Interview: Dr. Myron Rolle on Oxford, the NFL and Neurosurgery

In this episode, Amira Rose Davis talks with Dr. Myron Rolle about his recent book The 2% Way: How a Philosophy of Small Improvements Took Me to Oxford, the NFL, and Neurosurgery. They discuss his upbringing in a Bahamian-American immigrant family, completing his long-time dream of becoming a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, his transition from the NFL to becoming a neurosurgeon and how he balances career and family life.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Amira: Hey, flamethrowers. Amira here, and I am thrilled to be joined in conversation today with Dr. Myron Rolle, former FSU standout, and his journey from the NFL to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar – although I think that was actually flipped in order – and then now as a neurosurgeon, has been a thing of wonder. But it is not an impossible journey, which we now know obviously through his work, but because we have a new book that talks all about the journey and the lessons that Dr. Rolle learned along the way. So, I am so excited to share in this space, to chit chat about the book, The 2% Way, and to talk a little bit about this intersection of football and healthcare, and defying expectations. So, welcome to Burn It All Down. 

Myron: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Amira: Absolutely. So, first and foremost, writing a book in a pandemic is hard. So congratulations on getting this together. What made you want to tell your story in this form? Because your story has been documented over the years in a variety of ways. But what compelled you to write this book right now? 

Myron: Yeah. So, typically what I do after a surgery or after my days at the hospital, I'd give my wife Latoya a call, and just one particular 24 hour shift I was leaving Mass General Hospital up in Boston. And, you know, she says, you know what, Myron, I think you should write a book. And I said, whoa, I said, really? I said, I'm in the doldrums of residency, it’s cold in Boston, no one wants to hear from me. They don't wanna hear my story. But she says, every time we go out to eat, every time we go somewhere, people come up to you and tell you how your story has inspired them. And I remember when you told me that you read Gifted Hands by Ben Carson, and that planted the seed of neurosurgery in your mind. Now look at you, you're a neurosurgeon. So, maybe your story can have that level of impact and inspiration on someone.

So, it was really my wife believing in me more than I believed in myself. And as you mentioned, my story had been told many times before, but not like this where I'm able to be vulnerable, personal. I can really get deep and introspective on some of the things and challenges that I've had in my life and the process that I use to help mitigate some of those stress, stressors and challenges. This 2% way process that I learned from my football coach at Florida State. So, it was my wife believing in me, and eight months, nine months later, we had a manuscript and the book came out. We're excited about it. 

Amira: Look at that, man. Yeah, so, like I said, your story has been told, but I want to refresh everybody. You know, you are from a Black immigrant family from Exuma in The Bahamas, which is a very, very special community in terms of Caribbean history, in terms of thinking about colonization, all of that. And then, like many Black immigrant families, there's a lot of movement and mobility in your story. But you were mainly raised in Jersey and then of course you went to Florida to play football, and then you've always also been an academic standout. And so most notoriously you got the Rhodes scholarship, just impossible to get – but not for you. And from there we see your story kind of roll into the public eye in this way that, while celebrating it, we also saw what happens when you defy the kind of dichotomy or the boundaries that people try to place you in. And we saw a world that wasn't quite ready to contend with a world-class academic, with medical aspirations, and a football player. And so we want to drop down into your story for like what people a lot of times first go to, which is that moment in your career in which you were in college and pursuing and thinking about these two kind of focuses. What was your mentality like at that time? And how did you merge your interests, both on the field and off the field? 

Myron: I appreciate my parents, because they set the vision for me and my older brothers. Coming from Exuma, coming from The Bahamas, growing up in America, you know, the Bible talks about in Proverbs 29, where there is no vision, people perish. So, they had this vision for us to be good men and good leaders, good citizens, good Christians. And they always, always injected us with the idea that academics and education, intellectual prowess should lead the way. And if you were good at sports or something else, fine, that's cool. But your priority and your premium had to be placed on academics. And so when I got to Florida State University, I made it very known to my coaches who recruited me that I was only going to be there for three years, because I plan on leaving after my third year with a degree in hand to go to the NFL.

I was the #1 rated player to come out of high school. I had a lot of confidence in my ability to get to the NFL, but my academic achievements and goals were going to be met. And I need them to support me, because you go to these colleges a lot of times – you and I had talked off air about you being at Penn State, a major power five school, and UT Austin, same thing, major power five – and so a lot of these athletes sometimes get run through the ringer of taking classes or doing coursework that maybe doesn't behoove their future interests in whatever it is they want to do. But I made it known very clearly, I want to be a Rhodes scholar like Senator Bill Bradley. I wanted to, you know, develop a foundation and try to have service in the Big Bend community or north Florida community. I wanted to shadow then governor Charlie Crist, and I wanted to see how lawmakers made things happen in Tallahassee, Florida. It's right across the street from our university, so why not take advantage of that opportunity?

I wanted to volunteer. I wanted to mentor young people. I wanted to develop as a Christian, and my coaches were very adamant that they will move the obstacles away and allow me to pursue these dreams. And it really came to a head when I applied for the Rhodes scholarship and had to interview for it in Birmingham, Alabama, the same day my football team at FSU was playing the University of Maryland, November 22nd, 2008. My team already was in Maryland playing this ACC opponent, and I am in Birmingham doing the interview. I won the scholarship that day, got a private plane from Alabama, flew up to BWI. Got there, got to the game around the second quarter. Dumped Maryland like 37-3. But my coaches giving me the space and allowing me to be a true student athlete was awesome. So, you know, I never really felt that I was competing with one side versus the other. Both journeys sort of co-existed in my body. And I was able to thankfully have good balance by the support that I had of my family, friends and coaches and other individuals around the Tallahassee community. 

Amira: Yeah. And that support is really notable, because these institutions oftentimes aren't built for complexity. You know, I teach a lot of athletes who are pushed away from majors, you know, because it would be too much time, or they're running up against these perceptions and these stereotypes where they are recruiting young Black men one particular way, because…And you write about moments in your book, right? Where they have the cheerleaders dancing around, or they have this, or there's a kind of playbook – to borrow from my colleague, Jessica Luther, who wrote the book Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape, about college football, and she talks about the playbook used in handling those situations. But there is also a playbook for getting people in the door. And that oftentimes is predicated on these stereotypes about presumptions of what Black boys and Black men do or are, and coming into this schooling space, right? And a lot of times literally watching people pushed away from majors or have their time kind of set for them. It's really impressive to me that you were able to carve out a space and get that support to hold both of them simultaneously.

And then we fast forward a little bit. You go, you know, I want to talk about Oxford as well. You take your scholarship, but then the draft happens, right? And here is this moment where, to me, the draft – and not just the NFL draft, the WNBA draft just did this – their playbook is to traffic in trauma, right? The video packages they’re putting together, these stories about bootstraps and pain and peddling kind of Black trauma and pathology, and like all of this stuff. And even though your story was like a ready-made video package, right? We come to the night of the draft, and despite being labeled as the number one recruit, the number one prospect, and having all these accolades, having a dominant season, you know, before you took your scholarship, we watched round after round go by. What was that moment…You write about it hauntingly in the book, but if you could just talk about what it was like to not have your name called, and when did that realization kind of sink in, ‘They're really not calling my name right now.’

Myron: Yeah, that was a very difficult experience, you know. The whole draft process was tough, not just the actual three days. But even the combine, that was most stressful moment of my life, going to Indianapolis and waking up at, you know, five, six o'clock in the morning and being poked and prodded and poked and prodded again, tested and moved and run. Okay, now go run, boy. [laughs] You know, now go jump, now go do this. I'm like, oh man. So you're not in your sort of element, but nevertheless, when that draft day, when those draft days came, I totally expected to get drafted early. I knew I had talent. I had skill. I came back from my Oxford experience and went to the senior bowl and dominated, like, played very well. Started off fourth on the depth chart because I hadn't played football, so I was sort of off the radar. And by the time that Saturday came up, I was starting. So I was now starting over guys who are now getting drafted in front of me. And I saw name after name go off the board, safeties from Montana, safeties from DII schools. I'm like, what, what is this coming from? Like, how is this possible right now?

And then I had two camera crews there in my home from NFL network and ESPN, and they just were locked in, every emotion, every facial expression, watching everything. And then I saw…This is what really got me. And this is, I don't know why that got me so bad. I write about this in the book. One of the cameraman, he like looked down and yawned and like was kicking the ground. And I was like, oh, this guy's even bored. Like, he's over it. If he's over it, I'm definitely over it. So I actually got up out of the house. I walked down the street just to clear my mind and get away from it all. Came back in the house, and then went to my room and just slept. Just slept and then woke up. And then maybe 15 minutes after I woke up and put on my shirt and tie again, I got a call from a 615 number and Jeff Fisher came on the phone and he said, Myron, are you ready to be a Tennessee Titan? And I said, absolutely. And then I saw it come across the screen in front of me. So it was a lot of relief to go in the draft pick #207, 6th round, last pick of that round. But I was happy. I was grateful to have my foot in the door, and to now begin my journey as a NFL player. 

Amira: What a rollercoaster of emotions. When you’re at Oxford, I was thinking about this when you said this, how did you train? Did you train at all? Because it's not just that you're not playing football, but you're also in a space in which American football is like, pshh. Like, okay. [laughs] 

Myron: Yeah. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Yeah. I did train. So I brought my brother McKinley. He’s right above me. I have four older brothers, one right above me. He’s about two years older than me. He went to St. John's University in Queens in New York and came with me to England. And so he had the weight vest, he had all the muscle milk for me to drink. He parachutes, he had ankle weights. He picked me up in his Peugeot – I don't know how you say it, but a little small car. And he would pick me up from my flat and we would go to Iffley Road Sports Centre in Oxford, same place where they played rugby, same place where Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile, like, a lot of history in that space. But when I went to go lift, you know, they're looking at me like, who are you? And I said, I play American football. And they just couldn't comprehend, like, well, why aren't you playing rugby for us? Like, why aren't you doing crew for us or something? I'm like, no, that's not my sport. [laughs] 

So, then I started working out essentially in somebody's backyard, and there was some grass there that was good. And all the rugby guys were out there looking at me do these different drills and they were just dumbfounded by it. So, it was definitely difficult, but I try to do the best I could. My brother helped tremendously, and we also watched films. So after we worked out, we'd go and I'd like get some film that my coaches would send me from Florida and I'd just put it in and start studying tapes, game tapes, game film, see, you know, how to keep my mind sharp. And then after that, that's when I go to my medical anthropology courses for for my degree. So, it was definitely trying, but I'm grateful that my brother was there to help me through it because it did keep me in shape and then I was able to return to the United States ready to perform.

Amira: And you were demonstrating how holding these dualities could be done even at a time where the other kind of response was to say, oh, you're not singularly focused, you’re a distraction. Or that you're not serious about this. And yet you here, you are trying to navigate that space. I'm going to ask you, one of the things for me, like, I feel like I sit on a lot of intersections, and one of the things I talk about, even like with history, we've done a more public turn, we're podcasting, we're doing documentaries, whatever. And the question is always like the same thing – “Oh, is that a distraction? You're not serious…” Whatever. And one of the things that I've tried to move into a space is actually talking about how they inform each other. And I think you do this so well in the book, to talk about like, actually, what do you take from this world that informs that world? Because they can both coexist, they are coexisting in you simultaneously. But like, not just defending the practice of doing both, but actually talking about how by doing both you're strengthening yourself in both areas. And you speak to that in the book a lot, and so I want to know, what did football give you with your medical career? And then what did those medical anthropology classes teach you about football and about competition and playing? 

Myron: Yeah, that's an excellent point, and so valid. So I think I'll start with how my academic course works helped me through through football. I think understanding the meticulous preparation that it takes to be a good athlete, getting into the nuanced details of coursework that I would have to do to make sure I impressed my tutors at Oxford, make sure that I was not just a jock there, right? I had this label of being the big football player. I was way bigger than everybody else in the class. And so they couldn't fathom like why I was there, but, you know, making sure that I was always on point, very detail oriented. That part of my work was helpful. And also, I'd go see my tutors during office hours. Like, I would exercise and utilize that opportunity so much that it really gave me an advantage. I would ask, hey, what am I expecting on the test, or how do I need to get better? Give me feedback. A lot of people don't like to be coached, but I do like to be coached. And so they would teach me that.

So, what I took from that academic road to my football was how do I meticulously prepare for these games? How do I look at the details? If a receiver is leaning a certain way, you know, is he going to run an out route, because he sort of does this on tape, and I've seen this over and over and over again. If a quarterback has his foot back a little bit more, maybe he's going to get out of there quickly because he wants, you know, three or five, five step drop. So I know it's going to be a pass. So, I just picked up these things by just being more detail oriented and focused. And I'd go see my coaches just like I would go see my teachers during an office hour. I would see them after practice. I would see them on off days. I would find ways to spend time with them to really grab everything I could out of how I could be a better player, what should I do to be better? Tell me what you did when you coached these legends and these greats before me, and how I can sort of emulate my game and sort of mimic what they've done so I can become a better player. So, that's how academics informed football.

And then how football informed my trajectory as a student and now as a physician, very helpful. How do I communicate? You know, as a football player, as a safety, I'm talking to everyone on the field, I'm making sure I'm getting everyone lined up. I’m yelling out down and distance, I'm yelling out to personnel, I'm yelling out, you know, the strength of the formation. And when I'm in the operating room, I'm talking to everyone about estimated blood loss. How long is this case going to take? What do we need? You know, do we need thrombin? Do we need some extra antiepileptic drugs because we're going to be in an certain area of the brain? I'm talking about all this stuff, and everyone's gotta be able to hear my communication, you know, very sternly and confidently. Teamwork is obviously very important. Discipline, focus, being coachable, overcoming adversity.

One thing that really, really helped me in my physician life now is being adaptable and flexible. When COVID hit and the pandemic came, all the elective cases for neurosurgery were put on hold. And so our chairman said, you have to…Or you don't have to, but we would love for you guys to volunteer into the emergency room because we just need the bodies. Nurses are calling out sick, they're getting COVID, doctors are getting COVID. We just don't have enough people to support all the people coming into Massachusetts General Hospital. So just basically like stopping playing man to man and then we would go to a zone in the second half, I stopped doing the surgeries and then I went to the ED, not knowing anything about this respiratory illness, but you know, wanted to be a part of the team, essentially be a foot soldier and learn from the smarter people who knew more about this disease than I did, and try to help save lives on the front line. So yeah, both. You're actually right. Both journeys and both roads informed each other.

Amira: And so obviously one of the reasons why people have gravitated to your story, for those of us who work in critical sports studies and stuff like that, is because it really exemplifies what professional football was willing to accept and not accept at a time. And this continues to today, where you see people who have harmed being welcomed into rosters, right? And people who, you know, have been documented in terms of their abuse and other ways of harm, executives and GMs who have had their problems, but still have their teams. What is so threatening about, you know, a medically inclined football player?But you wrote about in your book, and this is a piece to the puzzle that like for me really solidified how you wrote about it here, was that you were particularly focused on neurosurgery, you were thinking about the brain. And we know that the NFL has been playing perfect defense for a while on the stuff about CTE.

And we know the cases you talk about, Junior, of course, and we know that these names and these bodies have stacked up and up and up and up. When did these kinds of reflective moments come where you were able to reflect on not just that you had this kind of split focus, but that what you were focused on, about brains, about what brains do and how they need to be healed and the threat of football on them, like, that concern…When did that kind of public health crisis intersect with how you oriented yourself with football and with medicine? And I know that you've talked about before why you still played football, even thinking about the brain in this way, but I'm really interested in this way that specifically your field of medicine is cutting into the heart of an issue that professional football has just been mangling for a while. 

Myron: Yeah, I think the NFL and the major stakeholders in that league and the people who are fit to benefit from everything the NFL could produce, they were quite nervous about someone like myself and others who had a mind to think about their brain, their brain health, head trauma, safety, concussion, CTE, all the different things that come with the sport sometimes when you have these high velocity collision impacts over and over and over again. I was very vocal and very clear that neurosurgery is something that I wanted to do, and when they see someone like myself, well, we're going through these lawsuits, and we're seeing players kill themselves early, having suicidal episodes. We are, you know, fighting a media storm of like the movie Concussion coming out and people are really talking about this now and it's becoming, you know, water cooler talk on Monday morning at offices everywhere. And now here's a player that wants to be a neurosurgeon, has expressed his interest in neurosurgery and the brain. If something were to happen to him or something were to go wrong there, you know, we might not be able to recover from that. So let's do what we can to sort of quiet it down, keep them out, keep them moving along, right?

If I had not expressed interest in that, if I had not expressed interest in academics, if I had not expressed interest in other options outside of football, I know my talent would have kept me in the NFL for a long time. Eight, nine, maybe ten years. I had coaches who told me that I had the talent to play for eight or ten years. When I told my teammates Ryan Clark, Troy Polamalu, Ike Taylor in Pittsburgh that I'd just been released, they couldn't believe it. They were like, are you serious? Like, you're out here ballin’. And I said, well, the GM told me that he's not worried about me. I can be a doctor, a president. There's another guy who’s not as good as me, but he needs football. This is all he has. And so you're going to be fine. We're not worried about you. I said, well, that's not your decision for you to make, like, this is what I want. This is the grind that I'm putting in today. This is the commitment that I'm having.

So, it was hard. It was hard to mitigate those two and try to balance those worlds. But as I played football, I wished that I was even a stronger advocate for brain health and brain safety. You know, activating that bully pulpit that's given and afforded to a lot of NFL players, whether it be through your beat reporters in the locker room or through social media or whatever, to talk about these issues. And now that I'm on this side, as a physician scientist, I do have the opportunity to do it and I love speaking to my teammates, former players who I didn't even play with, who reach out to me and ask how they can help stave off CTE and what they can do to support their brain health. It feels fitting and fulfilling to be in this role now to aid and support guys who I love and guys who are part of the brotherhood, the same one that I was a part of.

Amira: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that it's so important. We have friends with a lot of former players who are dealing with injuries, who are thinking about this health. We've seen lawsuits, right? We've seen the race norming lawsuit continue to kind of tumble through the courts. But I think what you said that really resonated with me with that kind of search for this idea of hunger, right? Like, somebody needs to be hungry, hungry or desperate to go gladiate themselves in this way. And we had an episode maybe a year or so ago with my homie Benji Hart, who's an abolitionist activist in Chicago, and they talk about…We talked about the similarities between like professional football, even collegiate sports as well, and the military and policing, in which people are almost…The folks in charge are hoping to back somebody into a corner in which they will go and lay everything on the line. And the public health discussion around collision sports, especially football, is kind of finally catching up to talking about what happens when you're rendered disposable in that way, right?

And I think that one of the things I really appreciate about the work you do in this is you're really reflective. And you talk about Kaepernick, you talk about…I mean, this generation of athletes has almost given you a language for what you were doing before, and then you see spaces in which you had wished you had done as well. Whether it's More Than an Athlete or thinking about what you can do with that platform or kind of pushing activist athlete, you know, the politics and sports aspects further. But you also not only were reflective of that, but you also had your chance to step back onto that platform come round again when you have another public health crisis. You’ve already kind of talked about COVID. And I have to say, I was so impacted by yourself and your wife's decision that you made right when you guys were expecting twins and decided it was safer for her…And she's a TSU alum, if I'm not mistaken, right?

Myron: She is. Yeah. 

Amira: Yeah. I write about the Tigerbelles, the storied track team there. But to separate, right? So you could be at Mass General and be helping out on the front lines, and that she was back in Georgia with her family. And that's an incredible sacrifice that’s really haunting in walking through this chapter of your story, but it also created this opportunity where you did come back to this athlete platform and step into that space as a scientist, as a medical practitioner, to talk about COVID, to talk about what leagues should or should not be doing during that moment. So, what was that like, to kind of come back, armed with both aspects of your story still, and to kind of reclaim that pulpit?

Myron: Yeah, no, it felt good. It felt like God working in my favor, for sure. You know, this pandemic, I don't know if anyone anticipated it, and no one expected it to be as entrenched into the community and disrupt as much of the community as it did. And you've already mentioned family life being disrupted with my rock, the person I'm able to decompress with being my wife, you know, walking home and seeing her and talking about some of the tough cases, good or bad outcomes, just things that really were taxing on my body. Being able to unload some of that with being able to be just unfiltered with her, not having that opportunity and that medium because we want it to be safe. That was very difficult. It was certainly trying. I mean, we were three or four or five months away from each other. And I knew that it would be best for her and best for our unborn kids at the time. Thankfully, they were all safe and now they're very healthy.

But yeah, you know, being thrust into that position where I can be an advocate and a voice that represents…A representative for good science, evidence-based medicine, public health. And especially as it relates to us, especially as it relates to minority, Black and brown populations. In Mass General Hospital, you know, our hospital is the best in the country, or at least one of the best, or is at the top. And we get clients and patients from UAE, Bahrain, Martha's Vineyard, you know, all the top places. If you have a complex pathology, you come to us. But we don't typically see the young Black person who's coming from Mattapan or Roxbury where, you know, New Edition, Bobby Brown, those boys are from, or from other sort of inner city areas in Boston. They will go to Boston Medical Center because there's more Black doctors and Black nurses and Black staff and Black materials management and all those staff members over there look like them. But when the pandemic hit, they had no choice. You see many more Black patients coming in.

And so I'm saying to myself, why are they disproportionately being hit with this stuff? Why are they getting rocked with COVID more than anyone else? Well, a part of it is illuminating the gap that we have in healthcare, the disparity access, you know? They don't have primary care physicians. They’re being under or unmanaged for their chronic conditions. They can’t physically separate and social distance because they have to live on top of each other based on the living environments that they're in. So, you know, the pandemic gave me an opportunity to speak life to evidence-based medicine for my athlete people, for individuals who needed to hear that there are still disparities that exist out here, regardless of how great we think our healthcare is in the United States. There's still gaps, and people don't have equitable, timely access to care. And to sort of, you know, speak truth. And I really did appreciate having that position. It did take a 2% wait process, like I write about in the book, the sort of informing myself and making sure that I was ready to go when that mantle came and when that platform came. You know, I have to step up and do what I gotta do. And the ways to sort of get to a point where I sound confident, where I sound informed, where I sound like I have, you know, command of this issue and can help lead. It's a small step, small gains every day. That's the 2% way process at work.

Amira: Yeah. Absolutely. So you talk about that 2% way, which you got from your coach at FSU, who got that from Bear Bryant, this idea that you get 2% better every day, and the full subtitle of your book, “how a philosophy of small improvements took me to Oxford, the NFL, and neurosurgery.” And I was thinking a lot about these small improvements because obviously we're living in a time where our problems seem vast and huge, and sometimes unconquerable. One of the things that I really love about your work is that you're really focused on the global, right? You have not just a health focus, but really a desire to do global health, right? To go to places like Exuma, to think about all of this disproportionate access to care globally. And I'm thinking globally about the problems that feel like the weight of the world, right? And sometimes, especially on weeks like this week, where we're seeing, you know, babies taken from us. Last week, we had our elders. Like, it feels like these problems are very heavy. And sometimes it can feel like you can't possibly make a dent in any of these things.

And it was really refreshing to think about how you can have a philosophy of small improvements, right? And that your philosophy of small improvements has actually led you to a place where your impact is vast. And so I know that that's not actually a question, but rather a reflection that I had, especially while I was reading your book this week and thinking about how paralyzing it can feel to be faced with such issues that we're all contending with, and how a return to thinking about how you can improve on a daily basis, not for your own personal edification necessarily, but like, actually we can think about small improvements as community care and community practice as well.

Myron: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and that's so right. You started off rightly so talking about the origin of the 2% way coming from my football. You know, I'm not sure if he thought that his impact as a coach on us, as football players, would take his philosophy, his mindset, his ethos to a book that helped change my life, to save lives in the operating room. But it really did. It's just as you mentioned, small wins, small gains every single day towards a larger goal. If we can take something that seems insurmountable or almost some lofty goal or some overwhelming task from responsibility, this challenge that just seems way too big for us, break it down piece by piece and continue to have those consistent steps forward, leaning forward, onward and upward everyday, then we grow. And then in the process we grow our community and we grow the people around us and we serve others as well. You know, having somebody kind of be an accountability partner for you to check in objectively on if you are getting better every day, writing things down.

I think there is something to your motor strip that's sort of in your parietal lobe – if you’re right handed, it'll be on your left side of your brain. You know, having the circuitry in the pathway come and control that muscle movement that says ‘I'm going to actually have the coordination and write down my goal and then cross it out for that day’ and say, I got it. I got that done today. Tracking your progress a month, six months, a year from now, to make sure you're still moving forward. And then having that moment of self-reflection like, did I actually get better today? Did I do what I was supposed to do today? And when you can say yes and you feel that reward, that activates the limbic lobe, one of our lobes in our brain that has these neurotransmitters that are excitatory and make us literally feel good about ourselves. It's a feeling of endorphins, it's a feeling of euphoria. It's a feeling of goodness.

And, you know, I think often in our communities, especially in underserved and marginalized communities, we compare ourselves to other journeys. We look to the left and look to the right, whether it be on social media or anywhere else and say, well, I'm not good enough. I don't have it. I can't get it done tomorrow. I can't get that done next week. But that's okay. You don't have to look there that way. You don't have to compare yourself to anyone. You don't have to get it done by next week. As long as you just get a little bit better, stay in your lane and keep moving forward, you can block out that background noise.

And I've been able to use it in my life as a neurosurgeon and my life as a father and as a husband, as a mentor, my life as a son, you know, talking more to my parents, having more communication with them when the world seems like it's moving around so much, just taking the time, carving out a part of my day to be more communicative with my two 71 year old parents. One's hypertensive, one's diabetic, but they're lovely people. And I just want to make sure I can connect with them as much as possible. So there's utility in it and in many different facets of our lives, and I'm excited for people to dig in and hopefully the stories resonate with them, just as stories like Ben Carson's Gifted Hands resonated with me when I was younger. It sort of unlocked my potential, and hopefully this book can do the same for someone out there. 

Amira: Yeah, absolutely. So, I want to kind of conclude...We chase joy a lot here on the podcast as well after we're done burning things. You know, the point is to build in its ashes. So, how are the twins?

Myron: The twins are good. So, I have to have two sets of twins.

Amira: Yeah, you have two sets of twins! Which is a lot of twins. [laughs]

Myron: It’s a lot of twins. Yeah. It's like a 1 in 75,000 chance or something like that, something crazy. 

Amira: Defying the odds.

Myron: You know, boy, girl. We have our oldest, Zora and Zayed, they're both 21 months. And then Zanzi and Zafar are three weeks old.

Amira: Oh my gosh! Three weeks.

Myron: Yeah. They're brand new. They're brand new.

Amira: They were almost Gemini twins. I'm a Gemini. It would have just broke the stratosphere. [Myron laughs] Well, congrats to you and to your wife, and that is keeping you busy, and you're generally busy. How are you cultivating space for self care, community care, and joy in your super busy world right now?

Myron: Yeah. You know, heavy into my faith with my wife. We are very committed. Matter of fact, my pastor is coming over tonight with his wife, and we're going to have some conversations around, you know, keeping ourselves whole and making sure that we're loving each other and doing all the right things to lead a Christian home. So that's important. I love to travel. Getting back to The Bahamas means a lot to me, getting to Exuma. I'm going to The Bahamas in about two weeks or so, just a way to decompress and get the sun in and see family and eat some peas and rice and crab, conch and everything that I love to eat. So, that's important for me as well.

And then I have a mentor group that really fills me up every time. I have a group of young Black men, medical students and pre-med. We call it the Honor Rolle – Rolle, like my last name. [Amira laughs] And so it's about 13 guys and they're all so amazing. I mean, just hearing the research that they're getting involved in, the conferences that they're attending, you know, we're having a retreat together to really kind of connect on a brotherhood level. I bring in guest speakers to talk to them. I've helped fund their books and other conferences they wanted to attend, other webinars that they wanted to attend. I love doing it. I love being a mentor. I had some great mentors growing up, so I feel like now it's time for me and my wife to sort of turn the table and do it for the next next generation. So, it's been a blessing.

Amira: That's a word. Mentoring is so important. Well, The 2% Way: How a Philosophy of Small Improvements Took Me to Oxford, the NFL, and Neurosurgery is out now. Can you tell everybody where they can grab the book, where they can follow you? 

Myron: Absolutely. Yeah. So you can grab the book from anywhere. Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, wherever you can get it – online, Amazon, anywhere you get books online. You can go to our website, www.twopercentway.com. And you can follow me online. I have the links to all of these things. @myronlrolle on Instagram, or just @MyronRolle on Twitter. I'm on Facebook too. Very easy to find there. So, we're excited about it.

Amira: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Myron Rolle, man of multitudes. It has been a pleasure having a conversation with you today for Burn It All Down.

Myron: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.