This week we present two stories from people for whom science and love were interconnected.
Part 1: When Saurin Choksi starts dating a neuroscientist, it challenges his assumptions about gender roles.
A proud member of the Writers Guild of America, he wrote on staff for the Facebook / Refinery 29 talk show, “After After Party.” He’s also worked with the good people at Comedy Central on a number of their digital sketches. Choksi won The Boston Comedy Fest and his stand up has been featured on Laughs on Fox TV and Sirius/XM radio. He's performed at numerous comedy festivals--Limestone, Bridgetown, and SF Sketch are among his favorites. Choksi also hosted a television show on Fuse called "White Guy Talk Show" where he talked about pop culture and wore suits he couldn't afford. He created internet videos for Seriously.tv and is a proud alumni of Chicago's Lincoln Lodge. Choksi produces and hosts two acclaimed live stand up showcases in Brooklyn: Comedians You Should Know NYC and Brown Privilege Comedy. He is a 2020 Sesame Workshop Writer's Room fellow.
Choksi relaxes by sewing, crafting, and making stuff. He loves his wife, his family, and 4 of his friends. He thinks you should be nice to yourself and is impressed by your power.
Part 2: Wendy Suzuki's trajectory as a neuroscientist is forever altered by a passionate love affair in Paris.
Dr. Wendy A. Suzuki is a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology in the Center for Neural Science at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree in physiology and human anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 studying with Prof. Marion C. Diamond, a leader in the field of brain plasticity. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from U.C. San Diego in 1993 and completed apost-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before accepting her faculty position at New York University in 1998. Her major research interest continues to be brain plasticity. She is best known for her extensive work studying areas in the brain critical for our ability to form and retain new long-term memories. More recently her work has focused on understanding how aerobic exercise can be used to improve learning, memory and higher cognitive abilities in humans. Wendy is passionate about teaching (see her courses), about exercise (intenSati), and about supporting and mentoring up and coming scientists.
Episode Transcript
Part 1: Saurin Choksi
It was a February 14, 2015, Valentine's Day, obviously, and I was a little nervous. I was a little anxious . I went to go knock on her door.
I've been dating, we'll call her Caitlin, for one month. I think starting to date someone in January is a terrible idea because you don't think ahead. You just think, “Oh, it's cold. I want to spoon.” You know, you're not factoring it all out. You go on a few dates, you get to know each other, and then Valentine's shows up with its authoritarian heart candy, “I love you”.
And you're like, “Calm down. Where’s the chill, relaxed candy that just says, ‘We've known each other a few weeks. You seem pretty cool.’”
When I met Caitlin, she was writing her dissertation, Brainwaves: A Cultural History, Oscillations in Neuroscience, Technology, Telepathy and Transcendence. Clearly, she was way, way smarter than me. You ever tried to read something and you just can't? I mean, your brain is like, “But I can't do this.” Like you see the words but your brain is like, “No.”
Caitlin was very smart. She had an undergrad degree in Neuroscience, a master's in Journalism, PhD from Columbia University. She was going to have five degrees, you guys. I just had two DUIs so I knew I was outclassed.
But sometimes I'd be like, “Hey, I'm smart too, right?” And she'd say, “Sure, buddy. Sure you are.”
Saurin Choksi shares his story with the Story Collider audience at (le) Poisson Rouge in New York City in March 2020. Photo by Zhen Qin.
We used to talk on the phone a lot and Caitlin would tell me about the history of science or how neurons worked, you know, sexy talk. And what really got my synapses sizzling was when we would chat about consciousness.
One of my favorite thoughts Caitlin put into my head was you can never actually know someone else's subjective internal experience. Oh, wow. What fun, right? Some people got off on it like I did. And isn't that wild? Like you can't actually know someone else's mind.
So when you first start dating someone, you're already worrying. Does she like me? What is she thinking? Why didn't she put a smiley emoji on the end of that text? But now I was also wondering is her experience of the color blue the same as my experience of the color blue? You can't know. You can't even know if other people are actually conscious. You know, like you all.
I don't know. Maybe you're just empty shells with convincing exterior facades, but in here nothing. Just a bunch of zombies, Story Collider-listening zombies but you're smiling and laughing. But maybe there's nothing going on. I can't know. I don't know.
Like, Ma'am, are you a zombie? Are you conscious?
[inaudible audience response]
Exactly what a zombie might say. You can't know.
And I would have conversations like this with Caitlin. I'd be like, “Are you a zombie?” And she would say, “No, I'm conscious 100%. Are you conscious?”
And I'd be like, “I don't know.”
And she would say, “That's troubling.”
It's I guess not good when the woman you're dating has to perform a Turing test on you and you fail over and over.
So I had all this stuff going in on the head on Valentine's. Valentine's, the pressure from the date, the color blue, am I a zombie? But I was excited for it. I was trying real hard. I had a button‑down jacket combo on. I had Timberlands on for that extra inch of height. I brought flowers and I knocked on the door.
Caitlin opened it and I saw for the big night she was dressed amazingly casual, you know, sweatpants, sweatshirt, full-body sweats, unemployed gym teacher vibes. I guess that's like the PhD student dress code.
She saw what I was wearing, she was like, “Oh, you wanted to like do all that.”
And then I realized, “Oh, man, robo-science girl isn't like me. She's not worried about a Hallmark holiday. She just wanted to hang out.”
But she still threw on a black dress and she brushed her hair out, she put my flowers and old Tupperware from Chinese takeout. I remember looking at it being like, “Oh, there sits my romantic gesture where wonton soup once made its home.”
And we go together to get dinner. As we eat mediocre saag paneer, Caitlin starts telling me that she's not really into dressing up and, unless it's for new sneakers, she doesn't like shopping. And my brain was like, “What?”
Okay, I understood that I can't know the mind of the person sitting across from me but I figured like I could rely on a few truths about the genders. Because I had learned most of what I knew about men and women and our differences from watching Comedy Central in 1993. Women like stuff and feelings and men hate feelings. We love logic and blow jobs. All men want is rational fellatio. That's what I had gathered.
And the way comics talked it just seemed like all of these differences between men and women that was wired into us deep, like that was in our brains. It was biological. And I just figured that boys’ brains were made out of wood and screws and girl brains were pink and assembled from macaroons and lace. I thought that was science.
So when Caitlin said she didn't like shopping, I was like, “But women be shopping.” She was messing up the way I viewed the world. And because of all this brain stuff she would tell me and just the way she was.
So we finished our meal and then I was feeling very perplexed as usual and I no idea what she was thinking. We went back to her place and the topic changed to sex. Look, we’re all adults, right?
Caitlin and I had already developed a physical relationship. Normally, the pattern that had emerged was she was usually on top, which I didn't mind that because I'm not a spry man. She would also usually close her eyes. Where was she going? I did not know. I never got a ticket to Narnia. I never got to ride on Aslan’s head. I wasn't invited.
I had slept with other women in my life and they, too, had usually closed their eyes. Where were they going? I did not know. I had wondered if I was ever with two women at the same time and they both closed their eyes, would they meet each other in this new fantastical world? They'd be like, “Hey, glad we got rid of old idiot boy.”
I one time timed it so that when Caitlin opened her eyes, I was doing this, which did not enhance the romantic experience.
So we're talking and we're talking and I start telling Caitlin my thoughts inspired by Paul Reiser about men and women's sexual fantasies. And I go, “You know, men we’re very simple. You ask any man what his sexual fantasy is, all dudes we’re very simple, they'll give you a simple answer. Two chicks. That's it. A threesome. That's it.”
And you can be like, “But is there a back story? Is there an environment?”
Saurin Choksi shares his story with the Story Collider audience at (le) Poisson Rouge in New York City in March 2020. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And dudes are like, “I don't know, man. We’re fucking in a white room, dog. I really don't know. It's like where they build Intel processors. I really don't know.”
And you could be like, “But this is your fantasy. You can have anything you want, anything in the whole wide world. Your imagination is your playground.”
And dudes are like, “All right, like three chicks. Okay, don't push my mind anymore.”
And Caitlin is just listening to me and she's like, “Okay.”
And I go, “Women, though, oh-ho-ho, women, women, women. Women's fantasies are dark. They're emotional. I think they're quite frightening, to be honest.”
Caitlin goes, “Oh, really?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“No, you're totally right. Men and women, we have totally different brains for fantasizing, totally different sections of our brains.” And she goes, “Do you want to hear my sexual fantasy?”
I was scared about it buy, yeah.
And Caitlin goes, “It was Salem, Massachusetts 1698.”
“Shut up.”
“The townspeople have accused me of being a witch and an adulteress. Both accusations are true.”
“Shut up.”
“I've been tied to a cross in the middle of the town square. The local blacksmith shouts, ‘Hark, light a fire!’ The flames are beginning to grow. The smoke is billowing in the air. From afar I see a lone woodsman begin to approach. He only has one arm.”
“Shut up.”
“It doesn't matter why. He lost it in a windmill accident.”
“Shut up.”
“The flames are growing higher and higher. I begin to feel a heat, not from the fire but from within my own loins.”
“Shut up.”
“Now, the woodsman is so close. He begins to caress my body with his one stubby elbow.”
I was like, “Oh, no. What happens next?”
And Caitlin just goes, “I don't know. By then I usually open my eyes and there you are going [makes sound].”
So she was just messing with me, you know. She was like, “Dude, that's how you think our brains work? You think like all men fantasize one way and all women fantasize one way? That's what you really think?”
She was like, “Do you want to know my real sexual fantasy?” And I was afraid, but I said yes.
And she just goes, “Three dudes, motherfucker!”
So I just want to thank Dr. Caitlin Shure for helping me write that story. All the best jokes were hers and also for marrying me despite my very bad brain. Thank you guys so much.
Part 2: Wendy A. Suzuki
So the first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley, I learned something that was going to change my life. I learned that the experiences that you have in your life, who you see, who you meet, what you learn actually can change the anatomy, physiology and function of your brain. I thought that was the most fascinating thing I had ever heard in my entire life.
Well, I didn't realize it but just two years later, in my junior year, I was going to have my own life‑changing experience when I decided to do something I had always wanted to do. I was going to spend my third year abroad in France. And I could tell the moment I stepped off that plane that the food and the language and the cigarette smoke was going to change my life.
You have to remember, 1985, nobody spoke English in France so I was completely immersed. And as part of this year adventure, I wanted music to be part of it. I was playing a lot of piano at that point and I asked that the home that I stayed in for that year have a piano.
So one afternoon, Madame Meryl asked me to be home at 3:00 p.m. because she had asked the piano tuner to come and tune the piano that was in my bedroom. It had recently arrived.
So I was sitting there on the second floor waiting for the white-haired, old grand-père to walk up the stairs and tune my piano when, to my surprise, a hot young French guy named Francois with wavy brown hair walked up the stairs to tune my piano. And that was the day I learned how to flirt in French for the very first time. It was like a very snap-learning.
Wendy A. Suzuki shares her story with the Story Collider audience at Union Hall in Brooklyn, NY in January 2020. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And I did really well because we became boyfriend-girlfriend soon after that. So I spent the rest of the year with Francois, a piano tuner/musician/wine enthusiast and I just soaked up everything about that year.
For example, Francois and I would sneak into the biggest piano store in Bordeaux. He worked there so he had the keys at night. And before we snuck in, we would practice these piano duets, me on my piano in my bedroom and he on his piano in his apartment. And we would sneak in and we would play the concert grand pianos that they stored there.
We'd put the tops up. He would play the Steinway, I would play the Bosendorfer and I would just imagine, and not imagine, these were the pianos that the great solo piano artists like Maurizio Pollini or Mitsuko Uchida they played on these pianos. And even our mistakes sounded beautiful. It was just a lovely, lovely experience.
Every day after school, I would go to Francois’ apartment. And he introduced me to this amazing record they had. We had records back in those days. It was Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach solo cello concertos. I had never heard that piece of music before and I played it over and over and over again.
Well, before we knew it, it was Christmas. And that Christmas, I received the most romantic gift that I had ever received before or since. Francois gave me a cello. It was a Suzuki cello. My name is Wendy Suzuki so it’s very cool. And it was even more romantic because I don't even play the cello. It was just this amazing gift.
So we spent the rest of the year, me trying to learn how to play the cello and continuing our adventures around Bordeaux. Of course, we ended that year just pledging we are going to stay together, my 21-year-old self. I know you are the one. We're going to stay together. We're going to somehow do this.
But before we did that, I have to go back and finish my senior year at UC Berkeley. So I went back and things changed. Things changed because I got back into my academic life and I knew I wanted to go to graduate school. I knew I wanted to go to study the brain.
I got into a great graduate school and somewhere in there I realized that Francois didn't speak English at all. He was a piano tuner who didn't speak English and that would be hard because I was going to be going to graduate school. So I decided I was going to break up with him.
So I called him one day, and I still remember where I was sitting in my little studio apartment in Berkeley. It was clear in my mind. I was just going to explain it to him. And I started explaining it to him and it didn't go well. He kept saying, “You promised. You promised.” And he was absolutely right, I did promise and I broke my promise.
He got really mad and then I got really mad. And he got even madder and I got mad back at him. And you know those old telephones? We both took the telephone and we slammed it down. That's the best thing about the old telephones. You could really slam it down. And I slammed it down but I felt awful, because he was right. I had promised and I broke my promise. And I did a terrible job at breaking up with him. He was my first love and I never broke up with anybody before. And I didn't know how to fix it so I just moved forward.
Fast forward 30 years. Went through all my education, ended up in New York City in the middle of a bad breakup. It was really bad. I needed something to lift me up. Luckily, I have a friend Inessa. She is a Feng Shui expert. She's actually a post-breakup Feng Shui expert and she was going to be in town. This is true. She was going to be in town for just a day. She lives in Florida.
So I said, “Please, Inessa, I need you to come over and help me.”
So she came to my apartment bearing burning sage and beautiful Balinese bells and prayer flags. She did this wonderful ceremony, but part I love the best is when we started going around the apartment and we started looking for things that came from old boyfriends. And we had a box. And she would say, “Do you want to keep this?” It came from an old boyfriend. I would look at it and I'd say, “Put it in the box.” And every item I put in that box, I could feel the energy shift in my apartment. I was feeling great. We only had one more room to go. It was the bedroom.
So we went into the bedroom and I flung open my walk-in closet and I saw it. Way in the back of the closet looking like a lonely soldier, all alone, was my cello. And the closet, as you know, is not very big so Inessa saw this big old thing.
And she said, “What's that?”
I wasn't prepared and I started talking really fast. My voice got really high and I was trying to explain that this also came from boyfriend, and I suddenly started to cry. She calmed me down and she said, “So what do you want to do?”
And I had a snap decision. I hadn't played that cello in at least 10 years and I said, “I want to donate the cello to cellist children that need a cello.”
She said, “I think that's a great idea.”
So we finished up the Feng Shui ceremony. I was feeling so light and airy. I had a plan. She left and I felt really good.
Immediately, a friend of mine said, “Actually, my daughter plays the cello. Let me take it and have it evaluated to see whether maybe I might buy it from you.”
So we took it and that's when I learned the bad news. The cello had a really bad crack in it right in the middle of the soundboard because it had been sitting in the back of my closet for so long.
But then another friend said, “No worries. I know the best cello crack repairman in New York City. And I know a bunch of cellist kids that need cellos donated to them.” So this was fantastic.
Then something happened that usually doesn't happen. I don't know if you can tell but I have a Type A personality. And when I have a plan of action, I like to execute. I like to check those things off of my checklist and so I had a big plan.
For some reason, I couldn't get it done. I knew exactly where I needed to go, couldn't do it, couldn't do it, couldn’t do it, until one day I realized I didn't want to give my cello to a cellist child. I wanted to keep that cello. I wanted to take the lessons but I couldn't even do that because of that terrible breakup 30 years ago.
So I decided I needed to call Francois. I needed to fix this. But I hadn't talked to him in 30 years since I slammed that phone down. But I went to my computer. I went to Google and I Googled ‘piano tuners in Bordeaux’. And there was nothing that came up.
And then I clicked images. Fifth row down, Francois. He looked good. He looked older but he was looking really good. And there was a telephone number for a studio in Bordeaux that he worked at.
So the next morning, I woke up at 5:30 a.m., you know they're six hours ahead and I wanted to call him in the morning. 5:30 a.m., called the number and I said, “Can I speak to Francois,” in my broken French. Of course the French guy says, “What?”
And I said, “Does Francois work there,” and he says no.
Wendy A. Suzuki shares her story with the Story Collider audience at Union Hall in Brooklyn, NY in January 2020. Photo by Zhen Qin.
And I said, “Do you know him?” He says, “Yes, he comes in to work only when I need piano tuning,” so he did know Francois.
So I explained I was an old friend from the United States and I was looking for his cell phone number. And he said, “Oh, well, I'm not at work. Call me back in 30 minutes.” So I said fine, hung up the phone, went back to sleep for 30 minutes, woke up at 6:00 a.m., called him.
True to his word, he gave me Francois’s cell phone number. In one Google and two phone calls, I had my old boyfriend’s cell phone number. And before I got cold feet and asked myself what are you going to say to this guy from 30 years ago, I dialed his number. On the third ring, somebody answered.
I said, “Francois?”
He said, “Oui?”
I said, “Hi, it's your old friend from the United States, Wendy Suzuki. How are you?”
And he says, “Oh, I'm fine. How are you?”
And I said, “Well, you don't seem so surprised that I'm calling.”
He said, “Oh, my friend from the studio called me and he said that an American woman was looking for me, and you're the only American woman that I know so I thought it was probably you.”
So we both laughed and we caught up on our families. But at some point I paused and said, “You know, Francois, the reason I'm calling today is that I realized that that year that we spent together was life-changing for me. It was one of the best years of my entire life and I never thanked you properly for it. I felt so bad about that breakup and I just needed to call you to tell you how much I appreciated that year.”
And there was a very long pregnant pause. And at the end, very quietly, Francois said, “Merci, Wendy. Thank you.” He said, “I had such a hard time after that breakup but I'm so glad we're connected again.”
And we exchanged email numbers and I can tell you that that cello visited the best cello-crack repairman in the city and now sits in a place of honor in my living room with its own private humidifier right next door to it that I fill every night so that it won't crack again.
And I think I gave up Francois for science, but in the end I became a neuroscientist that studies how experiences change your brain. Now I know better than ever that that year was so important for me, the language that he taught me. I never would have learned French as well if I hadn't been with Francois. That changes your brain. All of the food and the culture he introduced me to, all that novelty was so good for my brain. Okay, all the wine probably wasn't so good but you have to take the bad with the good.
And most importantly, he was my first love. He gave me a huge dose of dopamine that was very, very positively affecting my brain. But most importantly, I think about all the possibilities that have opened up in my life because I decided to fix that crack. Thank you.