Video2021

NS-18 webcast: William Shatner’s flight

Bezos is on camera as host rather than passenger: he opens the capsule hatch and stands, champagne in hand, as a visibly shaken 90-year-old William Shatner describes the ‘blackness’ of space (‘what you have given me is the most profound experience’), a moment widely replayed because Bezos turns away to spray champagne mid-speech.

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Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 70 recordings of Jeff Bezos →

2019
JFK Space Summit fireside chat
A month before the Apollo 11 anniversary, Bezos tells Caroline Kennedy why going to the Moon is harder now than in 1962 (‘the thing that slows things down is procurement’), argues that settling space ‘is not optional,’ and calls spaceflight a problem ‘God set up as achievable, but just barely.’
2019
Reagan National Defense Forum fireside chat
Weeks after Amazon sued over losing the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft, Bezos tells the defense establishment that ‘if big tech is turning their back on the Department of Defense, this country is in big trouble,’ that ‘we are the good guys,’ and that the Pentagon’s procurement system must move faster; he also discusses Blue Origin and the New Glenn program.
2020
House antitrust hearing: first congressional testimony
Bezos’s first appearance before Congress, by video link alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai. His opening statement tells the story of his mother Jackie, a 17-year-old high-school student when he was born, his adoptive father Miguel’s flight from Cuba, and the garage start of Amazon.
2021
‘I want to go on this flight’
In a short self-shot video Bezos says ‘ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space’ and asks his brother Mark on camera to join him (‘I really want you to come with me. Would you?’), announcing that both will fly on July 20.
2021
NS-16 post-flight press conference
Two hours after landing, Bezos, in flight suit and cowboy hat, describes the view (‘fragile’) and the weightlessness, thanks ‘every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this’ (a line that drew wide criticism), and announces the $100 million Courage and Civility Awards to Van Jones and chef José Andrés.
2021
New Shepard first human flight (NS-16)
Fifteen days after handing the Amazon CEO job to Andy Jassy, and on the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11, Bezos flies to 107 km on New Shepard’s first crewed mission with his brother Mark, 82-year-old Mercury 13 aviator Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.
2021
NS-18 webcast: William Shatner’s flight
Bezos is on camera as host rather than passenger: he opens the capsule hatch and stands, champagne in hand, as a visibly shaken 90-year-old William Shatner describes the ‘blackness’ of space (‘what you have given me is the most profound experience’), a moment widely replayed because Bezos turns away to spray champagne mid-speech.
2021
Ignatius Forum: Our Future in Space
A surprise guest at the cathedral’s annual Ignatius Forum, Bezos describes the ‘overview effect’ of his July flight, says he spends more on the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund than on space, proposes moving heavy industry and solar farms into orbit, and sketches O’Neill colonies housing a million people each; he calls terraforming Mars ‘very, very challenging.’
2022
Tribute to his father at the Ellis Island award
Bezos chokes up while describing his adoptive father Miguel, who left Cuba alone at 16 with no English, as an ‘intense, hard worker’ with ‘an easy smile and self-deprecating humor’: ‘My brother, sister and I could not have had a better role model.’
2022
CNN: ‘I will give away most of my wealth’
In his first joint interview with Lauren Sanchez, Bezos says for the first time that he plans to give away the majority of his fortune in his lifetime (‘the hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way’), announces a $100 million Courage and Civility Award for Dolly Parton, and warns consumers to ‘batten down the hatches’ before a possible recession.
2023
Lex Fridman Podcast #405: Amazon and Blue Origin
Bezos’s longest recorded conversation: two-plus hours on his Texas childhood and grandfather’s ranch, rocket engineering and the New Glenn program, the physics of lunar landers, Amazon’s founding and ‘Day 1’ culture, the six-page memo, ‘disagree and commit,’ how he structures his mornings, and his views on AI and humanity’s long-term future.
2024
DealBook Summit: from Amazon to space
A month after the election and six weeks after he killed The Washington Post’s planned Harris endorsement, Bezos tells Sorkin he is ‘very optimistic’ about Donald Trump’s second term and its deregulatory agenda, says he will try to talk Trump out of the idea that the press is the enemy, defends the non-endorsement decision, and discusses Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Amazon’s AI investments and his fiancee Lauren Sanchez’s role in his life.
2025
Italian Tech Week 2025: ‘Dreaming and Building’
Bezos tells John Elkann that AI is in an ‘industrial bubble’ in which ‘society benefits from those inventions’ even if investors lose, that ‘we’re going to start building these giant gigawatt data centers in space’ within ten to twenty years, and that entrepreneurs ‘need to be optimistic, almost to the point of delusion.’