CEO of Good Steward LLC, financial coach, and author Shawn Rochester visits Google to discuss his book, "The Black Tax: The Cost of Being Black in America". He examines the various costs associated with being Black in America, as well as what the Black community and concerned advocates can do to help close the wealth gap.​ While Black Americans have long felt the devastating effects of anti-black discrimination, they have often had great difficulty articulating and substantiating both the existence and impact of that discrimination to an American public who is convinced that it no longer exists. Professionals in academia, the media, and the business community, along with people in the general public have struggled to explain the significant and persistent gaps in wealth, employment, and poverty between Black and White communities in what they perceive to be a post-racial America. In this book, Shawn Rochester shows how The Black Tax, or the financial cost of conscious and unconscious anti-black discrimination, creates a massive financial burden on Black American households that dramatically reduces their ability to leave a substantial legacy for future generations. Originally published in February of 2018 Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Dr. Lonnie Johnson, engineer & Inventor Hall of Fame inductee, visits Google to discuss his past work with NASA, the US Air Force, and his efforts to help underrepresented communities enter STEM fields. He is the founder and President of Johnson Research and Development and the founder and President of the Johnson STEM Activity Center, a 501c(3) dedicated to educating disadvantaged and underserved children in STEM. A prolific inventor with over 150 patents, he is best known for his popular invention, the super soaker. Dr. Johnson attended Tuskegee University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, a master’s degree in nuclear engineering and two honorary doctorates in science. He served in the U.S. Air Force where he analyzed space systems and worked on the Stealth Bomber Program, earning the Air Force Achievement Medal and the Air Force Commendation Medal twice. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he helped develop some of the nation’s most advanced technologies in the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Mars Observer and the Cassini Mission to Saturn, earning multiple awards for his contributions. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

National Book Award winner, MacArthur fellow, and New York Times bestselling author Colson Whitehead visits Google to discuss his novel, "The Underground Railroad." The novel tells the story of Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood, where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share. Originally published in September of 2016. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

In honor of Black History Month, Google is excited to welcome Dr. Clarence Jones - author, lawyer, personal counsel, advisor and friend to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1962, Martin Luther King wrote a letter recommending his lawyer and advisor, Clarence B. Jones, to the New York State Bar, stating: “Ever since I have known Mr. Jones, I have always seen him as a man of sound judgment, deep insights, and great dedication. I am also convinced that he is a man of great integrity.” Jones joined the team of lawyers defending Dr. King in the midst of King’s 1960 tax fraud trial, which was resolved in King’s favor in May of 1960. After King’s arrest in Birmingham, Jones secretly smuggled King’s handwritten letters from jail, writings that were later printed and distributed nationally as the famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Jones continued to function as King’s lawyer and advisor through the remainder of his life, assisting him in drafting the “I Have a Dream” speech and preserving King’s copyright of the momentous address, acting as part of the successful defense team for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan, and contributing with Vincent Harding and Andrew Young to King’s “Beyond Vietnam” address at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4th 1967. In summing up his sentiments on King’s life, Jones remarked in a 2007 interview: “Except for Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Martin Luther King, Jr., in 12 years and 4 months from 1956 to 1968, did more to achieve political, economic, and social justice in America than any other event or person in the previous 400 years.” Originally published in February of 2012. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

In celebration of Black History Month, Google is excited to welcome life coach, spiritual teacher and African Healing Practitioner Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi as she unpacks the pre-colonial history of African Spirituality and how it intersects with global systemic issues in the 21st century. Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi is a pre-eminent and pioneering traditional healer who has successfully merged the sacredness of African Spirituality with modern thinking. She is a celebrated spiritual teacher, life coach, African storyteller, actress, writer, dancer and trained facilitator. She has been instrumental in changing perceptions around the practice of “ubungoma”, a sacred form of African Spiritual Healing. This has made her a household name in Southern Africa and with Africans in the diaspora over the last decade as she continues to shift mindsets and encourage people to access African spiritual healing modalities and indigenous knowledge systems. Gogo Dineo cemented her position as a foremost speaker in the global market as she graced the TEDxCAPETOWN stage in 2019 and as a keynote speaker in Lüneburg, Germany at Leuphana University at the Leverage Points and Sustainability conference, where she spoke on how the global healthcare system can leverage from African indigenous healing practices to overcome systemic failures. Visit http://g.co/TalksAtGoogle/AfricanSpirituality to watch the video.

Judson Brewer visits Google to discuss his book "Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind." The book lays out a step-by-step plan that is clinically proven to break the cycles that drive anxiety and addictive habits.  We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for a wine bottle every night, many of us are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. In this timely book, Dr. Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone. We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope, such as stress eating, procrastination, and social media doom-scrolling. Anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought, so we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us how to map our brains, so that we can discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Mark Blyth, a political economist, challenges the notion of austerity as a solution, highlighting its negative impact on economic growth. He discusses the origins of the financial crisis, European banks' risky behavior, historical perspectives on debt, and alternative economic strategies in countries like Ireland and Iceland.

Susan Wilner Golden, author of 'Stage (Not Age)', discusses the $22 trillion opportunity in understanding and serving people over 60. Longevity presents both challenges and opportunities for companies. The book emphasizes life stage over age, highlighting the diverse needs within the demographic. With 10,000 Americans turning sixty-five daily, companies need to rethink their approach towards this rapidly growing market.