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Neal Baer - Show Runner, Law and Order SVU, Welcome to Chechnya - Neal Baer is an Executive Producer or "Showrunner" with an incredible pedigree. But, before he dominated the world as a showrunner he was a doctor who earned his medical degree at Harvard; underachiever.
As a showrunner, his career started when his childhood friend John Wells, also a hyper-successful showrunner, suggested that Neal join him in working on China Beach. Then it was ER, and then, Law and Order SVU 20+ years later Neal is one of the biggest names in TV. Neal's current show Designated Survivor, starring Keifer Sutherland, has a pandemic storyline. Instead of COVID-19 which comes from animals, this pandemic comes from |
a CRISPR (CRISPR is a real thing you should read up on what it is and how it can be used) created pathogen that is unleashed on the world.
Watch Designated Survivor on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80113647
Hat Tip to from NAMM for setting Pete A Turner up for this episode. You'll enjoy this new podcast episode with one of Hollywood's most successful Producers.
Haiku
The birth of disease
Truth is stranger than fiction
Did they use CRISPR
Similar episodes:
Anthony Zuiker https://youtu.be/F0bSYDuHea8
Krista Vernoff https://youtu.be/QMBbZ6Ib2_o
Tony Tost https://youtu.be/7JUOJkqT6nI
Join us in supporting Save the Brave as we battle PTSD. www.savethebrave.org
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner https://youtu.be/mYoUxRJzXcA
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
The Break It Down Show is your favorite best, new podcast, featuring 5 episodes a week with great interviews highlighting world-class guests from a wide array of topics. Get in contact with Pete at www.peteaturner.com www.breakitdownshow.com
Watch Designated Survivor on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80113647
Hat Tip to from NAMM for setting Pete A Turner up for this episode. You'll enjoy this new podcast episode with one of Hollywood's most successful Producers.
Haiku
The birth of disease
Truth is stranger than fiction
Did they use CRISPR
Similar episodes:
Anthony Zuiker https://youtu.be/F0bSYDuHea8
Krista Vernoff https://youtu.be/QMBbZ6Ib2_o
Tony Tost https://youtu.be/7JUOJkqT6nI
Join us in supporting Save the Brave as we battle PTSD. www.savethebrave.org
Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner https://youtu.be/mYoUxRJzXcA
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev
The Break It Down Show is your favorite best, new podcast, featuring 5 episodes a week with great interviews highlighting world-class guests from a wide array of topics. Get in contact with Pete at www.peteaturner.com www.breakitdownshow.com
Transcript
Pete Turner 0:00
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show with today's intro. Our guest is Neil bear who is a very, very notable showrunner, executive producer of TV shows. And he's been doing this for a long time. So before he became an executive producer for TV shows, Neil became a Harvard trained doctor. Yes, he was Harvard Medical School, I guess, for whatever reason, that wasn't his path if you can believe that. He grew up with a another very notable showrunner and those guys were friends.
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show with today's intro. Our guest is Neil bear who is a very, very notable showrunner, executive producer of TV shows. And he's been doing this for a long time. So before he became an executive producer for TV shows, Neil became a Harvard trained doctor. Yes, he was Harvard Medical School, I guess, for whatever reason, that wasn't his path if you can believe that. He grew up with a another very notable showrunner and those guys were friends.
Pete Turner 0:00
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show with today's intro. Our guest is Neil bear who is a very, very notable showrunner, executive producer of TV shows. And he's been doing this for a long time. So before he became an executive producer for TV shows, Neil became a Harvard trained doctor. Yes, he was Harvard Medical School, I guess, for whatever reason, that wasn't his path if you can believe that. He grew up with a another very notable showrunner and those guys were friends. He's like, hey, come help me out with China beach. I kind of need a doctor's voice and you got nothing else to do. So he went and started working on China beach and slowly but surely, all of a sudden this career happens. So China beach leads to er, which is mind blowing and just a series of fantastic show after his show. So Neil comes today to talk about his career a little bit, but also the latest show that they do with Kiefer Sutherland. It's called Designated Survivor. And you can watch that on Netflix. If you go there, you'll get a chance to see one of the storylines is a pandemic that causes all kinds of chaos and Kieffer ends up becoming president of United States and his character. So we talk about the origins of the COVID virus and all of the different things that he does a doctor in terms of storytelling and how, hey, living this life, Stranger Than Fiction, actually, you know, ends up that that their show is timely because of the of the COVID outbreak pandemic, but also just the tension that it creates with these kind of stories in real life, and then how close they were to predicting everything I think you really enjoy what Neil has to say it was a blast talking to him and I can't wait to have him on again to talk more in depth about his career and how he actually does those things. So a couple real quick things. The show is doing great. You guys are supporting it. We just had a really big month in April, thank you so much for listening. If you're on YouTube listening, awesome, we're about to hit a big milestone for subscribers. So if you like YouTube, we're doing more video on there now doing the full transition over to video is continues to grow and evolve. And as soon as we're able, I think we're going to try to do mobile video shows as well. So we'll see just how that goes. Anyhow, the thing I wanted to say about that was thank you so much all of you for your support. It means a lot to us for john Scott and I as we put these things together, we have so many great shows, we've got shows recorded all the way out until June now at this point, so we're still well over a month ahead and just getting great guests all the time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And finally, look, it's a tough time for people and so obviously, we could use your support. We'll save the brave go to save the brave.org click on the donate tab and find a little bit amount of money each month. Put that in there and that will help out a lot you Other thing I want to say is, if not that, give charity as a gift lead with charity as your gift, go to charity on top org, buy someone a charity gift card. It's real simple. You just just like any other kind of gift card, you say, hey, I want to give this person charity. So you spend the $10 25 to 50, or whatever that amount of money is. You spend it. Here's the cool part. You can also elect to cover all of the fees which are nominal, but to make sure that that whole amount of money goes directly to that charity. And let me tell you something on the other end of it comes out of the blue No, like, Oh my god, here's $50. All they've got to do is just put the money in their account. It's all electronic, super easy. It's a fantastic way to give charity on top.org. Go there and give that way and you'll be doing someone a big favor. All right, long intro Sorry about that. But I really wanted to encourage people to think of charity as a gift and a way to lead with that. All right, here comes Neal bear,
Unknown Speaker 3:55
lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 4:00
This is Jay Morrison.
Unknown Speaker 4:01
This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring naked nice Sebastian yo this is Rick Murat
Unknown Speaker 4:06
Stewart COPPA. This is Mitch Alexis Andy somebody there's a skunk Baxter.
Unknown Speaker 4:09
Gabby Reese is Rob bell. This is john Leon gray.
Pete Turner 4:11
And this is Pete a Turner.
neal bear 4:16
Hello, it's Neal bear and we're listening to the break it down show.
Niko Leon Guerrero 4:21
And now the break it down show with john Leon Guerrero. And Pete a Turner
Pete Turner 4:27
was connected with Neil bear, because I'm connected with now, oddly enough. It's Sean said, Hey, you should talk to Neil and she was absolutely. So I wanted to bring you on for a couple of reasons. One, as a showrunner, obviously, you've got a lot to say in terms of TV and Hollywood, that kind of things. But also you're a physician and you just recently produced an edited volume of academic papers. So let's um, let's dive into Who the heck you are and what the heck you do, and how How did you get to be so smart? And how do you get it all done? You're so busy?
neal bear 5:04
Well, I'm very, very fortunate. I started out as a graduate student in sociology at Harvard, and didn't really feel it was my niche. And I fell by chance into a documentary filmmaking course. And that changed my life was taught by a guy who's since deceased named Ed Pincus, who's the father of cinema Veritate, and I learned filmmaking from him and ended up producing his last documentary as a way of gratitude to what he gave me changing the course of my life. So I went from graduate school to the American Film Institute as a directing fellow and started directing and writing if you remember the whole after school specials, yes, I ABC after school special called private affairs by a girl who sees her father having an affair, and that then went on then went on to China beach, and then kind of got nervous Could I make it in Hollywood and I left with My year old son and wife can went to Harvard Medical School. And I was planning on being a pediatrician in Boston. When I got a call from john wells, my childhood friend. We literally grew up six blocks from each other in Denver, Colorado and went to Holly hills elementary school together, Cherry Creek High School together, people say how do you get into Hollywood and show business and become a TV writer and I say, grow up with john wells, because john produced China beach, our west wing, shameless, so I never had to write a spec script or do what most people do. He he knew I had done an after school special and he invited me in to do a freelance episode of China beach. And that's how I got started. So he wrote to me when I was a fourth year medical student at Harvard and said that he was producing a show called er, and that Michael Creighton had written the script around 1969 when he was a medical student at Harvard. And I read it and I thought it was amazing because it was from the perspective of the doctors in the medical studio. It was outdated. So I gave him some background on updating it because it was 25 years old. It was, you know, the lore has that it was found in a, in a trunk and Spielberg's office, and Spielberg was going to direct it as a film, but then decided would make a good TV series, and NBC didn't like it. They thought it had too many storylines, but they felt that the auspices were too important to turn down. Michael Creighton had done Jurassic Park and Steve Wynn had done Schindler's List by that point and all the other movies before that, so they made it and it just took off like no show. Since year two, we had 48 million viewers for one episode, so and Game of Thrones is announcing 19 million viewers. Like, huh, okay,
Pete Turner 7:50
well, that's your adorable Game of Thrones.
neal bear 7:53
We had more than two times that so or two times that x more than two times that I came back from medical school to LA to do ER and stayed and I stayed there for seven years and went up the ranks from from staff writer to executive producer showrunner and then left in year seven. I've worked with Mariska Hargitay on er. And SBU was in trouble. It was year two, and they had already had to show render. So I came in dick wolf said, we don't have a script, we have to shoot Monday, this was Friday, the 13th 2000 never forgot. And he said, so I'm gonna pass you in the pool and see if you sink or swim. So I had to write a script over a weekend. And it turned out to be a show with Kate Mara called Pixies and stayed on this show as the showrunner for 11 years, which was wonderful to do all the stories that we told from opening the backlog of rape kits to HIV deniers to the first show about transgender children. We just were able to go Violence, we were able to really plumb the depths and really go forward with the show in terms of places people hadn't gone before.
Pete Turner 9:08
Well, before you go past that, let me just thank you for doing that. Because, you know, you guys are sort of the Norman Lear of that generation, you guys explored things that were unexplored and gave it to us in a way that was consumable. And if you don't do that, then you know who's who's gonna So, seriously, thank you for doing that and taking on that risk. Because on a show that's failing, you come in and go, let's really do extra hard shit, you know, and I thought
neal bear 9:36
it was fun and and I was allowed to and NBC was super supportive and rescan, Maloney and ice T and belzer, dug in and loved it. And so I love doing it for 11 years and I, I left I thought, well, this is enough, and I went to do a show called I gifted man with Patrick Wilson, another medical series and then I did Under the Dome with Stephen King and Steven Spielberg again. was reunited with him. And I did that show ran for three years, which is really fun. And that's kind of like where we are now. We're under the dome. So, but the dome is, you know, we can move, but we're still under this COVID-19 dome. Yeah, yet. And then and we're running out of supplies, just like we did Under the Dome. And then I went and did a show. Recently, ABC cancel Designated Survivor. And I was asked to run it for Netflix. And I said yes, because I'd never worked with Kiefer. And I wanted to and also, I love the platform of being able to tell really intense stories about a president who was up for reelection, who was a Designated Survivor and we're hearing a lot about that now in the UK and everywhere. And I was also able to bring Tony Edwards on who might work with on on er, which is so great to work with him again. So, um, because it is like a family when you're working with people for seven years. You get to know So well and, and I called him and I said, you know, would you play Kiefer's chief of staff? And he said yes. And then Julie white won. A Tony was not a last year for Tony Award. I'd worked with her on SBU and thought she'd be perfect. And she said yes. And then we brought on new new actors. And it was really gratifying to do it. And I was kind of bummed because it didn't get the attention that I hoped it would get. But now, when I go on Twitter, I see this cascade of tweets about Designated Survivor and the pandemic because we did a pandemic storylines through the whole third season with Maggie Q. Hughes character, and she's trying to figure out why first, birds are dying Cardinals, and then people are getting the flu, and then they're getting worse and what's going on. And it turns out that some right wing fanatics who are really sort of
white supremacists are using CRISPR to control the population. So we got into all that before people were talking about CRISPR. The reason they started talking a lot about CRISPR was that over a bit over a year ago, Dr. Hood in China, used CRISPR, which is a technique, if you think of it like scissors and glue, where you can cut out a mutated gene in your genome and glue in one that's not affected. He did that in it with an embryo that became twins and he mutated gene that prevents someone from acquiring HIV. And we already knew that people there were a small number of people in the population who were exposed to HIV, and didn't become infected because they had receptors that were mutated. And so he did that. And that created a huge uproar among scientists and the public around the world. But that's where You know, night been interested in in that issue for a long time about using CRISPR. And what's so fascinating about CRISPR is it's already been used in the United States to treat a woman with sickle cell disease, which is a terrible disease that causes not only constant intense pain, but and suffering but also can cause strokes. And essentially what happens is your your red blood cells or sickle, they're not shaped the way that easily go through one's arteries and veins and so they get clogged and that can cause strokes and horrible pain and organ dysfunction. And so, scientists have used geneticists have spurred this woman's DNA. What they did is they took out her bone marrow, as hits her bone marrow that's making the diseased cells, and they gave her about what we call bone marrow relations. So they killed all of her bone marrow, but instead of giving her a transplant, which puts her at higher risk for rejection and you have to be on anti rejection medication because you won't be a perfect match unless you have a twin. They took her own cells and they used CRISPR that cut and paste they they turned on a gene that causes the production of what's called fetal hemoglobin. We're all born with fetal hemoglobin, which is mom's onto oxygen better than our normal hemoglobin. But it turns off genetically because we don't need it. We need it in utero, because obviously we're not breathing air, right? We're getting oxygen through our mother's blood. So they turn this on in her and to date, she's been transfusion free pain free doing well and focuses just next to miraculous and it can can be really wonderful for treating all kinds of genetic diseases like sickle cell and beta thalassemia, cystic fibrosis and all these things that are caused by a gene we actually know exactly where it is and on what chromosome it's on. So with that, good With CRISPR comes the other side of it which is
which is could be used to make a virus more transmissible it could be used. This is where we get into the Cova discussion. It can be used to make to combine by, you know, destructive parts of viruses. It's conceivable someone could make an Ebola pox we already did make without using CRISPR. A more transmissible h5 n one flu. And there was a big debate in the Obama administration about whether to release the genomic structure of that and it finally was and the researchers in Canada and the Netherlands who did it said they did it so that we'd be prepared for something like this, where we'd have a pandemic of a very transmissible lethal flu, because fortunately, bird flu wasn't very transmissible. It's very lethal much more so than COVID. But it's hard. To get you have to like live with birds. So there were things made with DNA sequences, like somebody took pieces of DNA and put it together. Maybe they made polio at SUNY Stony Brook some years ago, and somebody made horse pox, which is related to smallpox in Canada. With CRISPR, it would be much easier to do it. And not only that, but you know, I think of this paradigm profound paradigm shift where we talk about mutually assured destruction with nuclear weapons. And it's like, we'll blow you off the map if you blow us off the map. And so we don't do anything, right with a nation state. to afford it. You can't walk around with a briefcase of plutonium. So it's only a nation states that can afford the infrastructure and the massive amount of money it takes to build nuclear reactors and do these things. all bets are off now with CRISPR because you need a DNA sequencer that could cost 2500 bucks and you need access to DNA sequences. And if you fairly good at basic lab techniques, you can CRISPR virus, conceivably, and you can go online and buy CRISPR kits, which I think is pretty crazy. And you can buy a kit online and make green treat broads bigger using CRISPR in affecting their gene. And you can make fluorescent yeast for your beer. And so this is all fun and games and science at home. But there's really a very, very dark side to this. So that's a long explanation. But that's where where my show came from because of my concern about CRISPR. It it. It has the potential to do great good and unimaginable harm, and it can change the human genome. So maybe I should explain very briefly for the listeners, two points that are really important when we're thinking about CRISPR that people often don't hear about. There are two approaches using CRISPR one is what's called somatic cells and the other is called germ cells. So if somebody conceivably, let's say, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease, we could conceivably we haven't, we have done it for, as I said, sickle cell disease, we go in, and we change their cells. So we changed. We changed this woman's blood cells and she then we re engrafted her bone. I didn't, but they did her bone marrow, so she wasn't going to have any problem with rejection. its own her own bone marrow, but it was CRISPR. So that's called somatic. If she were to have children, she would still pass on the sickle cell gene because CRISPR was only affecting the cells that make the hemoglobin. Gotcha. Mouse. germ cell is where we take reproductive cells there. We take a very, very early embryo and that's what Dr. Hood did in China. He took an embryo, and he went in and mutated a gene in the embryo for the HIV receptor. So those children will pass on that mutated gene, any other than they have. So that's where we start to get into some real issues. So there's first of all the viral making viruses and bacteria. And then there's the human evolution question. Because if we change someone's germ cells, their sperm cell or their egg cell so that they pass on this trait to their offspring, then we are conceivably changing human evolution. And that's where we get into a lot of questions about human enhancement, because people could conceivably go to a geneticist and say they want a taller child, or a more muscular tie hook. Now we it's more complex than treating cystic fibrosis or sickle cell. disease in the sense that we know exactly exactly where it lies on the DNA on the gene. But height and eye color and things like that are more complex and involve a number of different genes. But it's not inconceivable that we could locate some jeans for height or musculature or things like that and enhance people if they could pay for it. So you can just imagine going down that road designer babies and yes, we could do designer babies now. It that's inflammatory and it scares people, but we can certainly design children not to have genetic diseases. Now, some people say, We don't need CRISPR because we have something called PGD, pre implant genetic implantation, or where we look at embryos, and we we know like the couple has a genetic disease like Marfan or, or cystic fibrosis and we only would implant it genetic diagnosis, we would only implant the eggs that have no genetic problems. And if some people feel that that's hard, you know that that's going against what maybe some anti choice people would say, you know, you're you shouldn't be choosing which eggs to put in. But should you if you have the ability to screen for these very serious, not only life threatening, but very painful diseases, should you do it? So we just get into the very basic realm of what does it mean to be human? And how do we think about these things and, and that's what I love doing on my shows. And that's why I did it on Designated Survivor because I wanted to get into those questions and I wanted to have some solutions. The major solution, or at least an approach to dealing with these problems would be to pass legislation that makes it very difficult to get certain kinds of DNA strands. We know we can, we can check if somebody is ordering, you know, CG GGC TT DNA strand. And we know that that's a piece of smallpox. We shouldn't be selling it to them, right. And we have, we have these companies that are supposed to screen and do these things, but they're not legally mandated to do it. So we need to have some legal mandates, especially now, maybe COVID will help us in that arena that we see. Just a a virus that we knew about, presumably since 2017. There was a big study for many years and in caves in China. And they looked at these horseshoe bats and they saw various viruses that they were carrying. And one of them that they discovered in 2017. It's very close genetically to the one that's making its way around the world. And you see that with transportation, The New York Times did a great piece where you can kind of track Wu Han and then people going to Sydney, Australia, New York. City, Seattle, Los Angeles, you should think for Whoa, didn't take very much time.
Pete Turner 23:07
Exactly. And it's terrifying.
neal bear 23:10
Yeah. So that's sort of what so those interests in science, and being able to cure, but also do tremendous damage is what interests me. And I want to tell stories about it. Because I think it's incumbent on all of us, as citizens to be aware of CRISPR and its potential. And its downside so that we can not just have people make decisions for us about it.
Pete Turner 23:39
So when you as a storyteller, when you're putting all this together, what is your storyteller brain Tell your doctor brain in terms of Look, I don't trust China, at all, to be honest, to be fair, I don't trust us either. But I really don't trust China. To be honest. If they had their Chernobyl moment with this, would they be honest you know, so You tell these stories. And the reason why I asked this, my friend Kat Connor writes, she's she writes crime novels, right? And she looks at a lot of these things. And she immediately said, This got out because China made it and they lost control of it, and they'll never admit to it. What do you think about these kind of theories? And China gives us no reason to believe them. So let's just say that upfront?
neal bear 24:21
Well, it worries me because, well, I don't think it's true, because we have data that shows that this existed in a cave, so it didn't get made in China. So I think we have evidence about that. And I think we have to be really careful about conspiracies, because the real reality is much worse with CRISPR. And what the potential is, you know, as I said, Now, we can have rogue scientists and biohackers making all kinds of stuff that you know, we can't control, right, we have to we have to state controls. So this whole conspiracy thing I think we we are drawn to uncertainty and we will Love the spy thriller aspect, I think there's a part of COVID-19 that keeps us on the edge of our seats. And we want we don't know the ending. So I have, I want to make a point about that. So every day 1200 children die in the world from malaria. And there's no panic about malaria every, every 1200. So that's hundreds of thousands of kids a year. We know how to treat it. We know what causes it and off least mosquito. And we know how to prevent it. But we don't do a great job. And it doesn't affect people in the United States. So it's less of concern here. So why do we not panic about something that's killing many, many more people? And the answer is, we don't have uncertainty about it. We know what causes malaria. We know the outcome. We know how to treat it. There's nothing in the scenario or the narrative that we don't understand. We're still looking for ways to treat it better. We're still looking for ways to do things. And as an aside, I'll come back to it. There is something we can do that with CRISPR. That's pretty interesting. So with COVID, we don't know how to treat it. We don't have any antivirus for it. We don't know what really caused it, but we think it's horseshoe bats being exposed to pangolins. That's sort of what's thought now in the wet marketplace, which is where SARS started, because bats and civets were exposed to each other in the marketplace. And we know that that's where it's supposed to camels for MERS. And there's another virus that appeared in Australia and cause terrible bleeding and horses and didn't get much attention. I think it's called hand up and three people died of that and some people who worked with horses they had to really be exposed to it. It's kind of like bird flu. They were like really trying to reach down into the throats of the horses so they got exposed and they died. But that was it. And they figured out they they did a great study where they looked at everything around the horses, and they captured bugs, lizards, animals, birds, everything, and they look to see what the vector was. And they noticed that these horses were many of them that that caught this virus, or brood mares and that they were in the hot sun in Australia, and they wandered under fig trees. So amazing story. The narrative is amazing story. And they wandered under fig trees and they noticed that the horses were eating the figs. And they also noticed that there were bats fruit bats in these trees and they were eating the fruit and of course, they would drop fruit, and their saliva would be on the figs. And they would also defecate on the ground and so these mares were eating grass exposed to the virus and they were eating the face. So they were a reservoir for the That transmission from bats to horses to people, we were able to contain it and get much attention. But this is happening a lot. And this has happened now with the four viruses I just told you about SARS, MERS, and and COVID. So we knew about these things. And so I think doing all of these conspiracies is really not only unhelpful, but but probably harmful, because just have to look at the data. And there's this there is a great paper on this that looked at these bats, and they saw all of these different viruses from 2005. I believe that was published in 2017. So this virus is not wasn't just made in a lab. Now, that's not to say that in the future, and maybe because of CRISPR, it's promoting that theory, because that's not to say that we can't tinker with viruses and make them more transmissible or more virulent. Now, using CRISPR technology
Pete Turner 28:59
Yeah. So with the storyteller, and you doesn't have to oblige the doctor. I mean, you say, hey, let's all calm down about this, you know, this, this came from fig trees or whatever, you know, like, it's like the standard looks. I'm an espionage guy. I was a spy in the army. And it's always like the senior plays to mole and the CIA. That does it and it gets to be a little trophy, but it isn't effective
neal bear 29:22
store looked at what they did with the fig trees, they just used observation. And they figured it out. They first thought, is this a bug? Is this a mammal is what is going on? How is this happening? And then they used their observational?
Pete Turner 29:36
Yeah, I'm not saying that didn't happen. I'm not saying that.
neal bear 29:39
No, no, but I think that that's what how things really, really are understood is through careful observation, right? Not jumping to conclusions, but as a writer to answer that question, then I want to talk about mosquitoes. Medicine and Health provides so many conundrums, like I just said, CRISPR in and of itself provides this conundrum. It has the potential to treat and cure horrible diseases? No question. And also has the potential to create horrible viruses and bacteria. So it's a double edged sword. And so you can imagine, and then it also another offshoot of it, and it could change human evolution in many ways. So that just raises a plethora of questions that the storyteller in me is just like, Yes, yeah. How do we talk about this? And how do we do a show about that? All of this, so I'm always thinking like when I did, er, I did a show for Clooney in year three, that he got nominated for a second Emmy for and he was saving a kid with cystic fibrosis who wanted to be allowed to die back then, you know, we still don't have great treatment we have better treating kids live longer, but it's a very painful, awful disease. Many, many multiple hospitalizations and now the possibility of treating it with CRISPR. So Kid wanted to be allowed to make his own decision was 16 to die and Clooney was struck with shitty, let the kid die or should you save him? Because he could save them? But, you know, ultimately the kid wasn't saleable? And what age should you be allowed to make that decision? And he decides, finally, Laurie emesis character says this about you or the kids. So that was a big turning point for Clooney. And he says, I'm going to do what you want, and you're mature enough. And then the mother when the kid is dying, screams that Clooney to intubate the kid and he's forced to do it because the mothers get as a minor. Right? So the point is, is that, that story about a kid who wants to be allowed to make his own decisions, and now it's easier for kids to do it since then, since 1996. When I did that show, still difficult. It raises all kinds of personal questions. It shows what we're made of as human beings, when he's confronted with this is this about his own hubris about being a great doctor? Or is it about doing what's best for the patient? Yeah, so always a story embedded That reveals character. And the work that I try to do on ers, or Under the Dome are Designated Survivor. So let me tell you about let me go back because this is a really interesting question. When I said about 1200 kids die a day from malaria CRISPR provides us a way of potentially getting rid of the monopolies mosquito, which is what carries me malaria and causes terrible, terrible pain, suffering demise for children and adults around the world. And there's a geneticist at MIT, who developed what's called a gene drive, and that uses CRISPR and what it does is it pinpoints in the mosquito for instance, a way to make the mosquito in fertile but
animals for the most part, different with like some lower level like worms and things but they inherit genes from their the chromosome comes from half from their father and half from their mother. And this is what causes evolution because we are resorting through meiosis. That's why we don't look like are completely like our siblings somewhat, because we might be, you know, we got each of our parents has a possibility of sending us one or the other gene from their grandma from their mother or their father. That's right. We're related to our grandparents. That's why it was well, milkman Exactly. Well, that's another story I can tell you. So we can put a CRISPR gene in to mosquitoes so that they are infertile, but they would only have one gene so they would pass the one gene on, but they would have a 5050 chance they could pass on the one that's not infertile. But a gene drive copies it essentially Xeroxes and makes both genes that way. So we could make these mosquitoes pass on to their offspring, in fertility and ultimately, guests. What would make Anopheles mosquitoes extinct? And this has been talked about for listeners who are interested, they can read a New Yorker piece from several years back about an experiment that was talked about on Nantucket to stop Lyme disease. And we know that Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria, not a virus, but a bacteria that infects these mice, deer mice, and ticks bite the deer mice and ticks and bite human beings. So they pick it up from the deer mice. So there was a question of putting in a gene drive on this island, which would then be a great experimental controlled area because it wouldn't go off the island, presumably, hopefully, and they could give these mice immunity to the bacterial through a gene drive, as I was just describing, ultimately, they decided not to do that. And what they did is they had another alternative which was to make mice immune But they're not passing it on, they can inject them and they can make them immune, but they're not passing it on to their offspring. I think that it was interesting because the community got together and talked about it. So we have some tools that are just profound what they can do, particularly gene drives. That's what's scary, too. It can do amazing things. Can you imagine a world without malaria? Now, the other thing is, we don't know. Fully. What would happen if we made these mosquitoes extinct? We don't know what it would do to the whole sort of environmental cosmos. Yeah. So there's just so many questions this raises, but unlike nuclear weapons, it's much more democratic many, many, many more people have access to it.
Pete Turner 35:47
Hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear. The best plan is show you how to pick a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown, show calm. Let me help. I want to hear about it.
neal bear 36:09
Oh, there's just so many questions this raises. But unlike nuclear weapons, it's much more democratic. Many, many more people have access to it.
Pete Turner 36:20
Do you maintain your medical license?
neal bear 36:23
You know, I was just thinking about that with the COVID problems. So I think my expired because you have to do CME courses and I just time there. Now, I teach a lot of courses, so I probably could. So it expired in 2016 or 17. But I imagine if things get really bad, they would probably grandfather us back in or something, right. I'm really good at starting IVs.
Pete Turner 36:44
You're good at starting IVs. I'm not I like to go through both sides of the vein and then back up and try again. Oh, yeah, no, that's not
neal bear 36:51
that's not a good thing. But being a pediatrician. We have to do it with neonates and preemies. And that's a Super Challenge. So you learn really all the tricks and how to do it.
Pete Turner 37:03
Yeah, we had Krista vernoff on the show a while back and she was a an executive producer for Grey's Anatomy. And it's interesting how, you know, you're a doctor. So you obviously come with, you know, a pedigree of knowledge and a capability. And it's interesting how someone like Krista can come up and her her main skill set, which is formidable is that she's a fantastic drama writer. She's desperate to be a comedian and a singer. But what she is is is is this drama writer, when did you realize that you needed to do this and then when you broke the news to your mom, and you're like, Hey, Mom, you remember that medical degree that I went to Harvard to get? Nevermind all that?
neal bear 37:44
Well, I was a writer before I went to medical school, so I did China beach in the after school special. So I knew I loved telling stories. Medical School gave me just a treasure trove of stories and I'm the first along with Lance genteel, who was the other doctor on the show. I'm the first doctor writer in television. Actually, I was a medical so I was a fourth year medical student when I started on er, so definitely the first medical student right. But now every medical series, Krista was doing raise Joanne clack was the Is it still is I think the doctor on the show, we set a new standard as to David Kelly being really the first lawyer writer for LA law. And so we brought this verisimilitude to the show and we brought in our own stories which people love. They love the reality before. Er, the last big medical series was seen elsewhere. And before that there was you know, Medical Center and Marcus Welby and Dr. Kildare, etc. They all will then Casey relied on people to sprinkle the medicine and consultants after the show was written and that's why it was always about really the personal life of the patient office, obviously, because I couldn't really get matched and immersed into the medicine when I came on, er JOHN wells, the show runner wanted and Michael Creighton was a trained physician wanted, you know the perspective of doctors and didn't want to do it from the perspective necessarily of the patient. And so and he didn't care if people understood all the medicine medical talk, and he wanted it to look real so we had, er Doc's alternating each episode. One did odds and one did even to make it look real and teach No, no, Eric, George, Tony Sherry, Giuliana, Laura Gloria, how to make it look real and so on prosthetics and all of that stuff. And Eric took it so seriously and was always practicing because he was a surgeon on the show. And Eric basalt really learned how to tie when I was doing my residency and someone said, Oh, you know, that the best you can do for suturing? It's like, no, why we could do better and I thought, yeah, I we taught him how funny so we brought a new veracity to emerging artists. television show about medicine. And we draw on our own lives. And that's now the case with my friend David Foster. I went to medical school with I helped him get on house. So he was the doctor on house I had given him his first jobs on SBU as freelance as a freelancer. So he's now on New Amsterdam. And so every show he David did house all the years it was on every medical series has doctors on it. Now we set that standard. And I think the audience demands it. And it's not just like, sort of the private life of a patient in a hospital. And in order to do that, you have to have position writers and so I love telling stories and medicine is really about gathering stories. It's about being a detective. When you go and talk to a patient you have to discern their history and figure out what's relevant what's not and not pissed them off so that they tell you the truth and you've got to put all of that data together and come up with a narrative that makes sense, lest you go down the wrong road and make the wrong decision and why we did that many times on er, you know, so it's just a natural place for one to tell compelling stories about literally what is most engaging life and death.
Pete Turner 41:18
Let's go back and talk a little bit about Designated Survivor, and how CRISPR was used in that show. It's available on Netflix, for those that want to watch it and, and also talk a little bit about, you know, you could make something that like every show was impossible to make in Hollywood. It's just super tough to get things done. But then something like COVID-19 breaks out, and all of a sudden your show that was like, it's in the competition that's standing up on its own merits, but now, holy cow,
neal bear 41:48
right. Well, I feel we've been doing that for years. We you know, we would laugh about SBU and say that, you know, the mothership line order was ripped from the headlines and we would save That the headlines ripped from us, haha. So much research. So for instance, the story about opening the backlog of rape kits that Musk has taken on, and she did a documentary. It started because I met a woman who was afraid to leave her apartment she'd been sexually assaulted. And she learned that her kid had not been tested. So obviously made sense to me and everybody else on the show that there were people out there who could be apprehended because they probably committed crimes, and they were in jail. So we have their DNA, and they were out committing these crimes. And why weren't we testing these kits? And it's because we just didn't care. Really it was we didn't have the political will and some risk has taken that on as her, you know, mission which has been really, really important. And she's accomplished a lot and can, you know, testifying before Congress, but we started with an episode with maybe I can't remember in the mid 2000s, I think with Jennifer Love Hewitt as the guest Start playing that person who inspired the story. And we did research and we found out that there were hundreds of thousands of untested kits. And so we felt that we had to start somewhere. And we did you know, like it's taken years, but we're Scott has really been in the forefront of opening the backlog of rape kits. And it starts with the story. So we did stories about rape in the military that didn't get much attention, rape on college campuses. And then Kirby Dick's documentaries really came and ran with it, but you need to lay the foundation and so I think we've been laying foundation for years about these stories, and it started with Gloria Reubens character on er playing Jeannie blay who was HIV positive and a time when there was a lot of fear like now and mystery about HIV and she played the first character who ongoing character who didn't die from HIV because when we did this storyline. Coincidentally, unfortunately, anti retrovirals came about. And so we were able to take her story down for many years. And then she came back at the end of the art and showed that she was still a vibrant, healthy person. So this role modeling that we do and showing these stories, I think has a huge impact, and maybe not at first. And you have to accrue a number of stories, but we're very fortunate that we've been able to start the ball rolling. And so I feel like with CRISPR, we've started the ball rolling, and now they're going to be many more shows. They're documentaries now out about CRISPR. But we were, I believe, the first drama to really deal with it. And, and it's, you know, it just takes the efforts of many storytellers one story isn't enough,
Pete Turner 44:45
how many stories is enough? Like when do you reach that critical mass where you know, you and another show and all of a sudden there's a documentary, and you know, like, like, as someone who does podcasts, you know, COVID-19 is something so now I'm putting finding people that can talk intelligently about it. When does that critical mass reach because SBU has been around forever now, if it's not a struggling show anymore, Neil
neal bear 45:09
21 years and it's just been renewed for three more, but that's because it taps I think there are a number of reasons for SBU success. One is, of course, Mariska who represents the you know, she's there for the victims. And when Maloney was there for 12 years, he was the anchor, we feel and Mercer was his, the yin and the yang, and she was the compassion and empathy. So they fit well together. And she continues that and it's something that wasn't talked about and now it is talked about and it has that you know, uncertainty edge of your seat who did it kind of thing that people like, it's settled at the end of each episode. There's like a catharsis, the bad guys are caught for the most part, and we learn a lot and it's also like a way to talk about many, many, many different subjects that We did, because you're just meeting people through the city, and they have all these different issues. So it was kind of this ideal show. And also I think young women keep discovering the show. And risk is a tremendous role model for them. So I can't tell you how many times I've been at events or things where people say they watch it, or they watch it in hotels, they watch it on planes or whatever. And then they'll be they'll say, oh, and my daughter just discovered it. It's like, yes, I'm glad. And so risk is a role model for young women. And there's always fortunately, more young women growing up watching the show. They watch old shows, I think er is the same. I read that it's, you know, a huge hit on Hulu amongst the millennials. And the great thing about VR is that everybody's in scrubs and everybody's still wearing scrubs that look exactly the same. So it could be pretty much the same show now as it was 25 years ago. ers do look pretty much the same and you know We made it a little more high tech as we went on, but, you know, scrubs haven't changed. And so and so er, kind of is timeless. Yeah. And, and so I think that's why people in there and it's, it raises the same questions about life and death and who should decide and who gets the resource and who doesn't. Should medical, medical care be available to everyone and all the things we struggle with daily, and yearly, those shows really grappled with and those are things that, you know, move people and people care about. So I think that's, that's what keeps shows like SBU going, what are your thoughts on,
Pete Turner 47:39
you know, as, as we get older, as a population, we're finding new things to conquer. And, you know, we don't die from our three alcohol or three Martini lunches and smoking habit at 52 years old anymore, you know, we just, we keep going. So now we have these new end of life problems that we're slowly solving. We die from opioids, opioids, or you know We have a lot more Parkinson's is growing because we just live longer we can age into that category. So do you think talking about your boy with the cystic fibrosis who chooses like I'm done you know and beyond a DNR How about like a if I reach this point with my Parkinson's with my als with my whatever those debilitating diseases are where you like you lose the ability to have any sense of life when grandpa is swirling the drain for six months
neal bear 48:28
right you know that's really spend the most money at end of life. That's also another storyline on turns out on Designated Survivor with Italia reaches character dealing with her mother who has end stage cancer who wants to be euthanized and euthanasia. She lives in Florida and she decides to move up to DC because her daughter was going to not work in the campaign to take care of her mother and she says no, no, I'll come to DC. Little does Italian character No. euthanasia is legal in DC. So Let me just counter that by saying that there is a problem that costs us hundreds of millions of dollars and that is when I graduated from medical school in 1996 15% of American adults were obese. And our 40% are obese and 30% are overweight. So 70% of our population is at very high risk for type two diabetes. Now last figures from 2017, we spend over $300 billion a year between one out of four one out of five healthcare dollars treating type two diabetes or or what it causes heart disease, retinal disease, kidney disease, neuropathy. So we spend this huge amount of money on something that's preventable. So we haven't learned yet. You know, even though we're growing older, and healthier in some some ways, we're actually less healthy and much more overweight than we ever were. And so that's what we're spending the money on. You out, we could do something about it, if we choose to.
Pete Turner 50:03
Yeah, when we talk about medical care for all, everybody, all of the groups have to do some kind of sacrifice. We all need to take better care of ourselves so that we're not consuming mass amounts of medical care. I found that an interesting stat of the day that 8000 residences now there are more doctors than there are residences in the US and then if you don't get a residency in a certain amount of time, the window closes on that doctors career. And I think it's the number is 8000 doctors with degrees or graduate Now granted, maybe they come from less prestigious places, but they don't even have a shot at getting out there. Maybe that was their path. That's another issue where if if everybody had medical care and i'm not i'm not against Medicare for all at all, I'm just saying that there is a logistics problem of hospitals, doctors, orderlies all down the line.
neal bear 50:53
Yeah, no, it's that's called the match and looking at if you just look at the number of African American men who are in medical school, the number is infantile, small compared to everybody else. So that's a societal problem that has roots in education, access, all kinds of things. So there's much that we can do. And I think COVID reveals besides are not being prepared, you know, with kits, and the like, that we have to think through in a much more compassionate way, how to provide medical care and how and I think this is going to help people I hope, think about how they protect not only themselves and their families, but each other. So maybe there'll be a watershed moment that we're approaching where we will change in our, from our sort of more self inward self. This to more selflessness. Hmm, yeah, maybe, maybe. What do you see in the future like what's coming up in terms of sales exciting stories. You've had your finger on the pulse or however you put your finger in front of the pulse of society and telling all these wonderful, wonderful stories in this view, telling all of these tragic stories that have been kind of hidden. What do you see out there? what interests you beyond COVID and CRISPR? Young CRISPR, because CRISPR really occupies me for the most part now. So I think, you know, to me, there are four areas of concern for humanity, nuclear annihilation, global warming, artificial intelligence and weaponized drones and CRISPR. So, I think doing stories about those areas are interests me the most and that's why I took on designated because we did a storyline about opioid abuse with Tony Edwards and Lauren Holly's character and the way that the FDA approved the drugs we're able to really get into a lot of different issues. besides just the CRISPR issue, making, you know, for instance, insulin has gotten much more expensive. And we were the first show, I believe, to integrate documentary footage in the drama. So, so Kiefer's characters, the President wants to know what the people are thinking. So one of our characters played by Ben Watson goes out and gets real documentary footage of non actors, and one was a woman whose son died, he was 27 or so, type one diabetes, which is treated with insulin, and he had no insurance. He made $35,000 a year or so. So he didn't qualify for Medicaid. He worked though, and he couldn't. He was too old to be on his parent's insurance. And so he rationed his insulin and died. So a lot of people are going to Canada to buy insulin in what are called insulin caravans. So we were able to interview real people real meaning nonactors and get their stories and it's very compelling. So that interests me how to do some hybrid shows. Integrate documentary. I just worked. I'm the executive producer of a documentary that will be on HBO, in June, and it won a Special Jury Award at Sundance, and it won the Berlin Film Festival document Best Documentary award. And it's called Welcome to Chechnya. And it's about the sanction murder of gays and lesbians by the president of Chechnya. And it's a astoundingly compelling film directed by David France. I, I hope people will watch it, they can go on the website. Welcome to techyv.com and learn about it. Unfortunately, now with COVID. The festival circuit has been closed, but the show the film will air soon. And I think it's really worth seeing that these kinds of travesties, travesties can still occur. So that's what pulls me to do these stories, and I was drawn to that story.
Pete Turner 54:52
Yeah, there's no end to these human stories where people are put against impossible odds and completely unfair situations. Just like the whole thing with the rape kits, here's all this evidence sitting there and it's not used. And then now we're looking at, you know, the the killer that we caught. What was that guy's name? He had so many different names the Golden State killer, you know, all of all of the names that were the first
neal bear 55:15
we were the first to do it. We had I read a piece years ago that why do we have to have a 99% match? This was like a journal article. What if we had a 50% match so early on Mariska swabs, her cheek and sends it through and allies and says it's a perk, because she wants to know if she can find her father who was a rapist, and she ended up finding her brother who had been in prison, and that's how she finds her father. So she went from a 99% match, which is what we were always doing to a 50% match. And that's how we caught the Grim Sleeper because now we do not a 99% match and we look at and there was just a new Cold Case that was just just uncovered were they sent through like ancestry or those places. says that old DNA and they found like cousins, and then they made a family tree and they saw, okay, this person lived in this area. And that's how they got the person. And then they found DNA. And they matched it. And it turned out that was a 99% match, but he wasn't in the system. So and then there are of course, civil liberties Kate questions about doing this kind of work, right. That's what that's for. You did and so we were the first to do that. Nobody had thought of doing that kind of story before.
Pete Turner 56:28
That's incredible, man. Good for you guys for doing that, too. That That stuff is it's just it gives that that da or that detective that one thing like, Hey, I saw this episode of Designated Survivor. What if it's this, you know, and it really, you really can. You know, what did you say? You guys didn't rip the story straight off the front page.
neal bear 56:51
Yes, they rip them from us. Yes, exactly. I appreciate.
Pete Turner 56:54
Well, listen, man, I appreciate you coming on and talk and it's fascinating to hear all of this stuff and others You're an authority on TV shows, but turns out you're also an authority on medicine. And I, I appreciate you sharing this stuff, because it's all part of that big pile of information that we've got to create to get the thing nudged over the top. And if you didn't do it, who would you know? So thank you. Sure.
neal bear 57:16
I'm really glad I was able to come on. And it's been really, I feel really grateful and fortunate that I've been able to have the bully pulpit to tell these stories. So thanks a lot.
Pete Turner 57:31
Now to where anybody who wants to follow up with Neil you can I'll put all the information in the show notes, break it down. show.com everything would be in there. Links to the Netflix special welcome to Chechnya. I'll put all that stuff in the show notes. There's there's so much stuff. It's just, it's massive. Neil, thank you again for coming on.
neal bear 57:47
Sure. Thank you. Nice to see you.
Hey everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show with today's intro. Our guest is Neil bear who is a very, very notable showrunner, executive producer of TV shows. And he's been doing this for a long time. So before he became an executive producer for TV shows, Neil became a Harvard trained doctor. Yes, he was Harvard Medical School, I guess, for whatever reason, that wasn't his path if you can believe that. He grew up with a another very notable showrunner and those guys were friends. He's like, hey, come help me out with China beach. I kind of need a doctor's voice and you got nothing else to do. So he went and started working on China beach and slowly but surely, all of a sudden this career happens. So China beach leads to er, which is mind blowing and just a series of fantastic show after his show. So Neil comes today to talk about his career a little bit, but also the latest show that they do with Kiefer Sutherland. It's called Designated Survivor. And you can watch that on Netflix. If you go there, you'll get a chance to see one of the storylines is a pandemic that causes all kinds of chaos and Kieffer ends up becoming president of United States and his character. So we talk about the origins of the COVID virus and all of the different things that he does a doctor in terms of storytelling and how, hey, living this life, Stranger Than Fiction, actually, you know, ends up that that their show is timely because of the of the COVID outbreak pandemic, but also just the tension that it creates with these kind of stories in real life, and then how close they were to predicting everything I think you really enjoy what Neil has to say it was a blast talking to him and I can't wait to have him on again to talk more in depth about his career and how he actually does those things. So a couple real quick things. The show is doing great. You guys are supporting it. We just had a really big month in April, thank you so much for listening. If you're on YouTube listening, awesome, we're about to hit a big milestone for subscribers. So if you like YouTube, we're doing more video on there now doing the full transition over to video is continues to grow and evolve. And as soon as we're able, I think we're going to try to do mobile video shows as well. So we'll see just how that goes. Anyhow, the thing I wanted to say about that was thank you so much all of you for your support. It means a lot to us for john Scott and I as we put these things together, we have so many great shows, we've got shows recorded all the way out until June now at this point, so we're still well over a month ahead and just getting great guests all the time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And finally, look, it's a tough time for people and so obviously, we could use your support. We'll save the brave go to save the brave.org click on the donate tab and find a little bit amount of money each month. Put that in there and that will help out a lot you Other thing I want to say is, if not that, give charity as a gift lead with charity as your gift, go to charity on top org, buy someone a charity gift card. It's real simple. You just just like any other kind of gift card, you say, hey, I want to give this person charity. So you spend the $10 25 to 50, or whatever that amount of money is. You spend it. Here's the cool part. You can also elect to cover all of the fees which are nominal, but to make sure that that whole amount of money goes directly to that charity. And let me tell you something on the other end of it comes out of the blue No, like, Oh my god, here's $50. All they've got to do is just put the money in their account. It's all electronic, super easy. It's a fantastic way to give charity on top.org. Go there and give that way and you'll be doing someone a big favor. All right, long intro Sorry about that. But I really wanted to encourage people to think of charity as a gift and a way to lead with that. All right, here comes Neal bear,
Unknown Speaker 3:55
lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 4:00
This is Jay Morrison.
Unknown Speaker 4:01
This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring naked nice Sebastian yo this is Rick Murat
Unknown Speaker 4:06
Stewart COPPA. This is Mitch Alexis Andy somebody there's a skunk Baxter.
Unknown Speaker 4:09
Gabby Reese is Rob bell. This is john Leon gray.
Pete Turner 4:11
And this is Pete a Turner.
neal bear 4:16
Hello, it's Neal bear and we're listening to the break it down show.
Niko Leon Guerrero 4:21
And now the break it down show with john Leon Guerrero. And Pete a Turner
Pete Turner 4:27
was connected with Neil bear, because I'm connected with now, oddly enough. It's Sean said, Hey, you should talk to Neil and she was absolutely. So I wanted to bring you on for a couple of reasons. One, as a showrunner, obviously, you've got a lot to say in terms of TV and Hollywood, that kind of things. But also you're a physician and you just recently produced an edited volume of academic papers. So let's um, let's dive into Who the heck you are and what the heck you do, and how How did you get to be so smart? And how do you get it all done? You're so busy?
neal bear 5:04
Well, I'm very, very fortunate. I started out as a graduate student in sociology at Harvard, and didn't really feel it was my niche. And I fell by chance into a documentary filmmaking course. And that changed my life was taught by a guy who's since deceased named Ed Pincus, who's the father of cinema Veritate, and I learned filmmaking from him and ended up producing his last documentary as a way of gratitude to what he gave me changing the course of my life. So I went from graduate school to the American Film Institute as a directing fellow and started directing and writing if you remember the whole after school specials, yes, I ABC after school special called private affairs by a girl who sees her father having an affair, and that then went on then went on to China beach, and then kind of got nervous Could I make it in Hollywood and I left with My year old son and wife can went to Harvard Medical School. And I was planning on being a pediatrician in Boston. When I got a call from john wells, my childhood friend. We literally grew up six blocks from each other in Denver, Colorado and went to Holly hills elementary school together, Cherry Creek High School together, people say how do you get into Hollywood and show business and become a TV writer and I say, grow up with john wells, because john produced China beach, our west wing, shameless, so I never had to write a spec script or do what most people do. He he knew I had done an after school special and he invited me in to do a freelance episode of China beach. And that's how I got started. So he wrote to me when I was a fourth year medical student at Harvard and said that he was producing a show called er, and that Michael Creighton had written the script around 1969 when he was a medical student at Harvard. And I read it and I thought it was amazing because it was from the perspective of the doctors in the medical studio. It was outdated. So I gave him some background on updating it because it was 25 years old. It was, you know, the lore has that it was found in a, in a trunk and Spielberg's office, and Spielberg was going to direct it as a film, but then decided would make a good TV series, and NBC didn't like it. They thought it had too many storylines, but they felt that the auspices were too important to turn down. Michael Creighton had done Jurassic Park and Steve Wynn had done Schindler's List by that point and all the other movies before that, so they made it and it just took off like no show. Since year two, we had 48 million viewers for one episode, so and Game of Thrones is announcing 19 million viewers. Like, huh, okay,
Pete Turner 7:50
well, that's your adorable Game of Thrones.
neal bear 7:53
We had more than two times that so or two times that x more than two times that I came back from medical school to LA to do ER and stayed and I stayed there for seven years and went up the ranks from from staff writer to executive producer showrunner and then left in year seven. I've worked with Mariska Hargitay on er. And SBU was in trouble. It was year two, and they had already had to show render. So I came in dick wolf said, we don't have a script, we have to shoot Monday, this was Friday, the 13th 2000 never forgot. And he said, so I'm gonna pass you in the pool and see if you sink or swim. So I had to write a script over a weekend. And it turned out to be a show with Kate Mara called Pixies and stayed on this show as the showrunner for 11 years, which was wonderful to do all the stories that we told from opening the backlog of rape kits to HIV deniers to the first show about transgender children. We just were able to go Violence, we were able to really plumb the depths and really go forward with the show in terms of places people hadn't gone before.
Pete Turner 9:08
Well, before you go past that, let me just thank you for doing that. Because, you know, you guys are sort of the Norman Lear of that generation, you guys explored things that were unexplored and gave it to us in a way that was consumable. And if you don't do that, then you know who's who's gonna So, seriously, thank you for doing that and taking on that risk. Because on a show that's failing, you come in and go, let's really do extra hard shit, you know, and I thought
neal bear 9:36
it was fun and and I was allowed to and NBC was super supportive and rescan, Maloney and ice T and belzer, dug in and loved it. And so I love doing it for 11 years and I, I left I thought, well, this is enough, and I went to do a show called I gifted man with Patrick Wilson, another medical series and then I did Under the Dome with Stephen King and Steven Spielberg again. was reunited with him. And I did that show ran for three years, which is really fun. And that's kind of like where we are now. We're under the dome. So, but the dome is, you know, we can move, but we're still under this COVID-19 dome. Yeah, yet. And then and we're running out of supplies, just like we did Under the Dome. And then I went and did a show. Recently, ABC cancel Designated Survivor. And I was asked to run it for Netflix. And I said yes, because I'd never worked with Kiefer. And I wanted to and also, I love the platform of being able to tell really intense stories about a president who was up for reelection, who was a Designated Survivor and we're hearing a lot about that now in the UK and everywhere. And I was also able to bring Tony Edwards on who might work with on on er, which is so great to work with him again. So, um, because it is like a family when you're working with people for seven years. You get to know So well and, and I called him and I said, you know, would you play Kiefer's chief of staff? And he said yes. And then Julie white won. A Tony was not a last year for Tony Award. I'd worked with her on SBU and thought she'd be perfect. And she said yes. And then we brought on new new actors. And it was really gratifying to do it. And I was kind of bummed because it didn't get the attention that I hoped it would get. But now, when I go on Twitter, I see this cascade of tweets about Designated Survivor and the pandemic because we did a pandemic storylines through the whole third season with Maggie Q. Hughes character, and she's trying to figure out why first, birds are dying Cardinals, and then people are getting the flu, and then they're getting worse and what's going on. And it turns out that some right wing fanatics who are really sort of
white supremacists are using CRISPR to control the population. So we got into all that before people were talking about CRISPR. The reason they started talking a lot about CRISPR was that over a bit over a year ago, Dr. Hood in China, used CRISPR, which is a technique, if you think of it like scissors and glue, where you can cut out a mutated gene in your genome and glue in one that's not affected. He did that in it with an embryo that became twins and he mutated gene that prevents someone from acquiring HIV. And we already knew that people there were a small number of people in the population who were exposed to HIV, and didn't become infected because they had receptors that were mutated. And so he did that. And that created a huge uproar among scientists and the public around the world. But that's where You know, night been interested in in that issue for a long time about using CRISPR. And what's so fascinating about CRISPR is it's already been used in the United States to treat a woman with sickle cell disease, which is a terrible disease that causes not only constant intense pain, but and suffering but also can cause strokes. And essentially what happens is your your red blood cells or sickle, they're not shaped the way that easily go through one's arteries and veins and so they get clogged and that can cause strokes and horrible pain and organ dysfunction. And so, scientists have used geneticists have spurred this woman's DNA. What they did is they took out her bone marrow, as hits her bone marrow that's making the diseased cells, and they gave her about what we call bone marrow relations. So they killed all of her bone marrow, but instead of giving her a transplant, which puts her at higher risk for rejection and you have to be on anti rejection medication because you won't be a perfect match unless you have a twin. They took her own cells and they used CRISPR that cut and paste they they turned on a gene that causes the production of what's called fetal hemoglobin. We're all born with fetal hemoglobin, which is mom's onto oxygen better than our normal hemoglobin. But it turns off genetically because we don't need it. We need it in utero, because obviously we're not breathing air, right? We're getting oxygen through our mother's blood. So they turn this on in her and to date, she's been transfusion free pain free doing well and focuses just next to miraculous and it can can be really wonderful for treating all kinds of genetic diseases like sickle cell and beta thalassemia, cystic fibrosis and all these things that are caused by a gene we actually know exactly where it is and on what chromosome it's on. So with that, good With CRISPR comes the other side of it which is
which is could be used to make a virus more transmissible it could be used. This is where we get into the Cova discussion. It can be used to make to combine by, you know, destructive parts of viruses. It's conceivable someone could make an Ebola pox we already did make without using CRISPR. A more transmissible h5 n one flu. And there was a big debate in the Obama administration about whether to release the genomic structure of that and it finally was and the researchers in Canada and the Netherlands who did it said they did it so that we'd be prepared for something like this, where we'd have a pandemic of a very transmissible lethal flu, because fortunately, bird flu wasn't very transmissible. It's very lethal much more so than COVID. But it's hard. To get you have to like live with birds. So there were things made with DNA sequences, like somebody took pieces of DNA and put it together. Maybe they made polio at SUNY Stony Brook some years ago, and somebody made horse pox, which is related to smallpox in Canada. With CRISPR, it would be much easier to do it. And not only that, but you know, I think of this paradigm profound paradigm shift where we talk about mutually assured destruction with nuclear weapons. And it's like, we'll blow you off the map if you blow us off the map. And so we don't do anything, right with a nation state. to afford it. You can't walk around with a briefcase of plutonium. So it's only a nation states that can afford the infrastructure and the massive amount of money it takes to build nuclear reactors and do these things. all bets are off now with CRISPR because you need a DNA sequencer that could cost 2500 bucks and you need access to DNA sequences. And if you fairly good at basic lab techniques, you can CRISPR virus, conceivably, and you can go online and buy CRISPR kits, which I think is pretty crazy. And you can buy a kit online and make green treat broads bigger using CRISPR in affecting their gene. And you can make fluorescent yeast for your beer. And so this is all fun and games and science at home. But there's really a very, very dark side to this. So that's a long explanation. But that's where where my show came from because of my concern about CRISPR. It it. It has the potential to do great good and unimaginable harm, and it can change the human genome. So maybe I should explain very briefly for the listeners, two points that are really important when we're thinking about CRISPR that people often don't hear about. There are two approaches using CRISPR one is what's called somatic cells and the other is called germ cells. So if somebody conceivably, let's say, has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease, we could conceivably we haven't, we have done it for, as I said, sickle cell disease, we go in, and we change their cells. So we changed. We changed this woman's blood cells and she then we re engrafted her bone. I didn't, but they did her bone marrow, so she wasn't going to have any problem with rejection. its own her own bone marrow, but it was CRISPR. So that's called somatic. If she were to have children, she would still pass on the sickle cell gene because CRISPR was only affecting the cells that make the hemoglobin. Gotcha. Mouse. germ cell is where we take reproductive cells there. We take a very, very early embryo and that's what Dr. Hood did in China. He took an embryo, and he went in and mutated a gene in the embryo for the HIV receptor. So those children will pass on that mutated gene, any other than they have. So that's where we start to get into some real issues. So there's first of all the viral making viruses and bacteria. And then there's the human evolution question. Because if we change someone's germ cells, their sperm cell or their egg cell so that they pass on this trait to their offspring, then we are conceivably changing human evolution. And that's where we get into a lot of questions about human enhancement, because people could conceivably go to a geneticist and say they want a taller child, or a more muscular tie hook. Now we it's more complex than treating cystic fibrosis or sickle cell. disease in the sense that we know exactly exactly where it lies on the DNA on the gene. But height and eye color and things like that are more complex and involve a number of different genes. But it's not inconceivable that we could locate some jeans for height or musculature or things like that and enhance people if they could pay for it. So you can just imagine going down that road designer babies and yes, we could do designer babies now. It that's inflammatory and it scares people, but we can certainly design children not to have genetic diseases. Now, some people say, We don't need CRISPR because we have something called PGD, pre implant genetic implantation, or where we look at embryos, and we we know like the couple has a genetic disease like Marfan or, or cystic fibrosis and we only would implant it genetic diagnosis, we would only implant the eggs that have no genetic problems. And if some people feel that that's hard, you know that that's going against what maybe some anti choice people would say, you know, you're you shouldn't be choosing which eggs to put in. But should you if you have the ability to screen for these very serious, not only life threatening, but very painful diseases, should you do it? So we just get into the very basic realm of what does it mean to be human? And how do we think about these things and, and that's what I love doing on my shows. And that's why I did it on Designated Survivor because I wanted to get into those questions and I wanted to have some solutions. The major solution, or at least an approach to dealing with these problems would be to pass legislation that makes it very difficult to get certain kinds of DNA strands. We know we can, we can check if somebody is ordering, you know, CG GGC TT DNA strand. And we know that that's a piece of smallpox. We shouldn't be selling it to them, right. And we have, we have these companies that are supposed to screen and do these things, but they're not legally mandated to do it. So we need to have some legal mandates, especially now, maybe COVID will help us in that arena that we see. Just a a virus that we knew about, presumably since 2017. There was a big study for many years and in caves in China. And they looked at these horseshoe bats and they saw various viruses that they were carrying. And one of them that they discovered in 2017. It's very close genetically to the one that's making its way around the world. And you see that with transportation, The New York Times did a great piece where you can kind of track Wu Han and then people going to Sydney, Australia, New York. City, Seattle, Los Angeles, you should think for Whoa, didn't take very much time.
Pete Turner 23:07
Exactly. And it's terrifying.
neal bear 23:10
Yeah. So that's sort of what so those interests in science, and being able to cure, but also do tremendous damage is what interests me. And I want to tell stories about it. Because I think it's incumbent on all of us, as citizens to be aware of CRISPR and its potential. And its downside so that we can not just have people make decisions for us about it.
Pete Turner 23:39
So when you as a storyteller, when you're putting all this together, what is your storyteller brain Tell your doctor brain in terms of Look, I don't trust China, at all, to be honest, to be fair, I don't trust us either. But I really don't trust China. To be honest. If they had their Chernobyl moment with this, would they be honest you know, so You tell these stories. And the reason why I asked this, my friend Kat Connor writes, she's she writes crime novels, right? And she looks at a lot of these things. And she immediately said, This got out because China made it and they lost control of it, and they'll never admit to it. What do you think about these kind of theories? And China gives us no reason to believe them. So let's just say that upfront?
neal bear 24:21
Well, it worries me because, well, I don't think it's true, because we have data that shows that this existed in a cave, so it didn't get made in China. So I think we have evidence about that. And I think we have to be really careful about conspiracies, because the real reality is much worse with CRISPR. And what the potential is, you know, as I said, Now, we can have rogue scientists and biohackers making all kinds of stuff that you know, we can't control, right, we have to we have to state controls. So this whole conspiracy thing I think we we are drawn to uncertainty and we will Love the spy thriller aspect, I think there's a part of COVID-19 that keeps us on the edge of our seats. And we want we don't know the ending. So I have, I want to make a point about that. So every day 1200 children die in the world from malaria. And there's no panic about malaria every, every 1200. So that's hundreds of thousands of kids a year. We know how to treat it. We know what causes it and off least mosquito. And we know how to prevent it. But we don't do a great job. And it doesn't affect people in the United States. So it's less of concern here. So why do we not panic about something that's killing many, many more people? And the answer is, we don't have uncertainty about it. We know what causes malaria. We know the outcome. We know how to treat it. There's nothing in the scenario or the narrative that we don't understand. We're still looking for ways to treat it better. We're still looking for ways to do things. And as an aside, I'll come back to it. There is something we can do that with CRISPR. That's pretty interesting. So with COVID, we don't know how to treat it. We don't have any antivirus for it. We don't know what really caused it, but we think it's horseshoe bats being exposed to pangolins. That's sort of what's thought now in the wet marketplace, which is where SARS started, because bats and civets were exposed to each other in the marketplace. And we know that that's where it's supposed to camels for MERS. And there's another virus that appeared in Australia and cause terrible bleeding and horses and didn't get much attention. I think it's called hand up and three people died of that and some people who worked with horses they had to really be exposed to it. It's kind of like bird flu. They were like really trying to reach down into the throats of the horses so they got exposed and they died. But that was it. And they figured out they they did a great study where they looked at everything around the horses, and they captured bugs, lizards, animals, birds, everything, and they look to see what the vector was. And they noticed that these horses were many of them that that caught this virus, or brood mares and that they were in the hot sun in Australia, and they wandered under fig trees. So amazing story. The narrative is amazing story. And they wandered under fig trees and they noticed that the horses were eating the figs. And they also noticed that there were bats fruit bats in these trees and they were eating the fruit and of course, they would drop fruit, and their saliva would be on the figs. And they would also defecate on the ground and so these mares were eating grass exposed to the virus and they were eating the face. So they were a reservoir for the That transmission from bats to horses to people, we were able to contain it and get much attention. But this is happening a lot. And this has happened now with the four viruses I just told you about SARS, MERS, and and COVID. So we knew about these things. And so I think doing all of these conspiracies is really not only unhelpful, but but probably harmful, because just have to look at the data. And there's this there is a great paper on this that looked at these bats, and they saw all of these different viruses from 2005. I believe that was published in 2017. So this virus is not wasn't just made in a lab. Now, that's not to say that in the future, and maybe because of CRISPR, it's promoting that theory, because that's not to say that we can't tinker with viruses and make them more transmissible or more virulent. Now, using CRISPR technology
Pete Turner 28:59
Yeah. So with the storyteller, and you doesn't have to oblige the doctor. I mean, you say, hey, let's all calm down about this, you know, this, this came from fig trees or whatever, you know, like, it's like the standard looks. I'm an espionage guy. I was a spy in the army. And it's always like the senior plays to mole and the CIA. That does it and it gets to be a little trophy, but it isn't effective
neal bear 29:22
store looked at what they did with the fig trees, they just used observation. And they figured it out. They first thought, is this a bug? Is this a mammal is what is going on? How is this happening? And then they used their observational?
Pete Turner 29:36
Yeah, I'm not saying that didn't happen. I'm not saying that.
neal bear 29:39
No, no, but I think that that's what how things really, really are understood is through careful observation, right? Not jumping to conclusions, but as a writer to answer that question, then I want to talk about mosquitoes. Medicine and Health provides so many conundrums, like I just said, CRISPR in and of itself provides this conundrum. It has the potential to treat and cure horrible diseases? No question. And also has the potential to create horrible viruses and bacteria. So it's a double edged sword. And so you can imagine, and then it also another offshoot of it, and it could change human evolution in many ways. So that just raises a plethora of questions that the storyteller in me is just like, Yes, yeah. How do we talk about this? And how do we do a show about that? All of this, so I'm always thinking like when I did, er, I did a show for Clooney in year three, that he got nominated for a second Emmy for and he was saving a kid with cystic fibrosis who wanted to be allowed to die back then, you know, we still don't have great treatment we have better treating kids live longer, but it's a very painful, awful disease. Many, many multiple hospitalizations and now the possibility of treating it with CRISPR. So Kid wanted to be allowed to make his own decision was 16 to die and Clooney was struck with shitty, let the kid die or should you save him? Because he could save them? But, you know, ultimately the kid wasn't saleable? And what age should you be allowed to make that decision? And he decides, finally, Laurie emesis character says this about you or the kids. So that was a big turning point for Clooney. And he says, I'm going to do what you want, and you're mature enough. And then the mother when the kid is dying, screams that Clooney to intubate the kid and he's forced to do it because the mothers get as a minor. Right? So the point is, is that, that story about a kid who wants to be allowed to make his own decisions, and now it's easier for kids to do it since then, since 1996. When I did that show, still difficult. It raises all kinds of personal questions. It shows what we're made of as human beings, when he's confronted with this is this about his own hubris about being a great doctor? Or is it about doing what's best for the patient? Yeah, so always a story embedded That reveals character. And the work that I try to do on ers, or Under the Dome are Designated Survivor. So let me tell you about let me go back because this is a really interesting question. When I said about 1200 kids die a day from malaria CRISPR provides us a way of potentially getting rid of the monopolies mosquito, which is what carries me malaria and causes terrible, terrible pain, suffering demise for children and adults around the world. And there's a geneticist at MIT, who developed what's called a gene drive, and that uses CRISPR and what it does is it pinpoints in the mosquito for instance, a way to make the mosquito in fertile but
animals for the most part, different with like some lower level like worms and things but they inherit genes from their the chromosome comes from half from their father and half from their mother. And this is what causes evolution because we are resorting through meiosis. That's why we don't look like are completely like our siblings somewhat, because we might be, you know, we got each of our parents has a possibility of sending us one or the other gene from their grandma from their mother or their father. That's right. We're related to our grandparents. That's why it was well, milkman Exactly. Well, that's another story I can tell you. So we can put a CRISPR gene in to mosquitoes so that they are infertile, but they would only have one gene so they would pass the one gene on, but they would have a 5050 chance they could pass on the one that's not infertile. But a gene drive copies it essentially Xeroxes and makes both genes that way. So we could make these mosquitoes pass on to their offspring, in fertility and ultimately, guests. What would make Anopheles mosquitoes extinct? And this has been talked about for listeners who are interested, they can read a New Yorker piece from several years back about an experiment that was talked about on Nantucket to stop Lyme disease. And we know that Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria, not a virus, but a bacteria that infects these mice, deer mice, and ticks bite the deer mice and ticks and bite human beings. So they pick it up from the deer mice. So there was a question of putting in a gene drive on this island, which would then be a great experimental controlled area because it wouldn't go off the island, presumably, hopefully, and they could give these mice immunity to the bacterial through a gene drive, as I was just describing, ultimately, they decided not to do that. And what they did is they had another alternative which was to make mice immune But they're not passing it on, they can inject them and they can make them immune, but they're not passing it on to their offspring. I think that it was interesting because the community got together and talked about it. So we have some tools that are just profound what they can do, particularly gene drives. That's what's scary, too. It can do amazing things. Can you imagine a world without malaria? Now, the other thing is, we don't know. Fully. What would happen if we made these mosquitoes extinct? We don't know what it would do to the whole sort of environmental cosmos. Yeah. So there's just so many questions this raises, but unlike nuclear weapons, it's much more democratic many, many, many more people have access to it.
Pete Turner 35:47
Hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear. The best plan is show you how to pick a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown, show calm. Let me help. I want to hear about it.
neal bear 36:09
Oh, there's just so many questions this raises. But unlike nuclear weapons, it's much more democratic. Many, many more people have access to it.
Pete Turner 36:20
Do you maintain your medical license?
neal bear 36:23
You know, I was just thinking about that with the COVID problems. So I think my expired because you have to do CME courses and I just time there. Now, I teach a lot of courses, so I probably could. So it expired in 2016 or 17. But I imagine if things get really bad, they would probably grandfather us back in or something, right. I'm really good at starting IVs.
Pete Turner 36:44
You're good at starting IVs. I'm not I like to go through both sides of the vein and then back up and try again. Oh, yeah, no, that's not
neal bear 36:51
that's not a good thing. But being a pediatrician. We have to do it with neonates and preemies. And that's a Super Challenge. So you learn really all the tricks and how to do it.
Pete Turner 37:03
Yeah, we had Krista vernoff on the show a while back and she was a an executive producer for Grey's Anatomy. And it's interesting how, you know, you're a doctor. So you obviously come with, you know, a pedigree of knowledge and a capability. And it's interesting how someone like Krista can come up and her her main skill set, which is formidable is that she's a fantastic drama writer. She's desperate to be a comedian and a singer. But what she is is is is this drama writer, when did you realize that you needed to do this and then when you broke the news to your mom, and you're like, Hey, Mom, you remember that medical degree that I went to Harvard to get? Nevermind all that?
neal bear 37:44
Well, I was a writer before I went to medical school, so I did China beach in the after school special. So I knew I loved telling stories. Medical School gave me just a treasure trove of stories and I'm the first along with Lance genteel, who was the other doctor on the show. I'm the first doctor writer in television. Actually, I was a medical so I was a fourth year medical student when I started on er, so definitely the first medical student right. But now every medical series, Krista was doing raise Joanne clack was the Is it still is I think the doctor on the show, we set a new standard as to David Kelly being really the first lawyer writer for LA law. And so we brought this verisimilitude to the show and we brought in our own stories which people love. They love the reality before. Er, the last big medical series was seen elsewhere. And before that there was you know, Medical Center and Marcus Welby and Dr. Kildare, etc. They all will then Casey relied on people to sprinkle the medicine and consultants after the show was written and that's why it was always about really the personal life of the patient office, obviously, because I couldn't really get matched and immersed into the medicine when I came on, er JOHN wells, the show runner wanted and Michael Creighton was a trained physician wanted, you know the perspective of doctors and didn't want to do it from the perspective necessarily of the patient. And so and he didn't care if people understood all the medicine medical talk, and he wanted it to look real so we had, er Doc's alternating each episode. One did odds and one did even to make it look real and teach No, no, Eric, George, Tony Sherry, Giuliana, Laura Gloria, how to make it look real and so on prosthetics and all of that stuff. And Eric took it so seriously and was always practicing because he was a surgeon on the show. And Eric basalt really learned how to tie when I was doing my residency and someone said, Oh, you know, that the best you can do for suturing? It's like, no, why we could do better and I thought, yeah, I we taught him how funny so we brought a new veracity to emerging artists. television show about medicine. And we draw on our own lives. And that's now the case with my friend David Foster. I went to medical school with I helped him get on house. So he was the doctor on house I had given him his first jobs on SBU as freelance as a freelancer. So he's now on New Amsterdam. And so every show he David did house all the years it was on every medical series has doctors on it. Now we set that standard. And I think the audience demands it. And it's not just like, sort of the private life of a patient in a hospital. And in order to do that, you have to have position writers and so I love telling stories and medicine is really about gathering stories. It's about being a detective. When you go and talk to a patient you have to discern their history and figure out what's relevant what's not and not pissed them off so that they tell you the truth and you've got to put all of that data together and come up with a narrative that makes sense, lest you go down the wrong road and make the wrong decision and why we did that many times on er, you know, so it's just a natural place for one to tell compelling stories about literally what is most engaging life and death.
Pete Turner 41:18
Let's go back and talk a little bit about Designated Survivor, and how CRISPR was used in that show. It's available on Netflix, for those that want to watch it and, and also talk a little bit about, you know, you could make something that like every show was impossible to make in Hollywood. It's just super tough to get things done. But then something like COVID-19 breaks out, and all of a sudden your show that was like, it's in the competition that's standing up on its own merits, but now, holy cow,
neal bear 41:48
right. Well, I feel we've been doing that for years. We you know, we would laugh about SBU and say that, you know, the mothership line order was ripped from the headlines and we would save That the headlines ripped from us, haha. So much research. So for instance, the story about opening the backlog of rape kits that Musk has taken on, and she did a documentary. It started because I met a woman who was afraid to leave her apartment she'd been sexually assaulted. And she learned that her kid had not been tested. So obviously made sense to me and everybody else on the show that there were people out there who could be apprehended because they probably committed crimes, and they were in jail. So we have their DNA, and they were out committing these crimes. And why weren't we testing these kits? And it's because we just didn't care. Really it was we didn't have the political will and some risk has taken that on as her, you know, mission which has been really, really important. And she's accomplished a lot and can, you know, testifying before Congress, but we started with an episode with maybe I can't remember in the mid 2000s, I think with Jennifer Love Hewitt as the guest Start playing that person who inspired the story. And we did research and we found out that there were hundreds of thousands of untested kits. And so we felt that we had to start somewhere. And we did you know, like it's taken years, but we're Scott has really been in the forefront of opening the backlog of rape kits. And it starts with the story. So we did stories about rape in the military that didn't get much attention, rape on college campuses. And then Kirby Dick's documentaries really came and ran with it, but you need to lay the foundation and so I think we've been laying foundation for years about these stories, and it started with Gloria Reubens character on er playing Jeannie blay who was HIV positive and a time when there was a lot of fear like now and mystery about HIV and she played the first character who ongoing character who didn't die from HIV because when we did this storyline. Coincidentally, unfortunately, anti retrovirals came about. And so we were able to take her story down for many years. And then she came back at the end of the art and showed that she was still a vibrant, healthy person. So this role modeling that we do and showing these stories, I think has a huge impact, and maybe not at first. And you have to accrue a number of stories, but we're very fortunate that we've been able to start the ball rolling. And so I feel like with CRISPR, we've started the ball rolling, and now they're going to be many more shows. They're documentaries now out about CRISPR. But we were, I believe, the first drama to really deal with it. And, and it's, you know, it just takes the efforts of many storytellers one story isn't enough,
Pete Turner 44:45
how many stories is enough? Like when do you reach that critical mass where you know, you and another show and all of a sudden there's a documentary, and you know, like, like, as someone who does podcasts, you know, COVID-19 is something so now I'm putting finding people that can talk intelligently about it. When does that critical mass reach because SBU has been around forever now, if it's not a struggling show anymore, Neil
neal bear 45:09
21 years and it's just been renewed for three more, but that's because it taps I think there are a number of reasons for SBU success. One is, of course, Mariska who represents the you know, she's there for the victims. And when Maloney was there for 12 years, he was the anchor, we feel and Mercer was his, the yin and the yang, and she was the compassion and empathy. So they fit well together. And she continues that and it's something that wasn't talked about and now it is talked about and it has that you know, uncertainty edge of your seat who did it kind of thing that people like, it's settled at the end of each episode. There's like a catharsis, the bad guys are caught for the most part, and we learn a lot and it's also like a way to talk about many, many, many different subjects that We did, because you're just meeting people through the city, and they have all these different issues. So it was kind of this ideal show. And also I think young women keep discovering the show. And risk is a tremendous role model for them. So I can't tell you how many times I've been at events or things where people say they watch it, or they watch it in hotels, they watch it on planes or whatever. And then they'll be they'll say, oh, and my daughter just discovered it. It's like, yes, I'm glad. And so risk is a role model for young women. And there's always fortunately, more young women growing up watching the show. They watch old shows, I think er is the same. I read that it's, you know, a huge hit on Hulu amongst the millennials. And the great thing about VR is that everybody's in scrubs and everybody's still wearing scrubs that look exactly the same. So it could be pretty much the same show now as it was 25 years ago. ers do look pretty much the same and you know We made it a little more high tech as we went on, but, you know, scrubs haven't changed. And so and so er, kind of is timeless. Yeah. And, and so I think that's why people in there and it's, it raises the same questions about life and death and who should decide and who gets the resource and who doesn't. Should medical, medical care be available to everyone and all the things we struggle with daily, and yearly, those shows really grappled with and those are things that, you know, move people and people care about. So I think that's, that's what keeps shows like SBU going, what are your thoughts on,
Pete Turner 47:39
you know, as, as we get older, as a population, we're finding new things to conquer. And, you know, we don't die from our three alcohol or three Martini lunches and smoking habit at 52 years old anymore, you know, we just, we keep going. So now we have these new end of life problems that we're slowly solving. We die from opioids, opioids, or you know We have a lot more Parkinson's is growing because we just live longer we can age into that category. So do you think talking about your boy with the cystic fibrosis who chooses like I'm done you know and beyond a DNR How about like a if I reach this point with my Parkinson's with my als with my whatever those debilitating diseases are where you like you lose the ability to have any sense of life when grandpa is swirling the drain for six months
neal bear 48:28
right you know that's really spend the most money at end of life. That's also another storyline on turns out on Designated Survivor with Italia reaches character dealing with her mother who has end stage cancer who wants to be euthanized and euthanasia. She lives in Florida and she decides to move up to DC because her daughter was going to not work in the campaign to take care of her mother and she says no, no, I'll come to DC. Little does Italian character No. euthanasia is legal in DC. So Let me just counter that by saying that there is a problem that costs us hundreds of millions of dollars and that is when I graduated from medical school in 1996 15% of American adults were obese. And our 40% are obese and 30% are overweight. So 70% of our population is at very high risk for type two diabetes. Now last figures from 2017, we spend over $300 billion a year between one out of four one out of five healthcare dollars treating type two diabetes or or what it causes heart disease, retinal disease, kidney disease, neuropathy. So we spend this huge amount of money on something that's preventable. So we haven't learned yet. You know, even though we're growing older, and healthier in some some ways, we're actually less healthy and much more overweight than we ever were. And so that's what we're spending the money on. You out, we could do something about it, if we choose to.
Pete Turner 50:03
Yeah, when we talk about medical care for all, everybody, all of the groups have to do some kind of sacrifice. We all need to take better care of ourselves so that we're not consuming mass amounts of medical care. I found that an interesting stat of the day that 8000 residences now there are more doctors than there are residences in the US and then if you don't get a residency in a certain amount of time, the window closes on that doctors career. And I think it's the number is 8000 doctors with degrees or graduate Now granted, maybe they come from less prestigious places, but they don't even have a shot at getting out there. Maybe that was their path. That's another issue where if if everybody had medical care and i'm not i'm not against Medicare for all at all, I'm just saying that there is a logistics problem of hospitals, doctors, orderlies all down the line.
neal bear 50:53
Yeah, no, it's that's called the match and looking at if you just look at the number of African American men who are in medical school, the number is infantile, small compared to everybody else. So that's a societal problem that has roots in education, access, all kinds of things. So there's much that we can do. And I think COVID reveals besides are not being prepared, you know, with kits, and the like, that we have to think through in a much more compassionate way, how to provide medical care and how and I think this is going to help people I hope, think about how they protect not only themselves and their families, but each other. So maybe there'll be a watershed moment that we're approaching where we will change in our, from our sort of more self inward self. This to more selflessness. Hmm, yeah, maybe, maybe. What do you see in the future like what's coming up in terms of sales exciting stories. You've had your finger on the pulse or however you put your finger in front of the pulse of society and telling all these wonderful, wonderful stories in this view, telling all of these tragic stories that have been kind of hidden. What do you see out there? what interests you beyond COVID and CRISPR? Young CRISPR, because CRISPR really occupies me for the most part now. So I think, you know, to me, there are four areas of concern for humanity, nuclear annihilation, global warming, artificial intelligence and weaponized drones and CRISPR. So, I think doing stories about those areas are interests me the most and that's why I took on designated because we did a storyline about opioid abuse with Tony Edwards and Lauren Holly's character and the way that the FDA approved the drugs we're able to really get into a lot of different issues. besides just the CRISPR issue, making, you know, for instance, insulin has gotten much more expensive. And we were the first show, I believe, to integrate documentary footage in the drama. So, so Kiefer's characters, the President wants to know what the people are thinking. So one of our characters played by Ben Watson goes out and gets real documentary footage of non actors, and one was a woman whose son died, he was 27 or so, type one diabetes, which is treated with insulin, and he had no insurance. He made $35,000 a year or so. So he didn't qualify for Medicaid. He worked though, and he couldn't. He was too old to be on his parent's insurance. And so he rationed his insulin and died. So a lot of people are going to Canada to buy insulin in what are called insulin caravans. So we were able to interview real people real meaning nonactors and get their stories and it's very compelling. So that interests me how to do some hybrid shows. Integrate documentary. I just worked. I'm the executive producer of a documentary that will be on HBO, in June, and it won a Special Jury Award at Sundance, and it won the Berlin Film Festival document Best Documentary award. And it's called Welcome to Chechnya. And it's about the sanction murder of gays and lesbians by the president of Chechnya. And it's a astoundingly compelling film directed by David France. I, I hope people will watch it, they can go on the website. Welcome to techyv.com and learn about it. Unfortunately, now with COVID. The festival circuit has been closed, but the show the film will air soon. And I think it's really worth seeing that these kinds of travesties, travesties can still occur. So that's what pulls me to do these stories, and I was drawn to that story.
Pete Turner 54:52
Yeah, there's no end to these human stories where people are put against impossible odds and completely unfair situations. Just like the whole thing with the rape kits, here's all this evidence sitting there and it's not used. And then now we're looking at, you know, the the killer that we caught. What was that guy's name? He had so many different names the Golden State killer, you know, all of all of the names that were the first
neal bear 55:15
we were the first to do it. We had I read a piece years ago that why do we have to have a 99% match? This was like a journal article. What if we had a 50% match so early on Mariska swabs, her cheek and sends it through and allies and says it's a perk, because she wants to know if she can find her father who was a rapist, and she ended up finding her brother who had been in prison, and that's how she finds her father. So she went from a 99% match, which is what we were always doing to a 50% match. And that's how we caught the Grim Sleeper because now we do not a 99% match and we look at and there was just a new Cold Case that was just just uncovered were they sent through like ancestry or those places. says that old DNA and they found like cousins, and then they made a family tree and they saw, okay, this person lived in this area. And that's how they got the person. And then they found DNA. And they matched it. And it turned out that was a 99% match, but he wasn't in the system. So and then there are of course, civil liberties Kate questions about doing this kind of work, right. That's what that's for. You did and so we were the first to do that. Nobody had thought of doing that kind of story before.
Pete Turner 56:28
That's incredible, man. Good for you guys for doing that, too. That That stuff is it's just it gives that that da or that detective that one thing like, Hey, I saw this episode of Designated Survivor. What if it's this, you know, and it really, you really can. You know, what did you say? You guys didn't rip the story straight off the front page.
neal bear 56:51
Yes, they rip them from us. Yes, exactly. I appreciate.
Pete Turner 56:54
Well, listen, man, I appreciate you coming on and talk and it's fascinating to hear all of this stuff and others You're an authority on TV shows, but turns out you're also an authority on medicine. And I, I appreciate you sharing this stuff, because it's all part of that big pile of information that we've got to create to get the thing nudged over the top. And if you didn't do it, who would you know? So thank you. Sure.
neal bear 57:16
I'm really glad I was able to come on. And it's been really, I feel really grateful and fortunate that I've been able to have the bully pulpit to tell these stories. So thanks a lot.
Pete Turner 57:31
Now to where anybody who wants to follow up with Neil you can I'll put all the information in the show notes, break it down. show.com everything would be in there. Links to the Netflix special welcome to Chechnya. I'll put all that stuff in the show notes. There's there's so much stuff. It's just, it's massive. Neil, thank you again for coming on.
neal bear 57:47
Sure. Thank you. Nice to see you.
