In 1990, a quiet Brazilian man named Jao suffered a serious health crisis.

He was only 49 years old.

But he pulled through the crisis, and afterward he told people that he wanted to live differently.

I saw death from up close, he said. Now I want to be in high spirits.

So Jo quit his job in human resources at an insurance company in Rio de Janeiro.

Instead, he began selling French fries from a street cart. The fries quickly proved popular in his neighborhood.

They were delicious, thin and crisp and

he'd scoop up a box of them away for free.

All you had to do was ask and he'd scoop up a box of them, no charge.

And what money she did make, he often gave away to children begging in the street, or he would

use his profits to buy them candy.

Day after day, he came home without a single coin or Brazilian Ray all in his pocket, but he could

not have been happier. Indeed, nothing made him happier than giving, whether from his savings or that day's French fry money.

Jao's story might have been nothing more than fodder for chicken noodle soup for the

soul, except for one thing, that the health crisis that changed his life was actually a stroke

that left him with severe brain damage.

Among other symptoms, Jao stopped sleeping and lost his sex drive.

He started forgetting things and had trouble focusing.

His movement slowed down.

And in the strangest symptom of all,

he became pathologically generous,

compulsively driven to give.

...