Gerd Gigerenzer visits Google to discuss his latest book "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms." The book is a comprehensive guide on how to stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms that beat us in chess, try to find us romantic partners, and tell us to "turn right in 500 yards." Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think that replacing people w...
Dec 27, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 306
Author Michael Lent visits Google to discuss his book "Christmas Letters from Hell: All The News We Hate from the People We Love." Who doesn't love to open the mailbox during the holidays and find a newsletter? Whether it's a letter from an old college roommate inadvertently revealing her husband's wandering eye, a self-congratulatory account of a cousin's rise to power at the local fast-food joint, or a mind-numbingly detailed account of a year's medical ailments from a coworker, they're always...
Dec 23, 2022•19 min•Ep. 305
Aliza Knox visits Google to discuss her book "Don't Quit Your Day Job: The 6 Mindshifts You Need to Rise and Thrive at Work." The book presents six empowering, essential mindshifts necessary to rise and thrive in your career – and to love your life at the same time. Driven by Aliza's four decades working in and leading some of the world's most celebrated firms, and featuring candid accounts of other people's successes and missteps in industries such as global tech and consumer goods, this book i...
Dec 20, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 304
Jake Dell and Evan Bloom visit Google to discuss what makes a Jewish Deli, the role delis play in American culture, and how Evan and Jake maintain the food traditions of their ancestors while operating modern businesses. Will Katz Deli ever give up their ticket system? Can there be more than one great Jewish Deli per city? Does the future of Jewish cuisine have room for vegan Rubens? These questions and many more are addressed in this talk. Many people know Katz's deli as the setting for the fam...
Dec 16, 2022•54 min•Ep. 303
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 throug...
Dec 13, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 302
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...
Dec 09, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 301
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 futur...
Dec 06, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 300
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 m...
Dec 02, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 299
Astrophysicist and folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier visits Google to discuss her book "The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy." This approachable and fascinating autobiography of our galaxy details what humans have discovered about everything from its formation to its eventual death, and what more there is to learn about this galaxy we call home. After a few billion years of bearing witness to life on Earth, of watching one hundred billion humans go about their day-to-day lives, and of hearing...
Nov 29, 2022•49 min•Ep. 298
Weird Al Yankovic visits Google to discuss his new album "Mandatory Fun." He is best known for creating comedy songs that make light of pop culture and often parody specific songs by world-renown artists such as Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Queen, and many more. Since having a comedy song aired on The Dr. Demento Radio Show in 1976 at age 16, Yankovic has sold more than 12 million albums, recorded more than 150 parodies and original songs, and performed more than 1,000 live shows. His work has ea...
Nov 25, 2022•39 min•Ep. 297
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,...
Nov 22, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 296
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 spec...
Nov 18, 2022•25 min•Ep. 295
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 a...
Nov 15, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 294
Richard Dawkins visits Google to discuss his book "The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True." Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting a goddess swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods' bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its...
Nov 11, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 293
Leading theoretical physicist Antonio Padilla visits Google to discuss his new book, "Fantastic Numbers and Where to Find Them: A Cosmic Quest from Zero to Infinity." The book is a combination of popular and cutting-edge science, as well as a lively, entertaining, and even funny exploration of the most fundamental truths about the universe. For particularly brilliant theoretical physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, Paul Dirac, or Albert Einstein, the search for mathematical truths led to strange...
Nov 08, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 292
Archaeologist Ian Hodder visits Google to discuss the origins of settled life in the Middle East. Recent archaeological discoveries have upturned our theories about the origins of agriculture and the dawn of settled life. While climate change and economic adaptation have long been seen as prime causes, recent work at Göbekli (Guh-BEK-li) and Çatalhöyük (CHATAL-hoyuk) in what is now Turkey has shown that social gatherings at ritual centers played a key role. The remarkable finds at Göbekli includ...
Nov 04, 2022•55 min•Ep. 291
Renowned teacher and author Prem Rawat visits Google to discuss his book "Hear Yourself: How to Find Peace in a Noisy World." The book aims to show readers how to quiet the noise of our busy lives to hear our own authentic voice—the source of peace. The cacophony of modern life can be deafening, leaving us feeling frazzled and uneasy. In this book, Prem Rawat teaches us how to turn down the noise to "hear ourselves"—to listen to the subtle song of peace that sings inside each of us. Once we lear...
Nov 01, 2022•54 min•Ep. 290
Futurist and entreprenuer Jerry Kaplan visits Google to discuss his book "Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence". The common wisdom about Artificial Intelligence is that we are building increasingly intelligent machines that will ultimately surpass human capabilities and steal our jobs, or possibly even escape human control and take over the world. This narrative is both misguided and counterproductive. A more appropriate framing–better supported...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 289
Deborah Liu visits Google to discuss her book "Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work." We live in a world where women only make up 20% of Russell 300 company board seats; where for every 100 hundred men hired into management, only 86 women are promoted; where women earn six out of every ten college degrees, but make less money. And while we can't make the world fair, we can take back our power. As a woman in Silicon Valley who worked her way to the top of the corporate ladder, Deb...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 288
Before becoming a renowned journalist and public speaker, Nomi Prins reached the upper echelons of the financial world where she worked as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, ran the international analytics group at Bear Stearns, was a strategist at Lehman Brothers, and an analyst at the Chase Manhattan Bank. During her time on Wall Street, she grew increasingly aware of unethical practices that readily permeated the banking industry. Eventually, she decided to become an investigative journali...
Oct 21, 2022•55 min•Ep. 287
Tiago Forte visits Google to discuss his latest book "Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential." This revolutionary approach is designed to help us enhance productivity, create flow, and vastly increase our ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us. For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world's knowledge. There has never been a better time to le...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 286
Professor Cassie Holmes visits Google to discuss her book "Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most." Cassie argues that our most precious resource isn't money. It's time. We are allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling "time poor" —like we just never have enough. Since we can't add more hours to the day, how can we experience our lives as being richer? Is it possible to spend our days so they aren't just...
Oct 14, 2022•51 min•Ep. 285
Actors Sue Ann Pien, Rick Glassman and Albert Rutecki visit Google to discuss the Amazon Original series As We See It. The show follows three roommates on the autism spectrum, as they strive to get and keep jobs, make friends, fall in love, and navigate the strange world of adulthood in a world that eludes them. Through her journey of understanding what it means to be on the autism spectrum, Sue Ann Pien has welcomed a greater acceptance of what makes her unique, and the freedom to express that....
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 284
Philosophy professor John Searle visits Google to discuss the philosophy of mind and the potential for consciousness in artificial intelligence. John is widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. Among his notable concepts is the "Chinese room" argument, which challenges the supposed language comprehension ability of artificial intelligence. Searle conceived of the "Chinese room" thought experiment in 1980. Imagine a native Englis...
Oct 07, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 283
Clara Rowe visits Google to discuss conservation non-profit Restor, sustainability, and the importance of open data platforms to accelerate the global restoration movement. Ecosystem restoration and conservation are essential for protecting Earth's biodiversity and achieving climate goals with the potential to reduce 30% of accumulated global carbon emissions. Supported by a $1.2M grant from Google.org, Restor is accelerating the global restoration movement by connecting people to scientific dat...
Oct 04, 2022•51 min•Ep. 282
Economist Gernot Wagner visits Google to discuss his book "Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet". In the book, Wagner explores the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from works previously unavailable to general audiences. He argues that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the book looks at how economic forces that make sensible climate po...
Sep 30, 2022•55 min•Ep. 281
Dr. Anton Treuer visits Google to discuss his book "Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask." What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you think you should already know the answers—or suspect that your questions may be offensive? Is the term "Indians" even appropriate to use in the 21st century? In matter-of-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer ...
Sep 27, 2022•52 min•Ep. 280
Actor Nick Offerman visits Google to discuss his book "Good Clean Fun: MIsadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop." Nestled among the glitz and glitter of Hollywood is a testament to American elbow grease and a hard day's work: Offerman Woodshop. Captained by woodworker, actor, comedian, and writer Nick Offerman, the shop produces not only fine handcrafted furniture, but also fun stuff like kazoos, baseball bats, ukuleles, mustache combs, and even cedar-strip canoes. Now Nick and his crew wan...
Sep 23, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 279
Roham Gharegozlou visits Google to discuss his company Dapper Labs, the detailed history of cryptocurrency, and where he sees it going in the near future. Roham Gharegozlou is the co-founder and CEO of Dapper Labs and a leader in blockchain and Web3 technology. He is often cited as the pioneer of NFTs, with CryptoKitties being the first viral NFT project that broke Ethereum in 2017. From those learnings, Roham launched Dapper Labs from Axiom Zen in 2018, aiming to drive mainstream adoption of de...
Sep 20, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 278
Since 2008, Bea Johnson and her family have been dedicated to living a zero waste lifestyle, generating a mere quart-size jar of waste per year. Through her blog and her book ""Zero Waste Home"", Bea has launched a global movement and continues to inspire a growing community to live simply and take a stance against needless waste with the application of the 5R's: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. This book shares essential how-to advice, secrets, and insights based on Bea's experience. Sh...
Sep 16, 2022•58 min•Ep. 277
