This week, Oliver and I sat down with Alex Gibney, the prolific documentary filmmaker who has never shied away from scrutinizing the powerful. But his latest subject, Elon Musk, has made that task more difficult than ever. In our conversation, the director of “Musk” described the obstacles he’s faced simply trying to get the four-hour documentary in front of audiences.

YouTube, TikTok, and Meta all initially blocked promotion of the film, labeling it “political,” a designation Gibney said appears to mean anything critical of society’s most powerful. TikTok went even further and issued a ban on the films advertising account just as the film headed into wide release, and, according to Gibney, came despite the platform greenlighting ads for Amazon's “Melania” vanity project. "‘Melania’ was fine, but you're a problem," he said he was told.

Perhaps least surprising to Gibney was that X, Musk’s own platform and a supposed haven of free speech, also refused to run the ads. He described the site as a propaganda tool for Musk and a “rage addicting machine” that monetizes vitriol, and said his team has noticed that influencers with large followings see their posts radically underperform whenever they mention the film.

The movie’s distribution has also had its own complications. Gibney confirmed that Comcast’s Universal Pictures, which holds the international rights, didn't seem “forward leaning” in the film’s release for a moment this summer, though he said the studio is now fully engaged, with a rollout in the U.K. and other markets expected early next year.

But a bigger question hangs over the film's eventual home at HBO, now owned by David Ellison’s Skydance, particularly after Semafor reported this week that Musk has invested $1 billion into the debt-laden company. Gibney said he's been told that Ellison is committed to running the documentary and that pulling it now would be “supremely embarrassing” for him. Still, he didn't pretend to be at ease. “Of course, I'm concerned,” he said, noting that Musk is “very thin skinned.”

What troubles Gibney most is the staggering amount of power Musk wields without accountability. He called it “deeply disturbing” that, according to The Wall Street Journal, Musk personally made the decision to cut off Starlink access in Ukraine, and that neither Trump nor Musk will give a straight answer about who was actually responsible. “It's like power without accountability,” he quipped.

And Gibney revealed the most disturbing thing he uncovered about Musk from his reporting. “He has accreted all this power,” Gibney said, “and he has no idea why.”

You can watch the full interview on YouTube—or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.