good evening from ran. i'm tavis smiley. more than 5 million people currently suffer from alzheimer's, a type of dementia that steals away your memories, your quality of life, and your ability to be independent. tonight a conversation with neurosurgeon dr. keith black about development of identification of a ground-breaking eye test that can identify signs of alzheimer's disease well in advance. actor weatherly joins us to discuss his leading role on cbs' comedy drama "bull." we're glad you've joined us. dr. keith black and michael weatherly in just a moment.

and by the robert wood johnson foundation. working with diverse partners to build a national culture of health so everyone in america can live productive and healthy lives. the california endowment. health happens in neighborhoods. learn more. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> this year we've been pleased to bring you conversations about health and health care issues as part of our road to health series, tonight neurosurgeon dr. keith black of cedars sinai medical center in los angeles, developed a ground-breaking new eye test that can detect the early signs of alzheimer's disease. dr. black, pleased to have you back on this program. >> tavis, it's great to be back with you. >> this has a great deal of promise. i know just that opening sentence has people not wanting to turn the channel. because the data is so clear. >> right. >> that so many more people apparently now than ever before are being stricken with this disease. first of all, why? >> so -- it's the tale of two cities. the reason is that alzheimer's and cognitive decline with age, and it's just a matter of age, how old you are. in the last 114 years, life expectancy has increased 40 years. so we're living longer than we've ever lived before. the challenge is that by the time one gets 65 or older, they

have a 1 in 8 chance of having alzheimer's or some type of dementia. by the time we get 85 or older, about 47% of that population will have alzheimer's or some type of dementia. so we're living longer, we need to find a solution to alzheimer's disease and dementia because we want to live longer but also live a healthy quality of life in old age. >> can i take your explanation to mean the only reason for that is because i'm getting old? are there other factors? >> there are other factors. there's genetic components, lifestyle components, environmental components. but the greatest risk of dementia and alzheimer's is age. so for most alzheimer's disease, which is really the spontaneous type, it's just a function of age. and what we now know is this disease actually starts about 20 years before we actually develop symptoms. before you get memory loss, behavioral problems, cognitive

decline. the disease undergoes about a 20-year silent period where it's not detected. during that 20 years, we're actually losing brain cells, we're using brain connectivity. and that's the real opportune time to try to stop the disease and treat it. >> before i talk about this ground and breaking work you've done with this eye test to help us figure this out, 20 years in advance, thank you in advance for what you've already done. tell me more about what you mean when you say environmental factors that lead to alzheimer's, like? >> we know there's a genetic component to it, there's also a lifestyle component. alzheimer's behaves very much like diabetes or other types of diseases where you have a genetic component but if you modify your lifestyle, you can potentially modify the disease. we know that particularly in the early stages before it becomes symptomatic, what we eat has a huge impact. so studies have shown that diets like the mediterranean diet can

ameliorate the risk. getting exercise can decrease the risk. ameliorating the amount of stress that you have in your life. or getting enough sleep can also modify the risk. so those can be very important components as well. and if we can detect it early and empower individuals in how to modify their lifestyle to control it, that's another potential therapeutic avenue. >> when i hear lifestyle, one of the components of that, just one of the components that comes to mind for me, is always race. are there any factors that indicate that there are environmental factors that particular races have to be -- >> yes, so tavis, we know that as african-americans, our risk is twice as high as the non-african-american population, the caucasian population. we don't know if there are particular genetic factors that

relate to that but we also know things like diabetes can increase the risk. high blood pressure can increase the risk. diet can increase the risk. a lot of that increased risk related to african-american background may be related to dietary factors or other health factors as well. >> all right, tell me the good news here which is this eye test. tell me about this eye test. >> so it turns out that the back of the eye, the retina, is really an extension of the brain, an outgrowth of the brain during embryonic development. when you look through the eye you're really looking at the brain. the eye is the window to the brain for a lot of neurological disorders. the hallmark of alzheimer's disease, the key sort of pathological factor, is the buildup up these proteins that form plaques that we call ameloyd plaque. you don't want to get a brain biopsy to see if you have it or

a tomography p.e.t. scan, which is radioactive, very limited. what we discovered in our laboratory is that with a 10-minute, noninvasive test, looking through the eye, we can detect these plaques that occur about 20 years before one becomes symptomatic, increase over time, and it gives us potentially an early biomarker, early predictor of the silent phase of the disease. so that's important really for a couple reasons. one is that if one knows that they're getting it, most of the pharmaceutical companies now developing treatments in this asymptomatic phase. so patients will have an opportunity to participate in clinical trials that are designed to sort of use therapies to prevent alzheimer's disease. or actually try to initiate one of these lifestyle intervention programs to try to slow down the progression and essentially prevent the symptomatic form of it occurring. the most of my career i've

really spent focused on brain cancer. brain cancer is hard. alzheimer's i think is easier, because it's a disease that occurs slowly over time. basically progressing over about 20 years. so if you're becoming -- if you're becoming symptomatic at 75, the disease actually started when you were about 55. if we can decrease the slope of that curve so that now you develop the disease at 55 but you don't become symptomatic until you're 95, we could essentially eliminate the symptomatic disease in most people's lifetime. >> i'm going to come to your ground-breaking research on brain cancer in just a second. because i've known you so many years, you were just as calm and cool and collected as you always are. i'm sitting here trying to keep myself from jumping out of my seat about the excitement. about this eye test. you're just so cool with it. you do understand this is like a really big deal? that this eye test can -- >> i think the reason it's so transformative is that you want to ascreening test for this. because if you have a 50% chance

by the time you get 85 or older of having the disease, you want to know if you're developing the disease and moving towards that stage. so if you can have a 10-minute noninvasive eye test, go to the eye doctor and say, wow, i'm getting this, what can i do about it? that really can be potentially transformative. >> what do you say to folk who say, but dr. black, with great appreciation and respect for the ground-breaking research you're doing at cedars, i really don't want to know. >> that was the knee-jerk reaction. you know, it's the way that we used to think about cancer 40 years ago. you don't talk about it. and we live in a very different time, right? so we're really the first generation we're seeing where parents and aunts and uncles develop the disease because they're living now into their 80s and beyond. and we now understand that alzheimer's isn't a disease we cannot intervene for. so we do have interventions. whether it's a lifestyle

intervention, whether it's a matter of now saying, okay, if i'm at risk, let me seek out some of these promising trials. pharmaceutical companies have a pipeline of drugs that are now under development in clinical trials to try to stop this disease. to try to prevent it. a lot of those drugs fail because they were treating patients too late in the disease. they already had alzheimer's. the brain had already shrunk. the brain cells were already lost. now the trials are trying to pinpoint patients in this early stage. so if i could get one of those drugs, if i'm developing it, i would want to consider being in one of those clinical trials. >> how long before you think this eye test will be universally available for people? >> so the eye test currently is not fda approved. it's still in the research phase. it's expected hopefully to undergo fda approval in the next 18 to 24 months. it will then be in sort of a limited number of centers in that early stage.

i would hope in the next four year, five years, this will be a widespread test. >> good news for a whole lot of people watching tonight and beyond. tell me about your research and how you're coming along with your brain cancer vaccine. >> so brain cancer, the most deadly form and common form is a type calls agliablastoma multi-forming, the type that johnnie cochran, my good friend and your good friend, died from. the type that senator kennedy died from. what makes this the tumor so deadly is even with best standard care, from the time of diagnosis to death, with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, it's still really about 18 months. we've been on a path to try to teach the body's immune system how to eradicate and fight this cancer. in the latest generation of the vaccines that we've developed, so we give a vaccine, basically a shot, that teaches the body's

immune cells how to basically identify the cancer, go into the brain, find those cancer cells, eradicate those cancer cells. in eight of the 16 patients that got the vaccine, they all survived more than five years. and about four of those 16, they're now approaching ten years of life. so we think that we've been able to make a real impact in this group of people that are now in long-term survival mode. we've now gone out and about 120 different medical centers with the vaccine, in a phase three trial to get fda approval for it. so we'll know potentially in three or four years if it really works in a large-scale study and can be fda approved. >> my time is up. a very quick question. when did you decide that you were going to pursue this path? of medicine? >> you know, i knew, tavis, very early, that i had a love for science.

and once i understood that i really wanted to help people and make an impact in the lives of people, i knew that i wanted to pursue medicine. and the first time i looked at an anatomy book of the brain i fell in love with the brain. and so i had great mentors along the way that really helped me. and that's one of the reasons why at seed darls sinai we created a program, brain works, we bring students from l.a. unified, seventh and eighth grade, we brought over 2,000 students to our brain works program, they get to be a neurosurgeon, work with a million-dollar surgical microscope, manipulate sheeps' brains, put in sutures and drill hole in the skull. it's really fascinating. through our mentorship programs, between that and the washington gifted scholars program, we now have a cup of those that are going on to be brain surgeons. >> you're doing great work.

>> thank you, tavis. >> i'm quite honored to have you on this program. >> thank you. up next, actor michael weatherly from the cbs hit show "bull." stay with us. michael weatherly, star of cbs' "bull." his character jason bull is based on the early days of dr. phil's career when he worked for a trial consulting firm and the world knows, michael knows, the mult multi-series juggernaut "ncis." first a clip from "bull" which wraps its successful first season next week. >> mr. cologne has a problem, want me to take care of it? >> please. >> excellent. stay by your phone. >> wait a second. so how does this work? >> what do you mean? money? no, i'm not interested in your money, mr. bull.

i'm interested in your work. in your science. in your company. i'm offering to do you a professional favor. all i expect is for you or, rather, your company, to do me one in return. >> i will stay by my phone. >> you do that. >> don't worry, i'll lock up. >> sounds like hollywood to me. professional favors. >> well, that's how it works. >> yeah. >> you take care of me, i'm take care of you. >> okay, anything you say. >> when you were doing "ncis," 13 seasons? >> i did 13. the show just finished its 14th or is finishing its 14th. now "ncis: l.a." going into its ninth, "new orleans" into its fourth. there's a quite a lot of episoded out there. >> when you've been doing something that long and it's

been that good to you, when or how do you know it's time to step aside? there's obviously a risk, you never know what the future holds. >> right. >> you've got a good gig, making good money, you know the system. how did you know it was time to make the move? >> that was such an instinct wall moment. and it's very slowly, all at once -- i had -- i started to have a difficult day one day that turned into a difficult week that turned into a difficult month. and i thought, i can't shake this. i was just -- i wasn't finding the zip and the fun. and then i really started -- part of it was that i had a new young family and i was probably exhausted. but i alsoso realized that denozo's meant to be a certain age, a certain kind of -- i'm sure radar o'reilly at a certain point was like, how long am i

going to anticipate what colonel potter has to say? i just -- i realized it was a risk, but i also looked around at -- interestingly in the world of music, i looked around at artists that decided to step away from certain things. and try to find their own voice. separate from this great team that i was on that i still love everybody on that show. >> that's my point. you're a music man yourself. >> yeah. >> so we could have a conversation for hours if we had the time, going through the list of all those persons who stepped off, thinking they could do it solo. >> right. >> didn't quite work out so well. >> right. >> michael jackson is the best example how to do it. >> right. i looked at like peter gabriel from genesis. and that was a guy who was part of this very successful thing that he was at the genesis of. >> pardon the pun. >> but he was part of a -- that

was a real movement, a real thing. but i responded to the idea, there's a song calls "salisbury hill" that peter gabriel wrote that is about embarking on that adventure, whatever that -- look, i didn't become an actor because i wanted bankers' hours. steve mcqueen has a quote. i became an actor to beat the 40-hour work week, now i work 80 hours a week. >> yeah. >> so you can't know anything for sure. and so there's a part of me that felt that there was a next step. i didn't know what it was. and luckily i have a great support in my wife. that's -- i think that makes all the difference too. i think on my own, i don't know if i would have come to the same place. >> i guess this conversation now begs the follow-up question. which is, now that we know why you decided to take the risk, whether or not you're happy that you did.

creatively. >> right. yeah, it's been -- it's been an unparalleled experience. but denozo in creating that team, i saw the way mark harmon fostered -- probably as a result of years of experience from ensemble shows as well. he wanted everyone to trust their instincts and bring those instincts into the play that we were doing. whether you're blocking a scene, you know -- don't just stand on your mark and say the line. you've got to bring your feeling to it. and your own unique perspective. so i had a great mentor and teacher in harmon. and i tried to bring all those things. and then my own nuanced understanding of how things work. i was surprised how -- the more dialogue i got, the less of a

leadership i felt coming from the character of bull. so that was a big journey for me was to realize, the less you say might actually be more important. i was always fighting for lines, i'm a pretty verbose guy. but i learned a lot about the role inside the show creatively, but also, you know -- it was all work and no play. and i don't think i became a dull boy, but i was a tired boy by the end of it. >> i try to juxtapose these two things. i hear you but i want to follow you. explain to me best you can how you challenge yourself, how you can become a better actor when you have fewer words, fewer lines. >> yeah, because i think -- we get, especially in television, this idea that you have to explain everything. recontextualize everything. the real power of a show like

"bull" is that the audience needs to go on this ride with the title character. if you're constantly talking to the audience, they don't have a moment to process. if you think about hitchcock's "vertigo," how much time do you spend driving with jimmy stewart? that really allows the audience to project themselves. what's he thinking? i wonder. sometimes they're having more interesting thoughts than a writer might come up with. giving that space is the real lesson. harmon did a lot of that on "ncis." i think the nickname we had for him was functional mute. i don't know if he appreciated that moniker. but i see the value in that now. >> yeah. i know this is not the first time you've been asked this, the first time you've been asked it by me. why the glasses? i think they work. they work for the character. but i'm always fascinated by little small choices like that

on a character. because glasses in particular can represent a barrier. but they also can represent something else. what do they represent for you in this character? >> yeah, it was the first thing i wrote on the script after i read the first pass last year. before, you know -- the pilot, i saw right away that he was a watcher. i got to meet gary oldman, and we talked about "tinker, tailor, soldier, spy." >> great actor. >> great actor and a great character, george smiley. and he wears -- >> what was that name again? >> tavis smiley. >> oh, yes. >> so he wears these great glasses and they're owl-like. when i was talking to mr. old man he said that that was his spirit animal for the character. actors are interesting in that you pull from all kinds of different places. and i thought that bull was a watcher. and a predatory watcher like an

owl. a very apt animal comparison. and so as we went into it, you're right, it does create a barrier. but it also -- people project on to you, when they see glasses that must be a smart guy. so bull -- >> is that what i need? >> there we go. >> thank you. >> all right. there is a slight prescription in there. does it help? you look fantastic. you know. >> you were saying, you were saying? >> tavis, where did you go? i'm sure you understand, just by wearing those glasses, much better than you did moments ago. >> yes, yes. >> so i found that there were all kinds -- there was this cardigan that bull wears in the first part of this season. we actually get to the end of the season and the cardigan disappears, for reasons of the arrival of this young woman. and then finally in the last episode, i shaved. which i'd been waiting to do for

22 episodes. because my mom every week is like, do you shave? so i did shave for the last episode. spoiler alert. but these little choices, you know. they seem small, like glasses or something. but they do come from character, and they come from a place of slowly, brick by brick, building what you hope will be a character that's mysterious but also appealing and personable. you're coming to people's house every week, you know. it's not like a two-hour film. you have to create -- you know, i looked at james garner a lot. and george papard. and, you know, sort of these appealing actors from the '70s and '80s. and then my big inspiration was mastriana from "8 1/2." the glasses and witch craft he

gets into making a movie. >> before i go blind. >> it is a prescription. >> congratulations on the season. we'll see you again, seasons down the road. >> i look forward to it as well, thank you, sir. >> that's our show tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. next time an upstate on standing rock, and singer faith evans on her new album. that's next time, we'll see you then.

and by the robert wood johnson foundation, working with diverse partners to build a national culture of health so that everyone in america can live productive and healthy lives. >> the california endowment. health happens in neighborhoods. learn more. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs. ♪

-today on "america's test kitchen," julia and bridget make sensational beef stir-fry, jack challenges bridget to a tasting of soy sauce, and keith makes julia unforgettable scallion pancakes. it's all coming up right here on "america's test kitchen." "america's test kitchen" is brought to you by the following -- fisher & paykel. since 1934, fisher & paykel has been designing