On this episode of Neutral, I first met Alvin and Heidi Toffler in the 1970s and worked

with them on a project about anticipatory democracy. Toffler's book, Future Shock had really

changed how people thought about things. Providentially, the publisher decided to bring it out

in three different colors so that when you walked into a store, you had your own version

of Future Shock right there. The Toffler's went on to write what I think is in some ways

their most important book, The Third Wave, published in 1984. It had an enormously impact

and was built on some earlier work done by various academics on the whole concept of

the scale of the information revolution. But The Toffler's had a remarkable capacity

for popularizing things and bringing them home. Alvin and Heidi had a daughter named

Karen who tragically died in 2000 at the age of 46 after more than a decade of suffering

from Guillain-Barr syndrome. After her death, Alvin and Heidi established the Karen Toffler

Charitable Trust to help fund neurological medical research breakthroughs. Here to talk

about the work which the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust has developed, which they are funding

today, I'm really pleased to welcome my three guests. Deborah Westfall, the executive advisor

to the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust, and two of the trust toffler scholars and round

recipients. Aditya Gopinath, Postdoctoral Neuroscience, University of Florida, and Vijaya Kola Chalama,

Associate Professor Boston University, on how the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust helps

fund advanced neurological disease research and helps young professional researchers

early in their career, doing this research, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Welcome. It's pleasure to be here. Thank you, sir. It's a pleasure. I'm really delighted

by all three of you. I took great pride in taking Toffler down to see General Don Starrie,

who is the head of the training and doctorate command, who had read Toffler's work and said,

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