Good Life Project - The Neuroscientist Novelist | Lisa Genova

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

Lisa Genova (https://www.lisagenova.com/) graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology, before pursuing her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard with a focus on the brain and addiction. Genova's TED talk—What You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimer’s—was one of the most popular TED talks of 2017 and has been viewed over 4 million times. So, how did she end becoming a novelist, penning the mega-New York Times bestseller, Still Alice (which was made into an Oscar-winning movie)? And, what led Lisa to not just investigate dementia, Alzheimer's and numerous other neurological conditions, but also write a series of deeply-moving novels that shine a powerful, relatable light on these conditions, including Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens and her most recent, Every Note Played (https://amzn.to/2ZepfRJ)? That's what we explore in today's conversation, along with some powerful awakenings, truths and insights about brain health and Alzheimer's.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I've been pretty fortunate to know over the years a number of pretty brilliant neuroscientists. And I've also been pretty fortunate to know quite a number of accomplished writers from nonfiction to fiction. My guest today, Lisa Genova, is the first person I've met who is both. She is an astonishingly accomplished neuroscientist with a strong focus on Alzheimer's and cognitive brain function. And at the same time, she's an acclaimed fiction writer who wrote a book called Still Alice, which became a massive bestseller. Suddenly millions of copies was then turned into an Oscar-winning movie with all these

A-list stars in it. And that also kicked off a stream of other fiction books. She tends to write books that illuminate people moving through neurological conditions, but they're fiction, and they're so beautiful and compelling, and it allows you to step into the experience of other people and families and understand them in an entirely different way. Really, really powerful. She is also an expert in this world of Alzheimer's and the decline of brain function. And for anybody who is in the middle years of their lives, you may be wondering, what do I do to stay as cognitively active and alert and here as possible for anybody who may be a little bit older, you may actually be dealing with problems with yourself or with loved

ones or with parents. So we come full circle and dive into that world as well at the end to really explore what happens and what are the things that we might be able to do to help prevent some of this decline and potentially even maybe reverse it or kind of rebuild around it? So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

I don't think I've met yet another neuroscientist novelist. So I don't know if I'm the only one out there doing this. I might be. Yeah, I was always interested in science and I was good at it. My brain sort of very easily understands math and science. And I liked the idea of studying how we work. How does a human being, how's a human being put together? And so I loved learning about anatomy and physiology and biochemistry of anything. So the heart, the kidney, but then it then came along the brain

and it's, you know, the heart's a pump, the kidney's a filter, kind of basic. Pretty basic stuff. Yeah. And then it's like, well, now the brain and it was like, this is where you think and desire and remember and want and your personality. This is addiction. This is hunger. So it was just kind of mind blowing, literally. So I was all in as soon as I studied that. Was that like high school-ish or was that when you were sort of more college age? Yeah, that was college age. Right. Because you ended up at Bates, right?

Yes. Studying? They didn't have a neuroscience major back then. So I'm 48, so I'm dating myself a bit here. But it was the psychology of biology or the biology of psychology, however you want to think about it. And so it was an interdisciplinary major. And now it's called neuroscience. So you kind of had to create what you wanted to study to a certain extent. Yeah.

It was the bridge between those two disciplines, really. So you go from there. And did you go immediately to grad school after that? Or did you take time off? Well, I didn't take time off. I worked. Okay. And I worked with the idea that I would go to grad school

because that was the plan. I wanted to be a neuroscientist at this point. And to do that, you need a PhD. Got it. But I wanted to work first and just make sure. This is a big deal to go into a PhD program is probably like, you know, five to nine years. So I got a job as a research assistant in a drug addiction lab at Massachusetts General Hospital East. It was really hard work,

but it was exciting as well. I love telling folks that in February of 93, the lab down the hall starts celebrating and screaming and hugging. And neuroscientists aren't usually this motive. And so kind of the whole hallway stops where we were in this old building that used to belong to the Navy. It was a part of the shipyard

where the ships would come in. They clean the ships. So the length of this building is massive and there's no walls. So you can see the Navy. It was a part of the shipyard where the ships would come in, they'd clean the ships. So the length of this building is massive and there's no walls. So you can see the length. And so all these neuroscientists stop. And it turns out that that group had just isolated the genetic mutation that causes Huntington's disease. So this historic moment in all of science, I just witnessed it happening. So it was an exciting place to be for sure. And so I did that for a year and then went to grad school. I mean, what's going on in your mind when you're really young at this point, it's sort of like fresh out of school, you're doing this thing, you're really interested,

and you see that people who literally you're looking at have just discovered something that will potentially profoundly change the lives of a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, I got goosebumps. It's totally inspiring. Again, this neuroscience, it was a new field of study back in the 90s. We still even then didn't have the tools that we have now to look at the underlying causes of neurodegenerative diseases or psychiatric disorders, but the possibilities were beginning. And so, yeah, to know that this was the beginning of what I hope realistically will soon be a cure

for Huntington's disease. Yeah. So at that point also, I mean, was the whole idea of neuroplasticity is still relatively new. Was that even in play then? Or was that like the really, really early days of that, if even? Yeah, that was definitely in play then.

I mean, when I was in the beginning of grad school, maybe it was even undergrad, there was this idea that, you know, once you have the number of neurons you have in your brain, like if you kill any, that's it, you'll never get another new one. And that's been debunked. We generate new neurons regularly and certain things help that, like exercise. But no, I was working as a

molecular neurobiologist and studying drug addiction. So the idea that your brain, you know, whether it's a beer or a cigarette, cocaine, heroin. If your brain sees it once, it's not addicted. But do it over and over again. Expose the brain to that same substance over and over, and you can become an addict. Well, the substance didn't change. Your brain changed. So that's neuroplasticity.

So sometimes it benefits you because you're able to learn new things, and sometimes it can result in something pathological like addiction. Oh, that's really, I never really thought about it that way. Huh. And I guess some people would be predisposed or not predisposed, depending sort of like how you just arrive also to a certain extent. Yeah. So neuroplasticity is about, you know, so your cells aren't just this like static thing that doesn't change. All day long, our cells are changing. And what's changing are the constellation of proteins that communicate with each other and relay information within the cell and tell it to do this and that. And some of us are born with certain constellation of genes that produce a certain constellation of proteins that make the cells act differently. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.

So all of the grad work then was around this one area. So it was like focused on the brain, but it was around how it changes with addictive substances. Yes. Did you think that that would sort of be your, I guess when you stay in it for that long, did you feel like you were, were you genuinely interested in sort of like the addictive side of it? And I can't change gears now because it's going to add another three years to my PhD. Because it seems like your interest expanded, broadened out so quickly after that. At the time in grad school, I loved all of the other research other folks were doing. So I would attend seminars and think the Alzheimer's research was really cool. And I liked all of it. Anything having to do with the brain I thought was fascinating and fun. I was definitely a geek. And I wasn't of it. Anything having to do with the brain, I thought was fascinating and

fun. I was definitely a geek. And I wasn't bored by what I was doing. Again, it's the answers. It takes a long time to find answers. And so you have this hypothesis and you do the experiments and you need enough data to get statistical analyses. And you learn enough that it keeps you going. And it's actually, I didn't get bored of the addiction world and still trying to understand, you know, right? Classical conditioning. If you ring the bell and present the steak, the dog salivates eventually to just the bell alone. Well, with addiction, if you are, you know, I would inject my rats with cocaine at the same time of day in a special cage with a specific environment and then do that for, I forget how many days or weeks. And then I would present just an injection of saline in the same, that special cage time of day. And their brains, the genetic expression and proteins that turned on, that lit up in parts of their brain,

activated as if I had given them cocaine. That's amazing. So if you say, thanks, it was cool. It was exciting. So what does that mean? That means if we translate that and look back, like sort of pull back the lens, what does that mean for us? It's like, well, if I'm an addict and I go to rehab

and I get off whatever I'm on and then I go back to my neighborhood, I go back to the living room, I go back to the sights, the smells, the sounds that are like that bell, tricking the dog to salivate is like the bell for me. My brain is going to light up as if I've just had another hit of cocaine or another beer or a cigarette. And then that primes the brain to say that was good. Do it again. Yeah. I mean, it's so, it's so fast. I'm blown away by, I feel like how much

we're learning about the brain and, and also probably by what, what, at least it seems to me how much more we still don't know, like how small, like, you know, the tip of the iceberg we are in the context of what I think we'll know 10, 15, 20 years from now. Totally. Like on my way here, I was just reading a Neil deGrasse Tyson book. And I feel like astrophysicists and neuroscientists are like, they're looking at the vast cosmos and we're zooming in on the molecular, you know, neuronal cells. And it's the same kind of things, right? It's like, wow, we're learning so much. And like, man, are we idiots? We know nothing. It's amazing. But I mean, what you were just describing also was sort of like what you were

seeing when we started the podcast. We were actually before the podcast, we had a video show and the first guest there was Dan Ariely. And one of the reasons why he sort of went into behavioral economics and psychology was when he was 18, he was involved in a really horrific accident that burned like 70 or 80% of his body. And he was in a burn ward for, I think it was three years, if I remember correctly. And they would get every day, each person in the ward would get a certain allocation of morphine to get through the day. And he started kind of keeping track of whatever, each time he heard somebody like call for

the nurse to get it. And he started realizing that certain people were out, but the nurse would go and give them an injection. And then the person who was in agony would then all of a sudden be much better. And at one point he asked one of the nurses, he's like, I know you couldn't have actually given him morphine cause I kind of been tracking it, you know?

And she's like, it was saline. But it was kind of like the same thing. His brain had been trained that when you get the injection, you feel something going into you. The brain was like, okay, this means that I feel better. Right. And whether- And this is part of placebo effect.

Right, right. And it's like- It's a real thing. It's amazing. This is the psychology of our biology, right? So like we tend to think of, you know, sort of what's going on from the neck up in terms of thinking and feeling as separate from, you know, blood and tissue and physiology.

And it's, no, thinking is physiology. Emotion is physiology. And they all interplay. Yeah. And the whole idea behind, you know, like beliefs literally changing your physiology. Because a belief is physiology. Right. Because a belief is your neurons firing and, you know, whether it's stress, emotion, belief, that all, you know, plays and

there are physical interactions in your brain between a thought, a belief, an emotion, and the stress response in your body. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing how it's all just one giant feedback mechanism. Yeah. So you end up completing your PhD, going out into the world. What do you actually do after that? So I thought, first, I thought I wanted to be a professor. I thought I wanted to be a professor at a small liberal arts college like Bates. And I called around to the various professors I know.

I'm like, so are you tired? Are you thinking of retiring anytime soon? You know, you were kind of old when I was there. You know? And no, nobody was done. And there were no slots available. And I didn't, you know, again, I was married at the time. And he was a lawyer in Boston.

And we have family in this area. So I didn't want to go off to California, for example. So there were no teaching opportunities. And so it's like, well, I should postdoc, which basically means doing more of what I was doing as a grad student, making just a little bit more money. And again, I just I didn't see any opportunities that were really exciting in the Boston area. You know, the guy doing addiction research, Steve Hyman, he had gone to Bethesda, Maryland at the NIH. So I couldn't continue working for him and really wanted to change things up anyway. So weirdly,

and I actually don't exactly remember how this all started, but I ended up working as a strategy consultant for biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies at a company called Health Advances. And it was really fun. It wasn't something I intended to do forever or for very long, but it was really fast-paced, which was the opposite of scientific research, and working in teams, which was so exciting and new for me because I'd been working in my own little singular silo for five years. So working in teams to solve problems that you couldn't look up on the Internet and figure out. So, you know, a company, a biotech company might say, like, we've got a compound that could treat liver failure or kidney failure. Which one should we put in for clinical trials?

So sometimes I was working on neuroscience related projects and other times I wasn't. And I liked it. It was exciting. Yeah. I mean, it sort of like just keeps letting you test out different expressions of your interest. At the same time, in the background, I guess would the timing be right around that window? And I guess maybe through your PhD, too, you notice your grandma is actually starting to be diagnosed with some brain problems.

Yeah, so I think she was diagnosed just as I finished my PhD, but she'd certainly been experiencing memory issues for, you know, in retrospect, probably a decade. So she was diagnosed when she was 85. And I think for, you know, many years before then, and again, I think we can trace it back to about 10 years before then, she had started becoming forgetful. So she'd leave the keys in the door and not be able to find the keys. She'd leave the tea kettle on the burner,

and it would be whistling, and she wouldn't respond to or think about, well, what is that sound? Or what is that sound? Not be able to figure it out. Couldn't handle the checkbook anymore. So my dad took over that responsibility. But we all just assumed that this was a normal part of normal aging. Like, well, Nana's just getting old. This is just what that looks like. And so I think there was a certain amount of, well, that's a misconception that the

general public has. And it was a bit of denial because you know nobody wants to see alzheimer's happen to someone you love so we were you know her nine children who were all married and the grandkids we most of us live locally and we saw her regularly and i mean we kind of saw what was going on but we didn't register it until she ended up walking to the bowling alley from her house in the middle of the night, thinking it was the middle of the day, wondering why her bowling team wasn't there and like calling people. And it was, that was when my family was sort of like, well, wait a minute, that's really strange. How come she didn't know it was the middle of the night and what's going on?

And so got her evaluated and it was Alzheimer's. Yeah. Were you close with her? Yeah. Yeah. Very. So we grew up in the same town. My grandfather died when I was seven. So she was living alone for a really long time. But my brother and I used to sleep over there a lot, if not every weekend, I can't really remember, but we were there a lot and I loved her. She was fun, really smart. I think she had her education only went up to sixth grade or eighth grade. Her parents spoke no English, Italian immigrants, but really smart lady and fun and adventurous and, you know, was on the bowling team and swam every day and was traveling and loved her family. We all loved her. Yeah. Yeah. So as you're seeing what's happening with your grandma, and once it hits a point where you're like, you know, this is not just the natural process of aging. There's actually some, there's a disease state happening here. And at the same time, you know, you're studying and you're coming out of this world of really geeking out and trying to understand the brain and what's happening. Were you at any point sort of, you know, like in those earlier

times, especially sort of like, maybe let me start to actually take a look at this. Or did that happen later on? No, it was during that time. So when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, my, you know, I'm a grandkid, so none of this is my responsibility, but I'm around. And so, you know, my aunts and uncles and my parents and but especially my aunts, they really sort of rolled up their sleeves and like, OK, what are we going to do? How are we going to handle this? And ultimately, my Aunt Mary became her full time caregiver. So she and my uncle moved into my grandmother's house and my Aunt Mary cared for her for four years until my grandmother died. But I'm the neuroscientist geek in this family. And, you know, it's going to be, yeah, I was so ready to figure this out. Like, okay, let me read everything I can about Alzheimer's and, you know, I'll be able to help us figure out how to, you know, best care for her and what treatments are out there and what's going on. And so, yeah, I really dug into the literature. So I read the scientific research papers first, which is like the most useless piece of information for my family, but I, being the

geek, really loved it. So I got up to speed on the, you know, the current understanding of the molecular neurobiology of Alzheimer's. And then I read, you know, the textbooks, the clinical management, you know, how this disease is treated and managed. And then I read the self-help how to care for books. So like the 36-hour day is the most common one people know about. And that one in particular and books like it were helpful in terms of how to be a good caregiver. And so that information I passed along to my family. But for me, I was left really restless.

Like the more I learned, the more frustrated I got because it took a while to figure it out. But what was bothering me was that everything I read at the time was written from the perspective of an outsider looking in. So everything written about Alzheimer's was written by someone who didn't have Alzheimer's, which kind of makes sense because people who are in the throes of Alzheimer's aren't, you know, able to self-reflect and understand what's going on. But not at the beginning of Alzheimer's, at least. But at the time, I was like, well, there's nothing here written by the perspective of the person with it. And why was that important? Well, I felt so much sympathy for my grandmother and us. Like, I felt so bad for her. This was like a really smart woman who had this, you know, worked hard her whole life and created this beautiful, big family. She didn't

know who any of us were. Like, all of the ways that we were connected were severed for her. She continued to stay sort of lovely to be around and just enjoyed our company, but we were all strangers. She thought my Aunt Mary was a homeless woman who she'd just let stay with her. But so I had enormous sympathy. I felt bad for her and I felt frustrated and heartbroken and embarrassed and confused by what was going on with her. But I didn't feel with her. And that's empathy. I didn't know how to feel with my grandmother. I didn't know how to be comfortable with her Alzheimer's.

I didn't know what it felt like to be her. And I couldn't find that sort of perspective in anything that I read. And so this was, you know, good book about a person with Alzheimer's told from her perspective. I thought, well, someday I'll write a novel about a woman with Alzheimer's, and then I'll be able to figure this out. What makes you feel like you're the person who would be the writer of that book? Well, there's zero arrogance in this. I didn't quit my job and think, well, now I'm going to write the novel that's going to like change the world, world's ability to understand this disease from sort of the heart space instead of the head space. And no, I thought I would do this, you know, long after my grandmother died and, you know, after I'm done working and I'm retired and

there's like no risk and it's just kind of a personal. This is like a later in life thing. Yeah. This is just, you know, I'd really like to understand this from a point of view of empathy. And I don't have that now, but life is moving so fast. You know, I've got this job and things to do, like I'll do it some point. Yeah. Yeah. What changes then, which makes it like that point happen? Yeah. So that was probably, that was somewhere in the late 90s that I had the idea for the book. In 2000, my daughter was born and I quit my job to be home with her for anywhere from six months to a year was the plan. Because I had been working like 60, 70 hours a week and traveling. And I just didn't want to start her out that way. So I was

home with a new baby and my marriage started to unravel and this is the guy I'd been with since I was 18 and he'd been my best friend and and uh and nothing specific happened I mean in retrospect and so I just I went to his third wedding a couple weeks ago ago. So we're still good friends, which is lovely. Nothing happened. He just started not wanting to be in this life that he suddenly found himself in, I think is what happened. I don't mean to put blame on him, but I think that that's kind of how it started. So I didn't go back to work because I was just sort of paralyzed in fear of sort of my life seemed to sort of be disassembling. And I didn't want to four or just before she turned four, we got divorced. So now I'm suddenly a divorced, unemployed, single mom. And the obvious thing

to do, and I felt really, I felt ashamed. I felt like I'd failed. I felt heartbroken over the loss of this relationship. I felt unacceptable. My parents were married. I grew up Catholic. I just felt like this is not how this was supposed to go. And so the quickest way to feeling acceptable, again, would have been to go back to doing something I was trained and educated to do. So it's go get a job at a biotech, go back to consulting, go work in a neuroscience lab. But the shakeup, like the sudden derailment of my life, which had been so linear and like tick the boxes, right? Like as you grow up, it's like there are all these expectations. You'll go to college, you'll get a job, you'll get married, you'll buy a house, you'll have the kid. Like it

was all just going. And then suddenly I'm off the rails. And I think that it really gave me a moment to sort of like, okay, you've been, you're off the rails and you want to get back on track, but what track do you want to be on now? Like, you actually have a moment to make a choice instead of like just barreling ahead with your head down based on the decision of what an 18 year old, like my whole life was unfolding based on the decision at 18 to be a neuroscientist in some ways. And so it was like, all right, well, if you could do, and I remember the question, it was, all right, Lise, if you could do anything you wanted, what would you do? And the answer was go write that book. And I didn't like that answer. I was like, no. Were you like surprised that was the answer? Yeah. And it was like, well, so my sort of logical,

conscious, analytical, argumentative mind was, no, you can't do that. You don't know how to write a book. Nothing about that makes sense. You're not going to get paid. You might never get paid. It might be horrible. Like people are going to point and laugh. Like no one not going to get paid. You might never get paid. It might be horrible. Like people are going to point and laugh. Like no one's going to approve of that decision. Like what will my parents think? It was like just a horrible idea. And so I kept getting quiet and trying to think of like, okay, what's the next thing I should do?

And that it wouldn't leave. And it was sort of like, okay, well, if I could do anything I wanted, if I didn't have to care about what anybody thought, like if I didn't have to worry about judgment and if I didn't have to worry about money, and that's real, like you've got to pay the bills, but just for a second, like what if it didn't really matter?

And it was just inescapable. It was like, go write the book. So I dropped my daughter off at preschool, and I went to the Starbucks down the street and began writing the book about the woman with Alzheimer's. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

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Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. I'm a good learner. I'm a good student. And I continue to, like with every book I write, with anything I do, it's like being a beginner again is kind of a fun, even though it's scary, it's a fun place to be. And so even though I've written many books now, like with each book I begin, I'm like, all right, I'm a beginner again. This is great. And actually, I told you, I was just listening to your interview with Julia Cameron. And literally, I've read that book five times.

And I like reading that book five times. Right. And I like reading it like, okay. Because at every age, you're a different person. And so what spoke to me at 34 is not what speaks to me now at 48. So, yeah, I read books on craft. I read The Artist's Way. So I read on writing. I read Writing Down the Bones.

All the classics. All the good ones. And I didn't know what I didn't know, which was awesome. So I didn't know how hard it can be to write a book or how grim it can be to try to get a publisher. I didn't know any of that. I didn't know any other writers. And I was doing research. So I know how to do that. And the research was like, okay, go find the neurologist, shadow them, sit in on neuropsych testing, go find people who have Alzheimer's and talk to them. And I came to know 27 people in the early stages of Alzheimer's who could still talk about what it feels like to have it. I was in touch with them every day for the year and a half that I was writing this, like literally every day by email, chat, on the phone.

And so the writing came, like I did a lot, I probably researched for like four to six months before I sat down to write. And then I'd sit down to write and I'd start with morning pages like Julia Cameron recommends. And that definitely like just sort of gets out the junk and gets you started. But a lot of times I'd freak out and be like, who am I to be doing this? I'm a neuroscientist. I'm not a writer. This is crazy. Especially also, I mean, because you made an interesting choice too, right?

It would have been a huge thing to say, I'm going to write a book. It's an even bigger thing to say, like the book needs to be fiction. I know, I know. Which is, I mean, I've written a handful of books too, but they're all kind of, they're all nonfiction and they're all kind of based on my experience. And I definitely have fiction in my head and that will come someday, but I'm a little bit terrified to write that book

because in my mind, that's so much harder than just writing what I know because you've got to build the world. You've got to build the characters. You've got to, I mean, so it wasn't you just saying, I'm going to write a book. I know a lot about the neuroscience.

I've done all the research. You're like, no, this actually needs to be fiction, which is a whole different thing. I know. And I want to get back to how you think it's harder, but in some ways it's not because I'm writing nonfiction right now. I'd be so happy to hear that. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, so you're right.

For me to write nonfiction wouldn't have been that much of a leap for other people and me to understand because I'd written scientific research papers and had those published. People who are academics certainly write nonfiction. I could have sort of worn that neuroscientist hat and put out sort of a scholarly academic treatise on Alzheimer's. I could have focused on one particular person with the disease and written about his or her story. I just, again, I had this intuitive hunch that fiction, that story is the place that we human beings are wired to feel like each other. Yeah. And I guess if you were trying to find a way in through empathy, that would have been, that's it. That was it. That was the curiosity. That was the, you know, what does it feel like to have Alzheimer's from the perspective of the person with it? And then can I feel with that person? Not for that person. Can I inhabit what that experience is like emotionally? So that was the plan. So interestingly, I'm writing a

nonfiction book now about memory because, you know, 10 years into talking about Alzheimer's to people all over the world. And like at the end of any talk, I give ladies like the women will corner me in the ladies room or people, there'll be people who wait at the end of the book signing line. Like they're all really freaked out, concerned, worried about their memories. So these are people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and rightfully concerned. But so basically, I'm writing a nonfiction book to help people understand how we remember and why we forget and what's normal and what's not. And I'm finding it much harder than fiction. That's so interesting. Yeah, it's because, and you're right, in fiction, you have to build the whole world and who are these characters and what do they look like and what are their backstories and why do we care and what's the struggle? And yet, for me, at least maybe it's because that's where I sort of started at this point. There's more play involved in that. and playful and adventurous writing fiction because anything is possible

and you can create things that are your invention. Whereas with nonfiction, you gotta stick to the facts and you gotta get it right. So I feel a little bit restrained to play within this box, right? Yeah, no, that makes total sense now. So you end up sitting down and writing this book, which eventually becomes a book called Still Alice.

How long did it actually take you from the moment you said, okay, I'm going to start writing and researching to the moment when you're like, you know, I'm pretty sure I have a finished manuscript here. I took a year and a half. Okay, so a year and a half. Then you didn't write this book. If you're not in the industry,

the general rule is if you're writing a nonfiction book, you sell the proposal first, and then you go, you get paid and you write the book. If you're writing fiction, you have to write the whole thing first and then hope and pray somebody wants to publish it. So you get done writing this and then you're like, okay, let me see if somebody wants it and then what happens nobody wanted it so you know again so this was when was this this was 2000 i started the book in 2004 so this was and it was end of 2004 so this is you know summer of of 2006 is that right i have the right year and i got the literary marketplace guide i looked up a high you know i'm such a little geeky scientist I got the literary marketplace guide. I looked up, you know, I'm such a little geeky scientist. I got the names and addresses of 100 literary agents who, according to this book,

might represent the kind of book I've written. And I sent out my query letters. And I don't know, maybe my query letter just completely sucked. But like, I heard back, you know, at least 50, right, relatively right away, just dear author, no, thank you. And you know at least 50 right relatively right away just dear author no thank you and you know that they don't even give you a whole sheet of paper for this they give you a third of a sheet of paper which always cracked me up um gotten a lot of those letters yeah so mostly like lots of no's and then eventually three agents wanted to read the manuscript which was so exciting one i've never heard back from. And then the other two said pretty much the same thing, which was, I just think that Alzheimer's is too scary and too depressing and too heavy.

And that this is fiction and the fiction market is so tough that there just aren't going to be enough people willing to read a book about this subject. And then one of those two people said, you know, you've got this PhD in neuroscience. Why did you write fiction, write a nonfiction book about Alzheimer's? And I'll take a look at that. So I totally dead ended. And so now the choice was stick this book in a drawer and go back to doing what I was trained and educated to do. Right. And, you know, or self-publish it. Those were really, I thought, the only two options. And I was very concerned.

I'm like, you know, am I like one of those contestants on American Idol when they show the auditions and these people think they can sing and they're completely toned up? I'm like, please do not. I asked, you know, some friends who had read the book. I'm like, listen, like, do not let me chase this if I am toned up. Just tell me. Give it to me real.

Yeah. So they're like, no, this book's good. Go for I am choked up. Just tell me, give it to me real. Yeah. So they're like, no, this book's good. Go for it. Give it a little longer if you can. So I self-published in 2007. And I was giving myself a year to find an agent in a publishing house. And if that didn't happen, I would have gone back to. Right.

So you self-published. You put the book out there. And self-publishing in 2007 is a profoundly different game than it is now, by the way. Yeah, no, I was, you know, and coming from science where like everything published is peer reviewed and you can't just put anything out there. And so I knew the risk of doing this is like now I'm putting myself in a bucket of people where like anybody can publish anything. So there's a lot of garbage in the self-published world back then.

And not many people did it because of that stigma. But I sort of looked at it, well, A, I had no other choice if I was going to give the book a shot. And B, like, you know, the film industry and the music industry had already gone this path and legitimized it. And so I thought, well, you know, if Annie DeFranco can do it, maybe I can do it. So, yeah. Yeah. So you put it out into the world. How were you actually trying to get there?

I mean, did you just put it out there and hope people would discover it? No. Or were you actually actively being like, I need to make something happen with this? Yeah, I need to make something happen. You know, my dad always said to my brother and I, anytime we're doing anything, his little mantra was always, work hard, do good, have fun. And so, like, anything you do, those three things are awesome. And the do good was always, I always took that as do a good job and make sure you're doing something good, like, that it's good for the world. So, work hard, do good, have fun.

So, yeah, no, this was, I'm going to work hard, do good, and have fun with the self-publishing project I was on. So, you know, I was selling it out of the trunk of my car on Cape Cod and in the Boston area. The retail, the major chain retail stores at the time wouldn't take it. So it was all indie bookstores that really put this on the shelves, which was awesome. And just trying to get, you know, interviews. Podcasts weren't a big thing back then, but I was definitely on some. Like, I was hustling. Right. So what happens then to take it from self-published book that's out there and you're just hustling to try and sell one copy at a time to you eventually being picked up by a major publisher and this thing becoming a giant phenomenon. Yeah, yeah. And so, by the way, this is 2007.

So this was really like as Facebook was just starting maybe, but like that was not just, it was like, you know, MySpace. But I was like, if you were in a book club and I found you, I'm like, listen, if I give you these copies and you read it, will you post something somewhere online, like an Amazon review or a blog or bloggers were like exciting to me that can help. So I actually hired a publicist out of Marblehead, Massachusetts, a local, a local group, these two women, Kelly and Hall book publicity. And I hired them for three months and they got the book into the hands of Beverly Beckham at the Boston Globe, who didn't want to read it, but said she would. She put down

her copy of Stephen King, the book she really wanted to read, and read Still Alice, and wrote this amazing review on the Sunday Globe. And that really, that changed things. So not only were libraries suddenly ordering it, and people were ordering it at Amazon, but the direct link is a woman named Julia Fox Garrison, who had written a memoir called Don't Leave Me This Way, originally self-published her book, and then went on to get a book deal with, I believe, HarperCollins. She wrote in to Beverly Beckham, the columnist, said, hey, thanks for portraying a self-published writer in such a positive way. You know, we don't usually get any street cred. Beverly, recognizing that this woman has done what I was trying to do, put us in touch. And so then Julia introduced me to her agent.

Her agent agreed to be my agent. And then a few days later, my book was three publishing houses were bidding on it. So it went from nobody would look at this thing to suddenly like there was an auction. I mean, what's that like for you? It's like you wake up one day and you're just hustling, trying to sell one copy at a time. And literally a couple of days later, there's a bidding war over this thing. Yeah. I mean, there was lots of screaming and giggling and just like, what is happening? That book eventually comes out and becomes this giant hit.

Eventually also gets turned into a big movie with big A-list stars in it, award-winning. As you're going along for the ride, like, well, this is all happening. Like, what's happening in your mind? Like, what's happening in your mind? What's happening in your life? And I guess the bigger curiosity for me is, what's happening in the context of your really threatening and it's a crisis and they've only got

so much time or the time that they, you know, whether it's so much time to live as in the case with ALS or with Alzheimer's, it's live, but it's also to live with sort of the clarity of knowing who you are. And you're going to give some of that time. They're giving some of that time to me. That's so incredibly humbling to me and like such a privilege. And what it instilled in me was a sense of like responsibility and opportunity. Like if they're giving me an opportunity to help them be seen and heard and to sort of maybe give them a stage for the world to understand their journey. And so it was the idea started when I was doing the research.

But once it got published by Simon & Schuster and took off in a big way, I used that as an opportunity to be an advocate and to speak about Alzheimer's and to help further. Like the book became the vehicle for having a conversation about a topic that people were very reluctant to talk about. And I think conversation fuels social change. And so if we don't have a medical cure for these diseases and disorders and conditions,

but can we do something about pulling people back into community who've been excluded because they're other? In this case, it's other due to neurological disease. So part of what was changing in me was stepping up to becoming a voice to help the world understand what it is like to live with these neurological diseases and disorders. And so then actually, so with Simon Schuster publishing Still Alice, now I'm earning a living doing this. And it gave me permission to write the next book. So now I sort of began the transition from thinking of myself really as a neuroscientist

who tried writing a book, tried writing a novel, to I'm both. I'm a neuroscientist novelist. And this day more, I mean, I don't do neuroscience research anymore. I tell stories. So I'm more of a storyteller than anything these days. Yeah. And a storyteller who has the context and the nuance and the depth of understanding of how the brain does and doesn't work, that allows you a level of inquiry and insight that somebody who writes that same kind of book just wouldn't have access to. Thank you. Yeah, I believe that's true. It gives me access to asking the right kinds of questions. It gives me access to, again, like when I'm writing the book on ALS, I'm shadowing the chief of neurology at Mass General.

And then the people who have this again, now I've got some books behind me. So people know who I am rather than was still Alice. I'd have to convince people that I was, it's okay to trust me with your time. Now people are like, yeah, no, we want to be part of your next project because we know that your books make a difference. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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Compared to previous generations iPhone XS or later required charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. What a powerful position to be in. I mean, you've since then written a series of books that, it's so interesting, right?

Because you've written a series of books that in theory, had you listened to those early people who said, no, too depressing, you never would have written any of these. And yet each one has landed and found a really big, really powerful audience and also had that ability to have people step into a place of empathy while also, it's like the book is also a bit of a stealth advocate for whatever that particular thing that that person is struggling with. I mean, the last book, Every Note Played, which focuses on somebody who has ALS, sort of like you're you're talking you're you're biting off different different things that affect the brain and the body and the emotions and it's not just the person it's everyone around them yeah and sharing it in a way where people

people realize it's upsetting and it's hard and at the same time it's a part of the human condition and they i think they think we wanna understand this and we wanna feel and develop empathy for others. And also, I'm curious whether, when you talk about traumatic brain injury, when you talk about Alzheimer's, when you talk about ALS, when you write these books and they come out,

I would have to imagine that people and their families who have these diagnoses come to you and say, it's like, thank you for allowing us to be seen. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think we all want to be seen and heard. And I think that when you're diagnosed with Huntington's or Alzheimer's, or if you have a kid with autism or any of these, you end up being otherized. And if you have Alzheimer's and I really don't know anything about Alzheimer's, and I see you acting weird, or I see that something's going on with you, I'm going to get uncomfortable really fast because I'm not familiar with what's going on.

And the quickest way for me to relieve my discomfort is to just look away. I just am not going to deal with that's just easier for them. They really get excluded and marginalized and alienated and isolated. And I find that, you know, I think diseases from the neck up, mental illness, psychiatric disorders, like they carry a special sort of, you know, taboo. People are really scared of that because they don't know much about it. And so, you know, these conditions and diseases are hard enough to live with without having to be lonely on top of it. Yeah. Right? Like, we've all experienced loneliness, and it's painful to be disconnected from community, from other human beings. It's, like, one of the worst kinds of pain.

And so the books, like you use the word stealth, and I love that. Like there are this story is this little sneaky way in. I'm not asking you to read, you know, the Journal of Neuroscience, and I'm not asking you to, it's not homework. It's not like, well, let's, you know, let's learn something really difficult about a difficult topic. It's a story. It's just a story about I like to say they're about neurological conditions, but they can't be just about that. It's about the human condition. So it's about my life as much as it is about a life with ALS or Alzheimer's or whatever.

And especially in the context of Alzheimer's, you did a TED Talk where early in the talk, you posed a couple of questions to the audience where you're like, okay, so let's all imagine that we're, you know, like fast forward and we're all 85 years old. You know, 50% of you are going to have some form of Alzheimer's or impairment. And then there was sort of like this uncomfortable laughter in the audience. And you're like, you know, if you're laughing now because you're thinking it's the other

person, you're the caretaker. And then there was even more uncomfortable laughter because people are like, oh, oh, like there's some, if you live long enough, you know, I think a lot of the assumption is if you live long enough, you're not going to get away with not having to deal with this in some way, shape or form. But then what was really fascinating, and this is what I want to dive into a little bit with you also, is you shared a bit more about actually like the physiology of what's really happening in this condition. And it seems like a lot of the assumptions that we made for years, if not generations about like this, it is what it is. There's nothing you can do. Maybe that's changing now. Yeah. Oh, the literature's out there. The data's out there.

It's definitely changing. It's just getting you all to know about it and believe it and actually use the information. cancers and heart disease, that there are things you can do, you know, decades before you might actually become symptomatic or have either of those things. You know, so when do you want to start to treat yourself for heart disease? Like when you're lying on a gurney in the middle of a myocardial infarction? Or do we want to start to be mindful about your diet and exercise, you know, 30 years before that and maybe keep your cholesterol low and your blood pressure low? So it's all preventative. Do we want to treat cancer at stage four or do we want to detect it before it's even stage one? Like it's preventative.

So similarly with Alzheimer's, we're noticing that there are a lot of lifestyle ways that we can prevent this disease and or at least tip the scales in our favor so that we can prolong the years when we might become first symptomatic. We know that this disease starts biologically in the brain symptom free 10 to 20 years before you have your first symptom. And the biological processes that are going on, this accumulation of amyloid plaques, doesn't just automatically accumulate with age. It fluctuates up and down depending on what we do. So if you have a heart-healthy diet, so a Mediterranean diet can cut your risk of Alzheimer's by a third. Anything that is good for the heart is going to be good for decreasing your risk of Alzheimer's. So we know that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, and smoking, all bad for your heart, also bad for your head. All of those will increase your risk of Alzheimer's.

We know that exercise is phenomenal. It decreases your risk of Alzheimer's anywhere from a third to a half. Aerobic exercise in particular. Lots of studies. Every study on exercise shows this. And in animal studies, we've shown that it clears away amyloid plaques better than any pharmaceutical we've seen yet. Do we know what the mechanism is for that? Not exactly now. But we just know like consistently that is insanely powerful. Yeah. Yeah. The net result of it is a decreased risk for sure. And then sleep is massive. So, and the data on this are striking and compelling. And every neuroscientist who studies Alzheimer's, I know now makes sleep a priority. So we know that in slow wave, deep sleep, your glial cells, which are the janitors of your brain, they clear away any metabolic debris that accumulated in

your brain during the business of being awake. So this is like the sewage system of your brain. And that operates while you're in this deep sleep. One of the things that clears away are these amyloid plaques. But what happens if you shortchange yourself on sleep, if you're not getting enough slow, deep sleep, you'll wake up in the morning without all of your trash cleared away, basically. And so you'll have amyloid piled up unnecessarily as you start your day. And if you continue to be sleep deprived, you're bumping yourself up toward closer and closer to Alzheimer's. Right. Is there a feedback, a negative feedback loop where the more it builds up, does the, does a buildup that isn't cleared away then in turn have an effect on giving you poorer sleep?

Yeah. So it creates this really destructive spiral. It's like, right. So a lot of our body is this nice negative feedback loop, right? Like something happens, it gets turned on, and then that flips the switch and turns the next thing off. With this, you're right. So if you have amyloid beta accumulating, that then disrupts the neural mechanisms that modulate getting to sleep and staying asleep. So you end up with a positive feedback loop that is going to make your situation

much worse for your risk of Alzheimer's. Right. It's interesting when you talk about sleep. I think when you talk about exercise, everyone's like, okay, so I haven't really prioritized it, but I know how to do it. I can make it happen. Like, I know that if I go and I get on the treadmill or I go ride my bike or I go, you know, like in the woods, whatever it is, I know how to move my body. And I know, I know how to get my heart rate up. I can wear my heart rate monitor. I can do that for my 30 to 60 minutes a day. Like I can, I have, I have the ability, I have the control to make that happen.

Even if it means I have to wake up early, even if it means I have to move things, like I can do that. I can make it happen three to five times a week, right? When you talk about sleep, I feel like we all, there's all this research that comes out, like that's come out over the last decade where people are like, yeah, I get it.

It affects everything. It is so important. But along with that, there's this mad sense of frustration of like, but yeah, I've seen all of the blog posts about sleep hygiene and like the 10 things you should do in your bedroom. But it hasn't worked for me. And I'm so frustrated because I see how important this is, especially to brain health these

days, but I can't make it happen. And it becomes, I wonder if people kind of walk away from really just spending, investing a huge amount of energy to try and really figure out their sleep because they get really frustrated because it's not as straightforward. It's not as easy. It's not as fast as so many other, you know, eating better and moving your body. Right. There's a lot to the sleep literature. And a guy, a neuroscientist named Matthew Walker has a great book out right now on sleep. And he, you know, speaks about this quite regularly. But yeah, there's a lot that we understand about diet and exercise. And we have cultures built around this, right?

You go to the gym, there are gyms. There aren't like, there aren't sleep, friendly sleep clinics for people, I guess. So there's a lot that you can do to improve your, the quality and quantity of sleep. But that's like almost a whole separate conversation. But you're right. Like there are things that you can do to help just like, well, if I wear a Fitbit and if I join a gym and if I set aside time in the day or if I've got my little cute yoga outfit and the yoga mat. Like if you make it a priority and you have the tools to make it happen, then exercise becomes part of your life. Similarly, if you understand the tools you need to get a good night's sleep. And I understand that you've tried some of these.

We can talk later if you want. But unless something is really sort of, there are ways to figure it out. And the other thing I would say is like, yes, if you read Matthew's book, which is phenomenal, you'll walk away knowing that sleep affects every system in your body and it fights cancer and it's essential for mental health and it's going to be essential for memory and preventing Alzheimer's. And like, OK, but then you also might be panic thinking like, my God, like I've had three children.

I didn't sleep for like a decade. Does that mean I'm going to be dead tomorrow? And so, yes, sleep is essential for all of these things. And yet we are remarkably resilient and it does not kill us if we don't get enough sleep, at least not immediately. Right. So, I mean, there are compensatory mechanisms in our bodies that help when we don't get enough of that. Yeah. And I guess that also leads to sort of like the extended part of my original question,

which is like, there are things that you can do to help prevent decline of your brain function. If you get to that tipping point where you are symptomatic and you are maybe in the earliest stages of a disease state, but it's there and it's diagnosable, are we at a point now where there are interventions that we can do that might actually hold the potential to reverse some or all of that? It's at least anatomically, it's not known that we can reverse the disease once the tipping point has been reached. And we now have Alzheimer's disease, sort of like your brain on fire with the disease and it's sort of running amok. But there are still things you can do to offset the disease that we can't seem to really affect yet. So for example, again, with exercise, exercise stimulates neurogenesis. So it stimulates the growth of new neurons.

So you've got neurons whose functions are being compromised by Alzheimer's disease and being destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. Exercise promotes the growth of new neurons in the part of the brain called the hippocampus. And this is the place that's attacked first by Alzheimer's. This is the part of your brain that's essential for the formation of new memories. So exercise is a phenomenal way to combat the disease, even if you've got it present. Learning new things is massive. So we began the conversation talking about neuroplasticity and how your brain changes. Your brain changes every time you learn something new. So I'd never been in a room with you before today. And now I have much more information on who Jonathan Fields is and what you look like and

where you live. And that information wasn't in my brain until today. So my brain changed. So every time you learn something new, your brain changes. You build new. And what does that mean? You're building new neural connections. So neurons are making connections that associate this and that. So you become parts, information about you becomes embedded into my brain in a way that's connected to this information and other stuff I know. So if I have Alzheimer's and parts of my brain and neural connections are being compromised or destroyed by the disease, if I make other neural connections, I might be able to detour that wreckage. So for example, I like to

tell people, think of your neurons as roads leading somewhere. So say I'm trying to get to City Hall and there's only one road to City Hall. And now there's a massive car accident on that road, and it's impassable. I can't get to City Hall. That's it. There's only one road. I'm done. But if the city paves more roads to City Hall, there can be an accident. They pave 10 roads. There can be an accident on nine of those roads, and I can still get there. So likewise, in your brain, if you have more neural connections, you have more ways to dance around any wreckage.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Would, I don't know if there's even an answer to this question, but let's say you do that. So you're activating through multiple pathways, this process of neurogenesis, which lets you literally grow new neurons, new cells in your brain, especially in the area of your brain that is one of the seeds of memory. On the one hand, it seems like that would give you the mechanism to now form and keep memories that are happening in real time from this point forward. But if there's stuff that gets lost, that's still lost, right? It is. Yeah. And so Alzheimer's attacks your most recently made

memories and personal history first. So if you know anyone with this, like the longer held memories, the stuff you learned when you were a kid is safe from the disease for a while. Interesting. still want to listen to music from the 40s and 50s, or we'll still be able to talk about, you know, what his home looked like when he was a kid and give you massive amounts of detail, but we'll forget what you said five minutes ago. So the learning new things isn't necessarily creating new neurons, it's new neural connections. It's connecting through neurons that already exist. And then through exercise, you can actually make more neurons in the part of your brain that has to do with remembering what happened five minutes ago. So it can be this constant sort of tidal battle for, like, how many neurons are being compromised versus how many can still work. And so, yes, you can fight this while you have it and try to stay at a sort of a plateau.

There's a guy I know named Greg O'Brien who has Alzheimer's. He's had it for 10 years now. He's 69. And he wrote a book called On Pluto about this. And he fights this every day with exercise, continuing to write, So trying to stay cognitively active. Yeah. And I mean, it's such a powerful argument, right? So I'm 53, you know, like we're similar age. And it's such a powerful, full argument to say, okay, now is, yes, 10 years would have been better. But even so, you know, like if now is, there's such a strong, important reason to be doing all these things, to be moving your body on a regular basis, to be really trying to figure out and dial in your sleep, to be thinking about what you put in a marathon you want to run. But if you're thinking, well, I kind of, I want to be here for myself and for the people that I love 20, 30, 40 years from

now, not just in body, but in mind. And the process of me still being able to do that, that far down the road, it starts today. And like it probably started, you know, like 10 years ago, but there's still a lot, like if I start today, that can make a profound difference in the quality of my ability to be cognitively there decades from now. Like if you can remind yourself of that every day. Yeah. You know, I think it's such a powerful motivator to wake up and actually. And the beautiful thing about what we're talking about here is anyone can do it. Right.

It's, I mean, when I talk about this, I'm like, I know you guys all want some like high tech, sexy device or like there's some magical pill, but like the magical pill is free. It's called sleep. It's, you know, it's exercise. It's your diet. It's really low tech, not sexy stuff. And yet we're used to, we're pretty comfortable with the idea of having an influence over our health and preventing disease from the neck down. Like we really, I think with heart health in

particular, you know, like we know if I get in my number of steps, if I do this, that's like, I'm preventing heart disease. I'm keeping my heart healthy. And you might be thinking this as a 25 year old. Oh, I'm going to keep my heart healthy. Like, well, you weren't at risk really for a heart attack at 25. This is something you're actually preventing, you know, when you're in your 50s and 60s. And so one of the shifts that I and others are trying to make out there in the public is to start to think about having some influence

over your health from the neck up. And like your heart, what you do is important for keeping your brain and your memory healthy now and in the future. Yeah. No, that makes so much sense. I love it. It's making me sort of, the more it's funny, as I was just sort of like prepping a little bit for this conversation through the conversation, it's really, it got me in a reflective state of like, huh, you know what? I'm pretty solid, but I need to actually make all these things an even higher priority and not expect necessarily to feel some profound difference tomorrow. But just because I

know this is like my daily maintenance, this is what I have to do because I know I want to be around for a long time. And there are things that I want to see and do and people that I still want to be in relationship with and recognize down the road. Yeah. And Alzheimer's is not a fun price to pay for longevity. You know, like the average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 in 1900. Wow. I know.

So it's like we've gained a massive number of years in longevity. But with that comes this really massive risk of Alzheimer's. And so, yeah, I mean, we don't want to, that shouldn't be the price that you have to pay. Like, well, I'm going to get to live 30 more years than I would have had I lived a hundred years ago, but I'm going to go out not remembering any one or anything that I've ever lived for. Yeah. Who's the person who said it's not the number of years you live, it's the life in your years or something like that.

This feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So hanging out in the studio in the context of this thing called The Good Life Project, if I offer out the phrase to live the fully realized version of yourself. To be seen and heard. To love and be loved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible.

You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever.

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