Astro Teller, Alphabet’s Captain of Moonshots, joins us for a conversation about the importance of failure, workplace culture in a moonshot factory, and not throwing away your shot.

We Meet: 

Astro Teller is the Captain of Moonshots at X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

What if voting in a primary could be as simple as reaching for your phone? We explore mobile voting in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Bradley Tusk, Founder & CEO of Tusk Holdings 

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Meet the CEO of Cerebras Systems in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important role in the way new drugs are discovered. It’s radically changing how this process works, and speeding up the development of new therapies.

We Meet: 

Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO at Insilico Medicine 

Mike Nally, CEO at Generate Biomedicines

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

We know that kids spending time on social media are more likely to experience depression and anxiety. Less clear, and far more contentious, is the role we expect of schools, governments, and tech companies, and some parents are starting to organize.

It's the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA) Founder Julie Scelfo

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Anyone who’s had a job, knows what it means to have co-workers, but what happens when your colleague is an AI agent? As AI enters the workforce, we explore this question and more in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Lattice CEO Sarah Franklin

Credits:

SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

We meet a founder questioning the wisdom of the Turing Test as he works to address the loneliness epidemic among the elderly, in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Intuition Robotics Founder Dor Skuler, maker of the ElliQ digital companion

Credits:

SHIFT is produced by Jennifer Strong and Emma Cillekens. It’s mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

This episode first published in August 2024. 

A live conversation about the state of the space economy with the first Arab woman to fly to space and with a leading space investor. This episode was taped at the Middle East's largest tech event, with 25,000 attendees, from the mainstage of Web Summit Qatar. 

We meet: 

Astronaut Sara Sabry, CEO & Founder Deep Space Initiative

Adam Niewinski Co-Founder, General Partner OTB Ventures

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong and Emma Cillekens, and it was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

In the not too distant future we might use AI agents for all sorts of things, though for now payments remain an obstacle because they can’t spend money without human help. 

We Meet: 

Amir Sarhangi, CEO of Skyfire

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes what we say we want isn’t precisely what we mean. Nowhere is that felt more acutely than when we’re giving instructions to a machine, whether that’s coding or offering examples to machine learning systems. We unpack the alignment problem in the latest installment of our oral history project.

We Meet: 

Brian Christian, University of Oxford researcher, and author of The Alignment Problem 

Credits:

This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.