106. Tom Slick’s Legacy: The San Antonio Institution Studying Consciousness

Bob Rivard [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Big City Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Rivard. Tom Slick was one of the most fascinating and visionary entrepreneurs in San Antonio history. He was a mid twentieth century oil wildcatter, very successful one, an explorer, and a creator. Actually, why there is no statue or other public remembrance of this striking individual is a mystery to me. Yet, if you look around, his fingerprints are found all over the contemporary city. Slick tragically died in a small plane crash in the early nineteen sixties, but while he was alive he used his wealth to explore some of the most remote reaches of the planet as well as the inner labyrinth of the human mind and spirit. In the nineteen forties, he founded Texas Biomedical Research Institute here, as well as the Southwest Research Institute, two internationally recognized centers of excellence in San Antonio that that too often fly below the general public's radar.

Bob Rivard [00:01:07]:
Before his death, Slick also founded the nonprofit Mind Science Foundation, which he described this way, and it's a quote, I regard the creation of the Mind Science Foundation as the most important undertaking of my life, and I plan to devote most of my time to it. I feel that the human mind has tremendous unexplored potential, and I want to go about the discovery of that potential in a scientific way. Close quotes. Today's guests on Big City Small Town are Miriam Good, the president and CEO of the Mind Science Foundation and a longtime nonprofit leader, and doctor Ben Raine, the foundation's chief scientist. Raine is a Stanford trained neuroscientist and a renowned science communicator with more than 1,000,000 social media followers, including me. We're drawn to his ability to take scientific complexity and make it both captivating and easy to understand for a general audience. Doctor Rain is based in Buffalo, New York, but he and Mariam Goode join us in the Geekdom podcast studio in San Antonio today.

Meriam Musa Good [00:02:13]:
Well, we're just thrilled to be here, Bob. Thank you for inviting us and letting us talk about you know, we're both fans of Tom Slick, so it's a delight to come and share a little bit more about him.

Bob Rivard [00:02:24]:
Ben, thanks for coming all the way from Buffalo.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:02:26]:
Yep. Just landed earlier this morning. I'm very pleased to be here.

Bob Rivard [00:02:29]:
I think in after a hundred plus episodes, you've come the farthest to be on the podcast. So you hold that honor, and you'll probably hold it for a while.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:02:37]:
That's amazing.

Bob Rivard [00:02:38]:
Well and we can go with first names, Miriam and Ben, please. I've been fascinated with Tom Slick and the Mind Science Foundation since my family arrived here in 1989, and I began to learn more about this mysterious larger than life figure. He left an enduring imprint on the city and beyond San Antonio in the world of scientific research. Yet, I dare say many in our audience have probably never heard of him.

Meriam Musa Good [00:03:03]:
And I think that's really unfortunate because you have an individual who was, you know, fortunate enough to have great material wealth. And, yes, he did many adventures, he built many things, but above all, he was insatiably curious. And he used his wealth to investigate Texas Biomed with its basic science, Southwest Research with applied science. But then for us, mind science, he was fascinated with the mystery of the human mind. What makes us human? We have a brain that is, you know, three pounds of, I won't say jelly, but it's three pounds of physical material, Yet each of us has this glorious subjective experience of the world. We love, we can taste, we can enjoy, we can share and visit. And where does that come from? How does the brain create the mind and this wonderful subjective self that we all enjoy? And that started with Tom Slick's curiosity about what makes us tick.

Bob Rivard [00:04:15]:
Ben, how did a Stanford educated scientist with a million social media followers get connected to the Mind Science Foundation as its chief scientist?

Ben Rein, PhD [00:04:24]:
Well, it all started actually when I applied to the, Brainstorm neuroscience pitch competition, which is the Mind Science Foundation's primary funding mechanism nowadays for early career scientists. So as a researcher at Stanford

Bob Rivard [00:04:37]:
to hear more about that from

Ben Rein, PhD [00:04:38]:
you and me. But

Bob Rivard [00:04:39]:
Well well all of that was your connection.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:04:41]:
Yeah. Well and we will talk much more about that. But so I applied, and I end up winning and getting very involved with the foundation and just really fell in love. First off, I fell in love with San Antonio and amazing city. And, also, just the model of funding, which is super unique that, as we will discuss later, you don't just write a proposal, like a grant, like you typically would as a scientist. You also create a video pitch where you explain the proposal so that anybody can understand it. It has this built in science communication element, which is extremely rare. And in doing so, it really is one of the only funding mechanisms in science that incentivizes researchers to create, to, communicate their research clearly.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:05:20]:
And so I found that to be extremely interesting and compelling and valuable because I feel that we need to, as a field, as researchers, be more clear and accessible and engage the public more effectively. And the only way that's gonna happen is if, you know, busy scientists are incentivized to do so. And so, you know, what a novel, creative, and effective idea to fund research scientists who can most effectively engage the public. So that's how I'm here.

Bob Rivard [00:05:42]:
I think the work you're doing is really important. I'm married to a citizen scientist and have met many real scientists through her, but most of them aren't real interested in citizen scientists or speaking that language. They're interested in their own worlds of research and work, and those are the world they stay in, and they often don't come out of it.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:06:02]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as you progress through your academic training, you know, you come across jargon and all these words and this whole scientific language that nobody can understand. You learn to understand it through your training, and then there's no active component of scientific education, like formal graduate school, that kind of stuff, that sort of teaches you to back translate to the public. You know, you learn to dive into this academic world where you speak in front of other scientists and, you know, they know what you're talking about, but if the average person were in that room, they would not be able to follow it. And so I'm a huge proponent of educating scientists to speak more clearly. And, in fact, I'm actually gonna be teaching a class on science communication at Stanford, in the coming semester. I'm all about this stuff, and mind science is really rare in the way that it targets that specific area.

Bob Rivard [00:06:47]:
No. That's great. Miriam, what is the award that the Mind Science Foundation offers young scientists?

Meriam Musa Good [00:06:53]:
As Ben said, it's the Brainstorm Neuroscience Pitch Competition, and we have an RFP that we open in the spring. It's actually active now. If there are any neuroscientists out there wanting to apply at mindscience.org, just wanna plug that. And so out of the applicants, three are chosen as finalists. And so as Ben mentioned, part of that process is they submit a research proposal, which we funded research for decades. And so that's not different for us. It's goes through a rigorous peer review. It's solid science.

Meriam Musa Good [00:07:32]:
But that other piece is what sets us apart, which is the pitch video. And we're Mind Science is as committed to funding the research that will unlock answers to intractable problems with health and well-being. We're as interested and committed to that as we are to making sure that research is communicated in a way that gets people excited about science and also builds trust in science. And I don't need to say anymore about how desperately we need people to be scientifically literate and educated and not opposed to scientific endeavor. And I always go back to my experience with Mind Science. We moved here in 02/2008, and I come from a background of indigent health care. And so when we moved here, I thought, you know, I really want to stay in health care. Could not find an opening or a place to get in, and I don't even remember where I saw how I got connected, but I was hired at MindScience to be the member relations person and development.

Meriam Musa Good [00:08:58]:
And through the course of time, you know, a couple years later, I became the leader of the organization. But what happened for me about two years in, because I don't have a science background, I I it never occurred to me to be scientifically interested. But here I was after about two years with this deep dive on brain science and specifically the neuroscience of human consciousness. So as I said before, how does the brain create the mind? What can we find out about that? And I so clearly remember sitting at our conference room table and it was like a light bulb went on. And all of a sudden, I understood a couple of things. Number one, science is beautiful. It's a wonderful it's a wonderful endeavor. It's a wonderful way to experience the world.

Meriam Musa Good [00:09:55]:
And there's a richness to that I didn't have beforehand. Second piece of that is regret because I have a neurodivergent child. And if I'd known what I know now about how the brain works, I would have been, I think, a better parent or a more effective parent. And at least I would have had the the knowledge to share with him so that it wasn't a mystery to him. And so I'm personally committed to giving everybody that moment, and I I'm privileged to be able to do that through Mind Science.

Bob Rivard [00:10:36]:
Well, never too late with your own son.

Meriam Musa Good [00:10:38]:
It's not. Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:10:39]:
There I assume there's a financial component to this award that's attracting scientists from near and far to apply.

Meriam Musa Good [00:10:45]:
Yes. There is.

Bob Rivard [00:10:46]:
How much, if I may ask?

Meriam Musa Good [00:10:47]:
So they are $30,000 awards. Three people scientists will win that.

Bob Rivard [00:10:53]:
Every year?

Meriam Musa Good [00:10:54]:
Every year.

Bob Rivard [00:10:54]:
That's real money.

Meriam Musa Good [00:10:56]:
It is real money. And I think Ben can comment on

Bob Rivard [00:10:59]:
Well, tell me first.

Meriam Musa Good [00:11:00]:
How real that is. But and then the they have submitted their pitch videos. So the three people who made it to the finals have their videos put on our website, and then they're voted on. People from around the world can view them and vote on them for their favorite.

Bob Rivard [00:11:18]:
Can we vote?

Meriam Musa Good [00:11:19]:
Anybody can vote.

Bob Rivard [00:11:20]:
Okay. Please vote.

Meriam Musa Good [00:11:22]:
Please vote.

Bob Rivard [00:11:22]:
Then I would have voted for you. I promise. I appreciate that.

Meriam Musa Good [00:11:25]:
That's kinda why he's here today. But anybody can vote, and so we come together in mid October like we are this year, on October 22. And the finalists are brought to San Antonio. We have a really lively panel discussion. This is all built for the public so that you can come in person, meet a scientist, learn more about the brain. But how we cap that evening off is the winner of the audience choice award gets an extra $10,000.

Bob Rivard [00:12:00]:
And that person's announced live there at the event.

Meriam Musa Good [00:12:03]:
Person is announced live there. I think there's two of us who know who it is, the the printer and

Bob Rivard [00:12:08]:
It's like the Oscars.

Meriam Musa Good [00:12:09]:
It is like the Oscars.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:12:10]:
And they get a gigantic check.

Meriam Musa Good [00:12:12]:
And they they everybody gets the gigantic check, and it's just it's so meaningful.

Bob Rivard [00:12:17]:
So that's coming up this year, and it's open to the public. And we can focus people's attention on that in our newsletter a little later in the year when we get closer to the date. And Yes. Absolutely. We're invited.

Meriam Musa Good [00:12:27]:
Absolutely. Alright.

Bob Rivard [00:12:28]:
And we're gonna vote.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:12:29]:
If you're an early career researcher, the grant is open right now. So a hundred thousand dollars total in funding. I should also note that's not affected whatsoever by any federal changes or regulations.

Bob Rivard [00:12:39]:
That'll be welcome.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:12:41]:
Yes. Absolutely. And I know there's a great need for that right now. And so but that money is you know, we are the RFP is out. So you can apply now. The event will be in October, and that'll be here in San Antonio. And, yeah, that'll be open to the public.

Bob Rivard [00:12:53]:
Miriam, I know that you've funded research around the world, and we can talk about some of those projects here a little later in the podcast. But is the competition open to scientists around the world or just or nationally?

Meriam Musa Good [00:13:05]:
It's international. We've funded some research here in San Antonio, One individual from UT Health and another from UTSA. They were both in different they were in different years, but basically studying social isolation. And what was really timely is that the woman who is studying social isolation was doing that before COVID, and her project kind of overlapped pre COVID and active COVID.

Bob Rivard [00:13:34]:
But that was a research project, not an award?

Meriam Musa Good [00:13:37]:
No. When I say project, I'm using that interchangeably. Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:13:41]:
So anyone listening from anywhere is eligible to compete for that. Yeah.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:13:45]:
Yes. Yeah. Last year, we had a winner from France. The year before, we had a winner from Holland.

Bob Rivard [00:13:49]:
Oh, that's exciting. And they came here. Yep.

Meriam Musa Good [00:13:51]:
Yes.

Bob Rivard [00:13:52]:
What did you do with your research time and resources after winning? Did that help you along with some project that was underway or that you had hoped to undertake?

Ben Rein, PhD [00:14:00]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And we've had winners over the last few years that I've been involved, that I've seen, I've spoken to, who have said, this is literally gonna change my career because my lab had just run out of money, and now this is gonna pay for me to work for another year and finish my research project and publish it and be able to go on to the next step of my career. And so, you know, sometimes the money can be used for reagents and for experiments. Other times, it can be used for that kind of thing for someone's salary in a in a deficit. But I wanna emphasize this is again for early career researchers. So we're talking PhD students and postdocs, which is the stage after, which for those who aren't aware, it's like a residency for a scientist, the doctor's residency. And so we're really looking to support, especially right now, you know, those early career researchers who could use the extra funds for if there's, you know, particular projects they need to get over the finish line or because we also recognize that, you know, this isn't an RO1 grant, which is the big federal one, which is millions of dollars, but it's a significant amount of money that can help people bolster their projects by adding additional experiments or support salaries, things like that.

Bob Rivard [00:15:01]:
Miriam, if the Mind Science Foundation isn't known as well locally as it should be, is it known well in scientific circles where people like Ben around the the country and even outside the country are aware that that you exist and that there's this competition?

Meriam Musa Good [00:15:15]:
Yes. We have over twenty five years of building relationships with researchers internationally, going to conferences, supporting conferences, and then funding individuals along the way. For whatever reason, especially in Europe, Western Europe, we are very well known. We get regular submissions from that area of the world. So we're not as well known in San Antonio. And like many small organizations in this, like, you know, big city, small town that we call San Antonio, I hear frequently that, oh, I didn't know about you, and we're a hidden gem. We're right there in Olmos Park, across from the fire department, doing our work, encouraging and funding young scientists, and also having an educational outreach so that people in this room can learn about their brains.

Bob Rivard [00:16:13]:
So one of the reasons I ask that is you're a nonprofit. You have to raise money. As a matter of fact, that was your first job was in development for the Yes. Mind Science Foundation. How are you raising money? Is it local? Is it national or international? Is it from foundations or individuals?

Meriam Musa Good [00:16:30]:
Our funding resources are varied. We are very fortunate to have an endowment left by Tom Slick. And that supplies, you know, that supplies income for our basic needs, the lights, the heat,

Bob Rivard [00:16:44]:
you know The unsexy stuff.

Meriam Musa Good [00:16:46]:
You know, all that sexy stuff that makes it possible for us to actually do the work. But we are really reliant on donors for us to do any expansion beyond that. So donors are the source of the funding for brainstorm, and that's a hundred thousand dollars plus the expense of the event. So I

Bob Rivard [00:17:06]:
And bringing people in and

Meriam Musa Good [00:17:07]:
everything else. People in, that's like a hundred and around a hundred and $50,000. And so we just had our gala at the February, and that supplies a a big chunk of that. But we also have generous individual donors who are committed to our mission as well. And then, you know, we have the $5.10, $20 donors, which we equally love, and we are a foundation. So most other foundations do not make grants to other foundations. And so that's a challenge that we have is finding non foundation donors.

Bob Rivard [00:17:53]:
Ben, we're this is actually the second program we've done over the course of a couple of years with the brain scientists in the room. We had doctor Peter Fox on from UT Health San Antonio who is the founder of the Advanced, Research Imaging Institute, I think is the name. And he was specifically here to talk about MRI work that he's doing to explore pediatric near fatal drowning syndrome, which I think his research has shown that those children that suffer that unfortunate event are not vegetables in quotes, but in fact, are people with minds that are very active and emotional and they just can't communicate in traditional ways and unlocking that is that's unlocking that locked in syndrome is key. I'm interested in what you see out there. That's really cutting edge. That's happening with brain science. And I wanted to bring up two specific topics with you to get your reaction and then invite you to just talk about anything else. One is the sudden front page news we're reading almost every day on GLP one drugs, which are the, pharmaceuticals.

Bob Rivard [00:19:00]:
I think they were developed to treat diabetes, type two diabetes, but have since become universally accepted as weight loss drugs and are really helping people with morbid obesity and other conditions that have been resistant to any other treatment. And and the other thing that I'm particularly interested in age 72 is staving off the advance of dementia and what we're learning about how people can live their lives to to avert that or to lessen the chances of that happening.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:19:29]:
Mhmm. Well, with the GLP one drugs, I'll admit, I'm I don't know as much as I should to answer your question completely. You know, like, I'm not really familiar with mechanism. All I know is that they're becoming very popular, and I'm sure there is a lot of research out there. I'm not familiar with it. I can only speculate. And one of the places that I source my integrity is from not speculating on things that I don't know a lot about or at least I'm not up to date on the literature on. So, unfortunately, your question will have to go unanswered for today.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:19:59]:
But I can answer your second one about Alzheimer's and, you know, mitigating risk. When it comes to reducing Alzheimer's risk, it's unfortunately the same boring things that you've heard a bunch of times. You know, diet, obviously, eating a clean, healthy diet. There might be there seem to be some pretty convincing evidence that certain foods and certain sort of nutrients can be helpful. So I'm I'm 99% sure. Again, haven't checked the literature recently, but increased intake of omega threes, which aren't like fish, are associated with reduced risk of Alzheimer's. Secondly, sleep is obviously huge. Exercise, social interaction, you know, all the things that you might traditionally think of as very basic health measures are also protective for the brain.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:20:42]:
You know, I'm happy to go into greater depth on any of those, but I think that one that I'm personally interested in and happen to know probably the most about is the social component. Isolation is just the worst. It's really bad for you at any age. It's exceptionally bad for you at an advanced age because this is basically, social isolation almost induces or increases the risk of just about everything. But it increases the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, you know. It causes all sorts of problems, and that is unfortunately very bad in later life because as we age, we also become just naturally at greater risk of all those things. So you have this sort of, like, evil synergistic effect. And the worst thing of all is that the data show that as people, at least in America and Western cultures, as people get older, they spend more and more time alone.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:21:32]:
So, it's something that really needs to be addressed, and we really need to talk about it more, I think. And the solution is quite simple, which is great. You know? Get out there and talk to people.

Bob Rivard [00:21:41]:
I've actually, yeah, I've actually read that that people that that do isolate like that and sort of slip into dementia lose their language skills

Ben Rein, PhD [00:21:49]:
Mhmm.

Bob Rivard [00:21:49]:
And that accelerates the the problem.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:21:53]:
Yeah. Right. Because then you have you struggle to communicate, and then things get only worse. Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:21:57]:
So how about Scrabble? I'm I'm joking, but, you know, people say do crossword puzzles, do, you know, Sudoku, whatever, do Scrabble, that those kinds of mind exercises are very good for both, memory enhancement and just general sharpness of

Ben Rein, PhD [00:22:14]:
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the you could think about the brain like a complete body of different muscles. Right? And if you go to the gym every single day and you do bicep curls, your biceps are gonna get really strong. Nothing else is really gonna happen in your body. If you do Sudoku every single day, you'll probably get really good at whatever particular brain regions that exercise engages. But, you know, you're not gonna get any better at cooking. Right? Or you brush your your teeth with your left hand for a week or two. You'll get better at coordinating that movement, but you won't get better at Sudoku.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:22:44]:
So you need to think about activities that engage a bunch of different brain areas and brain systems. Social interaction is one of those. It's like an exercise for the brain. I mean, there's so much to it that we don't really think about. To your point, there's this idea of something called cognitive reserve. Have you ever heard of that? No. So the idea is that the more brain matter you build up throughout your life, the more resilient you are to neurodegeneration, which happens naturally as we age. You know, this, everybody experiences, unfortunately, synapse loss as they age.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:23:15]:
Synapses are the connections between brain cells. You have 86,000,000,000 neurons. Each of them has maybe a thousand synapses. So there are like an incalculable number of synapses in your brain. But as we age, they progressively die and go away. And those synapses are incredibly important. They are basically what like, those are like the muscles of the brain, really, that allow you to do everything. And so it makes sense naturally that if you have more synapses, more brain matter, more neurons, As that process happens, you will hold on to your capacities for longer.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:23:47]:
And so doing things like Sudoku, you know, there's no concrete evidence of this that I'm aware of, but, you know, just basically keeping your brain challenged is helpful because as soon as you know, again, with the muscle analogy, when you don't use it, it can atrophy. And so, you know, socializing can be another good way to sort of complement that. And there are actually, believe it or not, studies that show that people who socialize more have larger brains because probably this cognitive, you know, this exercise effect that it kind of builds up, more better. And then those people are maybe relatedly more resilient and and less vulnerable to cognitive decline and Alzheimer's and dementia.

Bob Rivard [00:24:25]:
Well, beyond those two subjects, what's the, area of interest that you find yourself in right now as a scientist? Well,

Ben Rein, PhD [00:24:34]:
you know, I have so many answers to this because the field is always growing in every direction.

Bob Rivard [00:24:39]:
You know, we could talk about psychedelics. We could talk about empathy. I'm interested in psychedelics and their use that I understand is being studied at some of the leading research institutes, Harvard, Stanford, John Hopkins, that using psychedelics to treat people with terminally ill cancer, people with PTSD and deep depression, and the the results are very positive. And that, unfortunately, ever since the seventies, the Nixon era, we have vilified psychedelics as a possibly valuable pharmaceutical Mhmm. Pass to take. And Timothy Leary didn't do anybody any favors with, you know, his hippie dippie approach to everything. And, you know, most of us boomers had experience with CIPE for better or worse, and and now they seem to be back in a more controlled clinical way.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:25:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely controlled clinical are keywords. You know, we're talking about people taking these drugs under the supervision of trained professionals in very comfortable clinical settings, but, you know, kind of like what you might want for a psychedelic experience, you know, music playing, eye mask on, you have whatever you need accessible to you. You're journaling, you have a therapist there. But it's funny because, you know, as a researcher, I I have worked in this field directly. My last paper one of the last papers I published was on MDMA and empathy. And many of my colleagues at Stanford also study, psychedelics.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:26:01]:
And it's just so funny because the way that we talk about psychedelics, you know, privately as scientists is very optimistic and enthusiastic. And then occasionally, I'll stumble, you know, into a conversation with with someone who's not really familiar with the science, and they assume that the scientific field is, like, very, like, we don't like this. But in truth, I think that the general public is actually more skeptical now than the researchers are. At least, you know, I don't wanna speak for all researchers, but most. Because the evidence is extremely impressive, you know, and and it's not that, you know, you take ketamine and it cures everything or psilocybin, it cures everything. Of course not. And there are some scientists who propose that and they are very wrong. But, you know, the idea is that maybe ketamine is extremely effective for, depression, you know, major depressive disorder.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:26:47]:
MDMA is extremely effective for PTSD. Of course, none of these drugs have passed the sort of clinical threshold and become available in The United States. But

Bob Rivard [00:26:57]:
In other words, somebody a physician couldn't prescribe you No. No. One of those drugs.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:27:02]:
There are some confusing ketamine's, like, on the cusp there. I know there are, like, certain states where you can get it, I believe, and same thing with psilocybin. But for the most part, they're not available. But, you know, the and I'm, I'm not even trying to sound like a, you know, psychedelic evangelical, but I think when you look at the, the data, they're very compelling. And if you took all the context, the historical context out of the discussion, and you just planted a group of researchers together and you had them look at the clinical trials that have been done, first off, for most of these drugs, when you compare them with the existing psychiatric interventions, they vastly exceed what are shown in the clinical trials. And I think if you show them any of these trials, they would say, wow, we need to, you know, fast track this to the clinics. But the historical context of everything that has happened with these with all these psychedelics makes it so that they're under such additional scrutiny, which is actually a good thing. And it's maybe something that should be, you know, a scrutiny that should be applied to all interventions and potential pharmacological agents, but it has also caused a lot of holdups.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:28:05]:
And so, you know, I happen to believe in the data. Of course, there are a lot of things going on. When you give people psychedelics, they have intense experiences and, you know, it's hard to blind the placebo group and stuff. So there are a lot of other issues, but overall, I mean, it's pretty impressive.

Bob Rivard [00:28:20]:
Miriam, you've you've funded so the Mind Science Foundation has funded some of that work. Have you not?

Meriam Musa Good [00:28:25]:
We have funded three projects. Actually, two in the last two years, but for different conditions. One was looking at, if you gave, human patients because a lot of these studies are done in mice, but this was a a group of people in a minimally conscious state. So you were talking about doctor Fox's work with pediatric nonfatal drowning and people being locked in. So but we know that psychedelics increase brain complexity. So the idea of this proposal was if you can administer psychedelics to those patients, might it not raise the level of their consciousness concurrently? And so we're waiting to see how that you know, what the results of that are. And we've also funded an individual at Stanford who is looking at psilocybin as a potential treatment for opioid addiction. And I'm not a scientist, but what was really compelling for me is that she's looking at, can you in any kind of psychedelic substance, can you split off the experience from whatever mechanism it might have in the brain that affects the addiction or the depression? So could there ultimately be, a prescription that you could get from your doctor for that derivative of a psychedelic that doesn't give you a trip.

Meriam Musa Good [00:30:02]:
It just you know, if we can figure out what that piece is doing in the brain that's disconnected from the experience, that would be a game changer.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:30:13]:
And that's a really good question of consciousness too. Right? Because psychedelics, like I said, they induce these profound powerful experiences. People come out of the experience with, you know, lower depression scores, whatever it is. Did their depression scores go down because they had a profound psychological conscious experience or because pharmacologically, the drug went in their brain and tinkered with specific systems that are related to depression and then induced some effect just on a biological basis, and the the trip itself was unrelated? And that's a really hard question to tease out, but there are some people exploring that.

Bob Rivard [00:30:45]:
So let let me ask if you've read the book by Michael Pollan, Change Your Mind. And, you know, we're we live in a world where, people my age, boomers, many I know, including myself, have taken, gummies with THC or CBD for everything from, you know, trying to help with sleep to antianxiety. I'm aware of people in my children's generation, millennials, microdosing mushrooms, magic mushrooms, psilocybin. And I have talked to one psychiatrist who said those can trigger some very terrible latent bipolar bipolar tendencies and other effects that people aren't aware of that may have read the book and gotten excited about it, and they're they're they're self medicating. And I just wonder with such problems right now socially with fentanyl on the streets, what fentanyl has done to the vagrant community, here and in every city. It's resulted in many more overdoses and deaths. What your thoughts are about how the popular use of drugs, whether it's just the legalization of marijuana, which is, you know, a very low level thing to people deciding that they can change their minds on their own and the impact of that?

Ben Rein, PhD [00:31:54]:
Well, one of the key factors here is that certain psychedelics, like ketamine, psilocybin, LSD, you know, a handful of them are they have been shown to potentially induce psychosis. You know, for someone who is genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, that psychedelic experience might be the what it takes for their brain to, you know, trigger psychosis for the first time and then induce their you know, from there on out schizophrenia. That's obviously a big concern. And so when people are doing it on the you know, just illegally, basically, that's a risk because you don't really know what your risk profile is. All the studies that I'm talking about in these clinical trials have been published, they always screen people carefully to make sure that they are, you know, not at risk for that. And, you know, the risk factors, like, one of them, which is obvious, family history. You know, do you have a relative with psychosis or schizophrenia? So, yeah, people need to be careful. You know, these are very robust drugs and they need to be used carefully and ideally, they should not be used illegally, you know.

Meriam Musa Good [00:32:53]:
Well, I think that just points out the fact that you need to understand the public needs to understand that just because it's in a headline or somebody wrote a best selling book does not mean the science is there. Yeah. And one thing that's, you know, through the years as I've spent time with scientists and looked at their work is that you have to have a very, not skeptical, but a very close attention to what is the science behind it? What was it good science? Was it a, you know, did they try this on a population of 10 or 500? So being scientifically literate helps a person wade through the headlines and make good choices for themselves.

Bob Rivard [00:33:39]:
So we're here to talk about the Mind Science Foundation, by the way, but, I can't help but ask both of you what your thoughts are about this anti science moment that we're living where people no longer trust vaccines, where we're seeing measles and and polio outbreaks again, that diseases that we thought were eradicated domestically, people second guessing, like doctor Anthony Fauci during the COVID nineteen pandemic. And now our fear, which I've heard from many people below the radar that are in our science community here, their deep seated fear over losing all of the funding from the federal government for institutions like the Southwest Research Institute, Texas Biomedical Institute, UT Health San Antonio, etcetera. And I'm sure wherever you come into the world of science, that could have a profoundly negative impact. But it seems to be something that's captured the the attention of at least half of the country.

Meriam Musa Good [00:34:36]:
I'll just jump in because I know Ben's gonna have really great things to say from a scientific point of view. But from my point of view as a lay person with an appreciation for science, but I came to that appreciation late. And for me, it's tragic that people don't trust science, but I think it's because they haven't been communicated with in a way that makes sense to them. And there are so many factors underlying this, mistrust of science and scientists. But I think part of it is having access to relatable communication about science. And then something else that, you know, it's hard to have on a broad scale, meet a scientist, spend some time with the scientist, get to know. Like, I am so fortunate. I have a whole group of I I have my own group of personal neuroscientists that I can go to, and you develop trust through that.

Bob Rivard [00:35:38]:
Let's go to Ben. How do what are your thoughts on that, and how do we reverse that and get people once again to to believe in science again?

Ben Rein, PhD [00:35:46]:
Well, so let's look at Miriam's story. You know, you came into the Mind Science Foundation and basically learned that, woah, science is cool and it's meaningful and it's and it I can use this information for my personal life. A lot of people have not had that experience. And if you look, if you ask anybody, you know, how how much do you know about science? Probably very little. And to be fair, I think that if not for the work of journalism, how would anybody know anything about what's happening in science today? There would be no education because scientists, you know, the, sorry to go at the whole ivory tower metaphor analogy, but it's true. Like, scientists publish research and then it goes into scientific journals which are held behind paywalls. And even if you get through the paywall, then it's full of jargon. You can't understand it.

Bob Rivard [00:36:34]:
Hard to read.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:36:35]:
And so how is the public is supposed to engage with this or learn anything from this? And so, again, without the work of journalism, there's no dialogue between science and the public. And so when the your favorite news station or your favorite politician or whoever, your your best friend, tells you, oh, whatever, SSRIs are dangerous or science, you know, vaccines are are dangerous, whatever it is. You have most people have absolutely no logical basis to refute that claim because they don't engage with the science. They've not been educated or reached directly. And so scientists need to do a better job of of training up on how to communicate with the public, building infrastructure to directly interact with the public. Personally, I do it through social media and, you know, it works. And I've actually done surveys where I've asked people who follow me, you know, since you follow me, have do you feel more connected with science, more trusting of science? And the numbers were outstanding. Like, we had, like, 700 people respond, and, like, 84% of them said they feel more trusting of science and scientists since watching my silly little sixty second Instagram and TikTok videos.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:37:34]:
Like, you would never think that would work, but it does because people are not reached.

Bob Rivard [00:37:37]:
Are those your principal platforms for reaching people, or what is your social media profile?

Ben Rein, PhD [00:37:41]:
Yeah. Mostly, Instagram and TikTok.

Bob Rivard [00:37:43]:
Yeah. And and tell people that are listening how to find you.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:37:47]:
So I well, my name is Ben, r e I n. So I go by doctor Brain, b r e I n. Oh, very cool. So if you just search the word Brain with the letter e instead of an a, b r e I n, it should be able to it should pop up.

Bob Rivard [00:37:59]:
But, anyways TikTok, Instagram, where else? Threads.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:38:02]:
I'm on if you speak Chinese, I'm on Billy Billy. I don't speak Chinese, but, I have a team who dubs Chinese, so I'm there. It's, like, Chinese YouTube and YouTube, I should also say. So, yeah, I try to hit them all. Yeah. Anyways, all that to say, it's critical to do that, to reach people. And so that's why I'm such a big fan of the Mind Science Foundation and what we're doing because we are having scientists as part of their applications to get funding, create videos that anybody can watch and understand, and they could say, oh, this is now I understand what this scientist is why what questions they're asking, how they're gonna do the experiments. It's a lesson in science by watching the video, and you get to understand, oh, what's on the cutting edge of science? People watch the videos.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:38:42]:
They vote for the videos. Then they have a chance so multiple goals here. We have now gotten scientists to practice their science communication skills. We have engaged the public directly. And then, best of all, we have this in person event in San Antonio where I moderate a panel with the winners and we talk about everything. Last year, we talked about psychedelics. We talked about Alzheimer's disease. We talked about brain computer interfaces and artificial intelligence.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:39:03]:
And the people who came in through the door got to vote on what we spoke about. So it's this whole, like, kind of tripartite model of bringing science to the public and doing so in a way that's really innovative and addresses a lot of core problems in society. So that's why I'm such a huge fan of it.

Bob Rivard [00:39:18]:
I think you've crossed over to do very important work as a communicator as opposed to just a scientist and decoding that for people and getting them interested. I my fear is that people have it's easy to say, you know, we should cut the federal government, the agencies, the workforce. It's all faceless and anonymous. But you can't take a chainsaw to networks that have been carefully developed over decades. And when people here start to see the result of if those hundreds of millions of dollars research dollars go away, that important work, people's jobs and livelihoods, it's all gonna go away with it, and it'll be very hard to short order.

Meriam Musa Good [00:39:58]:
And one thing that I learned in my journey learning to appreciate science that I didn't understand is that research builds on previous research. You don't go into a you don't go into a lab and figure out how to cure cancer. You build on what other people have done. And if there's this if there's this hiatus for however long, I can't even imagine the damage that's going to do to future research because there's gonna be a gap there, and you're going to have scientists who are going to leave the field. Early career scientists might have a choice to make. They might have to leave the field, and that is going to do incalculable damage in so many different arenas, health, the climate, the earth, just a anybody who does any research, there's gonna be a gap in there.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:40:56]:
Yeah. I heard someone on social media. I wish I could credit the creator. They were a doctor. And to summarize, what does this pause mean? You know, they said, if you've ever been in a hospital or had, unfortunately, someone going through a really bad situation in the hospital and you're asking the doctors, what isn't there anything that can be done? You know, what can be done? The answer to that question, that those experimental things that maybe can be tested, that is what this research funding goes to, to pushing the boundaries of our existing knowledge of medicine and what can be done to create new potentially better therapeutics. And so without research, that doesn't get any better. And so, you know, you go to a hospital today, you go to a hospital fifty years from now without any research. You're getting the exact same treatments with research.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:41:36]:
The treatments are gonna be accelerating and getting a lot more effective.

Bob Rivard [00:41:39]:
One irony is that I've heard from many people in leadership positions, Miriam, in our city that, you know, are involved in organizations with substantial federal research dollars that they're, reluctant to speak publicly about what they're telling me about privately because of the political moment we're in. And so in my mind, the scientific voice is not being heard very robustly across the nation right now because, the people that could be pushing back, they have a lot at stake, and they have to be very careful about how they push back.

Meriam Musa Good [00:42:11]:
And it just puts a damper as Ben said, it just puts a damper on scientific endeavors. If you are if you're afraid you're going to lose your job, it's not that's life changing. And so I understand why some individuals are are hesitant to speak out and are only speaking out, you know, kind of off mic or personally. Again, I just think it's a tragedy that we're not going to understand the full depth of this until years later or maybe five years later. I'd

Bob Rivard [00:42:47]:
Well, we're running out of time, but I I think we should be very proud in San Antonio of the Mind Science Foundation being here. I think it's the center of excellence, and and it would brings people like Ben into our world that otherwise wouldn't be there. And I wanna make a plug, Miriam, for something the mind science foundation used to do years ago that you don't do anymore, but they were called the Imagineer Awards. And when I look back and reflect on those, I think that was the mind Science Foundation going out into the community and finding citizen scientists and others who weren't scientific professionals and finding ways to put a spotlight on them and their work. And I think it was a very positive way to bring the the public into the Mind Science Foundation, people that aren't necessarily involved in science day to day in their world. And I don't know what happened to those awards, but they went away and they ought to come back.

Meriam Musa Good [00:43:38]:
You'll be happy to know that we are actually considering that because, again, you know, it has to do with we have great connections outside of San Antonio, but we have so much going on in San Antonio that we want to revive and go back to shining that spotlight on what's happening right oh, on what's happening right here.

Bob Rivard [00:44:04]:
Well, doctor doctor Brain Ben Rain and Miriam Good from the Mind Science Foundation. Thanks for coming on to Big City, Small Town, and we will see you guys, if not sooner, in October.

Meriam Musa Good [00:44:15]:
Yes. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Ben Rein, PhD [00:44:17]:
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Bob Rivard [00:44:22]:
Please share this episode with friends and colleagues, and do sign up for our new newsletter, Monday Musings. Big City, Small Town is brought to you by Western Urban, building the city our children wanna call home, and Geekdom, where startups are born and smart ideas become businesses. Our producer is Corey Eames, video by Erica Rempel, sound engineering by Alfie de la Garza of Sound Crane Audio. We will see you next week.