Zapping parts of the brain to know where to cut, operating a mouth-controlled microscope that's worth more than a house, and carrying the weight of life-or-death decisions with Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a brain surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. How do you preserve a mathematician's expertise when removing tumors? And how did he go from picking tomatoes to performing brain surgery?

Dr. Q wrote about his remarkable journey to the operating room in the book, Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon.

He was also featured in the Netflix documentary series The Surgeon’s Cut.

NEW BOOK ALERT!
You may be aware that I’ve written or co-written five business books, including The Power of Moments and Made to Stick. I’ve got a sixth book out now called RESET: How to Change What’s Not Working. It’s a book intended to help you and your team get unstuck, to overcome the gravity of the way things have always worked. Learn more about the book and order it here. You can also listen to it on Audible and at Apple Books.

Got a comment or suggestion for us? You can reach us via email at [email protected]

Want to be on the show? Leave a message on our voice mailbox at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

• What do people think your job is like and what is it actually like?
• What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?