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Dr. Sean Pauzauskie joins Suzy this week for a fascinating discussion of brain science, and the many ways it relates to readers and writing. They discuss his debut novel, Stage of Fools, and the journey it took to get to publication. You won’t want to miss this exploration of the nature and possibilities of our wonderful brains!
Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)
81. Dr. Sean P. Neuroscience, Readers, and A Stage of Fools
Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Show, don’t Tell Writing Podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction. Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be. Join me as I share the step by step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away.
As I host successful writers who share a behind the scenes look at their own writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger. Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book. There are real and important skills that you need to learn on this show.
I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need. I can’t wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing.
This week we have such a [00:01:00] special episode and chat. Wait for you to hear it on the show Not Tell Writing podcast. We get pitches every single week from writers who’d like to come on the show, and that’s amazing. Keep sending them. But we’re picky. We wanna pick and we want highlight writers who are. Doing really cool things and who are doing in-depth things and who are gonna share their stories with our listeners, you the listeners, that’s why you keep listening.
But when this pitch came across my desk to have Dr. Sean PKI on the podcast, I lit a light your Christmas tree because if you’ve been following this podcast for a while, you know that I like to dabble in a little bit of brain science and have these conversations and that I’m absolutely obsessed with how readers.
Process information and how they take what we write and they experience it and they experience our stories. And so Dr. Sean pki is actually a neurologist and he has written his debut novel Stage of Fools, [00:02:00] and it is my absolute pleasure. And I was like, okay, we can come on, we’re gonna talk about this whole process.
And I just am really excited because his studying of the human brain has given him such an advantage for writing, and it’s one that I want you all to have as well. So welcome my guest, Dr. Sean Polowski. He’s a practicing hospital neurologist in the University of Colorado Assistant. Where he conducts clinical research, employing neurotechnology primarily for the optimization of epilepsy management.
He’s the medical director of the Neuro Rights Foundation. He’s an active member of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Medical Association and his research experience includes time at the National Institute Mental Health. The Energy and Commerce Committee of the US House of Representatives and the Kaufman Foundation for Entrepreneurship.
His literary scholarship has been presented at the International Nabokov Society Conference in Montrose, Switzerland, and elsewhere. [00:03:00] Stage of Fools is his debut novel. I don’t know how he got it done. We’re gonna ask him that here with all the other things that he’s doing. Pull up your favorite mug of tea or coffee, or your favorite beverage one.
Enjoy. Welcome to the show, Dr. Sean Browski. So excited to have him here today. His novel Stage of Fools came out in October of 2025, and we are here today to talk all about it. Welcome to the show, Sean.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Suzy Vadori: I just have to ask, you’re doing all these things. You’ve got short stories, you’ve, you’re a doctor, a medical doctor.
Why did you write Stage of Fools, this particular book at this particular moment in your life, what was behind that?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, so there, there’s a long story and kind of an abbreviated version, so I’ll kind of just try to provide some context. So you’re right. Uh, uh, guilty. I went to medical school, uh, became a practicing neurologist, but I was also a literature major in college.
And so I’d always [00:04:00] planned to write and I had this great mentor who really instilled in me that, you know, you can sort of. Have a broader worldview, provided that, I think the way he put it was, um, you know, you can write, but be sure you get a day job. So I don’t know why I chose something that takes 15 years to become a, a quote day job.
But there was also a lot of mentorship there when it came to science. And he was a, a lab tech in a, uh, molecular biology lab setting immunology at the same time that he was Vladimir Nab Bakos assistant. Wow. At Cornell. And so, um, I, I, you know, it’s maybe not the, uh, most traditional path, but uh, I decided to just go for it and, uh, go to medical school.
And so obviously that took a while. I mean, I didn’t really have a lot of time for writing, but about 10 years ago, I started to get more serious about it. Wrote my first novel, which is actually the prequel, kind of similar to your fountain series. This is the initial one is the, uh, the centerpiece. And so, uh, but to really get into why, uh, you know, this novel, why now?
And I’ve written about nine manuscripts at this point, so I’ve kind of [00:05:00] been, my goodness, working away. But about four years ago, I, I became curious about this new emerging field of neurotechnology. There’s another long story about that, but kind of suffice it to say over the last 10 years, neurotechnology has just kind of become a new focus, not only in terms of clinical, but broader application.
So, um, I was very curious about this and I just learned about a few interesting, uh, items within the neurotech space and the space of neurology. So I, I, I combined things and put those two things together to create stage of fools.
Suzy Vadori: Oh my goodness. There’s so much to unpack there. Nine manuscripts that you’ve finished or, but none of them are published yet, right?
Just this one? Is that right? Uh, or was the prequel already published?
Dr. Sean P.: The prequels not published yet. Yeah. So this is the first. Long form fiction that I published.
Suzy Vadori: Oh my goodness. And nine manuscripts. And sometimes it takes that long to finish them and to get it right and wow, you, you’re gonna have a long, prolific [00:06:00] writing career ahead of you as well.
I love that you have all these different facets and that somebody told you to get a day job. ’cause that’s very similar to my own story where. I was told, I wasn’t told writing couldn’t be a job. I just never was told it could be. And so I went into banking and technology for 20 years and then manufacturing later, and I thought I would write on the side.
So I’ll be really interested to follow your career and see what happens. For me, after I wrote the second book, I really didn’t have time to be an executive anymore. There was too many things taking over and, and people will often say, I actually was interviewed on. News channel a few weeks back when I was at a conference and the actual interviewer said to me, oh, well, that, I guess you make a lot less money now.
Like it was, it’s just this misperception necessarily. Um, it depends what you do, right? It depends what you do. So we’ll see what happens.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, I tend to think that, uh, you know, we try to silo ourselves into different areas and, you know, but life, life is too complicated. And, um, if you’ve [00:07:00] got a, you know, a creative interest, I, I think anybody.
Should pursue that. So, so kudos for, uh, for your journey as well.
Suzy Vadori: Hey, definitely it was not, if you’d have told me I’d be doing this 10 years ago, I would’ve thought you were nuts. But I couldn’t be plea more pleased. Okay, so because of your literary background, I love, I love all of these facets.
Dr. Sean P.: So, because of your
Suzy Vadori: literary background.
When you wrote this book, you call it a genre called science informed literary fiction. Can you talk a little bit about that genre and what does it mean to you and why is it important? Not necessarily to be, I mean it is science fiction, sort of, but what’s the distinction for you in those different terms?
Dr. Sean P.: We could obviously spend a long time talking about genre and unpacking that, and there, you know, people probably more equipped to do that, who are deeply embedded in, you know, what is sci-fi? What is, yeah.
Suzy Vadori: We won’t hold you to it, but, but why did you choose science informed literary fiction? What does that mean to you?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, so what, what it means to me is that I care. [00:08:00] I think it’s kind of how you wait, what’s driving the manuscript on the story? So I, I tend to view science fiction as kind of starting with a scientific concept and then sort of being built around that where the characters, you know, have their own inner lives and have their own emotional, you know, processes and interactions.
Um, but it’s, everything’s kind of tied to, okay, thinking of an example like Jurassic Park, where it’s like genetic technology. We’ve created these dinosaurs and the characters are just kind of living in that world. And that’s great and I love that. And Jurassic Park’s one of my favorite books and franchises and you know, a long time ago my dad used to tell me like, you know, you should try to be like Michael Kret.
You know, so big kudos to that. But I think I tend to, you know, just in my own literary journey and because of the, the influence of my mentor named Steve Parker, that, uh, I really want the literary. Aspects to shine, the kind of interiority, the kind of character development, the internal processes of the characters.
Um, and really to put that kind of, you know, if you had to wait, it, it, it might be [00:09:00] 51 49 with the science, you know, as far as like a percentage, but, or maybe 60 40. But I really want readers to come away with a sense of the literary, you know, aspects of the character development and the plot and that the science should serve that as, as opposed to vice versa.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it was a really smart choice for this book because you chose a difficult structure, right? If you were going straight, science fiction, we’re looking for a little bit more plot driven, and your main character is in a coma. And so, you know, we, we don’t have the interiority is, is real.
And you’ve chosen a structure with a coma and a braided timeline with a past and present. So what challenges did this structure pose for you as you wrote,
Dr. Sean P.: I was a little hesitant, you know, to go down this path. And so maybe just to unpack that a little bit further about the coma, sort of the inspiration.
So about 10 years ago, we named a condition that was discovered. It was, I think it was named 20 years ago. [00:10:00] Or it was mentioned 20 years ago, but things sort of got it scientific named 10 years ago. And that condition is called Cognitive motor dissociation. And what that means, it’s, you know, we’ve got a lot of syllables in medicine.
But basically all that means is that a person who is in a comatose state is able to sense and to hear and be sentient at the same time that they’re unable to respond to the world around them. There’s a lot of complex, uh, neurology that goes into that, but it’s just, it was such a surprise when we discovered, you know, that this was a real thing.
So that intrigued me, both from my personal experience as an early career neurologist. You know, I got a lot of, I got consulted a lot about patients in COAs and people asking, you know, what’s going on? What’s gonna happen? Um, and I found that to be a very challenging, uh, in interesting and challenging, you know, question.
And so I came across this cognitive motor dissociation and then, you know, that’s kind of the scientific backing. But to your question about, you know, how, how to write a novel in that context, you know, I think the first thing I thought was like, well, how is there gonna be any action? Like, how is there gonna be any tension?
You know, how, how is there gonna be a [00:11:00] plot? You know, all, all those things. So what I did is, you know, I, I, I looked at, I knew I wanted to tell kind of classic story in a modern way. And so I chose the plot of King Lear to kind of lean on as sort of what’s happening around this, you know, somewhat elderly character, 70-year-old character.
Kind of listening. And so the, the novel is very much informed by King Lear and kind of very much tracks it throughout. You know, most of it, it doesn’t quite, but get to the end. But so that, that, that was the reasoning behind, you know, how to keep the action and tension flowing and then to braid it with a murder mystery.
I thought, like, you know, that, that, that would be a good way to sort of keep attention and also bring in other themes, kind of big picture themes that would keep the action going. So that was the challenge and that’s how I chose to, to try to tackle it.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, it was really smart because. I think I don’t, I like to say if you have these dual timelines, you have the past and present.
You nailed it here. It’s really difficult, especially in the past timeline to create any tension because you know, the guy ends up in a coma, right? So if we’re going into his own memories and his own life. [00:12:00] We kind of know where it ends, and so it is difficult to set that up. There’s no surprise factor.
There’s no tension because we know not everything is gonna be fine in this case, but we know where he’s gonna end up. But it can be used to inform what happens. In the present, right? So it can be used to inform the decisions or what’s going on. So yeah, really cool. I also saw in some of your writings that you were talking about using a sensory detail to set off a memory.
And so as you’re sort of flipping between these past and present timelines using something that’s happening or something that your main character Steve is thinking about can set off those flashbacks or those actual. Memories, which are in your past timeline and how do you think, because that really what happens in real life.
’cause that’s what we do in writing for sure. Is that what happens in real life? Is that how memories are triggered?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, so I, I think the short answer is to an extent, absolutely. I think probably the most famous example of that would be the Madeline Cookie in Proust, uh, in [00:13:00] search, you know, in search of lost time, where, you know, he’s eating this Madeline Cookie and that sets off this whole orchestra of, of memory.
And so it doesn’t quite, you know, get to that point in stage of fools. But I think it is very powerful. And just to maybe expand on that Madeline Cookie, we know that the olfactory or the smell pathways are, are deeply linked to taste and vice versa. I think that’s. Pretty much common knowledge at this point, but what may not always be clear that those pathways run directly to the memory centers in the brain.
So there’s a structure called the hippocampus, which I think a lot of people have heard of, or. Kind of, uh, you know, familiar with, and it’s sort of like the crossroads of memory. Like there’s a big loop of structures and it all runs through the hippocampus. And so just, you know, to your question, memory does kind of get triggered in ways by sensory perception, uh, very powerfully by, by smell and taste, but also by visuals and just kind of, you know, everybody’s kind of built differently.
But that’d be one way of thinking about it.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. So in book, how much is science? How much is fiction? How did you [00:14:00] balance that?
Dr. Sean P.: That’s also, I think, a choice that, that we have to kind of make, I mean, I think that, uh, you know, to your point about like a lot of writers have day jobs and, uh, we all kinda live in, you know, what, what is a profession, what is a job?
It’s, it involves a lot of jargon. Um, and I think medicine is guilty probably more than you know, than most about the complexity of the word. And it can get very esoteric very quickly. And so I tried to kind of shy away from that, you know? ’cause I think that kind of comes from my experience, you know, talking to patients.
If I walk into a room, you know, I’m not gonna be saying the cerebral cortex, you know, I’m gonna say your brain. Or, uh, if I’m gonna talk about, you know, the kidney, I’m not gonna say the renal architecture. I’m gonna say the kidney. You know, to kind of keep it, keep it simple. And I, I think that was, was a choice.
I mean, I’m not saying like, if you need to describe a complex topic, you know, use a complex word if you need to. But I would say that, uh, you know, I tried to make it balanced so that the science is definitely there. And maybe if you feel like, you know, this is esoteric, that the book leads you to a deeper understanding if you already have kind of a scientific background and already have a deeper [00:15:00] understanding that it’s not too general or too simple.
But I, I tried not to use sort of like the hospital speak throughout the entirety.
Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. Okay. So because we’re talking about these general of, you know, these very difficult terms and whatnot, I’m gonna dive in and try to pronounce something that I read about this book. And so the, the main technology that you introduce here, the fictional main technology is the ultrasonic stimulation.
Is that right? Yeah. So how did you come up with that? So that’s, that’s not real, right?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, so I, I, I think it’s also kind of one of those yes, but not quite, and. So ultrasonic thalamic stimulation is an experimental concept for a treatment. I think it was got some publicity about 10 years ago at UCLA.
They were actually able to help people wake up out of comas. Basically by introducing sound waves into a structure deep in the brain, kind of olive shape structure that we call the thalamus, which is actually kind of coming more into the, you know, the consciousness of the neurologic [00:16:00] community as sort of a relay center for consciousness.
So I, until I had that, um, sort of second part to the Cognitive Motor Association, like there really wasn’t much of a novel, but I wanted to introduce that. And just to be very clear, you know, ultrasonic, thalamic stimulation is not something you could go and ask for today. But as part of the overarching kind of pathos and kind of zeitgeist we’re entering with neurotechnology, I wanted to show something that was experimental and had promise.
Because you know, everything that we take for granted today as being common, you know, standard of practice was at one point experimental. And so I wanted to show that. And yeah, so the thalamus very interesting structure and it’s getting a lot more attention in terms of, um, not only consciousness, but um, sort of this subconscious and uh, how that might be, you know, kind of triggers for memory that kind of bubble up through, uh, different sensory pathways, which the thalamus is a very important one they’re involved in, in a very important one.
Suzy Vadori: I love that you say that everything that we know today is standard was once experimental. And the same is true with some of [00:17:00] the anecdotal evidence that you see in your daily practice, but you can’t prove yet. Right. And I think it was one of the, the reasons that you cited for. Wanting to do a fictional novel at this time.
It’s because we can use that anecdotal evidence. We can’t necessarily write a research paper yet, but we can explore the what ifs and being in there. And I think one of the, one of the examples that you used was coma patients responding to loved ones. Right? They seem to, mm-hmm. We’re not sure yet. Is that fair?
Dr. Sean P.: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think that in my anecdotal experience, I have seen people who have shown signs of more attentiveness, more alertness, more response when it’s a loved one in the room, and that could just take the form of like a heart rate increase. It could take the form in breathing. Kind of subtle signs in the consciousness.
You know, we’ve kind of become obsessed these days in medicine with measuring things with numbers and tests, and we should absolutely do that and try to do all the data-driven analysis. But, uh, there are things that go beyond that, [00:18:00] which is why I thought, uh, a narrative approach to really this neurotechnology revolution, it’s about to happen, was important.
Because, you know, as we know, I think intuitively as writers, we kind of. It doesn’t take much explaining to us that life is story and you know, everything is story on a personal level, but you also need the bigger narratives kind of capture. And so that’s what I was hoping for Stage of Fools to kind of add to that broader narrative about neurotechnology.
This is real stuff and it’s gonna change the world and it already is, but uh, it’s gonna take some conversation, let’s put it that way.
Suzy Vadori: Absolutely, absolutely. And I mean this anecdotal hope that. Patients could, he’d be able to respond to level ones. That’s not new in fiction, right? Like it’s still new because we haven’t been able to prove it in science.
But I mean, I’m thinking of soap operas and romance novels, and this narrative has been said throughout time. So I’d love that you’re taking sort of this romantic notion that people could wake up and know that somebody had been there that whole time, but [00:19:00] actually. Relating it to what we know in science today, and hopefully we’ll be able to prove, uh, in years to come.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, we kind of split the brain into emotional and kind of thinking. I think that’s kind of like a dichotomy that a lot of people are familiar with and that actually bears out in the different structures in the brain. Um, not everything should be measured and not everything, you know, can be measured, but I think that sort of notion that our thinking brains are oftentimes trying to keep our emotional brains happy.
We lead with emotion and then try to justify it with logic. Things like coma, patients responding to loved ones. I mean, I think that’s something that’s off limits in terms of, you know, science, but that’s also why we need fiction and novels to kind of dive into that. So.
Suzy Vadori: That’s amazing and I could geek out about this all day and I’m learning so much.
Thank you so much. Okay. You’re a practicing neurologist. You also are now the president-elect of the Colorado Medical Society. You volunteer in lots of different places. They, like you like to say, if you want something to get done, give it to a busy person. ’cause they’ll get it done [00:20:00] faster than it’s not busy.
How did you get this done? How did you get the writing done, even though between all these other things. How did that go?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, so I, you know, I, and I, I do think about this too, and I think it does just come back to passion. And if, if you love something, like I love writing and literature, um, you’ll find a way I’ve written at all times of the day.
Throughout the last 10 years I’ve written at night, I’ve kind of become a morning person. You know, I’ve written through different schedules like a Monday through Friday, nine to five. The schedule that I have now actually lends itself fairly decently. You know, when I’m busy and I’m taking hospital calls, sometimes it’s 24 hours, and I was up at.
1:00 AM yesterday and didn’t get back to, you know, I, I have definite, uh, you know, stress when I’m taking call, but then I also get, um, a certain amount of days off every month where I can wake up and, uh, try to get 500, a thousand words in. I just did that this morning on the third part of the trilogy, which I just started about a month ago.
And so I think it’s just sort of one of those, like you find a way, uh, this particular novel, uh, stage of Fools was actually a [00:21:00] pandemic project, which I think there were certain advantages to, uh, you know, pandemic, uh, writing. I think I wrote three of the nine manuscripts in that 18, you know, 24 month Wow.
Timeframe. Oh, yeah. And Stage of Fools was the third one that I, I finished it like New Year’s Eve on, uh, 20 21, 20 22,
Suzy Vadori: and I could see, I mean. Certainly in the medical profession. I’m sure that your experience was gonna be different from many of ours during the pandemic when we spent a lot of time alone, but many people were.
And so this kind of soliloquy and comatose patient who spends a lot of time on his own, I, I could see that during the pandemic being inspired to write that.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah. I think that, uh, oftentimes, you know, reality fiction mirrors reality and vice versa, but, uh. I think you’re, you’re absolutely very insightful and, and right about that, that, uh, it’s very much a, a pandemic, uh, inspired project
Suzy Vadori: without screaming pandemic.
And people often ask me that, nowadays, should I write about the pandemic? Should I put it in there? And the the truth is, is most of us don’t wanna [00:22:00] read about the actual pandemic,
Dr. Sean P.: but the themes and how we changed.
Suzy Vadori: As humans and as people throughout that, certainly anything that reflects that I think is really, really timely and interesting.
Okay. I am fascinated by brain science or what I call brain science. It’s probably not really real brain science when we talk about it, but I’m just absolutely obsessed with understanding how readers respond. Why do we read? How does that work? How we can use our writing to interact with our reader’s brains.
And it’s something that I just am always looking for. Those connections. Can, can you talk a little about what’s possible right now in the field of interpreting what’s going on in people’s brains, whether it’s reading or anything else, and what’s coming, because I know there’s, you know, right now we can interpret brainwaves, it sounds like, and signals to know when we’re gonna make certain facial expressions, for example.
So what, what are we studying? What’s out there right now?
Dr. Sean P.: And so that’s a great question. And uh, [00:23:00] thankfully there, there’s a lot to unpack there as well in terms of what’s been studied and, uh, what could come. And so I think that, you know, probably a good place to start would just be that I think that, that we don’t know, and we may never know why human brains are so deeply, intuitively, you know, foundationally geared for story.
Uh, but we are, and uh, you know, maybe it came from, you know, ancient times when people were sitting around the campfire trying to pass time. You know, I think we can speculate. There’s also probably a survival advantage to like, Hey, I heard this story about, you know, this thing over there where there’s, you know, a predator and I shouldn’t go over there.
You know, kind of like the communication, you know, and, and how that’s built out into story and so that we know that we’re hardwired for that. There’s no question about that. And, and it crosses disciplines too, I think language. You know, music is a language, math is a language, you know, everything is language on some level, so everything’s kind of telling a story.
But to your point, engaging different parts of our brains. And so I think a good way to kind of split that up would be to talk about the difference between. [00:24:00] Being told a story and, uh, reading a story, you know, reading is a fairly modern or new, let’s say newer technology. You know, I think the first novels came around, you know, maybe 400 years ago.
I mean, and we’re talking about in the broader context of human history, but, uh, you know, audio has been around forever. I mean, everybody, you know, talks about Homer traveling around, and if there was a homer, it was kind of like story time, you know, back in the day. But these two things are obviously beautifully, you know, have, have grown together.
And the interesting thing about the research into storytelling is that regardless, we’ve learned that regardless of whether you’re reading or listening, the same areas of the brain are activated. And so, you know, the, the memory centers, uh, the emotional centers, how we create meaning is essentially identical.
Whether you’re receiving the information visually or auditory, which I think is fascinating.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. So when people fight over whether listening to audio books is considered reading. It’s kind of, there’s an elitist group in there and I listen to lots of audio books. I’m an editor. I read manuscripts on a [00:25:00] screen all day.
And honestly, the last thing I wanna do at the end of the day is open up a book and read. ’cause my eyes are tired. I’m old. But yeah, so I, I consume a lot of story that way and, and I did hear that brainwaves to the study that they’re similar. And then I was like, all right. And I think I’ve also heard, said that.
Your brain actually goes through a lot of the same motions as if you were in the story, right? As if you were really experiencing.
Dr. Sean P.: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re absolutely right. I mean, you’re not missing out by listening when it comes to, you know, meaning and this kind of semantic. I mean, it’s really a sensory difference.
It’s not a semantic difference, visual versus auditory. You’re, you’re able to grasp the same meeting. Absolutely. To your point. I mean, I, I think even, you know, beyond people who read all day and maybe don’t wanna, uh, read at the end of the day, um, you have people who have things like dyslexia and have a hard time.
Looking at stuff on the page. And so, um, I think it’s good news for everyone, um, that audio books, you know, imply, uh, the same meaning maybe [00:26:00] just a few caveats to that. Um, not big ones, but just kind of like, you know, attentionally when you know you’re listening, it’s kind of like you gotta be there. You can’t stop and skim around and.
Um, so just kind of looking into this a little bit further, I, I found that probably the ideal situation to listen to an audiobook is when you’re walking because just a little bit of stimulation actually enhances that auditory, that auditory process. And so, um, but basically, yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m very much like you.
I’m, I’m in the same camp of any which way. And, and, and any way you slice audiobooks are great.
Suzy Vadori: You that story, right? Like you, you send. Our brains are wired for story. And I love to consume story. And you know, people ask me about my hobbies and sometimes I’ll be like, I like Netflix. Right? And I’m okay with that ’cause it’s consuming story.
And as a book coach, I need to be always looking at story and how does it work at all things and, and. Netflix really does it. It can make you sit there and saw a meme recently was just like executives asking, would you like to watch a 10 hour movie? And us saying, no, absolutely not. We don’t wanna watch a 10 hour movie.
Okay, well I’ll break [00:27:00] it down into 45 minute increments and you could sit for 10 hours and binge watch them. We’re like, yeah, and let’s do that F. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense,
Dr. Sean P.: but we’d be remiss not to mention
Suzy Vadori: Lisa Krons Wired for Story and the research that’s in those books. I don’t know, you use some of the terminology, so I don’t know if you’ve read them, but great book series for writers Story Genius is one of my go-tos when we’re talking about story structure and it it does, it kind of dabbles into that marine science audit and it’s what got me really, really interested back in the day, many years ago now.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah,
Suzy Vadori: about,
Dr. Sean P.: I think the things. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that these things, like we’re writers, like we, we know this, like whatever, how you unpack the word knowledge, but we know this intuitively, but it’s great to have the brain science to back it up. Maybe just to expand to your, the, your second question, um, about what’s going on in the brain and, and what kind of architecture and um, how things are received.
I’m actually a big, big advocate of this notion that we shouldn’t just because we can’t. Describe it [00:28:00] scientifically that we should discount some of these effects of artistic practice in the humanities. I actually sponsored a scholarship at my alma mater at the University of Kansas, where I met Steve Parker and, uh, the, the Naba guy who you know, but kind of justifying that with this notion that the benefits while not, you know, you can sit down and have a brain scan, there are things that have been studied.
A term that you may be familiar with called attribution complexity. Attribution complexity. Um, and I, I did some research when I was doing the scholarship ’cause I really wanted it to be, um, and I should mention the scholarship is,
Suzy Vadori: I was gonna say, you gimme too much credit. I’m not familiar with that term, but I’m excited to learn, keep going.
Scholarship. Yes.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah. And it may be buried somewhere, you know, like, and, uh, the tech companies don’t want you to know. But, but basically, yeah, the scholarship is for students who wanna major in English and go to medical school or practice in the healthcare professions broadly. It could be medical school, it could be physical therapy, it could be nursing.
Uh, but this notion of empathy and how we have, [00:29:00] uh, these cells in our brains that, that we call mirror cells. And those are essentially the empathy cells. Like when somebody. Is smiling or somebody is having a hard time like you, you actually activate those cells in your brain so that you actually feel what that person is feeling.
And I think that we intuitively kind of sense that we have these in, in different gradations and different amounts in different people. And some people kind of are further on the spectrum. Some people are not. But, uh, the justification for the scholarship was like, Hey, we know that patient outcomes are better if they felt like they were listened to and they were empathized with.
And, uh, reading builds that empathy. And then even further than that, um, this thing called attri attribution complexity, uh, which kind of builds off of this, these empathy cells and this kind of concept that, uh, if you read fiction, you’re constantly perspective taking. You’re constantly in the perspective of this character or that character.
You’re watching how they interact. That doesn’t go away when we take that into our daily lives. So when you ask about like, why are English majors, you know, successful, it’s kind of like one of those things that, you know, we, we may not always be conscious of, but really does bear [00:30:00] itself out over the long term, the effects of empathy and attribution, complexity in terms of navigating the world and, um, just having that kind of richer human experience.
And, you know, to me that’s, that’s one definition of success.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely. And I think. That speaks to me on so many levels and I’m really interested and thank you for diving into, and I know you’re like, is sit off like is this too much detail?
Dr. Sean P.: No,
Suzy Vadori: I think that the listeners are gonna be really interested in this too, because anybody who works with me, we talk about these things a lot, but I think as well.
It’s how I landed in the arts. Working in the business world. There is very little room for empathy and eventually it became really obvious, right? Um, working on Wall Street and then working, managing factories in China. I mean, I did some big things and big moves in terms of. That and eventually I was just way more interested in helping people tell their stories and, and doing that was just more, rather than making widgets or, or making people more money, just wasn’t [00:31:00] exciting to me anymore.
And that empathy piece of it, I think whatever those cells are, I have way too many labor. Yeah. So we know a little bit about those brainwaves and how that creates your facial expressions or how you express emotions. Do you think that that, okay, this is one of the tenets of show Don’t tell, right? We’re on the show.
Don’t tell writing podcast. I always have to bring it back. So do you think that that gave you an advantage when you were, one of the tenets is don’t name emotions, show them and how they work. How does your work with patients on how those. Emotions are actually expressed. Does that actually help you come up with some original ideas when you’re expressing emotions on the page, or is it unrelated?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah. So I definitely think that what I do as a physician, as a neurologist and what I do as an author and a, a lot of people have talked about this before. There’s a long tradition of physicians who, who writes, and I think that there may be a, a good reason for that and that everything with patients is [00:32:00] story.
And that’s the first thing you do when you meet a patient is you try to, you know, get the story, take a history. It’s a narrative about the long. Kind of arc that happens to, uh, a person’s body or their mind. And so really what all good physicians should be are good story takers. Um, but then I think that what that kind of builds into, or what, what certainly has happened to me and I think helps me is that I sort of have a natural inclination, but to take a storytelling and then to expand on that and try to get into a lot of things you’re talking about with.
Different kind of emotional processes and, and then to really, you know, ha have some kind of movement, like I know in the hospital, like nobody who’s talking to me is having a good day. Yeah. Nobody, nobody wants to be in the hospital. It’s uncomfortable. You can’t sleep. There are alarms going off. You’re worried about what’s going on, what’s gonna happen to you.
I mean, everybody is kind of in this, this state of kind of quasi shock. You know, they’re, they’re outta their elements and, but in case anything happens or to kind of get set on that, on that right path. And so I don’t. Take any of my patient’s stories or experiences and directly translate them, you know, [00:33:00] into a, a fictional account.
Suzy Vadori: No. And nor and nor could you ethically and nor should you, right? But, but they’re all going to be, we always write a little bit about what we know. It’s going to be informed by that and, and a compilation of, of human experiences, right.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, uh, you know, case in point, stage of fools. It’s not based on any one character or any one patient or any one experience that I had, but really this collection of experiences getting asked what’s going on to a, a person in a coma and what’s gonna happen and what could happen.
Suzy Vadori: So that’s what exists today in terms of being able to interpret brainwaves and do some basics. Right. And I read also like what’s coming because I, I read there’s something about, you know, we could feed all those brainwave activity into AI and, and match that to possible thoughts and actions and. You’re involved in the privacy of it.
And I was like, wow, this is, this is some big stuff that’s coming. What should we be worried about? What? What [00:34:00] is the possibility? And I think in somewhere, you said within the next five years, some of this might be real, right? What’s coming in terms of the technology that’s out there today?
Dr. Sean P.: Thank you for asking that.
And you know, it’s, it, it’s kind of surreal. I think sometimes, you know, sometimes I think the things in our lives, they kind of choose us and you sort of look back and try to connect the dots. But actually at the same time, I was writing Stage of Fools. I reached out to a foundation based at Columbia University in New York and in Washington DC called the Neuro Rights Foundation.
And they’re a foundation for the promotion of innovation and for the development of the safe and ethical uses of neurotechnology kind of broadly. Generally speaking, and going back to that kind of 10 year runway where the thing that happened 10 years ago is there was an a funding initiative signed by the president to fund neurotechnology research and applications.
Just really try to dive into the brain and understand it better using technology. And so that was the same year that I had the idea for stage of fools. And actually wrote it. I was reaching out to them, I hadn’t connected with them yet, but then [00:35:00] reached out again and they got in touch and said, yeah, we would like to maybe think about doing some work in Colorado and see what we could do on this issue of mental privacy.
There are five kind of broad categories of, uh, ethical issues with neurotechnology. The one that’s really here today, to your point, is this issue of mental privacy. So, fast forward about a year and a half after I reached out to them, we had the first bill actually in the world for the protection of these brainwaves, this neural beta, so that, you know, you or I, um, I’m actually wearing a pair of headphones right now that are collecting my brainwaves through these sensors.
I don’t know.
Suzy Vadori: Very cool. I mean, I, I could see for those listening, we do this on video and then we don’t share the video with you, but. Yeah, Sean’s wearing headphones and I had no idea that they were collecting his brainwaves. I’ll be interested to see if you get any interesting data on what happened when you say and whether it was interesting or not.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but just to your point, I mean, this stuff is here today. You can buy brainwave sensing, you know, headphones. And I know that I’m kind of like a biased kind of early adopter as a neurologist, [00:36:00] but I mean, it’s here, you can get it off Amazon. You could go to the website and have these headphones and what they’re doing.
They are tracking my focus right now, and I can actually see, yeah, I’m, I’m in high focus right now. No surprise.
Suzy Vadori: Keeping you on your toes. Keeping you on your toes. It’s good. Yeah. So what? What’s the danger? I mean, is it possible that if I fall into a coma and you put some kind of headphones on me. In five years, you might be able to see my thoughts.
And is that, is that the danger? Is that what we’re worried about? And, and, and obviously I wouldn’t be, maybe you could ask me and then I’d be able to consent and that might be a different, a different story. But, but where are we going with this? Like, as we talk about ai, and I have this conversation daily with writers, people are on all over the spectrum.
Some people are not really that worried about ai. And some people are like really worried about AI and really think that it’s going to be the downfall of literature and the world. So what is the danger here with brainwave data privacy?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah. And that, that’s an amazingly wonderful [00:37:00] question. And the answer is that it’s not so much that.
We’re worried about AI today, like reading whatever thoughts are coming out of, out of your brain. Like these headphones can track my focus by tracking different frequencies of brainwaves, but they’re not gonna be able to translate my words. But the caveat there is that the answer is not yet. You know, last year in a laboratory in Australia, they were able to, to prove and show that with a headset, just, you know, something similar to what I’m wearing right now, you could decode the actual words in a person’s mind with about 40% fidelity.
You imagine how quickly, you know, technology progresses, um, and the algorithms and the more data you get, the more data you capture, the more reliable and the more you know fidelity you get from your insights. And so this stuff is coming and it’s gonna be wonderful, you know, for patients. And I’m a big advocate of this stuff too, but you know, to your point, like,
Suzy Vadori: but yeah, a big but there scary, right?
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so in terms of like mind reading and like, let’s say, uh, just create a hypothetical situation where in the [00:38:00] future, you know, the government wants to know what’s going on, you know, in your mind and you know, you don’t have the right to refuse and they, they put a head cap on you or, you know, it could lead to interrogation, it could lead to manipulation.
You know, it just, if, if the company knows sort of, uh, your level of alertness, your level of. Focus, you know, that could be used for those types of purposes, or it could be sold to an insurance company. You can give away a lot of your health data from this information you mentioned, what mood you’re in, you know, you can tell not just things like epilepsy, but things like OCD, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression.
All these things, dementia, you know, so people should just have a right. Um, you know, technology is fundamentally neutral. When you think about, you know, like nuclear technology. You can power a city, you can do, you know, destructive things with a genetic technology. You can tell somebody about their health.
You can clone people and that’s weird. So we’re just trying to steer things towards only the good applications and we think that people ought to have fair access to all the good applications at the same time that you should have rights to, you know, use your data request, its deletion, request that it not be used for certain [00:39:00] purposes.
When you look at what happened with 23 and me, you know, with that, all that data being sold to pharmaceutical companies, like, we just wanna be sure that consumers have a right to their brains, which it’s hard to argue against, but that’s why we, uh, we were able to get the first laws passed in the country, in the world last year for neural data protection.
Part of the Colorado, California, now Montana and Connecticut Privacy Acts. We’re working at the federal level and at the global level. So just trying to get, you know, some momentum so that, uh, you know, you can wear these headphones and not have to worry.
Suzy Vadori: I love, love loud that you are on the bleeding edge of pro, the technology that we don’t even.
Most of us had never even heard of yet, and you’re already protecting
Dr. Sean P.: us from, and I think that’s really amazing.
Suzy Vadori: I go to, uh, when I go to schools and I speak to students about writing, I often will put up this slide and it’s this picture of two boys with tinfoil hats on, right? And the, the probes and all the things that you used to see in the seventies and the science fiction, if you will, of what we thought was going to happen.
And [00:40:00] I say to them, oh, I forgot these hats at home. If you, if I put one on my head and you put one on your head, then I can just think of a story and the movie plays in my mind and it will also play in your mind. And then I don’t have to write
Dr. Sean P.: F These kids, they’re amazing. I love it.
Suzy Vadori: And they all say you have those.
You would have those. Susie and I. No, no, actually I’m lying. And that’s okay because I’m a fiction writer. It’s what I do for a living. Right. And then you get a laugh, but they really believe in it. And it sounds like that kind of thing is coming, but I think we’re still going to need that translation. I mean, that’s a one-to-one.
And how do we get that back into readers minds? You still have to create it. Yeah. There’s so many applications. I could talk about this all day long. Thank you so much. I wanna just end our podcast time as we wrap up with some quick fire questions. Are you ready?
Dr. Sean P.: Sure.
Suzy Vadori: Okay. So how long did it take you to write this debut novel that finally got published from the [00:41:00] time that you thought of it?
Probably even the time that you started the prequel, until you published it. How long
Dr. Sean P.: Prequel? I started, it was about 10 years Stage Fools. The writing was four months, but the idea about eight months, but the prequel about 10 years from.
Suzy Vadori: Actually, yeah, I actually love that, that you wrote it in four months and because that much planning and thinking.
’cause I like to say that it’s not just, I mean we’re talking about brains here today, but you carried that story around and you kind of worked on it. And so when you sat down to write, it was there. And I find that with busy professionals, and it was me as well when I was a business executive and I would write.
You know, I would block a weekend and then I would binge write and get 10,000 words a day or something. And I hate even saying that ’cause I don’t want people to compare. ’cause what happened was when I quit my job to do all things writing, I thought I could do that whenever I wanted. And the answer was I couldn’t.
I couldn’t sit down every single day and get that kind of result because I needed that thinking time. Right? So there’s this marination time where, so I love that, you know, 10 [00:42:00] years for the storyline, but then when you actually. Mapped it out and sat down and did it, it was there. So,
Dr. Sean P.: yeah, I, it all has to.
Yeah. Yeah. I have a long runway. But yeah, I think it’s a good kind of buffer against writer’s block too, in that if you’ve planned and, you know, kind of know the main points. I don’t like to know everything, but, uh, if you basically know where you’re headed, it’s, it’s harder to get stopped. Yeah. Oh, writer’s
Suzy Vadori: block is a whole different episode.
We could have that one too. ’cause, because there’s a lot of reasons. There’s a lot of reasons, and a lot of it is exactly what you just said. It’s, you haven’t decided. That’s gonna happen, and so you can’t write it. Okay. Number two, what was your first big break where you knew that this novel was actually gonna happen?
You’ve written nine manuscripts. How did you know that this was the one that was going to see the light of day? What was your break?
Dr. Sean P.: I think that, well, it was when the publisher reached out to me and said, can we publish this? I didn’t particularly, I mean, to, to our previous question, you know, I, I invested a lot more time and a lot more.
Energy [00:43:00] and effort into writing the first several manuscripts. And this one was kind of the shortest from start to finish, but I guess maybe I learned something by that point. ’cause you know, they, I was, uh, you know, working with them on some editing, some editing services, and, uh, they read it and said, Hey, you know, we’re, we’re doing this and, uh, can we publish it?
So that’s, that was kind of the moment.
Suzy Vadori: Oh, amazing. And what’s your best advice for writers just starting out listening to this podcast? What do you wish you’d known when you started this journey? Nine manuscripts ago.
Dr. Sean P.: I would just say, I think it’s sort of like the marathon sprint thing. You know, I, I always want people to have success, you know, wonderful success with their first project, but these things, you know, they can take a long time.
I mean, they do take a long time, even from the publishing agreement, uh, on this novel, it was still like a two year timeframe. So I, I would urge. Number one, passion, obsession. You know, really get into your work and just when, when you’re doing it, care about nothing, nothing else. But then also on, on the flip side, just be open to the idea that, you know, careers are built over years and years and like, so [00:44:00] just not to get discouraged, I guess is what I’m getting at.
That it doesn’t happen like in the moment that it’s never gonna happen.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. Publishing. It has been a really eye-opening experience coming from the world of tech and manufacturing and business and published a purpose slower, and there’s a lot of patience required and uh, and sometimes that’s awesome and sometimes it can be really frustrating, but it is normal.
So where can we find you and your.
Dr. Sean P.: Yeah, so you can find it on all the major platforms. You can find it at Amazon or barnes and noble.com. You can find it from the publisher, high frequency press.com. Um, I got a personal website, sean polowski.com. Um, there will be an audio book out here.
Suzy Vadori: We’ll put all the links so by the time this show comes out, you should be able to get the audio book and you know, right from the doctor’s mouth.
That listening to the book is just as effective and does the same things in your brain as reading, so make sure you go grab those. Thank you so much, Dr. Kowski for coming [00:45:00] on the show. It has been my absolute pleasure and honor to geek out about brain science. Thanks for coming on today.
Dr. Sean P.: Likewise. Susie, thank you so much.
It’s been a pleasure.
Suzy Vadori: Thanks for tuning into the show. Don’t Tell Writing podcast with me, Susie Vori. It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight goods for that book. You’re writing or its. The book that you’re planning to write, please help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us. You could subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening to show the show.
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