The Moonshot Podcast

Natural disasters will keep coming — but what if we could stay one step ahead? That’s the mission of Bellwether, a moonshot working to build a “crystal ball” for the natural world. Their team is uniting the talents and expertise of firefighters and physicians to turn messy geospatial data into real-time forecasts for fire, flood and beyond, helping communities prepare for the unpredictable. We also meet the inventors behind 280 Earth, a project that uses waste heat from data centres to pull CO₂ from the air and produce clean water in the process. This is a story about resilience — technological, economic and human — and the power of radical foresight. Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab. Thank you to Robert Baird, Sarah Russell, Jacques Gagne and Helen Riley for featuring in this episode.  The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, the moonshot factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if waste wasn’t the end of the story – but the start of something new? In this episode of The Moonshot Podcast, we explore Delta, a Moonshot to help feed the millions of Americans facing food insecurity, and X’s Moonshot for Circularity which is working to design waste systems that are more resilient, more adaptable, and more intelligent from the outset. This isn’t just about cleaning up – it’s about building a world where nothing useful gets thrown away. Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab. Thank you to Emily Ma, Mark Mollenkopf, Rey Banatao, Emma Lingle and Chef Monet for featuring in this episode.  The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, the moonshot factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Robots are at the heart of sci-fi, visions of the future, but what if that future is now? And what if those robots, helping us at work and at home, are simply an extension of the tools we’ve used for millions of years? That’s what artist and engineer Catie Cuan thinks, and it’s part of the reason she teaches robots to dance. In this episode we meet the people at the frontiers of the future of robotics and Astro Teller introduces two groundbreaking projects, Everyday Robots and Intrinsic, that have advanced how robots could work not just for us but with us. Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab. Thank you to Catie Cuan, Hans Peter Brondmo, James Manyika and Wendy Tan White for featuring in this episode.  The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, the moonshot factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Agriculture is the world’s oldest industry – and it’s racing to meet one of the newest and biggest challenges of our time: how to feed a growing global population that will soon hit 10 billion people. In this episode, Astro Teller explores how two moonshot teams set out to reinvent the way we grow food, using cutting-edge technology in some unexpected places. We follow the team behind Mineral, who began their journey with a pair of bicycles and a radical idea for rethinking farming from the ground up. And we head underwater with Tidal, where the team is using computer vision to transform ocean aquaculture. Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories of innovation from 15 years of Google’s moonshot factory.  Thank you to Elliott Grant, David Guerena, Evan Rapoport, Rajesh Jadhav, Joe Sargent, Paul Nnko, Elifura Nassari and Elinansha Nanyaro for featuring in this episode.  The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, the moonshot factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping everything - but how did we get here? Dive deep with Astro Teller into the origins of Google Brain, meeting Andrew Ng and Jeff Dean, two of AI’s early pioneers. Their innovations helped shatter a decades-long computing block and catapulted deep learning from the academic arena to the commercial prime time. We’ll also explore Codey, an AI system that writes and rewrites software. How do those designing AI’s next generation think about its opportunities and challenges? Could AI revolutionize the process of innovation itself? Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots,  The Moonshot Podcast  goes behind the scenes with creators and inventors trying to find radical solutions and breakthrough technologies to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories of innovation from 15 years of Google’s moonshot factory.  Thank you to Andrew Ng, Jeff Dean, Scott Huffman, Benoît Schillings and Olivia Hatalsky for featuring in this episode. The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, The Moonshot Factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices