The Moonshot Podcast S2, Episode 1: Supercharging Human Health

23 snips

Mar 25, 2026

Guest

Will Biederman

Guest

Kathryn Zealand

Will Biederman, microelectronics expert behind Project Iris who helped enable modern continuous glucose monitors. Kathryn Zealand, physicist who co-created Skip’s powered movewear to boost everyday mobility. They discuss powered pants as an “e-bike for walking,” on-body sensors and AI for intuitive movement, noninvasive tear-based glucose sensing, packing compute into tiny wearables, and how these moonshots pivoted toward real-world healthcare impact.

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ANECDOTE

Racing Salesforce Tower To Prove The Tech

The team raced to the top of Salesforce Tower as a concrete goal to prove stairs assistance, recruiting a Googler stair-runner for help.
With a prototype, Eric climbed 67 flights nearly matching a world record while far less exhausted using the device.

ADVICE

Kill Solutions Not Problems

Set clear kill criteria but focus on solving the user problem, not on a preconceived solution like fabric-only.
Be willing to pivot hardware approach if the core user needs (comfort, usefulness) remain addressed.

ANECDOTE

One Platform Two Mobility Products

Skip pursued two product paths: general mobility and a Parkinson's hip device, sharing software and controls across both.
They minimized hardware variants by leveraging the same actuated design and chips with individualized control training.

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The Moonshot Podcast is back! 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 – 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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