“The world needs moonshots now more than ever. We want to inspire others to join us in a mission to create radical new technologies to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems.” – Astro Teller, The Moonshot Podcast host
Feb 27, 2025 (New York, NY) – The Moonshot Podcast, a ten-part podcast series hosted by Google X Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller, is set to launch from SXSW 2025 with a celebratory morning launch event and live panel on March 10, 2025. The event will include prototypes of some of the most celebrated innovations from Google X, interview clips of the creators lauded for the innovations, and very special panelist guests joining Astro Teller live on stage, to be announced soon.
The podcast chronicles the untold stories of innovation – both highs and lows – from 15 years inside Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory. In conversation with thinkers and creators behind X, the Moonshot Factory’s most audacious projects including self driving cars, wearables, robots, computer systems that code themselves, Internet balloons, laser internet, wildfire prediction, and so much more, Astro explores huge problems, radical solutions and breakthrough technologies that have the potential to reshape our world.
Said Astro Teller, “This year we’re celebrating 15 years of moonshot taking. We saw this as a great opportunity to go back and talk to those who helped shape key moonshots over X’s history–particularly people who invented new technologies that have transformed industries or created new ones. Through our conversations, we hear their reflections on the process of experimentation, the evolution of technology, and what the future holds for critical spaces like transportation, connectivity, computing, and sustainability.”
The podcast will explore important questions like How do we achieve the clean, green energy dream? and Can technology give our planet a second chance? while diving into the history of exciting projects like Waymo, Brain, Everyday Robots and Google Glass.
The Moonshot Podcast embodies optimism, realism, inspiration and resilience in the face of the world’s most pressing social and environmental threats. This is an unprecedented opportunity to take an unfiltered look into X, the Moonshot Factory, and the people working to solve some of the world’s hardest problems. Radical innovation is never straightforward, but it holds keys to unlocking human progress, and this series will show listeners how.
ABOUT GOOGLE X, THE MOONSHOT FACTORY:
In 2010, Google parent company Alphabet formed a new division called X to work on moonshots: far-out, sci-fi sounding technologies that could one day make the world a radically better place. It was something of a moonshot unto itself. Today, X is a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of billions. X ‘graduates’ have become new Alphabet companies (Waymo, Wing), others have found homes inside Google (Brain), and others still have become independent companies outside of Alphabet (Dandelion, Malta). The goal remains the same: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. X approaches projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup.
ABOUT ASTRO TELLER:
As Google X’s Captain of Moonshots, Astro is responsible for steering X’s projects through the bumps and scrapes they meet along the road to reality. Prior to X, Astro founded and grew five companies, including BodyMedia, which developed wearable body-monitoring devices. Before moving to the business world, Astro was an engineer and researcher for Phoenix Laser Technologies, Stanford’s Center for Integrated Systems, and taught a Computer Science class at Stanford University. He holds a B.S. in computer science and an M.S. in symbolic and heuristic computation, both from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon, where he was a recipient of the Hertz fellowship. Through his work as a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur, Astro holds many U.S. and international patents, related to hardware and software technology. He’s the successful author of three published books and an international speaker on technology and innovation.
