How did you get attached to FOX's show Superhuman?
About a year ago, the people who made the show called City of Hope wanting me to come in and talk to them for a while. I think they may have seen me from the local area morning news show KTLA, where I am a regular contributor. They contacted me through my work.
Some people don't believe in superhuman abilities. What exactly are we talking about here? Who should watch this show? Besides a contestant winning money, what is the purpose of this show?
Think of it this way, we all watch the Super Bowl or the Olympics and we know what superhuman, or world class physical abilities are. Well, our world has people with remarkable brain talent, not physical fitness but cognitive / brain abilities. So the show is really for everyone because the young people who are in the show are remarkable with amazing back stories and good intentions with what they are going to do with the winnings. My role is to explain what is so remarkable about their brains and highlight those superhuman abilities such as sounds, smells, mathematical computations etc. When you watch the show, you almost can't believe what you're seeing. Frankly, if I hadn't been there I would have thought it was CGI or Hollywood magic. But I was there, and they do the performance under the pressure of a real audience just like an Olympian would.
What made you choose cancer as one of your main focuses?
Every year, they graduate about 17,000 medical students and everyone chooses what they want to go into. You get to choose what type of physician or surgeon to become, and more importantly how much of your life you want to dedicate to the sick. So, I always wanted to take care of the sickest of the sick and cancer patients who need brain surgery are just that. It's not just about having capable hands, it's about the humanity that is required to connect with those in crisis and profound illness. My patients can tell that I have my demons that I'm working through, I have suffered and by harnessing that I do my best to connect with people who are dying. In that way it is cathartic for me. I am my truest self with cancer patients. I'm there to help and they're there to receive help and to me when someone trusts me to open their skull to dissect a cancer of them, this requires the closest of human connection.
What exactly is a neurological disorder?
To explain that, let's go back to how we're built. We are flesh and bone and there is a very interesting flesh inside us called the Central Nervous System. It's white even though it gets a ton of blood flow. Think of it as a jelly fish floating inside a home of muscle, bone and guts. That command center, the nervous system, wires all of what we are. Thomas Edison said the body is just meant to carry around the brain. So, a neurological disorder is when disease affects the central nervous system. This flesh that is that amazing place that leads to consciousness and faith, beauty and art, also can get diseases just like anywhere else. So I go in there and physically try to fix it as a brain surgeon.
You're a Neurosurgeon/Scientist with an M.D and Ph.D. When you were a boy, is this what you dreamed of becoming? At what point in your life did you choose this direction? Why?
I have had a very unconventional path to becoming a brain surgeon and scientist. I dropped out of college when I was 19 and worked as a security guard for a year, and of course went back, motivated by my then girlfriend who is now my wife. I just wanted to put my best foot forward and see where it went. What I realized in my neurosurgical training was that surgery helped patients live longer, but often it did not cure them. I realized that scientists create and invent medicine, and cancer cures was what they needed. So I took on a parallel, a second training as a neuroscientist and I brought that in as a complement to being a neurosurg