Hi, I'm Shen White. You're listening to the Winnie Podcast, where we get to the heart

of the story. Today, our conversation with two authors, the first Sarah Manning Pascon.

She's a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania. We talked about her new book,

A Molecule Away from Madness, Tales of the Hijacked Brain. In it, she uses personal stories

from her patients and their families to unpack the molecular changes in her brain's chemistry

that cause diseases. Later on, we speak with Sarah Faye about her new book, Pathological,

the true story of six misdiagnoses. In it, she chronicles her uphill battle to find

a reliable diagnosis. We talked to Faye and a panel of experts about how we diagnose mental

health disorders. A reminder to have your questions answered on future topics, or just

to let us know what you think. Tweet us at 1a.

Our minds can play all kinds of tricks on us, and as Lauren Cain will tell you, those tricks

can be life-changing. In 2016, Lauren was a recent college graduate with a love of fiction

writing. She lived at home with her mother, consuming books and binging shows like The Walking

Dead. One August day, Lauren was having trouble walking, so her mother took her to the hospital.

When a doctor approached Lauren for tests, she lashed out and started yelling, don't you

see she's a walker? Lauren's fiction had become her reality. She suffered from a rare disease

that would take months for doctors to diagnose. Lauren's story is part of a collection put

together by Sarah Manning-Peskin in her debut book, A Molecule Away from Madness. Sarah Manning-Peskin

is an assistant professor of clinical neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and she joins

us now. Sarah, thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me. Our brains are incredibly complex organs that direct all

our functions. How can something as small as a molecule or a piece of genetic code derail

...