The Moonshot Podcast

Episode 1: Driving the Future

Fifteen years ago, the world thought self-driving cars were impossible - even the experts doubted it. Today, they’re on the road. In the first episode of The Moonshot Podcast, join Astro Teller inside X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory, to discover the early days of Waymo’s self-driving vehicles and Wing’s autonomous drone deliveries.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube Music

Episode 2: Essential Connections

Nearly 3 billion people still don’t have a reliable internet connection. In this episode of The Moonshot Podcast, Astro Teller dives into X’s decade-long mission to bring fast, reliable and affordable connectivity to people everywhere. We uncover the inside story of Loon - the audacious attempt to use high-altitude balloons for internet access - and how its legacy lives on in Taara, a revolutionary way to deliver fast, affordable connectivity over long distances using beams of light. Expect balloons in jail, monkeys causing mischief, and a digital leap over the world’s deepest river.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube Music

Episode 3: Machines That Think – The AI Moonshot

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?

Listen on: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube Music

Episode 4: Feeding the World

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.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube Music

Episode 5: Living with Robots

Robots have been at the heart of sci-fi visions of the future for decades. But what if that future is now? And what if the robots helping us at work and at home are simply extensions of the tools humans have used for millions of years? That’s what artist and engineer Catie Cuan thinks, and it’s why she teaches robots to dance. In this episode, Astro Teller meets the pioneers working at the frontiers of robotics and introduces Everyday Robots and Intrinsic —  two projects that have advanced how robots can work not just for us but *with* us.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube Music

Episode 6: Trash to Treasure

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.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / YouTube Music