The Moonshot Podcast

The Moonshot Podcast is back!

In the season 2 premiere, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller explores how three X projects developed technology to transform the future of healthcare.

He first sits down with Kathryn Zealand and Anna Roumiantseva from Skip to hear about how the world’s first “e-bike for walking” evolved from their team’s mobility moonshot at X. They recount how an early prototype of Skip’s powered pants helped carry a colleague to top of the Salesforce Tower, and share how the product has developed since spinning out into an independent company (Astro even tries a pair on for size to see their progress firsthand).

Microelectronics expert Will Biederman then joins Astro for a conversation about the origins of Project Iris, a computerized contact lens designed to help measure diabetes risk, which laid the foundation for the continuous glucose monitors that millions of people use today. Finally, Astro chats with Verily CEO Stephen Gillet to hear about his mission to make precision healthcare accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

0:00 - Intro
1:08 - Meet Kathryn Zealand and Anna Roumiantseva, Skip
1:57 - An “e-bike for walking”
2:35 - Why mobility needs a moonshot
3:42 - Limitations with current mobility solutions
6:19 - Criteria for the world’s first “movewear”
7:37 - Understanding the complexities of human motion
9:13 - How much weight Skip’s pants can carry
9:40 - Racing to the top of the Salesforce Tower
13:54 - Skip’s partnership with Arc’teryx
14:40 - The “kill criteria” for Skip’s moonshot
17:29 - Astro tries Skip’s pants on for size
18:55 - Meet Will Biederman, Project Iris
19:26 - Can a computerized contact lens help prevent diabetes?
20:19 - The potential worldwide impact of glucose monitoring
20:52 - Can tears help measure glucose?
22:50 - How to put a computer into a contact lens
24:11 - Project Iris’s early findings using glasses
25:20 - Fitting the “world’s smallest batteries” onto a contact lens
26:18 - A close-up view of the Project Iris contact lens
28:55 - How Project Iris transformed continuous glucose monitoring
31:18 - The origins of the Dexcom 7
32:08 - How glucose monitoring could lead to other health breakthroughs
32:55 - The future of everyday medical technologies
33:42 - Liftware’s “robot in a spoon” to counter tremors
34:16 - Meet Steven Gillett, Verily CEO
35:09 - Verily’s mission to democratize precision healthcare
36:30 - How Verily can aggregate a person’s entire medical history
39:05 - How Verily’s technology keeps private data secure
39:43 - Steve’s vision for how Verily can change the world
41:17 - What needs to happen in order to reach autonomous healthcare
42:27 - Conclusion

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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 16 years of Alphabet’s moonshot factory.

The Moonshot Podcast is a Pique Action production for X, The Moonshot Factory, produced in association with Blanchard House.
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The Moonshot Podcast is back!

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.

From energy kites and robotic pants, to sea fuel and digital immune systems, go behind the scenes with the inventors and creators working to turn "what if" into what’s next.

Available from March 25, wherever you get your podcasts.
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In the ninth installment of the Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive series, Astro Teller and Emily Ma explore how to solve humanity’s food waste and hunger problems.

They discuss how Project Delta built an “air traffic control” system for the world’s surplus food. They also discuss the origins of Chorus, X’s moonshot to give every object a voice which is now focused on optimizing global supply chains using advanced sensors and orchestration software.

For more on the future of food waste, tune into Episode 6 of the Moonshot Podcast, “Trash to Treasure”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgRASA92Dco

Video Segmentation
00:00 - Introduction
01:38 - The origins of Emily’s passion for food waste
04:07 - Why food waste is such a big problem
07:09 - How Emily wound up at X
10:24 - Google Glass in early food waste prototypes
12:06 - Emily’s “waste audit” sifting through physical trash
15:08 - How food is wasted in every phase of the production process
20:36 - An “air traffic control” system for the world’s surplus food
23:54 - How X’s food waste technology helped tackle that surplus
29:25 - What the team learned by working in the field
30:40 - Food waste “nodes” to reroute surplus food
33:34 - Applying X’s food waste technology outside the U.S.
35:41 - The team’s early vision for a supply chain moonshot - Chorus
39:56 - How Chorus evolved from the Delta team
41:26 - How Delta graduated to Google
45:06 - Emily’s fondest moonshot memories
46:54 - The importance of play when taking moonshots
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In the eighth installment of the Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive series, Astro Teller discusses the future of audio wearables with iyO Founder Jason Rugolo.

They discuss the many unexpected use cases for machine-mediated hearing, what it was like to build the world’s first audio computer and how to make audio wearables “cool.”

For more on the origins of iyO and the next generation of audio wearable technology, tune into Episode 9 of the Moonshot Podcast, “Supersenses”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlpF2QJNL5Y

00:00 - Introduction
02:17 - The first company Jason started at age 14
04:02 - How Jason came to X
06:40 - Jason’s earliest “fail fast” moonshot ideas
09:54 - The importance of being “the right amount too early”
12:45 - Radical idea for digital humans
14:59 - Early explorations into tele-video
18:49 - The original pitch for what became iyO
22:24 - Why designing great wearables for the ear is so hard
24:52 - Design considerations for audio wearables
29:41 - Making audio wearables “cool”
31:32 - The limitations of current in-ear devices
32:33 - The “superpowers” we’d have with machine-mediated hearing
35:30 - Building the first audio computer
36:30 - What the team’s first audio wearable looked like
38:01 - How audio wearables could help with translation
40:55 - The potential for wearables to protect from hearing loss
41:57 - The future of “hearing enhancement” apps
44:45 - The unexpected value of voice-to-audio interaction
48:34 - Astro’s “holy s**t” moment with audio wearables
52:26 - Why audio wearables need to change sound sources so quickly
55:47 - iyO’s public debut
57:23 - Surprising agentic AI use cases
58:50 - Physics conversations with the Einstein app using iyO
01:00:58 - Musical conversations with the iyO DJ app using iyO
01:01:51 - Jason’s hard-won lessons from taking moonshots
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In this installment of the Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive series, Astro Teller explores the origins of Google Glass with designers Ivy Ross and Isabelle Olsson.

They discuss the unexpected design and tech challenges the team faced creating such a bold new form factor, the surprising ways people ended up wanting to use Glass, how their backgrounds in art influenced their approach, and the importance of timing when creating new technologies.

For more on Glass’s early days, tune into Episode 9 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Supersenses”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlpF2QJNL5Y

00:00 - Introduction
01:43 - How Isabelle wound up at X
03:37 - How Ivy came to X
07:25 - The big challenges Glass was solving
11:04 - The origins of the Glass Explorer Program
11:43 - Glass’s public debut
14:46 - Ivy’s earliest memories of Glass in action
18:37 - How art influenced the design of Glass
22:19 - Glass’s second generation design
27:20 - From sunglasses to monocles: Early design debates
31:30 - Surprising “fringe” uses of Glass in industry
34:33 - Reinventing Glass for industry
35:47 - Why timing matters
41:45 - Memorable team traditions
44:50 - When Glass moved from X to Google
47:41 - Early explorations with the Google Watch
49:37 - Lessons learned from taking moonshots
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