The Thinking Machine

We’re entering a new era in robotics. One where the bottleneck isn’t just algorithms, it’s the entire stack. The foundation models, the data pipelines, the simulation environments, the training infrastructure. All of it has to come together for robots to move from demos to deployment. The Thinking Machine Podcast goes deep with the researchers, founders, and engineers working across this stack. That means conversations with teams building robotics foundation models like Groot and Gemini Robotics, architects of world models and neural simulators, and the people designing the data collection systems that make training possible at scale. If you’re building in robotics, investing in the space, or trying to understand where this field is really headed, this podcast is for you.

The Thinking Machine is a technology podcast hosted by Jonathan Stephens, with 6 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Jonathan Stephens hosts The Thinking Machine, a technology show with 6 episodes published.

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  The Thinking Machine

  Why Touch Is the Missing Piece in Robotics with Tao Yu

  May 7, 20261 hourS0

  <p>Vision got robots looking. Language got them reasoning. But the moment a robot has to actually do something with its hands such threading a cable, screw a nut on a bolt, or manipulate a deformable object it can't fully see, touch becomes the missing piece. And touch is one of the hardest unsolved problems in physical AI.<br /><br />In this episode of The Thinking Machine, I sit down with Tao Yu, Director of Dexterous AI Group at Analog Devices, to unpack why ADI is now building a humanoid hand platform with tactile sensing at its core.<br /><br />...

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  The Thinking Machine

  Physical AI and Robotics at NVIDIA GTC 2026 with Diana Wolf Torres

  Apr 16, 20261h 33mS0

  <p>Diana Wolf Torres joins The Thinking Machine podcast to break down everything we saw at GTC 2026. Diana is the author of the DROIDS robotics newsletter and the Deep Learning with the Wolf AI newsletter, and we're both NVIDIA-invited creators who have been covering this space together since GTC 2025.<br /><br />We start with what stood out from Jensen's keynote — the shift to measuring tokens per watt, the Vera Rubin chip and why it might make your Blackwell obsolete before you install it, and NVIDIA's trillion-dollar hardware number. <br /><br />Then we get into OpenClaw, the DGX Spark, and why ag...

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  The Thinking Machine

  How Lightwheel is Building the Simulation Infrastructure of Physical AI with Steve Xie

  Mar 14, 202653 minS0

  <p>Steve Xie spent years leading simulation at Cruise and NVIDIA before founding Lightwheel — and in that time he watched simulation go from a tool that was "great for showcasing to investors" to what he believes will become the core infrastructure layer for all of physical AI.<br /><br />In this episode, we sit down with Steve to break down Lightwheel's three-pillar framework for simulation infrastructure: World, Behavior, and Evaluation — and why getting all three right is what separates serious simulation from everything else. We also get into the physical measurement factory, the data scale that Lightwheel is hitting in 2025, and...

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  The Thinking Machine

  Why Robotics Is Harder Than It Looks with Chris Paxton

  Feb 24, 202650 minS0

  <p>Robots can walk. They can dance. They can even do backflips.<br /></p><p>But can they reliably fold your laundry, make coffee, or recover from mistakes in your kitchen?<br /></p><p>In this episode, I sit down with robotics researcher Chris Paxton to talk about what’s actually hard about building intelligent robots.<br /></p><p>We explore:</p>Why robotics today is fundamentally different than it was 10 years agoThe rise of world models and robot imaginationWhy contact and manipulation tasks are harder than navigation for robotsThe compounding error problem in long-horizon tasksWhy robotics evaluation is still an...

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  The Thinking Machine

  Modeling the Real World with Tolga Kart

  Feb 10, 202651 minS0

  <p>Tolga Kart spent seven years building massive 3D worlds for Call of Duty at Sledgehammer Games. Then he left gaming for Tesla Autopilot, led simulation at Parallel Domain, and now he's the CEO of Third Dimension AI, a company building neural simulators that reconstruct reality from sensor data.<br /><br />In this episode, we dig into SuperSim, Third Dimension's first product, which takes driving logs and reconstructs them into photorealistic 4D environments where robots can train and validate their behavior. The results look so real that Tolga has to convince people they're not just watching video.<br /><br />In...

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