What made physician Oliver Sacks unique?

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Journalist Robert Krulwich explains that the storytelling abilities of neurologist Oliver Sacks had the significant effect of “storying people back into the world” – people who otherwise would have been isolated and overlooked by the rest of society because of their neurological challenges.

Written Features

A lightning strike caused a man to discover Chopin, and neurologist Oliver Sacks to investigate

The bull that changed Oliver Sacks’ life (and nearly took it)

What was on Oliver Sacks’ bookshelf?

Video Features

Clip | What made physician Oliver Sacks unique?

Clip | What pushed Oliver Sacks’ brother towards psychosis?

Clip | Why did Oliver Sacks love the periodic table so much?

TRANSCRIPT

TRANSCRIPT

(classical music) - He was asking, as hard as a person can, 'Who are you?'

I need to know, I need to know more, I need to know even more, and his attention would release people.

He could get secrets.

He could learn things.

And then he will tell stories about people in terrible trouble, who are brave, and special, and full of heart, paralyzed but not over, he will take this thread, of them, and he will pull them out, pull them slowly out.

But what he also did simultaneously, which was the great part, is he pulled the whole world in the other way.

He would tell these stories so well that other people, playwrights, actors, poets, would pick up the stories he tells.

retell them, or tell them in their own way.

And then that effect, is that people who are lonely and left out, autistic people, Touretters, people with all kinds of mental difficulties, are storied back into the world.