♪ HEATHER BERLIN: So there I am, in this glass-enclosed death box dangling over the zoo and I have a full-on panic attack.

YARI GOLDEN-CASTAÑO: The idea of going to Mars immediately became my next goal.

The months after that, I searched the internet for a one-way trip to Mars.

What was maybe in that stack of paper that could have helped me be a better physician?

WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "Eureka!"

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

HAZARD: I'm delighted to be presenting to you tonight on the theme of "Eureka!"

That term roughly translates to "I found it," and it's attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, who upon stepping into a tub, and seeing the rising level of water, realized that he could use that principle of displacement to calculate the volume of an irregular object.

It's said that Archimedes was so excited by his discovery that he jumped out of the tub and ran naked through the streets shouting, "Eureka!"

(laughter) And tonight, our tellers are going to share their wonder and discovery with you.

♪ BERLIN: My name's Heather Berlin.

I am a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt.

Sinai, and I'm a science communicator.

HAZARD: This is the first time that we've had a neuroscientist here on "Stories from the Stage," and I'm wondering if you might be able to walk us through what you think is happening to the audience when they are listening to a story, on the cognitive level.

BERLIN: Hm, you know, there's some research which looks at audience members when they're watching a film, and they look at what's happening in their brain.

And what they find is that you see synchronized activation across their brains.

So in a way, people are kind of...

When you're all experiencing the same thing, or all following or listening to a story, your brains in a way are syncing up.

I mean, not directly to each other, but they're all having the same experience at the same time.

HAZARD: Hm, and is that process any different from the person who's actually on stage telling the story?

BERLIN: They're usually in a flow state, where they're kind of losing their sense of self, and time, and place, and really are just in the moment.

And that's usually when you have the best performances.

And they have activated what's called the default mode network in the brain, which is basically internally focused activation.

And then occasionally, they check in with the audience, and they activate the executive network, which checks in, sees how they're doing, and they can kind of revise their performance in real-time depending on the feedback.

HAZARD: Why do you feel it's important to share stories about science?

BERLIN: Our brains are wired to appreciate stories and to remember them.

And so it's a great way to convey information.

And often, people will relate something of their own personal life to the story you're telling, and that's how you draw people in, and then, you know, you can sprinkle in some science so they learn something along the way, and everybody wins.

My husband is a science rapper.

Yes, he literally raps about things like evolution, and climate change, and other nerdy subjects.

And he does it around the world, and a few years ago he got invited to perform at the Sydney Opera House, so of course, I'm coming along for that gig.

And while we're there, we decide to visit Taronga Zoo in Sydney Harbor-- me, my husband, and our six-month-old daughter.

So you take a boat across the harbor to get there, and at the dock, there's this little gondola that takes you up to the zoo entrance, going over the whole zoo.

Now, I am extremely claustrophobic, and I have a fear of heights.

My husband really wants to go on the gondola.

And he's trying to encourage me, tell me to face my fears.

So I say, "Look, how about we just take the bus up "to the zoo entrance, and then we can take the gondola back down," basically just to get him off my back.

And so we take the bus up, and we have a beautiful day at the zoo, we see the tigers, the elephants, and now the time is coming to take the gondola back down.

And he's giving me pep talks like, you know, "You'll be okay," and, "Don't you want to, you know, show your daughter how brave you are?"

I mean, she's six months old, she's completely oblivious.

(laughter) But I'm, like, "Okay, I'll do it."

So we get in the gondola, and the doors are slowly closing, and I begin to panic.

So I jump up, I grab the door, I try to open it, and I say, "I want to get out!"

But the doors don't care, they close anyway, and we start lifting off into the air, and it's too late.

(exhales): So there I am in this glass-enclosed, in my mind death box, dangling over the zoo, and I have a full-on panic attack.

And now, I know what a panic attack is, logically.

I have a PhD in neuroscience and psychology, so I know from a scientific perspective what's happening in my brain, what's happening in my physiology.

And I know that it can only last for about 15 minutes, so it will pass.

I know all this, logically.

But subjectively, it feels like my heart is racing out of my chest, I can't catch my breath, and I'm going to die.

Now, this whole ride is, like, about three minutes, but... (laughter) Yeah, I know, but for me, it feels like an absolute eternity of just sheer terror.

And when we finally get to the end, I get off, and I'm still hyperventilating, and the zoo employee comes up to me, gives me a glass of water, is trying to calm me down.

And my husband's, like, completely unconcerned.

He's just playing with our daughter, he's, like, you know, proud I faced my fears, even though I feel like I'm dying.

And a few hours later, now, we're back at the hotel, and my heart is still racing, and I still can't catch my breath.

And I'm thinking, "Something is wrong."

And he's saying, "Oh, it's just all in your head."

And I say, "No, I'm taking myself to the hospital."

So he stays at the hotel with our daughter, I get in a taxi, go to the hospital, I get there, I say, "You know, it's probably nothing, but I just thought I should get checked out."

The nurse starts taking my vitals.

All of a sudden, they rush me into the E.R., machines are beeping, they start injecting me with things, and it's a real emergency.

So part of me is thinking, "See?

I told you so."

(laughter) And the other part is, like, "Wait, am I dying here?"

And what it turns out is that my heart was actually in what's called atrial fibrillation, and it's beating irregularly, and very fast, well over 200 beats a minute, which is very dangerous.

So I say I have to stay in the E.R.

overnight.

About 6:00 in the morning, they wake me up, they start injecting me with more things to try to normalize my heartrate, and nothing is working.

And they say, "Look, it's really dangerous for you "to be in atrial fib for this long.

"You can start forming blood clots and have a stroke, so we need to cardiovert you."

Now, what that means in layman's terms is, they basically put you out and they use the paddles to shock your heart back into a normal rhythm.

Now, that's scary, but even worse for me is that I don't like losing consciousness, so that's even more terrifying for me.

But at this point, I have no choice.

I have to do it, and so there I am in this hospital literally halfway around the world from my home, I'm about to get my heart shocked, you know, so that I don't have a stroke.

So I call my parents back in New York, I tell them what's going on just before I'm about to be put out, and I tell them I love them, just in case.

So they do it, they put me out, cardiovert me, and it works.

My heart goes back into a normal rhythm, a sinus rhythm.

But it's still beating too fast, it's called tachycardia.

And they say, "Look, something's wrong.

You need to go back to New York and get a full medical work-up."

So they give me a bunch of sedatives and beta blockers, so that I can basically keep my heartrate down for the whole long plane ride home.

As soon as I get home, I get a full medical evaluation, and fortunately, everything is good with my heart.

But what they find is that I actually have an autoimmune condition called Graves' disease, where my immune system is attacking my thyroid and revving up my whole system.

It's hyperthyroidism.

So any slight increase in excitement can throw my heart into atrial fib.

So they say that they need to destroy my thyroid with radioactive iodine.

At this point, I'm just shaking my head, like, "Okay, what next?"

And they say I have to take this radioactive pill, I can't hold or be near my daughter for a week because of the radiation, and that I have to take a synthetic thyroid hormone pill every day for the rest of my life.

But at least there's a treatment, so I'm relieved, and I of course do it.

And my husband at this point, looking on the bright side, is, like, "Well, you know, "it's a good thing I got you into that gondola "because we never would have discovered your Graves' disease."

(laughter) So, yeah, okay, I'll give him that-- he was accidentally very helpful.

And shortly after that experience, I decided I didn't just want to study people's brains in the lab for research.

I actually also wanted to treat individual patients with cognitive behavioral therapy, including exposure therapy, where you gradual expose someone to something that triggers negative emotions, until over time, they habituate, and the triggers are less explosive.

But it's a gradual process with baby steps-- it's called systematic desensitization.

You don't, you know, do it all at once.

That's called flooding, and that can actually backfire.

You know, for example, I wouldn't trap a claustrophobic person in a glass jar dangling a hundred feet in the air above a tiger pit.

(laughter) The thing to keep in mind is, you are your brain, and you can know what's going on in your body, but knowing is not enough.

You need to gradually and repeatedly change your body and your brain little by little.

So a few years have passed since what we now refer to as "the gondola incident," and my baby girl just fearlessly got on the bus for her first day of kindergarten, and we now have a 22-month-old son.

So I guess you can say I forgave my husband.

(laughter) He still encourages me to face my fears, but now he just does it in much smaller doses.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ MEYER: I'm Dr. Gregg Meyer, I'm a general internist and primary care physician.

I have the privilege of seeing patients locally here in Boston at the Brigham and at the Mass.

General Hospital, and I'm also the chief clinical officer of Partners Healthcare System.

HAZARD: You speak extensively on the subjects of medicine, the healthcare system, and artificial intelligence.

I'm wondering, do you feel that the medical community is using storytelling more and more to communicate these things to members of the public?

MEYER: We talk about data and how important data is all the time, but I think most of us know that in the real world, that really to move things, to change things-- whether or not we're trying to change a public policy, whether or not we're trying to change the behavior of a patient in front of us-- data's important, but you need data plus the story.

HAZARD: How does tonight's theme of "Eureka!"

inspire you?

MEYER: Every day my schedule, and what I think I'm going to do, is a hypothesis.

And usually, the null hypothesis wins out.

My day ends up completely different than I ever anticipated, but it's in that constant flux and change that I often get surprised, and the truth of the matter is, is that it's not very interesting to have your biases or to have what you originally thought was going to happen, to have that all confirmed.

It's really exciting, though, when you just get surprised, and one of the wonderful things about what I get to have the privilege of doing everyday is, is, I constantly get surprised.

I was up on a stage in a crowded ballroom in Downtown Boston with bright lights shining in my eyes, sitting in front of 1,700 incredibly smart people.

These were folks who were C.E.Os., and they were venture capitalists, and they were information technology gurus.

And I was up there on a panel answering questions as part of the World Medical Innovation Forum on artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is that idea that software can write software, and sift through huge amounts of big data, and come up with important new insights, and make us all more efficient and effective.

And it is going to absolutely revolutionize the way that we deliver healthcare.

And I was asked a question, and the question was: What is the essential skill for a physician in a world with artificial intelligence?

And I sat there and racked my brains, said, "Okay, what skill do I need?

"How can I come up with a thoughtful answer "about how I'm going to use artificial intelligence in the way I practice medicine?"

And I thought back to a morning when I was seeing patients, and I had a full waiting room, and I was behind after my first patient-- that's often the case.

And I looked at the name that I was going to see next on my schedule, and it was a young woman who was incredibly witty, and she was really smart, and she asked a whole lot of really tough questions.

She's somebody who I knew when she was single and overworked, and then she fell in love, and she got married, and now she was late in her first pregnancy, and she and her husband were about to start their family.

And she came in, she was so excited, but also incredibly, incredibly nervous.

And she walked into the examination room, and she sat down, and she opened up her big pocketbook, and she reached in, and she pulled out a big thick stack of paper.

My heart sank.

My heart sank because 20 years earlier, when I was a medical student in Albany, New York, I learned from this crusty old wise professor something called la maladie des petits papiers-- the disease of little papers.

The disease of little papers is that if a patient comes in, and they have all their concerns, and all their symptoms, and all their questions, written on little bits of paper, that that in and of itself is a diagnosis.

(laughter) I am pleased to report to all of you that la maladie des petits papiers has been wiped off the face of the Earth.

It is just like the World Health Organization eradicated smallpox.

Unfortunately, la maladie des petits papiers has been replaced by le mal de internet printout.

(laughter) As she laid this heavy, hulking stack of papers on the table, I started to go through it with her, and started to answer her questions, and do my best to try to sift through the information, and figure out what it all meant, and to make an explanation for her.

But I was rushed, there was not enough time to go through all of that, and I was able to reassure her, because things were going well.

She'd had a very normal pregnancy to date, and there was nothing to suspect there was going to be a problem.

And I was looking forward to her having a nice, regular, normal delivery.

But a few weeks later, I was standing outside her hospital door, and I was filled with dread, because things didn't go as planned.

Two days earlier, she'd come in for her delivery, and had a horrible, horrific, and incredibly rare complication.

She was in the intensive care unit for two days.

I was seeing her just as she had come out to a regular hospital room earlier that morning, and she and her husband had lost their baby.

As I walked in, I was filled with all those emotions: inadequacy, self-doubt.

What did I miss?

What was maybe in that stack of paper that could have helped me be a better physician and prevent this from happening?

And so I walked up to her bed, and I pulled up a chair, and sat down next to it, and I reached out and held her trembling hand, and mine was trembling just as much.

And we had a conversation where I explained what had happened, and what she could expect going forward.

And as I did so, her eyes started to well up, as did her husband's, and so did mine.

And she stopped me and she said, "Dr. Meyer, am I going to be able to have a family?"

Well, the truth is, I didn't know the answer.

I didn't have that ability to pull all that information and come up with the exact right answer.

But what I was able to tell her was that, "What happened to you is really rare, "and I have no reason to think "it's ever going to happen again.

"And even if it did, maybe we'd recognize it earlier, "and manage it better, "and we are going to go through this together.

"We will get through this.

And yes... yeah, I think you're going to have a family."

Well, that was it, sitting up there on the stage, that was the answer.

The answer is that artificial intelligence is going to help me by being able to harvest all this big data and be able to make sense out of it and make better decisions for my patients.

I am not going to miss things.

I am going to be such a better doctor with this tool.

And I was about to deliver that incredibly insightful answer, and I stopped for a second and realized I had it wrong.

Because I thought back to that crusty old wise professor from medical school, and he taught me something else.

He taught me that statistics are patients with the tears wiped off.

And artificial intelligence is going to get me better at looking at statistics, and making inferences, and drawing great conclusions, and being more efficient.

But in fact, the essential skill that I need as a physician in a world with artificial intelligence is that ability to share those tears, to wipe them off, to explain to the patient that we will get through this together, and offer reassurance and hope.

The essential skill is to maintain my human touch and my humanity.

If I ever forget it, I remember every day when I walk into my office and I look there on my desk, and there's a holiday card I look forward to getting every single year.

That holiday card has a picture of that patient, her husband, and their son.

Thank you.

(applause) ♪ GOLDEN-CASTAÑO: My name is Yari Golden-Castaño.

I'm a systems engineer at M.I.T.

I do some work on laser communication systems and I also spent some time teaching... introducing kids to engineering, especially girls.

HAZARD: And I have to ask, what's inspired you to sort of, you know, bring that information and that sense of wonder to young children?

GOLDEN-CASTAÑO: Growing up, my family put these ideas in my head about, like, space as a possibility, but outside of my family home, there wasn't a lot of support.

The schools that I went to didn't have the right classes to introduce me to the subject.

I had an experience giving a talk in Mexico, one of my project talks, and it was one of the schools that I went to as a little kid.

One of the students sitting on the table, he was, like, "Wow, you were a student here in my school.

"This was probably your chair.

"Like, I can't believe that you were one of us, and one day we can be like you."

So that was very inspiring to me, to see the impact that I was making just by telling kids what I do.

When I was in high school preparing for college, I told my science teacher that I wanted to study engineering.

I was planning to be an astronaut.

See, when I was a two-year-old, my favorite outfit was this astronaut onesie that my mom found at a yard sale.

(chuckles) I used to wear it all the time, that I became known in my family as the Little Astronaut.

And I remember one of my uncles used to carry me upside down over his head to simulate space walks.

(laughter) Later, when I was learning how to read, my grandmother introduced me to the story of cosmonaut Yury Gagarin and his first orbit around the planet.

I think from that story, and maybe an episode of "Goosebumps," my... (laughter) ...my favorite imaginary place, my place to go to feel safe, became the surface of another planet, with a view of Earth at a distance.

By the time I was in high school, I had spent the last ten years of my life moving back and forth between Mexico, my mom's home in Mexico, and my aunt and uncle's home in California.

During this time, I had to adapt and adjust to the different parents, and a different home, different siblings, new schools, new friends, and new culture.

So the hardest part for me was to adjust to switching back and forth between English and Spanish.

It became really hard for me to communicate with others, to make friends, to share my feelings.

So I think this is why I got very interested in math and science.

See, all those numbers and equations, they...

I could read them in English or Spanish.

They were easy to understand no matter what.

So when it came to applying for college, I came to my science teacher and I told them...

I want to study engineering-- I plan to be an astronaut.

He looked at me confused, and said, "Are you high?"

(laughter) "What are you taking?

"You'll never be an astronaut.

Plus, engineering is not for you, you're not prepared."

So he wasn't the only one.

I had other teachers, mentors, trying to discourage me from engineering.

Some claim, "Engineering is not for girls."

And others told me to have a back-up plan.

Maybe a Spanish major was more reasonable.

I was very embarrassed that I shared this dream with my teachers.

So for many years after that, I didn't tell anybody, but once I learned what was required of me to become an astronaut, I based all my decisions around this goal.

Even the little things, like keeping a healthy mind and body and staying out of trouble.

So I went to college, and let me tell you, they were right-- engineering was tough, and I wasn't prepared.

Apparently, I was the only student in my class who had not taken an engineering class in high school.

I didn't know that.

So for the first time, I had to reach out to other students, ask for help, get tutoring, pull up... pull all-nighters to get my assignments done.

I did it, and four years later, I got my degree in engineering.

And I... (cheers and applause) Thank you.

Thank you.

But let me tell you, I graduated with other... with 25 other incredibly smart and talented women.

So those people back in high school were so wrong!

Engineering is totally for girls.

(cheers and applause) After college, I got a job as an engineer, and a few months later, I came across this headline saying, "NASA is looking for volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars to colonize the planet."

As soon as I saw the link, I click, I was trying to figure out how to sign up, but it was just click-bait, and... (laughter) Yeah, NASA had nothing to do with it.

So, but the idea of going to Mars immediately became my next goal, like, I have to do this.

So for the months after that, I searched the internet for a one-way trip to Mars, and eventually... (laughter) Eventually, I came across Mars One, and yes, they were a small company with the goal of sending the first humans to Mars to settle permanently, and they were announcing their application that year.

So this is it, for me, the mission I've been dreaming of, that I've been preparing all my life.

It was right in front of me.

I was ready to donate my life to science, to become the guinea pig to prove that human life on Mars is possible.

In the application process, I met my partner, R. Daniel.

Today, we are both in the top 100 astronaut candidates for this mission, and we live in an RV, and we're training for the next round by learning about life support systems, space bio-med, interacting with our friends, or the other candidates from around the world, and even keeping our tomatoes alive.

(laughter) So just anything that we can learn so that one day we can build a home on Mars.

So if we get selected into the final 24, we will head to Mars... We will train for the next ten years, and head to Mars after 2031.

I know, it's ambitious and even unbelievable, but I'm telling you, it's happening.

So for now, I will just continue to work as a systems engineer on the laser communication technology, so that one day, I can share the rest of this story from Mars.

Thank you.

(cheering and applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

♪