In 1726, Jonathan Swift described a wooden machine the size of a small room that would let anyone write books of philosophy, poetry, law, mathematics and theology “without the least assistance from genius or study”. Its inventor wanted funding to build more. Swift meant it as a joke. Three centuries on, it’s a rather uncomfortable one.

Dave and Kelly are joined by Aisling Mooney, founder of the health tech company Fertally, for a conversation that starts with Swift’s satire of the newly founded Royal Society and ends up somewhere very modern: what makes an idea worth pursuing, and how do we decide whether we should?

In this full podcast episode:

• The Scientific Revolution, the birth of the Royal Society in 1660, and a motto that means “take nobody’s word for it”

• Why the early scientists were intelligent generalists (Christopher Wren was an astronomer and an architect), and whether a polymath has the edge today

• Laputa, the flying island, and the “projectors” of the Grand Academy of Lagado, who spend their days trying to extract sunbeams from cucumbers

• The Engine itself: why it’s closer to Dadaism and the infinite monkeys than to a computer, and why “Swift invented ChatGPT” doesn’t quite hold up

• John Clark’s Eureka, the real nineteenth-century machine that composed Latin verse, and the schoolboys who would have loved it

• Aisling on turning problems she couldn’t stand into businesses, from plant-based food to fertility

• Is it easier or harder to invent something in 2026, and Jurassic Park’s question: just because we can, should we?

• The Star Trek gadget we want most and the real invention we should all be more grateful for

Inspired by our book, Myth-Made Machines: The Stories Behind Artificial Intelligence by Dave Bradley and Kelly Vero (Bloomsbury, published 3rd September 2026): https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/mythmade-machines-9798216370680/

Aisling Mooney is the founder and CEO of Fertally, a platform that helps fertility clinics and patients get to the research that matters. She is based in Ireland.

Next time: a stormy night in Geneva, a young woman, and one of literature’s most famous artificial creatures. Is Frankenstein’s monster an AI?

Not an AI podcast. A podcast about the stories that made AI.