So we want to finish the night with a salute to a guy who's been on our program and part of our family pretty much from the beginning.

I have known him for more than 35 years.

Early on when radio lab started, I asked him if he'd help us out and send us a few story ideas.

He didn't send us a few. He sent us bushels, tales of chemistry and medicine, hallucinations, music people,

so many extraordinary people that he knew or found or helped, because the guy just doesn't run out.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist, author, is a guy who notices everything.

He's deeply interested in everything that happens around him and to him.

And tonight we're bringing him back on tape

for what, alas, may be his final offering for us.

As many of you know, Dr. Sachs recently was diagnosed with liver cancer,

and he wrote about this in the New York Times. He said he plans to spend the time that he has left, writing, being with friends, not doing interviews,

but he did agree to share his thoughts exclusively with us tonight, for you gathered here, because he's one of our family.

So, as I've done for decades now, I went over his house in Manhattan

with my mic and I said to him, I just need to know what just happened. A month and a half ago,

you were fine and then what? At the beginning of the year, I was fine. On the 3rd of January, I felt a little queer and I passed some dark urine. I thought I had a little gallbladder attack and didn't pay that much attention, but thought I better get things checked. And the x-ray, which was expected only to show a couple of gallstones

showed hundreds of cysts in my liver. Although my doctor said he didn't know what these

were and I would need further tests I knew what they were and I would need further tests. I knew what they were.

I said, it's happened.

And he was right.

The doctors eventually confirmed that a cancer that had been found in his eye nine years ago

had spread to his liver.

Were you frightened or relieved or what, what?

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