I am not typically stunned by anything, and that's because after doing “journalism” and the information business for 40 years there is little that really impacts me, really shocks me. I was recently however made to realize that this is silly – I can be overwhelmed with amazement. Not often, but it can happen.

So there I was at the outpatient oncology clinic about 4 weeks ago. In Santa Rosa. A very affluent area of Santa Rosa. I was getting my 4th chemotherapy infusion. The nurse administering the toxic chemicals which kill – “obliterate” [using the word my oncologist used] – the “diffuse large B-cell lymphoma" seemed friendly so we began to talk a little. First it was your typical pleasantries, then it turned to more serious topics. She asked me what I did, and I told her that I am a journalist but also a diplomat and neuroscientist. She perked up a lot when I told her this, she then said she wanted to know more. “What kind of neuroscience do you do?” I explained to her that I recently – well not recently but in April 2016 – redefined what epilepsy is. She was intrigued, and then told me that four years ago her husband had a seizure – what they believed was a seizure – and so she took her husband to a neurologist.

Like I said, this happened about 4 years ago. I was just listening to her recount what happened. What happened with the neurologist, I asked. She then said he told them that there was nothing they would do at this point, that he hoped her husband would not have another seizure. The nurse asked the neurologist, “so we do nothing, why?” The neurologist then quickly responded, “we no longer think epilepsy is a disease or disorder, we think it's the brain rebooting....” So we leave things alone, he added.

I was flabbergasted, utterly amazed. I then told her that this was because of me, that I am responsible for the redefinition. I told her about my talk with Stanford University Medical School neurologist and epilepsy specialist Robert Fisher MD PhD in April 2016, and how, after I explained to him what epilepsy is, asked me, “you mean it is a reboot?”

This nurse is a cool lady, very sharp. She looked at me, then said to me that I will be famous. I told her that I am already famous – that I run the US government and even the entire world. I told her that this amazing story she told me meant that I would be getting a Nobel Prize in Medicine. I said it without any emotion. She said, “yes I agree.”

Am I proud of my work? My efforts to get things right? To help people? Yes certainly I am pleased – and you might say that I'm proud – but this may give you a false or misleading impression of who I really am. I work hard, and I do what I know what I must do – regardless of the sacrifices, the indifference, the lack of recognition or reward. Fisher, the Stanford University neurologist [he is the most highly regarded epilepsy specialist in the United States perhaps even in the world], told me in April 2016 that I was the most impressive and hardcore scientist he knew. He and I have a lot in common, he told me. It's great to hear such praise, to be sure. But I am really unmoved. I don't give a crap what anyone says. I just do what I know I got to do.

So what I now must say is going to get you agitated, probably. I never got a PhD, and that's for a good reason. I want to be free to investigate the world the way I want to investigate the world. I do not want any frauds telling me what to do and what to think. It certainly looks like I have blasted away at the neurology guild. They have submitted to me, that I am right. They do not call me. No one calls me. It has been 8 years!

There is discussion that I will likely get another 2 Nobel Prizes. The Nobel Peace Prize as well as a Nobel Prize in Economics. I am now 66 years old. I have worked very hard since I was a teenager. Insanely hard, so hard that most people would be appalled. Does it take this kind of hard work? Going on for decades? Yes, I'm afraid that it does. Fisher said to me, “this is the thrill of science.” Indeed it is.

So we are left with the question, and yes it is a bizarre question: how is it that the mammal brain is in charge, that it reboots itself when it thinks it needs to? We have no idea, but I am working on getting an answer. I do not count on figuring this out anytime soon. I will probably die without coming up with a plausible answer. I will work hard at it nevertheless.

Now to the “sleep function” since we now have a better understanding of the “seizure function.” It turns out the sleep function and seizure function have basically a lot in common. Both are tasked with maintaining healthy and powerful brain function. Both deploy electricity to do this, in fact very small amounts of energy but it is fair to say that the seizure function will often deploy a frightening amount of electricity – or energy.

We have little understanding of the sleep function, but I have advanced my own theories. Sleep is the more powerful expression of human mammal brain function compared to the awake or cognitive brain function. Cognition is prepared in sleep, it is achieved with electricity. Deprive the human mammal of this sleep for some two weeks – no sleep whatsoever – and there will be death. Sometimes it could be three weeks, but no longer. Death.

Sleep is when the neural network configures itself, or rather, reconfigures itself. To achieve cognition. The DNA in the brain is the neural substrate to achieve this cognition – intelligence.

Stanford University will not let me talk to Fisher – with the recorder on. Neither do I get any response from the University of California, San Francisco. Both institutions are run by criminals. This is very unfortunate, but I cannot say that I am surprised. The United States has been until now run by criminals. Yes, Israel – Ashkenazi Jews. Ask the Arabs who live in the Levant what they might say about this.

I did have some dialogue with William Dement MD PhD in 2012. He never did answer my questions. He was a prominent sleep researcher, at Stanford University. He's dead [1928-2020] so we will never know what he thinks of my science of sleep. That he never did respond indicates that he was intrigued if not freaked out. Michelle Brandt no longer works in media relations for Stanford Univerity School of Medicine. I had to go through her to get my interview with Dement. I did not get the interview, obviously.