Who are we?
Hi! Welcome to our sub stack. This is where we muse aloud on all topics having to do with the brain and why we humans do things the way we do.
What you can expect:
At home, one of us is usually spouting off excitedly about brain stuff while the other is makes jokes, witty rejoinders, or little asides— it felt right to do that here, too. So, when Alan posts, Sarah makes comments and, two weeks later (if we have our act together), we switch.
Why Boots and the Brain you ask? Basically, Alan is the philosophical one (“the Brain”) and Sarah gets stuff done (“Boots on the ground”). We hope you join us for kooky brain science, inspiration, and a few laughs along the way.
Alan Simmons, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. With a career spanning over two decades and over 200 peer reviewed publications, Alan has made significant contributions to the field of neuroimaging, particularly in the study of emotional systems and their impact on mental health. As the Director of the fMRI Research Core at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, he continues to push the boundaries of our understanding of the human brain. Alan's research focuses on the intricate dance between emotion and cognition–exploring how our brains process anticipation, fear, and time itself. He is a co-editor of “The Bodily Self, Emotion, and Subjective Time: Exploring Interoception through the Contributions of A.D. (Bud) Craig” (Springer book series: Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences). Alan’s work is a testament to the complex interplay between our emotions, experiences, and the ticking of our internal interoceptive clocks. He is “The Brain” (heavy on the quotation marks), and with his wife, is driven to helping others understand living psychologically well.
Sarah Simmons, M.D., is a psychiatrist (Chicago Medical School & University of California, San Diego) who specializes in helping others hone their mental balance. She appears regularly on TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS) and radio as a psychological health expert. She is known as the “doctor’s doctor” due to her extensive work promoting psychological wellness within the physician community. In addition to serving as a psychological wellness expert for the County of San Diego, Sarah was named the 2024 Healthcare Hero of the Year by the San Diego Business Journal and has been a San Diego Top Doctor for five years. She regularly speaks at conferences and has received awards in research and leadership. In addition to corporate podcast work, she pens the advice column “Dear Dr. Simmons” for a newsletter serving a large integrated healthcare system. She is “Boots” (as in Boots on the ground) and, with her husband, is driven to helping others live psychologically well.
Why subscribe?
If you want to show your enthusiasm for the life of the mind.
If you want to get alerts or hear about other projects.
If you want that sense of belonging that your parents failed to provide.
If you want full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
Stay up-to-date
Every new post is sent directly to your email inbox. The good ones and the bad ones. If we like you then it will mostly be the good ones.
Apparently if you desire a spam-free, ad-free reading experience, plus audio and community features, get the Substack app.
Join the crew
Be part of a community of people who share your interests, or maybe share our interests. Tell you what, let’s compromise and you can have some of the interests and we will have some of them like in a draft lottery.
To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.
