Episode notes
Fifteen years ago, the world thought self-driving cars were impossible - even the experts doubted it. Today, they’re on the road. In this inaugural 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. Astro meets Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of X, to revisit the origin story of this innovation lab and, with leaders from Waymo and Wing, explores what’s next for driverless cars and drone delivery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…
Podcast
The Moonshot Podcast
X, The Moonshot Factory · Tech & Science · English
The Moonshot Podcast chronicles the untold stories of innovation - both highs and lows - from inside Google’s Moonshot Factory. In Season 2, Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with a new crop of moonshot takers exploring the next frontiers in health, biology, computing and more.
More from The Moonshot Podcast All episodes →
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S1 · E6 · 14 Apr 2025 · 54 min
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. Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using…
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S1 · E5 · 7 Apr 2025 · 59 min
Living With Robots
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…
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S1 · E4 · 31 Mar 2025 · 47 min
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…
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S1 · E3 · 24 Mar 2025 · 46 min
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? Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain…
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S1 · E2 · 17 Mar 2025 · 48 min
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. Hosted…
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26 Feb 2025 · 1 min
The Moonshot Podcast Season 1 Trailer
Premiering March 10th! The Moonshot Podcast chronicles the untold stories of innovation - both highs and lows - from 15 years inside Google’s Moonshot Factory. Go behind the scenes with the inventors and creators exploring the huge problems, radical solutions and breakthrough technologies that have the potential to reshape our world. Self-driving cars, superhuman hearing, robots, drone delivery, wildfire prediction and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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