Talks at Google

Diego Perez visits Google to discuss his book "Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future.” The book demonstrates how we can all move forward in our healing, from learning self-compassion to letting go, to becoming emotionally mature. Diego Perez is a New York Times bestselling author who is widely known on Instagram and various social media networks through his pen name Yung Pueblo. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. Diego is primarily a meditator who shares his insights on his life, his healing journey and advice on lifting the heaviness that prevents us from healing ourselves and the world. Diego hopes to inspire others into believing that deep healing is both possible and achievable. He also hopes that as more of us heal, our actions will become more intentional, our decisions will become more compassionate, our thinking will become clearer, and the future will become brighter. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

3 Jan 20231h 1min

Anand Giridharadas visits Google to discuss his book "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World." Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. The book argues that elites rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; that they lavishly reward so-called thought leaders who redefine “change” in ways that preserve the status quo; and that they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. Giridharadas asks hard questions: for example, why should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions eroded by lobbying and tax dodging? His groundbreaking investigation has already forced a great, sorely needed reckoning among the world’s wealthiest and those they hover above, and it points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions. Originally published in October of 2018. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

30 Des 20221h 3min

Gerd Gigerenzer visits Google to discuss his latest book "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms.” The book is a comprehensive guide on how to stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms that beat us in chess, try to find us romantic partners, and tell us to “turn right in 500 yards.” Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think that replacing people with software might make the world a better place, while tech industry critics warn darkly about surveillance capitalism. Despite their differing views of the future, they all agree: machines will soon do everything better than humans. Machines powered by artificial intelligence are good at some things, like playing chess, but not others. Gigerenzer explains why algorithms often fail at finding us romantic partners, why self-driving cars fall prey to the so-called Russian Tank Fallacy, and how judges and police rely increasingly on nontransparent “black box” algorithms to predict whether a criminal defendant will reoffend or show up in court. He invokes the hit TV show Black Mirror, considers the privacy paradox in which people want privacy, but give their data away, and explains that social media gets us hooked by programming intermittent reinforcement in the form of the “like” button. Gigerenzer tells us that we shouldn't trust smart technology unconditionally, but we shouldn’t fear it unthinkingly either. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

27 Des 20221h 1min

Author Michael Lent visits Google to discuss his book "Christmas Letters from Hell: All The News We Hate from the People We Love." Who doesn't love to open the mailbox during the holidays and find a newsletter? Whether it's a letter from an old college roommate inadvertently revealing her husband's wandering eye, a self-congratulatory account of a cousin's rise to power at the local fast-food joint, or a mind-numbingly detailed account of a year's medical ailments from a coworker, they're always entertaining. "Christmas Letters from Hell" skewers holiday letters of all shapes and sizes, from the ones that come crammed with cheesy graphics or written from the perspective of the recently neutered family dog to those filled with stories of "perfect" family vacations that were clearly anything but. Here Santa uses his holiday letter to let the elves know that he'll be outsourcing their roles overseas…effective immediately; a bipolar mom tells two very different versions of the year's events; and Osama bin Laden touches base with his high school host family in Minneapolis. "Christmas Letters from Hell" serves up a steaming, savory blend of the holiday cheer, humor, and twisted truth in our well-intended attempts to stay in touch gone horribly, horribly wrong. Originally published in December of 2007. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

23 Des 202218min

Aliza Knox visits Google to discuss her book "Don't Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise and Thrive at Work." The book presents six empowering, essential mindshifts necessary to rise and thrive in your career – and to love your life at the same time. Driven by Aliza’s four decades working in and leading some of the world’s most celebrated firms, and featuring candid accounts of other people’s successes and missteps in industries such as global tech and consumer goods, this book is an essential guide to integrating your professional and personal goals to build a fulfilling, complete life. "Don’t Quit Your Day Job" provides a global outlook that reveals how to excel in today’s hybrid, often dispersed world of work. Whether you’re just starting your first job or you’re ready to rise to the C-suite, it will help you advance and flourish in the workplace. Aliza Knox built and led Asia-Pacific businesses for three of the world's top technology firms—Google, Twitter and Cloudflare. Named 2020 APAC IT Woman of The Year, she spent decades as a global finance and consulting executive, and is currently a non-executive board director and a senior advisor for Boston Consulting Group. Aliza now shares her passion and lessons learned with the next generation of business leaders, guiding companies across new frontiers while building and maintaining strong connections between teams around the world. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

20 Des 20221h

Jake Dell and Evan Bloom visit Google to discuss what makes a Jewish Deli, the role delis play in American culture, and how Evan and Jake maintain the food traditions of their ancestors while operating modern businesses. Will Katz Deli ever give up their ticket system? Can there be more than one great Jewish Deli per city? Does the future of Jewish cuisine have room for vegan Rubens? These questions and many more are addressed in this talk. Many people know Katz’s deli as the setting for the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally.” But despite being a popular film location, Katz’s was famous long before Hollywood came knocking. Its enduring slogan, “Send a salami to your boy in the Army,” dates back to World War II. Katz’s is likely the most famous remaining Jewish-style deli in the nation, and has been dispensing its famous pastrami and corned beef on Manhattan’s Lower East Side for more than 130 years. Originally published in July of 2013. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

16 Des 202254min

Kathy Rastle, a leading expert on skilled reading and learning to read, visits Google to discuss how her lab’s research has had a major influence on how children around the world are taught to read. Learning to read is the most important milestone of a child’s education. Yet, reading is not a universal part of the human experience. Writing is a recent cultural invention and reading is a learned skill whose mastery requires years of instruction, dedication, and practice. Kathy will walk us through what psychological science has discovered about this fascinating process, and share her reflections on how we can use this knowledge to improve literacy for children around the world. Kathy’s research is focused on reading acquisition, skilled reading, and the relationship between reading and spoken language. She has a particular interest in characterizing the information that is present in written languages, and in understanding how this information is learned through instruction and text experience. Recently, she conducted a number of artificial language learning experiments investigating how acquired knowledge is influenced by properties of languages and writing systems, the quality of prior knowledge, and the nature of instruction. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

13 Des 20221h 1min

Mary Bond is a former dancer, a Structural Integration practitioner and former Chair of the Rolf Movement® faculty of the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. In addition to running movement workshops, she has authored many articles and two books: "The New Rules Of Posture" and "Your Body Mandala: Posture as a Path to Presence". Drawing on current anatomy research and neuroscience, Mary discusses how her work empowers people to change the way they inhabit their body. She shares foundational sensory perceptions that, when practiced mindfully, can radically change how you sit, stand and move. Originally published in September of 2017. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

9 Des 20221h 4min