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.  

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.  

From the bestselling authors and hosts of "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" podcast, Steven Novella, Jay Novella & Bob Novella visit Google to discuss their book "The Skeptics' Guide to the Future: What Yesterday's Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow." The book is a high-tech roadmap of the future, cracking open the follies of futurists' past and how technology will profoundly change our world, redefining what it means to be human. Our predictions of the future are a wild fantasy, inextricably linked to our present hopes and fears, biases and ignorance. Whether they be the outlandish leaps predicted in the 1920s, like multi-purpose utility belts with climate control capabilities and planes the size of luxury cruise ships, or the forecasts of the ‘60s, which didn’t anticipate the sexual revolution or women’s liberation, the path to the present is littered with failed predictions and incorrect estimations. The best we can do is try to absorb the lessons from futurism's checkered past, perhaps learning to do a little better. In the book, Steven Novella and his co-authors build upon the work of futurists of the past by examining what they got right, what they got wrong, and how they came to those conclusions. By exploring the pitfalls of each era, they give their own speculations about the distant future, transformed by unbelievable technology ranging from genetic manipulation to artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Applying their trademark skepticism, they carefully extrapolate upon each scientific development, leaving no stone unturned as they lay out a vision for the future. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

In "How to Create a Mind, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed," futurist and author Ray Kurzweil explores the limitless potential of reverse engineering the human brain. Ray Kurzweil is arguably today's most influential—and often controversial—futurist. In "How to Create a Mind," Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the human brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness while envisioning the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating. A prolific inventor, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition software, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition software. Originally published in November of 2012. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Dandapani visits Google to discuss his book "The Power of Unwavering Focus." Anxiety, stress, worry, and fear—these mental maladies are making us increasingly unhappy and unhealthy. Dandapani—argues that learning how to concentrate is the cure. "The Power of Unwavering Focus" distills his wisdom and learnings into a step-by-step guide to taking charge of your life by understanding the mind, harnessing awareness, and cultivating a concentration practice. Dandapani is a Hindu priest, entrepreneur, and former monk of ten years. After graduating university with a degree in Electrical Engineering, he left it all behind to become a Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. For 10 years he lived a life of serious personal discipline and training at his guru’s cloistered monastery in Hawaii. When his vows expired, he chose to venture out into the world making New York City his home. He now works with entrepreneurs and some of the top athletes in the world in helping them understand and leverage their mind so that they can be the best at what they do. He does this by empowering them with tools and teachings that have been used by Hindu monks of his tradition for thousands of years. An internationally renowned speaker and world-leading expert on leveraging the human mind to create a life of purpose and joy, Dandapani has shared the stage with world-renowned leaders, companies and many individuals. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Moriyasu Ito, a priest with the renowned Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo, visits Google to share the history of Shintoism and how it has become an important part of Japanese culture. He talks about how Shinto first started in Japan, the way of Shinto in life, and its numerous festivities and celebrations. According to Ito, Shinto can be difficult for many foreigners to understand because it is not organized in the same way as many Western religions; it does not have initiation rituals or even a specific membership. Shinto focuses on the worship of kami, numerous divinities who are believed to inhabit all things. Numerically, it is Japan's largest religion, the second being Buddhism. Most of the country's population takes part in both Shinto and Buddhist activities, especially festivals, reflecting a common view in Japanese culture that the beliefs and practices of different religions need not be exclusive. Originally published in July of 2016. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.  

Randall Munroe visits Google to discuss his book "What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions." The millions of people around the world who read the first "What If?" book still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist. But before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to a T. rex, or fill every church with bananas, be sure to consult this practical guide for impractical ideas. Unfazed by absurdity, Randall consults the latest research on everything from swing-set physics to airplane-catapult design to clearly and concisely answer his readers’ questions. As he consistently demonstrates, you can learn a lot from examining how the world might work in very specific extreme circumstances. This book is filled with bonkers science, boundless curiosity, and Randall’s signature stick-figure comics. Randall Munroe is the author of the number one New York Times bestsellers "How To", "What If?", and "Thing Explainer"; the science question-and-answer blog “What If?”; and the popular web comic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full time. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.