A Doctor Who Can Feel People’s Pain

“There’s a space between people that we just have to take a risk and just leap and see how we can connect,” says Joel Salinas, Harvard Medical School neurologist and author of Mirror Touch. Salinas has mirror-touch synesthesia: He explains to host Elise Loehnen that he perceives his senses as mixed (i.e., he hears colors) and that he’s able to feel the physical and emotional sensations of other people—as if they are happening to him. Which is: wild. Loehnen asks him how this has changed his understanding of empathy and the ways we connect with other people. And he teaches us why we need boundaries—and how to set them.