Talks at Google

In honor of World Wildlife Day, wildlife veterinarian Dr. Gabby Wild visited Google to discuss her latest book, National Geographic Kids’ "Wild Vet Adventures: Saving Animals Around The World". Dr. Wild travels the continents to meet some of Earth's most incredible creatures, including regal lions, playful pandas, fearsome Gila monsters, and creepy tarantulas. She teaches young readers about animal anatomy and behaviors, diets, families, the dangers they face in the wild, the special human-animal relationship, and the challenges that arise when they share a habitat. Dr. Wild has traveled all over the world to save animals. Kids often recognize Dr. Wild as the veterinarian from the online game Animal Jam Classic, where she answers questions from children about wild animals. When Dr. Wild is not traveling to save animals, she is an emergency room doctor and veterinary surgeon at The Animal Surgical Center on Long Island. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

1 Mar 202258min

Baratunde Thurston visits Google to discuss his book, How To Be Black. Drawing from his 30-plus years of personal expertise in being black, this satirical guide to racial issues includes helpful essays like “How to Be the Black Friend,” “How to Speak for All Black People,” and “How To Celebrate Black History Month.” Audacious, cunning, and razor-sharp, How to Be Black exposes the mass-media’s insidiously racist, monochromatic portrayal of black culture’s richness and variety. Fans of "Stuff White People Like," "This Week in Blackness," and "Ending Racism in About an Hour" will be captivated, uplifted, incensed, and inspired by this hilarious and powerful attack on America’s blacklisting of black culture. But the book isn't just filled with biting satire - it’s a comedic memoir, chronicling Baratunde’s coming-of-blackness from being raised by an Afrocentric single mother in one of Washington D.C.’s worst neighborhoods, through his education at The Sidwell Friends School & Harvard, and eventually into becoming a producer for The Daily Show and digital director of The Onion. How To Be Black is written for anyone who can read, loves to laugh, and has ever felt a distance between who they know themselves to be and what the world expects. Originally published in March of 2012. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

25 Feb 20221h 1min

Paving the way for those who might one day be deemed architectural technologists, Iddris Sandu is a pioneering young technologist seeking to level the playing field for fellow African youth & other marginalized groups. Having worked with the likes of creatives such as Jay-Z, Nipsey Hussle, Louis Vuitton, & Off-White's Virgil Abloh, Iddris has been making waves since before he turned 18. Not only is Iddris breaking ground in the use of emerging technology in creative spaces, but also in creating unique and sustainable designs to impact some of the most vulnerable populations in society. Today Iddris visits Google to discuss his journey from a young aspiring engineer to a technologist, as well as the role of technology as an agent for sustainable change in the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, the diaspora, and across the continent of Africa. Moderated by Kemi Shokunbi. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

22 Feb 20221h 6min

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound “black.” In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, linguist John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

18 Feb 202255min

Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation (or STI) rather than a maker of them. In the book “What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?“, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere, but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. These contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Originally published in December of 2017. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

15 Feb 202244min

When Damon Tweedy began medical school, he envisioned a bright future where his segregated, working-class background would become largely irrelevant. Instead, he found that he had joined a new world where race was front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon met a professor who bluntly questioned whether he belonged in medical school, a moment that crystallized the challenges he would face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture, the common refrain for numerous diseases repeated as “More common in blacks than in whites.” Tweedy’s book, Black Man in a White Coat, examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common amongst black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care. Originally published in September of 2015. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

11 Feb 202248min

Stephanie Hicks, PhD is a Lecturer at the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan and completed her master’s degree and PhD in Educational Policy Studies – Social Foundations at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Stephanie sat down with Google to unpack what it means to be Black in America and discusses the catalysts, realizations and misperceptions of the Black experience through the lens of her own personal experiences and her studies on intergroup dialogue and DEI policy.  In celebration of Black History Month, members of the Black Googler Network created a film that explores their past experiences as it pertains to their initial realizations of being Black. This project was inspired from the 2017 CNN feature of, The First Time I Realized I Was Black, and the 1903 book by W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Audience members of the live talk just finished watching this incredibly powerful film that showcases some poignant experiences that Black people in America face on a daily basis. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video. Moderated by Brady Bennett.

8 Feb 202231min

Belva Davis is a history-maker, an award-winning journalist, and a pioneering feminist. She has traveled the world reporting on politics, terrorism, racial and gender issues, and the role of art and culture in increasing human understanding. From her hardscrabble beginnings in the Deep South during the Great Depression, she broke into journalism and made the move from segregated newspaper and radio work, becoming the first black woman hired as a commercial television news reporter on the West Coast. She has anchored at three major network affiliates CBS, NBC, and PBS. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

4 Feb 202254min