Oliver Sacks's Blog
May 16, 2012
The film also features novelist Howard Engel and famed chef Danny Delcambre, along with Dr. Sacks.Broadcast times on BBC World News (a separate channel from BBC America) are Saturday, May 19 at 02:10 GMT and 15:10 GMT; Sunday, May 20 at 09:10 GMT and 21:10 GMT—that’s Greenwich Mean Time, not to be confused with British Summer Time.
Sorry, New Yorkers, BBC Worldwide News is not yet available on the island of Manhattan unless you have satellite tv—but it is available now throughout the United States (and virtually everywhere else in the world).
But there are still tickets left to hear Dr. Sacks speak in New York City at the World Science Festival, June 1, 2012 at 8:00 pm. He’ll be talking on the therapeutic power of music. Check out the rest of the Festival, too!
April 13, 2012
This week, something extraordinary happened. Director Michael Rossato-Bennett posted a clip from his new documentary, “Alive Inside,” on YouTube. Over the next couple of hours, he watched the number of views climb from 300 to three hundred thousand. As of this writing, five days later, over three million people have watched it. It’s been covered by USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, ABC News, the LA Times, the Guardian, and news organizations in Brazil, Canada, and Pakistan. And the film hasn’t even premiered yet.
What’s attracting all this attention? Music therapy, and the extraordinary effect it has on a 94-year-old called Henry. Without music, Henry is uncommunicative and cannot recognize his own daughter. With music, he comes alive, reminiscing about his favorite Cab Calloway performances. His eyes glow, he speaks with energy and passion.
If you haven’t seen this clip, you can find it here. Pass it along!
The full documentary, which premieres next week at the Rubin Museum in New York, is about a wonderful project devoted to improving the lives of elderly people with various conditions—especially those, like Henry, with dementia, as well as people with cancer, depression, paralysis, and a host of other conditions. The idea couldn’t be simpler: load an iPod with music that has meaning for the individual, so they can access that music to enliven, engage, and uplift.
You can help transform the life of someone like Henry by donating an old or new iPod. For more information, go to the Music and Memory website. Learn how to pick the right music and set up an iPod for your loved one, or how to bring this program to your neighbors.
As Dr. Sacks has written in Musicophilia, music can be more therapeutic than any medication. Music, he says,”brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can.”
Music is inexpensive, easily available, and (unlike drugs) it has no side effects! Let’s keep this going—tell a friend, and ask them to spread the word, too.
March 9, 2012
Spring is on the way, and it's time to take a journey to the lovely warm climes of Oaxaca, Mexico! (We pronounce it "Wah-HAH-ka.")
Dr. Sacks's Oaxaca Journal has just been republished in a beautiful Vintage paperback edition, complete with the original fern drawings by Dick Rauh.
That's Dr. Sacks on the cover, writing in his journal in the shade of a nopal cactus. He may be writing about the history of chocolate or chili peppers, his ferny childhood at Kew Gardens, the gentle capybara, the violent colonization of Mexico, or its glorious pre-Conquest architecture. Or perhaps he is musing on botanical hallucinogens or the strange habits of fern devotees and birders scouting for new species.
As the New York Times said of this book, "Sacks's boundless curiosity is always a reward." (Did we mention that this book could completely solve your Mother's Day shopping duties?)
We hope you love your local librarians as much as we do. As a salute to libraries large and small, we will donate a hardcover copy of Oaxaca Journal to the first ten libraries we hear from (please send in a request on library letterhead via email—sorry, we can only send within the United States).
Bon voyage!
January 25, 2012
Happy Year of the Dragon! It seems like an auspicious time to announce that Dr. Sacks's next book, HALLUCINATIONS, is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2012. Stay tuned for updates, and a sneak peak or two!
We are excited also to announce the publication of Writer, M.D.: The Best Contemporary Fiction and Nonfiction by Doctors. This collection includes Dr. Sacks's "The Lost Mariner," along with pieces by many of our favorite writers: Pauline Chen, Atul Gawande, Leah Kaminsky, Perri Klass, Robert Jay Lifton, Danielle Ofri, Abraham Verghese, and others. A percentage of proceeds from sales of the book will be donated to the Starlight Children's Foundation.
Jerome Groopman opens the book beautifully when he writes: "A physician works at the border between science and the soul."
Speaking of science, many of us are thinking at this time of year about improving our diet and exercise habits. If you have read The Island of the Colorblind, you might be interested in this fascinating follow-up to the "bat" hypothesis, originally proposed in 2002 by Paul Cox and Oliver Sacks. The plot continues to thicken… and the science is not yet definitive. But in the meantime, you may want to think twice about the health effects of "blue-green algae" (really cyanobacteria) drinks and "superfoods."
Wishing you all a healthy, happy Year of the Dragon, with much good reading, great music, and the company of friends and family.
November 21, 2011
Thanksgiving is here, and we are thankful for your support, your comments, and your emails and letters. In particular, as Dr. Sacks finishes up the manuscript for his book on hallucinations, we are very grateful to all who have written to him about their own experiences with hallucinations (and everything else). Thank you!!
We are also grateful for the power of music. Last week, ABC's Nightline aired this special on Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's incredible progress using melodic intonation therapy to regain speech after a bullet passed through the left side of her brain, causing her to lose expressive speech. Her journey has been deeply inspiring, and we'd like to take this opportunity to salute music therapists, speech therapists, occupational and physical therapists, too. These dedicated professionals know all about brain plasticity and are devoted to helping the rest of us utilize it. Saludos!
We give thanks, always, for books and book people. What's Dr. Sacks reading these days? He has been returning to a perennial favorite, William James's Principles of Psychology (his edition is so well-thumbed its cover has long since worn away). He has been excited by a new book on dolphin intelligence–biologist Diana Reiss's The Dolphin in the Mirror, and one on the conquest of Mount Everest–Wade Davis's Into the Silence. And he is looking forward to reading Eugenia Bone's Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms–not only to learn more about hallucinations, but because mushrooms are some of the coolest and most overlooked members of the botanical world (well, at least they used to be plants, before scientists figured out that they weren't…).
October 21, 2011
Dr. Sacks’s newest book, The Mind’s Eye, debuted in paperback this month. Tell us what you think of the new cover . . . and the striking new set of covers for Migraine, An Anthropologist on Mars, Seeing Voices, Awakenings, Uncle Tungsten, and Island of the Colorblind—wow!
Dr. Sacks's newest book, The Mind's Eye, debuted in paperback this month. Tell us what you think of the new cover . . . and the striking new set of covers for Migraine, An Anthropologist on Mars, Seeing Voices, Awakenings, Uncle Tungsten, and Island of the Colorblind—wow!
August 5, 2011
In addition to the e-books and audiobooks mentioned in our last newsletter, we thought you'd like to know that The Music Never Stopped, the inspiring movie based on a chapter from An Anthropologist on Mars, is available now on DVD. It tells the story of a young man lost in the depths of amnesia and reunited with his father by the power of music. The DVD features extras including an interview with Dr. Sacks and the actors, commentary by director Jim Kohlberg, and deleted scenes. The great soundtrack for the film (including Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills & Nash, and previously unreleased Grateful Dead tracks) is also available by download or CD.
"Let there be songs to fill the air!"
July 25, 2011
Have you ever smelled, seen, heard or felt something that isn't there? Dr. Sacks is working on a new book about (mostly) non-psychotic hallucinations—those associated with delirium, migraine, blindness, intoxication, and a host of other conditions. He would be interested to know about your experiences if you'd like to share them. (Apologies, we may not be able to send a personal reply to all.)
Meanwhile, the good doctor has been making botanical forays again—his latest one, on the sex life of horsetails, is the subject of a "Talk of the Town" piece in this week's New Yorker.
Some of his earlier books are newly available in different formats:
Audiobooks: including introductions by Dr. Sacks (for The Mind's Eye, he reads the whole chapter on his own eye tumor).
e-books: The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, The Mind's Eye, and Vintage Sacks are all available now in e-book form, with more titles coming soon.
Folio Society Edition: Just published—a beautifully bound and illustrated limited edition of The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.
Check our Twitter, Facebook for the latest updates. Check our YouTube channel for a new video about the power of "doing."
P.S.: Word of the month: dehiscence (the botanical kind!)
May 27, 2011
This month is Tourette Syndrome Awareness Month in New York State. The syndrome, characterized by involuntary body movements or vocalizations, was first described in 1885 by the French neurologist Georges Gilles de la Tourette, and for the better part of a century, it was regarded as a rare disorder.
That started to change in 1972, when a small group of parents gathered around a kitchen table in Bayside, New York, to form the Tourette Syndrome Association. Around the same time, Dr. Sacks began writing about Tourette's; he went on to publish essays about it in his books The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars (in a chapter that was originally titled "The World's Only Flying Touretter Surgeon"), and Musicophilia, as well as in various medical journals (check out Sacks by Subject for a full list of his writings on TS).
These days, Tourette's is almost a household word, thanks to many portrayals (some accurate, some not so) in the media. It is now understood that the condition affects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, and there are research and advocacy groups devoted to TS around the globe.
In spite of these advances, people with Tourette Syndrome still face too much social stigma. Although coprolalia (outbursts of obscene or derogatory language) makes for colorful television characters, most people with TS do not have this symptom. Still, the more common vocal and motor tics often cause difficulties in school, work or family life—in large part due to a lack of understanding and awareness by others.
So we salute people living with TS (and their parents!), and hope you will take an opportunity this month to learn more about the syndrome.
P.S.: The Tourette name was also given to an English microcar built in the mid-1950s. We're betting it got great mileage!
