TSBD opening monolouge

Dr. Leah Whitlock, a scientist at a leading medical institute, is fascinated by the line between life and death and the brain's ability to protect us from perceived threats. She is dedicated to finding cures for diseases and documenting her experiments to make them accessible to others. Today, she introduces her assistant, Katie. You probably know that feeling, when you're almost asleep, but suddenly you feel like you've fallen and jolt awake. The part of it that you might not know is the reason behind it. When you're falling asleep too quickly, your brain can mistake it for dying, so it sends one last surge of adrenaline through you to try and keep you awake. This could be helpful if you were actually dying and not just trying to get some sleep. But this has always intrigued me, the line between life and death. How far will your brain go to protect you from things that aren't threats? I mean, that's mostly what phobias are. Spiders could be poisonous, falls from high up could be deadly, clowns could be killers, but none of these are always the case. Many spiders are harmless, most of the time if you're high enough to worry, you'll have equipment to keep you safe. Clowns are mostly just regular guys. Let all of this not mean that your brain will go to ridiculous lengths to keep you safe, even beyond what's reasonably dangerous. If your own brain can think that something completely safe could kill you, does it really have a good grasp on life and death? How far will the line be blurred? Okay, I'm getting very off track here. My name is Dr. Leah Whitlock, and I work in the leading scientific medical institute in the country. I have always been obsessed with the idea of prolonging human life, and more specifically, curing diseases. When my roommate Jason, the amazing janitor here, said they had a job offering for assistant scientists two years ago, I jumped at the chance. I mean, I've heard of the company, of course, and where better to figure out how to get rid of these illnesses than a place whose whole goal is just that? Over the past two years, I've been trying to work my way up to lead scientist, and here I am now. I'm doing this for documentation of my experiments, so that people can replicate it and these cures can become mainstream. That's enough monologuing for now. Today I'm not doing any experiments, so there isn't much to document. I mean, I could say why I took this job was specifics of my hypothesis, but that's for later. Oh! I should introduce my assistant. Katie!