David Moser is a man of many talents. Not only is he a linguist and sinologist, an author and commentator for BBC and CCTV, and the Associate Dean of Peking University, but he has also been active in the Beijing music scene for more than 20 years and performs in various groups such as “Rhythm Dogs,” “the Du Yinjiao Quarters”, “Zang Tianshuo’s Group” and “Ah-Q Jazz Group”. In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month, press play on this week’s Talks at Google podcast to hear more about David's amazing sto...
Apr 07, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 335
Dr. Temple Grandin visits Google to discuss her book "Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions" - this landmark book reveals, celebrates, and advocates for the special minds and contributions of visual thinkers. A quarter of a century after her memoir, "Thinking in Pictures", forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction...
Apr 04, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 334
It may "take a village to raise a child," but most American families are struggling to do the job on their own. While parents work longer hours for less money and the costs of childcare, healthcare, and college skyrocket, the share of the U.S. budget spent on kids has fallen 22 percent since 1960. More and more children may well not make it to a healthy, productive adulthood. That's terrible for them--and for us as well. But it doesn't have to be this way. In this book, renowned expert David Kir...
Mar 31, 2023•51 min•Ep. 333
Renowned astrophysicist and professor Vinod Krishan visits Google to discuss the phenomenal diversity of plasmas in the cosmos and in our day-to-day lives. Describing multi-level techniques used to study plasma configuration and stability, with emphasis on its relevance to the global challenges we face today like clean energy, Professor Krishan takes us on a journey to better understand plasma, the most prevalent state of matter in the universe. Dr. Krishan received her Ph.D. in 1971 in Solid St...
Mar 28, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 332
Maureen Chiquet visits Google to discuss her book "Beyond the Label: Women, Leadership & Success in Our Own Terms". The book charts her unlikely path from literature major to global chief executive, guiding readers to move beyond the confines of staid expectations and discover their own true paths, strengths, and leadership values. Driven. Shy. Leader. Wife. Mother. We live in a world of categories — labels designed to tell the world, and ourselves, who we are and ought to be. Some we may covet,...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 331
American Paralympic medalist Colleen Young visits Google to discuss her career journey as a Paralympian and World Champion, and how she is driving awareness for the visually impaired community. Colleen Young is a three-time Paralympic medalist, two-time bronze medalist in the 100m breaststroke, and a silver medalist in the 200m Individual Medley for Team USA. Having been born legally blind and with albinism, Colleen began swimming in 2005 at age seven after realizing she could focus on herself i...
Mar 21, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 330
Emily Fletcher, one of the world's leading experts on meditation, visits Google to explain the differences between two popular styles of meditation, how they affect the brain differently, and the impact of stress on performance. Emily also leads the audience through a simple breathing technique and guided visualization that helps balance the right and left sides of the brain. This talk also covers how the fight or flight reaction can work for you or against you, why emotional intelligence is so ...
Mar 17, 2023•52 min•Ep. 329
In celebration of International Day of Persons with Disabilities and in partnership with #IamRemarkable, Dame Evelyn Glennie visits Google to discuss her career as the world’s premier solo percussionist and how she has learned to listen differently since losing her hearing from childhood. As a profoundly deaf musician, Evelyn’s significance transcends the discipline of music; her unique skills as expert listener and sound creator have driven progress and innovation in a wide array of contexts on...
Mar 14, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 328
Susan MacKenty Brady, Janet Foutty & Dr. Lynn Perry Wooten visit Google to discuss their book "Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership." Three of today’s top women leaders in business and academia, the authors hail from very different worlds―each brings a different career path, focus of experience, and personal point of view. In this book, you’ll learn to make the best choices for yourself, your team, your industry, and your community. This timely guide reveals s...
Mar 10, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 327
Performer and writer Joy Harjo visits Google to discuss her journey and her new book "Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years". This selection of poems celebrates the three-term US Poet Laureate’s fifty years as a poet. She is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation. Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy’s poems intertwine ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. For this volume, she selects her best poems fr...
Mar 07, 2023•48 min•Ep. 326
Dr. Catherine Whitlock is a former biomedical researcher, who spent ten years in London labs where she explored the immune response in Goodpasture’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. She now works as a science writer and author and is a member of the Association of British Science Writers, the Royal Society of Biology and the British Society for Immunology. In this talk, Dr. Whitlock presents her new book "10 Women Who Changed Science and the World.” The book tells the moving stories of the phys...
Mar 03, 2023•44 min•Ep. 325
Wellness author and teacher Alexandra Elle visits Google to discuss her book "How We Heal: Uncover Your Power and Set Yourself Free." A practical and empowering guide to self-healing, this book is an invitation to heal yourself and reclaim your peace. Readers will discover essential techniques for self-healing, including journaling rituals to cultivate innate strength, accessible tools for processing difficult emotions, and restorative meditations to ease the mind. Alexandra weaves together them...
Feb 28, 2023•59 min•Ep. 324
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 existe...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 323
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 inven...
Feb 21, 2023•51 min•Ep. 322
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 esca...
Feb 17, 2023•42 min•Ep. 321
Brandon Kyle Goodman visits Google to discuss his book "You Gotta Be You: How to Embrace This Messy Life and Step Into Who You Really Are." From the time we’re born, a litany of do’s and don’ts are placed on us by our families, our communities, and society. We're required to fit into boxes based on our race, gender, and sexuality, and are told by others how we should behave, who we should date, and what we should be interested in. For so many of us, those boxes begin to feel like shackles when w...
Feb 14, 2023•47 min•Ep. 320
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 j...
Feb 10, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 319
Noëlla Coursaris Musunka visits Google to discuss Malaika, a grassroots nonprofit that empowers girls and communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through a school, a community center, and a clean water program. Malaika has grown into a fully-functioning ecosystem impacting thousands of lives each year, anchored by its accredited primary and secondary school for more than 400 girls. The Malaika School provides a comprehensive education for girls ages 5-18 with a STEM-focused curriculu...
Feb 07, 2023•56 min•Ep. 318
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, Afric...
Feb 03, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 317
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, man...
Jan 31, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 316
Author and political economist Mark Blyth visits Google to discuss his book “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.” Politicians in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that makes the economy worse. As a remedy, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts--austerity--to solve the many financial crises of the early 21st century. Pro-austerity voices tell us that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tig...
Jan 27, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 315
Susan Wilner Golden visits Google to discuss her book, “Stage (Not Age): How to Understand and Serve People Over 60 – the Fastest Growing, Most Dynamic Market in the World”. The book discusses the $22 trillion opportunity that can be unlocked if we rethink everything we think we know about people over 60. The book is the concise guide to helping companies understand and serve this market by focusing on life stage, not age, and identifying the deep diversity of needs within the demographic. In th...
Jan 24, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 314
Avi Goldfarb and Ajay Agrawal visit Google to discuss their book “Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of AI.” The idea of artificial intelligence--job-killing robots, self-driving cars, and self-managing organizations--captures the imagination, evoking a combination of wonder and dread for those of us who will have to deal with the consequences. But what if it’s not quite so complicated? The real job of artificial intelligence is to lower the cost of prediction. And once you start talking ...
Jan 20, 2023•57 min•Ep. 313
The cast & creatives of Broadway’s "The Kite Runner" visit Google to discuss their critically acclaimed play, based on Khaled Hosseini’s internationally best-selling novel. Originally published in 2003, "The Kite Runner" became a bestseller across the globe and has since been published in 70 countries, selling 31.5 million copies in 60 languages. Now this powerful story has been adapted into a stunning stage production. One of the best-loved and most highly acclaimed novels of our time, "The Kit...
Jan 17, 2023•52 min•Ep. 312
Dr. John P. Kotter is a New York Times best-selling author, award winning business and management thought leader, business entrepreneur, inspirational speaker and Harvard Professor. His ideas, books, speeches, and company, Kotter International, have helped mobilize people around the world to better lead organizations, and their own lives. Dr. Kotter visits Google to discuss his book "Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results In Uncertain and Volatile Times". In the 21st century, ...
Jan 13, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 311
Neuroscientist and author Greg Gage visits Google to discuss his recent book "How Your Brain Works: Neuroscience Experiments for Everyone.” The book is detailed guide on how to discover the hidden electrical world inside your nervous system using DIY, hands-on experiments, for all ages, with no MD or PhD required! The workings of the brain are mysterious: What are neural signals? What do they mean? How do our senses really sense? How does our brain control our movements? What happens when we med...
Jan 10, 2023•58 min•Ep. 310
Author Cate Flanders visits Google to discuss her book “The Year of Less”. In her late twenties, Cait found herself stuck in the consumerism cycle that grips so many of us: earn more, buy more, want more, rinse, repeat. Even after she worked her way out of nearly $30,000 of consumer debt, her old habits took hold again. When she realized that nothing she was doing or buying was making her happy, she decided to set herself a challenge: she would not shop for an entire year. "The Year of Less" doc...
Jan 06, 2023•45 min•Ep. 309
Diego Perez visits Google to discuss his book "Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future.” The book demonstrates how we can all move forward in our healing, from learning self-compassion to letting go, to becoming emotionally mature. Diego Perez is a New York Times bestselling author who is widely known on Instagram and various social media networks through his pen name Yung Pueblo. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationship...
Jan 03, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 308
Anand Giridharadas visits Google to discuss his book "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World." Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can—except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. The book argues that elites rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; that they lavishly reward so-called thought leaders who redefine “change” in ways that preserve...
Dec 30, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 307
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