You know me as a journalist and a podcast host, but I wanted to tell you the way that I see myself,

primarily, is as a husband and a father to three teenage girls.

That's my primary role in life, but also as a doctor, a brain

surgeon. Brain surgery was my first and truest professional love, a brain surgeon,

being a brain surgeon, love being a neurosurgeon.

I love taking care of patients.

A lot of times patients I take care of are people who are going from having a perfectly

normal wonderful day to suddenly the worst day of their lives.

And it's something that I'm very mindful of.

I take care of patients who come in with chronic pain, who've dealt

with pain for decades, hoping for some sort of relief, people who have been giving a

new diagnosis of a brain tumor and are grappling with how much that means to them practically and

existentially. It has made me appreciate life in ways that I don't think I otherwise

could have.

I operate in hospitals here in the United States on battlefields across the world.

It is a tremendous privilege.

And I also never take for granted the complexity and beauty of the human brain.

Three and a half pounds of tissue that is the most enigmatic tissue anywhere in the known universe. It controls everything. All of our

loves, our joys, our hopes, our dreams, our emotions, our memories. I never take it for granted. Nor do I take for granted the remarkable

colleagues that I have in this field, some of whom are my best friends. Nothing bonds

you together like going through a residency training program.

Seven years of incredibly hard work, 100 hour plus work weeks, just to try and keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

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