The Moonshot Podcast

By X, The Moonshot Factory

What if the keys to solve the world’s hardest problems – food security, energy resilience, the digital divide – were already within our grasp?

Welcome to The Moonshot Podcast, where we go behind ... more

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FAQs about The Moonshot Podcast:

How many episodes does The Moonshot Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 17 episodes available.

The Moonshot Podcast episodes:

September 05, 2025 Deep Dive: David Guerena on the Future of Agriculture
In the sixth installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive series, X’s Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller, discusses plant breeding and the future of agriculture with Agricultural Scientist, David Guerena. David works with The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) — a partner of Mineral, X’s moonshot for computational agriculture. They discuss plant breeding, the challenges facing smallholder farmers around the world, and how the tools Mineral developed are helping plant breeders grow more resilient crops.
For more on Mineral’s impact on agriculture, check out Episode 4 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Feeding the World”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQS3lY6pRvY
And to learn more about how Mineral’s technology is being used by public plant breeding programs in the Global South, check out The Artemis Project: https://alliancebioversityciat.org/projects/artemis
00:00 - Introduction
1:09 - Why humans eat certain plants
3:20 - How plants have historically been domesticated
4:53 - The origins of plant breeding
6:52 - The changing face of plant breeding
8:42 - Gene banks that preserve genetic diversity
10:22 - Helping small farmers with plant breeding
12:33 - How David’s career started
14:00 - The process of identifying and cataloguing plants
23:32 - CIAT and CGIAR’s partnership with Mineral
26:13 - Mineral’s technology
32:59 - Unexpected findings from Mineral’s early days
38:40 - Solving for the biggest challenges in plant breeding
40:08 - Phenotyping 101
41:06 - The impact of Mineral’s technology
44:39 - The challenges of existing breeding systems
50:10 - The future of computational agriculture
57:00 - The impact of AI on plant breeders and farmers
59:19 - A surprising insight about bean cooking time
1:01:47 - The future of plant breeding
1:03:58 - David, finally, talks about Bruno

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1h 7min
August 22, 2025 Deep Dive: Jeff Dean on Google Brain’s Early Days
In the fifth installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Google DeepMind’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean for a conversation about the origin of Jeff’s pioneering work scaling neural networks.
They discuss the first time AI captured Jeff’s imagination, the earliest Google Brain framework, the team’s stratospheric advancements in image recognition and speech-to-text, how AI is evolving, and more.
For more on X’s AI moonshots, check out Jeff on Episode 3 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Machines That Think”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLPA8Qpc74
00:00 - Introduction
00:35 - What Jeff’s childhood was like
03:50 - The first “non-trivial” thing Jeff coded
05:02 - Jeff’s “love/hate” relationship with C++
06:59 - The first time AI captured Jeff’s imagination
10:40 - When neural networks fell “out of vogue”
12:24 - How Jeff made a career out of “starting over”
14:23 - The origins of Google Brain
17:30 - Critical components of scaling neural networks
18:43 - The earliest Google Brain framework
19:32 - How the team first built a 100x bigger neural network
22:04 - The cat video that started it all
25:02 - Google Brain’s major progress on image recognition
26:24 - Google Brain’s major progress on speech to text
27:29 - The origins of TensorFlow and TPUs
31:56 - Three breakthroughs in understanding language models
37:41 - Where Jeff thinks the world is headed
40:07 - The shift from “making things” to designing prompts
42:38 - How Jeff uses AI to enhance his own life
43:51 - Safety, security, and privacy in AI
50:26 - The future of understanding neural network behavior
53:34 - When computers are “smarter” than humans
56:52 - Jeff’s next-five-years plan

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59min
August 08, 2025 The Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive: Andrew Ng on Deep Learning and Google Brain
In the fourth installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Andrew Ng, the founder of Google Brain and DeepLearning.AI, for a conversation about the history of neural network research and how Andrew’s pioneering ideas led to some of the biggest breakthroughs in modern-day AI.
Hear about the origins of Google’s deep learning work, how Andrew’s teenage frustrations led him to pursue a career in machine learning and automation, and the work that led up to Google Brain’s infamous “cat video” paper.
For more on X’s AI moonshots, check out Andrew on Episode 3 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Machines That Think”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLPA8Qpc74

00:00 - Introduction
03:30 - Andrew’s groundbreaking early theories about neural networks
08:16 - Why Andrew came to X with his ideas
10:30 - The unlikely history of neural network research
15:25 - Jeff Dean as Andrew’s “partner in crime”
17:16 - The origins of Google Brain’s neural networks
18:32 - Google Brain’s evolution in and out of hardware
22:01 - Google Brain’s innovation around transformers
24:36 - Google Brain’s earliest leaps forward in AI
28:24 - Google Brain’s graduation from X into Google
31:50 - What Andrew is up to these days
34:07 - Where the AI and machine learning field is going
35:19 - Andrew’s passion for education
36:51 - Why Andrew became interested in AI as a teenager
37:53 - AI’s democratizing effect on humanity
41:34 - How Andrew defines the term “artificial intelligence”
43:51 - Google Brain’s “cat video” coming out moment
45:51 - AI’s potential positive impact on the workforce
47:17 - Andrew’s favorite aspects of moonshot-taking

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52min
July 24, 2025 Deep Dive: Catie Cuan on Dancing and Living With Robots
In the third installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Dr. Catie Cuan, robot choreographer and former artist in residence at Everyday Robots, for a conversation about how dance can be used to build beautiful and useful robots that people want to be around.
Watch the video to hear how Catie and the Everyday Robots team transformed robotic motion into music, what it feels like when she’s dancing with a robot and why she’s “hyper-optimistic” about the future of robotics.
For more, check out Catie on Episode 5 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Living With Robots”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUcB73KgEVs
00:00 - Introduction
00:29 - Catie’s mission to make robots more humanistic and whimsical
02:12 - How Catie came to X and Everyday Robots
03:40 - Using dance to make robots less “robotic”
07:38 - Teaching robots human social cues
11:00 - Transforming robotic motion into sound with “music mode”
15:16 - Programming robots to “flock” together like animals
18:31 - How young kids interact with robots
20:15 - Catie’s own experience interacting with her robots
22:18 - Working with experts outside the field
24:36 - Designing robots to not look like “robots”
28:44 - Helping humanity face their visceral fear of robots
32:40 - The moonshot and legacy of Everyday Robots
35:42 - Catie’s advice for moonshot-takers
37:27 - Catie’s vision for what the future looks like

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42min
July 11, 2025 Deep Dive: André Prager on Prototyping at Wing
In the second installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with André Prager, former Chief Engineer at Wing, for a conversation about the early days of Wing and how the team solved some of their toughest engineering challenges to develop simple, lightweight, inexpensive delivery drones that are now being used every day across three continents.
Watch the video to hear the story of André’s earliest inventions as a teenager, the surprising discovery that led the Wing team to rethink the drones’ sound, why engineering often feels like creating art, and more.
For more, check out André on Episode 1 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Driving the Future”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXGnjbkFLeo

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52min
June 27, 2025 Deep Dive: Sebastian Thrun on Waymo’s Early Days
n the first installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of the Moonshot Factory, for a conversation about the history of Waymo and Google X, the ethics of innovation, the future of AI, and more.
Watch the video to hear how the self-driving car project got its start, Sebastian’s philosophy for building great teams, and practical advice for anyone who wants to tackle a big problem with a moonshot idea.

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36min
May 12, 2025 Episode 10: Prototyping The Future, live from SXSW 2025
Astro joins an all-star cast of inventors, futurists and creatives for a live conversation about radical innovation on-stage at SXSW 2025. These pioneers and problem-solvers pull together the threads of our series, revealing how imagination and prototyping can come together to tackle global challenges like transportation, energy, food security and human health. Recorded in front of a live audience in Austin, Texas, this special episode explores how creativity, curiosity, and a maker's spirit have the power to transform bold ideas into reality.
Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab.
Thank you to Nicholas Thompson, Adam Savage and Catie Cuan for joining us on stage at SXSW 2025.
The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, The Moonshot Factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted.

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1h 2min
May 05, 2025 Episode 9: Supersenses
What if, rather than making you distracted, your smart device helped you be more present?
In this episode, we revisit the early days of Google Glass: a bold Moonshot that opened up new ways of seeing and being in the world. We go behind the scenes with the designers and engineers who shaped it – and hear how their insights helped inspire IyO, a next-generation audio wearable designed to integrate our digital and physical lives while also liberating us from screens. From skydiving, to the real-life “babel fish”, this is a story about the power of invention, the importance of timing, and how to design and build technology that fits humanity – not the other way around.
Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab.
Thank you to Ivy Ross, Isabelle Olsson, Ivo Stirovic, Jason Rugolo and Joe Sargent for featuring in this episode.
The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, The Moonshot Factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Louis Nanke-Mannell. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted.

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46min
April 28, 2025 Episode 8: Powering Up
Energy might just be the ultimate moonshot – because if we can make it affordable, abundant and dependable long-term, it could improve life for all 8.2 billion people on Earth. In this episode, we follow two bold projects from X: Blixt, a fusion Moonshot that took a high-risk bet on a decades-old scientific mystery, and Tapestry, a new set of AI powered tools that are helping grid operators manage the world’s largest machine. From lightning bolts and frozen hydrogen, to mapping the electricity networks of entire countries, this is a story about risk, reward, and the invisible systems we all depend on.
Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab.
Thank you to Matt Forkin, Brian Adolf, Will Regan, Ivo Stivoric, Page Crahan and Juan Carlos Olmedo for featuring in this episode.
The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, the moonshot factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted.

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42min
April 21, 2025 Episode 7: Fires, Floods and Future-Proofing
Natural disasters will keep coming — but what if we could stay one step ahead? That’s the mission of Bellwether, a moonshot working to build a “crystal ball” for the natural world. Their team is uniting the talents and expertise of firefighters and physicians to turn messy geospatial data into real-time forecasts for fire, flood and beyond, helping communities prepare for the unpredictable. We also meet the inventors behind 280 Earth, a project that uses waste heat from data centres to pull CO₂ from the air and produce clean water in the process. This is a story about resilience — technological, economic and human — and the power of radical foresight.

Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, The Moonshot Podcast goes behind the scenes with the engineers and inventors using breakthrough technologies to try to find radical solutions to the world’s biggest problems. These are the untold stories from 15 years of Google’s innovation lab.

Thank you to Robert Baird, Sarah Russell, Jacques Gagne and Helen Riley for featuring in this episode.

The Moonshot Podcast is a Blanchard House production for X, the moonshot factory. It’s produced by Ellie Sans and Sophie Eastaugh. Original music by Louis Nanke-Mannell and Daniel Lloyd-Evans. Sound design and mix engineering by Toby Matimong. The executive producers are Amica Sciortino Nowlan and Rebecca Maxted.

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39min

FAQs about The Moonshot Podcast:

How many episodes does The Moonshot Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 17 episodes available.

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