Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Your Very Own Google Perk

Life seems pretty sweet at the Googleplex in Mountain View, where -- as Google's website explains -- employees travel between meetings on scooters, and dogs, lava lamps, massage chairs, yoga classes, and ping pong tables abound. Maybe we can't all eat at the company cafeteria, but here's one perk that Google shares with everyone: possibly the greatest online book club on the planet.

Authors@Google features a collection of authors who are invited to Googleplex to read from their work, and discuss it with Google employees. The speakers are stunningly diverse -- from How to Survive a Robot Uprising by Daniel Wilson, to Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick by Molly Ringwald. (Yes, that Molly Ringwald.)

As someone fascinated by developmental molecular biologist Dr. John Medina's book Brain Rules, I was happy to see that Medina spoke at Google two years ago when his book was first published. His hour-long talk is captivating -- while declaring that "We don't really know squat about the brain," Medina nevertheless illuminates how a variety of factors, including stress, nutrition, and sleep, have immediate and measurable effects on cognition.

We talked with Medina's publishing partner, Mark Pearson, about Medina's research for the July cover story "More Than Feeling." If you'd like to know more about how your brain works -- or how to best insure our children make the most of their cognitive capabilities -- tune in here.

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