Before Elon Musk rebranded Twitter, X was already in use — at Google. Google X was Google's secret research lab, where Google's most imaginative ideas came to life. As CEO and co-founder, Astro Teller's job is to harness X's wildest, most futuristic technology to solve the world's hardest problems. The same "moonshot factory" that created Google Brain and Wa ... Show More
Mar 24
AI Can Do Everything… Except This (Why Humans Still Win) With Restaurateur Will Guidara
As businesses race toward faster systems, smarter tools, and total automation, something critical is getting lost: human connection. And ironically, the rise of AI is making that gap impossible to ignore. In this episode, I sit down with returning guest and close friend Will Guid ... Show More
1h 5m
Mar 17
Revisited: What Dying Teaches Us About Living with Death Doula Alua Arthur
Team Simon here! While A Bit of Optimism is on a short break, we’re revisiting a few episodes you helped make some of our favorites. We’ll be back with brand-new conversations next week, on March 24th, 2026. In the meantime, we’re bringing back an episode that explores a word mos ... Show More
45m 7s
Mar 10
Revisited: The Kennedy Family and the Search for Self with Journalist Maria Shriver
Hello from Team Simon! We’re taking a short hiatus, but A Bit of Optimism will return with brand-new episodes March 24th. In the meantime, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Episodes that many of you who listened, shared them, and told us what resonated. This week, w ... Show More
43m 48s
Oct 2025
Google Part III: The AI Company
Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI system from ChatGPT to Claude (and, of course, Gemini). They employed nearly all the top AI talent: Ilya Sutskever, Geoff Hinton, Demis H ... Show More
4h 6m
Nov 2024
Ex Google CEO: AI Is Creating Deadly Viruses! If We See This, We Must Turn Off AI! They Leaked Our Secrets At Google!
He scaled Google from startup to $2 trillion success, can Eric Schmidt now help save humanity from the dangers of AI?
Eric Schmidt is the former CEO of Google and co-founder of Schmidt Sciences. He is also the author of bestselling books such as, ‘The New Digital Age’ and ‘Gene ... Show More
1h 50m
Jul 2025
The Future of Humans, AI and Intelligent Technologies
Dr. Ja-Naé Duane talks about her book, coauthored with futurist Steve Fisher, SuperShifts: Transforming How We Live, Learn, and Work in the Age of Intelligence. Ja-Naé is a leading behavioral scientist, an MIT research fellow, and an innovation strategist with deep expertise in e ... Show More
28m 2s
May 2025
Meet the CEO Bill Gates backs to beat Tesla: Alex Kendall, Wayve.AI
In this episode of Secret Leaders, we sit down with Alex Kendall, co-founder & CEO of Wayve AI — the $1B+ British startup taking on Tesla in the race to build a driverless future. From raising $1.05 billion from Microsoft, SoftBank, and NVIDIA, to reimagining cities with AI-power ... Show More
1h 14m
Jul 2024
How AI Will Transform Us Into Innovators: Mo Gawdat (E275)
<p>This episode is part of our ‘Experts In Their Field’ mini-series, presented by Salesforce.</p><br><p>In this episode, we welcome Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer for Google X, tech entrepreneur, and author of the best-selling books "Solve for Happy" and "Scary Smart” b ... Show More
1h 10m
May 2025
Google DeepMind C.E.O. Demis Hassabis on Living in an A.I. Future
<p>This week, we take a field trip to Google and report back about everything the company announced at its biggest show of the year, Google I/O. Then, we sit down with Google DeepMind’s chief executive and co-founder, Demis Hassabis, to discuss what his A.I. lab is building, the ... Show More
1h 13m
Nov 2024
Pourquoi Elon Musk s’est séparé d’Open AI en 2015 ?
<p>Quand Elon Musk, Sam Altman et leurs partenaires lançaient OpenAI en 2015, leur objectif semblait limpide : créer une intelligence artificielle générale (AGI) bénéfique pour l’humanité. Mais derrière cette ambition idéaliste se cachaient des tensions, des ambitions personnelle ... Show More
1m 57s