For a solo show that’s all about empathy, “Citizen Brain” doesn’t evince much for its audience.

There’s a story worth telling somewhere in Josh Kornbluth’s material: Despite having zero scientific aptitude, he became a fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF, all while his stepfather was diagnosed with dementia, soon concluding that a country that elected Donald Trump to its highest office might be suffering from a brain disease of its own. The cure? Strengthening the brain’s so-called empathy circuit.

But in its current form, which I saw at the Marsh Berkeley on Saturday, July 1, “Citizen Brain” doesn’t feel like a solo show so much as an endless pitch for the solo show we’re seeing, or one we might be about to see, if only Kornbluth would get to the point.

Kornbluth, a seasoned monologuist and Marsh favorite, structures “Citizen Brain” around getting the idea for and refining a pilot project he has to develop as part of his GBHI residency, which has the effect of making the whole thing sound like a series of drafts for a grant application. The idea he eventually lands on is to make some videos about the brain, which might make you wonder: Why not just show us those videos or some version thereof instead of talking about them?

Directed by Casey Stangl, Kornbluth exudes a jittery joy onstage, as if he just can’t wait to stammer out his next out-of-left-field idea or joke about how his mom is a “regal communist” and see your reaction. His voice has an appealing texture, like it’s been tanned into leather speckled with little bits of midcentury New York grit, and he knows just how to deploy it: fulminating a la George Costanza here, tucking in an idea with a caress there.

But the easy informality Kornbluth cultivates, as if he’s hosting us all at a freewheeling dinner party, doesn’t always serve him. He performs as if because this is all casual and fun, he can repeat a thought two or three times instead of rigorously honing his script.

And the insights he proffers are bathetic and vapid. Apparently, the cutting-edge way to exercise the brain’s empathy circuit when it’s confronted with someone who’s unreasonable and terrible is to take one to two deep breaths and imagine yourself in that person’s shoes.

The show takes a brief promising turn when it confronts empathy’s limits: “Are you going to ‘empathy’ your way out of fascism?” Kornbluth recounts one critic asking him; “Lord, save us from the empathy of white people,” says another. But then “Citizen Brain” neither tackles those counterarguments head on nor fully justifies why it’s still doing a whole show about an idea it works to discredit.

“Empathy is necessary, but it’s not sufficient,” Kornbluth concludes, appending a bromide about “how strong we are together.”

That’s all well and good, but you might not have needed a whole show to grant those premises.

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com