Talks at Google

Psychologist Kelly McGonical explores what influences us to procrastinate, why we fail to resist temptation, and teaches that small interventions can have large, positive outcomes. Based on her wildly popular course "The Science of Willpower," her book "The Willpower Instinct" is the first book to explain the science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity. Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, McGonical explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. Readers will learn that willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Willpower is not an unlimited resource - too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Guilt and shame over your setbacks can lead to giving in again, but self-forgiveness and self-compassion can boost self-control - in fact, giving up control is sometimes the only way to gain self-control. Our willpower failures are contagious—you can catch the desire to overspend or overeat from your friends­­—but you can also catch self-control from the right role models. "The Willpower Instinct" combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from losing weight to more patient parenting, less procrastination, better health, and greater productivity at work. Originally published in January of 2012. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

For so long, we've been told that success means having it all and doing it all. But working more and harder is holding us back, not moving us forward. In Becoming Super Woman, New York Times bestselling author Nicole Lapin redefines what it means to be a woman who "has it all"—and shows you how to find lasting success by your own definition, on your own terms. Nicole candidly shares her own story of career burnout and an emergency hospitalization that prompted her to take her mental health seriously for the first time. Along the way, she discovered that not only was this priority shift not a defeat, but rather the key to unlocking even greater achievements. In her third and most personal book yet, Nicole lays out an actionable, 12-step plan to guide you in taking control and becoming the hero of your own story, with the skills it takes to be a real Super Woman, from productivity hacks to boundary setting. She makes the case that the real secret to success doesn't hinge on the hustle or how many degrees you have, but rather in "putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others." In fact, self-care is the biggest asset or liability in our careers—when it's on-point it can help us soar, and when it's neglected it can bring us down faster than anything else. Entertaining, honest, and life-changing, Becoming Super Woman shows us how to banish burnout, ward off a breakdown, and achieve true balance. Originally published in July of 2020. Visit http://g.co/TalksAtGoogle/SuperWoman to watch the video.

We hear the terms trauma and PTSD more and more these days. Yet many people still believe that trauma can only result from experiences that are particularly extreme. But trauma is an emotional response that can stem from a wide variety of upsetting experiences, leaving us feeling anxious, weighed down by negative emotions or memories, or feeling like we lack security. As a licensed therapist, Kati Morton addresses this challenge by asking, "If we don't have an understanding of trauma and how it's defined, how can we work to overcome it?" The urgency of meeting this challenge is increasing in a time when we are bombarded with a constant flow of frightening stories—about global pandemics, ecological disasters, riots, and mass shootings—that can trigger our emotional stress. We must find a balance between staying connected to the world on social media while avoiding the false facts, hate-filled comments, and passive-aggressive posts and internet accounts that feed negative thoughts. In her book Traumatized, Morton shares a unique perspective on trauma in the online age. The book includes tips to be more mindful of what we do and who we follow online, which is key to improving our relationship with social media and not spreading trauma to others. It also includes helpful therapeutic techniques to heal from childhood trauma, teaches skills to identify transgenerational trauma, and teaches how to break harmful cycles in your home. Moderated by Jessica DiVento. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Shaz Kahng has been a scientist, a consulting partner, an e-commerce expert, an executive at Nike, and a brand & marketing strategist. She eventually became the CEO of multiple companies in the apparel, retail, footwear, sports, and technology sectors. Frustrated by the lack of successful, inspirational female business leaders in fiction, Shaz wrote and published a novel about women succeeding with smarts, scruples, and style. In this Talk, Shaz discusses her book The Closer, the first book in the Ceiling Smasher series. This series focuses on positive & powerful female leaders, fictionalizing Shaz' decades of top business experience and sharing a thrilling story about the first female CEO in the sports industry. Kahng's experience working in male-dominated boardrooms enabled her to provide a behind the scenes look at what it really takes for a woman and a person of color to shatter the glass ceiling. Moderated by Nadia Gil. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Volcanologist and natural hazards expert Jess Phoenix has dedicated her life to scientific exploration. Her career path—hard-earned in the still male-dominated world of science—has shoved her headlong into deep sea submersibles, congressional races, glittering cocktail parties at Manhattan's elite Explorers Club, and innumerable pairs of Caterpillar work boots. It has also inspired her to devote her life to making science more inclusive and accessible. As part of her mission to learn as much as possible about how the Earth works, Jess has done science in many remote and dangerous environments. Her work has taken her to the mountains and jungles of South America, rural Mexico, the Hawaiian islands, the Australian Outback, the expanses of the American west, and remote parts of Africa. Jess is a strong advocate for "boots on the ground" science, believing that seeing things up close is the best way to understand them comprehensively. Jess' book, Ms. Adventure, skillfully blends personal memoir, daring adventure, and scientific exploration, following her adventures from jungles to glaciers, university classrooms to television studios, and even to the side of the world's largest volcano, where she fixes a tire with a ballpoint pen, bubblegum, and duct tape. Moderated by Lauren Harrell. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

In honor of World Wildlife Day, wildlife veterinarian Dr. Gabby Wild visited Google to discuss her latest book, National Geographic Kids' "Wild Vet Adventures: Saving Animals Around The World". Dr. Wild travels the continents to meet some of Earth's most incredible creatures, including regal lions, playful pandas, fearsome Gila monsters, and creepy tarantulas. She teaches young readers about animal anatomy and behaviors, diets, families, the dangers they face in the wild, the special human-animal relationship, and the challenges that arise when they share a habitat. Dr. Wild has traveled all over the world to save animals. Kids often recognize Dr. Wild as the veterinarian from the online game Animal Jam Classic, where she answers questions from children about wild animals. When Dr. Wild is not traveling to save animals, she is an emergency room doctor and veterinary surgeon at The Animal Surgical Center on Long Island. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Baratunde Thurston visits Google to discuss his book, How To Be Black. Drawing from his 30-plus years of personal expertise in being black, this satirical guide to racial issues includes helpful essays like "How to Be the Black Friend," "How to Speak for All Black People," and "How To Celebrate Black History Month." Audacious, cunning, and razor-sharp, How to Be Black exposes the mass-media's insidiously racist, monochromatic portrayal of black culture's richness and variety. Fans of "Stuff White People Like," "This Week in Blackness," and "Ending Racism in About an Hour" will be captivated, uplifted, incensed, and inspired by this hilarious and powerful attack on America's blacklisting of black culture. But the book isn't just filled with biting satire - it's a comedic memoir, chronicling Baratunde's coming-of-blackness from being raised by an Afrocentric single mother in one of Washington D.C.'s worst neighborhoods, through his education at The Sidwell Friends School & Harvard, and eventually into becoming a producer for The Daily Show and digital director of The Onion. How To Be Black is written for anyone who can read, loves to laugh, and has ever felt a distance between who they know themselves to be and what the world expects. Originally published in March of 2012. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Paving the way for those who might one day be deemed architectural technologists, Iddris Sandu is a pioneering young technologist seeking to level the playing field for fellow African youth & other marginalized groups. Having worked with the likes of creatives such as Jay-Z, Nipsey Hussle, Louis Vuitton, & Off-White's Virgil Abloh, Iddris has been making waves since before he turned 18. Not only is Iddris breaking ground in the use of emerging technology in creative spaces, but also in creating unique and sustainable designs to impact some of the most vulnerable populations in society. Today Iddris visits Google to discuss his journey from a young aspiring engineer to a technologist, as well as the role of technology as an agent for sustainable change in the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, the diaspora, and across the continent of Africa. Moderated by Kemi Shokunbi. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound "black." In his first book devoted solely to the form, structure, and development of Black English, linguist John McWhorter clearly explains its fundamentals and rich history while carefully examining the cultural, educational, and political issues that have undermined recognition of this transformative, empowering dialect. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.

Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation (or STI) rather than a maker of them. In the book "What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?", scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of "technology transfer" from elsewhere, but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. These contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Originally published in December of 2017. Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.