Renowned long-distance backpacker Andrew Skurka visits Google to discuss the gear, supplies and skills necessary to make hiking fun instead of a chore. Described by National Geographic as “one of the best traveled and fastest hikers on the planet,” and named “Adventurer of the Year” by Outside and “Person of the Year” by Backpacker magazine, Skurka recounts what he’s learned from more than 30,000 miles of long-distance adventures, most recently a 4,700-mile 6-month loop around Alaska and...

Productivity expert, entrepreneur, creator, and bestselling author Ali Abdaal visits Google to discuss his book “Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You.” We often think that productivity is all about hard work, and that the road to success is lined with endless frustration and toil. But what if there’s another way? In this book, Ali reveals how the science of feel-good productivity can transform your life. He introduces the three hidden 'energizers' that underpin...

Sarah Williams Goldhagen visits Google to discuss how the environments we build profoundly shape our feelings, memories, and well-being, and argues that we must harness this knowledge to construct a world better suited to the human experience. Taking us on a fascinating journey through some of the world’s best and worst landscapes, buildings, and cityscapes, Goldhagen draws from recent research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology to demonstrate how people’s experiences of the places...

Jessica Stone, Grant Gustin, Isabelle McCalla, Gregg Edelman & Paul Alexander Nolan visit Google to perform a song and discuss the Tony-nominated Broadway show “Water for Elephants”, which is based on the critically acclaimed bestselling novel that comes to vivid life on Broadway in a spectacle-filled new musical. After losing what matters most, a young veterinary student jumps off a moving train, unsure of where the road will take him. He then finds a new home with the remarkable crew...

Chase Iron Eyes visits Google to discuss ongoing efforts to prevent oil pipelines from being built at Standing Rock, recent revelations of corporate infiltration of anti-pipeline protests, and attempts to keep arrested water protectors free from prison. Chase has used his career as an attorney to advocate for Native American civil rights. He has served as a staff attorney for the Lakota People's Law Project, an initiative founded in 2005 with the purpose of ending the unlawful practice of...

Writer, broadcaster, and researcher Dr. Aarathi Prasad visits Google to discuss her book “Silk: A World History.” In a tale that spans continents and millennia, Aarathi weaves together the complex story of the queen of fabrics. Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, she explores the global, natural, and cultural history of a unique material that has fascinated the world for thousands of years. Some four thousand years ago,...

Gary Small, a leading medical expert on memory and brain fitness, visits Google to discuss his book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Never before has one generation experienced such rapid change in the brain's underlying wiring system, and the full consequences of this evolution has yet to be fully explored until now. Gary explores the remarkable evolution of the human brain caused by today’s constant technological presence. The book separates the digital...

Samuel T. Wilkinson visits Google to discuss his book “Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply about the Meaning of Our Existence.” By using principles from a variety of scientific disciplines, Samuel provides a framework for human evolution that reveals an overarching purpose to our existence. Generations have been taught that evolution implies there is no overarching purpose to our existence, that life has no fundamental meaning. We are merely the accumulation of tens of thousands...

Amy Larkin visits Google to discuss her book, "Environmental Debt." For decades, politicians and business leaders alike told the American public that today's challenge was growing the economy, and that environmental protection could be left to future generations. Now in the wake of billions of dollars in costs associated with coastal devastation from hurricanes, rampant wildfires across the West, and groundwater contamination from drilling, it's becoming increasingly clear that yesterday's...

Globally recognized investor Simran Kaur visits Google to discuss her book “Girls That Invest: Your Guide to Financial Independence through Shares and Stocks.” The book is a step-by-step guide to financial independence from the creator of the investing education podcast, Girls That Invest. With only 15 to 25 percent of women investing, Simran founded Girls That Invest, a multi-million dollar media company that has amassed over six million podcast downloads and has become the world’s #1...

Sarah Miller Caldicott, the great grand-niece of Thomas Edison, visits Google to discuss her book "Innovate Like Edison: The Five Step System for Breakthrough Business Success." Thomas Edison is counted among the greatest innovators in American history. Edison's focus on practical accomplishment set the stage for America's global leadership in innovation. Now, for the first time ever, "Innovate Like Edison" translates the best practices of this supreme American inventor into contemporary...

Professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao visit Google to discuss their book “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder.” This book is a useful guide to eliminating the forces that make it harder, more complicated, or downright impossible to get things done in organizations. Every organization is plagued by destructive friction. Yet some forms of friction are incredibly useful, and leaders who attempt to improve workplace efficiency often make...

Sara Mednick visits Google to discuss her book, "Take a Nap! Change Your Life." Imagine a product that increases alertness, boosts creativity, reduces stress, improves perception, stamina, motor skills, and accuracy, helps you make better decisions, keeps you looking younger, aids in weight loss, reduces the risk of heart attack, elevates your mood, and strengthens memory. Now imagine that this product is nontoxic, has no dangerous side effects, and, best of all, is absolutely free. This...

Neuroscience specialist Stefanie Faye visits Google to discuss neurophysiology and its connection to mental health, drawing from her book Biomechanics of Human Communication: Neurophysiology, Regulation, and Systems Thinking. Stefanie Faye is a neuroscience specialist with expertise in optimizing learning, performance, attentional control, cognitive flexibility, and emotional regulation using biofeedback, neurotechnology, cognitive training and frameworks that integrate childhood experiences...

Major General Tammy Smith discusses her background as a member of the LGBTQ+ community in the US military, her experience as the highest ranking and first out-and-proud Major General, and what her leadership means to the LGBTQ+ community at large.  Tammy Smith is a recently retired Army Major General. At the conclusion of her 35 year career, she was serving at the Pentagon as the Military Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of the Army, the US military’s largest service branch with over one...

Professor of psychology and neuroscience Charan Ranganath visits Google to discuss his book "Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters." The book reveals the powerful role memory plays in nearly every aspect of our lives, from recalling faces and names, to learning, decision-making, trauma, and healing. A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. Memory is not quite the repository of the past that we can tap into as we wish. It is...

Mary Roach visits Google to discuss her book "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law." What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.  Mary Roach...

Olympic gold medalist, activist, author, and podcast host Abby Wambach visits Google to discuss her journey, career and International Women's Day. Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup Champion, and six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award. She was the United States’ leading scorer in the 2007 and 2011 Women’s World Cup tournaments and the 2004 and 2012 Olympics. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller "Wolfpack", and the...

Sarah Lux-Lee visits Google to discuss Mindr and strategies for building belonging in the workplace through impactful employee communities, a culture of mentorship, and meaningful virtual connections. Mindr is a workforce development organization that builds belonging in the world's leading workplaces. Their custom technology platform, events and strategic consulting services foster strong and impactful communities, including women’s initiatives, Black professional networks, working parent...

Chef, nutrition coach and former molecular biologist Kanchan Koya visits Google to discuss her cookbook “Spice Spice Baby” and her podcast “Radical Vitality”, where she uses science-backed evidence to encourage the use of food, spices and holistic lifestyle changes as our best preventative medicine. Kanchan Koya is a chef, author, podcast host and nutrition coach, specializing in championing the science-backed benefits of ancient spices to help people live a more vibrant, healthy and joyful...

Rudrani Chettri visits Google to discuss her journey as a champion for LGBTQ rights in India, and how her initiatives are helping shape a new generation. A transgender Delhi native, Rudrani Chettri has spent over 10 years spreading awareness and fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in India. She founded MITR Trust in 2005 with an aim to reduce the risks of HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections and in 2015, she founded BOLD, the first transgender modeling agency in India. Rudrani is a national...

Bestselling author, media pioneer, and curator of TED for over twenty years, Chris Anderson visits Google to discuss his book "Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading." The book explores one of humankind’s defining but overlooked impulses, and how we can super-charge its potential to build a hopeful future. Let’s face it: Recent years have been tough on optimists. Hopes that the Internet might bring people together have been crushed by the ills of social media. Is there a...

Julie Lythcott-Haims visits Google to discuss her book "Your Turn: How to Be an Adult".  In the twentieth century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. But early adulthood for members of the Millennial and Gen Z generations looks a lot different. Those old markers are valid choices, but any one person’s choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult. In “Your Turn,” Julie exposes her...

Award-winning actress and singer Danielle Brooks visits Google to discuss her journey, career, and her Oscar nominated performance as Sofia in the highly acclaimed film “The Color Purple.” Danielle rose to prominence for her portrayal of “Taystee” on the popular Netflix series Orange Is The New Black, for which she was nominated for an NAACP Image Award. In 2019, Danielle released her four-track EP entitled Four. She co-wrote the four songs, including “Seasons,” which was featured in the...