Welcome to the After-On Podcast. I'm Rob Reed, and I'm Tom Merritt. And this is a special

episode designed around the book, After-On. Each of these special episodes focuses on one

aspect of the science, tech, and social issues explored in the novel. Now, you don't have

to read after-on in order to learn from or enjoy these podcasts. That's because we

wait until the very end to discuss the book in detail and to really tie it to this week's

topic. That last section will make perfect sense if you're reading the novel, but if you're

not reading it, just tune out at that point. You can always come back if you decide to

read it later. And we'll warn you before we get to that part. But first, we have a lot

of things to talk about which should be interesting to everybody. Specifically, this week, consciousness

and how the brain works. Whether it's the problem Mitchell has with his own emotional

triggers or the idea of moats that can essentially program the brain, how our human mind, and

the brain it runs on works is essential for this story. So who's going to explain the

brain for us, Rob?

Well, in my own world, there is absolutely nobody better to go to than UCSF neuroscientist

Adam Gazali. He is probably regarded as one of the top neuroscientists of his generation.

He does amazing agenda shattering work at UCSF. And he's going to talk to us about a lot

of issues connected to neuroscience where it is today connected to consciousness, which

is a very important topic of the book, but a fascinating topic to anybody whether the

reading the book or not, we're going to go into a lot of depth about that. And he's also

going to tell us about things that he is doing to hopefully someday, perhaps even soon,

to our terrible conditions like dementia and Alzheimer's using the improbable medical

tool of video games. So with that, let's start the interview that I had with Adam at his

...