in this talk i will discuss various topological and geometric consequences of the existence of zeros of global holomorphic 1-forms on smooth projective varieties. such consequences have been indicated by a plethora of results. i will present some old and new results in this direction. one highlight of the topic is an interesting connection between two sets of such 1-forms, one that arises out of the generic vanishing theory and the other that falls out of hodge theory of algebraic maps. \\ \\ this is joint work with feng hao and yongqiang liu.