Oliver Sacks was a British neurologist, physician, and writer. Born in London to Jewish parents who were doctors, he started his academic course at the University of Oxford before emigrating to the USA. He did his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, UCLA, and then served at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic care facility. He documented his approach to people suffering from sleeping sickness -encephalitis lethargica- in his book Awakenings, which was adapted to the screens 17 years later and starred Robin Williams and Robert de Niro. He has written many books, several of which are eminently known. He passed away at the age of 82 from cancer.
In this podcast of 9 episodes, Indre Viskontas, a Lithuanian-Canadian neuroscientist and opera singer, considers Sacks her mentor and is equally fascinated by the mysteries of the brain. Radiant Minds tells "the human story one brain at a time" and highlights how much of a humanist Oliver Sacks was. The cases that stimulated his scientific curiosity were about people who were considered untreatable and not properly taken care of by the system. He considered neuropathologies not as deficiencies or lack of nervous response but rather as an addition of something different, that ought to be explored. He was amazed by the ways our brains were capable of adapting to new challenges, how creativity and memory could be affected or sparked, and how music had a profound impact on the recovery from trauma.
If you are like me, fascinated with how the human brain functions, what makes our minds grow, and how is information or stimuli processed, you will love this podcast! Episodes can be listened to in any order. This is an interesting series that I recommend. Happy listening 📚📚
