Welcome to The Lost Debata Show for Politically Ecclectics. I'm Robbie Gupta. And today I'm going to take you on a journey, not through mountains or rivers or the ocean where I am right now, but through the terrain of the human mind. Imagine someone who could look at what others see as a broken brain and see a whole person, someone who turn the clinical into the poetic, the disorderly,

into the deeply human. That was Oliver Sacks. And maybe you've never heard of him, that's okay.

But if you've ever wondered why we forget a face, but remember a melody, or how the brain can

make us dance even when our legs refuse to move, and you've been wondering about the same

things Oliver Sacks spent his life exploring. He was a neurologist, and you've been wondering about the same things Oliver Sacks

spent his life exploring. He was a neurologist, but he wasn't your average doctor. He didn't

see patients as charts or cases. He saw them as mysteries, as stories waiting to be told. And boy,

he could tell a story. He gave voice to people the world often ignored, those who didn't fit in, who lived on the

edges of what we call normal. Sacks wrote about a man who mistook his wife for a hat, a group of people

who could suddenly see but couldn't comprehend vision, and others who experienced a world far more

colorful or terrifying than we could ever imagine. He helped us understand

that the mind isn't a neat orderly machine. It's a messy, beautiful thing that is full of surprises.

But Sacks wasn't just a chronicler of others' lives. He was a man who wrestled with his own demons,

loneliness, love, identity, drugs, lots and lots of drugs. And he shared

that wrestling match with the world. He believed in curiosity and paying attention to the small,

strange moments of life and in finding wonder wherever you can. And unfortunately, we can't

interview Oliver Sacks because he passed away a few years ago, but we are able to talk to Bill Hayes, the man

who shared Oliver's final chapter and who knows Oliver Sacks better than anyone, except for perhaps

a tie with his editor, Oliver Sacks's editor, Katie, who just released a book of Oliver Sacks's

letters. And Bill is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in nonfiction.

He's a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the author of seven books, including

the wonderful, wonderful insomniac city. His new book, Sweat, A History of Exercise is a narrative

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