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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