My guest today, Obi-Felton, was in charge of moon shots at Google's Innovation Lab,

what's called X or formerly Google X. X has had both big successes like Waymo,

one of the first self-driving vehicles, and high-profile failures,

like the attempt to provide global internet using a network of stratospheric balloons.

The pressure of producing the next self-driving car in the next balloon project was absolute immense,

like it couldn't just be any old thing, it had to be something really incredibly amazing,

that was also very undefined.

Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levin.

As if moon shots weren't enough to talk about, Obi's now heading a startup called Flourish Labs.

She's trying to transform the way mental health services are provided to young people.

And the whole time I've been living in Germany, I've been trying to find a German guest for the show.

Finally with Obi, I've got one.

She grew up in Berlin, and she watched the Berlin Wall come down to the team.

That's one more topic, I have to be sure to cover.

When you worked at Google's Innovation Lab, you had a very unusual title, right?

My title was Head of Getting Moon Shots Ready for Contact with the Real World.

Everyone thought it was a joke.

And it came about when I sat down with Astro Teller, who hired me into X.

And he was running a bunch of projects at X at the time, and later on took over the whole group.

He had hired me somewhat on a whim as one of the first non-engineering people in the group.

We had this great conversation where he told me about these projects that were all secret at the time.

Even inside Google, I was working for Google in Europe at the time.

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