SHIFT

What’s an astronaut’s time worth? Answering that question is not a perfect science, but at more than $100,000 an hour (not counting salary - that's just to keep one alive) on the International Space Station, it’s safe to say it’s more than you want to pay for bagging up trash. 
This week, we take a field trip in New York City to see some space robots that could help with this problem. 

We Meet:  
Icarus Robotics CEO Ethan Barajas 
Icarus Robotics CTO Jamie Palmer 
 
Credits:
This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

For as far as we’ve come with AI and robotics, there’s still a huge gap when it comes to combining the two. AI excels in the digital space, and in the physical world, robots are often pre-programmed. That’s where physical AI comes in. It’s critical for things that can’t tolerate the kinds of mistakes that are common in today’s statistics based AI, like self driving cars or managing the power grid. In the latest installment of our oral history project, we meet a central figure in these efforts, MIT's Daniela Rus.

We Meet:  
Daniela Rus is the Director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Credits:
This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Clio serves as the "operating system" for more than 400,000 legal professionals worldwide. Its founder and CEO Jack Newton has a lot to say about the field's agentic future, the company's vLex acquisition, and what other professional services can learn from the shifts he’s seen. 

We Meet:  
Clio CEO and Founder Jack Newton

Credits:
This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Most geospatial data is gathered by satellites and cameras attached to planes, but a new decentralized network is helping amateur drone pilots capture and contribute ultra high resolution data. 
In this week's show, we go fly a drone and learn how that data is helping power next generation apps for things like disaster response.
This episode originally ran in June 2025.

We Meet:  
Alec Wilson, COO Spexi
Bill Lakeland, CEO Spexi
 
Credits:
This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.

Enterprises have been slogging through the AI adoption journey, but cybersecurity threat actors have been too. As the time from vulnerability discovery to breach effectively goes to zero, the new cybersecurity playbook is all about how fast you can recover. 

We Meet:  
Anneka Gupta is the Chief Product Officer at Rubrik 

Credits:
This episode of SHIFT was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Emma Cillekens. It was mixed by Garret Lang, with original music from him and Jacob Gorski. Art by Meg Marco.