Radiolab Live: Tell-Tale Hearts, featuring Oliver Sacks

Podcast: Radiolab (WNYC Studios)
Date: May 12, 2015
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Guest: Dr. Oliver Sacks
Theme: Stories about love, the heart (both literal and metaphorical), vulnerability, and empathy—layered with science, personal reflection, and music.

Episode Overview

Radiolab kicks off Radio Love Fest with a live show themed on the heart—both as an organ and a symbol of love, intimacy, and connection. The episode features two stories:

1. "Tell-Tale Heart" — A gripping and emotional journey through Summer Ash’s heart surgery and her strange post-op “superpower,” scored live by So Percussion.
2. "Valedictory Interview with Oliver Sacks" — A tender, reflective conversation with Dr. Sacks as he faces terminal illness, exploring memory, love, and what it means to live and feel deeply.

Segment 1: Summer Ash’s Telltale Heart (Live Story, ~[03:33]-[33:34])

Key Points & Story Development

Introduction to Summer Ash’s Journey

• [03:33] Molly Webster introduces Summer, her friend and former colleague, an astrophysicist and engineer with a “complicated relationship with her heart.”
• [03:42] Summer Ash:

  “My heart was not beating for three hours, which is a really crazy thought. Yeah, I was technically heart dead. I don’t know.”
  (Summer, reflecting on her surgery)

The Diagnosis and Surgery

• Summer’s heart murmur (previously benign) had, after a checkup, revealed an aorta more than double the normal size (~5cm vs. 2cm), posing sudden mortal danger ([05:40]).

• [06:21] Summer:

  “I live in New York? Like, living in New York is the contact sport?”
  (on being told to avoid strenuous activity)

• Surgical Details:

  • Sternum cut open, ribs spread, heart stopped chemically, heart-lung bypass performed, 4” of aorta replaced with synthetic tubing ([06:41]-[07:09]).

The Pain and Rehabilitation

• [07:44] Summer:

  “Part of my French was, this hurts.”
  (on waking from surgery)

• Describes excruciating pain, difficulty with even small movements ([07:59]).

An Unexpected Symptom: The Thundering Heartbeat

• During rehab, Summer’s heartbeat became so strong that her shirt fluttered visibly, and later, her heart was audible from two feet away ([09:11]-[10:39]).

• [11:29] Summer:

  “It just feels as if my entire rib cage, my clavicle, my sternum, my whole chest cavity is acting like an amp…”
  (describing sensation of her heartbeat)

• Audio of Summer’s heartbeat is played (eliciting strong audience reactions both live and for podcast listeners).

The Lingering, Overwhelming Presence

• Specialist assures Summer that the sensation is likely “scar tissue transmitting vibration” and will fade in 6-9 months ([12:45]).
• But it doesn’t go away ([13:58]).
• Over time, the sensation grows unbearable, causing anxiety, insomnia, and social withdrawal ([14:01]-[17:31]).
• [15:23] Summer:

  “My brain keeps thinking something must be wrong because we’re already doing this, so… Let’s freak out.”
  (on the feedback loop of physical and emotional anxiety)

A Moment of Reconciliation

• After two years, during an echocardiogram, Summer glimpses her heart beating, reflected in her glasses ([19:41]).
• [20:09] Summer:

  “I’m like talking to my heart in my head going, oh my God. You’re working hard… you are working for me. And we are on the same team… I see you, heart. Like, I see what you’re doing. I see your purpose.”
  (finding empathy for her own heart)

The Power and Peril of Empathy (Audience Reaction)

• The host shares that audience members fainted and vomited during the live performance, a phenomenon investigated post-show ([24:00]-[27:47]).
• Dr. Rachel Yehuda (psychiatrist) explains parasympathetic “overload” and possibly an empathy response:

  • “If you hear someone's heart beating... it might arouse a tremendous connection within you of hearing the very source of their life.” ([30:11])

  • Audience member Maria Chiveco:

    “The thing that was giving her life, which was absolutely necessary, was also the thing that was tormenting her.” ([28:38])

Reflections on Connection

• Summer’s heartbeat story becomes a literal medium for empathy, connection, and visceral discomfort:
• “I just identified so much with somebody being trapped in their own body.” ([30:33]—Maria Chiveco).

Segment 2: Dr. Oliver Sacks—Valedictory Interview ([35:18]-[57:28])

Key Points & Insights

Facing Mortality

• Sacks recounts discovering his terminal liver cancer diagnosis ([36:47]).

• [37:49] Sacks:

  “My first feeling was one of overwhelming sadness. There are all sorts of things I won’t see and I won’t do... It’s not like we all die. It’s like you have four months.”

• He approaches his own illness scientifically—recording the timing of a drug-induced delirium, marveling at how the illness manifests ([39:17]-[40:37]).

• [41:01] Host:

  “Why aren’t you more fragile... You don’t seem to worry at all when things become incoherent or strange?”

• Sacks marvels at his own brain, ever-curious in illness and health ([40:47]).

On Hallucinations and Curiosity

• Sacks recounts experiencing chemically-induced hallucinations and treating them as natural oddities to be studied ([42:03]).
• [42:03] Sacks:

  “There was a spider on the wall which said hello... and we had this conversation.”

• Even hallucinations become a subject of inquiry—a blend of philosophy, medicine, and humor.

Listening to Patients, Finding Humanity

• Story of Mrs. O.C., a patient who hears music after a stroke ([43:15]-[46:28]).
• Sacks recognizes that her “hallucinations” are, in essence, early childhood memories unlocked by a neurological change, and reframes them empathetically as a gift rather than pathology.
• [46:28] Sacks (via B):

  "Let’s suppose your stroke… opened the lock that none of us can break and released those first memories in you just for a little while."

• Mrs. O.C. is comforted:

  “I feel I’m a child in Ireland again. I feel my mother’s arms.”

Sacks on Love and Loneliness

• Sacks shares his experiences as a gay man—his difficult coming-out, rejection by his mother ([48:09]-[49:20]).
• On his first love, Richard Selig:
  [49:49] Sacks:

  “I said, ‘I’m in love with you.’ And Richard gripped me by the shoulders, and he said, ‘I know, but I’m not that way. But I love you in my own way.’”

• Subsequent heartbreak leads to decades of celibacy; a moving story about giving up intimacy after another loss ([52:05]).

Later-in-Life Love

• In his seventies, Sacks finds mutual love with Billy:
  [53:48] Billy (via Sacks):

  “I have conceived a deep love for you.”

• [53:59] Sacks:

  “And then I realized at that moment...that I had conceived a deep love for him... I’m not dealing with a what, I’m dealing with a who.”

• Love, at last, arrives, surprisingly, later in life.

The Mysteries of Existence

• Dr. Sacks recounts “seeing indigo”—that experience of fleeting, ineffable beauty, both on drugs and, once, looking at an artifact ([55:55]-[57:28]).
• [56:07] Sacks:

  “Although I’m not a religious person, I thought this is the color of heaven. And I leant towards it in a sort of ecstasy. And then it disappeared.”

• Suggests the infrequency—yet possibility—of awe, wonder, and mystery, even at life’s end.

Notable Quotes & Moments

Summer Ash’s Story

• “It feels like somebody has a rubber mallet and is banging on the inside of my sternum. And it’s very staccato.” —Summer Ash, [11:55]
• “My brain keeps thinking something must be wrong because we’re already doing this, so... Let’s freak out.” —Summer Ash, [15:23]
• “I see you, heart. Like, I see what you’re doing. I see your purpose.” —Summer Ash, [21:28]
• “I just identified so much with somebody being trapped in their own body.” —Maria Chiveco, [30:33]

Oliver Sacks’s Interview

• “It’s not like we all die. It’s like you have four months.” —Oliver Sacks, [37:49]
• “There was a spider on the wall which said hello...and we had this conversation.” —Oliver Sacks, [42:03]
• “Let’s suppose... that your stroke opened the lock that none of us can break and released those first memories in you...” —Oliver Sacks (via host), [46:28]
• “I have conceived a deep love for you.” —Billy to Oliver Sacks, [53:48]
• “Although I’m not a religious person, I thought this is the color of heaven.” —Oliver Sacks, [56:07]

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:33 | Beginning of Summer Ash’s Story | | 07:44 | Summer’s experience waking after surgery | | 09:30 | The visible, thundering heartbeat | | 10:39 | Heartbeat audibly heard by others | | 11:29 | Recording Summer’s heartbeat in the studio | | 13:58 | Realization the “party trick” heartbeat isn’t subsiding | | 14:48 | Anxiety feedback loop | | 19:09 | Preparing for two-year post-op echocardiogram | | 20:09 | Emotional reconciliation—“I see you, heart.” | | 22:54 | Audience is invited to listen live to Summer’s heart | | 24:00 | Hosts discuss live audience fainting/physical responses | | 25:19 | Dr. Yehuda on involuntary fainting/empathy response | | 28:13 | Audience member Maria Chiveco on her visceral reaction | | 30:09 | Dr. Yehuda on empathy—the source of another’s life | | 35:18 | Introduction of Oliver Sacks | | 36:47 | Sacks reveals his terminal diagnosis | | 39:17 | Sacks’s curiosity in tracking delirium onset | | 42:03 | Hallucination of a philosophizing spider | | 43:15 | Story of Mrs. O.C. and the music of memory | | 48:09 | Sacks’s mother’s traumatic rejection | | 49:49 | Confession of love to Richard Selig | | 52:05 | Losing his partner Mel and choosing loneliness | | 53:48 | Billy: “I have conceived a deep love for you” | | 55:55 | Sacks’s quest to “see indigo” |

Tone, Style, and Takeaway

The episode is deeply intimate, scientific, and empathetic, seamlessly weaving physiology with psychology, vulnerability, and the human need for connection. The weight of the literal human heart—its frailties, mysteries, and strengths—mirrors the emotional, often ineffable, experiences of love, loss, and awe. Even in moments of pain or mortality, both Summer Ash and Oliver Sacks exhibit an unyielding curiosity and tenderness toward themselves, others, and life’s mysteries.

For listeners:
This episode is a moving meditation on what it is to be alive, to feel our own hearts—and each other's—not just as throbbing muscle, but as the seat of meaning, memory, and love.