Talks at Google

When Mark Pollock lost his sight at the age of twenty-two, he thought his life was over. The story of how he overcame the odds to rebuild his life and exceed his own wildest expectations has inspired people the world over. In his story, you will find what can't be taught in school: the true education that is garnered from what Mark calls 'the university of life'. Unbroken by blindness, Mark became an adventure athlete competing in ultra-endurance races across deserts, mountains, and the polar ice caps, ultimately becoming the first blind person to race to the South Pole. He won silver and bronze medals for rowing at the Commonwealth Games and set up a successful international motivational speaking business. In 2010, a fall from a second story window nearly killed him; Mark broke his back and the damage to his spinal cord left him paralysed. Now, he is on a new expedition, exploring the intersection where humans and technology collide on his mission to cure paralysis in our lifetime. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Matt Damon & Gary White visit Google to discuss their recent book "The Worth of Water: Our Story of Chasing Solutions to the World's Greatest Challenge". This is the incredible true story of two unlikely allies on a mission to end the global water crisis.. With humor and humility, Matt & Gary illuminate the challenges of launching a brand-new model with extremely high stakes: better health and greater prosperity for people all over the world. "The Worth of Water" invites us to become a part of this effort—to match hope with resources, to empower families and communities, and conqure the global water crisis for good. On any given morning, you might wake up and shower with water, make your coffee with water, flush your toilet with water—and think nothing of it. But around the world, more than three-quarters of a billion people can't do any of that—because they have no clean water source near their homes. 1.7 billion people don't even have access to a toilet. This crisis affects a third of all humans on the planet. It keeps kids out of schools and women out of work, trapping people in extreme poverty and spreading disease. It is also completely solvable. That conviction is what brought together movie actor Matt Damon and water expert and engineer Gary White. Over time, they and their organization, Water.org, have found an approach that works. Working with partners across East Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, they've helped over 40 million people access water and sanitation. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and the remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, and yet he has been often overlooked by history. In "Tesla: Inventor of the Modern", Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind. When Tesla's first breakthrough―alternating current, the basis of our electric grid―pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct-current empire, Tesla's superior technology prevailed. Unfortunately, he had little business sense and could not capitalize on this success. His most advanced ideas went unrecognized for decades: forty years in the case of the radio patent, longer still for his ideas on laser beam technology. Although penniless during his later years, he never stopped imagining. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communications. His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy. So who was this genius? Drawing on letters, technical notebooks, and other primary sources, author Richard Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor. Born during a lightning storm at midnight, Tesla died alone in a New York City hotel. He was an acute germaphobe who never shook hands and required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he spoke eight languages and could recite entire books from memory. Yet Tesla's most famous inventions were not the product of fastidiousness or linear thought, but of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences: he conceived the induction motor while walking through a park and reciting Goethe's Faust. Tesla worked tirelessly to offer electric power to the world, to introduce automatons that would reduce life's drudgery, and to develop machines that might one day abolish war. His story is a reminder that technology can transcend the marketplace and that profit is not the only motivation for invention. Originally published in February of 2018. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Chef Tala Bashmi visits Google to discuss her successful culinary career and how she is bringing cuisine from the Gulf region to the forefront of the global food industry. Tala Bashmi started her culinary career by joining The Gulf Hotel Bahrain as a trainee and eventually working her way up the ranks. She studied at the Culinary Arts Academy in Lucerne, Switzerland, where she received her Masters of International Business in Culinary Management. Returning to the Middle East, she joined the cast of Top Chef, Middle East & North Africa, as a contestant, where she finished in the finals and showcased the modernized Bahraini cuisine that she would become famous for. Chef Tala then opened her inaugural restaurant Fusions by Tala in her home country of Bahrain, where she prides herself in her daring and willingness to experiment with a range of ingredients and techniques that come from different parts of the world. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Professor Richard D. Wolff visits Google to discuss the economic dimensions of our modern lives, our jobs, our incomes, and our debts in his unique mixture of deep insight and dry humor. He presents insights into current events and draws connections to the past to highlight the machinations of our global economy. He tries to help us to understand political and corporate policy, the organization of labor, the distribution of goods and services, and challenges us to question some of the deepest foundations of modern society. Professor Wolff argues that modern capitalism has spawned a deepening economic crisis alongside a captive political establishment. He argues that whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve. He believes that this state of affairs is due to the lack of genuine democracy in our economy as well as in our politics. His proposed solution requires the creation of a genuine economic democracy, starting with workers managing their own workplaces, as the basis for a genuine political democracy. In this Talk, Professor Wolff lays out a hopeful and concrete vision of how to make that possible, addressing the many people who have concluded that economic inequality and politics as usual must be changed. Originally published in June of 2017. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

North African fashion designer Nadine Bejou visits Google to discuss her journey as an Arab woman entrepreneur navigating the fashion industry, and how patience, persistence, and a willingness to self-teach has helped her to find her authentic voice. Nadine is a North African fashion designer and entrepreneur based in Seattle, who has built her businesses from the ground up despite the challenges she has faced being a first generation Libyan-American. She runs several successful fashion ventures including IDINA Bride, a luxury bridal shop, and Nadia's Evening, a fully sustainable prom and eveningwear brand which can be found in over 20 locations in the US and Canada. Her latest project, Soraya, a modest luxury evening label, has already received favorable recognition in the evening luxury space. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Author Kyle Johnson visits Google to discuss his book "Inception and Philosophy" which draws insight from important philosophical minds from Plato to Aristotle, Decartes to Hume, to shed new light on the movie's captivating themes, including the one that everyone talks about: did the top ever fall down (and does it even matter)? In the world of Christopher Nolan's four-time Academy Award-winning movie Inception, people can share one another's dreams and alter their beliefs and thoughts. Inception is a metaphysical heist film that raises more questions than it answers: Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of the "self" and the "other"? Johnson's book further explores the movie's key questions and themes, including how we can tell if we're dreaming or awake, how to make sense of a paradox, and whether or not dream inception is possible. It also gives new insights into the nature of free will, time, dreams, and the unconscious mind. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern visits Google to discuss her book "Quantum Steampunk: The Physics of Yesterday's Tomorrow." Victorian era steam engines and particle physics may seem worlds apart, yet a new branch of science, quantum thermodynamics, re-envisions the scientific underpinnings of the Industrial Revolution through the lens of today's quantum information revolution. Classical thermodynamics, understood as the study of engines, energy, and efficiency, needs reimagining to take advantage of quantum mechanics, the basic framework that explores the nature of reality by peering at minute matter, down to the momentum of a single particle. In her new book, intrepid Harvard-trained physicist Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern introduces these concepts to the uninitiated with what she calls "quantum steampunk," after the fantastical genre that pairs futuristic technologies with Victorian sensibilities. While readers follow the adventures of a rag-tag steampunk crew on trains, dirigibles, and automobiles, they explore questions such as, "Can quantum physics revolutionize engines?" and "What deeper secrets can quantum information reveal about the trajectory of time?" Yunger Halpern also describes her own adventures in the quantum universe and provides an insider's look at the work of the scientists obsessed with its technological promise. Moving from fundamental physics to cutting-edge experimental applications, "Quantum Steampunk" explores the field's aesthetic, shares its whimsy, and gazes into the potential of a quantum future. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Peter Kohler, founder of The Plastic Tide project, and Dr. Stefan Leutenegger, Lecturer in Robotics at the Imperial College London, visit Google to discuss how the ocean is under siege from an ever-increasing tide of waste, and how technology like machine learning and drones can help us fix the issue. Plastics are threatening not only a vital economic resource worth an estimated $5 trillion a year, but also humanity's very own life support. Oceanic plastic waste is growing by 8 million metric tonnes a year. If nothing is done, it is estimated that this figure will rise to 80 million metric tonnes a year by 2025. It consists of all sizes of plastics, with larger pieces taking at least 400 years to break down into fragments known as microplastics. These and other tiny pieces of plastic, like microbeads, accumulate into a toxic oceanic soup that recent estimates put at 15 to 50 trillion pieces. Solving this problem is becoming a major priority for scientists. But without further knowledge, it is impossible to identify trends, support legislation, monitor improvement, or develop strategies to reduce plastic pollution if we don't have evidence of when, where and how the plastics are distributed. That's why Peter Kohler founded The Plastic Tide initiative in 2015, with the aim of quantifying the problem using drone imagery of beaches in England & beyond. By raising awareness and generating precise data, Kohler is hoping to drive solutions at societal, political, and technological levels. He has already collected a huge database of drone imagery around British beaches, and a prototype algorithm he developed combines a deep-learning based plastic detection scheme in drone images with geo-referenced mapping. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

In celebration of Africa Week, Dipo Faloyin discusses his book "Africa Is Not A Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa." This portrait of modern Africa pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a much more comprehensive story. In this funny and insightful book, Dipo offers a much-needed corrective to the simplistic stereotype of Africa as an arid landscape of famines and safaris, plagued by poverty and strife. He examines each country's colonial heritage, and explores a wide range of subjects, from chronicling urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollof rice, to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture. "Africa Is Not A Country" brings the story of the continent towards reality, celebrating the energy and fabric of its different cultures and communities in a way that has never been done before. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.