Episode Details

The brain is the most mysterious and complex organ of the body, and when things go awry, we may be confronted with personal tragedy and we may gain insights on what it means to be human. With us to discuss neurological disorders and the history of their discovery is Sara Manning Peskin. Sara completed an AB in biochemistry at Harvard University in 2009, an MS in cellular and molecular biology at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and an MD also at U Penn in 2015. She completed postgraduate training and a fellowship in various aspects of neurology also at U Penn, where she is now an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology. Today we discuss a cornucopia of neurological disorders, including Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body dementia, Pick's disease, pellagra, and kuru disease (and its association with cannibalism) – all drawn from the pages of her new book, A Molecule Away from Madness, published in 2022 by W.W. Norton & Company.