Brain Awareness Week
Join us in Brooklyn for our annual Brain Awareness Week show! This month, we present five stories about brains -- from their amazing potential to what happens when they go terribly wrong.
To listen to stories from past Brain Awareness Week shows, check out our "Weird Things Happening to Brains" playlist!
Stories by:
Originally from Ohio, Joey DeGrandis moved to New York City in 2003 to attend Fordham University, majoring in Communications. Initially working in “senior-targeted” marketing, conjuring up cool ways to sell Flomax, Depend Briefs and the like, Joey later found a job at a genetics lab and then as a copywriter for a Manhattan advertising agency. Currently, he works as a Marketing and Content Writer for New York tech firm Medidata. Joey is one of a handful of people in the world with a unique ability called HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory), in which he can instantly recall memories from a given day, and vice versa. As scientists are studying this phenomenon, he's been featured on CBS's 60 Minutes, in New York Magazine and Vice, and on the NPR program "This American Life." In his spare time, Joey enjoys cooking, biking, traveling, exploring the culinary and cultural delights of the Big Apple, reading insightful, left-leaning Op-eds, quoting movies and sitcoms like it’s his day job, and is a proud member of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus.
Erica Silberman showed promise in science for one brief semester in high school when she got an A+ in chemistry. Since then, she has become a playwright, director, producer, and in home color consultant. She’s published in The Best Monologues from the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Playscripts, Teachers & Writers, and the Sunday Salon. She has been a mentor and a workshop leader, and served on various boards at Girls Write Now, a presidential award winning after school mentoring program for high school girls from underserved city schools. In the spring of 2018 her play, In the Night Everyone is Equal, will be produced by The Dramatic Question Theatre at Art NY.
Wendy Suzuki, Ph.D. is a Professor of Neural Science and psychology at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before starting her faculty position in the Center for Neural Science at New York University in 1998. Wendy is a recipient of numerous grants and awards for her research including the Lindsley Prize from the Society for Neuroscience, the prestigious Troland Research award from the National Academy of Sciences and NYU’s Golden Dozen Teaching award. Her research has focused on understanding the patterns of brain activity underlying long-term memory and understanding how aerobic exercise affects mood, learning, memory and cognitive abilities. Her first book “Healthy Brain Happy Life” came out in paperback in March of 2016 and is an international bestseller.
Oliver Vikbladh, originally from Sweden, is currently a 5th year PhD candidate at New York University’s Center for Neural Science. His thesis work explores how the human brain uses memories from the past to make decisions about the future. Outside of his research, Oliver is interested in communicating science to a wider public. He has written book and theatre reviews for Science Magazine and been part of creating a virtual reality experience about how the brain represents space.
Caveh Zahedi is a writer/director whose feature films include The Sheik and I (SXSW, 2012), I Am A Sex Addict (IFC), In The Bathtub of the World (Sundance Channel), I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, (Critics’ Prize - Rotterdam International Film Festival, 1994), and A Little Stiff (Sundance, 1991). He is currently in production on an episodic series for BRIC TV calledThe Show About The Show.