The Bossticks - Dr. Rahul Jandial On Neurofitness: A Brain Surgeon's Secrets to Boost Performance and Unleash Creativity

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

#256: Today we are joined by Dr. Rahul Jandial, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Jandial is an American, dual-trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles, a hospital for cancer treatment designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute. He  is an associate professor with expertise in the surgical treatment of cancers of the nervous system. On this episode we are discussing neurofitness. What is neuorfitness? It's a brain surgeons secrets to boost performance and unleash creativity. We also discuss the human brain, brain surgery, and the science behind how our brains work To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) The Episode is brought to you by Uncommon James   Uncommon James is a collection of timeless, effortless and sophisticated jewelry for women on-the-go and created by Kristin Cavallari. Inspired by her wide array of life experiences, travel and exposure to fashion from around the world, Kristin saw the need to create a jewelry brand that is both versatile and affordable for women of all ages and backgrounds.    Visit www.uncommonjames.com and use discount code Skinny20 for 20% off! This episode is brought to you by Sephora At Sephora, we know makeup. It's been in our DNA since day one. From the contouring trend to Fenty Beauty frenzy to SEPHORiA's lipstick-packed playground, we bring the very best the makeup world has to offer. Our latest obsession? Clean makeup. When we saw the newest wave of Clean— uncompromising in its glow-giving, pigment-rich, stay-all-day glory—we knew it was the game-changing lineup you've all been waiting for. These products read like a highlight reel of beauty innovation, and it just so happens that they're packed with good-for-you ingredients, too. Sephora doesn't make exceptions for Clean—this March, we're raising the expectation on what Clean can be This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that's reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you're ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your 'Lifelong-Health-401k'. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body? Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a dear media production. This episode is brought to you by Sephora. We got to talk about clean makeup, specifically at Sephora. This is so relevant for the times and clean makeup has never been hotter. Here's the deal. Sephora is making it so much easier for all makeup lovers to shop clean makeup products. They have so much clean makeup. And I'm going to tell you guys a couple of my specific favorites in a second.

But first, you should know if you are shopping at Sephora and you, you want to buy something clean, definitely look for like it's like a circle and it's a green stamp and it says clean at Sephora. Basically, they have this green, clean seal on their stuff in store and online. So you can find all your favorite makeup very quickly and very efficiently. I'm very into this. The one that I keep telling you to look at the clean product to check out at Sephora is the tart C surfer curl mascara. It is the best clean mascara I've ever tried. Let me tell you, this mascara is vegan, it volumizes, it curls, it's sweatproof, it's vitamin E, it's skinny, confidential, master list approved, and it conditions your lashes. It does everything and it's clean. And if you're

into clean beauty and you want to sort of dip your toe in, I would start with mascara just because it's the closest thing to your eye. So that's what I would recommend. Anyways, like I said, all their clean products are marked with their clean green seal. This seal means formulated without paraben, sulfates, mineral oils, and even formaldehyde. You can check them out online and in stores. Get the best in clean makeup at Sephora online and in stores now. Let me know what you got. DM me slide into my inbox. And with that, let's get back to the show.

She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. Calm is one element, knowledge is another element, experience is another element, you know, commitment

is another element. Having good hands is one component, but it's not the thing that makes you a badass surgeon. A badass surgeon is one that can take you out of unexpected danger. Here we go again, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. On this episode, we are joined by Dr. Rahul Jundial to discuss nerd. neuro fitness. What is neuro fitness? It's a brain surgeon's secrets to boost performance and

unleash creativity. We also discuss the human brain, brain surgery, and the science behind how our brains work. A lot of brain going on in this episode. For those of you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. I'm most recently the CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network and the co-hosts of this show. And it costs from me, the creator of the skinny confidential drum roll, please. We've been cooped up a long time together, quarantine. Lauren Everts. It's been a long time. It's been like, what, seven days, 10 days? I can't keep talking about it. It feels like a lifetime, Lauren.

It feels like a life. I know every single thing about you. You know what's weird is like you're going to see what I actually look like, which is like really weird. You know, my nails are chipped. I don't have a spray tan. My brows have not been double tinted in a while. My roots are starting to show.

Things are unraveling slowly. I looked over there today and like, who the hell is that? Yeah, you're going to be like, you might have a whole new girlfriend. I'm running, you know, I would, it's rare that I would say this. I may be running out of things to, say to you. And I'm usually a long talker, but we've been here. We've been cooped up a long time. A lot of people have been cooped up. I know everything about you. Like, there's nothing else possible to not know. I mean, I've seen every single facet of every single part of you. We're social creatures, Lauren.

We're meant to be out and about and fly. Yeah. It's weird, guys, we feel you. But thank God for podcast because I've been listening to podcast this entire time. And I'm trying to use this time, this time to get quiet and go inward. And I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity instead of something negative. So I'm doing a lot of research. I'm writing a lot. I'm working on things that I've wanted to work on for a long time, but haven't had the time. I'm spending a lot of time with Saza. And I'm getting to know my husband, like really getting to know. We're really quarantined. We're really, we're sticking to the stay home narrative. We're here. All right, guys, we got a really solid show for you today with an amazing guest.

It's a subject that we haven't necessarily touched on. So who is Dr. Rahul Jundial? Dr. Rahul Jondal is an American dual-trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles as a hospital for cancer treatment designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. He's an associate professor with expertise in surgical treatment of cancers of the nervous system. And on this episode, we're talking all about the brain, all about the life as a neuroscientist and

surgeon. Guys, this one goes all over the place. It's extremely interesting. Lauren and I were glued to our seats as he was talking to us, as we were learning. It's an incredible episode. Hope you enjoy it. With that, Dr. Rahul Jundial, welcome to the show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Okay, so the first thing is, are these headphones okay to put on your head? Because I feel like you're a brain sergeant, you would know. I would know, maybe. And I'm not taking any risk putting these headphones on, and either is anybody else in your show. Yeah, they're just headphones. The funny thing about that is people ask me, do cell phones cause brain cancer? And if you look, like last 20 years, the rates of brain cancer have not changed, but everybody's got a cell phone.

And then if you're still worried about it, we're starting to lean more towards texting and having them in our hands and not next to our ears. So it's a non-issue. What are these stories, though, that I hear about these women that hold their phone and their breasts? Like, they hold it, like, in between their boobs and then they get breast cancer. That's just not true. It's just not correlated. Just total baloney. See, this is why I love having someone that actually is a doctor on the show

because I want to, I always, every time someone says this stuff to me like, hey, if you hold your phone up, I'm like, there is, I always say there's no data behind this, but I'm, you know, obviously speaking as somebody that's not an expert like you. Yeah, but that's, that's kind of the weird thing now is if you say crazy stuff, there's so many outlets, you'll get the headline, you know, and there was a thing like the laptops that's going to cause problems with your junk and stuff like that. See, she yells at me all the time if my laptop's on his job. I yelled at him if his laptop's on his balls, so I don't have to yell at him about that.

Maybe that's for a play. That's just warm up. I'll take that off my list. It's a long fucking scroll. What about like electronics? There's a lot of people ripping their wiring out of their house and going crazy. What about that? So that's interesting.

So the concept between that thought, so I'll take you back to a story. My three boys were born in San Diego. And we were buying a house. There was one that was cheaper. And it was underneath these like heavy wires. You know I'm talking about like the giant. It looks like a dinosaur with the big wall. So when you have electricity, it also creates a magnetic field.

So it's like electromagnetics. Like you drive with your AM radio through certain spots and it gets all staticy. So there is a connection between electricity and magnetic fields. And they had a sign if we were going to buy the house that this may have some health effects. But you're talking about a monstrous amount of electricity at a distance. And even then it's not proven. But pulling wires out of your house, I haven't seen anything like that. I might be wrong.

I'm just telling you, like, as of this moment, I haven't seen anything like that. And I'm in the cancer field. I'm a cancer brain surgeon. I've got a laboratory. We read about this stuff. Okay. I want to go, speaking about all that, let's go way back with you because, you know, before we turned on the mics, we were briefly talking about your background. How did you become basically a brain surgeon?

And you told me this. And correct me if I'm wrong, you said you were a security guard in Oakland. This has to be, this is a wild story. I know. I want to hear the whole. We want to hear the whole thing. Yeah, unpack that first. Yeah, unpacked.

I don't know where to start with that. Like, so I grew up here in Los Angeles, and this is funny. Like, I'm sitting here and it's Hollywood Hills. Everybody thinks Hollywood or the industry or whatever you guys call it, the business is Los Angeles. But if there's 20 million people from, let's say, the valley, let's say Ventura to San Clemente to, like, inland empire, I would say almost all of them are not part of the business or the industry. And so there's this giant world out there from Whittier to comp, to, you know, Van Nuys.

And I grew up in that world. I grew up off to 605.91. It's weird. Like, you just know, like, where you live based on your freeway junction. And I drove through this area. I didn't know anything about this world, but I was starting to look at, like, universities. So then I realized, I want to go to a university that's not here because I wanted to get away from L.A.

In the 80s, things were just tense, you know. There was, I mean, AIDS was popping up in San Francisco and there were a lot of gang stuff in LA. It was just a tense environment. It may still be tense, but that was uniquely tense for me. I just felt like I needed to get out of LA to understand who I was. So I went to Berkeley. I got into Berkeley, luckily, and I didn't even check it out. I just was like, I'm going because it's not here. And what a magical place. I mean, I didn't have to drive. I love driving, but I didn't have to drive. Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, you take the bar, completely different vibe. people stare at you, it's not because they want to fight.

People are, they were, they would have like smokeouts on, on Berkeley as a campus and the cops would be like, don't bother them. It was just a different environment. I'm not saying better or worse. I don't judge. I just want to understand. And when I was there, I was about a year or two into it, I was like, you know, I'm not going to class. It was semester base, not quarter. So you, like, had tests every like two months.

So you could not go to class for a month and a half, cram for a test and still like bounce out. I know. So it was my cup of tea and I dropped out because I just needed to get my head right. I wanted to like bask in in the different environment. So I needed a job and there was a the dormitories are these big cafeterias. So I got a job there as a security guard. You know, it wasn't violent, but I had a uniform and a hat. It was just a different thing.

But the trip was like I was sitting in class with people like chemistry 101 or whatever. And everybody's thinking about making big careers. and then like two weeks later, I'm like, you can't take that out of the cafeteria. You know, it's like totally different role. And they would look at me sideways, but I never let that. Like, I never got twisted about that. I was just like, whatever, man. This is me.

I don't, I don't really care what you think. It's not my business. But that's also where I met my wife. She's from Guam. They don't really have a university. She was one of the students going through there. And that's how we met. And so she was like, I met somebody in America in Los Angeles.

He's a security guard. And her parents weren't just. her family wasn't and then she inspired me to like look at it differently and having a year or two being a security guard I liked it I was volunteering in San Francisco I was partying but I was like it was losing its buzz and so I realized I wanted to do something else and that's when I went back to school and were you always good in school were you good student yeah I was or sort of always lived a double life in Los Angeles like I was hanging out with the kids that were definitely not going college and but I could just cram and and get the scores and so like they were like a student all the

so you're just naturally very very intelligent well that's a different thing intelligence i'm more tactical i would be like oh man i would if i memorize these 500 words i can do good on this test and that's what these colleges are looking at it wasn't like i'm i was a learned man and i was at a photographic memory i would just i was strategic like they look at grades and they look at scores Let me take the easiest classes and get the easiest A's. And let me cram for whatever this test is about so I can get to the next step. But it wasn't like, I wasn't the smartest out of the ones going to college. And a lot of the kids that didn't go to college, some of them went to prison, some of them had trouble.

When we were, they were smart. I mean, they were, if they had been given the opportunity to go to school or good school or had the gentle pressure from family or society or culture or parents, parents to be like, this is important, they would have exceeded me. So it was like the first time I started seeing like, there's potential inside all of us. And just because you get somewhere, you know, a lot of it is luck and opportunity that you're, you fall into. Not that you, I pulled myself up and I did this. But like not anyone can be a brain surgeon. Which is so wild to me. Yeah, but that's different. So then when I went back to school, I got into medical school. And I was not

at the top of my class in medical school. I wasn't really trying. Then my wife. got pregnant and she was, you know, she is a gyne oncologist. So it's a gynecologist who do robotic surgery to cut out like cancers in pelvis of- I said she's a gyne oncologist and you said, no, she's a gyne oncologist. So they start off with gynecology, then they do three more years of training to cut out cancers of the uterus and cervix and stuff like that. And so we kind of fumbled into this stuff. But when I was at medical school, the first time I liked what I was doing, interestingly enough, when I saw them make an incision on somebody's belly who'd been shot. And we always think of the human body like cadavers, you know, or like those body exhibits.

No way, man. Even in the belly, they open it up and it was like slithering snakes of bowel and it was iridescent. And we're just talking about guts. I mean, I was like, whoa, the liver. It was just colorful. It was almost artistic. And then so I was like, oh, man, it's nice because when you're a surgeon, it's you. like if you need chemotherapy or somebody needs chemo it's the same bag of chemotherapy in new york as it is here

but it's not the same hands operating in new york as it is with me or here right so it's like it's where your hands or your medicine so i was like whoa this is like this i felt ownership you know who also said something similar to this and dr jason diamond you know him he's a facial surgeon here and he's like he said like a lot of facial trauma one time to study and he said like a light went off and he's like oh my hands could do it wait you said something though that's so interesting to me you said when you looked at it, like Michael just said, it's artistic. You didn't look at it in a gross way. Because if I saw guts, yeah, I'm going to die.

Well, that's the funny. Okay, trauma surgery can be bloody. There's blood everywhere because you're rushing. But when you do surgery as a scheduled kind of thing, you have this like, it looks like a fountain pen. It looks like a, and it's got electricity that shoots. So when you're cutting, you're sniffing, you're controlling. It's not supposed to be bloody.

And so that means you can see the anatomy. It's a window inside that's not. made opaque because it's filled with blood. Actually, you're sloppy if you're just leaving blood all over the place. So when you cut it open, it's not bloody. People think, I'm scared of blood. No, it's actually, it's like, it's like, you know, it's like opening a fruit basket and get all these different shapes and colors. And that's just the belly. And then later on, I saw like the heart and different things. So I wanted a general surgery. Since we're on the topic of health, let's talk about ritual. You guys know I have been a fan of ritual for so long. I take it every

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guaranteed. Go to ritual.com slash skinny to start your ritual today. That's 10% off during your first three months at ritual.com slash skinny. It comes to your doorstep, ready to go. So efficient. I'm very much about this. All right, let's get back into the show. I'm scared of cutting anything. I don't care if there's blood or not. I'm looking at, I'm not looking at this like a bag of fruit. I'm looking at this like, holy shit, somebody's body's open. And the cutting is just the beginning. Like, That's where I tell people like, oh, the operation of six hours, the nip tuck, you know, where they show the blade. I used to love that show, but the blade part takes what?

60 seconds. What are you doing inside for the other five hours and 59 minutes or whatever, right? What's the average length of surgery that you perform? What depends on terms of duration. So my operant on Wednesdays is usually two, four-hour cases. But sometimes if it's a big case, it could be eight or nine hours. It just depends on what the patient needs. And that's the thing, though.

the work inside cannot be imagined if you have not taken a look. I mean, the exact, again, what are you doing for six hours in there? If cutting the skin takes a minute or two, what are all the other things? And I think that's like where I like, I love talking about surgery because I try to get people to imagine the incision is just opening the hood. And then you see, you go to Ferrari dealership or whatever, Ford dealership, and they're rebuilding the engine. You can imagine that because you've seen it.

We've looked inside when we were growing up. But similarly, inside the body and inside the skull, opening the skull takes 20 minutes. The operation is four hours. What are you doing in there? What are you actually doing? You're like slithering around valleys and singeing vessels and sucking out tumors. There's all this work that is completely like sculpting. Like whether you've got a machete and you're working on a totem pole or, you know, you've got an exacto knife and you're doing arts and crafts.

there's a lot of like physical work in there and some people are better at it. It's not the same 1500 steps doing those four. Like for example, if you're making a totem pole, you might go, you might take fewer wax to make it wax me to like you know, hits to make it take form. And so a surgeon that's good messes with the tissue less, less picking, grabbing, less stretching, less stabbing. The less the body notices you, the more perky the patient is afterward, the less the complications. It's more precision. More precision, fewer steps. And then the patient is, the patient does better. And that's like, that's cool. That's the competition I'm in.

It's like a way for me to be like super competitive, but do in a way that's like cathartic and I feel good because my complication rates, my patients do better than at the other centers across the world. So it is competitive, but it's not me against the patient. It's me. The better I get my patient to do, that's the competition I have at City of Hope where we want, I want to be the best. You're like competing with yourself in a way. Yeah, and actually the other surgeons.

I want my patients to know he crash lands the least when he flies to the moon. I still crash land, but less than the other pilots. So here's a weird question. Maybe you get asked us a lot, but I've always wondered this as someone who could never do what you do. the first time that you perform brain surgery after college. I don't know if you have to go to college all the way or you do it while you're in college. How much anxiety do you have? What if you fuck that up?

I know, that's a trip. So the way it goes is like this. College is about four years. Medical school is about four years. You got to eat eight just to get your medical degree, but you can't touch a patient just by doing that. Then you got to do residency, which is three to eight more. So you're 16 years out from graduating high school. By the way, you guys, he looks like he's 25 in a model.

But go on. I'll let them Google you. 47 years old. And just hitting my stride, actually, it feels, this is a good age for people who are thinking 47 is old. I'm sort of just feeling it. It's a good thing to mention so many young people that listen to the show they have things. I don't know what I'm going to do. I know they're in their 20s.

You know, like you said, you're like in your prime now 47. Yeah. And actually don't be, I'm going to get back to that, what you're saying. But don't be in a rush. Like rush. Like, rush to my kids, like rush to like finish and have a job. job from 21 to 71? Oh my God, man. It's a long time. I started working at 36. I'm 47. I'm already feeling like, man, I've been doing this a while. So take time, take pauses, diversify your skill set,

launch a little later. That's my advice to my own kids. But the first time the brain surgery thing, so this is a trip because I had seen, so in medical school, four years of college at Berkeley, well, six, because I took two years off in the middle, at USC medical. school. I saw heart surgery. It's what you expect. Beating muscle. You're like, okay, it's flesh, it's bone. You go to the butcher shop. You've seen those colors before. Then when they said, hey, you want to switch over to neurosurgery because they had a spot and it was sort of like, I didn't apply into it. They approached me because I was going into heart surgery. Then there's, I was like, well, can I, you know, well, let me just watch one because I didn't

seen one in medical school. And they like, they made an incision from, your sideburn across to your other sideburn but behind the hairline so you know it's not on your forehead that there's thoughtfulness to the hairline and they're just like did did it and they made these like little holes like you'd make in the wall like like pep like pep boys or home depot drills and they and then they took a jigsaw like you know like you would cut out a cardboard like the stucco and they were and they chipped off and they cracked off the just like the forehead with the sky And I was like, is, I mean, is that even something that you're allowed to do and have the patient survive? And I'm like, past medical school.

It was that, like, crazy looking. And then you don't see the brain right away. The brain is the beautiful brain that you're imagining from the movies. It's covered with a sheath. So it's almost like in a little sack, like a parachute material sack. And then they lifted it up, like with two pickups, like little tweezers. And then they sniffed at it. And they unzipped it with a blue.

And I looked and it was white. No blood. Just like pearl. Like it's not gray matter. It looks like opalescent. It was shimmery and white and had these little thin, fine blue and red arteries. And I was like, that's gorgeous. I mean, just from seeing something in a museum, it was gorgeous.

It wasn't gray. It wasn't bloody. It didn't smell. And the brain fluid was clear. It looked like seven up without the fizz. And I was like, where in the body are we? It was completely different than anything I had seen. And I had seen leg surgery, pelvic surgery, art surgery, lung surgery, neck surgery.

And I was like, this is something. This is something to have the opportunity to potentially work in to help people. I will benefit in being a space that's like, whoa, a rare fight space, right? Like, maybe that's how astronauts feel. and then I get to make people better. So I can take my competition, my competitive nature. I can take my fascination with being in a unique space. And then I don't have any guilt with it because I'm trying to get you better.

So let me ask you this. When people are, when people need brain surgery, forgive me because it's again, not like, yeah, yeah. Like what is the most common thing you see? What's the most common reason people come and need help with the brain? Okay. That actually takes me back to a bit of the. story. So when I finished San Diego and I moved up here to City of Hope, 2009, I was, then I was 35, 36 years old. And I had written this handbook called 100 questions and answers about head

injury. I like, like, I like doing stuff for people because I always felt like our world is not good at communicating. It's like, study your butt off, stay in the library all day to get the scores, and then we're going to put you in a hospital where people are doing drugs, they're fighting. There's crime inside the hospital. There's jail wards inside the hospital. There's CEOs there. There's business people there. There's homeless people there. I always felt like there's a disconnect. Like we weren't properly trained for a human environment. And so I always liked writing like book, little pamphlets and books, you know, rest in peace with all respect. Liam Nielsen's wife had that tragic snowboarding accident where she fell. You know, if you

snowboard, if you hit the wrong edge, it slaps you down hard. It's an unprotected fall. There's no like I put my arm out and then my head hits. It's a very, it can be tricky. I don't know if she's snowboarding or skiing, but so she had a brain hemorrhage. That's the number one reason. So when someone hits their head and has a brain hemorrhage? Most of the brain hemorrhages can be just watched. They're like a bruise.

If it doesn't grow too much, the skull doesn't stretch and the brain can handle a little gentle push. But if it continues to grow, it's basically like putting your fist into the brain because the skull will not give. In the belly, the blood will, if you had blood, your belly, your abdominal wall would stretch. So your guts are like, it's cool. We're expanding.

But the skull doesn't stretch. So if you put blood in there, the brain gets smashed. And that is the number one reason people get brain surgery. Now, that's different. That's just open the coconut shell. Let it out. Let it out. Yeah, yeah.

You're actually not in the brain. You're on the surface of the brain. And then what we do is when the cancers grow within the brain, they look like strange cauliflower stuck. stuck inside like a strange cauliflower like stuck inside a beautiful flon and then you dissect a bit of the brain and you get to it it feels different it looks different and then you don't just grab at it and like other cancers you don't take a normal cuff around it it's weird you go like an egg you go right into the middle you core it out and then you collapse the shell onto itself you don't want to

bother the brain. And then you find out which corridors you can actually, parts of the brain, you can go through and you wake up fine. Other parts of the brain you go through and they're injured. That's brain surgery. Which valleys and which corners can we slither in to get to the disease, get out, get out of town, smooth and slick, and then the patient wakes up. That's brain surgery, not just, of course it's brain surgery and root the skull, but that's what we do with cancer brain surgery. Let me ask you this. So with a brain hemorrhage, how common is it people just don't know their hemorrhaging? Hold up. We're going to take a quick break to talk about uncommon James.

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and definitely maybe add the seashell earrings and you are like good to go, throw in a candle, have some fun. And with that, let's get back into the show. Well, I'm assuming that's a good question. I bet everybody pops a little bit and they have a bruise or inside their brain and you don't feel it and a lot of people heal.

But these days with all the scans, every time you got a headache, every time you get a headache, every time you get a car crash, they're getting those scans in the emergency rooms. So we're seeing little ones. Most of them don't need surgery. The ones that grow or the ones that are growing fast, we jump in, open the skull,

and let it drain out and they put the skull back down. I will tell people when they hit their head if they feel like like they should just go get a check dogs. You never know.

We know a couple people in our life that you always tell people that are you a brain surgeon? Yeah. It's good advice though. I look at you're teasing it. I'm not a brain surgeon

but I mean they should But you know and now. Yeah. And like I think there's a lot of people that just don't know they're hemorrhaging they end up going the other way. Yeah, there's some tragic cases.

What does it take to be a really, really damn good brain surgeon? Like does it take a steady hand? like what are, give us like all the like tools that you need in your toolbox. I'm assuming first you have to look at it as a fruit basket and beautiful flan. Like that has to be the first priority. You have to like find it beautiful. Yeah, but I'll send you some pictures.

There's some like, there's stuff like, well. Because I'll pass the fuck out. That's funny. No, but brain. They got like stuff about like brain are and stuff. And I'll send you stuff. You'll be like, okay, that looks pretty. Who are the best?

So you ever see that movie Hurt Locker? Yep. And the guy's completely like, he's just got, he's got a lot of issues. But he has a unique thing where he can diffuse bombs better than everybody. He's calm as hell in the situation. Whatever it is. It's like he's calm. Calm is one element.

Knowledge is another element. Experience is another element. You know, commitment is another element. Having good hands is one component, but it's not the thing that makes you a badass surgeon. A badass surgeon is one that can take you out of unexpected danger. They're better. They're better. Okay.

Perfect. Because I mean, I was going to get too deep on that. Not Einstein. but Captain Sully on the Hudson. I literally was just going to ask you, are you Captain Sully? I met him, I was like, this dude should be president, man.

This dude is just... It's like you can land the plane calm. Well, but whatever he did, right? He flew for a while. He had it just like that elusive. You can't capture it. Let's take 100 people. Stoic.

Yeah, Stoic is one of them. But even if you freak out, if you pull it off, like, I don't know how, what is a two-minute drill in football? Some of these quarterbacks are so good at throwing, but under pressure, two minutes, games on the line, some are better, some who don't actually have the better arm. And what Captain Sully did was interesting to me. Really helped me understand was I saw him at KTLA because after Leon Nielsen's wife passed away, they actually asked me to come on.

And that's been my local gig. I go every Tuesday morning. Actually went this morning. But I met him there. And it was interesting that when we talked about it, you don't know you have that skill. unless you try. And it's not the smartest ones. It's not the show-offs. It's something you realize when you're put under pressure over and over again. Like, I want that guy to operate on my mom because the last 10 times, the case kind of got out control or you hit rough weather. Man, they did better

in his hands or her hands than the other people. And so that you have to be put to the test. And so steady hands is one of them, knowledge is one of them. But that elusive, Why, if we both of us are given 100 airplanes to crash land, you pull off 90 and I only pull off 60? Why do that happen? It can't be taught. It's not in a textbook. That's what I love being a surgeon. Like, it's a physical performance.

We work in an operating theater, right? It's a performance. And sometimes we joke. You don't want to be, you don't want a smart surgeon. You want a capable surgeon. You know, there was, my dad was a, like, part-time pilot for a while, and he, he had some training. And the guy that trained him was, he was an old, like, he was an old pilot. And he said, like, whenever there's a problem up in the air and you got to figure out, like, instead of freaking out and trying to make a quick decision, he's like, take off your watch and start winding it.

Like, take that time as you're winding your watch. Just think and be calm. And, like, I feel like it's those guys that have the experience being in some shit. Like, you know, the guys that freak out and they're like, they can have all the training in the world. But when shit hits the fan. And then once people are put under that stress, certain people show that. they're remarkable. And it cannot be computed. It's not writing prescriptions. It's not making programs and software. It is a physical performance. So I always wonder about this. Like I have,

this surgeon came on that did my boob job. Dr. Barrett, shout out to him. And he, he is like amazing with how he, his precision, like everything. What if like you have a bad day or what if you worked out too hard? Or what if your wife just bitched at you? Like, what, what, What if you have, what if your parents just died? I asked him this question, like, how do you go into surgery and operate on someone's brain and compartmentalize that? Yeah. So I don't, I don't, I'm not a guy that judges or diminishes. I just like, I'm in my space.

I'm hitting my stride. The interesting thing about plastic surgery is you get to see and have an opinion on the success. But not of our, whether you're here or at a U.S. seer-seater's, when we put the skull cap on and we see you afterwards, you have no idea. What the hell went on? What the hell went on? Whoa. And that's, so it becomes a real private club of people who operate inside skulls and hearts.

Even the heart, you can tell like, oh, wait, you know, I'm not having chest pain. Even knees, you can tell, like, Dr. Josephina does the knee repair, and 98% say they feel better and down the street, 96. With brain surgery, it's hard because you wake up and it's like, am I thinking right? Am I moving right? It's a very fuzzy space that only other neurosurgeons can evaluate. So what I would say is for brain surgery, you want to ask the anesthesiologists that are in the room like, hey, but you guys can't get to them, which is a weird structure. but like, hey, man, or what's going on and who's good?

They would know. But with plastic surgery, it's interesting, the results are for you to collectively evaluate. And with operating inside cavities, the result is private and sometimes can be mispresented to the patients and the patients can't always tell. And the thing about plastic surgery, like, no hate at all. But I like surgery where, where, you're, it's dangerous because it brings something out of me.

It brings a focus out in me. So if I have a bad day or whatever, it's actually strangely like my meditation, my golf, my yoga. It's like, oh, thank God I get to go to the operating room and shut everything out because this thing is going to get me just so jacked up and focus. It's like when you drive fast,

you're actually sometimes, I'm not encouraging people to drive fast. I'm just sharing my thoughts. When you drive fast, you have this weird focus. I think Robert Redford, to mention that it's like what do you like he's like movement and speed so a little bit of driving a bit of attention to something else can actually calm the mind so stuff like this takes you out of what could be a bad yeah exactly perfectly said so the bad day the stress that's my escape and i'm not

sure that's that's true for all surgeons because here's the weird thing when you you go into surgical training and they've never seen you operate so if you took a thousand quarterbacks without about seeing them throw and you would put all of them in a game. And I think that's where surgical training should say, look, you got to take videos, you got to show your performance. If you're average and you got to do stuff, that's not dangerous. And if you are talented, then we're going to put you in higher risk stuff. You know, there's like the flight simulators they would have for pilots and astronauts.

We don't have that. So it's a strange world that I'm trying to explain. For me, the training was so rigorous when I was in my 20s, 40-hour shift. easy. Come in Monday morning, 4 a.m. Leave Tuesday night, 7 p.m. Put in a full day on Wednesday. Do it again. Thursday morning. Come back Friday. So the bad day, bad mood, you kind of learn your, you're kind of, I'm not saying that's the way I want it to be now. If that's going to, you know, maybe you shouldn't be operating doing dangerous cases if, if having a bad day or coffee. Yeah, if she's going to rally. Yeah. If I come in somebody's upset about their wife's things, then you're going to be operating. I'm going to freak the fuck. out, you know? What do you do if you operate on someone and it doesn't go your way? I can't imagine

every single case is like a win-win 100%. Yeah, that's a good question. That's proper. That's what I was mentioning earlier is that at some point you have to say, if you, if you tried to go to the moon, some of the flights won't make it or there will be there will be issues. And then so you, then that really messes with you. Like, I took a long time trying to be like, man, this house really, especially with the kids, like children's brain surgery. There was a couple that have stuck with me. You know, no question is PTSD. They just, but I try to channel that into positivity.

But so then that's where it comes in where you have to in some way say to yourself, they need this. They can, this, the risk can never go to zero. But in your hands, it's the closest to zero compared to other people in town or other countries. And you start taking pride in being able to. do things that others can't. Your hands are like a medicine that others can't get to.

And that's, so you take, you start to, you have to, you have to realize you're going to hurt some people, but you're hurting them less than then if they went into other hands in other cities. And so like next week I'm going to Bogota, Colombia, we're going to, my buddy and now we do children's brain surgery down there. And so I need that to keep my mind fresh because this, this city, I love it. It's my town. But I need to see that too to see the ones that don't.

do well, it was, it was just sort of this strange fate that it wasn't something. It's never an oops moment. It's just some, there's a certain percentage of complications. You can't get it below that. If you fix 100 Ferraris, too, got to come back to the shop. What, what kind of emotional toll does that take? In the beginning, it used to take a lot. You know, I had kids. Then I had, you know, had some complication with kids. And no matter how tough you are, when you see a kid who can't move their legs and they came in moving their legs and you're the one that said you know you have some issues and I to protect you in the future this treatment happens to be surgery but this treatment will give you a better life a longer life a fuller life and like the next day they can't

move their legs you're not doing you I don't know and if you're not if you're okay with that then you should get out of you know you got to you had the so how do you cope with that I don't know the pain is the motivator to get better the the nightmare is about about the people that you wish you could have done better for is the motivation to get better. And then a decade later, you see what others do. And then you start to understand, again, it's not an oops moment thing.

It's just you can't get certain complications down to zero if you're doing dangerous thing. You can fly to San Francisco and expect not to get no car crash, I mean, the airplane crash, but you can't expect to go to the moon and land all 100. And then you start to understand like, okay, the 10 that crashed en route, Was that an oops moment or was, no, you were, everything, you were, you were, you were flowing,

but the meteor hit or something happened. It's just an inherent risk to a dangerous, dangerous project. You know, he was articulate like you about this is, and he passed away, but the guy that wrote, Breath Becomes Air. He was a surgeon that got cancer. And his wife actually has been speaking at schools and stuff like that. Wow. Oh, I'd love to get her on the podcast. That was a great book. I would like to know for anyone out there who's listening if there's any symptoms that you recommend that people should go to a doctor if they're feeling in their head. Like, is it a headache or, you know, a bruise or like, is there something like really weird that people wouldn't think is related to the brain where their handshakes? Like, why should someone see a doctor? Okay, that's a,

that's actually, that's a really good question because the things that are dangerous are also the things that are super common, a headache. 99.9% of headaches, tell me you have a brain tumor. And so here, here's what I would say. I'll say three things. If you'll go bottom up, if your leg hurts and there's shooting pain, that's one thing. But if you're trying to tell your foot to move or your leg to move and it doesn't listen to you, you got to go to the doctor. And in those situations, it usually doesn't hurt. So like, after. After the Super Bowl, we get a lot of people like, my leg hasn't been moving for a day.

It's not hurting, Doc, but it hasn't been moving for day. Now, you get a one-day window for us to fix that. So not being able to move a hand or an arm or a leg without pain. Pain brings you in. But don't ignore my leg's not listening or my foot's not tapping. Like you're saying go in right away because you have a one, you have a small window. You got to go in before the Super Bowl ends. Because those nerves, if we don't open them up within like,

like 24 hours, you've lost that for good. So then, so that's called, so if you have weakness without pain, it's still a big deal. Don't think, like, well, it's not hurting, so it's okay. The other thing is your speech, like, strangely, like the brain is super global. It's not like, the creativity lives here and fashion lives here, all that, all that stuff I read. It's just not true. So we've done a poor job of explaining it and making it appealing. But interestingly, language is on the left side, has.

this unique neighborhood right here. And that's why we do awake brain surgery to figure out like where everybody's address is for speech. Awake brain surgery? Yeah. Like the person's awake. Yeah. That's a trip too.

I wrote about that in the book, but that's, and that's been going on for 50 years. Yeah. Now, so if you can't get the words out and you're, you can't get them out or you're, you're having trouble with language or your face is droopy. That's what, and it won't hurt. That's also, that could be a stroke. That's one. And the last thing is headaches, they hurt.

How do you figure out if a headache's dangerous? I don't have a simple answer for that. But what I tell my patience is, if you have a headache and you do the usual things and it goes away, you have an espresso or you take your Advil or whatever and it goes away, that's okay. If you have a headache and that doesn't work and then the headache persists and it grows and it grows progressive. Then you're going to go in. That one is the one you want to pay attention to. If your usual maneuvers handle it, that's it.

that one you can ignore. But if it's growing and your usual tricks aren't working with it, then that's something you want to get chicked. What about like a, this is not to minimize this, but like a bad hangover, you know, because sometimes you do things,

but it just grows and grows. Is that because maybe like you're, you're dehydrated? I'm talking too much of fucking whiskey last night, Michael. I'm asking this selfishly. This is not for your audience. This is for yourself. You drank too much whiskey last night.

Your wife's pregnant and can't have fun of you. Those can progressively get worse as you're awake. I mean, he's not going to operate on you. Yeah, that's fine. If you have a bad headache because you've been drinking. What's the best thing to do if you've been, like, for the brain? Because you get bad headache.

You've been drinking? Yeah. Water? Water for sure, because dehydration is a part of it. And something with like salt in it and stuff like that. Like so my buddy's their go-to thing is menudo. They get the soup and it's got like Carponzo beans and like. All right.

We just went on the tangent. But the. Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about your book. Neuro fitness. I want to, because there's a lot of, there's a lot of young people here. I was liking the tangent by the way.

Well, it was a very, so listen, I have this show for a reason. I got to sit down with smart guys like you and solve my own problems. Okay, so your new book, A Brain Surgeon's Secrets to Boost Performance and Unleash Creativity. There's a lot of people, high performers, listening to the show, a lot of creative people. Let's dive into it. What are some tangible things and steps that they can take to boost creativity and performance? Yeah, so the ones that have been working well, particularly in London. So just to go on another tangent, but.

Tanger away. From KTLA, I got on this random Fox show, Fox Prime Time, It was called Superhuman and the shot at CBS Radford. I was like, whoa. And I didn't have an agent at that time. They just called me at work. And I was like, oh, yeah, there wants to be another nursing home. I got to go check out a patient.

Then my executive assistant is like, no, it's on Dhani. It's on. I don't think there's a nursing home. And I met with Endemal and they gave me this great opportunity. And I was on a cast. And it was one season. But then your world here, they noticed like, who gets on a prime time show? without an agent.

This dude is random, right? Through them, I connected with WME Literary, which is just those, you know, the guy out there, Melberger's just, he's just been so much fun. I know you don't think of literary as fun, but this dude is fun. He's been in a 40 years.

It came up from the mailroom. I had this idea. He did the magic of auction, I mean, the whole world was just, I don't even know it. He drove it. And then somebody bought it from, Venetia Butterfield from Penguin in London in UK.

And she put a different title on it. Just changed the album cover. Change the title. Change the cover art, everything. And I became a bestseller in London. What was the message that people connected with so much over there? She put the word storytelling on the cover, my opinion. So this one, the one you're looking at, it feels more like get at the airport and self-help.

And that's good too. But she put new stories of the mind. People are like, I want to hear stories. Because you don't want to be, you don't want Wikipedia, right? You want to learn. You're hanging, you're telling stories, and you're growing and you're learning. And that's, each of these chapters starts with like a gnarly story, oh, actually, that I wrote for Vice. So I wrote a gnarly story for Vice called the first time I let someone die.

Because people are like, you know, sometimes you make the decision that letting you die is the best thing. They love that title, the first time I let someone die. That led to this, that led to that. Hold on. You have to just unpack back. really quick. The first time I let someone die, you wrote an article about that. When you say let someone die, what do you mean? Meaning they had an injury to the reptilian brain. If the brain is a mushroom, the stalk that is underneath the canopy, all those ridges you see. If you get an injury

there, there's no way to come back. And you have to explain that to the family to say, this one, there are no miracles. God, that's going to be a brutal conversation. That was 27. Oh, shit, man. So I wrote that. They were like, okay, that's different. Because everything is like, oh, you're saving lives, saving the complexity of our gig has not been revealed yet. And so that got traction. And so back to the book, over there it's called Life Lessons from a Rain Surgeon, New Stories, and Science of the Mind. Every chapter starts off with a vice piece, essentially, just like a raw four pages.

And the chapters that have done well, because you wanted to talk about the book, are sleep and creativity. Let's just riff on creativity for a little bit because this is the one that's really stolen my heart because, you know, these tumors that grow in the brain in different ways. They're not like squares inside of a circle. Like, I mean, they're wrapping around. It's three-dimensional, like unimaginably. And so what are the ways to be created? So there are the ways that are illegal, that microdosing, psychedelics and stuff like that. And the way that works is, think of it this way.

your brain is only three pounds, but it sucks up 20% of your fuel. I mean, it's just like an energy hog. So by design in its own way, it wants to form freeways to get to work, put the kids to bed, in your mind, these pathways, these circuits, these like swarm of birds is the way I like to think of it. They get into these habits, how to get through the day without using parts of the brain they don't need to. It wants to be efficient because it's an energy hog, right? So it's always going down the freeways in its mind. When you take psychedelics, you shatter all the freeways and it's only roads.

And so you'll have a lot of crazy thoughts, but you'll also have a lot of thoughts you wouldn't have had if you're just checking your emails and that sort of thing. That's the concept behind. It's not putting you in like a habitual path. Right. A rut. Like if you ski or snowboard, there's a mountain, but there's all these lanes that everybody goes down.

Psychedelics will take you down through the trees. That's not good or bad. I'm not trying to say, do them or not do them. You're just trying to explain the concept. what's somewhat limiting you. Is it like a limit is a... Is that the right way to say it like a limiter? Is it just...

Well, it takes you to thoughts you would not have in the brain's pursuit to be efficient to tie your shoelaces and get you home and check your email. And you might get good ideas, you might get bad ideas. But that's where that psychedelic thing comes. But we are all wildly creative in our dreams. I mean, we're all tripping when we dream, right? So there's a built-in process for that. And then so how to access that?

I freaked myself out the other day. I really freaked myself out. I was dreaming. This is another tangent. You know, they talk about this mucus plug that pops out when the baby. And I woke up and I was like, yo,

did your spark plug come out here? And I was, because I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Anyways, sorry, let's get going. I wish you guys could see the look between the two. Well, because you're talking about,

like, I don't know what I was tripping on in that dream, but obviously something. So then you go to dreams, right? So the concept of psychedelics are built in, so this is for like the people who are trying to enhance creativity. Like if you're thinking like, what does this do know about creativity? Well, if you saw what we do with three-dimensional work, you'd understand, we're sculptors.

So we're wildly creative in our dreams. Can that be accessed? Can that be put to use? And then I started reading about all this stuff. So Salvador Dali, wildly creative, used to write about like the portal to his dreams was where he, like, put in work. Okay? And then I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then Thomas Edison used to like do this thing where he'd have being on like a,

like just the back of a chair and he'd have a notepad and like when he was falling asleep, he would write down what he was thinking right at that moment, right? And that's the basis of inception that movie with those famous actors. I can't remember their names. Christopher Nolan, Leonardo de Caprio. Yeah. Yeah. And the other guy that I like, actually, Tom Hardy, he's got good energy.

They had that thing where they fall backwards to pop them out of it. That's from Thomas's Edison's, like, trick to lean on a chair. When he's falling, he'll startle himself. And so what that is is there's a period when you are transitioning from being awake to asleep that you are like partly dreaming but awake enough to write it down. And so that transition is also when you go from having slept to waking up. They're actually technical names for hypnagogic and hypnipompic. And if you put these like electrodes on your skull, like you know, people understand you

put electrodes on your chest, you can measure like the heart rate and stuff. Well, electrodes on your skull, stickers can measure electricity. And there's, they're flow states. It's Aurora Borealis. It's not a computer. Swarm of birds, you know, and there are these flow states. It's typically one that you have when you're awake, and there's typically one where you have when you're sleeping. And so all the way from Edison to Dolly to Inception, there's like a 15-minute window when you're drifting off to sleep where you actually have those, both of those waves. And so there's a biological basis that you may have more creative thoughts if you think about things as you fall asleep. And there's a caveat.

And then think about them again when you wake up. So the ritual for me is I got like my phone with the notes app is ready or the Google Docs. And it can't be when you're exhausted. So you have to protect time to be creative, right? You can't be creative like when you're exhausted. Triple espresso exhausted, hungover. Things aren't going to be popping then. So what I do is I dedicate a day or two of the week where I know I don't have to wake up as early.

And I'll take the puzzle in my mind that's been like, damn, I've been working on this for a while, this tumor, this thought, the scientific thought. And I'll read about it on a dedicated night and drift off sleeping about it and sort of imagine me running it in my mind in that dream factory, in that psychedelic state that we have without the dangers of drugs. And I'll wake up. I'll take some notes. And does it work? No, not all the time. Of course not. Otherwise, we'd all be wildly creative. But I find that's where I get my good ideas in that, in that process, in that ritual.

So that's one way to enhance your creativity. I call this when my husband goes cerebral. I allow him space to go cerebral. I can tell when he needs to go inward and just like... I get stuck in there. He gets stuck in his brain. And I say, oh, you're going cerebral. That's good living though, man.

That's because... I need time. I need to like... And it's not, you know, sometimes. I'll just like kind of go into. I just need time to think. Yeah. And so those windows are there.

And then you're like, okay. So I would say that's one safe, non-drug way to consider changing the way you do your creative process. The other question I get from people, which I love is, I mean, like, this sounds like an overpromise. So can we all be more creative? This is a really, like, passionate concept for me. And the way to think.

about is this, the front of lobes, those things behind our forehead that other animals don't have, they are so in command, they're like the air traffic controller. And what they're doing is they're tamping down our wild side. Because you have to, you have to drop the kids off to get to work, right? You got to be efficient in getting the daily tasks done. So the windows falling into sleep and coming out of sleep is one way. But it was this fascinating thing that we When you damage the frontal lobes, not on purpose, it's not some strange experiment, but in Alzheimer's clinics and institutes, nobody wants Alzheimer's. I'm not going there, but you can learn about yourself from the ways in which other people's brains deteriorate. When you injure, in Alzheimer's, there's some people have this dramatic increase in the ability to paint.

Like they have shown art. And then like 20 years later, it's just better. And so the concept behind that is, and then sometimes people say, well, alcohol, a lot of riders used to drink, if you can learn to have your executive functions of the frontal lobe, take a back seat for a while, we all have the potential to be more creative. Kids' frontal lobes are not developed. They're creative. Okay, Alzheimer's patients, front of lobes are starting to be damaged. They can display some increase in creativity. We know some people have been hit with lightning and all of a sudden, some people have been hit with lightning and all of a sudden, some people. magical that's happened, savants, right? So there is this latent wild creative side that is in our core brain that that is that should be tamped down. Otherwise we just be walking around like we're all on acid. So to get things done, the frontal lobes really developed and let us live life, but they also now get in the way of us accessing those, that visceral mind, which is where

creativity comes from. Are psychedelics bad for your brain? You know, I mean, I went to Berkeley. Some people used to trip hard, and they ended up having a lot of psychosis and issues and stuff like that. And I know Silicon Valley, which is weird, like computer people doing microdosing. I don't get that. I was thought of creativity is more of writing, entertainment, graphic arts, you know,

sculpting. But psychedelics are illegal. But they're also, oh, that's here's a side of it too. They're being tested at cancer center. in New York. I also think they're, aren't they testing for people of PTSD too? Yep. Yeah.

And some of those tests are positive. And Molly or X, I mean, we used to call it E, but E, ecstasy. Molly was a marriage counseling drug and it's not a true just a psychedelic, but the ones they're testing on cancer patients, extremely powerful concept that that mushrooms, shrooms, whatever you want to call them, that they help people, they help, this is, I just, this is the complexity of the brain that is rarely shared, that cancer patients, sometimes struggle with the fact that they have grown something inside them that is eating them alive. Right?

This is what cancer is. You don't get infected with it. You grew it. And it hurts to think about that. And you just feel the, sometimes. And so they call this an existential crisis. So in America, in New York, there are clinical trials at hospitals with, you know, that are looking at Ken Shrooms in a controlled environment with a doctor, help patients be more at ease, mind. ease with the fact that they have cancer. And to me, uh, that's amazing because that,

that starts to talk about the wow of the brain not, this is where creativity lives and this is where fashion lives and this is where your brain lights up when you look at Brad Pitt. You know, like that stuff is like, I think it's a disservice to us to misguide us about this complex universe inside our skulls. And so like, what do you mean? They're using like Beote or Shrooms to help cancer patients be at, you know, be at peace with the fact that they have a terminal cancer. I like that, that kind of complexity is a story I want to tell about the brain. That is interesting. Yeah, right.

Wow. So who do you think would benefit from your book? Is it anyone? Is it someone that's looking to get in the medical field? No, it's not for people getting it. That's fair question. I'm glad you said that. No, it's for anybody that wants to see themselves in a new light.

That's what I would say is, for example, there's stuff about creativity that you've probably never read before because that was my goal. Like, dude, I'm not going to just go and see what others have written and go on Wikipedia and put it in a pretty package. Like, I did a deep dive. There's this like nature neuroscience journal. And I was flipping through stuff from 50 years ago to now. And there's references to like, like I said, Salvador Dali and Edison.

So there's creativity. there's sleep, there's smart drugs, stupid drugs. And it's just a straight up, it's just a straight up presentation, but it's done in storytelling. And I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just trying to show you there's things I know about our brains that we haven't read in the media or in the papers and books. And you might see yourself in a different light. Well, if I need brain surgery, I'm going to call you. I think you're my guy.

I think you're my solely. I appreciate that. You need a different doctor. Yeah, I need a different doctor. Just as important as a great answer. Hopefully, like, tomorrow I need a different doctor. Where can everyone find you, stock you, get your book? You know, I work at City of Hope Castle Center.

That's who I am. That's who I am. Well, it's not who I am. I'm a dad, three teenage boys, you know, husband. My mom's living with me. We got a new puppy. Like, that's me. It's not on the resume.

But what I do, my profession, my career, and what's most important to me is I'm a cancer surgeon. And actually, that's even more important to me than a neurosurgeon. People trip out like, oh, brain surgeon, okay. But to me, I'm a cancer surgeon. And I like thinking about the fact that I've cut cancers out of thousands of people. Like, to me, that's actually more identity forming than the rarefied air of neurosurgery. Because there's some neurosurgeons that were just like, they're not, you know, they're kind of, I'm not, they're not all impressive. There you seem like a pretty down-dor, dude.

Yeah, the cancer surgery thing is the deep thing. And then, so I actually will tell people, I'm a cancer doctor. And they said, what kind of cancer surgeon? What kind of? Cancer of the brain. So I'd rather start with, I'm like, I try to help people with cancer and then work to. So, but I've been, I've been enjoying my Instagram account lately. which is I put creative stuff on.

They're pretty stuff, non-growth stuff. And that's at Dr. John D.L. But there's nothing I'm trying to sell. I have privilege of being highly paid. My wife is employed so I could just quit and do whatever I want. My kids are strong. They've come through puberty and adolescence and all of that nicely. So the things I'm doing with you, like right now,

I feel like is my next, the next chapter in my life, is to have people see our world, the cancer doctor world, world also in a new light. It's important, man. I mean, listen, we've done this. This will be 250 of these things is the first time we've ever had a conversation like this. And so it just goes to show you like how many people don't start, don't talk about this. But how many people that should.

Yeah, I appreciate that a lot. What you're doing is amazing. I think everyone should go follow you on Instagram as long as I don't faint. It's not going to be stuff that I'm going to faint over. No, it's like, it's beautiful stuff. It's like art. And there's like trees and different things to show people that like the way you're, you got 90 billion neurons and what some of them are shaped like just like trees like the concept can you imagine the branching in a giant tree is also

similar to the branching inside your brain on the tiniest little neuron and the way lightning bolts are and rivers come down mountains is the way arteries are like there's this connection between we are we are atomic dust so it's like you know i mean it's all like lithium can help you with by being bipolar and it's also like on a meteor right so we i'm just trying to let people know like we we are this this earth It's not like us on this earth. So it's trippy like that. But there's no gory stuff. What you do is very niche.

It's very interesting. Thank you so much for coming on. That was one of my favorite episodes. Where can everybody find the book? They're interested. Just Amazon. Okay. Thank you.

Come back anytime. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Good luck with the most important thing happening in your life. Yeah, yeah. Any day, no. Thank you. Guys, wait, don't go.

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