Was I In A Cult? - SpaceX — PT2: “Mission Aborted”

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

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.____FOLLOW USFor more cult content, behind-the-scenes chaos:→ @wasiinacult on Instagram & TikTokSUPPORT THE SHOWThe best way to fuel our mission? Rate, review, and share the pod with your people — word of mouth is rocket fuel.And if you want to help keep the mics on (without betting on stock options that never vest)? Join us on Patreon. We don’t drain bank accounts — we just give you ad-free episodes, bonus content, and our undying gratitude.→ Become a member on Patreon.HAVE A CULTY STORY?We want to hear it. → [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Grab a coffee and discover non-stop action with BudMGM Casino. Check out our hottest exclusive. Friends of one with Multi-Drop. Once even more options. Play our wide variety of table games. Or head over to the arcade for nostalgic casino thrills only available at BetMGM. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. 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, podcast one, this network, or any of their respective affiliates. Welcome to the show. Was I in a cult. I'm Tyler Riesom.

And this gal is Lizzie. You know, I tried to bring the energy up a little bit. And you just Like, you just, I meled 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 honest, I don't like saying my name. It's not easy to say.

Liz Ayacuzzi. 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 Meesam. 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.

Possible. Game one is a tough one. They got their best pitcher at brewers. A lot of ground roll doubles, right, Rob? It's my favorite thing to happen in baseball. Now, today is part two of Paige's travails working at a little-known place called SpaceX. And if you didn't listen to the first part of her story, go back, start there, of course. But for those who did catch last week's episode, here is a quick recap.

My name is Paige. Super passionate about space. I went engineering school. Applied to SpaceX. That initial interview went really well. And I got the offer like a couple days later. Elon would talk about his maniacal sense of urgency. You're expected to work 50 or more hours a week.

I'm always tired. I have no joy. A lot of people had sexual harassment experiences. People reported getting groped. Harassment comes from the CEO himself. This is actually a problem. We're told to focus on the mission. I just was fed up.

We need to do a walkout and we decided to, like, instead write a letter. Maybe they'll, like, actually want to make some changes. Well, that seems like it covered it quite well. Why spend 50 minutes listening to an entire episode, just give the people, you know, the podcast version of TikTok. Yeah, it's much like the Reader's Digest condensed version. And on another episode of Tyler dating himself. All right, okay, true.

Reader's Digest is a bit old. And for those who aren't aware, Reader's Digest would take full books. It was a magazine. It would take full books and kind of shrink them into bite-sized reads, mostly suitable for bathroom sitting. is the original TLDR. Right, yeah, which is... Too long. Dintrade.

Okay. Acronyms of the youth generation have gotten out of hand. Anyway, 17 million readers subscribe to Readers Digest at its peak, right? Now, I don't know if you've ever seen one. If you have a grandmother, you probably did because grandmothers always had them. But they had a section called Laughter is the Best Medicine, and they were jokes, and they were jokes submitted by readers. And if you submitted a joke, you got a hundred bucks. A hundred bucks.

That's a lot for a joke. Yeah. So I spent... For the 1940s, that's really good. Funny. I spent so much of my childhood sending in jokes to Reader's Digest in order to win 100 bucks. I must have sent them hundreds. And finally, in my late 20s, I sold one joke to Reader's digest.

You're... Come on. No, I seriously did. It was a dream long awaited and finally fulfilled. In your Mormon youth, you were like, I will. We'll sell a joke to Reader's Digest. And it took, it took, it took a soul to this person. It took a decade or so.

And you knew what it was like to stick with something and get it sold, right? I did. I did. From your mission days. You're dying to know what the joke is, aren't you? I actually am. What was the joke? Okay, okay. What do you call identical policemen?

Uh, copies, copies, copies, copies, copies, copies, ching, ching, $100 came to me in a check for one joke. It was a great day. Well, you could buy a Ford Fair Lane in those days for a hundred bucks. So, I think, I think that's what I bought. I think I bought a used sedan. All right, okay, okay, enough jokes. Let's get to the episode, shall we? We'll go from 20th century jokes to 21st century rockets that will one day land on Mars. Yeah, sure, maybe-ish. Soonish. Speaking of, did you see the SpaceX rocket launch over this very past weekend? I did. Yes, the Falcon 9 went up from Vandenberg Space Force Base, which is in Santa Barbara County, California. When I saw it, I was like, hi, that's some serendipitous timing.

Right. According to SpaceX, it was a successful launch. But there were some folks who saw something, well, completely different. Flat Earthers, and they're out there, they swear that the rocket went up, then sideways, when, of course, it smacked into the firmament. And if you don't know what the firmament is, well, let's let our trusty news source TikTok explain. Let's top firmament, people. Planets aren't real.

Yep, you heard that right. and I have some eye-opening proof. In the Bible, it specifically talks about God creating a firmament over the heavens and the earth. There is water above and below. And that little dome that he created over us is called the firmament. These are the very same waters that were released to flood the earth during the days of Noah. But, Auntie, if we have an impenetrable dome above us, how did we go to the moon? How could space travel even be possible?

It can't. You can't get in and you can't get out. I can say this with great confidence that if the dome is ever pierced, we would drown. So those space missions to Mars, or even to the moon, or even sending Katie Perry up there to take a gander around, nope, all lie. And with that, my brain is officially broken. So I'll pick up the pieces and we'll move on to today's episode, finally, where the sky is not the limit Mars is, at least according to the Lord and Savior. Elon Musk. Elon Musk.

Elon. Elon Musk. It just sounds, it doesn't sound, it still doesn't sound good. So if you were to do a little digging, you'd realize that what the Bible is referring to with the firmament isn't a literal dome. It's how ancient people described the atmosphere, the waters above, rain, waters below, the sea. But hey, what do we know anyway, right? We're not rocket scientists. But you know who is a rocket scientist?

Liz, speaking of rock and scientists, are long waiting in the lobby guest page. And we pick it up when things at SpaceX start to, well, you know what, let's let her do it. There were a lot of lines that were crossed. There were a lot of red flags. And the weird thing about being in a cult that is your job, when you decide that enough is enough, like, I still have bills to pay. I still have medical bills. Like, I still need health insurance. Like, I can't just get up and leave.

Every single time I would look at the job pool and be like, none of this is the right fit for me. Like, I won't be passionate about anything. I don't want to work at a bank or I don't want to work in financial tech. The options that are available don't fit the niche that I've worked my ass off to get into and, like, the things that I think that I'm capable of. And so I would just be like, I'll just stick it out a little longer. Like, I'll get to the five-year mark.

My, like, initial stock grant will vet. and then I can get out. This is known as the bargaining phase that always happens right before you finally leave a cult. But for Paige, after years of watching the harassment at SpaceX get swept under the rug, she finally rounded up some other like-minded space Xers. So I started a signal chat of, I think they were like 50 or 60 people at its peak. So we wrote this letter.

There was a group of six of us who met in person. repeatedly to actually write this. And we're doing this outside of the building on our own time, on our own devices, because people are so scared to lose their jobs. People were coming to me and telling me how, like, I care about this and I want to help, but I'm afraid of getting fired, so I'm not going to support you publicly. The fact that people were so scared to just ask for help was like just really eye-opening and devastating. And so we had to be like so careful. And that made it's so much more difficult because, you know, I'm doing all this stuff for the first time. So when Paige says they were writing an open letter, an open letter is just a kind of collective

petition. It's public. It puts pressure on leadership when other reporting channels have failed. Employees at places like Google, Amazon, and Netflix have all done them. At Apple, employees wrote one challenging Tim Cook on workplace culture. Journalists at the New York Times did one after their opinion section imploded. Even Taylor Swift wrote an open letter to Apple back in 2015, explaining why she was going to be holding back her album 1989 from the new streaming service at the time, Apple Music. Even within startups and nonprofits, it's become a way for employees to grab a megaphone and say, this culture is broken. Here's how to fix it. And sometimes it works. At Google, it led to a global walkout and actual policy changes on

handling harassment. At Netflix, employees got the company to rethink how they addressed harmful content. But at SpaceX, it was a radical notion. And in cult-like environments, the act of collective truth-telling is one of the scariest things you can do. It risks your job, your reputation, even your entire social circle, because it forces the myth of the untouchable leader into the light. I was up to like 2 a.m. every single night in the weeks before this. And so this was like at least six hours of work per day for a moment. month outside of my regular job, which was like preparing to launch satellites. We also had like probably 50 people who were not part of the signal group who helped contribute to the letter.

Some directors would give advice on how to market our message so that executive leadership would actually listen to it. And we weren't trying to send the letter to Elon Musk. We were trying to send a letter to the executives of SpaceX, people who actually like do things and make decisions. But we had to like trim back the language. We couldn't call them demands. I had to make them like nice and polite and always talk about the mission. So we were like, take sexual harassment complaints as seriously as you take alerts on board the rocket. But like it's really difficult when I'm being distracted by this blatant sexism pushed from above and at every level. And one of the pieces of advice that we got from a director was that Elon will only listen to

anything if he can be convinced that it was his idea. He needs the deification and he needs you to kiss his ass and make him feel like a genius so that like he'll agree to doing what is objectively the right thing. Oh, you're not the first one to do that either, Elon. Cult leaders live off the same formula, build an echo chamber where every idea has to sound like it comes from them and anyone who breaks the spell is exile. See ya. And that applies for like technical decisions. He's not an engineering genius. He's not all that impressive as a human being. He just is a successful con man who has other people handling him in a way that gets to make him feel smart.

So he keeps bankrolling the thing that we're all working on so that we can get to Mars. This is the mission. You mean he surrounds himself with people who are actually talented? Not so that they themselves can shine, but that their brilliance can be absorbed into his myth, i.e. the myth of Elon is the lone genius who will save humanity. That is, of course, in between tweets about tits and ass. But didn't they say that people who tweet about tits and ass is like the sign of an intellect so advanced

that us mere mortals confuse it with seventh grade humor? That is what it is. And on that note, then, why did the tit cross the road? To go get a better job at NASA. You, yes, and why then did the ass, consequently, cross the road? Because even Elon walks from time to time. Those are not readers digest. Submit them now, please.

We need, we could use $200. You don't think they would make it? No, I do not. Copies. Identical. Please spend are called copies. Copies. But the thing is, guys, cult leaders, they do this.

all day long. They keep the smartest, hardest, hardest working people close, strip them of any credit, and then hold up their work as proof of their own divinity. It feeds their ego. It creates the illusion of the singular genius. And thus, followers double down in belief because when the leader is seen as the only one with the vision, followers are less likely to question because now they've been trained that their identity and their success is tied to his or her greatness. So we wrote this letter It was so well researched

100 people poured our hearts and souls into it Like we really did the work Just trying to make our little cult A slightly better cult to be trapped in A hundred people working together Not to launch rockets But to simply make their workplace more tolerable And we will be right back

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Once again, greenlight.com slash cult. We love you, Greenlight. For years, SpaceX had received many harassment complaints. Now, leadership eventually commissioned a month-long internal investigation, but the findings were delayed again and again. And when they finally surfaced, well, it was on the exact day that the letter was set to go out. Quinky-dink? I think not. And then on the day that we were supposed to release it originally,

an email came out from HR with results of their audit that they had been promising for seven months at that point were finally available and had found no wrongdoing. You don't say. They said.

Like we've investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong kind of thing. So it was like they chose a firm to do the audit that was like very corporate friendly and unsurprisingly they were not going to ever tell SpaceX they had done anything wrong. I think it was like the same firm

that got Uber drivers, like classified as not employees. Definitely not surprised, though they found no wrongdoing. You know, it's kind of like placing, I don't know, Cash Patel in charge of an agency that's meant to check corruption. Or kind of like putting, I don't know, a loyalist insurance lawyer with no prior prosecutorial experience in charge of defending you against federal criminal charges. Or putting just some ex-lawyer in charge of vaccines and medication and food.

Or I don't know, putting Pam Bondi in charge of, I don't know, I don't know, ethics? Hmm, a lot like that. Interesting. So that came out, and then we had kind of a last-minute scramble session where we were like, we have to change some of the wording because we need to acknowledge that some stuff has been done, but that it's far from enough. So we did one final kind of rewrite.

I was actually, like, proud of the work we did. We wanted to have a one-page letter that was digestible, and then another page of actual detail about the ideas. that we wanted to work on. And in our interview, I asked her to read the letter, and it's great. Here are some highlights. Oh, man, it was really good. An open letter to the executives of SpaceX.

In light of recent allegations against our CEO and his public disparagement of the situation, as SpaceX employees, we are expected to challenge established processes, rapidly innovate to solve complex problems as a team. But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion with the equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo. Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks.

His messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values. As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items. Publicly address and condemn Elon's harmful Twitter behavior. Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone. We care deeply about SpaceX's mission to make humanity multiplenitary. But more importantly, we care about each other. And it's a delicate mind-fuck dance when you're standing up to someone like this because you're trying to signal dissent without shattering the illusion of the leader's divinity or mission.

And with that in mind, the letter closes with this. The collaboration we need to make life multi-planetary is incompatible with a culture that treats employees as consumable resources. Our unique position requires us to consider how our actions today will shape the experiences of individuals beyond our planet. Is the culture we are fostering now the one which we aim to bring, to Mars and beyond. We have made great strides, but there's so much more to accomplish. The day that it released, I just cried for like an hour straight while I was eating my lunch because I was so overwhelmed and I was so, so tired. And I was so scared that people were going to be mad and mean to me because we're asking for help. And I was so, like, beaten down. I knew that

one way or the other, like, I had to get out. And this letter was my last ditch effort. One way or another, I'm going to leave SpaceX. They'll either fire me or this letter won't work and I'll quit. But I was really hopeful that this would work because it was so well thought out. It was so well researched. We gave executive staff a heads up using their suggestion boxes. And we had three people who were willing to be somewhat anonymous, but potentially not anonymous. And it was only open to exec staff at first. So they had an hour heads up before we posted it publicly internally. And then we started, you know, we made the page viewable by all employees. It was on an internally hosted service and then I sent it to the women's network email distribution, which is like maybe

a thousand people. Some people would like get off the internet Wi-Fi or like not use their company phone and text me on the side or people would come up to me and tell me like I really support this but I am way too scared to put my name on anything and I don't want to go to the website because I don't want them to trace my network access. Like everybody just feels spied on all the time. Here watched it every moment. As Page earlier stated, most people were too afraid to even text their support, let alone sign their name. Now, remember, Paige and her co-authors were meeting off company property on their own devices just to avoid surveillance. Now, here is a text exchange between a co-worker and page. I will play the role of the co-worker. And I'll play

page. I'm paranoid at how anonymous that survey is, L-O-L. Anonymity? I mean, I'm the only one with access to it. I'm considering going off my home internet and hopping on a VPN. How fucked up is it that people are that scared to ask for help? Very, smile emoji. I hate it. I'm probably going to get fired, just heads up. And another one, they are both males, by the way. I only provide that for context. Nothing else. I regret to inform you that I'm too paranoid to sign that, but I've shared it. However, Howard to you. That is fair enough. I will sign and put your anonymity name anonymous and then roll. IT did.

All of those texts, regardless, without these people signing, the letter was most certainly signed. The company at the time was 12,000 people. The letter reached 1,200 people, and of those 1,200 people, before it got shut down, of those 1,200 people, 409 signed it, which is significant. And they shut it down early enough that they made it seem like a vocal minority, which, like, it was a vocal minority, but not that much. It wasn't 400 out of 12,000. and it was 400 out of the 1,200 who had seen it.

So yes, you heard it correctly. They shut it down. The open letter shut down. And then... I got an email from Gwen Shotwell. Gwen again is SpaceX's president and COO. And this is her, just nine months ago, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I am most excited about Starship because this is the vehicle that is going to allow true human space exploration. We also have a culture of significant feedback. We are hard on our colleagues, but if you're doing something and you're holding your compatriot team back, we expect that team to tell the team that's holding them back, like, dude, like you can't do that this way. You can't do that because you're killing me here and we can't meet our goals if you're doing that because I can't do this. So there's a lot of feedback at the company.

We do counsel out a lot of employees, roughly 10% a year. And it's not because they're bad people. It's just SpaceX is not a culture that works for everybody. And if you don't like continuous feedback, and if you don't like running a marathon, if you want to walk a marathon, you're probably not a, probably don't want to work at SpaceX. Only hours after the letter dropped, Gwen sent page an email. Which, remember, the letter had only reached about 1,200 of the 12,000.

thousand SpaceX employees. And this is the email. Page at all, please stop flooding employees' communications channels immediately. I have received numerous emails just like the one below, and interestingly, none thus far for the open letter. I will consider you are ignoring my email to be insubordination. Instead, please focus on your job and the mission of SpaceX to get humanity to Mars as quickly as possible.

Thank you, G. I got this email like at the very end of my crying lunch, and I just set off a new wave of crying. Like, I don't have a place here. I'm not being heard. I'm a human body to throw at the mission. And when I'm used up, they'll just find someone else to take my place. Like, it's a revolving door of talent waiting to be used up by SpaceX. They're making a space elevator to Mars out of the shriveled husks of former employees. If you don't like running a marathon, if you want to walk a marathon, you're probably not a, probably don't want to work at SpaceX. And we'll be right back.

We know you enjoy cult stories. And while we give you real ones, sometimes it's fun to dive into some cult fiction. You know, it doesn't have all the emotional scarring. Which is why we've both been totally hooked on the prophecy. Season two, it's on Audible, it's climactic, it's cinematic, it's intense. It's got a great cast, Carrie Washington. She is Virginia. I'm mother on the run with her miracle son, Joshua.

And they're being hunted by Jean-Carlo Esse. Spizito, who plays a very creepy cult leader named Luther Bell. And Virginia ends up teeming with her strange husband and this mysterious believer named Moses, played by Dule Hill. There's visions, betrayals, and all these natural disasters come crashing down all around them. And then it unravels in this epic battle between faith and fear. The kind of story that makes you forget you're stuck in traffic. The Prophecy Season 2, highly recommend from Yours Truly.

Go to audible.com slash Prophecy 2. That's the number two, and start listening today. This episode of Was Ina Cult is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Ah, yes, the fiscally responsible, the money magicians, the people who somehow know how to save hundreds on car insurance. Yeah, you know how they do it? They switch to progressive. They offer discounts for paying in full owning a home and a bunch of other really smart person things that we don't really understand in our limited IQ. Plus, their customer service is actually great.

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Okay, I'm going to go hands off. I'm not going to share the link anymore. I was in a terrible place that day. So the letter is released on Wednesday because I was wearing a t-shirt that said on Wednesdays, we smashed the patriarchy. And I was preparing for a satellite launch. I was on the overnight shift. So I was actually very focused on the mission.

I was ready to launch a satellite in two days. I had everything prepared. I had shifts scheduled. I had equipment set up. I had a plan to execute on like we were ready. but then on Thursday I got like a casual message from another HR person who I'd never heard of who was like, hey, like, would you be willing to have a chat with me today? And I was like, I'm really busy. I do not have time for this today. I'm launching a satellite in two days. So I'm good. And then I was just really suspicious of that. So I told my friend, I think I'm getting fired. And she was like, they can't fire you for this. You're fine. This is completely legal. And then we went for a walk. And so we're sitting in the courtyard of the nearest coffee station. I was too nervous to go back into the building. I was not supposed to be working at that point anyway because I was doing overnight shifts.

So I was like, nobody's actually expecting me to be there. So I can take as much time as I need. So we were just like sitting in the courtyard and she was calming me down. And then I got a call on my phone and I knew that this was like a SpaceX security guard. I didn't answer. And then he texted me. He's like, hey, just like want to chat. Where are you? My friend and I were sitting at the stable in the courtyard, and, like, at the very same moment, our email stopped connecting on our phones. We lost access to email, and then our signal chat, the big group chat, got a message from one of the other authors. It said, I just got fired. And then the security guard and my boss made it to the courtyard at the same exact time. And the security guard was like, I've been asked to escort you to a meeting

with HR in the main building. And I was like, cool, I'm going to get my backpack first. And he was like, they'll let you go do that afterwards and I was like no they won't and I refused to get in his car I was squirted into this HR conference room with the frosted windows so nobody can see what's happening and the VP of HR had his laptop facing him in a call with Gwynne Shotwell so I could hear her voice coming out of his computer yelling at me but I couldn't actually see her which is just rude and that's when they told me that they had done an investigation they found that I had been instrumental in conceiving, writing, and distributing the open letter, which like, no, duh, I put my frickin' name on it, and that it had displayed extraordinarily poor judgment,

and my employment was being terminated effective immediately. It still hurts. I wasn't really emotionally ready to leave. I had so many ties there still. My entire social network was that job. I had two book clubs. All of my time was spent there. Most of my friends were through work.

So that night, she eased her pain in her own way. I drank a couple white claws and had a gluten-free pizza. And then a reporter called me. And I was like, dude, come on, read the fucking room. Like, I'm not ready to talk about this. My name was on it. There were two other names on it because the three of us got fired. And then two people who didn't have their names on it.

One was the head of the SpaceX Women's Network for her entire time. SpaceX got fired that day. And she wasn't even really involved in the letter. And I felt like responsible for everybody because this was my idea. I got all of these people to like follow me and it went so badly. Like I fucked up so badly. Like I got all these people fired and still feeling responsible for adults' actions. So, oh, and then Gwen Shotwell in the wake of us leaving, sent an email to the entire company saying that we had been terminated for our actions and nobody has to be worried about being pressured and to sign this letter ever again the next day after we got fired, he had a department meeting and called us extremists and said that like Elon is SpaceX and

SpaceX is Elon. You work for Elon Musk. You don't work at SpaceX. Your identity is tied up in SpaceX. So with leaving, or in this case being forced out, it comes with what cult experts call the unraveling. And it's that disorienting free fall when the mission you live for, for was your oxygen, and now suddenly you can't breathe. And with that goes your community, your purpose, your sense of self, everything you thought gave life meaning, gone. The complete lack of direction in the next couple of weeks, like I was sleeping a lot because of the cortisol changes from not being on edge all the time,

but also like still being on edge because this whole thing happened. didn't stop thinking about it. Anything adjacent to SpaceX would like set me off again. I would cry when I saw Tesla because, you know, people are working for Elon companies and buying Elon products and I'm here in pain from just having asked for help. And like, who even am I outside of SpaceX? Like, I've made that my life for so long. Like, do I still have hobbies? Do I still have friends in the outside world? Like, I lost access to my mental health care, which I needed because of working at SpaceX. I lost my 50-person book club and everything that went with it. I didn't pick up a book for two years. Like, I just couldn't bring myself to read anything. And I talked to a lot of people who had similar experiences with sexual harassment or, like, had spoken out about something and gotten fired or who just experienced botched handling of sexual harassment complaints and left on their own. I made a lot of connections in the outside world. And most of them would tell me, like, you need to, like, read books by people who have left cults, and you'll be so

surprised at how similar it is. And I was like, like, I didn't because I was in the point in my trauma where I could not pick up a book. It was just really embarrassing. I took three and a half months off and looked at myself and tried to figure out, like, what I really want to do with my life and who am I and what's next. And I started, like, doing my hobbies again. So I had this project that I had not touched since starting SpaceX, and I actually finished it, and it was like this big quilt that I made. And I started drawing again. And just like really remembering that I am my own person. I'm interesting. I'm fun to be around. I have a personality that isn't entirely this company. And I've just forgot that for a little while. Then I'm like, I got to

pick myself up off the couch and go apply for jobs because I can't be unemployed. I need health insurance. I need to be able to afford food and stuff. Yes, food and stuff. But also, we got to remember, jobs are often more than just a paycheck. I mean, we spend on average about 90,000 hours of our life at work. That's nearly a third of our waking hours. And job satisfaction, well, it's one of the biggest predictors of overall happiness and even longevity. Which is wild, because for Paige, this wasn't just a job. It was a calling. It was her dream. And when a dream job turns on you. It's like a breakup where you don't just lose the person. You lose the apartment. You lose the dog. And all of his friends like Mark and Doug and Tim. What are you guys up to? I get a beer.

Right. And probably some sweaters and books as well. But look, work should never become your entire identity, as Paige had said previously. But it does inevitably shape our sense of purpose and self. So finding the right fit, well, that matters. And fortunately, she did. Page found another job, and thankfully, it's not like a cult at all. So I got a job at another space company, so I work for a satellite startup. The really weird thing about working for another space company is that everything is still so tied to SpaceX, like our satellites launch on SpaceX rockets. And so I'm still relying on them in a way that I hate, but I love my job.

and I didn't want them to be able to take that away from me. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Jesse Prey. And I'm Andy Cassette. Welcome to Love Murder, where we unravel the darkest tales of romance turned deadly. Our episodes are long form, narrative-driven, and deeply researched, perfect for the true crime officinados seeking stories beyond the headlines.

Like the chilling case of Blanche Taylor Moore, the so-called Black Widow who left a trail of poisoned lovers. Or the shocking murders of Chad Shelton and Dwayne Johnson, where family ties masked a sinister plot. Subscribe to Love Murder on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. So, Paige, she picked herself up, she dusted herself off, she got a healthier job, and she ventured forth into the world once again. But her story would continue, because silence was not an option. I'm still really close with the people who got fired for this. We have a little group, and some people were comfortable going public.

Some people weren't. And so I was the first one to go public just because I still have so much guilt feeling like this was my fault. And so I feel like I have to atone for it. And then I also feel like it would have been for nothing if I just shut up and stopped talking about it after this all happened. But yeah, I was on CNN and I was on Bloomberg. and there's like a piece about me in the New York Times. Joining me now is one of the employees who was let go, Paige Holland-Teeleyn. Paige, thanks so much for joining this morning.

Thanks for having me. I wonder if you'd explain what exactly about Musk's behaviors and comments led you and your colleagues to write this letter. So there's a long history of poor handling of sexual harassment and discrimination complaints at SpaceX. It was very clear that until the behavior changed from the top down, the treatment of us employees on the ground was never going to improve. In SpaceX, there's also a very definite tendency to find a tiny mistake and then use that to cast out on the entire thing. Oh, you missed this, so you must just not know anything. I'm not a perfect person.

I have not been fact-checking myself 100%, so maybe I got some of the quotes wrong. I feel like in general women are criticized more for whatever they do. So no matter what I say, like there will always be people who take the wrong thing. from this interview and they'll be like she just probably wasn't smart enough or it wasn't good enough to do it and like I know that's not true I also feel like really good about being able to get it off my chest because it feels like you're carrying around a giant boulder and that impacts everything that you do and everything that you see but the more you're able to like share the story with people the boulder wears down and so now it's like a manageable amount of pain I do feel like three and change years down that the road I'm healing and the only time that I've cried recently is like I had a birthday notification in my phone from someone who I haven't spoken to since I got fired and I used to talk to her every single day and I just like a person who I felt like so well connected to is no longer part of my life and I have no way of contacting them and I cried for a while that

day just because I was like wow that's just so weird thinking like I was totally cut off and like most people probably didn't even notice and life went on Yeah, so the people who knew what happened talked to me for a while, but really it's fizzled out and most of them stopped after the election. I think it makes them confront something knowing the mask is off. Elon's mask is off. They know who he is. He and his extra governmental group whose legal status is wildly unclear are slashing budgets and staffs at agencies that regulate must businesses, while also getting an inside look at the department that give his companies billions and billions of dollars in contracts and suburbies. and he's millions of dollars a day flowing from the public fisc into his pocket.

He's very explicit about his beliefs and who he is and, like, you're working at SpaceX, and you've been told over and over again that SpaceX is Elon and Elon is SpaceX. So I'm the person, I think, in a lot of ways that, like, makes people confront. They're continuing to be complicit. And yes, she and a few former employees filed charges with the NLRB, which is the National Labor Relations Board. A group of eight former SpaceX employees are taking CEO Elon Musk to court. They say they were illegally fired for raising concerns about gender, discrimination, and sexual harassment.

The suit, it accuses Musk, of treating women as objects and that he bombarded the workplace with lewd sexual banter. The former employees say that this created a toxic work environment where employees felt pressure to tolerate inappropriate behavior from the top. Gwen Shotwell, SpaceX's president and C-O, has defended Musk, stating that he is one of the best humans she knows. SpaceX is trying to dismantle the NLRB. Most of the people on the board have been replaced with Trump cronies. So they are stalling and delaying and hoping, I think, that, like, they're wasting our time and money and we'll just give up. And I don't really have anything to lose on it. So I'm just going to stick it out till the end.

What would be an ideal outcome from this process for you? I just want accountability. I want the people who are left behind to know that they don't have to live like this. I want change. I don't want accountability and I want justice. I haven't gotten justice. I don't know if I ever will. I don't know if any of us ever will.

I don't know if the world is ever going to change, but I'm not going to stop trying. Isn't that how we all feel upon leaving a cult? Like, I probably stayed six months longer in my cult than I would have. Just trying to get this woman. to take some fucking responsibility, to be held accountable. I think that high level of gaslighting is what can end up being the most painful part or the most infuriating because it's like the hardest itch to scratch

and then you learn, like Paige, that sadly, you most likely never will. I think my biggest thing now is trying to convince people, whoever's listening, that you have the choice to leave. you'll be happier if you do. You don't have to live like that. And that goes for any company, but I think especially an Elon Musk company because he's shown so loudly

who he is and what he stands for. And if you feel uncomfortable because you're still working under that environment, like you do not have to stay. There are other companies that are doing amazing things that are groundbreaking. So Elon Musk, he's obviously found Elon Musk. Elon Musk.

Elon Musk. So Elon Musk. Oh, you guys want to come over to my party? I'm with my boyfriend's house. That's Elon Musk house. Elon. I don't even know what accent that is. Expensive girlfriend accent.

So Elon Musk, he's obviously found a way to keep his name, Elon Musk, in the news over the past few years. Has he ever? Like, what was it? Yesterday, he wanted people to cancel their Netflix account because of an animated show from 23 had a transgender character in it. Yeah. And now he's trying to get Congress to bring in Netflix to testify because apparently they're pushing it on people because one character in an animated show.

Regardless, he's a dick. Elon Musk is kind of a dick. Kind of. But he's also building a compound. He spends most of his SpaceX time at Starbase. which is like the central cult compound. They like bought an entire town in Texas to build up for a starship manufacturing.

There is literally a centralized cult compound that they're trying to get everybody to go to. Elon Musk's star base is on its way to become the newest city in Texas. So the proposed land where this new city would be is really only about one and a half square miles. We know it's made up of SpaceX complexes as well as homes and land.

Company execs say it will help SpaceX, keep up with its needs of its growing workforce. And so officially, the building of this new space town would begin in the coming weeks and months, but sometime by the end of the year. There is this whole, like, move to Starbase. You'll get paid like a California engineer, but you'll live in Texas where it's so much cheaper to live.

And, like, there is nothing in Starbase. It's on the very, very southern border of Texas. And the only thing that's there is this SpaceX town. So on-site food and bars and houses. and if your company is the only thing around, then your company is the only thing that you're doing and the only network that you have. So they're encouraging anybody to pick up and move to Starbase.

So they used to have a school for kids of SpaceX, but they moved that to Starbase. But it's basically because Elon wants total control over his employees' children's minds too. So they already have schools. They already have indoctrination camps. They're so close to, like, starting to pay people in company script. Like, I swear to God, it's going to be.

And people just like, they're like, this is so cool. This is the future. I hope not. Now, that's a cult compound, but with a key fob. Yes, a technologically upgraded cult compound. And it's actually quite disheartening and sad because, look, he is Elon Mosque. He is a visionary, right? He has a ton of money that he could actually put towards good causes.

And sometimes they are. but he's just kind of a temperamental, racist, homophobic little boy with ill manners. What are you talking about? Hey, I just got out of ass class. Sorry, I miss what you were talking about. But for Paige. Got out of ass class? But, you know, my copies joke didn't make you laugh, Rob, but ass class. I just got out of ass class is much funnier than copies. You giggled like a...

I'm sorry. Like a frat boy after a bong hit. Well, it takes off the fact that Reader's Digest will never publish. I just got out of ass class. No, their tastes are much better than that. Copies. All right. So, Paige, fortunately, she'd left Elon in the rearview mirror.

You know, I have been on a healing journey for several years at this point. And I went to lunch with my former. VP who had left SpaceX before I did and joined a different company. He was the one that told me to read up on cult deprogramming. But I think that was like the aha moment when I was having lunch with him. And he was like, it's real. There's a lot of parallels to it. And like read up on cult deprogramming.

And I was like, if this person who I trust is saying it, like maybe there's something to that, I started listening to this podcast. Was I in a call? I think there was like a specific episode where I was like, holy shit, that's exactly like this. and then binge the entire thing over the course of a month. Like I see myself in a lot of these experiences, and then in a lot of ways I obviously don't see myself. You know, there are various levels of cultiness.

It doesn't have to be like a religious fanatic to be a cult-like environment and thought that maybe me speaking out about this could help someone. But the girl with the big dreams? Well, that girl, she didn't get fired. Yeah, no, I'm a big dreamer. I'm going to keep dreaming. The company that I work for is making a constellation for wildfire detection. So, you know, working on something that is space related, but also, like, fundamentally important to humanity, like working on the impacts of climate change. Like, I'm really glad to have this opportunity and to be able to work somewhere I love. I'm fully remote, which is not a thing at all at SpaceX. I have total control over where I live and where I sit and how I spend my time. I have. a good relationship with most of my coworkers. It's fun, but also being remote. Like, I'm a little bit separated from that where that's not my entire social network anymore. And I think I've learned

a little bit from the SpaceX experiences. People will leave and someday I might leave and I need to have people in my life who are not only connected to my job. You know, I spend more time with family and I, my husband and I go travel a lot and really enjoy that. And it's definitely like a night and day difference, the job that I have now, especially coming out of SpaceX. Like, it really feels like stepping out of the shadow into a nice sunny day. A sunny day indeed.

You know, because you don't need to leave the earth to escape a toxic atmosphere. The myth says one man builds the future. The truth is thousands and thousands of people do and a few men take the credit. So if you're listening from a place

that feels relatable, a place where your weekends, your voice, and your boundaries keep getting optimized, you know, there are exits. I mean, sure, they're hard and they're scary, but they do exist. And on the other side, there's quilts, there's road trips, there's new co-workers, there's white claws, and there's reading, reading books again. Page told us that she has read, I think it's 14 books so far this year. But to be fair, Liz, I mean, you have read 14 books this year. It's just it's been elephant and piggy and pee is for potty.

Cat in the hat. Good night, good night construction site. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one. It's a little T-L-D-R for me, though. Be nice if they can readers digest that. By the time you get to the steamroll, you're like, I get it. All the trucks are sleeping. We got it. We got it.

Page, thank you for the courage and the clarity speaking out is scary, it just is. But you are encouraging others listening to do the same scary thing, and one day, in my utopic future, the only people who will be scared are the ones that are harming people. The ones who use ego and intimidation and fear and money

and fear-mongering tactics to control and abuse to make up for whatever childhood trauma left them terrified of powerlessness. in my utopia, those are the ones who will be scared. Amen. Interestingly enough, just one week ago, the New York Times published an investigation into allegations that Elon Musk's father, Errol Musk, sexually abused five of his children and stepchildren over a period spanning decades, starting in 1993.

Elon has been outspoken about his exorcally. estranged father in the past. His previous interviews have brought him to tears, saying that his father has done almost every evil thing you can possibly think of. Since the accusations came out, Elon has been silent. While I'm talking about my utopias, guys, just be good dads. I mean, just be a good fucking dad's, all right? You know what I mean?

It's important. Okay, that's all. How do you be a good dad? It's hard with life and John. and stress and pressure and worry and you're never as good as mommy sometimes but just talk to your kids listen to them

play with them for God's sakes it's not that hard give them a little bit of time don't be an Elon or an arrow be a good daddy and also weirdly right as we're recording this you guys there's a sort of win for cult like predators P. Diddy

just got sentenced but just over 40 years. It's not enough, in my opinion, but I guess it's the start. One step closer to my utopia. One step. Next week, we'll be back with the most bizarrely controlling dating criteria that I think we've ever had on this show. It's a weird one. So Dan announces we're going to do this courtship model. It's going to have three phases so that people don't fall into sin. There was some standard rules. that every couple had in their phase one.

And those were, you are not allowed to talk about feelings. You are not allowed to talk about the future. And no physical contact. And it should be like six months to a year and a half in this phase one where you're just inspecting. Like, is this person worth being my spouse? If you dug today's episode, rate and review the show, share it with a friend, or consider joining our happy, happy club of Patreon people for ad-free episodes and a little bonus chaos. In fact, today we expounded much too much on the bathroom habits of men and how disgusting women are.

We'll put that on Patreon in video, so you can see exactly... You could feel sorry for me and what I have to deal with at my work every week. I feel sorry for you, Liz. I'm going to take down this patriarchy one of these days. Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday you smash the patriarchy. That's right. We should, in honor of her t-shirt, make some Saturdays we, because it wasn't a cult, I think that's Saturday where we smash the patriarchy. Saturdays we break up the cult. And if you're listening and you have once been in your own cult or cult workplace or any type of cult, you want to be on the show and share your story, email us at info at wasaunicult.com.

We read your emails carefully on non-companyed devices. Outside of company hours. On a VPN. Was Ina cult is hosted, written, and joke told by. Me, this guy, Tyler, space Y, Mism. And me, identical policeman, Liz Copies. And it's edited, sound mixed, and basically make us look decent human being type human individuals. Rob.

The alien Rob. I can't do anything about that sentence. I'm sorry. And the wonderful Greta Stromquist. assistant editor. She is our firmament. Copies. Copies.

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