Talks at Google Talks at Google

Productivity expert, entrepreneur, creator, and bestselling author Ali Abdaal visits Google to discuss his book “Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You.” We often think that productivity is all about hard work, and that the road to success is lined with endless frustration and toil. But what if there’s another way?
In this book, Ali reveals how the science of feel-good productivity can transform your life. He introduces the three hidden 'energizers' that underpin enjoyable productivity, the three 'blockers' we must overcome to beat procrastination, and the three 'sustainers' that prevent burnout and help us achieve lasting fulfillment. 
Ali Abdaal started his creator journey in 2017 and has since amassed a following of over 7 million people across various platforms and newsletters, and leads a company with over 15 employees. While working as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service, Ali started to document his journey towards living a healthier, happier, more productive life on his YouTube channel and other social media platforms. To date, Ali’s evidence-based videos, podcasts and articles sharing insights into the human mind have reached hundreds of millions of people all around the world.
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Sarah Williams Goldhagen visits Google to discuss how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to the human experience.
Taking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes, buildings, and cityscapes, Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places they build are central to their well-being, their physical health, their communal and social lives, and even their very sense of themselves. From this foundation, Goldhagen presents a powerful case that societies must use this knowledge to rethink what and how they build: the world needs better-designed, healthier environments that address the complex range of human individual and social needs.
Originally published in June of 2017.
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Jessica Stone, Grant Gustin, Isabelle McCalla, Gregg Edelman & Paul Alexander Nolan visit Google to perform a song and discuss the Tony-nominated Broadway show “Water for Elephants”, which is based on the critically acclaimed bestselling novel that comes to vivid life on Broadway in a spectacle-filled new musical.
After losing what matters most, a young veterinary student jumps off a moving train, unsure of where the road will take him. He then finds a new home with the remarkable crew of a traveling circus, and a life - and love - beyond his wildest dreams.
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Chase Iron Eyes visits Google to discuss ongoing efforts to prevent oil pipelines from being built at Standing Rock, recent revelations of corporate infiltration of anti-pipeline protests, and attempts to keep arrested water protectors free from prison.
Chase has used his career as an attorney to advocate for Native American civil rights. He has served as a staff attorney for the Lakota People's Law Project, an initiative founded in 2005 with the purpose of ending the unlawful practice of removing Lakota children from their families and placing them in foster care outside their communities. In the summer of 2016, he joined with other anti-pipeline protesters near Standing Rock to resist the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.
Originally published in October of 2017.
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Writer, broadcaster, and researcher Dr. Aarathi Prasad visits Google to discuss her book “Silk: A World History.” In a tale that spans continents and millennia, Aarathi weaves together the complex story of the queen of fabrics. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, she explores the global, natural, and cultural history of a unique material that has fascinated the world for thousands of years.
Some four thousand years ago, humans began cultivating silkworms. With it came a growing obsession with unlocking silk’s secrets to understand how the strongest biological material ever known could be harnessed.
Explorers and scientists, including groundbreaking women who pushed the boundaries of societal expectations, dedicated their lives to investigate the anatomy of silk-producing animals. They endured unbelievable hardships to discover and collect new specimens, leading them to the moths of China, Indonesia, and India; the spiders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Madagascar; and the mollusks of the Mediterranean.
Rich with the complex connections between human and nonhuman worlds, the book not only peers into the past but also reveals the fiber’s impact today, inspiring new technologies across the fashion, military, and medical fields, and shows its untapped potential to pioneer a more sustainable future.
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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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