Radiolab - Radiolab Live: Tell-Tale Hearts featuring Oliver Sacks

A few days ago Radiolab performed a live show and this episode we're bringing you a few of the highlights. They were stories of what motivates us, our drives, our loves and losses. Producer Molly Webster tells us the story of life, near-death and what happens when your heart starts to work against you. And we visit with Dr. Oliver Sacks one last time to reflect on his life, his loves and his endless sense of wonder. Special thanks to our musical guests, SO Percussion and Sarah Lipstate

Duration: 1h 1m
Broadcast on: 12 May 2015
Audio Format: other

Special thanks to our musical guests, SO Percussion and Sarah Lipstate

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

3D Lab is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trading. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life so you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trading of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. You're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC, N-P-R. Hey, I'm Chad, I'm Ron, I'm Robert Kowich, this is Radio Lab. And a couple days ago, as in like 7, we were on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Big Opera House there. It's a really beautiful theater and it was full of more than 2,000 people. We were part of something called Radio Love Fest. Radio Love Fest is a big public radio podcasting, radio lovey thing that WNYC station here puts on. Basically, it's a parade of all these amazing public radio shows and podcasts. We opened the festival and since it was called Radio Love Fest, we figured we would use the opportunity to basically talk about the community of people around Radio Lab that we love, the producers, the musicians, we features amazing acts like soap percussion, who you're hearing. A lot of stuff happened and we told a lot of stories today, we're just on this podcast, we're going to play two stories for you. These are both stories about love and about heart. The last one, which you'll hear, is an exclusive interview with Oliver Sacks, basically giving a kind of valedictory interview. It's pretty wonderful. But first, we decided to do literally a look at a heart. This comes from our producer, Molly Webster. It was scored live by soap percussion, which is Eric Chabiche, Josh Quillan, Jason Trudin, and Adams Lewinsky. Oh, and some people in the audience, in the theater audience, had a pretty strong reaction to what you were about to hear. And we are not so sure that that may not also be the case if you're just listening. So if you are driving or you're operating machinery, maybe this isn't the best piece to listen to because it can get a little intense. Which we'll talk about a little bit afterwards. In the meantime, here's producer Molly Webster. So this is a story about a friend, Summer Ash. We used to work together and I think it's fair to say that Summer has a complicated relationship with her heart. You know, my heart was not beating for three hours. She was a really crazy thought. Yeah. I was technically heart dead, I don't know. So a couple of things to know about Summer. She's like wicked smart. She's an astrophysicist. She uses a lot of big words. Propulsion, center of gravity and moment of inertia.

Transcription truncated.