The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Oct 16, 2026 · 20 min · 11 segments
George Hahn connects the dots across the week's biggest stories: what Elon’s political spending actually buys, why Kimberly Guilfoyle shouldn’t be the only one resigning, and what we lose when we…
George HahnHost
Ina GartenHostWill AndersonHost
There's a nearly four-hour documentary from director Alex Gibney, an Atlantic cover story about his space race with Jeff Bezos, and another round of political spending.
On Thursday's conversations, Atlantic staff writer Josh Tyrangiel explained how Musk's chaotic public life coexists with a company like SpaceX.
The way I describe Musk in the piece is that he, his life is a browser with too many tabs, right? He is constantly moving between things that distract him, that interest him, personal crises, professional crises, um, random statements that compromise his time, and obviously X is the tab that's always open, right? I mean, he is always sounding off about one thing or another.
Um, what I would say is that people are many things, as you know.
He's incredibly weird and complicated, and one of the reasons that SpaceX is so successful is not only delegation, but the groundwork he put in between really 2003 and 2012 to get a very skilled team that's not a huge team, but very skilled.
They know exactly what they do every day.
They have really clear business goals and business leadership.
Um, you can't give him all the credit for their accomplishments, but you can give him credit for delegation, right? And the way in which he's delegated has made SpaceX very, very successful.
Um, w- I'll, I'll talk in a minute about the ways in which that coheres into a future business plan, but I, I do think both things can be true, is that personally, he's, he's a mess.
And professionally, particularly when it comes to SpaceX, that team is really, really good.
Scott asked whether a future Democratic administration could reset the relationship.
Right now, the United States has outsourced launch capability to such a degree that we better be really careful about how we negotiate with Elon Musk because, you know, Musk-- Remember, Musk and Trump have gone back and forth on this too, and Musk threatened to turn off the rocket, the one rocket that takes Americans to the International Space Station.
And the Soviets, I mean, the Russians, were only too happy to charge America $80 million a seat to get them there.
So right now, the only way Americans can get to space is by SpaceX.
So Musk has lots of reasons to depend on the United States government for funding, for licensing.
There-- It's not like we have nothing, but we do actually need to be careful because right now we've allowed ourselves to get into a position where we would not be negotiating from a position of ultimate strength.
So will there be a reset in that relationship should there be a Democratic administration? Absolutely.
Will it be overnight? And will it be the kind of strong arm of government going in and taking exactly what it wants and reposition? No chance.
Musk has too much leverage.
Musk has put roughly $366 million into this election cycle, which is more than the $290 million he put into 2024.
There's a nearly four-hour documentary from director Alex Gibney, an Atlantic cover story about his space race with Jeff Bezos, and another round of political spending.
On Thursday's conversations, Atlantic staff writer Josh Tyrangiel explained how Musk's chaotic public life coexists with a company like SpaceX.
The way I describe Musk in the piece is that he, his life is a browser with too many tabs, right? He is constantly moving between things that distract him, that interest him, personal crises, professional crises, um, random statements that compromise his time, and obviously X is the tab that's always open, right? I mean, he is always sounding off about one thing or another.
Um, what I would say is that people are many things, as you know.
He's incredibly weird and complicated, and one of the reasons that SpaceX is so successful is not only delegation, but the groundwork he put in between really 2003 and 2012 to get a very skilled team that's not a huge team, but very skilled.
They know exactly what they do every day.
They have really clear business goals and business leadership.
Um, you can't give him all the credit for their accomplishments, but you can give him credit for delegation, right? And the way in which he's delegated has made SpaceX very, very successful.
Um, w- I'll, I'll talk in a minute about the ways in which that coheres into a future business plan, but I, I do think both things can be true, is that personally, he's, he's a mess.
And professionally, particularly when it comes to SpaceX, that team is really, really good.
Scott asked whether a future Democratic administration could reset the relationship.
Right now, the United States has outsourced launch capability to such a degree that we better be really careful about how we negotiate with Elon Musk because, you know, Musk-- Remember, Musk and Trump have gone back and forth on this too, and Musk threatened to turn off the rocket, the one rocket that takes Americans to the International Space Station.
And the Soviets, I mean, the Russians, were only too happy to charge America $80 million a seat to get them there.
So right now, the only way Americans can get to space is by SpaceX.
So Musk has lots of reasons to depend on the United States government for funding, for licensing.
There-- It's not like we have nothing, but we do actually need to be careful because right now we've allowed ourselves to get into a position where we would not be negotiating from a position of ultimate strength.
So will there be a reset in that relationship should there be a Democratic administration? Absolutely.
Will it be overnight? And will it be the kind of strong arm of government going in and taking exactly what it wants and reposition? No chance.
Musk has too much leverage.
Musk has put roughly $366 million into this election cycle, which is more than the $290 million he put into 2024.
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