Talks at Google Talks at Google

Gary Small, a leading medical expert on memory and brain fitness, visits Google to discuss his book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Never before has one generation experienced such rapid change in the brain's underlying wiring system, and the full consequences of this evolution has yet to be fully explored until now.
Gary explores the remarkable evolution of the human brain caused by today’s constant technological presence. The book separates the digital natives from the digital immigrants, and suggests that the Internet—with its virtually limitless wealth of news and information—is radically altering the way young minds are developing and functioning. In this era of social media, Gary Small’s iBrain is an important guide to understanding the astonishing impact of this new brain evolution on our society and our future, as well as a warning of its potential dangers—increased mental illness, social isolation, Internet addiction, and more.
Originally published in November of 2008.
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Samuel T. Wilkinson visits Google to discuss his book “Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply about the Meaning of Our Existence.” By using principles from a variety of scientific disciplines, Samuel provides a framework for human evolution that reveals an overarching purpose to our existence.
Generations have been taught that evolution implies there is no overarching purpose to our existence, that life has no fundamental meaning. We are merely the accumulation of tens of thousands of intricate molecular accidents. Some scientists take this logic one step further, suggesting that evolution is intrinsically atheistic and goes against the concept of the divine.
But is this true?
By integrating emerging principles from a variety of scientific disciplines—ranging from evolutionary biology to psychology—Yale Professor Samuel Wilkinson provides a framework of evolution that implies not only that there is an overarching purpose to our existence, but what this purpose is.
Nature seems to have endowed us with competing dispositions, what Wilkinson calls the dual potential of human nature. We are pulled in different directions: selfishness and altruism, aggression and cooperation, lust and love. When we couple this with the observation that we possess a measure of free will, all this strongly implies there is a universal purpose to our existence.
This purpose may be to choose between the good and evil impulses that nature has created within us. Our life is a test. This is a theory that has been espoused by so many of the world’s religions. From a certain framework, these aspects of human nature—including how evolution shaped us—are evidence for the existence of the divine, not against it.
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Amy Larkin visits Google to discuss her book, "Environmental Debt."
For decades, politicians and business leaders alike told the American public that today's challenge was growing the economy, and that environmental protection could be left to future generations. Now in the wake of billions of dollars in costs associated with coastal devastation from hurricanes, rampant wildfires across the West, and groundwater contamination from drilling, it's becoming increasingly clear that yesterday's carefree attitude about the environment has morphed into a financial crisis of epic proportions.
Amy Larkin has been at the forefront of the fight for the environment for years, and in "Environmental Debt" she argues that the costs of global warming, extreme weather, pollution and other forms of environmental debt are wreaking havoc on the global economy. Synthesizing complex ideas, she pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cultural touchstones of the environmental debate, revealing how, for instance, despite coal's relative fame as a 'cheap' energy source, ordinary Americans pay $350 billion a year for coal's damage in business-related expenses, polluted watersheds, and in healthcare costs. And the problem stretches far beyond our borders: deforestation from twenty years ago in Thailand caused catastrophic flooding in 2011, and cost Toyota 3.4 percent of its annual production while causing tens of thousands of workers to lose jobs in three different countries.
Provocative and hard-hitting, "Environmental Debt" sweeps aside the false choices of today's environmental debate, and shows how to revitalize the economy through nature's bounty.
Originally published in August of 2013.
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Globally recognized investor Simran Kaur visits Google to discuss her book “Girls That Invest: Your Guide to Financial Independence through Shares and Stocks.” The book is a step-by-step guide to financial independence from the creator of the investing education podcast, Girls That Invest.
With only 15 to 25 percent of women investing, Simran founded Girls That Invest, a multi-million dollar media company that has amassed over six million podcast downloads and has become the world’s #1 investing podcast for women. As a Forbes 30 under 30, Global Cartier Women in Business Fellow and finalist for Young New Zealander of the Year, Simran’s work has been featured on TEDx US, Forbes, Vogue, Business Insider, and a billboard in Times Square where she rang the NASDAQ opening bell for International Day of the Girl.
Her mission is simple: Putting money into the hands of women. Simran spoke at the UK Houses of Parliament for International Women's Day in March 2023. Her best-selling book, Girls That Invest, has topped charts in the USA, Canada, UK and New Zealand and her podcast is listened to in over 150 countries, demonstrating the need for more investing education tailored to help tackle the wealth gap women are facing.
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Sarah Miller Caldicott, the great grand-niece of Thomas Edison, visits Google to discuss her book "Innovate Like Edison: The Five Step System for Breakthrough Business Success."
Thomas Edison is counted among the greatest innovators in American history. Edison's focus on practical accomplishment set the stage for America's global leadership in innovation. Now, for the first time ever, "Innovate Like Edison" translates the best practices of this supreme American inventor into contemporary terms to help today's leaders harness their own innovative potential.
With her unique insight and expertise, Caldicott introduces a carefully researched, easy-to-apply system of five success secrets inspired by the creative methods of Edison himself. Presented in a step-by-step fashion, "Innovate Like Edison" provides the tools and strategies you need to compete and win in the business world and in everyday life. Whether you're an amateur or an executive, "Innovate Like Edison" is a powerful tool that will enable you to revamp and revitalize your own creative genius and thrive in today's culture of innovation.
Originally published in February, 2008.
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Professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao visit Google to discuss their book “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder.” This book is a useful guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations.
Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make things even worse. Drawing from seven years of hands-on research, Sutton and Rao teach readers how to become “friction fixers.”
Sutton and Rao unpack how skilled friction fixers think and act like trustees of each others’ time. They provide friction forensics to help readers identify where to avert and repair bad organizational friction and where to maintain and inject good friction. The heart of the book digs into the causes and solutions for five of the most common and damaging friction troubles: oblivious leaders, addition sickness, broken connections, jargon monoxide, and fast & frenzied people and teams.
Sound familiar? Sutton and Rao are here to help. They wrap things up with lessons for leading your own friction project, including linking little things to big things; the power of civility, caring, and love for propelling designs and repairs; and embracing the mess that is an inevitable part of the process.
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