charisma has attracted a devoted following, the quote, cult of personality may distract from the company's core mission and operations. So I wanted to throw this to you both. If the company's entire brand starts to revolve around the quirks and charisma of its leader,

like we're seeing with Elon and Tesla, at what point does that start to feel less like leadership and more like idol tree? And do you think that kind of cult personality actually helps or hurts the mission in the long run? This reminds me a lot of influencer brands, and I feel like a lot of the time this works in reverse, where it's like, you know, you have these essentially a lot of the time teenagers, especially in the Wild West age, the late 20s teens of YouTube and all of that, trying to coordinate how to essentially dropship

and mass produce all of these t-shirts for their fans, who they genuinely love, but they were running scams. Like Tana Mongeau's had at least 15 just herself, allegedly. So I think that as powerful a tool as it is to have a celebrity face of a brand, I do think that the brand needs to have some kind of identity separate from a leader and if it can't function without it, that it probably isn't a very sustainable company in terms of product quality or having an honest and healthy dynamic with their customers. Kite Well, the crazy thing is that Elon Musk was not a celebrity. He put so much effort into

becoming one, as did his whole dynasty. We'll talk about his mother, May Musk, a little bit later, but like creepy ass fun fact, when I was a beauty editor, I was once assigned to interview May Musk about her beauty routine. Like, what does May Musk look like? She looks like Tilda Swinton would play her in the movie. I'll put it that way. Oh, wait.

Oh, she's beautiful. Right. Amanda, Gillian Anderson would play her in the movie. I'll put it that way. Oh, wait. Oh, she's beautiful. Right. Amanda, Gillian Anderson would play her in the movie. Oh, you're right. You're right. Sorry, Gillian Anderson would play her in the movie. Culties, sound off in the comments if you think Gillian Anderson or Tilda Swinton

would play May Musk in a movie about Elon Musk's life and kind of see something. But like, regardless of how pretty she is, what is the intention behind getting beauty magazines to interview a business leaders mom about her skincare and her makeup? It's to create a celebrity halo around this entire family. They wanted to be famous. Chris Jenner's impact. Yeah.

Yes. No, honestly, legit. It was not enough to just have Elon Musk be a business leader. The whole family had to become worship worthy public figures and now politicians like they wanted world domination. All of them. I mean, I don't even think when we recorded our part one, Elon Musk was the richest man in the world yet. And now he is. His tentacles have slithered into our government. He has his OG Elon Musk bros who are still like speaking in tongues, waving their hands in the air, obsessed with him. And I mean, he has the resources to dominate in a way that makes discussions about businesses and shareholders feel like small potatoes, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. It was interesting seeing the transition though, right?

Because it's from business owner that we don't actually really know. And to then he started aligning himself with famous people. And so when you appeal to pop culture first and then the pipeline to the government, I totally, totally understand exactly what you're saying. Like I can remember seeing him doing like hangouts with Kanye West and it's just so, he was very intentional, I'll say that.

And smoking a joint with Joe Rogan. Exactly. And then he took over media by buying Twitter. Exactly. And everybody just thought it was a bit. I did, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, well, in the way that at first Donald Trump running for president was supposed to be a bit. Yes, was supposed to was a bit. I did. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. Well, in the way that at first Donald Trump running for president was supposed to be a

bit. Yes, was supposed to be a bit. Okay, so that tension between leadership and idol tree is exactly what writer Quincy DeVries digs into in her essay, The Cult of Personality of Elon Musk, because it's not just about what Elon does. It's about how people respond to it and the mental gymnastics required to keep believing in the myth, even when the cracks start to show.

DeVries notes that Musk's followers engage in double think. She points out that platforms like Twitter serves as echo chambers, reinforcing his status, further entrenching his position as a tech messiah. Ugh, that's such an important point. Okay, so enough of our introductory expositional yapping. It is high time to get into our interview with the one and only, the woman who employed me when I was 18 years old and had absolutely zero qualifications to watch a child, authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Guyot. Ruth, oh my gosh, thank you so much for joining this episode of Sounds Like a Cult.

Could you please introduce yourself and your work to our listeners? So Ruth Ben-Giott, I'm a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University. I'm a specialist on bad people, authoritarian leaders, their cults of personality. So my latest book is called Strong Men, and I also publish a sub-stack newsletter called Lucid, and I write about threats to democracy and authoritarian trickery, we could call it.

Just really lighthearted, low stakes work that you do Irrelevant to these times. Yeah, incredibly chill. I do a lot of yoga to keep calm. Oh, yeah Yeah, how's your self care routine like give us some tips? yoga and balancing exercises and new usual spending time with friends and new usual, spending time with friends, limiting news. But also one of my fields is resistance against these bad people. And so I'm actually an optimist by nature and that helps me as well. So am I, Ruth. I think, well, do you two, Reese and Chelsea, you two seem pretty optimistic. Well, I don't know about Reese. She can get a little cynical.

I still think I would consider myself an optimist. Yes, I think so. That's true. Yeah, and I think what I've always tried to do with my work and when I go on TV or podcasts, whatever is, I speak bluntly because I feel people deserve to know what is going on without sugarcoating it. But I also am hopeful for the longterm,

including in America, and I make that clear that there are things we can do. We're not powerless. So getting that balance between informing people of things that are bleak and the way these people think it's very bleak, but there are things that are positive that we can draw from the past and also the present. And that's very hopeful. So I think it's important to focus on hope and optimism too. That is such a grounding sentiment. Thank you for expressing that. Chelsea, do you think of yourself as an optimist? I think I'm pretty optimistic. However, it's hard to stay that way, honey, with this climate. So speaking of the climate, Ruth,

what are some qualities that fascist government authority figures and cult leaders have in common from your perspective? And do you perceive any of those qualities in Elon Musk? Yeah. So one of them is that the leader has to be the man of the people. And this is whether they're left-wing or right-wing, it doesn't matter. But they also have to be the man above all other men. So the man who is somehow touched by, in many cases, it's divine mission. So Trump has people saying you're there by the will of God, or that they are

geniuses, and this is the case with Elon Musk is supposed to be a genius and innovator. So the man of the people, relatable, communicates clearly, but the man who is special. And the ideal is that they're untouchable by the law. And another thing that is over a century is that they're there to save the nation or save civilization. And this is, of course, a big thing with right-wing authoritarianism, that you're going to save white Christian civilization from immigrants, from gay people, and it's really the usual suspects. The people who they go after doesn't actually change over a century.

So Elon Musk with his South African racism, apartheid, and his obsession with population engineering, I wrote a couple of things for Lucid on the way they think long term. That's because they are the visionaries. And on that basis, people accord them a kind of cult status. So that's super interesting. And you said something about his background and growing up in South Africa and apartheid. How do you think that upbringing may have shaped his worldview around power, control and entitlement? And does his backstory remind you of any other

fascist leaders in history? I think in his case, growing up with apartheid and then living through a period where apartheid was challenged and dismantled gave him and I guess his family, because what we know of his parents, I think his father and grandfather were sympathizers of fascism in different ways. And there's this whole transnational fascism that is still around after Mussolini and Hitler are gone. And so I think that this idea that whites are the victims, which we're literally seeing in our country now. That's a basic foundation of MAGA. And indeed they're letting white South Africans

come as refugees, cause they're persecuted. So it's white Christians are persecuted. I think that living through that, the empowerment of apartheid and then seeing it dismantled. And so all of a sudden it's not good and they're the victims. I think that profoundly shaped him and others who he circulates with and circulates their ideas. And this victimhood thing is actually part

of every fascist leader that they have to be the victims. In the 1920s when Hitler was trying to get to power and he was being banned in individual German states for his hate speech, the Nazi party literally made posters. I have a picture of one of them in my book, Strong Men, of Hitler with his mouth taped shut, like he was a victim of cancel culture. And the caption of the poster was like, "'Of all the people in Germany,

I'm the only one who can't speak.'" And so this victimhood thing helps them get to power and then stay there. And of course, ultimately, what these people want is to be the only one who can decide who gets to speak. So Musk, he's not a politician per se, but his trajectory in wanting to buy a social media platform so he can control speech in that world is similar. Oh my God, you're saying so many things that parallel some of the cult analysis that comes

up frequently on this show. I hadn't thought about Elon Musk's extreme forethought. He appears to have access to this incredible future thinking that makes him seem above everyone else. That is so clear in Marshall Applewhite like all these cult leaders from history. And I hadn't necessarily thought of that. Yeah, the idea of utopia. Think about the Nazis where they were going to racially engineer a utopia.

And that's very important with fascism and also communism. There you have revolutions, fascism was a revolution, and you hold out the idea of a kind of perfect nation. I literally have a chapter in Strongman called a greater nation. And so Trump, who came up starting 2016 saying America was a piece of garbage and he was going to make America great again. It's that same stuff that they do. And then for people like Musk, it's that they have these futuristic products.

And there's a real strain of, like, techno-fascism that starts with fascism. So this is old stuff. And a lot of what Musk personally does and the ways received goes all the way back to fascism. Wow. So he's using the same blueprint. And it also reminds me of an episode that we just did about Mark Zuckerberg

and the parallels there of establishing exactly what you're saying in this new age, a utopia. Super interesting. And the chip on his shoulder, you know, that self-victimhood is so evident in so many of these weak, ultimately weak, white male. And by weak, I guess I mean like ultra sensitive white male entitled figures

who feel as though they deserve a certain status. This entitlement is really important. It's especially a problem for the very wealthy. And it's really scary to get in to analyze them and get in their heads in a sense, because they truly believe that they are above the law and that they believe that any hindrance by the law or regulation to what they can do with their wealth or how they get their wealth or things that their behavior is regulated by laws against sexual assault or against lack of transparency in your finances, they truly believe that those are an affront to their existence and they scorn them.

And that's what's something we don't realize enough. And the political equivalent Trump, the reason he says, for example, that he could get Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, but he's not going to, is because he has to emphasize that he could do it, but for him that would be a sign of weakness because he would be obeying international and domestic laws and he's above the law.

So he could do it, but he's just not going to do it because he can, he can refuse. So this scorn for any kind of regulations or hindrances on their behavior, their businesses behavior, that's part of this feeling omnipotent, feeling all powerful. And that is part of the cult mentality, right? The cult leader. Totally. Ruth is dropping some bars. Always.

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Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super easy to set up a beautiful looking website, engage with your audience, and sell absolutely anything from products to content to even your valuable time. I've been a Squarespace user for five years now, is that possible? And I've literally never had an easier time updating my website. Sounds like a cult.com, check it out. With new sections or buttons. When I launched merch, I slapped a merch button on there. Whenever we have live shows, you can always find the ticket link there. Whether you want to do something really simple or a little bit more complex with your website, Squarespace has the tools for you, including Design Intelligence, which combines two decades of industry-leading design expertise with cutting-edge AI technology to help you create

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go to squarespace.com slash cult to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain. So Ruth, could you help us understand how he's weaponized his self-made billionaire narrative to gain cult-like power? So narrative is the right term because while Elon Musk presents himself as the self-made man, he actually couldn't have started his companies without copious financial assistance from the U S government. And he's been

one of the major recipients of defense and other contracts. And so he's not what it seems to be. In fact, the reason he has to hide that is that he's Mr. Privatization, get rid of government assistance, but he wouldn't be anything without government assistance from his adopted nation. He is an immigrant, probably one of the individuals who's had the most lavish assistance of anyone from the US government. And so that's the total hypocrisy of these people. Oh my God. I'm so glad you mentioned hypocrisy because I've been thinking about these contradictions this entire time. These figures position themselves as populists, as every men, but at the same time above it all,

transcendently wise. I'm just like, how can you be both at the same time? This is a scam. This is actually, I call this the fake populist scam. And there's so many of these guys. There's the original Mr. Chainsaw, Javier Millet of Argentina. So he presented himself as a populist and Argentina had huge, like very high inflation. So he went around with the chainsaw saying, he's the man of the people, he's going to cut everything. But you know what his job was until he went into politics? He was the advisor to the richest billionaire in Argentina. So he's an example. Another is the former far right prime minister of Poland, who was all about the kind of right-wing populism, we're the people, so we're going to get

rid of the immigrants, all of this stuff. Well, what was his job before he went into politics? He's an international banker who represented Santander and other banks in Poland. So these people are the globalist elite, and yet they pose over and over again. And Trump, nobody's more of a globalist than Trump. He licensed his name all over the world. That was one of the basis of Trump's business. And so these people pose as nationalists and patriots and populists, but they're actually

beholden to a kind of completely global way of life. So that's a basic scam of populism as I see it. Oh my God. I just have to slide in there with a quick psychological question. So Ruth's daughter, who I babysat in college, not really babysat, I feel like we babysat each other. She now studies narcissism and is in a mental health field. And so I feel like there's some overlap in your field of study and in hers. And I have

to ask if you have thoughts, even just sort of like casual ones about what in the freaking cluster B personality disorder is going on with these dudes. Like what went wrong? So bad. Now, and the spectacle of Musk, you know, with his drug use and his impulsive behavior. So Musk has, we can get into this. It's like a soft coup where he was the poor little rich boy. He had everything. He was rich as a man in the world. He had his own Twitter now X, but he didn't have a way to infiltrate a sovereign nation and take it over. And Trump was a venal and corrupt enough person to give him a way in exchange for the huge donations to his campaign.

So Doge was created as a way for Musk to infiltrate a superpower's government and take it over. And you should not believe that he's really stepping back, as everybody seems to say, because all the narrative's been like, oh, he failed. He didn't find that much fraud. It's actually, why was he there in the first place? We didn't elect him. And his people are still there. So this is all preamble. It's important. There's only one guy on the cover of Strongmen, because that's the whole point It's like the all-powerful dude. We've had two guys, two guys speaking in the Oval Office and two guys meeting with heads of state, foreign heads of state. So this is getting around to Musk psychological, I don't know what to say about it. He met with Modi and they were on presidential

property and there were the two flags of India and the US as though he were a head of state of the United States of America. And it was in Blair House, the presidential guest house. So on one side, on Modi's side was a row against the wall of all of his advisors. And they had their briefing books, they're wearing suits, normal. The other side of the room were toddlers, Musk's toddlers and some of their mothers, his ex-wives. It's giving Charles Manson. Representative of our country for sure. So they're on presidential property and it's like something is very wrong. There were these

toddlers who were probably, as I wrote in my essay about this, pooping in their pants while Modi was like, and Modi is such a social media animal that he normalized this, and he was the one who tweeted or posted the picture of this total weirdness of like one side normal, one side is toddlers.

So there's been this whole normalization of Musk's complete insanity, whether it's drug fueled or whether it's- Yes, yes, yes. And Trump too, Trump is extremely erratic. And in fact, the personality profile of these strongmen, these dictators, they are extremely impulsive. And all of the narratives that their propaganda machines give us about how efficient they are and they're in control and they're the strong man and their self mastery. It's all BS because behind the scenes it's a you know what show. It's constant

hirings and firings. A lot of them have drug addictions or sex addictions and they're the opposite of possessing self mastery. And so the Trump Musk kind of power sharing agreement, as that's how I'm analyzing it, is two very, very unstable people who are at the helm of a superpower and that should frighten everybody. And I wish that the media was not normalizing with few exceptions, like Wired and Rolling Stone. And there's been a huge normalization of this very frightening situation of these two people. To quote a journalist who studied

Idi Amin, he went and interviewed Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda, and he said he was both sane and insane. That kind of sums it up. Yes. Oh my God. You're also reminding me that another thing that makes these two individuals not only fascists, not only narcissists, allegedly, potentially, but cult leaders is that they're fucking trolls. Your point, their total weirdness, cult leaders love to be outside the norm. That's their whole point. They're coming in with a whole alternative to save the world.

Kite They do. And this is reminding me a lot of our incel conversation because those weird quirkinesses not only play into that victim complex of I'm not a part of the socially accepted group, but they also can become part of the narrative amongst their followers, amongst everyone paying attention. And now that's how the meme culture turns into the incel culture, turns into the Elon culture, and now all of it is all the same manosphere. Kite It's true. And the really frightening misogyny, and also another thing that Musk has in common with all these authoritarians is that he truly, because he thinks in the

aggregate about like racialized population engineering and stuff and about the future and colonizing Mars and occupying, et cetera, he sees people as props. And this is Trump does, of course, too. They have no respect for individual life. It's just what can you do as a part of a population to be manipulated, exploited? And that's very typical of the way that dictators think. They have no respect for individual dignity.

There was this study that an economist estimated that the effect of Musk's taking apart USAID is already 300,000 deaths, mostly children. So when this is all over, because again, as people are still in government, they're still doing this as we speak. You know, are we going to have to talk about crimes against humanity? I know this is like super bleak, but that's also what cult leaders do. They end up creating situations of mass suffering, mass casualties sometimes. Amanda, you know this better than me. Yeah, if they have the resources and don't get arraigned prior to that. Yeah.

It's blowing my mind how Elon is able to separate himself in the eyes of pop culture from all of this mass death and still have people essentially groveling on his social media platform to be his buddy. To pick your brain a little bit more about that, how would you characterize Elon's relationship to his diehard fans and followers? We've touched on a few of them, but what other techniques from the authoritarian playbook has Elon used to create his cult following? Kite He has this reward and punishment structure, which is all played out publicly because he's a creature of social media, not only, but he-

A creature? Is that right for him? Yeah, a creation. And he rewards loyalty, including on his platform, he will elevate unknown incels and extremists by posting them and featuring them. And then of course he's constantly threatening people on social media, as is his mother. After the Nazi salute episode, when his people in the media were talking about his Nazi salute, his charming mother went on X and said in a post, hey, Elon, you should sue these people

who are saying you made a Nazi salute. And he responded and saw playing out in public, Yeah, that's a great idea, something like that. To my knowledge, they didn't actually follow through. What a warm and again, very normal mother-son relationship dynamic to be tweeting in this way. Yes. If we were psychologists of family dynamics, that would be a very interesting episode. I did a post. I said it's not only a Nazi salute, it was a Nazi salute done in a very forceful and enthusiastic manner. I think it got 10 million views before I deleted it so that

his mother didn't come after me. Because being sued by the richest man in the world, it's not in my ideal situation. That's not on your bucket list. No, no. But all of this is entertainment, to go to your question, for his diehard followers. He's owning the Libs, he's owning the Marxists, and he plays into that. And it's very destructive. It's very chaotic, but that's part of the manosphere, the idea that he can do anything he wants and he's got this fiefdom and now he's got the whole US government.

Doge is in over 30 government agencies. I'm obsessed with this at the moment, as you see, and it's just not reported. There's a guy who is a crony of his, who's a billionaire, Antonio Gracias. He is literally a billionaire and he's working inside Social Security as a doge staffer. That's how his title was given. Why is a billionaire working inside just like as like a regular civil servant? There's all kinds of stuff going on that is lawless, in my opinion, and has been normalized. And this, to go back to the psychology of these people, the more they get away with, it's certainly

true of Trump and January 6th, the more they get away with, the more they feel empowered and they become more dangerous. Of course, what incentive would they have to scale back or modify their behavior? Yeah, of course. Karly Well, it seems obviously the crazy apple did not fall far from the crazy tree in terms of Elon and his mother, to put it bluntly. Kat- But Elon has a lot of apples! Karly I know! I was like, Elon has so many seeds!

One of them is my personal icon, Vivian Wilson. She legally changed her name and she has said publicly that she wants nothing to do with Elon. Go follow her on social media if you don't. What do you think that that complete split says about their dynamic, his dynamic with all of his children, etc.? And does it remind you at all of how people in a cult leader's inner circle who might challenge them end up deflecting from their high control system. Yeah, the kind of family wreckage of authoritarian leaders is really telling. Like Mussolini had his son-in-law executed, and there are others who just – it's a

shit show. And one of the reasons is they often include family members in the inner circle, and then if they betray them in any way, they lash out at them. But Musk, it's very sad that this came to be. And of course, his daughter is going to have that reaction. And it's just his inability to see the humanity and individual dignity of even his children, because they have to be props. That's why they're in the meeting with props. That's why they're in the meeting with Modi. That's why they're in the Oval Office. And just from yesterday,

I saw a news story that Elon Musk had a black eye. And I saw a story where he said that he told his son X, who is a toddler, to hit him. I don't know whether this is verified, but the kind of messed-upness that you disown some of your children, you use others as props, it's really a sign of a kind of damaged person, damaged in the same way as a lot of the leaders I've studied. And to that point, what we keep talking about, I think is so ironic that on a surface level,

Musk positions himself as this forward-thinking, all things free speech and supposed to be good. And your child doesn't talk to you because you don't accept them. And your mom is attacking people for expressing how your behavior, you know what I'm saying? It's just so ironic. It comes back to those contradictions, like, and because there's such a chaotic shitstorm, no one has any time to gather their thoughts and like pick apart each individual one, which I think is like part of the strategy, if you can even call it that. Although Ruth, I did learn from you that a lot of these cult followed figures are in fact, not genius masterminds,

but ultimately opportunists alone. But in terms of like the propification of family members, so many cult leaders from history come to mind for me, including Jim Jones, who his public position was very different from Musk's, but he was an integrationist pastor and he had relationships with Angela Davis and the Black Panthers and like seemingly all the right groups for a political progressive at the time that he was politicking in the in the 60s. But he had this large family of adopted children of all different races that was known as the Rainbow Family. And he used them as sort of poster children to show that he was walking the walk. And

then of course, he exacted violence on no population more than black women. And so like, it's just the heartbreak and hypocrisy and violence of that is something that I think can be seen in a lot of different cult leaders, personal families. Yeah, it's really sad. Somebody who was testing out a lot of the things for Trump was Ron DeSantis in Florida, and he uses children as props. He's been doing that for years. And so again, it's this disrespect of the individual humanity and dignity of people. And

that's how you get to Jodie Ernst, a GOP politician saying the other day when people were saying, you know, people are going to die because of these cuts to health insurance, et cetera. And she said, well, we're all going to die someday anyway, something like that. That is a thought-terminating cliche. So like fatalistic and irrelevant. Okay Ruth, we want to get to a bit of a lightning round. I'm going to challenge and invite you to answer the following questions sourced from our listeners on Instagram. That sounds like a cult pod. As quickly as you can. So the first lightning round question from Elissiter is, is Elon's breeder kink directly connected to the bend toward fascism?

Yes. It's the idea of that your genes are superior, that there are superior genes that some people have and there's a duty to spread those genes as widely as possible throughout not just the world, but the universe, Mars as well. Manifest destiny, baby. Next question, was his belief system always this way or did money and fame turn him into this person? I think from his family culture and upbringing,

he had these beliefs and then obviously money and fame at the level he has them made him feel invincible. And then he became much more right-wing and decided to cast his lot in that direction. Karly Beautiful. How did Elon so effectively – not beautiful – how did Elon so effectively influence the young, straight, white, male demographic. I think by being very successful, having a vision. I mean, you know, Tesla, a lot of people love Teslas, a lot of people think SpaceX is cool.

So he had products that were different and thought to be superior. And that's where he was for a long time. And then he turned political. And so he got a much wider audience, but based on this idea that he was a visionary genius. You know what he reminds me of? He reminds me of this little like everybody had in their elementary school, like a little snot-nosed bully on the playground who was like, look at my hot wheels. And no one likes that kid, but they're like, okay, yeah, your hot wheels are cool. And then that kid is like, I'm gonna run for class president. And it's like, no one likes you. Yeah, no one likes you.

And Elon has many Hot Wheels and his children and his wives become more Hot Wheels. And that's why I said before, he had everything, but he didn't have a way to own the government of a big country. He met his match with Trump because most leaders wouldn't allow somebody to infiltrate their government, but Trump has no bottom morally. He doesn't care. He's totally transactional. That's been a partnership made in heaven or probably made in hell for almost everybody who's not a billionaire.

Yeah. Ruth, why do you think Elon decided to dabble in politics? Like, what was the real point? More power, more influence. He wasn't content with just being a tech and defense industry and communications billionaire and mover and shaker, because I believe of his racist

and kind of population engineering ambitions, he realized that he needed to get hold of a nation's power. Isn't he tired? This is what I don't understand about politicians. Like literally like I'm tired. Well, that's what the drugs are for. And you know, Hitler was on drugs. Gaddafi was a major drug addict and others too. Not all of them, like Francisco Franco didn't use drugs to my knowledge, but a lot of them get hyped up in the ways Amanda has been describing all powerful

and then they become artificially stimulated to keep up the pace of living up to their own genius cult. Oh my God. They're like personality steroids in the bikini competition of Hades. Yes, and I guess Trump doesn't drink, but he has diet cokes and I don't know what else. Okay, is Elon actually in charge as he seems,

or is there a bigger puppet master? Grimes? I wish. Right? The way I'm seeing it, and I wrote a piece, February 2nd, so like less than two weeks after the inauguration, called A New Kind of Coup. And I think that Trump and Musk made a power sharing agreement because Elon Musk didn't come with tanks and guns to get inside the US government, but Doge, he was let in. He was given the codes, he was given the keys.

So that's how they did it. And in return, he was funding Trump and we don't know the full extent of the quid pro quo, but that's how he got in there. Next question, could we have stopped him? I mean, like 10 years ago, he was an indie folk hero meme. That's a hard one because would we want to stop him before making Tesla or SpaceX? Maybe not. And then he decides with the Saudis and also with the former owner of Twitter, Jack, to buy Twitter.

He's not the only owner, right? It's a multinational. There's some sanctioned Russian oligarchs also in the mix. So should we have stopped him doing that? Possibly, but we don't have anti-monopoly laws and we don't have policing or regulation of social media adequately, right? But that was a warning sign. That coincided with him becoming much more political.

How long ago did you see the red flags when everyone thought he was just a tech bro? I didn't honestly pay too much attention to him. However, in the fall of 2022, I was visiting my father, who was over 90 and in a foreign country and I had some time on my hands. And Elon Musk was in the news because he was deciding something to do with Starlink in Ukraine and he was in the news. And he tweeted something that was very pompous, like he was saving the world. And it irritated me. And because I had time on my hands and I understand the psychology of these people,

I said to myself, I'm gonna write a tweet that is designed to irritate someone of this authoritarian personality. So I said, the faux selflessness of Musk is one of the grossest things about him. And then I went to sleep. And when I woke up, he had answered.

He didn't follow me. He already had, I don't know, probably a hundred million followers. So a little news cycle ensued where some tech blog said, noted historian comes into the crosshairs of Elon, but I thought, no, he fell into my trap. Exactly. Don't get it twisted! I wrote a post designed to annoy him, if he had that authoritarian personality. So after that episode, I started paying a lot more attention to him,

because I realized... He failed the fascism test! Yes, thank you. I said better than I could. Jesus! That's a pretty story. Yes, thank you said better than I could I love it. I live for it. Elon is playing checkers and Ruth is playing chess It's like the classic thing where you you tweet something and you go to sleep and then you wake up and you're like, oh Did I do that Wow Wow, that. That's an amazing story. It is. Okay. And now that we are here, how do we get people to leave his cult? Is there

anything that can break his spell? Well, we haven't mentioned the very effective anti-Tesla protests. And it's really important to talk about that. Going back to our emphasis on we got to diagnose and talk about the bad things, but we need to also give hope. So these were effective. These were grassroots from the bottom up people spontaneously mobilizing against Tesla as a symbol of Musk because he was damaging US government and acting, you know, as a fascist basically. And they had an effect and they go into the category of economic boycotts also. So they were both a grassroots protest to draw attention on the street via the

media and social media to abuses of power being perpetrated by Musk with Trump's approval and a way to hit him economically. And there's a lot of, I think, young people in Myanmar and Turkey, there's a new interest in economic boycotts. And so I was really following this closely. And it had an effect. His profits dropped. And it's one of the reasons, again. I don't believe he's really stepping back all together Yeah, but it had an effect and so we should come away with this It's very hard to know what to do about Doge being basically embedded in our government now and stealing our data But we can know that that was an effective thing and that could be replicated Wow

Speaking to the boycotts. I can can describe the feeling driving through LA and seeing all the Teslas now having the anti-Musk stickers on now. We can debate about the motives behind that because some people just did it because they didn't want their cars to be like, damn, but even that message, sending that message that prior to having all this knowledge that now you do, it's like, it's so special. It is. And we really have to keep talking about it because if you study the history of resistance, it combined grassroots, spontaneous coming together with signs, and then they become

memes and social media with economic tools of resistance, and it was effective. This is such an interesting cult because Elon had his cult of personality and his diehards prior to his embedding in our government. And that was very powerful and compelling for a segment of society. But now that he's gained so much political sway, he could infiltrate mainstream psyches and in a way recruit everyday people into thinking like, oh, he's at least not that bad. And I think that is the part that scares me the most because that is the part that feels preventable. And that is the part that, well, I guess it scares me the most.

And it also gives me the most hope, because like for certain Elon diehards, no protest, no bumper sticker could ever convince them of anything that they don't want to believe. But for people who could lean over the fence and then fall, I do think that these like grassroots resistance efforts will have an effect on preventing like the entire country from imploding into Elon worship. And so this is like such an important thing to continue discussing. Yeah, also, that's why it's really important to talk about the destructive effects when

people social security checks stop coming, or their health. It's not just the GOP. It's the people who are in their quote,, finding fraud, are Doge people. And so I think there's gonna be a whole reckoning that's gonna hit Musk as well as Trump and the GOP because he's part of it. It's just that we have to inform the public because people are not aware of the extent to which he's been enabled.

Well, thank you for the work that you do. I'm going to adopt some balancing exercises for your self-care routine. I know that. If people want to keep up with you and your work, where's the best place to do that? It's at Ruth Ben-Giott, just all together without a hyphen on Instagram and I'm on X but maybe I don't recommend that after all we've said. My sub stack, which is where I do a lot of my thinking about these things, including all my writings about Musk, is lucid.substack.com.

And I do weekly Q&As and also do Substack Lives and stuff. And then I have a website under my name where you can find my interviews and writings and stuff like that. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much. My culty comrades, out of our three cult categories, I'll live your life, I'll watch your back, or I get the fuck out. Are y'all hopping on that rocket to Mars? What's the vibe? What is the cult

of Elon Musk? Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we get into the verdict, I have a few updates since this episode was recorded that I wanna spit rapid fire. Okay, so try to keep up. One, Elon and the orange man had a very nasty public breakup child. Two, speaking of hot wheels, shout out to my girl Ruth,

SpaceX had a massive rocket explosion during a test for its 2026 Mars mission, to which Elon responded via X with, quote, "' just a scratch. What the fuck does that even mean? Lastly, we would be remiss if we didn't discuss Elon's other little oopsie, his sketchy new AI plant planned for Memphis. Not only does the project come with major environmental red flags, but the location right next to a historically black neighborhood with a long legacy of environmental racism. So now the NAACP had to pull up like, actually, absolutely not. Listen, if I know anything about black folks from Memphis, Tennessee,

I know Elon should quit while he's ahead and run for the hills, child, because they are hashtag ready spaghetti. Okay, back to our verdict. You already know the answer to that, Reese. It is a resounding. Should we say it on the count of three? Let's say it on the count of three. One, two, three.

Get the fuck out. Respectfully, not respectfully. Get out. No, not respectfully. Disrespectfully. Respectfully. Hate him. Disdainfully.

Scornfully. Spitefully. I am so sad that Elon Musk exists. It's like the greatest conspiracy of our time. I am so sad that Elon Musk exists. Yep. It's like the greatest conspiracy of our time, IMHO. I really, really hope that people will take Ruth's insights seriously. She's like our authoritarianism Nostradamus,

just like defect. Should we go to an anti-Elon protest together? That would be a cute Slack activity. Slack activity? Cute-tivity? Cute. Okay, Pertmanteau, I see you. Well, that was an obvious verdict. Love that for us.

That is our show. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure to tune in for a new episode next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of The PodCabin. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montell, Reese Oliver, and Chelsea Charles.

Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslet, a Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at

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